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have nothing to do with his play. The Giants recently gave a game away to division rivals the Washington Redskins during what Ralph Vacchiano of SNY referred to as “one Giant undisciplined mess” that included center Weston Richburg being ejected from the contest.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Coaches must control their players. They’re not real leaders if they fail to accomplish this mission. McAdoo notched victories in two of his first three official games as head coach, but he has yet to do what Coughlin could not during the 2015 season: bring back the disciplined type of football we saw from Big Blue back in 2011.
Quarterback Eli Manning is not without blame for the loss to the Redskins. Granted, Manning received zero help from tight end Will Tye in the red zone when a pass that could’ve produced a Giants touchdown became an interception because Tye pulled up on his route and failed to fight for the ball at the critical moment of the play. Manning also tossed a costly and avoidable pick late in the game that eliminated any chance of a New York comeback.
Far too many supposed fans of the Giants take Manning for granted and don’t understand how good they’ve had it over the past 12 years. It’s a subject I tackled this past June. This does not, of course, mean that we cannot criticize the two-time Super Bowl champion when he does not do enough to lead his team to a victory during a winnable game.
Interceptions such as the one thrown by Manning on New York’s final offensive play against the Redskins frustrate fans for multiple reasons. At this point of his career, Manning should know to live to fight another down rather than attempt to force a pass when no window exists in that moment. We know Manning should know this, as he admitted to it when speaking with WFAN’s Mike Francesa during his weekly segment on September 26.
No quarterback is perfect. Brett Favre and Peyton Manning didn’t get it right every time they dropped back to pass. Tom Brady commits errors and sometimes tosses the ball into the waiting hands of a defensive back. Such mistakes are forgotten and forgiven. That’s the nature of the sport.
Manning is more than just a strong arm or a winner with two championship-clinching drives on his resume. He’s the emotional leader of the New York offense and of the locker room. The 35-year-old has accomplished more than the majority of starting quarterbacks currently in the NFL. Manning has seen it all and he is, theoretically, entering the twilight of a career that will land in the Hall of Fame before 2030 arrives.
Much has been made, over the past week, about the antics of Beckham while on the New York sideline during the game against Washington. Beckham got into a battle with a kicking net. And he also appeared to tear-up following Manning’s first interception of the contest.
Manning could write a book about dealing with adversity and handling stressful and emotional situations. It would behoove the two players and the rest of the Giants if Manning spent some additional time with Beckham for a chat or two before New York plays at the Minnesota Vikings on Monday night.
Manning must also act as a calming presence in the huddle. What that means may change per the situation, but it’s on the starting QB to be able to read that moment and know how to rally the troops around him.
The Giants are 2-1 and very much so in the race for the division title heading into the first Monday of October. New York has a roster capable of beating the Vikings in Minnesota. Failing to limit unforced mistakes and keep cool heads will down the Giants more so than anything the Vikings do on October 3. Manning needs to lead the charge in more ways than one starting this Monday.Sunset in New York. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
It may be the most important number on Earth: 1,000 gigatons. That’s roughly how much carbon dioxide humanity has left to emit, scientists say, in order to have a two-thirds chance of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius above the temperature in pre-industrial times — and thus, staying within what has often been deemed a “safe” climate threshold.
A gigaton is equivalent to a billion metric tons. Last year, 32.3 of them were emitted.
The 1,000 gigaton number has many implications, but we rarely think about what it means for city planning. A new report, though, finds that if we don’t build cities more wisely, using much greener infrastructure, then they could be a crucial factor that tips the planet over the 1,000 gigaton line — and indeed, that they could play this role in just five years time. By 2020.
The research, by the Stockholm Environment Institute and with funding support from the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group — a consortium of global megacities focused on sustainable development and fighting climate change — is based on the central concept of emissions “lock-in.” We haven’t literally emitted anything close to the remaining 1,000 gigatons yet, but prior research suggests that with all the coal plants and other forms of fossil fuel infrastructure that are already constructed — not to mention all of the buildings and roads and other types of urban and non-urban infrastructure whose very existence implies a future of using lots of energy — about 800 gigatons are already committed to go into the atmosphere.
All of this is simply because when humans build big things, they then overwhelmingly tend use them over their useful lifetime — and that implies a heck of a lot of emissions.
[The 27 patterns that make up the world’s cities and suburbs]
That leaves 200 gigatons, to be carefully — or, not so carefully — apportioned in a world in which cities and megacities are growing at a mind-boggling rate of 1.4 million individuals per week. And that’s what makes city planning, design and infrastructure decisions so critical.
The new report finds that in the next five years, about 14 gigatons of emissions per year will be locked in by simple infrastructure decisions made as we expand cities and megacities — that is, if we do it the way we’ve always done it, featuring big highways, non-green buildings and more.
Ten of those gigatons each year will be attributable to the design of new buildings — their envelopes, their heating and cooling systems — and new appliances and systems in older buildings: air conditioners, heaters, lights and more. Another four gigatons per year will be the result of transportation infrastructure — the roads that are built in ways that encourage lots of driving, and the new and not always efficient vehicles that will drive on them.
Overall, then, just by 2020, 70 gigatons of the planetary carbon budget will be used up in city design and planning decisions, and the consequences they unleash. “In the next 5 years, cities will contribute to 30 percent of the remaining locked in carbon budget,” says Seth Schultz, the director of research, measurement, and planning at C40.
The rest of the 200 gigaton budget will then be consumed by non-urban buildings and infrastructure, pushing the planet past the “locked in” carbon threshold by 2020.
“Based on a business as usual trajectory, and based on current rates of urbanization, the infrastructure and policy decisions made in the next five years will exceed a cumulative emissions threshold of 1000 gigatons at some point in the future,” says Schultz.
But the new report also finds that a crucial 45 gigatons of emissions could be averted if growing cities and megacities deploy much more energy-efficient buildings, urban structures that don’t encourage as much driving, and more.
Still more could be accomplished if major industrialized cities — the New Yorks and Londons of the world — extensively retrofit their infrastructure to make it greener. Doing so would subtract from the 800 gigatons of emissions that are already committed to.
Therefore, how cities develop — and how they retrofit to become more sustainable — could greatly shape our planet’s future climate. Granted, how non-urban infrastructure, in all of its forms, develops matters even more based on these statistics. But cities are special for the following reason. Along with other “sub-nationals” like states and territories, they have been major pioneers and drivers of change lately, and the new figures are, in that sense, empowering.
But here’s what’s more troubling — the problem doesn’t end at 2020. Even if we save the 45 gigatons, we could give them back in just a few years of additional urban (or non-urban) expansion, unless sustainability’s advance across all parts of the world is extremely rapid.
And there’s another problem. The foregoing discussion is based on a carbon budget that keeps the world below 2 degrees Celsius of warming. But if the real danger zone is entered at 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming — as many scientists, and many countries, contend — then the math becomes tougher.
The bottom line is that with a rapidly warming and urbanizing planet, we may still be able to find a way to grow that doesn’t lock in the worst impacts of climate change.
Also in Energy & Environment:
Wind and solar keep getting cheaper and cheaper
Scientists say a dramatic worldwide coral bleaching event is now underway
The U.S. needs a solar energy revolution. But it’s laying off solar energy researchers
For more, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter here, and follow us on Twitter here.Suddenly many Americans wonder what it means that Elizabeth Warren, who is vying for Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate seat, has identified herself as having Cherokee and Delaware Indian heritage. The claim wasn’t sudden, but the furor is.
Some 20 years ago, she listed herself as a minority in a directory of law professors. Recently the authenticity of her heritage, and her reasons for claiming it, have been called into question on the campaign trail. However, the debate should not be about whether she deserves this minority status, but whether we live in a meritocracy.
From the mid-19th century, the beginning of the reservation period, up through the early 20th century, regardless of how people identified themselves, being classified by the U.S. government as an American Indian automatically curtailed one’s rights. These included the right to travel, practice religion, and pursue liberty and happiness — by happiness I mean living in step with Indian cultures. This official and de facto persecution persisted through the 1940s, to the extent that my grandfather, who couldn’t have been mistaken for anything other than Indian, put down “white” on his enlistment forms when he volunteered for the Army in 1943. Being white, on paper at least, meant he would have more opportunities.
But during the 1960s, and even more so in the 1970s, Indian cultures and religions earned a kind of cachet. Being Indian finally meant something other than being stuck at the bottom of society. In this period, activists helped force dormant treaty rights — such as hunting and fishing rights, exemption from some forms of taxation, and religious freedom — into court, where they were upheld. Additionally, government money was funneled into tribal programs as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.
For the first time, tribes — not the Bureau of Indian Affairs — had control over housing, jobs assistance and community health-care programs, which they staffed with their members. These advances helped, but for Indian-ness to become a truly valuable commodity, we would have to wait until the 1980s for affirmative action to mature and tribal gaming to blossom.
An Indian identity is something someone claims for oneself; it is a matter of choice. It is not legally defined and entails no legal benefits. Being an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe, however, is a legal status that has nothing to do with identity and everything to do with blood quantum. Members must meet requirements set by the tribe in consultation with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. (Elizabeth Warren is not enrolled in a tribe and doesn’t seem to have sought such status. She doesn’t claim an Indian identity, just Indian ancestry.) Indians who are not enrolled in a tribe aren’t eligible for the aforementioned programs and benefits, including casino profits, education assistance, hunting privileges and housing.
Indians make up a spectrum — for some, not claiming an Indian identity would be positively strange; for others, the claim is hard to accept since there is so little blood and possibly no cultural connection behind it. Most Indians exist between these two poles. Claimed or not, to be Indian and to grow up in a tribal community often meant that what you inherited was a lack of adequate health care, education and opportunity.
For decades, federal policies — including war, compulsory boarding schools and relocation programs that moved Indians from reservations to cities — waged a brutal campaign meant to eradicate tribes and acculturate Indians. If that effort had been successful, no one would want or be able to claim a connection to a tribe. Instead, some Indians remain proudly unassimilated — or with only blood to show.
Regardless of why Warren claimed minority status (she said she did it in hopes of meeting people with similar heritage), to be a woman from Oklahoma of working-class upbringing — and to want not only to walk the halls of power but to help build them — you have to press whatever advantage you have. Doing so might seem distasteful to those who’ve never had to do it because they were born into privilege and power.
But beyond the question of whether Warren “gamed the system,” isn’t the question of her identity and its deployment suggestive of something else? Doesn’t it show us that whatever its sins, America’s virtues have won — that we have become a plural society? If someone with Indian blood, no matter how little, is a Harvard professor and stands a chance of being elected to the Senate, might that suggest that the American experiment is working and that we live in a meritocracy?
No, not yet. An Indian identity has become a commodity, though not one that is openly traded. It has real value in only a few places; the academy is one of them. And like most commodities, it is largely controlled by the elite. In the 19th century, the U.S. government, Indian agents and even commercial barons had power over who was and who wasn’t identified as Indian. This meant controlling who got annuities, rations of food and clothing, funding, land, and trade. After the passage of the Dawes Act of 1887, which allowed Indians a certain amount of acreage based on tribal enrollment, it meant controlling who got an allotment of land and who didn’t. Half-blood Indians enrolled in tribes were allowed to sell their allotments, while full-bloods were not.
So if you were on the make, it was better to classify Indians as half-blood on paper, get them in debt to you and then have them sign their land over to you. Millions of acres were transferred out of tribal control and into the hands of the government — and to timber, mining, farming and railroad barons. Those with power and those in power controlled who could be classified as Indian and how strongly so.
I worry that the same kind of injustice goes on today, but in a different register. Being Indian now is positive. Not everywhere, not all the time — but it is certainly of value in places like Harvard. And just as in the bad old days, what being Indian means is largely decided by powerful people in powerful institutions.
My father is Jewish, but I didn’t really grow up around any of my Jewish relatives, so claiming a Jewish identity — despite that heritage — would feel strange, presumptuous, disrespectful. On my mother’s side we have an ancestor by the name of Bonga, who was African and ended up at Leech Lake in Minnesota, where he married a woman of the Ojibwe tribe, and where I grew up. Despite this heritage, it would likewise feel very odd to claim that I am African or African American. (I am something like one-156th African.)
I identify as Ojibwe, but the important distinction is that I get to make this choice, and that makes me different from many in my tribe. To be able to control one’s identity means you have mastered many social, cultural and economic registers — precisely the ones that can make you a success. It also means you have the luxury of choice; some people make this luxury themselves, but others are born into it. This is, I think, why one’s heritage sometimes smacks of unfair advantage.
For many, to be Indian has meant suffering. For many, to claim it costs very little but can yield tremendous returns. You risk little when you control the commodity and the market. Indian people have not often controlled both. That Warren claims she has Indian ancestry means not only that America is working, but that it could work better.
outlook@washpost.com
David Treuer is an Ojibwe Indian from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the author of “Rez Life: An Indian’s Journey Through Reservation Life.”
Read more from Outlook:
Elizabeth Warren’s worst week in Washington
Friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.Buy Photo Michael Cox, of Independence, talks with Kim Moser, who is running for state representative, and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul on Oct. 22 while Paul campaigns in Northern Kentucky. (Photo: Sarah Brookbank/ The Community Recorder)Buy Photo
INDEPENDENCE – U.S. Sen. Rand Paul spent Saturday, Oct. 22, in Northern Kentucky campaigning for re-election.
Paul, a Republican from Bowling Green, is running against Democratic Lexington Mayor Jim Gray.
On Saturday, Paul spent part of the morning knocking doors in Independence, focusing on getting voters to the polls on Election Day, not changing their minds.
"Northern Kentucky has the largest collection of Republicans in the entire state," Paul said to supporters at the Kenton County Republican Party Office, "We're going to win very well up here... We need a big turnout up here and to get (voters) energized to vote."
When talking with supporters Paul stressed the importance of the presidential election and what it could mean for the U.S. Supreme Court. With one seat now open, the next president could see three open seats.
With two weeks to go until Election Day, Paul said it looks like he is significantly ahead of Gray and that Kentucky is looking more conservative.
"I think that gives us a built-in advantage, in the sense that Kentucky is trending more conservative, trending more Republican," Paul said during an interview at the Kenton County Republican Party Office in Fort Wright.
The numbers show a state that is not excited about having a Hillary Clinton presidency, Paul said, especially in coal country.
Kentucky remains one of the last Democratic-controlled statehouses and Paul believes it could flip Republican.
"Eastern Kentucky, like I said, is really poised to send a message to Hillary Clinton. I think they're going to send that message from the top and all the way down the ticket. They're just not happy with Hillary Clinton. She doesn't represent us in Kentucky," Paul said.
Buy Photo Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul campaigns in Independence on Oct. 22 with members of the Kenton County Republican Party. (Photo: Sarah Brookbank/ The Community Recorder)
Paul's opponent, Jim Gray, visited Covington's Devou Park on Oct. 19 to discuss Kentucky infrastructure, noting the Brent Spence Bridge as a priority.
When asked about the Brent Spence Bridge and other issues for Northern Kentucky voters, Paul said infrastructure is one of his top priorities in Washington.
Paul discussed his plan to fill the $15 billion gap in the Highway Fund. Paul, along with another senator, Barbara Boxer (D-California), proposed bringing American companies overseas back to the United States through a repatriation plan. It is similar to a 2005 plan which Paul said brought back $30 billion in tax revenue.
The Invest in Transportation Act of 2015 would use revenue from repatriation by providing an incentive for companies to bring back an estimated $2 trillion, Paul said.
Paul said he would want to lower tax rates for five years to bring companies back to the U.S. and to put all that back into the Highway Fund.
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“You would have more than enough money to replace the Brent Spence, or maybe even add another bridge out on the East Side,” Paul said. “I favor all of the above. We could replace the Brent Spence and add the east side bridge. With bridges comes more commerce, with the improvement of roads comes more commerce. We’re a rich country, we ought to be able to find a way to do that.”
Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/2eLIlb6UPDATE: A new wallet version has now been released. Please upgrade to v3.5.9.7 if you are running a Windows client.
A new wallet update has been released, which includes fixes with the aim of reliably staking Superblocks using Windows clients. Please update your client to version 3.5.9.6 ASAP, which can be done from within the wallet's update menu. While this update is not fork mandatory, the more clients that are running 3.5.9.6, the quicker we should see a new Superblock.
A word from the original developer, Rob Halförd, on the current release:
It looks like we may finally see some improvement with the current superblock situation: The popular hash of d996 is gaining popularity quickly (execute neuralreport). We will probably stake one within a few hours.
All 24 projects are in d996, and the average magnitude is 44 (IE within range) and has an average project RAC of about 125000, so I see no reason for it to get rejected.
To clarify some of the misinformation that has been going around, no-one has lost any POR rewards at all, regardless of what project you have been crunching. The POR payout window until research payout is lost is 6 months, not 14 days. Please update your wallet, and continue to crunch your project of choice as normal.
To keep up to date with any further developments of the Superblock (or other Gridcoin news), I would suggest you join the official development channel on Slackchat, or the Github repo. Both of these are entirely transparent to everyone who wants to be involved.
Gridcoin Github Repo - Full source code and development discussions.
Gridcoin Developer Slack - Chat with the devs, as well as general channels for troubleshooting and branding discussions.
If you have any questions, drop them below and I will do my best to help.
If you would like to get further involved, or to read up on what is going on with the network, you can check out the following further channels serving the Gridcoin network:
Gridcoin IRC - Join the linked channel, then register with NickServ using the instructions at the top of the page so you can join #Gridcoin. This is required to stop someone else stealing your nickname and the associated GRC.
Gridcoin Steemit - You are here already! =)
Gridcoin Homepage - The actively maintained and developed homepage of GRC globally.
Gridcoin Subreddit - Anything GRC related. The developers read the comments posted here, and will in all likelihood directly address any questions you pose within the day.
Gridcoin Forum and Main Thread - The ongoing megathread where you are most likely to find the original GRC developer Rob weighing in.
Gridcoin Twitter - Keep up to date with GRC news.
Image credit:
Banner, @joshoeah
Footer, @me-shellFighting feral cats with lasers and poison spray in remote Australia
Posted
A new feral cat management device that uses lasers to detect the shape and movements of cats has been deployed in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands.
Dubbed the Felixer, the machine has been specially designed to help reduce the number of large feral cats that live in far north-west South Australia.
University of South Australia ecologist John Read helped develop the machine, which shoots toxic gel at cats walking past.
"Cats are very fastidious about grooming and they'll lick that off and go away and get poisoned," Dr Read said.
"We've found from lots of studies over the past 20 to 30 years that cats are mainly hunters and they don't often take bait and they're hard to trap.
"By squirting poison onto their fur, rather than throwing baits around, it's a more targeted way of getting feral cats."
Sensors detect cats
One of the main concerns about deploying a machine like the Felixer is the possibility of the machine incorrectly shooting a native animal.
But Dr Read was assured that would not happen.
"We've got some activation sensors which detect a cat's rump and its shoulder," he said.
"The animal's got to be that high in order to activate them, so shorter animals like rabbits or lizards or bilbies [and] other native animals are too short.
"There's also some blocking sensors, so there's a blocking sensor at about our knee height, which is high enough that dingos, kangaroos, people, will automatically block the machine.
"If that blocking sensor is activated, the whole machine shuts down for at least a minute.
Dr Read said cats had a higher "belly clearance" than native animals — another feature that distinguished the species.
Protecting endangered species
The Felixer was deployed in the APY Lands because feral cats were a threat to the critically endangered black-footed wallaby, or warru.
APY Lands general manager Richard King said that was because of the sheer size of some outback feral cats.
"The cats are not like your normal cats that you have at home," he said.
"These cats are about 35 per cent bigger, and basically the meanest type of cat that you can get, almost like a bobcat."
Mr King said warru were on the brink of extinction, making it important they were protected.
Dr Read agreed.
"In the last two years alone, we've detected five different cats that have killed warru," he said.
"Warru only get to about three to five kilos in size and feral cats can easily get to four or five kilos, so they're a significant predator."
Dr Read said Felixers had been deployed throughout the APY Lands, including at Wamitjara, a habitat for warru.
Getting the locals involved
Mr King said as well as protecting the endangered warru, the Felixer was helping local Indigenous communities in the APY Lands learn new skills.
Aboriginal people work as rangers in the APY Lands national parks, and it will be their responsibility to refill the Felixer's gel cartridges when they run out.
"The warru enclosure, where we're breeding up warru, we have quite a few rangers in there that look after the traps, do weighing, monitor," Mr King said.
"All the charging, the battery charging, is done by all of our Anangu staff.
"The poisons are loaded by them and they work with the ecologist to get out there and make sure everything's working well."
Topics: pest-management, ecology, conservation, ernabella-0872Hate vocal fry? Bothered by the use of “like” and “just”? Think uptalk makes people sound less confident? If so, you may find yourself growing increasingly unpopular—there’s a new wave of people pointing out that criticizing young women’s speech is just old-fashioned sexism.
I agree, but I think we can go even further: young women’s speech isn’t just acceptable—it’s revolutionary. And if we value disruptors and innovation, we shouldn’t just be tolerating young women’s speech—we should be celebrating it. To use a modern metaphor, young women are the Uber of language.
What does it mean to disrupt language? Let’s start with the great English disruptor: William Shakespeare.
Shakespeare is celebrated to this day not just because he wrote a mean soliloquy but because of what he added to our language—he’s said to have brought in over 1,700 words. But recent scholars have called that number of words into question. As Katherine Martin, head of US Dictionaries at Oxford University Press, has pointed out, if Shakespeare was inventing dozens of new words per play, how would his audience have understood him? Rather, it’s likely that Shakespeare had an excellent grasp of the vernacular and was merely writing down words that his audience was already using.
We shouldn’t just be tolerating young women’s speech—we should be celebrating it.
So if Shakespeare wasn’t disrupting the English language, who was? And how did we get from Shakespearean English to the version we speak now? That’s right: young women.
A pair of linguists, Terttu Nevalainen and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg at the University of Helsinki, conducted a study that combed through 6,000 personal letters written between 1417 and 1681. The pair looked at fourteen language changes that occurred during this period, things like the eradication of ye, the switch from “mine eyes” to “my eyes,” and the change from hath, doth, maketh to has, does, makes.
In 11 out of the 14 changes, they found that female letter-writers were changing the way they wrote faster than male letter-writers. In the three exceptional cases where the men were ahead of the women, those particular changes were linked to men’s greater access to education at the time. In other words, women are reliably ahead of the game when it comes to word-of-mouth linguistic changes.
This trend hasn’t changed much. While young people have long driven innovation, it’s not just an age thing—it’s also a gender thing. During the decades that sociolinguists have been researching the question, they’ve continually found evidence that women lead linguistic change.
Young women are leading the change away from the distinctive /r/ pronunciation of New York City, they’re leading the vowel changes in US cities around the Great Lakes, the /aw/ pronunciation in Toronto and Vancouver, the “ch” pronunciation in Panama, the /r/ pronunciation in Montreal, the ne deletion in Tours, /t/ and /d/ pronunciations in Cairo Arabic, vowel pronunciation in Paris, not to mention entire language shifts, like that from Hungarian to German in Austria—and the list goes on.
Plus, young women are on the bleeding edge of those linguistic changes that periodically sweep through the media’s trend sections, from uptalk to “selfie” to the quotative like to vocal fry.
The role that young women play as language disruptors is so well-established at this point it’s practically boring to sociolinguists. The founder of modern sociolinguistics, William Labov, observed that women lead 90% of linguistic change—in a paper he wrote 25 years ago. Researchers continue to confirm his findings.
It takes about a generation for the language patterns started among young women to jump over to men. Uptalk, for example, which is associated with Valley Girls in the 1970s, is found among young men today. In other words, women learn language from their peers; men learn it from their mothers.
If women are such natural linguistic innovators, why do they get criticized for the same thing that we praise Shakespeare for?
While the pattern is well-established, we still don’t know for sure yet why young women reliably lead linguistic innovation. Maybe it’s nature, maybe it’s nurture; but we do know that young women tend to be more socially aware, more empathetic, and more concerned about how their peers perceive them. This may translate into a greater facility for linguistic disruption. Women also tend to have larger social networks, which means they’re more likely to be exposed to a greater diversity of language innovations.
And of course, women are still likely to spend more time caring for children than men—even if a particular woman works outside the home, daycare workers and elementary school teachers are disproportionately female. This means that even if young men were disrupting language as much as women, they would be hard-pressed to pass it along.
All of this leads us to the biggest question: if women are such natural linguistic innovators, why do they get criticized for the same thing that we praise Shakespeare for? Plain old-fashioned sexism.
Our society takes middle-aged men more seriously than young women for a whole host of reasons, so it’s only logical that we have also been conditioned to automatically respect the tone and cadence of the typical male voice, as well as their word choices.
Sure, let’s encourage young women to speak with confidence, but not by avoiding vocal fry or “like” or whatever the next linguistic disruption is. Let’s tell them to speak with confidence because they’re participating in a millennia-old cycle of linguistic innovation—and one that generations of powerful men still haven’t figured out how to crack.
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: Portland has a whole ton of Web analytics talent here in town. Both on the consulting side of the desk and the development side.
One of those talented companies is Clicky, a cost effective real time Web analytics service that I happen to use right here on Silicon Florist. What’s more, they have an incredibly passionate user base. How do I know? Clicky just changed their interface.
This is still the same Clicky you know and love, the main difference is the navigation. The goal here was to make it faster to get to other pages, and to load them faster too. We also wanted the entire site to feel like a true “app” instead of just a web site.
The new interface spent a great deal of time in beta. With a bunch of people banging on it. But just like when Digg or other services change their interface, many users take umbrage and dig in their heels. And there’s pushback and uproar. Even though the folks running the company are convinced it’s the best path to take.
People are resistant to change. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Well, Clicky wasn’t “broken” per se, but it was starting to feel dated. Sexy competitors like Chartbeat and Woopra have popped up and while we feel that our product is much more feature complete than either of them, people rave about their interfaces all the time. We get plenty of compliments on our (old) interface too, because of its simplicity and ease of use, but the difference is that Clicky felt like a web site, while the others feel like web apps. (And in the case of Woopra, it is literally a desktop app, although they offer a web version now as well).
I, for one, like the new look. You see, I use Clicky for one reason: understanding my traffic. And the new interface manages to cram more information on the screen more cleanly, giving me access to more details with less clicking. That’s better for me.
If you’re using Clicky already, I’d be interested to hear your take. If you’re not, maybe now would be a good time to take a look at how Clicky can help you better understand your Web traffic.
Want to connect with more awesome dots in the Portland startup community? Consider joining us over on Patreon ❤️
Like this: Like Loading...In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., the federal government created Canada's first anti-terrorism legislation, defining what constitutes terrorism and making it a punishable offence within Canada's Criminal Code.
The Anti-terrorism Act (bills C-36 and C-42) was the subject of heated debate and controversy as the Liberal government of the time fast-tracked it through the House of Commons and the Liberal-dominated Senate.
The act became part of the Criminal Code on Dec. 18, 2001. The changes to the code are "aimed at disabling and dismantling the activities of terrorists groups and those who support them."
As it was being drafted, politicians and protesters raised concerns that the legislation trampled on civil liberties because it gave police sweeping new powers, including the ability to arrest people and hold them without charge for up to 72 hours if they are suspected of planning a terrorist act.
The Liberals used their majority to pass a motion to curtail debate and rejected all of the remaining opposition amendments. The motion passed easily in the House of Commons, with a vote of 190 in favour and 47 against.
When the bills were passed, Liberal Justice Minister Anne McLellan said the provisions had three main objectives: to suppress existing terrorist groups, provide police with new investigative tools and strengthen prison sentences for terrorists.
The bills also contained provisions to comply with new UN rules on combating terrorism as well as with similar laws that were being put in place in the U.S. and Britain.
"We believe that people everywhere are entitled to live in peace and security," McLellan said.
Controversial clauses not extended
In a nod to civil libertarians, the original bill contained a five-year "sunset clause" on some of its more controversial elements, meaning those sections would have to be reviewed by Parliament, which would decide whether or not to to extend them after five years. The act itself was not open to a sunset clause.
When the time came to revisit the provisions, Parliament was gripped by another heated debate.
Of the two clauses that were at the heart of the discussion, one allowed police to arrest suspects without a warrant and detain them for three days without charges if police believed a terrorist act may have been committed.
The other allowed a judge to compel a witness to testify in secret about past associations or perhaps pending acts under penalty of going to jail if the witness didn't comply.
Neither clause was used by police or prosecutors in the five years before the necessary review.
In October 2006, a parliamentary committee recommended extending the two provisions and the Conservative government of the day agreed. The rest of the House of Commons, however, did not.
The three opposition parties united to defeat a Conservative proposal to keep the measures in place for three more years by a 159-124 vote. The rest of the legislation remained in force.
Courts test the legislation
In June 2006, 18 youths and adults were charged with offences under the Anti-terrorism Act in connection with an alleged bombing plot.
At the time, Conservative Justice Minister Vic Toews said the government had no plans to toughen the law but said the government could consider changing its definition of terrorism, which makes up what is known as the Act's motive clause.
Mohammad Momin Khawaja, shown in 2004, is accused of being part of an extremist organization that is alleged to have plotted to blow up Britain's electricity supply network, trains, pubs and nightclubs. ((Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press) )
This clause defined a terrorist act as one committed "for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause." At the time, Toews said there were two problems with that definition: it could lead to profiling |
about by looking at other players, meaning they would watch film, and then notice me, is just a testament to hard work, effort, and really the Grace of God allowing me to be in the right place in the right time. And to sum it up, the honor and privilege receive letters from a Division 1 college and to get a scholarship is definitely a blessing.
Strauss : What was the transition like from high school to Syracuse?
Darius : It was different. I was growing up in the inner-city and going to a big-time university where you’re on your own. There’s always a transition, but we had a great support staff at Syracuse to try to help with that transition. Understanding that this was the next phase of your life, and a lot of where you will end up in life is predicated on the decisions that are made during those four or five years. It was pretty powerful.
Strauss : Who was your best friend at Syracuse when you played?
Darius : My best friend was Roland Williams.
Strauss : Do you have a good memory you share with him?
Darius : Just growing together as young men. Not one in particular though. Just really talking about life and football.
Strauss : Do you have a favorite memory from any Syracuse football games or anything?
Darius : Yes, I remember the 1996 Gator Bowl in Jacksonville. We beat them forty-one to nothing. We had a great game against Clemson. Then, also during my senior year. One thing that happened was during my junior year, when I gained custody of my two brothers came up to live with me in college. That was pretty big for me. They were in high school, but they came up to live with me. Also, I made a position to come back my senior year, which is a testament to them, one that is graduating. The other is that God rewarded me in coming back and defensive All-American, Team-MVP, leading the country in interceptions, Big East Defensive Player of the Year, and all of those football accolades that it came with. I was humbled by it. I thank the Lord for it.
Strauss : What was it like to win Big East Defensive Player of the Year?
Darius : It was huge, because I was humbled. No matter what position I found myself in, college or the NFL, I still was in awe. I was still in awe. I would feel amazing, a kid from where I grew up, my background, and a way that God favored and blessed me with an opportunity to do that. To know that there are several guys from Miami, Virginia Tech, West Virginia, and they picked me to be Big East Defensive Player of the Year. I was like, “Common, pinch me!”
Strauss : At Syracuse, what was your relationship with Tebucky Jones? (Jones was the starting safety opposite Darius at Syracuse. He was a 1st round pick, drafted 22nd overall, while Darius was drafted 25th.)
Darius : We had a good relationship. We came in together. We grew together. He had a family, I didn’t at the time. We shared a similar background in terms of where we grew up, and in terms of the surrounding. But, we really grew closer that last year when he started playing Safety. We starting working together a lot, and for us to come out into the NFL Draft together. For him having been picked after only one year, I was proud of him. That one year of playing really blessed him to have that one year and be very successful at it, enough to make it to the NFL.
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Strauss : What was your draft day experience like?
Darius : My draft experience… It was very, very nice. It was a lot of stress and trust. Stress on the standpoint that you don’t really know where you are going to go. You are always thinking about where you can go. You know that there are thousands of guys that in your position all across the world, and what would cause a person to pick you. There is a lot of trust because you have to trust God that he was going to do what he said he was going to do, which was to take care of you, provide for you, bless you abundantly. And so, as a young christian, that was challenging. It was definitely rewarding when they called my name when I got drafted by the Jaguars.
Strauss : What was your first rookie experience like as a Jaguar?
Darius : Stepping out onto the field and understanding that this is a new chapter in your life. The fact that you actually made it, and not only that you made it, but the pressure that comes with staying there. The average career is three years. And so… My rookie year, getting a chance to start that year was incredible… and to be the starter on opening day in my position… and to win defensive rookie of the month in the month of November.
Strauss : Throughout your tenure with the Jaguars, do you have a favorite memory?
Darius : I think I would say two really. One in 1999, when we made it to the AFC Championship Game. That season was a very challenging season for us, but the way we went through it, only losing to one team the whole year, but it was three times to the Tennessee Titans. Then, also, in 2001, I fractured my hip in the first game of the season and missing six games, and then coming back, and then making first alternate to the Pro Bowl even after missing six games. I look back and I thank God for the people that he put in my life to help me get back and give me the highest level of play, in terms of what I was able to have when I came back. To be recognized as a possible Pro Bowl player, by the coaches and my peers. I will always remember that. And, then I guess the third would be getting franchised three years in a row, and it was the first time in league history.
Strauss : With the Jaguars, did you have a best friend on the team?
Darius : No, I really didn’t have a best friend. I was friends with everybody. I would say I was friends with everybody.
Strauss : What’s the funniest thing that happened in your pro football career?
Darius : The funniest thing that happened, I made it. No, I’m kidding. The funniest thing was really just the camaraderie with the guys. We always had something called, “The Rookie Show.” That was something every year before or in training camp, the rookies would put on a show. That was always funny.
Strauss : Who had the most impact on your career?
Darius : I would say Frank Gansz. He was head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. He was our Special Teams coordinator in 2001 and 2002. He had a tremendous impact because he was also a former navy pilot. He always brought a lot of fire. He told a lot of stories. He always challenged us to be at an elite level and to reach the highest potential. He never allowed us to underachieve. He always expected greatness out of us. He really had a great impact on my career.
Strauss : Did you have a nickname?
Darius : Yes. Double D.
Strauss : What’s it like to work for the NFLPA?
Darius : It’s a great experience because the NFLPA has a lot of programs that helps players in life. It helps you understand that business side of football. When the game stops, it really lets you understand the business side.
Strauss : If you could describe yourself as any ice cream flavor, what would you be and why?
Darius : Cookies and Cream because my grandma’s white, mom is white also. My dad is black.
Strauss : Do you have a favorite quote?
Darius : Yes, I do. “There are two types of pain. There is the pain of loss, which you can recover. And then, there is the pain of regret which never goes away.” And so, don’t live life in regret.
Strauss : From someone who wants to play in the NFL, what is the best advice you can give them?
Darius : Focus on what you’re doing. Focus on the phases in front of them. Do everything you can to get the best at that phase and get ready to take the next step when it happens.
Strauss : Is there anything you want to tell fans that we have not talked about?
Darius : My life would not be where I’m at without Jesus. He is the savior of my life, and he is the reason why I live, and why I breathe. If anybody wants to be blessed, you have to trust God. You have to live according to his standards.
Strauss : Thank so much for your time Donovin.
Darius : Alright buddy. Thank you.
Announcement : Thank you for listening to the interview with Donovin Darius! I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you leave your comments below as well! Please check out the Facebook page at http://facebook.com/ProInterviews/, and follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/ProInterviews/. Please subscribe on YouTube at http://youtube.com/ProInterviews/ and check out my website https://prointerviews.org/ for other interviews. Thanks again for listening! Stay tuned for more, and feel free to contact me!
->Here are the personal questions Donovin Darius answered.<-
Strauss : If you could meet anyone, who would it be and why?
Darius : If there was anybody I could meet that I have not met, I would say David. David from the Bible. He was a mighty man of God, and he was a warrior, and he was a worshipper.
Strauss : If playing football didn’t work out, what were your plans?
Darius : I love coaching. I would probably be coaching. I would work in athletes and work with the youth. I would maybe do personal development and athletics. I would coach in high school or college.
Strauss : Who was your childhood star?
Darius : My childhood star was Randall Cunningham.
Strauss : What is your favorite TV Show?
Darius : My favorite television growing up was Quantum Leap. Now, I like the History Channel.
Strauss : What is your favorite movie of all time?
Darius : Coming to America.
Strauss : What is your favorite type of pie?Satya Nadella reportedly made the confirmation in response to questions at the Madrid dotNet Conference, at which thousands of developers were in attendance.
The Xbox One was updated with the capabilities to run universal Windows 10 apps last year with the New Xbox One Experience (NXOE). In addition to the new Avatars app, which appears to be a Universal Windows Application, the NXOE briefly offered a glimpse of Cortana running on Xbox One — showing that Windows 10 convergence is truly on the cards.
According to Microsoft Insider, Satya fell short of answering where UWAs would appear on the Xbox One, leaving us to wonder whether the Xbox One will simply receive the full Windows 10 Store, or receive more strict curation processes as is currently the case. Either way, the report should be encouraging to independent Windows app developers, who have so far been unable to put their apps onto the Xbox One.
Beyond some fan favorite third-party Windows 10 apps like Readit, Baconit, Tweetium, and (ahem) Windows Central — it opens up the possibility of accessing Office Mobile, and other light computing apps via your console. Xbox head Phil Spencer recently re-confirmed that Microsoft is working on bringing mouse support to the Xbox One, which would further the usability of UWAs like Word and Excel although Edge for Xbox One functions fairly well while using your Xbox controller joystick as a cursor.
Full Windows app support for the Xbox One creates all sorts of possibilities for the console and gives it another powerful differentiator in its battle with Sony's PlayStation 4.
Source: Microsoft Insider
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Enlarge this image toggle caption AP AP
We've heard some of the same comments a lot about this fall's television lineup, which includes the shows Black-ish, Cristela, Selfie and Fresh Off the Boat: "Why is diversity all the rage now?" asked Robert Rorke of the New York Post. And Esther Breger called this season the "most diverse in recent TV history."
But as we pointed out a few weeks ago, back in 1974, three sitcoms featuring black families were at the top of the charts. So how much browner is today's TV landscape of sitcoms compared with the television offerings from a decade — or two, or five — ago?
To get at this question, we decided to make a list. We asked folks on Twitter and Facebook to scan their memories and help us compile as many notable prime-time sitcoms featuring families of color as we could. (Our criteria: The show had to be on a network — and we're counting PBS here.)
Here's a timeline of what we came up with. The shows that didn't last very long, by the way, are in light gray.Apple has pushed out an update to their iWork suite consisting of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote that not only bring support for iOS 6, but also add the ability to open your documents in another app. When you go to Share and Print, "Open in Another App" is now an option. You'll be able to choose between Apple's format (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), Microsoft's format (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), or PDF and the apps that support the chosen format will be available.
Before this feature was available, users would have to use the workaround of emailing the document to themselves and then opening it in the app of their choice. It's great to see Apple prioritize the usability of their apps. Even though this was the only thing new added to Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, I'm pretty excited about this update. How about you?
Pages - $9.99 - Download Now
Numbers - $9.99 - Download Now
Keynote - $9.99 - Download Now
This post may contain affiliate links. See our disclosure policy for more details.Fallout 4 looks like one hell of an upgrade from its last-gen predecessors. I say that as a man who put a lot of time into Fallout 3, including one particularly legendary/troubling-in-hindsight 15-hour stint, and vastly more cumulative play time before even (accidentally) stumbling upon the main plot. Very long story short, I spent a lot of time in the Capital Wasteland. For all of its cold, irradiated decay, I just loved being in that place. But after seeing a fair amount of Fallout 4, and talking to the people behind it, I now feel like I wasn’t really there at all.
See, in comparison to Fallout 4’s Boston-set Commonwealth, Fallout 3’s wasted Washington no longer feels like the rich, expansive, living world I thought it was at the time. In comparison to Fallout 4, it now feels like a sterile, miniature lansdscape made of cardboard and stickytape.
The sense of presence is the thing. It’s a vastly under-rated talking point in the discussion of convincing game worlds, and not something you create with the broad-strokes flourishes of game design. It’s a product of the little things. The details. The small, innocuous elements of being a real person in a real place that we rarely pay attention to, day-to-day, yet which scream like a klaxon horn made of angry seagulls when they’re missing from a simulation.
In hindsight, Fallout 3 is a game of great, isolated areas and moments, held together with a connective tissue of suspended disbelief. Conversations are text-clicking stare-outs with vocal mannequins, glorified versions of old-school RPG character portraits whose stumbling attempts at being real boys and girls make them only more creepily artificial. Combat is almost a great hybrid of real-time FPS and strategic, quasi-turn-based skillshots, but in truth only half of that equation holds up, shoot-outs turning into clumsy feats of panicked back-pedaling whenever you don’t have VATS ready as a time-stopping safety net. Fallout 3 might look like an FPS in screenshots, but that stiff, clunky aiming means that the in-game reality isn’t much more dynamic than those still images themselves.
Even the disturbingly compulsive exploration can suffer from a sense of disconnection at times. Limited scope for interaction can make your character feeling more like a roving camera in first-person play, and the endearingly wonky animations of the third-person view do nothing but take a sledgehammer to immersion. Fallout 3’s scale, scope, and brilliant, surprising tonal variety make it an undeniably immersive cumulative experience, but the moment-to-moment stuff? It all feels a bit robotic, a mechanical means to a more enjoyable, holistic end.
So far, Fallout 4 does not feel like that at all. All the usual new-gen upgrades are present and correct of course; grander scale and increased graphical fidelity are to be expected. But what really hits me between the eyes with a big bolt of excitement is everything in between.
First up, that boosted, red-and-blue drenched colour palette isn’t just to combat criticisms of F3 as an exercise in grey and brown. That’s a large part of it, of course, but it’s also there to make Fallout 4 feel more real. Yes, we expect the apocalypse to be painted in all shades of Dulux’ premium drab range, but the fact is that that’s just a stereotype we’ve invented and taught ourselves to believe, over years of games that confused ‘gritty’ with ‘grey’, just because. Look out of your window. Count the colours you see. That’s what the world looks like, and it wouldn’t look too different if it was partly knocked down and rebuilt with the same parts.
Nukes aren’t paint bombs. Dust gets swept up. People clean, and tidy, and rebuild, and life goes on. Aesthetically and thematically - this is, after all, a game about a plucky, optimistic, ‘50s inspired civilisation that picked itself up after a global nuclear pounding - Fallout 4’s world is already vastly more real than Fallout 3’s, and that’s before you even get into the much more intricate, more organic modelling of its environments and various detritus.
Then there are the things you do in those environments. And here, we really have to talk about combat. In those still-frames, it looks immediately familiar, but in motion, Bethesda’s acquisition of id Software and MachineGames becomes obvious. Both the House of Doom and the rebuilder of Wolfenstein have helped to design Fallout 4’s shooting, and the result is much smoother movement, with more natural momentum and intertia, and greater nuance. As Joe points out in his combat overview from Gamescom, RPG stats and levelling disparities will still govern the ultimate effectiveness of your actions, but the point is that it really feels like this time around they’ll be your actions, rather than a twitchy, lumpen approximation of your intent.
But it’s not just about the obvious, big changes. It’s about everything inbetween. The new shooting looks immensely more tactile – emphasised further by more intricate level design that really makes the most of the newly legitimate FPS qualifications - but it’s amplified exponentially by Fallout 4’s ambient improvements. Dogmeat, for example, now the almost-living, almost-breathing personification of a developer’s real-life dog, is a constant, dynamic conduit between player character and game-world.
As a startlingly life-like, autonomous companion reacting naturally to every moment of threat, intrigue, interest, and surprise – but crucially, at a range expanded from your own point of view – s/he adds greater reach both to your own perception, and the feedback of the world coming back at you. Like a big, cute, furry radar expounding blips of pure ‘being there’. On paper, his/her abilities are similar to those in Fallout 3, but the sheer increase in life and realism in the beast, in conjunction with the seamless, flowing ability to issue very specific, point-and-go commands on the fly, changes the relationship for the far more intimate.
Factor in your newly voiced character’s various yelps, grunts, comments and musings when doing the most innocuous of things – exploring, discovering, picking locks, dealing with traps, you’ll react to all of it now – and for once in a modern Fallout game, you have a world you’re an active, reactive part of, not just observing. Same goes for the entirely new conversation system, which ‘simply’ has events happen around you in real-time, without a break. Events which you’re free to walk away from or shoot in the face, expressing your will in real-time, direct from sofa to virtual Boston, and having the repercussions follow suit in the opposite direction.
And again, all of this ties thematically back into what Fallout 4 is all about. I speculated at the time of the game’s announcement that its world looked unexpectedly civilised, almost as if humanity was getting back on its feet. There are newly rebuilt skyscrapers. There are airships. There are farms. There’s clean water, and the cities are serviced by newspapers. Where Fallout 3 was about exploring the shell of a dead world, traversing a place in mourning for what it once was, Fallout 4 is a world looking forward, not back.
Where once your quest was to repair the ecosystem in order to deliver an echo of normalcy, a tinge of hope for survival, water is now plentiful, and everyone’s doing just fine, thank you very much, rabid Ghoul attacks aside. There’s no pining for a life long gone. There’s just this life. It’s normal. It’s now. It’s just the way things are. It simply makes sense that Fallout 4 should be concerned with involving you in it, in making you an active part of the here and now. And if that also delivers a game full of all of the series’ familiar joys, but which plays a hell of a lot better in a hundred tiny but important ways, then all the better.This won’t go down well with Twitter lovers. Everyone’s favorite microblogging service is experimenting with a new version of its Android app that removes @ replies entirely, hinting at the possibility that it will phase out the communications feature it has become synonymous with.
BuzzFeed reports that Twitter’s Head Of News Vivian Schiller recently told an audience at a media event that hashtags and @ replies are “arcane,” and hinted that they would be reworked to provide a more ‘streamlined’ approach to the service to help new users understand the concept of Twitter.
Schiller has since played down her comments, but a screenshot from the alpha version of Twitter for Android suggests that @ replies may be for the chop in favor of Facebook-like mentions, although it is only an experiment at this point and there is no suggestion that regular @ mentions are affected.
The thinking behind the change is that Twitter ‘scaffolding’ puts new users off, and makes it hard to understand and use the service — it seems certain that loyal users will disagree, and would likely protest against such changes, even if they are merely cosmetic as this one could prove to be.
➤ Twitter Hints That At-Replies And Hashtags Are About To Be Streamlined [BuzzFeed]
Headline image via DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: This is what the future of Twitter looks like
Read next: Xiaomi confirms its Redmi Note phablet will start at $129, go on sale outside of China from MayFormer elementary and middle school teacher Claudio Sanchez is an Education Correspondent for NPR. He focuses on the "three p's" of education reform: politics, policy and pedagogy. Sanchez's reports air regularly on NPR's award-winning newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.
Sanchez joined NPR in 1989, after serving for a year as executive producer for the El Paso, Texas, based Latin American News Service, a daily national radio news service covering Latin America and the U.S.- Mexico border.
From 1984 to 1988, Sanchez was news and public affairs director at KXCR-FM in El Paso. During this time, he contributed reports and features to NPR's news programs.
In 2008, Sanchez won First Prize in the Education Writers Association's National Awards for Education Reporting, for his series "The Student Loan Crisis." He was named as a Class of 2007 Fellow by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. In 1985, Sanchez received one of broadcasting's top honors, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton, for a series he co-produced, "Sanctuary: The New Underground Railroad." In addition, he has won the Guillermo Martinez-Marquez Award for Best Spot News, the El Paso Press Club Award for Best Investigative Reporting, and was recognized for outstanding local news coverage by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Sanchez is a native of Nogales, Mexico, and a graduate of Northern Arizona University, with post-baccalaureate studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.Why Emotions matter in Digital World more than ever before….
Kapil Kanugo Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 14, 2015
Emotions and Expressions:
If you ever have been to Disney, Pixar movies with your friends or kids, you know exactly what I am talking about. That’s right. Watching those animated characters doing life like things laughing, giggling, flying, fighting etc makes you feel amused and amazed. You feel happy when you walk out of the movie. Going to movies of different genre evokes different emotional response within ourselves trickled by body sensory movements affecting brain impulses to generate various emotional responses based on what you see and hear. Its about what you feel “inside” or sometimes referred as “gut” feeling or desire which actually govern your cognitive and non-cognitive decisions.
Similarly expressions or the Body Language is one other response our brain generates depending on the situation or place like while driving car or cracking a joke with your friends while having a beer.
Body language comprises of movements of hands, palms, legs, posture including facial expressions of you while you are in conversation with someone in real life.
Why Emotions matter in Digital world more than anything else
We are more connected than ever with our friends, family and loved ones. We establish personal relationships with these connections and cherish them when get to meet them or talk to them. We remember all the talks, funny moments when we are interacting with them while having dinner, drinking beer or just watching a NFL game night with them.
But if you think about it, what happens in our virtual world surrounded by Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat is really astounding. We settle down. We are ok with a plain text message or a photograph on an Instagram page that shows what are we upto. And a Like or Emoticon would be sent to denote how you feel about those moments in their lives.
How can a Like or Emoticon justify your emotions and expression and mimic the same experience as you would have seen when you would have met them face to face.
Lets analyze why Emoticons were born. They were born because of the sheer need and desire for people to be more “expressive” of their emotions. Emoticons, codify our emotions, like an alphabet does to letters and dictionary does to words. These are the same emotions that everybody recognizes which you can transmit virtually. That used to be okay, back when virtual space and reality were walled from each other. But this is no longer the case, and blurred lines have changed the game. Our lives are a streaming series of interactions based in both the virtual and real. We make friends, take photos, listen to music, and it’s all accessible in our life stream. I no longer end conversations with my closest friends. We don’t say goodbye because in a given day our conversation will move from twitter to Facebook to texting to seeing each other in real life. That blurred line means that those definitions of virtual and real no longer hold true. I’m sure you’ve heard of apps that use augmented reality — but really, aren’t our entire lives an augmented reality now? I reference a Vine video at lunch and then immediately pull it up on my iPhone. Isn’t that projecting the virtual in a real space?
Are we really becoming emotionally disengaged as human species?
If you look closely, the influence of social media, internet and virtual world have made us feel less sensitive of the events, milestones and important moments of our and everyones’ lives. We spend more time liking the post/picture than we spend to enjoy that moment with our friends. Getting more followers on Instagram or Twitter is the new norm. Does that mean we as a nation are becoming emotionally disengaged?
Well what the big deal with that you might ask? Emotions rules decision making, every decision we make through our cognitive brain is preceded by emotional justification. Emotional state controls how we act, behave and be productive in real life. Are we doing enough to make sure virtual world and its life helps us to maintain or uplift our emotional state or be more productive while engaging with our loved ones?
We are spending more than 4 hrs everyday of our lives(with loved ones) interacting in digital lives with no emotional connection whatsoever. With so much technological advancement, it is incumbent upon us to fix this problem for the better of the future…
How Soon?
A Burning question for which I “FEEL” we need to fix for our future generations…..Off the Counter May 1, 2012 Bagels, Toasted
Risen from the streets of Eastern Europe and squalid New York City, bagels now hold a seat at middle- and upper-class breakfast tables everywhere. A look back from a baker with 50,000 “golden visions” under his belt.
Credit: Martin Connelly
We will start with a definition of terms. The Oxford English Dictionary keeps things brief, stating that a bagel is simply “A hard ring-shaped salty roll of bread.” This is almost useless as a working definition. (What about sweet bagels? What kind of bread? How hard are we talking here?) Webster’s New World Dictionary goes into a little more detail, positing the opinion that a bagel is “a chewy bread roll made of yeast dough, twisted into a small doughnutlike shape, cooked in simmering water, then baked.” That’s more like it. These are the four characteristics, then, that we can use to tell a bagel from its bready brethren.
Webster’s definition is technically excellent, but it lacks poetry. Luckily, other expressions abound. Derisively, the bagel is sometimes referred to as a concrete doughnut, a doughnut with rigor mortis, or, when real contempt is called for, a roll with a hole. The bagel’s fans wax much more lyrical.
Writing for Commentary in 1951, Irving Pfefferblit (whose work on less rounded subjects is mostly lost) called the bagel “a golden vision of the bygone days when life was better.” Gertrude Berg—best known at mid-century as the writer, producer, and star of The Goldbergs—equates the bagel to family. The late, great Irving Fields Trio named not one, but two of its Jewish-Latin hybrid mambo albums for the bagel—and in fact, Bagels and Bongos makes for perfect baking music. The poet David Igantow imagined himself a bagel rolling down the street in more humorous metamorphosis. Chasing a bagel dropped out of carelessness:
…I found myself doubled over
and rolling down the street
head over heels, one complete somersault
after another like a bagel
and strangely happy with myself.
Countless humorists have leaned on the bagel as a crutch in their comedy, giving “bagels and yox” to generations of borscht-belt audiences.
Beyond its role as anchor to brunches, foundation of sandwiches, the bagel is held in high esteem. Never mind the Philistines and their doughnutty foolishness, what is it about the bagel that has been so inspiring, let alone so filling?
There’s a common story told in which the bagel is invented by an industrious Austrian baker in honor of Jan Sobieski, king of Poland, to celebrate his 1683 defeat of the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Vienna. The baker, so the story goes, took inspiration from Sobieski’s stirrup (beugel in Austrian) and thus the bread was born.
This is undoubtedly apocryphal.
In The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, certainly the most complete bagel book ever written, Maria Balinska relates that bagels had certainly been prevalent centuries before the Battle of Vienna—and if folklore is to be believed, as early as the 800s.
The etymology of the Sobieski story, too, is incorrect. Bagel comes from the Yiddish, beigel, which experts agree most likely comes ultimately from the High German bouc or “ring” (the “il” was added later). Beigel, or beygel, is also related to the yiddish beigen, “to bend,” which leads to a very important point: While there have been other ring-shaped breads, from the tarallo of Italy to the girde of the Turkic Uighurs, the bagel was, for almost all of history, a distinctly Jewish food.
New Yorkers claim terroir, suggesting that it is their water that seals the deal, but then, New Yorkers are always going on and on about their water.
We’ll have to skip forward a bit here, but for history you can’t beat Balinska. To summarize her work in broad strokes, the bagel (no matter its origin) found a true home in the Polish shtetl. By the middle of the last millennium it had taken on special significance in Eastern European Jewish folklore, and, as a ring, had become a symbol of continuity; bagels began marking ceremonial occasions like circumcisions and funerals, where you can still often find them today. In the depression of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many Poles took to hawking bagels on the street, which was neither legal nor lucrative without a license. Street trading became so pervasive and so symbolic of the desperate poverty experienced by Jews in independent Poland that one might be tempted to pass over matzo and point to the bagel as the bread of affliction.
At the same time (and for the same reasons), Jewish immigrants were coming to North America by the boatful, landing at Ellis Island and spreading into New York’s Lower East Side, where they began pushing carts and working in the garment district. They left much behind, but they brought the tastes of the old country—dark rye loaves, braided challah, and, of course, bagels.
The working conditions in the Jewish garment district were famously poor, but baking bagels was not much better. Bakeries were almost exclusively in low-ceilinged basements, ovens blasting unregulated heat into the small, unventilated rooms. Bakers worked long shifts, sometimes around the clock, and with fresh faces always landing ready to work, there was little pressure on bakery owners to improve conditions. In a New York Press article preceding Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle by a full decade, Edward Marshall wrote: “The wooden floor was rotten and bent under the weight of a person in every part … the shop was thoroughly infested with a great variety of insect life … real genuine cockroaches, about an inch long were seen springing at a lively rate in the direction of the half moulded dough.”
This would not stand. In the old world, bakeries had been one of the seats of leftist organization, and in the United States this proved true as well.
Never mind that the unions were necessary to fight working conditions so poor as to be hardly conceivable. Let’s celebrate for a moment the heyday of the labor movement, in the first decade of the 20th century, when bakers and union advocates successfully struck for shorter hours and better working conditions.
Among the unions that rose victorious was the Local 338 Bagel Bakers union, a part of the much broader Bakery and Confectionery Workers International Union of America. More a guild than a traditional union, the Local 338 dominated the New York bagel market through the mid 1960s. Everything changed with the development of reliable bagel-making machines, and the union faded into irrelevance. But just think about what it must have been like before that happened. Imagine the picket lines outside of the non-union Bagel Boys shop in Brooklyn. Imagine the hullabaloo caused when bagels from an out-of-state bakery started showing up in shops and markets. Just imagine.
Bagels are thus imbued with the history of a people, with battles fought against Ottoman incursion, against hunger, and against the straw boss. They are an almost perfect lens through which to view the diasporic movements of the Jews across Europe, across the Atlantic, and across North America. And yet, when we have our bagels and lox at Sunday brunch, we don’t eat them for all those reasons. We eat them because they are delicious.
Like all great culinary delights, bagels have regional varieties, and they each have their champions. Would Jon Stewart, flag-bearer of New York, consider eating Chicago deep-dish pizza? Hardly. Just the same with bagels. Never mind London bagels; the real fight plays out along the 380 miles or so separating New York from Montreal. The Rangers and the Habs might battle it out on the ice from time to time, but the real New York-Montreal rivalry is over bagels.
New Yorkers claim terroir, suggesting that it is their water that seals the deal, but then, New Yorkers are always going on and on about their water. Montrealers scoff, offering instead the key ingredient is their wood-fired ovens. It might be a trivial thing (you say lox, I say nova?), but there are a few key differences.
Credit: Martin Connelly
As a rule, New York bagels are salty and boiled in an alkaline water (made so through the addition of baking soda or lye). Montreal bagels are a little sweeter, boiled in a honey water, and smaller, too. Ed Levine, founder of the Serious Eats blog and the champion of New York bagels, suggests that the perfect bagel is 4 oz. Saul Restrepo, a baker at the famous St. Viateur bagel house in Montreal, counters that 3 oz. is just |
2015-16 if he opts into the final year of his current contract. Most informed projections have the salary cap landing somewhere between $66 and $67 million for the 2015-16 campaign. For purposes of this exercise, let’s assume the cap settles at $66.5 million.
Because Love has seven years of NBA experience under his belt, he can sign a max contract starting at 30 percent of a team’s total cap. (For those looking for exact figures it is important to note that, per cap expert Larry Coon, “a different cap calculation is used to determine the maximum salaries, which is based on 42.14 percent of projected BRI rather than 44.74 percent. … For this reason the maximum salaries are not actually 25 percent, 30 percent or 35 percent of the cap, and instead are a slightly lower amount.”
Okay, now based on a salary cap of $66.5 million next season, here is what a max offer (with max allowable raises) for Love from Cleveland would look like:
Year Projected Salary
2015-16 $18.6 million (30 percent of cap)
2016-17 $19.9 million (7.5 percent increase)
2017-18 $21.4 million (7.5 percent increase)
2018-19 $23.1 million (7.5 percent increase)
2019-20 $24.8 million (7.5 percent increase)
That sums to a total of $107.8 million over five years. Certainly a healthy payday, but it pales in comparison to what a max contract signed in 2016 would look like, and that’s where the cost/benefit analysis become fascinating.
If Love instead decided to sign just a two-year deal with an opt-out after the first year, he’d be he leaving staggering $69.3 million in guaranteed money on the table. However, he would give himself the opportunity cash in next summer and, assuming he avoids injury and is deemed worthy of a max contract, he’d be able to sign a monstrous contract in July of 2016.
Let’s assume the cap for the 2016-17 season lands at $90 million. If he gives himself the option of once again becoming a free agent next summer, Love would be in line for a max offer (with max allowable raises) as follows:
Year Projected Salary
2016-17 $25.2 million (30 percent of cap)
2017-18 $27.1 million (7.5 percent increase)
2018-19 $29.1 million (7.5 percent increase)
2019-20 $31.3 million (7.5 percent increase)
2020-21 $33.6 million (7.5 percent increase)
That’s sums to a mind-boggling $146.3 million – all guaranteed.
Each individual player will have to weigh the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of their particular situations. For Dragic and Gasol, who will be age 29 and 30 this summer, they may choose the security of a long-term deal.
Aldridge is also 29, but he will be arguably the most sought after free agent available. If he signed a deal that allowed him to opt-out next summer, he’d have played 10 years in the league at that point, which would allow him to get a deal starting at up to 35 percent the cap, which would mean a contract STARTING at an astronomical $30.1 million per season.
It’d be a fascinating gamble.
Another group of players that will have difficult decisions to make are the restricted free agents. The cream of the restricted free agent crop are Kawhi Leionad, Jimmy Butler and Draymond Green.
Because the restricted free agents will most likely be signing offer sheets from a team they don’t currently play for (their current teams will likely ask them to “test the market,” with the understanding they plan to match), the max increase they can receive per season would be 4.5 percent. And because they have fewer than seven years experience, they can only receive a max offer starting at 25 percent of the cap.
For instance, if Butler signed an offer sheet from a team other than Chicago this summer, here is what a max offer (with max allowable raises) would look like:
Year Projected Salary
2015-16 $15.9 million (25 percent of cap)
2016-17 $16.6 million (4.5 percent increase)
2017-18 $17.4 million (4.5 percent increase)
2018-19 $18.2 million (4.5 percent increase)
Now, let’s say Butler follows the same script outlined above and signs a two-year deal with an option to opt out next summer. If Butler signed such an offer sheet and the Bulls matched, he could then become an unrestricted free agent in 2016.
Thus, next summer when he becomes unrestricted, he could sign a five-year deal with the Bulls. Here is the max offer Chicago would be able to present:
Year Projected Salary
2016-17 $22.5 million (25 percent of cap)
2017-18 $24.2 million (7.5 percent increase)
2018-19 $26.0 million (7.5 percent increase)
2019-20 $27.9 million (7.5 percent increase)
2020-21 $29.9 million (7.5 percent increase)
The potential differential is massive.
The total value of a four-year max offer sheet signed in July of 2015 would be $68.1 million.
The total value of a five-year max contract signed in July of 2016 would be $130.5 million.
Kawhi Leonard could theoretically position himself the same way. Ditto for Draymond Green.
However, keep in mind Green has made less than less than $1 million in each of his first three seasons in the NBA. Would he really be willing for forgo a $68 million contract if presented with such opportunity, in order to chase a bigger pay day in July of 2016?
Yes, free agents will be able to secure insurance policies to help protect against catastrophic injury, but the risk is undeniably steep.
What will agents be whispering in their clients’ ears? Will agents encourage their clients to lock in that guaranteed cash, or try to take the enormous-payday route?
Many questions remain, but one thing seems certain: the next two summers may go down as the most interesting and exciting offseasons in recent NBA history.WHEN scientist Piotr Naskrecki heard rustling in a rainforest, he expected to see a possum or rat.
But his curiosity turned to shock when a puppy-sized spider bristled under his flashlight.
“When I turned on the light, I couldn’t quite understand what I was seeing,” Naskrecki, an entomologist and photographer at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, told Live Science.
The South American Goliath birdeater is the world’s largest spider, with a leg span of up to 30 centimetres (or the size of “a child’s forearm”) and weighing more than 170 grams.
“Its feet have hardened tips and claws that produce a very distinct, clicking sound, not unlike that of a horse’s hoofs hitting the ground,” Naskrecki wrote on his blog, The Smaller Majority.
Naskrecki, who spotted the colossal creature in a South American rainforest in 2012, saw it rub its hind legs against its abdomen, sending out hairs with tiny barbs on them. He said the barbs are “extremely painful and itchy”.
The highly venomous arachnid also has five-centimetre fangs.
But in good news, even if it bites you, “a chicken can probably do more damage,” Naskrecki said.
Naskrecki caught the female and took her back to his lab to study.
See the South American Goliath birdeater on theLive Science website.Daniele De Rossi: The midfielder was on Wednesday in action against England in Switzerland
Sky Sports understands Manchester City are stepping up their interest in Daniele De Rossi after the midfielder's agent on Thursday flew to England for talks.
The Italy international has long been linked with a move to Etihad Stadium and his impressive performances at Euro 2012 only underlined his ability and versatility.
De Rossi on Wednesday night delivered another good display in Italy's friendly defeat by England and he could yet become more familiar with British opponents.
The Roma star's representative jetted into the United Kingdom for discussions with City and the development comes just days after the Premier League champions signed Jack Rodwell.
City boss Roberto Mancini has been frustrated by his club's comparatively limited activity in the market ahead of their first game of the new season against Southampton on Sunday.
But if Mancini was able to sign his fellow Italian, De Rossi, he would have little cause to complain about the acquisition of such a top player.
The 29-year-old's future has constantly been a subject of debate but, earlier in August, Roma sporting director Walter Sabatini said: "If a monstrous bid materialised we would evaluate it.
"But we are not looking for buyers for Daniele, because he is a pillar of our team."The future home of Vert.x will most likely be at the Eclipse Foundation. Project leader Tim Fox recommended that the JVM-polyglot asynchronous event-driven framework should look to the Eclipse Foundation as a "little more 'business friendly'" home for the project's assets and governance. Mike Millinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, welcomed Fox's recommendation. A call for a +1/-1 vote from the original Vert.x community, seems so far to be predominantly +1, with no serious objections.
The future of Vert.x became the subject of debate earlier this month when Fox, who recently left VMware to take up a position at Red Hat, revealed that VMware lawyers turned up at his door demanding that he give up control of the Vert.x domain, discussion groups and issue trackers. The project had been developed at VMware and effectively sponsored by them, but Fox had not expected that reaction. Discussions with VMware and Fox's new employer Red Hat saw the assets turned over to VMware's control and another discussion begin over the future of Vert.x in general.
Fox's recommendation was also positively received by Red Hat's Mark Little, but the community discussion is still ongoing and VMware, as of writing, has not made any commitment.
The Eclipse Foundation will need to make a number of exceptions to bring Vert.x on board; most importantly allowing an exception to the rule that all Eclipse projects are under the Eclipse Public Licence. Vert.x is Apache licensed and it is unlikely that the developers will want to switch from a permissive to an albeit weakly copylefted licence. VMware will also need to transfer over its trademark assets to Eclipse and the project will have to sort out whether GitHub or Eclipse's Git is where its source code repository resides.
Although the Apache Foundation was in the running as a possible home, Simon Phipps points out that as well as differences in formulation (Apache is a public-benefit non-profit, Eclipse a member-benefit non-profit), Eclipse also allows businesses to formally participate in its processes whereas Apache only allows individual contributors to participate.
Update 22/01/13: It is now confirmed that Vert.x is moving to the Eclipse Foundation. Tim Fox tweeted that the process had begun and the Eclipse Foundation's Mike Millinkovich has begun helping shepherd the project into the Foundation. VMware's Alexis Richardson agreed earlier today to the transferal of Vert.x to the Foundation, the last hurdle to clear before the process could begin.
See also:
(djwm)The suicide rate among the nation’s active-duty military personnel has spiked this year, eclipsing the number of troops dying in battle and on pace to set a record annual high since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago, the Pentagon said Friday.
Suicides have increased even as the United States military has withdrawn from Iraq and stepped up efforts to provide mental health, drug and alcohol, and financial counseling services.
The military said Friday that there had been 154 suicides among active-duty troops through Thursday, a rate of nearly one each day this year. The figures were first reported this week by The Associated Press.
That number represents an 18 percent increase over the 130 active-duty military suicides for the same period in 2011. There were 123 suicides from January to early June in 2010, and 133 during that period in 2009, the Pentagon said.
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By contrast, there were 124 American military fatalities in Afghanistan as of June 1 this year, according to the Pentagon.Five nights at Freddy's fanart with a lot of characters.Since my graphic tablet refused to work this afternoon (and I also needed to reinstall photoshop, yay), I couldn't make any new stuff. But it came to my mind that I was asked to remake the image on Scott Cawthon's website, where are all the characters. I couldn't make it, but I tried to make something similar as a thank you image for Scott, and here it is!Please spread the word, I really want to this reach Scott! As much weird I found this game and it's hype in the beginnings, it actually dragged me out of a two years art block.You are free to use it in videos or upload it other sites or forums or send it to Scott himself if you have a contact with him or with people who have contact with him, just please credit me! I really want him to know my work - which was inspired by his work.Thank you!ps: oh, and I also kindly ask him to open that box and tell us the full story. Here it is on Tumblr, if you want to reblog it: fiszi.tumblr.com/post/12864151… So far, here is the fanfiction I wrotefuncssion is a set of really simple CSS classes, with a single purpose, inspired by the philosophy behind pure functions. This basically means, they attempt to avoid side-effects. It's not a full-fledged CSS framework, but rather a very handy set of classes that'll help you prototype really fast and understand what your components look like just by looking at your HTML code, not browsing through endless, repetitive CSS files and classes. Get v0.1 here 4.4kB gzipped
Star
Use it
Simply include the following tag in your HTML document to include the latest version*:
<link href="https://funcssion.com/css/funcssion.css" rel="stylesheet">
* A CDNJS link is preferred but not yet available.
How It Works
funcssion does not perform any kind of reset over HTML elements. Its use, together with other CSS frameworks/libraries or code of your own, is non-invasive, thus perfectly viable. All classes set just one or two properties. Most just set one.
Most classes are named using a prefix and a mix of the following: an orientation, a dash (-), a possible value of the property or a suffix (unit). Some examples are:
.va-middle { vertical-align: middle; }.pr1 { padding-right: 1rem; }.mv12 { margin-top: 1.2rem; margin-bottom: 1.2rem; }
Other classes are simply values of properties that are unambiguous and pretty common in CSS, such as:
.inline-block { display: inline-block; }.absolute { position: absolute; }
The Rules
Just keep these in mind and it'll help you memorize the class names, or intuitively deduce them.
Prefixes are usually written using the initials of a property name. i.e.: ta means text-align ; mb means margin-bottom, etc.
means ; means, etc. When not specified, default unit is rem
Other possible suffixes (units) are em, vh and pct (%)
(units) are, and (%) Classes whose value is NOT a number, use a dash(-)
Classes whose value is a number, do not use a dash(-). Except for Grid classes
. Except for Grid classes Numbers are usually decimals under 4, whose decimal mark is ignored. i.e.:.mt15 means margin-top of 1.5rem
Quick Reference
Below is all you need to understand and use funcssion:
— Spacing In margin and padding: rem units range from 0 ~ 2 every.1 and 2.5 ~ 4 every.5
units range from every and every em units range from 0.1 ~ 1 every.1 Numeric Prefix Properties.m margin.mt margin-top.mr margin-right.mb margin-bottom.ml margin-left.mv margin-top margin-bottom.mh margin-left margin-right.p padding.pt padding-top.pr padding-right.pb padding-bottom.pl padding-left.pv padding-top padding-bottom.ph padding-left padding-right Examples.mv14 { margin-top: 1.4rem; margin-bottom: 1.4rem; }.mh2 { margin-left: 2rem; margin-right: 2rem; }.m3 { margin: 3rem; }.m0 { margin: 0; }.p0 { padding: 0; }.pt08 { padding-top: 0.8rem; }.p25 { padding: 2.5rem; }.p4 { padding: 4rem; }
— Text In font-size and line-height: rem units range from 0.4 ~ 2 every.1 and 2.5 ~ 4 every.5
units range from every and every em units range from 0.4 ~ 2 every.1 Font Size & Line Height Prefix Property.fs font-size.lh line-height Examples.fs11 { font-size: 1.1rem; }.fs09em { font-size: 0.9em; }.lh15 { line-height: 1.5rem; }.lh2em { line-height: 2em; }
Headings Heading classes are intended to be "similar" to the tags themselves, so that <h1> and <div class="h1"> are equivalent. Class Name Example.h1 h1 Heading.h2 h2 Heading.h3 h3 Heading.h4 h4 Heading.h5 h5 Heading.h6 h6 Heading
Font Weight Class Name Meaning.fw-normal { font-weight: normal; }.fw-bold { font-weight: bold; }.fw-lighter { font-weight: lighter; }.fw100 { font-weight: 100; }.fw200 { font-weight: 200; }.fw300 { font-weight: 300; }.fw400 { font-weight: 400; }.fw500 { font-weight: 500; }.fw600 { font-weight: 600; }.fw700 { font-weight: 700; }.fw800 { font-weight: 800; }.fw900 { font-weight: 900; } Font Family Class Name Meaning.ff-sans-serif { font-family: sans-serif; }.ff-serif { font-family: serif; }.ff-monospace { font-family: monospace; }.ff-cursive { font-family: cursive; }.ff-fantasy { font-family: fantasy; }.ff-system { font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica,Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; } Font Style Class Name Meaning.fs-normal { font-style: normal; }.fs-italic { font-style: italic; }.fs-oblique { font-style: oblique; } Font Variant Class Name Meaning.fv-normal { font-variant: normal; }.fv-small-caps { font-variant: small-caps; } Text Alignment Class Name Meaning.ta-center { text-align: center; }.ta-left { text-align: left; }.ta-right { text-align: right; }.ta-justify { text-align: justify; } Text Decoration Class Name Meaning.td-none { text-decoration: none; }.td-underline { text-decoration: underline; }.td-overline { text-decoration: overline; } Text Transform Class Name Meaning.tt-none { text-transform: none; }.tt-uppercase { text-transform: uppercase; }.tt-lowercase { text-transform: lowercase; }.tt-capitalize { text-transform: capitalize; }.tt-inherit { text-transform: inherit; }
— Positioning Class Name Meaning.absolute { position: absolute; }.relative { position: relative; }.fixed { position: fixed; }.flex { display: flex; }.flex-items-center { align-items: center; }.fl-left { float: left; }.fl-right { float: right; }.top0 { top: 0; }.right0 { right: 0; }.bottom0 { bottom: 0; }.left0 { left: 0; }.top-auto { top: auto; }.right-auto { right: auto; }.bottom-auto { bottom: auto; }.left-auto { left: auto; }.va-middle { vertical-align: middle; }.va-top { vertical-align: top; }.va-bottom { vertical-align: bottom; }.va-baseline { vertical-align: baseline; }
— Colors Class Name Meaning.cl-text { color: #888; }.cl-title { color: #333; }.cl-contrast { color: white; }.bg-text { background: #888; }.bg-title { background: #333; }.bg-contrast { background: white; }
— Displaying Display Class Name Meaning.none { display: none; }.block { display: block; }.contents { display: contents; }.flex { display: flex; }.flow-root { display: flow-root; }.grid { display: grid; }.inline { display: inline; }.inline-block { display: inline-block; }.inline-flex { display: inline-flex; }.inline-grid { display: inline-grid; }.inline-table { display: inline-table; }.list-item { display: list-item; }.run-in { display: run-in; }.table { display: table; }.table-caption { display: table-caption; }.table-cell { display: table-cell; }.table-column { display: table-column; }.table-column-group { display: table-column-group; }.table-footer-group { display: table-footer-group; }.table-header-group { display: table-header-group; }.table-row { display: table-row; }.table-row-group { display: table-row-group; } Overflow Class Name Meaning.of-hidden { overflow: hidden; }.of-visible { overflow: visible; }.of-scroll { overflow: scroll; }.of-auto { overflow: auto; }.ofx-hidden { overflow-x: hidden; }.ofx-visible { overflow-x: visible; }.ofx-scroll { overflow-x: scroll; }.ofx-auto { overflow-x: auto; }.ofy-hidden { overflow-y: hidden; }.ofy-visible { overflow-y: visible; }.ofy-scroll { overflow-y: scroll; }.ofy-auto { overflow-y: auto; } Visibility Class Name Meaning.v-visible { visibility: visible; }.v-hidden { visibility: hidden; }.v-collapse { visibility: collapse; } Box Sizing Class Name Meaning.bs-border-box { box-sizing: border-box; }.bs-content-box { box-sizing: content-box; } Opacity Class Name Meaning.op0 { opacity: 0; }.op01 { opacity: 0.1; }.op02 { opacity: 0.2; }.op03 { opacity: 0.3; }.op04 { opacity: 0.4; }.op05 { opacity: 0.5; }.op06 { opacity: 0.6; }.op07 { opacity: 0.7; }.op08 { opacity: 0.8; }.op09 { opacity: 0.9; }.op1 { opacity: 1; }
— Grid Class Name Meaning.col-0 { width: 0%; }.col-1 { width: 8.33333%; }.col-2 { width: 16.66667%; }.col-3 { width: 25%; }.col-4 { width: 33.33334%; }.col-5 { width: 41.66667%; }.col-6 { width: 50%; }.col-7 { width: 58.33334%; }.col-8 { width: 66.66667%; }.col-9 { width: 75%; }.col-10 { width: 83.33334%; }.col-11 { width: 91.66667%; }.col-12 { width: 100%; }.col-left-1 { margin-left: 8.33333%; }.col-left-2 { margin-left: 16.66667%; }.col-left-3 { margin-left: 25%; }.col-left-4 { margin-left: 33.33334%; }.col-left-5 { margin-left: 41.66667%; }.col-left-6 { margin-left: 50%; }.col-left-7 { margin-left: 58.33334%; }.col-left-8 { margin-left: 66.66667%; }.col-left-9 { margin-left: 75%; }.col-left-10 { margin-left: 83.33334%; }.col-left-11 { margin-left: 91.66667%; }.col-left-12 { margin-left: 100%; }
— Sizing Class Name Meaning.w100pct { width: 100%; }.w-auto { width: auto; }.h100vh { height: 100vh; }.h100pct { height: 100%; }.h-auto { height: auto; }.mw100pct { max-width: 100%; }.mw-auto { max-width: auto; }
— Borders Border Style Class Name Meaning.bs-solid { border-style: solid; }.bs-dashed { border-style: dashed; }.bs-dotted { border-style: dotted; }.bs-double { border-style: double; }.bs-groove { border-style: groove; }.bs-hidden { border-style: hidden; }.bs-inset { border-style: inset; }.bs-none { border-style: none; }.bs-outset { border-style: outset; }.bs-ridge { border-style: ridge; } Border Radius Class Name Meaning.br0 { border-radius: 0; }
— Miscellaneous Class Name Meaning.hr { border-top: 1px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.08); }.circular { border-radius: 50%; }.cursor-auto { cursor: auto; }.cursor-default { cursor: default; }.cursor-not-allowed { cursor: not-allowed; }.cursor-pointer { cursor: pointer; }.cursor-text { cursor: text; }.cursor-wait { cursor: wait; }Pinterest 0 Tumblr 0 0 Google+ 0 Reddit 0 email
If you love Italian food as much as my husband and I do, you’ve either tried Pasta Caprese before and love it, or you haven’t tried it yet and I’ll bet that once you do you’ll love it! Pasta Caprese makes use of fresh mozzarella and Costco sells Tre Selle Mini Bocconcini in 1/2 kg tubs at a price that we haven’t been able to find lower anywhere else. Here again this is another recipe where almost all of the ingredients can be sourced from Costco, saving a significant amount of money. You can also make this one gluten free by using TruRoot’s Ancient Grain Penne pasta, which is our favorite GF penne and is periodically available in Costco as well.
Pasta Caprese (with gluten free option) Print Prep time 30 mins Cook time 25 mins Total time 55 mins Author: CostcoDiva Recipe type: Main Serves: 4 Ingredients 5 Roma tomatoes (available at Costco)
handful fresh cherry tomatoes, cut in quarters (available at Costco)
½ cup Kirkland extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Kirkland balsamic vinegar
2 cloves garlic, sliced
Kirkland salt and fresh ground Tellicherry pepper
pinch of cayenne pepper
1 pound of TruRoots Ancient Grains Penne (available at Costco) substitute regular penne if you like
½ pound mini bocconcini, cut in half
fresh basil Instructions Prepare the Roma tomatoes Peel and optionally seed the Roma tomatoes. Do this by scoring the bottom of the tomatoes in the shape of an X and then place the tomatoes in a pot of boiling water until the skins begin to show they are peeling away or the score has turned into a long crack in the skin. Remove from the water with a slotted spoon and peel. (If the tomatoes take more than a minute or two to begin to peel, immerse them in cold water when you remove them so they don’t begin to cook) Prepare the sauce Cut the tomatoes into small cubes and then drain them in a sieve/colander for about 15 minutes to remove excess liquid. In a medium sized bowl combine the balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, cayenne, the peeled cut Roma tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste and allow the flavors to develop by letting the tomato sauce sit for at least 15-20 minutes. Cook the pasta until al dente Drain the pasta and then put it into a large bowl Add the tomato mixture and toss Add freshly cut basil and the bocconcini, toss again. The bocconcini may begin to melt and this is perfectly fine. Serve into a dish and top with a handful of the quartered cherry tomatoes and a little bit more fresh basil. 3.2.2265New York can be a dirty place, but when it comes to the subway, a recently released study shows cars on the R line are the dirtiest.
The survey, conducted by the Straphangers Campaign, showed that subway car cleanliness overall has declined since 2009.
This year, the R line’s rating was the worst with only 27 percent of its cars deemed “clean”. That’s down from 39 percent two years ago.
While five of the subway lines got worse, one did improve while 14 others stayed about the same.
So what line is the cleanest? The 7 according to the study, with 68 percent of its cars rated clean.
The study took place over a two month period when over 2,000 observations of the subways are made.
Do you agree with study? Sound off below…The second-year guard has appeared in only 13 games this season. Jenkins has missed the past 15 games since Dec. 26 when he had nerve pain in his left leg associated with a back injury. He has been plagued by the back problem since the summer.
Following an MRI exam in December, which was negative, the Hawks and Jenkins opted for a course of action of rest and physical therapy. Jenkins has not progressed and has been unable to practice with the team with a status of out indefinitely.
Jenkins was unavailable for comment. He did not travel with the team for Saturday’s game against the Bucks.
Jenkins expressed frustration with the injury when the pain became an issue in December. He said at the time that surgery was an option, one of several be considering by himself, his agent and Hawks management.
“I’m weighing my options on what I need to do to eliminate this thing forever,” Jenkins told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in December. “It’s been too long. It’s been preventing me from playing the way I need to be playing. I’m trying to play on it, play through it. It’s time to just get it out of the way forever.”
Jenkins missed two months this summer with the back injury. The issue came up again at the start of training camp and forced him to miss all but the final two exhibition games.
Jenkins, a first-round pick of the Hawks in 2012, has seen limited action this season. He is averaging just 3.1 points and 1.7 rebounds in 12.1 minutes. He did a four-game stint in the NBA Development League in early December.A new version of Allo is rolling out just in time for the holidays. If you're thinking about singing Christmas carols or wishing somebody a happy new year, things are going to get a little more interesting thanks to the latest update. Your audio messages will now be automatically transcribed to text, so people can decide when to listen and have some idea of what they're going to be hearing. There's also a clue that may suggest threaded conversations will be supported. We're still poking around for other changes, but let us know in the comments if you stumble across anything else.
What's New
Unofficial Changelog: (the stuff we found) Voice transcriptions for audio messages
Voice transcriptions for audio messages
Audio transcriptions were first revealed in a teardown of Allo v22. They work a lot like language transcriptions except that they occur automatically, so no long-press is needed. The transcription usually takes a couple seconds to appear after the message is received.
If you don't like having the transcriptions, you can go into Settings -> Chat and turn off Voice message transcripts. Just be aware that you can't long-press on the audio message to manually request a transcription.
It's probably worth noting that video messages are not transcribed. But who knows, maybe Allo will do that next.
The transcriptions work just like voice dictation, so they will be pretty literal and won't insert any punctuation based on pauses or other audio clues. On the other hand, that means you can speak your punctuation and it will be appropriately converted for the transcripts. For the screenshot above, I spoke 'comma' and 'exclamation mark' as part of the second message. Of course, that will sound pretty weird to somebody that hears the message, so you might want to consider how the recipient is likely to consume the message.
Teardown
Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that plans could change or may be canceled entirely. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released. Disclaimer: Teardowns are based on evidence found inside of apks (Android's application package) and are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete information. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. Even when predictions are correct, there is always a chance that plans could change or may be canceled entirely. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced and released. The features discussed below are probably not live yet, or may only be live for a small percentage of users. Unless stated otherwise, don't expect to see these features if you install the apk.
Reply to specific messages...Threaded messages?
We already know from a previous teardown of v24 that a new floating context menu is in the works. It looks as though a new action may be a part of it: Reply. In the framework of Allo messaging that we currently know, replying to a message simply means that you're posting a new message to the bottom of the chat. However, if there's going to be a specific action for replying, it likely means Allo will soon branch out into threaded conversations.
<string name="message_context_menu_reply_message">Reply</string>
Most people will probably associate threaded conversations with the group chat service Slack (pictured below with a threaded message). For those that aren't familiar, threaded conversations allow users to add replies that are attached to a specific message, treating it almost like a sub-topic to be discussed further. It can be used in solo conversations, but threading is particularly effective in group chats where the majority may spin off into many directions.
At this point, we're just looking at a single line of text, or rather, a single word with a name that lends a little credibility to the theory. However, rumors have been floating around that threaded conversations were in development, so this one clue may be a confirmation that this is indeed happening.
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.
Version: 25.0.023_RC04Over the past few days, as members of the media have begun their election postmortem, several have returned to an argument about Donald Trump that Salena Zito made in The Atlantic back in September: “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” How literally we should take him now is still up in the air, but there’s one group in particular that’s having an especially difficult time with that question: children with autism, who take things more literally than most.
At the Pediatric Developmental Disabilities Clinic at Baltimore’s Kennedy Krieger Institute, which provides outpatient care for kids with developmental and neurological disorders, psychologists have spent the campaign season working to accommodate their clients’ Trump-related anxieties into regular treatment. Science of Us talked to three staff members about how their clients have been handling the election: Nancy Grace, the clinic’s director, Rochelle Schatz (disclosure: she’s a good friend of mine), and Daisy Bueno, both doctoral interns in behavioral psychology.
A common worry among her clients’ parents, Bueno says, is that their children will mimic some of the offensive things Trump has said about women and minorities. “They’re concerned,” she says, that his new title will confer a halo of acceptability on unacceptable things — “that they’re going to be more inclined to imitate because it looks like it’s okay to do that since he is the president, or will be the president.” There’s also the concern that some of his more inflammatory statements will be used in scripting (when people with autism continuously repeat certain words or phrases out of context).
On the flip side, the clinic also sees kids who are dealing with their own fears about a Trump presidency. One of her young clients, Schatz says, has been dealing with increasing anxiety symptoms in the lead-up to this week: “This was something we had been working on regularly in our sessions, being able to control certain things and not others, and this was a situation that would be out of his control,” she says.
Something like the election, Schatz adds, can be a common anxiety trigger: “Many of the kids that we have here have ongoing issues related to anxiety |
estate, Jeffrey Rosen, himself called it a “pro-Israel” ad when detailing why he rejected it. And as she so poignantly points out, he is a “member of the tribe,” so if he did in fact call it that, then he himself is perpetuating the equation of being “pro-Israel” with being anti-Islam as a Jew, which gives someone like Geller more legitimacy to call it that as well, unfortunately.
The primary reason they can get away with using Israel’s image in the first place is because the American Jewish establishment, monopolized by AIPAC, has branded Israel – and along with it, the “pro-Israel” label – in its own lobbying, which over the years has consistently demonstrated that “pro-Israel is anything that is anti-Palestinian and by extension anti-Islam and anti-Arab, and more recently, anti-Iran.
This story further substantiates my deep concern over the fact that Israel is increasingly being used as a pawn in American politics and that people can get away with using the term “pro-Israel” when it has no place. Another example is an ad from a couple of years ago by Elie Wiesel in major American newspapers stating that Jerusalem is “above politics,” which even the liberal daily Haaretz got away with calling a “pro-Israel” ad, when for me it was certainly not a “pro-Israel” ad because it does not promote the interests of anyone living in Israel.
This subway ad affair is another example of how dangerous and misguided the role of Israel has become in American politics. I therefore implore all writers and journalists out there to trash the term “pro-Israel,” or at least meticulously qualify it when using it. Anything less is irresponsible, damaging and offensive.A mother of three living in direct provision has described winning a University of Limerick scholarship as a “life-changing moment”, as she pursues her dream of a career in psychology.
Donnah Vuma (31) is one of 17 people accepted on to the Place of Sanctuary scholarship programme at UL. The scholarship programme begins this September, and includes a course-fee waiver, and subsistence towards travel, printing, and IT requirements.
Ms Vuma, along with her three young children, fled Zimbabwe three years ago, where she had worked as a sales and marketing manager.
She described coming to Ireland and “hoping for a better future” but found herself locked “in limbo”, as she is not allowed to work under the rules. “The biggest effect is psychological, depression and mental health,” she explained.
“The amount of time spent in direct provision centres is ridiculous.
“It’s draining, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. I’d like to see it come to an end. It’s the same routine every day... you get up, have your breakfast, go to your room, wait for lunch, go back to your room, go to dinner, go back to your room.”
Break the boredom
To break the boredom she engages in voluntary work and returns to the centre after her children, aged 12, nine and seven, finish their school day. “They go to local schools and for them it’s a sanctuary and a haven away from the centre. At school they are just like everyone else; no one can pinpoint that they are from a direct provision centre living under these conditions.”
Ms Vuma said, because she is not allowed work, and given €19.10 per week by the State, her children are learning, “that being dependent [on the State] is a normal thing. I think this is one of the worst lessons you can ever teach your children.
“The scholarship is going to be a life-changer for me. It means I can finally pursue an area that I’m very passionate about. It will mean I am out of the centre and doing something that will enable me to contribute positively to society, as soon as I can get out of direct provision.”
Dr Mairead Moriarty, chair of the University of Limerick’s sanctuary steering committee, said the scholarship students would be studying a wide range of courses including business, arts humanities and social sciences, law and politics, peace and development studies, and engineering.
“They are from a range of countries, including Syria, Zimbabwe, Iran, Iraq, Libya. Most have been in direct provision for up to four years, and the majority have one from war-torn regions. They are forced migrants, rather than having come here by choice.”
Dublin City University also announced last year it was to offer Sanctuary Scholarships.German right-wing extremist Ernst Zundel sits in a court in Mannheim, Germany, on Nov. 8, 2005, at the beginning of a trial to face charges including incitement libel and disparaging the dead. (Michael Probst/Associated Press)
Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel apparently wanted to move to the United States from Germany. (I say apparently because the decision on which I’m reporting, just posted on Westlaw but decided March 31 by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Administrative Appeals Office, referred only to one E.C.Z., but both the initials and the facts described in the decision fit Zundel and likely no one else.) He would normally get an immigrant visa, because his wife of 16 years — who is about 80 years old — is a U.S. citizen. But he was classified as inadmissible because he has been convicted of foreign crimes for which the sentence was five years or more:
[I]n 2007 the Applicant was convicted in Germany of 14 counts of incitement to hatred and one count of violating the memory of the dead. The Applicant was sentenced to an aggregate of five years in prison.
And though a waiver of inadmissibility was possible — because of extreme hardship to Zundel’s elderly wife — the office concluded that there was good reason to deny the waiver:
The negative factors in the Applicant’s case include his long history of inciting racial, ethnic, and religious hatred. The record shows that the Applicant is a historical revisionist and denier of the Holocaust, distributing writings, books, tapes, videos, and broadcasts to promote his views. The record indicates further that these publications agitated for aggressive behavior against Jews. Furthermore, the Applicant has been a leader in these activities for decades and has shown no regret or remorse for his actions. Thus, we find that the negative factors in the Applicant’s case outweigh the positive such that a favorable exercise of discretion is not warranted.
Now, I think there’s nothing unconstitutional under current First Amendment law about the decision to exclude Zundel. Various Supreme Court cases, of which the most relevant is Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972), generally take the view that the First Amendment and similar constitutional provisions don’t apply to decisions on whether to let in an alien. American immigration law has long barred immigration by aliens who have been members of Communist parties; more recently, it has likewise barred immigration by anyone who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.” The view seems to be: We have to live with schmucks who are already Americans, but that doesn’t mean we need to let in more. (Of course, the litigation over President Trump’s Executive Order might change this analysis: If the Supreme Court eventually concludes that the order discriminated based on the religious beliefs of most would-be visitors from certain countries, and that such discrimination violates the First Amendment, then — depending on the breadth of the Court’s rationale — that logic might equally apply to discrimination based on the political beliefs of would-be visitors and would-be immigrants, and might thus lead to an overruling of Kleindienst.)
But oddly, the decision suggests that Zundel might have had a legal right under existing law to immigrate after all (even if that right could constitutionally be taken away by a change in the law) — and that DHS’s Administrative Appeals Office might not fully understand American First Amendment law. The office stated,
A foreign conviction can be the basis for a finding of inadmissibility only where the conviction is “for conduct which is deemed criminal by United States standards.” Matter of Ramirez-Rivero, 18 I&N Dec. 135, 137 (BIA 1981).
(To give an example of the Ramirez-Rivero principle in action, one 2015 decision held that a 1997 Cuban conviction for “speculation and hoarding” couldn’t disqualify an alien from admissibility to the United States.) But as best I can tell from press accounts, Zundel’s speech that formed the basis of his German conviction would not have been “deemed criminal by United States standards.” Denying the Holocaust and expressing anti-Semitic sentiments is just not a crime under American law. Indeed, it can’t be made a crime, given the First Amendment.
But here’s what the office said as it went on:
In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court held that constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. 89 S.Ct. 1827, 1829 (1969).
But, as the office notes, the Brandenburg exception is limited to advocacy intended and likely to produce crime in the next few minutes, hours or at most days (see Hess v. Indiana [1973]), the classic example being a speech to an enraged crowd outside a building, urging it to storm the building. To my knowledge, Zundel’s convictions don’t stem from such behavior.
So the exclusion of Zundel was itself not a First Amendment violation. But, based on Ramirez-Rivero — and certainly the office’s description of Ramirez-Rivero — it appears to have been a violation of American immigration law. And in the process of misapplying Ramirez-Rivero, the office seems to have erroneously concluded that Holocaust denial and the expression of anti-Semitic sentiments would be “deemed criminal by United States standards.” That strikes me as mistaken, though I’d be glad to hear any corrections or clarifications from readers who are more knowledgeable about immigration law than I am.Gary Caldwell joined Wigan Athletic as a player in 2010
Wigan Athletic have named former captain Gary Caldwell as their new manager, replacing Malky Mackay who was sacked on Monday.
Mackay was dismissed after a 2-0 home defeat by Derby, a result that left the Latics 23rd in the Championship and eight points from safety.
Ex-Scotland international Caldwell, 32, played 111 games for Wigan and was part of their 2013 FA Cup-winning squad.
He retired earlier this season because of a persistent hip injury.
Caldwell is Wigan's third manager of the season, following Uwe Rosler and ex-Cardiff boss Mackay, who was unable to halt the club's slide during his five-month reign.
Wigan are in danger of suffering a second relegation in three seasons.
Graham Barrow, a long-serving member of Wigan's coaching staff, will assist Caldwell, while Eric Black and Mike Pollitt will serve as first-team coach and goalkeeping coach respectively.
Gary Caldwell (centre with trophy) was an unused substitute in Wigan's 2013 FA Cup final win
"I've made no secret of the fact I wanted to move into management when the time was right," Caldwell told the club website.
"I didn't expect that to come along as quickly as this, but in football you need to take opportunities when they arise.
"I am honoured and excited in equal measures to take charge at the Latics, where I have shared such incredible memories over the past five years.
"We are in a really tough place at the moment, but we will approach the next five games with only one thing in mind, to win. After that, we will assess where we are and move on."
Wigan chairman David Sharpe said it was an "appointment for the long-term", adding: "After a meeting with him on Monday and discussions all day on Tuesday, Gary was the only candidate we considered because we are so convinced of his qualities.
"He knows who we are as a football club and shares the same football philosophy. He is a natural leader who commands respect from everyone around him.
"People will talk about his lack of experience, but every young coach is in the same place. There are many examples of young coaches being given opportunities and being successful."
Caldwell will take charge of Wigan for the first time at Fulham on Friday.Image caption The sign at Regional Wines in Draperstown. Picture courtesy of the Irish News.
The owners of a Draperstown off-licence which demanded ID from foreign nationals have pledged not to discriminate over race or nationality.
Regional Wines in the County Londonderry village gave a voluntary undertaking after being contacted by the Equality Commission.
The Irish News reported a sign in the window of the shop said: "Due to theft, foreign nationals must produce ID."
Regional Wines is owned by John and Breda McKenna.
The Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities called the sign "indefensible" while it was also condemned by SDLP MLA for Mid-Ulster Patsy McGlone.
Evelyn Collins, chief executive of the commission, said that it welcomed the opportunity to work positively with Regional Wines.
She added that her organisation and Regional Wines would continue to review the off-licence's policies and practices.WASHINGTON: Barely 12 days after the shooting at a Gurdwara that killed six worshippers, an elderly Sikh man has been shot dead in an attempted robbery incident in the same Wisconsin state.A manhunt has been launched to nab the assailant, police said. The death of another Sikh has sent shock waves among the Sikh community members here, even though the police have termed it as a robbery incident and ruled out any link to the August 5 shootout inside the Oak Creek Gurdwara that killed six Sikh worshippers.The deceased Dalbir Singh, 56, assisted his nephew Jatinder Singh in running a grocery store in Milwaukee city, Wisconsin. The incident happened Wednesday night when some unidentified men entered the shop and put a gun to Jatinder Singh head. Jatinder Singh said he and his uncle made it back into the store and pushed the side door shut, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. But one of the men fired a shot through the door, killing Dalbir Singh, it said.Dalbir Singh was a regular visitor to the Gurdwara in Oak Creek, but was not present when the tragic incident happened on August 5. Jatinder Singh had gone to the Gurdwara, but had left its premises before the shootout began.About The Dust Bowl
For eight years dust blew on the southern plains. It came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. The simplest acts of life breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk were no longer simple. Children wore dust masks to and from school, women hung wet sheets over windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt, farmers watched helplessly as their crops blew away. [source]
[Map source]
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s lasted about a decade. Its primary area of impact was on the southern Plains. The northern Plains were not so badly effected, but nonetheless, the drought, windblown dust and agricultural decline were no strangers to the north. In fact the agricultural devastation helped to lengthen the Depression whose effects were felt worldwide. The movement of people on the Plains was also profound.
As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land."
Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought caused the Dust Bowl. Plains grasslands had been deeply plowed and planted to wheat. During the years when there was adequate rainfall, the land produced bountiful crops. But as the droughts of the early 1930s deepened, the farmers kept plowing and planting and nothing would grow. The ground cover that held the soil in place was gone. The Plains winds whipped across the fields raising billowing clouds of dust to the skys. The skys could darken for days, and even the most well sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on furniture. In some places the dust would drift like snow, covering farmsteads.
Timeline of The Dust Bowl
1931
Severe drought hits the midwestern and southern plains. As the crops die, the 'black blizzards" begin. Dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed land begins to blow.
1932
The number of dust storms is increasing. Fourteen are reported this year; next year there will be 38.
1933
March: When Franklin Roosevelt takes office, the country is in desperate straits. He took quick steps to declare a four-day bank holiday, during which time Congress came up with the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, which stabilized the banking industry and restored people's faith in the banking system by putting the federal government behind it.
May: The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act allots $200 million for refinancing mortgages to help farmers facing foreclosure. The Farm Credit Act of 1933 established a local bank and set up local credit associations.
September: Over 6 million young pigs are slaughtered to stabilize prices With most of the meat going to waste, public outcry led to the creation, in October, of the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation. The FSRC diverted agricultural commodities to relief organizations. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products were distributed through local relief channels. Cotton goods were eventually included to clothe the needy as well.
October: In California's San Joaquin Valley, where many farmers fleeing the plains have gone, seeking migrant farm work, the largest agricultural strike in America's history begins. More than 18,000 cotton workers with the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) went on strike for 24 days. During the strike, two men and one woman were killed and hundreds injured. In the settlement, the union was recognized by growers, and workers were given a 25 percent raise.
1934
May: Great dust storms spread from the Dust Bowl area. The drought is the worst ever in U.S. history, covering more than 75 percent of the country and affecting 27 states severely.
June: The Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act is approved. This act restricted the ability of banks to dispossess farmers in times of distress. Originally effective until 1938, the act was renewed four times until 1947, when it expired. Roosevelt signs the Taylor Grazing Act, which allows him to take up to 140 million acres of federally-owned land out of the public domain and establish grazing districts that will be carefully monitored. One of many New Deal efforts to reverse the damage done to the land by overuse, the program was able to arrest the deterioration, but couldn't undo the historical damage.
December: The "Yearbook of Agriculture" for 1934 announces, "Approximately 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production.... 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125 million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil... "
1935
January 15: The federal government forms a Drought Relief Service to coordinate relief activities. The DRS bought cattle in counties that were designated emergency areas, for $14 to $20 a head. Those unfit for human consumption - more than 50 percent at the beginning of the program - were destroyed. The remaining cattle were given to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation to be used in food distribution to families nationwide. Although it was difficult for farmers to give up their herds, the cattle slaughter program helped many of them avoid bankruptcy. "The government cattle buying program was a God-send to many farmers, as they could not afford to keep their cattle, and the government paid a better price than they could obtain in local markets."
April 8: FDR approves the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, which provides $525 million for drought relief, and authorizes creation of the Works Progress Administration, which would employ 8.5 million people.
April 14: Black Sunday. The worst "black blizzard" of the Dust Bowl occurs, causing extensive damage.
April 27: Congress declares soil erosion "a national menace" in an act establishing the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture (formerly the Soil Erosion Service in the U.S. Department of Interior). Under the direction of Hugh H. Bennett, the SCS developed extensive conservation programs that retained topsoil and prevented irreparable damage to the land. Farming techniques such as strip cropping, terracing, crop rotation, contour plowing, and cover crops were advocated. Farmers were paid to practice soil-conserving farming techniques.
December: At a meeting in Pueblo, Colorado, experts estimate that 850,000,000 tons of topsoil has blown off the Southern Plains during the course of the year, and that if the drought continued, the total area affected would increase from 4,350,000 acres to 5,350,000 acres in the spring of 1936. C.H. Wilson of the Resettlement Administration proposes buying up 2,250,000 acres and retiring it from cultivation.
1936
February: Los Angeles Police Chief James E. Davis sends 125 policemen to patrol the borders of Arizona and Oregon to keep "undesirables" out. As a result, the American Civil Liberties Union sues the city.
May: The SCS publishes a soil conservation district law, which, if passed by the states, allows farmers to set up their own districts to enforce soil conservation practices for five-year periods. One of the few grassroots organizations set up by the New Deal still in operation, the soil conservation district program recognized that new farming methods needed to be accepted and enforced by the farmers on the land rather than bureaucrats in Washington.
1937
March: Roosevelt addresses the nation in his second inaugural address, stating, "I see one-third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished... the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." FDR's Shelterbelt Project begins. The project called for large-scale planting of trees across the Great Plains, stretching in a 100-mile wide zone from Canada to northern Texas, to protect the land from erosion. Native trees, such as red cedar and green ash, were planted along fence rows separating properties, and farmers were paid to plant and cultivate them. The project was estimated to cost 75 million dollars over a period of 12 years. When disputes arose over funding sources (the project was considered to be a long-term strategy, and therefore ineligible for emergency relief funds), FDR transferred the program to the WPA, where the project had limited success.
1938
The extensive work re-plowing the land into furrows, planting trees in shelterbelts, and other conservation methods has resulted in a 65 percent reduction in the amount of soil blowing. However, the drought continued.
1939
In the fall, the rain comes, finally bringing an end to the drought. During the next few years, with the coming of World War II, the country is pulled out of the Depression and the plains once again become golden with wheat. Timeline Source
Return to The Great DepressionImage copyright Science Photo Library Image caption The bill would require a licence for all existing photographs and maps.
India is introducing legislation to ban maps or satellite images of the country unless they are approved by government.
The new bill, which would affect digital maps from Google, Apple, and Uber, is facing stiff opposition from campaign groups.
It also bans "wrong" information, including disputed international borders.
The government said the rules would not create barriers to business if the bill became law.
The bill bans all types of geospatial information, maps, raw data or photographs, acquired by any means, including satellite photography.
Offenders could be fined up to 1bn rupees (£10.4m).
It also requires anyone who has already gathered such information to apply for a licence to keep it.
It was designed to regulate both the creation and distribution of geospatial information in India "which is likely to affect the security, sovereignty and integrity" of the country, the Ministry of Home Affairs said.
Technical difficulties
Critics say the definition of geospatial data is so wide it could include printed maps, world atlases, or depictions of the country in international magazines imported to India.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Value-added services such as Uber are also likely to require a licence.
The proposed law is likely to cause problems for Apple and Google's map products, as well as services offering "value added" geolocation services, such as taxi-hailing app Uber.
It is also unclear if companies such as Google would have to go through a separate vetting process every time they updated their satellite imagery - a process that takes up to three months.
There is an exemption for government agencies and departments.
Google already offers slightly altered versions of its maps inside India, eliminating the Line of Control that divides Indian-controlled and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and locating the whole disputed region within India's borders.
Image copyright Google Image caption In India (left), Google Maps eliminates the Line of Control seen on the international version (right).
Both Google and Uber declined to comment.
The laws extend beyond large international companies.
Anyone creating, distributing, or owning unsanctioned maps must apply to a government agency for a licence, and submit the material for inspection.
The geospatial data will then be considered by a security vetting committee, which will decide if the applicant is granted a licence.
Once the material is cleared, it must be watermarked with the insignia of the vetting authority.
"It's only a draft proposal before the country," the Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju, said in a tweet. "I would appeal not to pass hasty judgment, but put up your suggestions."
Speaking to the Economic Times, he said: "It is a general concern being raised that India as a responsible country must have provisions to secure its boundary and territory.
"That is why the bill is necessary.
"It is not a question of sending a message to any firm or company - but it is a question of addressing our own security concern."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption WATCH: 'Tough penalties for unapproved maps'
Analysis: Shilpa Kannan, BBC News, Delhi
In a country where the number of people owning a mobile phone is rocketing, providing online maps is a big and growing business.
If this bill goes through, no-one, from Google to the smallest business, will be able to run their map services in India without a licence.
The government will control how anyone uses online maps.
When I want to book a cab using a taxi app service, I'm sharing my location with the service to find a cab.
The driver uses a map to navigate.
When I take a picture and upload it with metadata, I'm creating mapping information that would require a licence.
A growing protest online, with the hashtag "#savethemap", claims the bill won't just hurt individuals, but also small businesses.
Image copyright Twitter Image caption The #savethemap campaign is concerned with the wide definition in the draft bill
Campaigner Sumandro Chattapadhyay says companies such as Uber and Google will survive by getting all their maps vetted by the government.
"But smaller companies have no means to know what kind of geospatial information they can store and what they cannot," she says.
"Moreover, if a start-up requires three months to get approvals for your data before you can use it, it'll be as good as dead."
The bill also bans the publication of such material outside the country, and is designed to apply to citizens of India living and working in other countries, explicitly stating offenders outside India will be subject to the same penalties.
"This act needs to be dropped," said managing editor Arup Dasgupta, in a post on Geospatial World magazine's website.
"This act does not, in fact cannot, even begin to comprehend the paradigm shift in geospatial technologies which makes it a non-starter.
"India does need a geospatial information act, but it has to be an enabling and encouraging act that makes for faster and better implementation of programmes, not a regressive and punitive act as the proposed one," he said.
The bill is still in the draft stage, and government is inviting submissions on it until 4 June.“As we speak tonight,” he told a joint session of Congress, “we are removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our very innocent citizens. Bad ones are going out as I speak.”
The speech echoed his earlier calls to rid the country of the “bad hombres” from south of the border.
But as a civil rights lawyer representing immigrants in the Southeast, I’m not fooled.
No one, of course, is doubting that some undocumented immigrants have committed crimes. Studies, however, show that immigrants are less prone to criminality than native Americans – not more so. Crime tends to drop in neighborhoods that experience an influx of first-generation immigrants.
The fact is that the vast majority of immigrants who are being rounded up, taken from their families and thrown into prison-like detention centers are not criminals at all. They’re simply people trying to make ends meet, like most other Americans. They create jobs and contribute to the economy. They support families. They go to school. They’re part of the fabric of our communities.
They’re not “bad hombres” – or “rapists,” as Trump called them in the speech that kicked off his campaign.
Rather, they’re people like Walter Cervantes, who has been sitting in the Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, for the past two weeks.
Walter Cervantes’ wife, Sarah Lemasters, and daughter, Emilia Cervantes, of Stanton, N.C. (Mike Belleme)
Cervantes, 27, is a husband and a father to a baby girl. His parents brought him to the United States from Mexico when he was just 7. Under the Obama administration, he received assurance that he would be allowed to stay through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
But Cervantes has a marijuana charge on his record. On Feb. 13, he went to a monthly meeting with his probation officer. It was part of the conditions, set by a court, that would result in the charge being dismissed later this year.
“As I was finishing, the probation officer told me, two people want to talk to you,” Cervantes told one of my colleagues who visited him in detention.
The men were Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Instead of going home to his wife and baby daughter in Marion, North Carolina, Cervantes was detained. Thanks to his probation, he was a convenient target for federal agents freed by Trump’s new immigration orders to detain and deport a far wider class of immigrants than before.
Under Trump’s new mandates, any immigrant in the country without proper documentation who is charged with or convicted of any offense, or even suspected of a crime, is now an enforcement priority. It doesn’t matter how minor the offense. It doesn’t matter if the person has paid their debt to society. It doesn’t matter if the offense is a criminal charge stemming from the person’s immigration status.
Even the Dreamers, the DACA recipients like Cervantes who arrived with their parents as young children, are at risk.
Immigrants who have regular contact with a court, school or government agency should not have to worry that they are particularly vulnerable. Yet, many are. In El Paso, Texas, for example, agents detained a woman inside a courthouse just after she received a protective order against an abusive boyfriend.
The Los Angeles Times reported that up to 8 million people could be targeted for deportation by Trump’s dragnet.
Even though the Obama administration deported more people than any previous administration, Trump’s orders are far more aggressive than President Barack Obama’s directives. Under Obama, immigrants associated with serious crimes were targeted as higher priorities for deportation, while others were allowed some relief.
As the raids continue, in what Trump has called a “military operation,” immigrant communities will become less likely to report crimes like domestic violence out of fear of being deported and as a result will be less safe.
The apparatus Trump will need to carry out his new immigration directives is already being built.
Thousands more federal agents are to be hired. Trump has called for reinstating the Secure Communities program, which provided immigration agents with fingerprint records collected at local jails, even though, according to Human Rights Watch, it made immigrants “afraid to call 911.”
Trump also has signaled he will bring changes to so-called 287(g) agreements in an effort to enlist more local law enforcement officials to act as federal immigration agents. Under Obama, applications for such authority slowed and some were rescinded. Maricopa County, Arizona, had its 287(g) authority revoked after the Department of Justice found a pattern of racial profiling by officers.
Meanwhile, immigrants like Cervantes will continue to be rounded up and face the often devastating prospect of being sent back to their country of origin. For Cervantes, that is Michoacan, Mexico – a place he hasn’t seen in 20 years.
“I hear stories of cartels,” he said. “Last year, my cousin was murdered. People have broken into my family’s house. I’m worried because people may think I have money.”
Cervantes doesn’t want to go there to live. He wants to be in the United States, his home.
“I want to get out to be with my wife and baby.”Cliven Bundy (KLAS)
The Utah Highway Patrol is investigating reports that a federal worker driving a U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) vehicle was threatened with a handgun on Tuesday after anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy was recently accused of inciting militia members.
BLM Fillmore Field Office supervisor Eric Reid informed the The Salt Lake Tribune that a federal wrangler was driving on I-15 on Tuesday when he encountered a dark blue Dodge 1500 extended-cab pickup truck with two men who “told him he was No. 1 with that certain gesture.”
Within minutes the truck returned, but this time the men were wearing hoods and holding up a sign that read, “You need to die.”
Reid said that the federal worker was not able to record the license plate because it was covered in duct tape.
In an interview with KLAS last week, Clark County Assistant Sheriff Joe Lombardo had accused Bundy of inciting the militia members supporting him to use violence.
Lombardo said that he had gone to the Bundy ranch recently during a standoff after militia members refused to let the BLM remove cattle because the rancher had not paid $1 million in grazing fees for using federal lands. Although the BLM had agreed to suspend the cattle roundup, Lombardo recalled how militia members pointed guns at police officers as Bundy demanded that the sheriff’s office disarm the federal agents.
“There was a possibility of somebody just having an accidental discharge causing a blood bath, because the individuals that were showing up, the militia quote unquote, were armed to the teeth,” Lombardo pointed out. “Mr. Bundy, in my personal opinion, incited the crowd.”
“That bunch, the SS squad or something to do with Hitler, shouldn’t have guns there aimed at the people,” one Bundy supporter told KLAS.
“At some point, you have to draw a line in the sand. I guess this is it,” another militia member said.
On Friday, Cliven Bundy and “two to three-dozen Bundy family members and supporters” filed criminal complaints against the BLM at the Metropolitan Police Department headquarters.
The BLM has responded by warning employees to “be prepared to encounter unfriendlies.”
“We never know in life when we will cross paths with these types,” the agency told employees in an email after the BLM worker was threatened with a gun earlier this week.
BLM field office supervisor Eric Reid has said that worker had been ordered to remove all agency logos from vehicles as a “precaution.”
“It’s one of those things now we’re going to be dealing with,” Reid explained. “A lot of [people] have taken that attitude toward the government.”
Watch the video below from KLAS, broadcast May 1, 2014.
8 News NOW
Watch the video below from KTNV, broadcast May 2, 2014.[Editor’s note: From time to time, agents and other NFL insiders submit columns to PFT for potential posting. Sometimes we post it, sometimes we don’t. In the case of an open letter from agent David Mulugheta of Athletes First to all NFL fans regarding the manner in which players who seek more money are viewed by the public, the ideas expressed by Mulugheta mesh with a sentiment that PFT has articulated many times in recent years. The full letter, with minor edits, appears below.]
Letter to NFL Fans:
So I woke up Friday morning and began my daily routine. My workday starts with reading a few emails, sending a few dozen text messages, and accepting/making more calls than a telemarketer. After an hour or so, I’m usually settled in, which allows me time to scroll through my social media channels. On Friday morning, it seemed that a particular NFL player’s contract negotiations had taken the forefront on my Twitter feed. A
After only a few seconds of browsing, frustration began to set in. As expected and without delay, fans began to lash out against the player. And for what? Pursuing his option to enter into contract negotiations with his employer? Attempting to capitalize on years and years of hard work and after completing his contractual obligations? Utilizing the very little leverage he has against a multi-billion-dollar enterprise? Having the audacity to realize his worth and demand just compensation for his objective productivity on the field?
Do these fans demonstrate the same resentment when their favorite cashier at Walgreens decides to discuss wages with his/her supervisor? Or how about their favorite actor turning down a movie role because it doesn’t include a “pay or play” commitment? I can continue to speculate as to the root cause of fans’ frustration, but I’d rather use this moment to provide some context on NFL contract negotiations.
Far too often we hear that a given player “was offered a five-year, $100 million deal.” Now it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the player will have received $100 million at the conclusion of the five years. Well, if the player were basketball’s Kyrie Irving or baseball’s Bryce |
of the top prospects has all but paved the way for him to be taken first overall in the draft. His main competition for the top spot seems to be out of the way now and the question should be which team will be taking him first overall. Orlando City currently hold the pick but they could deal it prior to draft day if the right offer comes along. There will certainly be some interest from teams in acquiring the pick with Larin attracting interest from around the league.
MLS may not be able to completely salvage the draft class but getting Larin signed up will be a major boost. The lack of other names signing deals though is concerning for Toronto FC who are going to be forced to look for other options with all of their first round picks in what is suddenly looking like a very thin draft class. At least, they should have Chapman under contract which will give them one of the top talents available as the midfielder would have been a lock to go top 5 had he been forced to go through the draft.A brief history of the University of Edinburgh Forrest Hill building
Comments and corrections on this brief history are welcome.
5 Forrest Hill
The building at 5 Forrest Hill, until 2008 occupied by the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, comprises three historically distinct portions:
The garage, originally built as a Drill Hall in 1871
The north-most part of the building, which abuts Greyfriars Kirkyard. This section was built as part of the former Poor House, or Charity Workhouse, some time between 1817 and 1852
The central part of the building containing the frontage and the stairwell, dating from the late 19th or early 20th century.
North Wing: The Edinburgh Charity Workhouse or Poor House
The Charity Workhouse has its origins around 1740, when, according to Arthur Birnie in his book The Edinburgh Charity Workhouse, 1740-1845, the Town Council and the kirk-sessions agreed to construct a Charity Workhouse where, to stamp out a plague of beggars, “the city poor could be housed and set to work”. According to Peter Higginbotham on workhouses.org.uk:
The Edinburgh Charity Poorhouse in Port Bristo was built in 1739-1743 by Samuel Neilson, mason, and William McVey and James Heriot, wrights. It was financed by voluntary subscriptions. Funds for its operation were raised by a variety of means such as a tax on the valued rents of the city, collections at church doors, charitable donations and other contributions including an annual benefit play at one of the city’s theatres. It was a substantial establishment that, in 1777-8, could accommodate 484 adults and 180 children.
The OS map of 1852 (available from workhouses.org.uk or the National Library of Scotland) shows the West wing of the Edinburgh Poor House to be located where the north-most part of the current building (right) stands.
West wing of Edinburgh Poor House. The OS map from 1852 describes this as “The West Wing, for Women and Children” of the Edinburgh Poorhouse. It does not appear in Kirkwood’s plan of 1817.
The wing is marked as being for women and children. The wing does not appear in Kirkwood’s 1817 plan of Edinburgh. Birnie does not mention the building of this wing, though he does mention the problems that the managers of the Charity Workhouse had in the mid-nineteenth century accommodating children.
Part of the original Poor House building, constructed in 1743, still exists. It is the building shown in the first picture at the right (covered in scaffolding), that protrudes into Forrest Hill. Most of the building was demolished to make way for the Drill Hall in 1871, but one end of the “Main Wing” (as it is denoted on the 1852 OS map) remains.
A perspective view of the Poor House of Edinburgh as it now stands unfinished. This engraving by John Elphinstone shows the Poor House as it would have looked very shortly after it was built in 1743. The “unfinished” in the engraving caption suggests that the Poor House was originally intended to be larger, perhaps with extra wings, as shown in Maitland’s engraving. However, the city maps suggest that the Poor House was not extended until some time between 1817 and 1845. This image is copyright City of Edinburgh Council and is reproduced with permission. For more information about the image, see the Capital Collections website.
Elphinstone’s engraving A Perspective View of the Poor House of Edinburgh as it now stands unfinished shows how the Poor House would have looked shortly after it was built. The remaining section is the rightmost section of the building. The caption to the engraving suggests that the Poor House was intended to be larger. Another contemporary engraving of the Poor House, from Maitland’s 1753 History of Edinburgh, shows the Poor House with two wings projecting out from the Main Wing, but there is no evidence that these were built at the time. However, according to the maps, between 1817 and 1852, the buildings on the north side of Forrest Hill but to the east of the Poor House remnant already mentioned were built.
Maitland’s engraving of the charity workhouse
According to Birnie, in 1870 a new Poor House was opened at Craiglockhart Hill, and the Charity Workhouse was demolished to make way for the new Drill Hall. In fact the maps suggest that part of the Poor House remained. A contemporary description of the new Poor House at Craiglockhart is available from www.workhouses.org.uk.
There is also some information on the Charity Workhouse in Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh by James Grant.
Circa 1871: Fever hospital
From this history of the City Hospital in the Lothian Health Service Archive:
In 1867 the Public Health (Scotland) Act gave power to local authorities to make provision for the treatment of infectious diseases during periods of epidemics …. as the Managers of the Royal Infirmary refused to admit cases of smallpox or cholera, premises in King’s Stables Road and in part of the poorhouse in Forrest Road were fitted up as temporary hospitals to meet any emergency that might arise. After the Royal Infirmary moved to Lauriston Place in 1879 its Managers used Old Surgeons’ Hall for the treatment of infectious fevers during ordinary seasons.
1872-1990 Army
Plaque on side of Greyfriars Kirk, which reads: Regiment raised 1859. Headquarters rebuilt and opened 6th May 1905 by HRH the Duke of Connaught KT. Colonel Sir Robert Cranston VD. Colonel Comandant of Brigade. Lord Provost of the City.
According to the Dictionary of Scottish Architects the Drill Hall was constructed in 1872, designed by the practice of Stewart and Menzies, who had been involved in a faulty water supply scheme for Dundee. According to the plaque on the side of Greyfriars Kirk, the Drill Hall was opened on 21st December 1872 and was occupied at first by the Queen’s City of Edinburgh Volunteer Rifle Brigade, and then a succession of battalions and regiments, being joined by the University of Edinburgh Officer Training Corps in 1957.
The entrance, with carved inscription, which reads: “The Queens Rifle Volunteer Brigade The Royal Scots. Headquarters.”
According to the Dictionary of Scottish Architects, an extension to the 1872 Drill Hall and HQ for the Queen’s Rifle Volunteer Brigade, The Royal Scots was constructed between 1902 and 1904, and is now B-listed. This is the centre part of the building, which contains the entrance with the carved inscription and the plaque. However, in the 1894 OS map the centre part of the building already appears to exist, though it is not in the 1877 OS plan. Building News of 2 September 1904 reported:
EDINBURGH. - Progress is being made with the erection of the new headquarters in Forrest-road, for the Queen’s Rifle Volunteer Brigade (Royal Scots). In view of the building being much inclosed, and also with the object of keeping down expenses, no attempt has been made at an elaborately decorated exterior. The general design is a simple form of the Scottish Baronial style, and the walls are rubble covered with harl. The aspect to Lauriston has two crow-stepped gables, the larger of which contains the lecture hall and has circular corbelled turrets at the corners. The main entrance is situated under a projecting porch, and on the left leads immediately to the drill-hall and the orderly-room, and on the right to the main staircase. In communication with the orderly-room is the adjutant’s room. That again leads to the commanding officers’ room, in direct communication with the present drill-hall. To the rear is a store for six machine guns, a store for camp supplies, and the armoury, which has accommodation for 3,000 rifles. To the right of the main entrance is the store for the baggage waggons, and part of the north wing will be devoted to storage. Officers’ quarters are on the first floor, and a circular staircase leads up to the lecture-hall floor. On the same floor is a suite of four company meeting rooms, the largest 20 feet by 39 feet, and the smallest 15ft. by 18 feet. The medical officer’s room is also on this flat, and the gymnasium, which will measure 46 feet long by 25 feet. broad, with an 18 feet roof. Adjoining will be a lavatory, with two shower-baths, and in the entresol a dressing room. On the second floor will be the sergeants’ mess and a billiard-room, with a service-room connecting the two. The north-west block of this flat will be used a recreation place for the men, a room 26ft. by 25ft. On the third floor will be the lecture-hall. The architects are Messrs Cooper and Taylor, 20, Frederick-street, Edinburgh.(p 323, cited from the Dictionary of Scottish Architects)
By 2015 the inscription above the door had been restored. Photo courtesy of George Ross.
1969-present: University
In 1969, the University of Edinburgh took over part of the building from the Army. Until circa 1990, the Army and the University shared the building. The Drill Hall was used as a garage for army and university vehicles. Until June 2008, the Department of Artificial Intelligence (and forerunners) and then the School of Informatics or its forerunners occupied the building. According to Jim Howe, head of the Department of Artificial intelligence from 1977 to 1996, notable work carried out in the building included the construction of “the FREDDY II robot which was capable of assembling objects automatically from a heap of parts”. FREDDY can now be seen in the National Museum of Scotland in Chambers Street, and the inside of one of the ground floor rooms can be seen in the video of FREDDY at work.
Over the summer of 2009, Communications and Marketing section took up residence in the part of the building, with the remaining space being used for teaching.
In 2015, to allow for recladding of the Appleton Tower, Informatics teaching labs and administration was decanted into the building. The building underwent significant alterations, including installing a lift in the light well. A mezzanine floor has been built since 2009 in the Drill Hall, and this is now occupied by a large teaching lab.
Forrest Hill in culture
Gillian Hayes writes:
There’s a scene in the film The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie (Maggie Smith et al.) where the girls and Jean are in Greyfriars churchyard and the back wall of Forrest Hill and a few windows are visible. Then the camera pans round and - pouf - we’re in a completely different place.
The former Drill Hall has been used as a Fringe venue (number 109) on a number of occasions:
Works cited
Birnie, Arthur. “The Edinburgh Charity Workhouse, 1740-1845”. Book of the Old Edinburgh Club 22 (1938): 38-55.
Grant, James. Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh. Div. III. London: Cassell & Company Ltd.
Howe, Jim. “Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh University : a Perspective”. http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/about/AIhistory.html
Higginbotham, Peter. http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Edinburgh, Retrieved on 13 August 2014.
Bibliography
Dawson, Joanna. Crockery from Craiglockhart Poorhouse, Edinburgh. MA Dissertation, University of Glasgow, 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20080913232507/http://www.poorhouse.org.uk:80/dissertation/chapter-1.html#1.4SINGAPORE - Sequencing analysis of the Zika virus found in two of the patients from the Aljunied Crescent, Sims Drive cluster has indicated that the virus likely evolved from a strain that was already circulating in South-east Asia.
The virus from these two patients was not imported from South America.
The sequencing was completed by the National Public Health Laboratory and A*STAR's Bioinformatics Institute.
"The analysis found that the virus belongs to the Asian lineage and likely evolved from the strain that was already circulating in Southeast Asia," the Health Ministry said.
The research team will release more details shortly, it added.
There are 26 new cases of Zika infections in Singapore as of noon on Saturday (Sept 3). This raises the total number of locally-transmitted cases of the virus to 215.
Of the 26 cases, 24 are linked to the Aljunied Crescent, Sims Drive, Kallang Way and Paya Lebar Way cluster, the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the National Environment Agency (NEA) said in a joint statement.
Two patients have no known links to any existing cluster, but authorities did not say where they live.
NEA has been continuing with mosquito control operations in Aljunied and Bedok.
As of Friday, 83 breeding habitats – comprising 49 in homes and 34 in common areas or other premises – have been detected and destroyed.
Outreach efforts are continuing to raise awareness of the fight against Zika.
While outdoor fogging and spraying of insecticides continue in areas where Zika cases were found, it is not a sustainable way of controlling the mosquito population, NEA said.
"New batches of mosquitoes will continue to emerge until all breeding habitats are found and removed... source reduction is still a more effective and sustainable strategy," it said.Sharyl Attkisson uncovered another Obama administration falsehood about ObamaCare on Tuesday's CBS This Morning, spotlighting a 2010 document from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services which "estimated ObamaCare would collectively reduce the number of people with employer-sponsored health coverage by about 14 million". This is contrary to the White House's "repeated assurances that nothing will change for those insured through work".
Attkisson featured the cases of two small business owners who had to discontinue the health insurance plans for their employees, including a New Hampshire woman who "remains an avid ObamaCare supporter", despite the problems with HealthCare.gov. [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
Anchor Norah O'Donnell teased the correspondent's report by trumpeting how "employees [are] losing their current company health benefits because of the Affordable Care Act – Sharyl Attkisson investigates what the government knew was coming." Minutes later, co-anchor Charlie Rose introduced the segment by noting that "CBS News is learning another promise by the government isn't holding up. Some of those who get their insurance through work are losing their coverage."
The CBS journalist continued that "the government estimated all along that millions of workers will be dropped from their employee insurance under the Affordable Care Act. And for some, it's already happening." Attkisson spent much of her report highlighting how Nancy Clark, a "New Hampshire small business owner", and "Virginia Beach business owner" Betsy Atkinson, both had to "terminate" health coverage for their employees.
Later in the segment, the correspondent played three short soundbites of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney giving his "repeated assurances that nothing will change for those insured through work", and outlined the contents of the 2010 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services document:
SHARYL ATTKISSON: White House spokesman Jay Carney has given repeated assurances that nothing will change for those insured through work.
JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY (from press briefings): They don't have to worry about or do or change anything. This conversation doesn't apply to you. There is no change for you.
ATTKISSON: But in 2010, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services estimated ObamaCare would 'collectively reduce the number of people with employer-sponsored health coverage by about 14 million'. The reason is some big companies will opt to save by paying the relatively-small penalty for dropping employee insurance. Small businesses don't have to supply insurance, and may find new policies too costly.
Attkisson previously revealed on the November 12, 2013 edition of CBS This Morning that the Obama White House had prior knowledge of HealthCare.gov's numerous security flaws, but went ahead anyway with the October 1, 2013 launch. Attkisson zeroed in on a government memo that warned about "important security risks discovered in the insurance system....'The threat and risk potential to the system is limitless'." The journalist also detailed on the October 30, 2013 edition of CBS Evening News that the very structure of ObamaCare could encounter a "death spiral" due to the "enrollment fiasco" surrounding the federal website.
[Update: the full transcript of Sharyl Attkisson's report from Tuesday's CBS This Morning can be read at MRC.org.]Book Explores History Of The American Rifle
A new book traces American history — though the sight of a gun. Alexander Rose, author of American Rifle: A Biography, and host Andrea Seabrook visit a shooting range to tell the story.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
SEABROOK, host:
Ask writer Alexander Rose about the icons of U.S. culture, and he'll tell you there is one innovation that represents the ingenuity, the independence, the pioneering spirit of America - the rifle.
(Soundbite of gunshot)
SEABROOK: Rose is the author of a new history called "American Rifle." He calls it a biography.
Mr. ALEXANDER ROSE (Author, "American Rifle: A Biography): Well, I kind of treat the rifle almost as a human being. The American rifle is completely and inextricably intertwined with American culture, technology, business, war and society.
SEABROOK: Rose met me at the firing range of the National Rifle Association outside Washington D.C., to take a tour through two centuries of American history, and how it was shaped by the rifle. That history begins with the Red Coats. In the 18th century, British soldiers were mainly armed with muskets - loud, slow, clunky things that were horribly inaccurate. And the British style of fighting with these rifles?
Mr. ROSE: Essentially, line up all of your men in a very long line and tell them, and this is actually from an 18th century British drill book, that when you fire your gun, make sure to close your eyes because you don't want to actually aim because you just waste time like that. And so what they would do is they would send this proverbial hail of lead towards the enemy in the hopes that some of it would actually connect.
SEABROOK: But the American rebel had a new invention.
Mr. ROSE: The famous Kentucky rifle, or long rifle, which was created specifically in America for a specific purpose - frontier warfare and frontier living.
SEABROOK: It could shoot farther and more accurately. That led to a uniquely American style of warfare - taking aim and firing on specific targets. Rose argues that is what won the revolution. While the Red Coats fired their muskets indiscriminately, the rebels picked off British officers. You know the rest of the story. Back to the firing range, the NRA is letting us shoot a few of the guns we're talking about.
Mr. ROSE: OK, I want you to grab a seat and we'll get you set up.
SEABROOK: OK. The mid-1800s brought a new American original, the Winchester. Doug Wickland, a curator at the NRA's National Firearms Museum, gives me a tutorial. OK.
Mr. DOUG WICKLAND (Curator, National Firearms Museum): It's loaded with five cartridges. Now to work the action each time, you just work the lever like that.
SEABROOK: And that loads a new bullet?
Mr. WICKLAND: It loads it and cocks the hammer.
SEABROOK: So you just have to pull a trigger. OK. Now I feel like Annie Oakley.
(Soundbite of gunshot)
SEABROOK: OK, so now I pull this back. Oh, and it pops out the cartridge.
Mr. WICKLAND: And you're ready to shooting again.
SEABROOK: And now it's cocked again. My God, that's easy. OK, I'm going to do it again.
The Winchester's big innovation? It's a repeater. With a quick pump of the lever, you're reloaded. This rifle is the co-star of a thousand movies.
(Soundbite of movie "Winchester '73")
Mr. JIMMY STEWART: (As Lin McAdam): Seems they knew all about your Springfield being single shot.
Unidentified man: You mean they had repeaters?
Mr. STEWART: (As Lin McAdam): Yep, only this time we just might outfox them.
Unidentified man: On account of we got two Winchesters.
SEABROOK: Jimmy Stewart leading a posse in the movie "Winchester '73." If the Kentucky rifle won the American Revolution, Alex Rose says the Winchester won the American West.
(Soundbite of gunshots and fighting)
SEABROOK: By the end of World War I, modern warfare demanded, as Alex Rose writes, a light, full-powered, rapid-fire rifle. Enter the M1 Garand.
Mr. ROSE: The Garand was a semi-automatic which really means that every time you pull the trigger a bullet is unleashed.
SEABROOK: You didn't have to mess with it. You didn't have to reload.
Mr. ROSE: It was very simple, you just pushed your magazine in. You fired, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Clip came out, filled it with a new one quite quickly - quite an advance over the older guns of the early 20th century and late 19th century.
SEABROOK: The German and Japanese armies were still using bolt-action rifles. They had to manually work the lever between each shot. The M1 gave the Americans an advantage, but the Garand changed U.S. culture in another important way. General Douglas MacArthur appealed to President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal sensibilities. MacArthur made the case that by spending lavishly on updating American forces with the latest technology, he would be creating thousands of new jobs and turning unskilled laborers into skilled gunsmiths. The military-industrial complex was born.
(Soundbite of shooting range)
Mr. WICKLAND: The safety for this gun is inside the trigger guard. It's a blade that you push forward to remove.
SEABROOK: Back on the range, Doug Wickland hands me an M1 Garand. OK. Now this thing is heavy. This is not for wimps.
Mr. WICKLAND: You want to hold this into your shoulder as well.
SEABROOK: Is this one going to kick me?
Mr. WICKLAND: Just a little bit, but you've got experience. Now you can have one.
(Soundbite of gunshot)
SEABROOK: The Garand was the last of the old rifles, says Rose. It was used straight through World War II, Korea, and into the beginning of Vietnam. Then came the rifle that brings us right up to today, the M16.
Mr. ROSE: The M16 is the first gun of the space age. I mean, even looking at it with that characteristic carrying handle and the fiber glass stocks.
SEABROOK: It's a jet black scary looking thing. Again, Doug Wickland sets me up.
(Soundbite of shooting range)
Mr. WICKLAND: It latches into position. Now flip off the safety, and you're ready to shoot.
SEABROOK: OK.
(Soundbite of gunshot)
SEABROOK: That is so easy to fire. That's all - the first thing that comes to mind is that it's easy to pull the trigger. It doesn't kickback on you. It's just - it's simple. Now of course, I didn't even come near. I didn't hit the target, but...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. ROSE: Well, this is how these modern guns go, they're not supposed to be as quite as accurate as the old-time guns. But it is interesting that the M16 is - that you're not supposed to fire more than a couple of rounds at a time. It was designed deliberately so you conserve your ammunition and you take your aim, which is a very American idea about fighting wars.
SEABROOK: Rose says it may look different, but the M16 is still a direct descendant of that first Kentucky rifle.
Mr. ROSE: In its civilian and military aspects, the American rifle to this day mirrors traditional American ideas about individualism and self-control and discipline under fire and, you know, being able to think for oneself. You know, rifles are, I mean, they are part of the American character. The Americans have a relationship to rifles that others countries simply do not have.
SEABROOK: Now, I have to say, there are going to be listeners who aren't going to like the idea of looking at American history through the evolution of rifles.
Mr. ROSE: I mean, I just talk about the technology of them and the ideas behind them and what they represent and exemplify, that's my job as an historian. I am not a polemicist one way or the other. The real point is it doesn't really matter whether you like guns or whether you don't like guns. The point is that much of what you see about you today was indirectly or directly created by the rifle.
SEABROOK: Alexander Rose, his new book is called "American Rifle: A Biography."
(Soundbite of movie "A Christmas Story")
Mr. PETER BILLINGSLEY: (As Ralphie Parker) There it is, the Holy Grail of Christmas gifts, the Red Ryder 200-shot range model air rifle.
SEABROOK: That was the gun Ralphie Parker absolutely pined for in the movie "A Christmas Story." In a few minutes, our film critic, Bob Mondello, shares some of his favorite holiday scenes with a dysfunctional family twist.
(Soundbite of movie "A Christmas Story")
Mr. JEFF GILLEN: (As Santa Claus) You'll shoot your eye out, kid. Merry Christmas. Ho, ho, ho!
Mr. BILLINGSLEY: (As Ralphie Parker) No!
Copyright © 2008 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.THE belief that children and money will bring people happiness is one of life's abiding illusions, a Sydney conference attended by 2000 seekers of happiness was told yesterday.
The scientific evidence shows people are very bad at predicting what will make them happy, said Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of the book Stumbling On Happiness. He said people's happiness goes into steep decline after they have children, and never recovers its old level until the children leave home. As a source of pleasure, playing with one's offspring rates just above doing housework but below talking with friends, eating, or watching TV, research has shown.
Yet people invest so much time and money in their children, and focus on the fleeting moments of joy they bring, rather than on the long periods of boredom and irritation, that most continue to believe children will bring them happiness, Professor Gilbert said.If any monster has come to define the Minecraft experience, it would have to be the creeper, the odd green monster with dead eyes with slowly advances on unexpecting players, looking to blow both them and their creations to kingdom come. Though in a recently posted excerpt from the upcoming Minecraft documentary, the game's creator 'Notch' notes that the creeper was actually the result of some mistaken coding.
It's comin' right for us!
"The creepers were a mistake" he says in the short clip. "I dont have any modeling programs to do the models, I just write them in code. And I accidently made them (the creepers) tall instead of long, so it was like a tall thing with four little feet. And that became the creeper. As oppossed to a pig."
Apparently, Notch had been attempting to create the pig creature type seen within the game, though accidently had the length and height of the animal reversed, resulting in the strange creature that is the creeper. Inspired by the look, he would add the trademark green coloring and tendency to explode to the creature, showing how a small screw-up can result in an iconic monster.
Also seen in the trailer. Exploding arrows, which are so damn cool we can only pray they make their way into the final game. (TNT + Arrow?)
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhSunderland Lead the Way!!!
We rarely veer from the historical but for this blog we will regarding this weekend’s big win.
Now obviously from the title this is not about the football, as it was evident from Saturday’s win that, on the pitch, very little is right about the Wearsiders who showed why they are now favourites for the drop.
It is not about Brexit either, for while the Sunderland landslide “Leave” result at half past midnight showed the way the country was leaning we are a non-political concern.
Instead this is about a far sighted and imaginative scheme at Sunderland which caught our attention, in a sphere both Andy and myself have deep interests:
The Stadium of Light Sensory Room for those on the autistic spectrum.
The sensory room was the brainchild of a couple – Kate and Peter Shippey – who have three children on the autistic spectrum, the eldest of which loves football but was not able to enjoy it in a crowd owing to the noise, mass of people in one space and overall atmosphere.
The Shippeys contacted Sunderland a few seasons ago and, after discussions with Chris Waters, the club’s Supporter Liaison Officer, the practicalities of turnimg the germ of the idea into reality were put into place.
The Sensory room is located in The Black Cats bar, directly underneath the area set aside for opposition fans at the north end of the stadium.
The view of the pitch is excellent from the sensory room.
Chris had arranged that before the game on Saturday, my wife a SEN specialist, and myself were given a tour of the Black Cat area and the room by our genial host Rob Mason. Rob is the Sunderland club historian and also the equivalent of Andy Exley in that he edits and writes much of their match day programme and official club magazine.
The room is a lot smaller than I imagined, being approximately 10 by 12 feet, and able to accommodate 3 children and their parents, but on reflection if it was any larger it would defeat the purpose of the scheme. If expansion is required in the future the club will not expand the room but add a similar module either next to the existing room or in an appropriate location nearby.
It is designed to bring serenity to those with sensory difficulties, and while not age specific I imagine it would be more in use by children.
The idea being that the fan can watch and lend their support but without the overbearing noise that would otherwise spoil their enjoyment, and most likely lead to an early exit from the ground. Though there is enough of the atmosphere, as it is not totally soundproofed to ensure it does not appear they are just sitting at home watching the TV.
Planned in tandem with local autistic groups there is a step allowing optional standing, a number of comfortable seats, and ear defenders in case even the muted noise gets too much. A communication board with cards is provided for those with limited vocabulary and there is also a TV so the game can be watched via this media.
There is a bubble tube with a padded mat, which is a colour changing column a bit like a lava lamp, in case they need to get away from the match for a bit of calm.
Currently, while Sunderland were the first place to have this ground breaking idea, Notts County and Chesterfield have followed, or are in the process of setting this up at their ground.
As it is so small a room it leaves a very minor footprint on the total space required, and as such is something that could and should be replicated at as many stadiums as possible. Arsenal do fantastic work in the community, and this would be another feather in their cap if they were to take up this scheme.
We urge Arsenal to take this up in the Emirates, especially as grants and other incentives are being awarded by companies and charities. See the recent Shippey Campaign and BT assistance announcement.
This is an outstanding example of an idea being put into practice, and we take our hats off to the Shippeys and to Sunderland Football Club.
Further details
Shippey twitter account
The Shippey Campaign website
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Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog (top right). You know it makes sense.
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The books…For other ships with the same name, see HMS Pickle
Representation of HMS Pickle at Portsmouth History United Kingdom Name: HM Schooner Pickle Launched: 1799 Acquired: Purchased January 1801 as Sting Renamed: Pickle, 1802 Honours and
awards: Naval General Service Medal with clasps:
"Trafalgar"
"Pickle 3 Jany. 1807"[1] Fate: Sunk after running aground near Cádiz, 1808 General characteristics [2] Class and type: Topsail schooner Tons burthen: 127 (bm) Length: 73 ft (22.3 m) (gundeck)
56 ft 3 3⁄ 4 in (17.2 m) Beam: 20 ft 7 1⁄ 4 in (6.3 m) Depth of hold: 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m) Propulsion: Sails Sail plan: Gaff rig with square topsail on foremast Complement: about 40 Armament: 8 x 12-pounder carronades
HMS Pickle was a topsail schooner of the Royal Navy. She was originally a civilian vessel named Sting, of six guns, that Lord Hugh Seymour purchased to use as a tender on the Jamaica station. Pickle was at the Battle of Trafalgar, and though she was too small to take part in the fighting, Pickle was the first ship to bring the news of Nelson's victory to Great Britain. She also participated in a notable single-ship action when she captured the French privateer Favorite in 1807. Pickle was wrecked in 1808, but without loss of life. In 1995 five replica Baltic packet schooners were constructed at the Grumant & Askold shipyard in Russia. One, named "Alevtina & Tuy", was in 2005 renamed "Schooner Pickle", although not a replica of HMS Pickle, to represent the 1805 vessel for the 200-year Trafalgar celebration. Retaining her adopted name, she is berthed in Hull Marina on the Humber. The vessel, owned by Historic Motor and Sail, is kept as a representation of the original Pickle and can be seen at ports throughout the East coast of England during the summer months.
Origins [ edit ]
Originally named Sting, Pickle was built in 1799 in Bermuda, where this type of vessel was known as a Bermuda sloop.[2][3] Vice-Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour, the commander in chief on the Jamaica Station, formally purchased Sting in December 1800 for £2,500, after having leased her for some time at £10 per day. His purchase was in defiance of orders not to purchase vessels. However, faced with a fait accompli, the Admiralty issued an order in February 1801 that her name be changed to Pickle.[3]
Between April and June 1800, on the Leeward Island station, a Pickle participated in the capture of four prizes and a recapture. Sting may have been known as Pickle on station long before the Admiralty made her name change official; the London Gazette seems to have no mention of a Sting during this period. That said, the Naval Chronicle numbers the "schooner Sting" among the vessels escorting the convoy in which Lowestoffe wrecked on 10 August 1801.[4] The Admiralty admonished Sting's commander after September 1801, Lieutenant Thomas Thrush, to cease referring to her as Sting and to refer to her as Pickle.[3]
French Revolutionary Wars [ edit ]
On 9 April 1800, the tenders Pickle and Garland recaptured the schooner Hero. She had a crew of seven men and was 136 tons burthen (bm). She was out of Guadeloupe, sailing from Pointe Petre to Saint Bartholomew with a load of cordwood.[5] A week later, the same two vessels captured the Dutch schooner Maria. She had a crew of 19 men, armed with small arms, and was of 35 tons burthen (bm). She was from Curaçao, sailing from Curaçao to Guadeloupe with a cargo of dry goods.[5] Then on 9 May, Pickle alone took the schooner Jack, of Boston, sailing from Boston to Martinique with a cargo of cattle. Pickle's commander is given as Mr. William Black.[5]
Later, on 26 May, Pickle, described as the tender to Captain William Browell's ship of the line Sans Pareil recaptured the schooner John |
there might be hope in subscriptions. Now, some magazine and newspaper publishers – perhaps most successfully, the New York Times – are finding that it is possible to recapture part of the old glories of the all-you-can-eat subscription model, and micropublishing newcomers like The Magazine and The Awl’s Weekend Companion are also bold enough to ask for some money in return for a regular publication.
As content becomes atomized, pried away from homepages and spread across the Web by Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Reddit, it makes sense for readers to have subscription-based content as their media “base,” just as many of us already subscribe to streaming media services such as Netflix, Spotify, Rdio, Hulu, and Amazon Prime for a steady diet of movies, TV shows, and music. Again thanks to the rise of mobile devices as reading devices, you can expect more publishers to integrate a subscription element into their offerings in the year ahead (and hey! Andrew Sullivan just did it). That’s because, like subscriptions themselves, mobile devices are very personal – they say something about their owners, and wherever they go, so too does content. Thanks to smartphones and tablets, it’s also easier to start, stop, and pay for a subscription than ever before.
3. Serialization Related to the emergence of micropublishing and subscriptionization is the return of serialization, an old-school form of story publishing that had its heyday in the Charles Dickens era, when newspapers and other periodicals would publish novels in instalments. Through a partnership with Byliner, Margaret Atwood is perhaps the most prominent forerunner of this revived trend, but publishers themselves are also driving it forward. The New York Times, for instance, published its narrative non-fiction feature “Snow Fall” in six instalments. Which brings us to...
4. Multimedia As a counterweight to micropublishing, with “Snow Fall” the New York Times showed just what’s possible with a big budget and a big newsroom. The six-chapter story was published on the Web in HTML with rich interactive graphics, high-definition video, photo slideshows, audio, and responsive design (although it was best viewed on a large-screen desktop computer). It was much wowed-over by media and tech watchers alike and attracted more than 3.5 million pageviews.
The “Snow Fall” feature is nothing new – Atavist has been doing similar things with its own technology and stories for two years – but it is so far the best and most recognized example of multimedia publishing. It also took six months and 16 people to produce. What it really showed was not so much “the future of journalism” but what premium digital publishing can look like when given the right resources. Because of its success, in 2013 we’ll likely see more experimentation with HTML-based multimedia publishing, from the Times and its competitors, from ESPN to Frontline.
5. Longform Buzzfeed has a new longform editor – who apparently didn’t oversee the site’s disaster of a feature about The Oatmeal – Tumblr is commissioning longform journalism, and a bunch of other newcomers, from The Verge and Polygon to NSFW and PandoDaily, are getting excited about producing the sort of reporting that the likes of the New Yorker and The Atlantic have excelled at for decades. This new crop of digital publishers realize that people are more willing to read longer stories on their tablets and smartphones. They’re only just getting started – Buzzfeed’s longform editor came on only a month ago, Vox Media’s Polygon launched only in October, and Tumblr issued its call for paid freelancers in the same month – so 2013 promises to be a big year for magazine-length stories, even if they're no longer in the pages of actual magazines.
6. Curation Spotify founder Daniel Ek told Sarah Lacy at PandoMonthly that the music streaming company’s next challenge will be to help users make sense of the millions of songs now instantly available for free. The same challenge exists for news media and longform stories, which spread at lightning speed thanks to social sharing. In 2012, we already saw the rise of human curators, such as Dave Pell (NextDraft), Jason Kottke, and Bill Bishop (Sinocism), and Pinterest ushered in an era of self-powered curation. As read-it-later apps such as Instapaper, Readability (with which I’m so enamored that I called it the one indispensable app of 2012), and Pocket get faster and better, the mania for curation will only accelerate. In general, I’m picking that “more signal, less noise” will be a big theme of the Web in 2013 – a point reinforced by Gdgt co-founder Ryan Block’s New Year’s Eve Bits Blog post about simplifying our technological footprints.
7. Micropayments In October, I wrote about a journalist friend who made $5,000 from a story that he published on a blog just by asking for tips, and soon after covered Vimeo’s introduction of a tips jar for content creators. They were two significant stories in the early days of a micropayments trend that is set to gather steam in 2013. Swedish startup Flattr, which launched in May, already promises “big change through small donations,” and fellow micropayments startup CentUp will launch in the coming months. I know of another micropayments startup that’s currently in stealth that will also show its head this year. Now that we’re getting used to buying things with our mobile wallets, it’ll be only a small step to start tipping for digital content we truly appreciate.
[Illustration by Hallie Bateman]Introduction - What is NVMe?
Identifying the problem with current SSDs is simple. SSDs were forced to conform to the legacy of spinning media, in every fashion, as they gained acceptance. A glaring problem is the interface; SSDs commonly use SATA and SAS connections. AHCI and SCSI, the interface protocols for SATA and SAS, were initially designed to communicate with the slow rotating platters of HDDs. HDDs have never come close to providing the high IOPS and low-latency performance of SSDs, and legacy interfaces simply aren't designed to deliver the unadulterated connection flash-based devices crave.
SSD manufacturers migrated to the PCIe bus to power high-performance products for several reasons. Most common SSDs still come in a 2.5" form factor, even though one of the primary advantages of flash memory is enhanced density and a smaller footprint. The PCIe slot allows for denser designs better suited to the advantages of flash memory.
PCIe also provides much more bandwidth than other interfaces and reduces latency due to its close proximity to the CPU. Some manufacturers hamper performance by utilizing the AHCI protocol over the PCIe bus. Other manufacturers have taken to developing their own proprietary software interfaces to provide better performance. These approaches have restricted the performance of most PCIe SSDs.
The NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) protocol was built ground-up for non-volatile memory and scales to address both client and enterprise applications. Actually designed with next-generation non-volatile memory like PCM and MRAM in mind, NVMe is memory-agnostic and has no NAND-specific commands. Instead, latency, parallelism, performance, and low power operation were a key focus during NVMe development. These design tenets avail themselves perfectly to NAND flash media and its inherently parallel architecture.
Designed specifically to cater to multi-core environments, the NVMe interface provides almost unlimited scaling. The optimized software stack provides a radical reduction in latency. Latency is the most treasured performance characteristic of SSDs and delivers tangible performance benefits to applications. NVMe also lightens the CPU load required to perform storage operations through a number of enhancements.
An overriding goal of the NVMe specification is to usher in the commodization of PCIe SSDs. Over 90 companies have participated in the development in an open industry consortium, and a 13-company promoter group directs the body. Revolutionizing the communication protocol is a huge undertaking and development of the entire ecosystem is key. The NVMe committee will help speed broad industry adoption of PCIe SSDs by providing standard drivers, a consistent feature set, development tools, and compliance and interoperability testing through the UNH-IOL NVMe Test Consortium.
NVMe is already experiencing broad driver support with integrated drivers in Windows, Linux, UNIX, Solaris, VMware, and UEFI. In the past, it took a considerable amount of engineering effort to develop custom drivers and software for PCIe SSDs from scratch, and then validation essentially occurred in a vacuum. This process takes months, and sometimes years, to validate and progress through qual cycles. Unfortunately, some of the problems encountered with drivers and software occurred with SSDs already deployed into production environments.
The NVMe protocol speeds development and accelerates time to market. Tier 1 NAND vendors, OEMs, SSD vendors, and even hyperscale datacenters, can deploy solutions easily with standardized controllers and reference firmware designed to utilize the NVMe interface. The ability to deploy previously validated utilities, software, and drivers, helps minimize firmware and software customizations.
After years in development, and attending more sessions at trade shows than I can count, it really is exciting to have NVMe finally make it into the lab. Let's get to testing.
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Notes on "Unsupervised Represerntation Learning by Solving Jigsaw Puzzles"
I've recently looked at a paper that proposes a nice and fun way to learn representations in an unsupervised/self-supervised fashion:
Noroozi and Favaro (2016) Unsupervised Learning of Visual Representations by Solving Jigsaw Puzzles
The core idea behind this paper is powerfully simple. The goal is to learn useful representations from unlabelled data, useful in the sense of helping supervised object classification. This paper does this by chopping up images into a set of little jigsaw puzzle, scrambling the pieces, and asking a deep neural network to learn to reassambple them in the correct constellation. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is Figure 1 taken from the paper explaining this visually:
Summary of this note:
I note the similarities to denoising autoencoders, which motivate my question: "Can this method equivalently represent the data generating distribution?"
I consider a toy example with just two jigsaw pieces, and consider using an objective like this to fit a generative model $Q$ to data
I show how the jigsaw puzzle training procedure corresponds to minimising a difference of KL divergences
Conclude that the algorithm ignores some aspects of the data generating distribution, and argue that in this case it can be a good thing
What does this learn do?
This idea seems to make a lot of sense. But to me, one interesting question is the following:
What does a network trained to solve jigsaw puzzle learn about the data generating distribution?
Motivating example: denoising autoencoders
At one level, this jigsaw puzzle approach bears similarities to denoising autoencoders (DAEs): both methods are self-supervised: they take an unlabelled data and generate a synthetic supervised learning task. You can also interpret solving jigsaw puzzles as a special case 'undoing corruption' thus fitting a more general definition of autoencoders (Bengio et al, 2014).
DAEs have been shown to be related to score matching (Vincent, 2000), and that they learn to represent gradients of the log-probability-density-function of the data generating distribution (Alain et al, 2012). In this sense, autoencoders equivalently represent a complete probability distribution up to normalisation. This concept is also exploited in Harri Valpola's work on ladder networks (Rasmus et al, 2015)
So I was curious if I can find a similar neat interpretation of what really is going on in this jigsaw puzzle thing. If you equivalently represent all aspects of a probability distribution this way? Are there aspects that this representation ignores? Would it correspond to a consistent denisty estimation/generative modelling method in any sense? Below is my attempt to figure this out.
A toy case with just two jigsaw pieces
To simplify things, let's just consider a simpler jigsaw puzzle problem with just two jigsaw positions instead of 9, and in such a way that there are no gaps between puzzle pieces, so image patches (now on referred to as data $x$) can be partitioned exactly into pieces.
Let's assume our datapoints $x^{(n)}$ are drawn i.i.d. from an unknown distribution $P$, and that $x$ can be partitioned into two chunks $x_1$ and $x_2$ of equivalent dimensionality, such that $x=(x_1,x_2)$ by definition. Let's also define the permuted/scrambled version of a datapoint $x$ as $\hat{x}:=(x_2,x_1)$.
The jigsaw puzzle problem can be formulated in the following way: we draw a datapoint $x$ from $P$. We also independently draw a binary 'label' $y$ from a Bernoulli($\frac{1}{2}$) distribution, i.e. toss a coin. If $y=1$ we set $z=x$ otherwise $z=\hat{x}$.
Our task is to build a predictior, $f$, which receives as input $z$ and infers the value of $y$ (outputs the probability that its value is $1$). In other words, $f$ tries to guess the correct ordering of the chunks that make up the randomly scrambled datapoint $z$, thereby solving the jigsaw puzzle. The accuracy of the predictor is evaluated using the log-loss, a.k.a. binary cross-entropy, as it is common in binary classification problems:
$$ \mathcal{L}(f) = - \frac{1}{2} \mathbb{E}_{x\sim P} \left[\log f(x) + \log (1 - f(\hat{x}))\right] $$
Let's consider the case when we express the predictor $f$ in terms of a generative model $Q$ of $x$. $Q$ is an approximation to $P$, and has some parameters $\theta$ which we can tweak. For a given $\theta$, the posterior predictive distribution of $y$ takes the following form:
$$ f(z,\theta) := Q(y=1\vert z;\theta) = \frac{Q(z;\theta)}{Q(z;\theta) + Q(\hat{z};\theta)},
$$
where $\hat{z}$ denotes the scrambled/permuted version of $z$. Notice that when $f$ is defined this way the following property holds:
$$ 1 - f(\hat{x};\theta) = f(x;\theta),
$$
so we can simplify the expression for the log-loss to finally obtain:
\begin{align} \mathcal{L}(\theta) &= - \mathbb{E}_{x \sim P} \log Q(x;\theta) + \mathbb{E}_{x \sim P} \log [Q(x;\theta) + Q(\hat{x};\theta)]\\ &= \operatorname{KL}[P\|Q_{\theta}] - \operatorname{KL}\left[P\middle\|\frac{Q_{\theta}(x)+Q_{\theta}(\hat{x})}{2}\right] + \log(2) \end{align}
So we already see that using the jigsaw objective to train a generative model reduces to minimising the difference between two KL divergences. It's also possible to reformulate the loss as:
$$ \mathcal{L}(\theta) = \operatorname{KL}[P\|Q_{\theta}] - \operatorname{KL}\left[\frac{P(x) + P(\hat{x})}{2}\middle\|\frac{Q_{\theta}(x)+Q_{\theta}(\hat{x})}{2}\right] - \operatorname{KL}\left[P\middle\|\frac{P(x) + P(\hat{x})}{2}\right] + \log(2) $$
Let's look at what the different terms do:
The first term is the usual KL divergence that would correspond to maximum likelihood. So it just tries to make $Q$ as close to $P$ as possible.
The second term is a bit weird, particularly as comes into the formula with a negative sign. The KL divergence is $0$ if $Q$ and $P$ define the distribution over the set of jigsaw pieces ${x_1,x_2}$. Notice, I used set notation here, so the ordering does not matter. In a way this term tells the loss function: don't bother modelling what the jigsaw pieces are, only model how they fit together.
The last terms are constant wrt. $\theta$ so we don't need to worry about them.
Not a proper scoring rule (and it's okay)
From the formula above it is clear that the jigsaw training objective wouldn't be a proper scoring rule, as it is not uniquely minimised by $Q=P$ in all cases. Here are two counterexamples where the objective fails to capture all aspects of $P$:
Consider the case when $P=\frac{P(x) + P(\hat{x})}{2}$, that is, when $P$ is completely insensitive to the ordering of jigsaw pieces. As long as $Q$ also has this property $Q = \frac{Q(x) + Q(\hat{x})}{2}$, all KL divergences are $0$ and the jigsaw objective is constant with respect $\theta$. Indeed, it is impossible in this case for any classifier to surpass chance level in the jigsaw problem.
Another simple example to consider is a two-dimensional binary $P$. Here, the jigsaw objective only cares about the value of $Q(0,1)$ relative to $Q(1,0)$, but completely insensitive to $Q(1,1)$ and $Q(0,0)$. In other words, we don't really care how often $0$s and $1$s appear, we just want to know which one is likelier to be on the left or the right side.
This is all fine because we don't use this technique for generative modelling. We want to use it for representation learning, so it's okay to ignore some aspects of $P$.
Representation learning
I think this method seems like a really promising direction for unsupervised representation learning. In my mind representation learning needs either:
strong prior assumptions about what variables/aspects of data are behaviourally relevant, or relevant to the tasks we want to solve with the representations.
at least a little data in a semi-supervised setting to inform us about what is relevant and what is not.
Denoising autoencoders (with L2 reconstruction loss) and maximum likelihood training try to represent all aspects of the data generating distribution, down to pixel level. We can encode further priors in these models in various ways, either by constraining the network architecture or via probabilistic priors over latent variables.
The jigsaw method encodes prior assumptions into the training procedure: that the structure of the world (relative position of parts) is more important to get right than the low-level appearance of parts. This is probably a fair assumption.The Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a fine to the Denver Sheriff Department after a federal investigation found it incorrectly listed being a US citizen as a job requirement during a major hiring spree.
From January to March 2015, the police department, which is the largest sheriff department in Colorado, went on a recruitment drive, hiring more than 200 deputies to the team, but only US citizens were able to apply, which the DOJ ruled as unlawful.
Along with a $10,000 fine, the department will also have to rexamine all job applications in the last two years and identify immigrants who applied for roles but were excluded because of their status.
In a statement, the Justice Department said the police department “discriminated based on citizenship status” and violated the Immigration and Nationality Act
“We commend the Denver Sheriff Department for its cooperation and commitment to removing unnecessary and unlawful employment barriers,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta said.
“Eliminating this unlawful citizenship requirement will help ensure that the Denver Sheriff Department hires the best and most qualified individuals to protect and serve. The entire community will benefit from these reforms.”
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, citizenship, immigration status and national origin cannot be used in discriminating against individuals in relation to hiring, firing or recruitment.
All employers are obliged to equally treat those who are non-citizens but have valid work permits, unless state, local or federal law specifically requires certain jobs to only be open to US citizens.Soaring temperatures set new record highs throughout the weekend in Portland.
The city topped out at 100 degrees on Sunday, breaking the old record of 96 degrees set in 2003.
And the 98-degree high on Saturday shattered the previous record, also set in 2003.
Jeremiah Pyle, a National Weather Service meteorologist, said Vancouver, Hillsboro, Troutdale and Eugene also ended the weekend with new record highs.
This heatwave won't last much longer, however. And forecasters say the peak is already over.
"There's a gradual cooling trend starting tomorrow," Pyle said.
Monday looks to be cooler - but still warm.
"Right now we're forecasting a high of 88 for Portland," Pyle said. "After 99, maybe 88 won't feel so bad."
Each day, the temperature is expected to drop. Once midweek hits, forecasters say relief is in store.
"Wednesday and Thursday are the big change days," Pyle said.
By Thursday, the weather service expects a high in the upper 60s.
That's much closer to typical: The average high for this time of year is in the low 70s.
-- Emily E. Smith
esmith@oregonian.com
503-294-4032; @emilyesmith“When exposed to oxygen (as it would be when applied to your skin), one of it’s fragrant components, linalyl acetate forms substances that lead to allergic contact dermatitis in and out of sunlight.”
Lavender oil contains two major constituents in approximately equal amounts – linalool and linalyl acetate. Oxidation is actually more of a problem with linalool than with linalyl acetate, and it’s true that, over a period of months or years, lavender oil constituents can oxidize to hydroperoxides. These “oxidation products” are often slightly more skin-allergenic than the original compounds (which are virtually non-allergenic). However, oxidation is a very slow process – it does not happen in a few minutes while a product is sitting on your skin! To avoid the possibility of oxidation, I recommend that products containing lavender oil also include an added antioxidant. This is in line with the International Fragrance Association recommendation that essential oils high in linalool should include an antioxidant, such as the addition of 0.1% alpha-tocopherol (IFRA 2009). Even without an antioxidant, the shelf life of a lavender-containing product should be good for at least 12 months, so long as the essential oils were reasonably fresh when first used.
“Because the fragrance constituents in lavender oil oxidize when exposed to air, lavender oil is pro-oxidant. This enhanced oxidation also increases its irritancy on skin.”
This is partly true. It’s important to realize that in these tests, the essential oil is typically exposed to the air every day for a period of weeks or months. This scenario does not reflect real-world use of lavender oil, though it does show that oxidation will happen eventually. But Paula Begoun is wrong to label lavender oil as a pro-oxidant – it is not, it is an antioxidant that can itself eventually oxidize. That does not make it a pro-oxidant! Pro-oxidants cause oxidation. And, she uses “irritation” here when she means “allergenicity.” They are not the same thing, and the hydroperoxides that can form in lavender oil are potentially allergenic, not irritant.
“Lavender leaves contain camphor, which is known as a skin irritant.”
This assertion smacks of desperation! Lavender oil contains less than 1% of camphor which, anyway, is only a mild irritant. If you have a product containing 1% lavender oil, then you will end up with less than 0.01% of camphor. Even if camphor was a powerful irritant, this would hardly be an issue.
“Research also indicates that other components of lavender, specifically linalool, can be cytotoxic, meaning that topical application causes skin-cell death.”
Here lies the fundamental claim of risk, which however is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. Lavender oil was cytotoxic to human dermal fibroblasts and endothelial cells (skin cells) in vitro at concentrations greater than 0.125%. Linalool (35% of the oil sample) had similar toxicity to the essential oil, while linalyl acetate (51% of the oil sample) was more toxic. Membrane damage was thought to be the mechanism of toxicity (Prashar et al 2004). In this type of assay, the test substance is in direct contact with isolated cells in a petri dish. Without that direct contact, cell membrane damage will not take place at those low dilutions. It’s an in vitro test, and you can’t assume that the same effect will happen when you apply lavender oil to the skin, because the skin has a protective barrier: the stratum corneum. However, even if you applied lavender oil to broken skin, it would still not be equivalent to the test using isolated cells, because the dermis is a complex matrix of tissue that contains those cells.
Any type of in vitro test is only suggestive of a possible effect. You can never assume that the same effect will take place in the living body. It might, it might not. Either the cytotoxicity described above will manifest as irritation, or it will be so negligible as to have no importance. The most telling evidence is the fact that lavender oil has been successfully used in wound healing at 4%, with no adverse effects. Dermatological testing also reveals a lack of irritation. In a 48 hour occlusive patch test on 50 Italian volunteers, undiluted lavender oil produced no adverse reactions. Similarly tested at 1%, it produced no reactions in 273 eczema patients (Meneghini et al 1971). Undiluted lavender oil was slightly irritating to rabbit skin, but was not irritating to mouse or pig skin; tested at 10% on 25 healthy volunteers it was neither irritating nor sensitizing (Opdyke 1976 p451). So if there is any cytotoxicity, it’s not significant.
“It is a must to avoid in skin-care products.”
Skin allergies to lavender oil do happen occasionally, and I know of five cases (not cited here) in the dermatology literature, reported between 1986 and 2000. Considering that it is the most widely used essential oil in aromatherapy (global annual production about 200 tonnes), lavender oil allergy is extremely rare. And, although it is a very low-risk skin allergen (possibly only when oxidized), it is not an irritant. Nor are rose, cedarwood and tangerine. Undiluted lavender oil can work wonders on stings and blemishes, but it should not be applied to large areas of skin simply because it has a drying effect, due to rapid evaporation – the same reason that alcohol is drying.
If you don’t want to use lavender oil – or essential oils in general – that’s fine. But please, don’t mis-represent the science just so you can justify your world-view! Paula is right to draw attention to the possibility of lavender oil oxidation, but this is not a major problem, and is easy to avoid. To be super-safe, use undiluted lavender oil within 12 months of purchase, keep it cool and away from strong sunlight, and add an antioxidant to any product containing it (not needed in soaps).
If you search for negative effects you will surely find them, and it’s easy to become enmeshed in that negativity. I submit that the dermal benefits of lavender oil outweigh the risks to a considerable degree.
References
Bickers D, Calow P, Greim H et al 2003b A toxicologic and dermatologic assessment of linalool and related esters when used as fragrance ingredients. Food & Chemical Toxicology 41:919-942
Cassella S, Cassella JP, Smith I 2002 Synergistic antifungal activity of tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia) and lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) essential oils against dermatophyte infection. The International Journal of Aromatherapy 12(1):2-15
Cherng J-M, Shieh D-E, Chiang W 2007 Chemopreventive effects of minor dietary constituents in common foods on human cancer cells. Bioscience, Biotechnology & Biochemistry 71:1500-1504
D’Auria FD, Tecca M, Strippoli V et al 2005 Antifungal activity of Lavandula angustifolia essential oil against Candida albicans yeast and mycelial form. Medical Mycology 43:391-396
Edwards-Jones V, Buck R, Shawcross SG et al 2004 The effect of essential oils on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus using a dressing model. Burns 30:772-777
Gattefossé RM 1993 Gattefossé’s aromatherapy. CW Daniel, Saffron Walden
Ghelardini C, Galeotti N, Salvatore G et al 1999 Local anaesthetic activity of the essential oil of Lavandula angustifolia. Planta Medica 65:700-703
Goiriz R, Delgado-Jimenez Y, Sanchez-Perez J et al 2007 Photoallergic contact dermatitis from lavender oil in topical ketoprofen. Contact Dermatitis 57:381-382
Gould MN, Malzman TH, Tanner MA et al 1987 Anticarcinogenic effects of terpenoids in orange peel oil. Proceedings of the 78th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 28:153
Guba R 1998/1999 Wound healing: a pilot study using an essential oil-based cream to heal dermal wounds and ulcers. The International Journal of Aromatherapy 9(2):67-74
Hartman D, Coetzee JC 2002 Two US practitioners’ experience of using essential oils for wound care. Journal of Wound Care 11(8):317-320
IFRA 2009 Standards, including amendments as of October 14th 2009. International Fragrance Association, Brussels. http://www.ifraorg.org
Kerr J 2002 The use of essential oils in wound healing. The International Journal of Aromatherapy 12(4):202-206
Kim HM, Cho SH 1999 Lavender oil inhibits immediate-type allergic reaction in mice and rats. Journal of Pharmacy & Pharmacology 51:221-226
Kunicka-Styczyńska A, Sikora M, Kalemba D 2009 Antimicrobial activity of lavender, tea tree and lemon oils in cosmetic preservative systems. Journal of Applied Microbiology 107:1903-1911
Kunicka-Styczyńska A, Sikora M, Kalemba D 2011 Lavender, tea tree and lemon oils as antimicrobials in washing liquids and soft body balms. International Journal of Cosmetic Science 33:53-61
Meneghini CL, Rantuccio F, Lomuto M 1971 Additives, vehicles and active drugs of topical medicaments as causes of delayed-type allergic dermatitis. Dermatologica 143:137-147
Opdyke DL J 1976 Monographs on fragrance raw materials. Food & Cosmetics Toxicology 14 supplement
Prashar A, Locke IC, Evans CS 2004 Cytotoxicity of lavender oil and its major components to human skin cells. Cell Proliferation 37:221-229
Sakurada T, Kuwahata H, Katsuyama S et al 2009 Intraplantar injection of bergamot essential oil into the mouse hindpaw: effects on capsaicin-induced nociceptive behaviors. International Review of Neirobiology 85:237-248
Sakurai H, Yasui H, Yamada Y et al 2005 Detection of reactive oxygen species in the skin of live mice and rats exposed to UVA light: a research review on chemiluminescence and trials for UVA protection. Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences 4:715-720
Soković M, Glamočlija J, Marin PD et al 2010 Antibacterial effects of the essential oils of commonly consumed medicinal herbs using an in vitro model. Molecules 15:7532-7546
Vakilian K, Atarha M, Bekhradi R et al 2011 Healing advantages of lavender essential oil during episiotomy recovery: a clinical trial. Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice 17:50-53
Yang SA, Jeon SK, Lee EJ et al 2010 Comparative study of the chemical composition and antioxidant activity of six essential oils and their components. Natural Product research 24:140-151
Zu Y, Yu H, Liang L et al 2010 Activities of ten essential oils towards Propionibacterium acnes and PC-3, A-549 and MCF-7 cancer cells. Molecules 15:3200-3210
Dit artikel is ook beschikbaar in het Nederlands!Apple slipped off its high horse in 2015 and 2016, but has hopped back aboard and is now streaking at the front of the market.
This is not just about technicals or cheapness. The company has successfully rebuilt its business around grabbing your undivided attention. Do I have your attention?
Although the iPod and iTunes are emblematic of the transition to digitalization, for a long time investors feared Cupertino had lost its way. Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and even Netflix all seemed to have better strategies in the new era of the cloud and streaming media.
Yet it turns out Apple had a plan, too: Its ecosystem. Now it is pressing that advantage in a big way – and it will lead to more iPhone, Watch, Macbook, accessory and subscription sales than ever. This is where the new cheaper iPad fits in.
In September 2016, a day ahead of the release of iPhone 7, Verge writer Thomas Ricker explained his devotion to Apple products even though they were no longer at the cutting edge of innovation:
“I’m from the halo generation, where my first iPod caused me to buy my first MacBook, which led to an iPhone and then an iMac and then more iPhones, iPads, and finally, an Apple TV. And all this Apple hardware begat dozens of compatible accessories including speaker docks, cradles, cables, and Kickstarter doodads, not to mention hundreds of apps and other content purchased in Apple’s stores,” wrote Ricker. “So maybe what I’m describing is akin to Stockholm syndrome. But I don’t think so, not yet, anyway. Nevertheless, I’m at the point where I judge the best device to be the device that works best in the ecosystem where I live.”
There are many more like Ricker. My daughter, for instance. She’s a junior at Purdue University in Indiana, and not too long ago her Macbook Air died. She knew I prefer Windows laptops because you get more bang for your buck, but after a couple of weeks of indecision decided to go for a new Macbook Pro because it worked with all her other devices, and it’s just still cooler than a Dell. I remember going through the same exercise a decade ago when she got her first iPod. The brand still has stunning relevance after all these years; too bad Sears never figured that out.
The aura of its brand and the lure of its ecosystem puts Apple in a powerful position. Captive customers mean robust sales regardless of the level of innovation. It also allows the company to tightly integrate products and services to put competitors at a distinct disadvantage.
For example, iPhone users can ask Siri to stream specific songs and playlists from Apple Music to any of their Apple devices. And Airpods, the dorky new Bluetooth headphones, get the same connectivity smarts. They work magically with everything in the Apple ecosystem as soon as you open their carrying case.
It’s not really magic. It’s by design. It’s a trap to keep customers captive in the Apple ecosystem. And it’s working.
“We’re making Airpods as fast as we can,” said Tim Cook, Apple chief executive at the most recent shareholder meeting, reported Business Insider. “We have a few comments from people who don’t think we’re making them fast enough, but we’re definitely working on that.”
In the workplace, Apple forged partnerships with IBM (IBM) and the German enterprise software giant SAP (SAP). They will build productivity software applications for iPhones. Since Apple’s mobile devices are tightly integrated with its MacBook computers there should be built-in efficiencies not available to traditional PCs. And that should lead to more corporate iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch sales.
Apple shares gapped up to a record high Tuesday. Its market cap is now tops in the world at $741 billion, which is $160 billion more than its next largest competitor, Alphabet (GOOGL). Yet its forward price/earnings multiple is just 13.9x, which is barely half the level of much slower growing companies like Altria (MO) and a third the level of Amazon.com (AMZN). Yes, the most valuable company in the world is cheap.
Most of the leading technology firms found a way to monetize data, time or a combination of the two. Apple found a way to ensure its customers do not even consider buying other products. With iPhone 8 coming in the fall, and likely to be its best product in years, it |
American submarine commanders from 1941 to 1945. This game is a sequel to 2013’s classic The Hunters which simulated German U Boat operations from 1939 to 1943. The Hunters received a 95% favorable rating from Armchair General and, if you can believe it, Silent Victory is even better! For the review of The Hunters check out http://armchairgeneral.com/the-hunters-boardgame-review.htm
I have a very good friend who is now American citizen but was born in Japan. He told me the story of his dad who was drafted in to the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. His dad was being sent to an island in order to reinforce the military there when his ship was hit and sunk by an American submarine. He was subsequently rescued by another Japanese ship which was then sunk the next day. His dad was then rescued by another ship which was also sunk by an American sub a few more days in to the journey. My friend’s dad was sent back to Japan with the other survivors. It is ironic to think that because my friend’s dad had his ships sunk three times by American submarines, his dad survived the war and had a son who became my friend years later. This story, alone, should testify to the effectiveness of American submarines in the Pacific during World War II.
Upon opening the Silent Victory box, the player will find a rule book, submarine log sheets, nice looking full color and die cut counters, three six sided and two ten sided die and one 20 sided die, five double sided card stock submarine control mats, two submarine patrol maps, five player aid cards, submarine combat mats and eight historic captain’s cards. There is a mat for each submarine type used in the game. Mats are also included for Combat during missions, Patrol Assignments and Encounters (merchant ships, capital ships and aircrafts), ship target rosters, random events and torpedo and deck gun to hit and damage charts and submarine damage and repair charts.
The rule booklet and the mats and charts are well laid out and logically presented. The rule’s index is complete and adds greatly to ease of use.
The player can command different types of submarines: the smaller Porpoise type submarines which are available starting in 1941, Tambor class, Salmon class, Narwhal class, Argonaut class, Gar class, the ubiquitous Gato class sub, Balao class, and finally the late war Tench class submarine.
Each submarine is rated for various features including how much flooding and hull damage it can sustain, status of internal and external systems such as the boat’s batteries, periscope, radio and engines, quantity and type of fore and aft torpedoes it can carry, number of torpedo tubes, type of deck guns and anti-aircraft guns as well as the amount of gun ammo storage, crew and captain status, crew quality, awards and medals won and patrol range and usual type of missions. Later subs have jammers and special radars.
In order to play the game, the player creates his submarine commander and crew and picks the type, model and name for the sub. The type of sub that he picks dictates the month and year that the campaign game starts, in other words, the later the model of boat the player picks, the later in the campaign the mission start. What this means from a player perspective is the later the player starts the campaign, the more difficult the mission are and the better the Japanese get at hunting down the American subs.
Before a mission, the player outfits their submarine mat with status markers which track the promotion level and medals of the commander, the skill of the crew, the number of steam and electric torpedoes (and acoustic torpedoes later in the war) and ammo for the deck guns. The player picks their home port which can include Pearl Harbor or Australia. Next, the boat leaves its port and dice are rolled in order to pick the mission area for the patrol which can include the Philippines, East China Sea, Sea of Japan, Java Sea, Indo-China Sea, Marianas Islands area, Solomon Islands, the Marshall chains and the Midway area. Each area is rated for the type and frequency of encounters.
Aside for standard hunting for shipping, special missions may be assigned to the sub which can include evacuations, rescuing downed air crews, mine laying, recon, transport and wolf pack operations. Wolf pack operations don’t involve the large number of subs that the Germans used but two to four American subs.
Once the player knows where they are shipping off to, the player then rolls for encounters every few days they spend on patrol. Encounters include finding a convoy, single merchant ships, capital ships, Japanese submarines or even deadly aircraft attacks on the boat. Once a surface contact is established, the player then rolls for the type of ships encountered the name and tonnage of the ship and whether the contact was during the day or at night. The time of day matters because if the encounter is at night against an un-escorted ship, a surface attack with torpedoes and the deck gun may be more productive than a submerged attack. But beware, if you are caught on the surface by an escort, Japanese submarine or an airplane, your boat could end up at the bottom of the Pacific.
If the sub is attacked by an aircraft, the player still has a chance if they can effectively use the sub’s anti-aircraft guns. If not, the only hope is to try a crash dive and pray.
If attacked by an escort destroyer, things get interesting quickly. The escort will attempt to use its depth charges to destroy the player or force his sub to the surface. The player is given the option of exceeding the test depth of the sub by diving deep but, if the player is unlucky, the sub’s hull could rupture like an egg shell killing everyone on board. Using the optional rules, some escorts are more aggressive than others and will keep pounding away until either the player’s sub, or the player’s nerves, break. Other escorts will drop a few depth charges and then speed off. Unlike The Hunters, in this game the player has the option of attacking the Japanese escorts. This can be risky but if you can knock out the escort, the other ships are easier to pick off.
Damage to the submarine is tracked on the sub mat and can include everything from minor damage to flooding, hull breaches, damage to the electric or diesel engines, damage to other boat systems and crew casualties. While damage control teams can attempt to repair the sub on patrol, other damage may force the player to abort the patrol and head back to base.
If the boat has a good solution on its targets, the choice of torpedo type (or use of deck guns) and range can also affect the attack. Dud torpedoes are much more of a problem than they are in The Hunters. For the first year of the war American torpedoes had a 75% chance of hitting but not exploding. Even when the sub crews reported this, the powers that be in the Pentagon and the US congress and senate ignored the issue and blamed the “duds” on improperly trained submarine crews. This almost lead to a rebellion amongst sub crews until the problem was finally addressed by the top brass who found out the the Mark 14 torpedoes had issues with their firing pins. The game also handles the annoying habit of early Mark 14 torpedoes to circle around and home in on the sub which fire them. In my play example above, I fired 15 Mark 14 torpedoes at the Japanese ships and all but one failed to explode. It is realistic but very frustrating. As the players advance towards 1943, the military finally corrects the issues and duds are not as much of a problem.
The success of the patrol is based upon total tonnage sunk. Random encounter charts list the type of ship, tonnage and name for hundreds of real life vessels. Don’t expect to rack up the sort of “large tonnage sunk” missions that can be found in The Hunters. The Pacific is much vaster and the Japanese didn’t tend to form the huge convoys that Allied shipping did.
A random event chart provides for surprises which can include an interception of broken Japanese codes, your sub being swept by a giant wave which causes massive damage to the boat and even misidentifying targets which may result in a court martial proceeding.
Back at port, the player is evaluated and can win promotions, increases in crew skills and even earn more advanced model of submarine.
The role playing element of this game motivates the player to weigh each and every command decision. Does the sub make a dangerous close range attack or a more conservatively safer but difficult long range attack? Each and every decision may make or break the submarine’s crew.
There are many optional rules included with the game in order to amp up the realism. In addition, you can find fantastic player support and forums at http://www.consimpress.com/silent-victory.
I wish that GMT had included zip lock baggies in the game box but this, at most, a trivial complaint. The few flaws in The Hunters have been corrected in Silent Victory making this game one of the easiest to play and most immersive to experience. Silent Victory will go down as a classic World War II simulation!
Armchair General Rating: 98 %
Solitaire Rating: 5
About the Author
A college film instructor and small business owner, Richard Martin has also worked in the legal and real estate professions, is involved in video production, film criticism, sports shooting and is an avid World War I and II gamer who can remember war games which came in plastic bags and cost $2.99 (he’s really that old)!The information on this page is out of date. However, some of the content may still be useful, so we have archived the page.
Important information about DACA requests: Due to federal court orders, USCIS has resumed accepting requests to renew a grant of deferred action under DACA. USCIS is not accepting requests from individuals who have never before been granted deferred action under DACA. Until further notice, and unless otherwise provided in this guidance, the DACA policy will be operated on the terms in place before it was rescinded on Sept. 5, 2017. For more information, visit Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals: Response to January 2018 Preliminary Injunction.
This page provides information on requesting consideration of deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA). You may request DACA for the first time or renew your existing period of DACA if it is expiring.
Find on this Page:
What Is DACA
On June 15, 2012, the Secretary of Homeland Security announced that certain people who came to the United States as children and meet several guidelines may request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal. They are also eligible for work authorization. Deferred action is a use of prosecutorial discretion to defer removal action against an individual for a certain period of time. Deferred action does not provide lawful status.
Watch a Video on DACA
Watch a Video on DACA on USCIS YouTube Channel
Request DACA for the First Time
The following information explains the guidelines for requesting DACA for the first time. If you need further information and cannot find it in our Frequently Asked Questions, you can call the USCIS Contact Center at 800-375-5283. For people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability:TTY 800-767-1833. Representatives are available Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in each U.S. time zone.
Guidelines
You may request DACA if you:
Were under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012; Came to the United States before reaching your 16th birthday; Have continuously resided in the United States since June 15, 2007, up to the present time; Were physically present in the United States on June 15, 2012, and at the time of making your request for consideration of deferred action with USCIS; Had no lawful status on June 15, 2012; Are currently in school, have graduated or obtained a certificate of completion from high school, have obtained a general education development (GED) certificate, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States; and Have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor,or three or more other misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety.
Age Guidelines
Anyone requesting DACA must have been under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012. You must also be at least 15 years or older to request DACA, unless you are currently in removal proceedings or have a final removal or voluntary departure order, as summarized in the table below:
Your situation Age I have never been in removal proceedings, or my proceedings have been terminated before making my request. At least 15 years old at the time of submitting your request and under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012. I am in removal proceedings, have a final removal order, or have a voluntary departure order, and I am not in immigration detention. Under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012, but you may be younger than 15 years old at the time you submit your request.
Timeframe for Meeting the Guidelines
You must demonstrate
That on June 15, 2012 you As of the date you file your request you Were under the age of 31 years
Were physically present in the United States
Had no lawful status Have resided continuously in the U.S. since June 15, 2007;
Had come to the United States before your 16th birthday
Were physically present in the United States; and
Are in school, have graduated from high school in the United States, or have a GED; or
Are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the United States
Education and Military Service Guidelines
Your school or military status at the time of requesting DACA Meet education or military service guidelines for DACA I graduated from: Public or private high school; or
Secondary school.
Or
Or I have obtained a GED. Yes I am currently enrolled in school. See the Education section of the FAQs for a full explanation of who is considered currently in school. Yes I was in school but dropped out and did not graduate. I am not currently in school and am not an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the U.S. No I am an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the U.S. Yes
Please see our Frequently Asked Questions for more detail on school-related guidelines.
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Filing Process for DACA
If you meet the guidelines for DACA, you will need to complete the following steps to make your request to USCIS.
Collect documents as evidence you meet the guidelines.
You will need to submit supporting documents with your request for DACA. You can submit legible copies of these documents unless the instructions specify you must submit an original document.
Examples of Documents to Submit to Demonstrate you Meet the Guidelines
Please see the instructions (PDF, 262 KB) to Form I-821D, Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, for further details on acceptable documentation. Proof of identity Passport or national identity document from your country of origin
Birth certificate with photo identification
School or military ID with photo
Any U.S. government immigration or other document bearing your name and photo Proof you came to U.S. before your 16th birthday Passport with admission stamp
Form I-94/I-95/I-94W
School records from the U.S. schools you have attended
Any Immigration and Naturalization Service or DHS document stating your date of entry (Form I-862, Notice to Appear)
Travel records
Hospital or medical records
Employment records (pay stubs, W-2 Forms, etc.)
Official records from a religious entity confirming participation in a religious ceremony
Copies of money order receipts for money sent in or out of the country
Birth certificates of children born in the U.S.
Dated bank transactions
Automobile license receipts or registration
Deeds, mortgages, rental agreement contracts
Tax receipts, insurance policies Proof of immigration status Form I-94/I-95/I-94W with authorized stay expiration date
Final order of exclusion, deportation, or removal issued as of June 15, 2012
A charging document placing you into removal proceedings Proof of presence in U.S. on June 15, 2012 Rent receipts or utility bills
Employment records (pay stubs, W-2 Forms, etc)
School records (letters, report cards, etc)
Military records (Form DD-214 or NGB Form 22)
Official records from a religious entity confirming participation in a religious ceremony
Copies of money order receipts for money sent in or out of the country
Passport entries
Birth certificates of children born in the U.S.
Dated bank transactions
Automobile license receipts or registration
Deeds, mortgages, rental agreement contracts
Tax receipts, insurance policies Proof you continuously resided in U.S. since June 15, 2007 Proof of your student status at the time of requesting DACA Official records (transcripts, report cards, etc) from the school that you are currently attending in the United States.
U.S. high school diploma or certificate of completion
U.S. GED certificate Proof you are an honorably discharged veteran of the Coast Guard or Armed Forces of the U.S. Form DD-214, Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty
NGB Form 22, National Guard Report of Separation and Record of Service
Military personnel records
Military health records
See our Frequently Asked Questions for information on submitting affidavits or circumstantial evidence to support your request.
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Complete the required two forms and worksheet
Form name Fee I-821D, Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Use the most recent version of the form linked on our website or USCIS will reject your form. Please review the Filing Fee section of the Forms I-821D
and I-765 pages for detailed information. These fees cannot be waived.
I-765, Application for Employment Authorization I-765WS, Worksheet (PDF, 241 KB) Completing You Forms You must file the most recent version of Form I-821D from our website. USCIS will reject older versions of the form if you submit them.
Write your name, date of birth, and mailing address exactly the same way on each form.
We prefer that you download the forms from our website, fill them out electronically, and then print your completed forms to mail.
Make sure you are using the most current version of the forms. The correct, most current edition of every USCIS form is always available for free download on our website.
If you complete the forms by hand, use black ink only. Do NOT use highlighters or red ink on your forms. These could make your materials unreadable when scanned.
If you must make changes on a form, we recommend that you begin with a new form, rather than trying to white out information. This can lead to scanning errors.
Ensure that you provide all required supporting documentation and evidence.
Be sure to sign all of your forms. Filing Your Forms USCIS will reject your request if you fail to submit Forms I-821D, I-765, I-765WS, and the correct fees.
Organize and label your evidence by the DACA guideline that it meets.
Be sure that you mail all pages of the forms.
Mail the forms to correct USCIS Lockbox.
You cannot e-file your DACA request.
If you have questions, call the USCIS Contact Center at 1-800-375-5283 ; do NOT visit a USCIS field office.
Mail your forms to the appropriate USCIS Lockbox.
See the mailing instructions for Form I-821D. Include the required forms, fees and supporting documentation with your filing. Remember to carefully follow instructions and fully complete your forms. USCIS will not accept incomplete forms or forms without proper fee. USCIS will mail you a receipt after accepting your request. You may also choose to receive an email and/or text message notifying you that your form has been accepted by completing a Form G-1145, E-Notification of Application/Petition Acceptance. UPDATE: Create a USCIS online account for DACA requests. Beginning February 1, 2016, anyone who submits a DACA request will be able to create a USCIS online account to track and manage his or her case online. If you submit a DACA request, you will receive a USCIS Account Acceptance Notice in the mail with instructions on how to create a USCIS online account. Having a USCIS online account allows you to: Check the status of your case;
Receive notifications and case updates; and
Manage your contact information, including updating your address. If you are an attorney or accredited representative, creating a USCIS online account will allow you to manage all of your clients’ DACA requests in one place. USCIS will continue processing your DACA request even if you choose not to access your USCIS online account. You will continue to receive notifications and updates about your case by mail through the U.S. Postal Service. Note for Attorneys and Accredited Representatives: You should have only one USCIS online representative account. When you receive an Account Acceptance Notice for a paper form filed at a USCIS Lockbox on behalf of your client, please ensure that you enter the same personal information that you provided on the Form G-28 submitted with your client’s original application, petition, or request. If the information you use to access your online representative account does not match the information you provided on the Form G-28, you may be unable to access your client’s case. Visit an Application Support Center (ASC) for biometric services.
After USCIS receives your complete request with fees, we will send you a notice scheduling you to visit an ASC to for biometric services. If you fail to attend your ASC appointment, USCIS may deny your request DACA. Children under 14 in removal proceedings, with a final removal order, or with a voluntary departure order, and who are not in immigration detention, will appear at the ASC for photographs only. Check the status of your request online.
The 90-day period for reviewing Form I-765 filed together with Form I-821D begins if and when USCIS decides to defer action in your case. You can check the status of your case on Case Status Online or by logging into your USCIS online account.
Fee Exemptions
There are very limited fee exemptions available. Your request for a fee exemption must be filed and favorably adjudicated before you file your DACA request without a fee. In order to be considered for a fee exemption, you must submit a letter and supporting documentation to USCIS demonstrating that you meet one of the following conditions:
You are under 18 years of age, have an income that is less than 150 percent of the U.S. poverty level, and are in foster care or otherwise lacking any parental or other familial support; or,
You are under 18 years of age and homeless; or,
You cannot care for yourself because you suffer from a serious, chronic disability and your income is less than 150 percent of the U.S. poverty level; or,
You have, at the time of the request, accumulated $10,000 or more in debt in the past 12 months as a result of unreimbursed medical expenses for yourself or an immediate family member, and your income is less than 150 percent of the U.S. poverty level.
Submit the following types of evidence:
Affidavits from community-based or religious organizations to establish a requestor’s homelessness or lack of parental or other familial financial support.
Copies of tax returns, bank statement, pay stubs, or other reliable evidence of income level.
An affidavit from the applicant or a responsible third party attesting that the applicant does not file tax returns, has no bank accounts, and/or has no income to prove income level.
Copies of medical records, insurance records, bank statements, or other reliable evidence of unreimbursed medical expenses of at least $10,000.
USCIS will send you a Request for Evidence (RFE) if it has questions on the evidence you submitted.
You can find additional information on our Fee Exemption Guidance Web page.
Note: There are no fee waivers available for employment authorization applications connected to DACA.
If USCIS Grants DACA in Your Case
If USCIS grants DACA and employment authorization in your case, you will receive a written notice of that decision. An Employment Authorization Document will arrive separately in the mail.
If USCIS Does Not Grant DACA in Your Case
If USCIS decides not to grant DACA in your case, you cannot appeal the decision or file a motion to reopen or reconsider. USCIS will not review its discretionary determinations.
We will apply our policy guidance governing the referral of cases to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the issuance of notices to appear. If your case does not involve a criminal offense, fraud, or a threat to national security or public safety, we will not refer your case to ICE for purposes of removal proceedings except where DHS determines there are exceptional circumstances. For more information on notices to appear, visit www.uscis.gov/NTA.
Administrative Errors
You may request a review using the Service Request Management Tool process if you met all of the DACA guidelines and you believe USCIS denied your request because of an administrative error.
Examples:
USCIS believes you abandoned your case by not responding to a request for evidence (RFE), and you believe you did respond within the prescribed time; or
USCIS mailed the RFE to the wrong address, even though you had submitted a Form AR-11, Change of Address, or changed your address online at www.uscis.gov before we issued the RFE.
You can find a full list of possible errors in our Frequently Asked Questions.
To make a service request, you must call the USCIS Contact Center at 800-375-5283. For people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability: TTY 800-767-1833. A USCIS representative will then forward your request to the proper USCIS office. Your service request will be reviewed for accuracy and USCIS will send you a letter informing you of its decision.
The USCIS Contact Center is now open Monday – Friday from 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. in each U.S. time zone.
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Travel Information
Certain travel outside the United States may affect the continuous residence guideline. Traveling outside the U.S. before Aug. 15, 2012, will not interrupt your continuous residence if the travel was brief, casual, and innocent. If you travel outside the United States after Aug. 15, 2012, and before we decide your request for DACA, you will not be considered for DACA.
The following chart explains whether your travel will affect your continuous residence.
Travel Dates Type of Travel Does it Affect Continuous Residence On or after June 15, 2007, but before Aug. 15, 2012 brief
casual
innocent No For an extended time
Because of an order of exclusion, deportation, or removal
To participate in criminal activity Yes After Aug. 15, 2012, and before you have requested DACA Any Yes. You cannot apply for advance parole unless and until DHS has determined whether to defer action in your case and you cannot travel until you receive advance parole. After Aug. 15, 2012, and after you have requested DACA Any Yes. You cannot travel while your request is under review. You cannot apply for advance parole unless and until DHS has determined whether to defer action in your case. In addition, if you have previously been ordered deported and removed and you depart the United States without taking additional steps to address your removal proceedings, your departure will likely result in your being considered deported or removed, with potentially serious future immigration consequences. On or after Aug. 15, 2012, and receiving DACA Any It depends. If you travel after receiving advance parole, the travel will not interrupt your continuous residence. However, if you travel without receiving advance parole, the travel will interrupt your continuous residence.
Once USCIS has approved your request for DACA, you may file Form I-131, Application for Travel Document, to request advance parole to travel outside of the United States. If you travel outside the United States without first receiving advance parole, USCIS will automatically terminate your DACA.
USCIS is currently updating its policy on granting advanced parole for DACA recipients. Please check the Frequently Asked Questions for the latest guidance.
For detailed information see the Travel section of the Frequently Asked Questions.
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National Security and Public Safety Guidelines
You will not be considered for DACA if you have been convicted of:
A felony offense;
A significant misdemeanor offense; or
Three or more other misdemeanor offenses not occurring on the same date and not arising out of the same act, omission, or scheme of misconduct.
Or
You are otherwise deemed to pose a threat to national security or public safety.
What is the difference between “significant misdemeanor”, “non-significant misdemeanor”, and “felony”?
Felony Significant Misdemeanor Non-significant Misdemeanor A felony is a federal, state or local criminal offense punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year. A significant misdemeanor is a misdemeanor as defined by federal law (specifically, one for which the maximum term of imprisonment authorized is one year or less but greater than five days) and: Regardless of the sentence imposed, is an offense of domestic violence; sexual abuse or exploitation; burglary; unlawful possession or use of a firearm; drug distribution or trafficking; or, driving under the influence; or, If not an offense listed above, is one for which the individual was sentenced to time in custody of more than 90 days. The sentence must involve time to be served in custody, and therefore does not include a suspended sentence. A crime is considered a non-significant misdemeanor (maximum term of imprisonment is one year or less but greater than five days) if it: Is not an offense of domestic violence; sexual abuse or exploitation; burglary; unlawful possession or use of a firearm; drug distribution or trafficking; or, driving under the influence; and Is one for which the individual was sentenced to time in custody of 90 days or less.
A minor traffic offense will not be considered a misdemeanor for purposes of DACA, However, driving under the influence is a significant misdemeanor regardless of the sentence. You can find detailed information in the National Security and Public Safety section of the Frequent Asked Questions.
Don’t Be a Victim of Immigration Scams
Dishonest practitioners may promise to provide you with faster services if you pay them a fee. These people are trying to scam you and take your money. Visit our Avoid Scams page to learn how you can protect yourself from immigration scams.
Make sure you seek information about DACA from official government sources such as USCIS or the Department of Homeland Security. If you are seeking legal advice, visit our Find Legal Services page to learn how to choose a licensed attorney or accredited representative.
Remember you can download all USCIS forms for free at www.uscis.gov/forms.
Combatting Fraud
USCIS is committed to safeguarding the integrity of the immigration process. If you knowingly and willfully provide materially false information on Form I-821D, you will be committing a federal felony punishable by a fine, or imprisonment up to five years, or both, under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001. In addition, individuals may be placed into removal proceedings, face severe penalties provided by law, and be subject to criminal prosecution.
Previous DACA Updates
Sept. 13, 2016 Update: We are aware that some DACA requestors may have experienced delays receiving their Application Support Center biometrics appointment notices. We recently mailed biometrics appointment notices to those whose notices were delayed. Most of these appointments will be scheduled during the week of October 24, 2016, and we encourage you to appear at your appointment as scheduled. If you need to reschedule an appointment, please follow the instructions on your appointment notice. We will only reschedule a biometrics appointment if you have a compelling reason For more information, please refer to our guidance on rescheduling appointments due to reasons such as illness. For further information about your DACA request, you may call the USCIS Contact Center or send us an email from your online account inbox.
September 12, 2016 Update: Due to a federal court order, USCIS will not begin accepting requests for the expansion of DACA on February 18 as originally planned. The court's temporary injunction, issued February 16, does not affect the existing DACA. Individuals may continue to come forward and request an initial grant of DACA or renewal of DACA under the guidelines established in 2012 and discussed below.
August 10, 2016 Update: If you submitted a request for DACA renewal between February 14 and May 14, 2016, your renewal request may have taken longer than expected. You should receive a decision on your case within the next few weeks. USCIS is dedicated to restoring normal processing times as quickly as possible.
June 27, 2016, Update: The Supreme Court’s 4-4 decision on June 23, 2016, in United States v. Texas does not affect existing policy regarding 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Individuals who meet the 2012 DACA guidelines may continue to come forward and file an initial or renewal request for DACA under the 2012 guidelines.
The Supreme Court decision does, however, mean that the injunction prohibiting implementation of Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and expanded DACA remains in effect
August 3, 2015, Update: Quick Facts for DACA Recipients Who Received 3-Year Work Authorization Post-Injunction
February, 15, 2015, Update: Due to a federal court order, USCIS will not begin accepting requests for the expansion of DACA on February 18 as originally planned. The court's temporary injunction, issued February 16, does not affect the existing DACA. Individuals may continue to come forward and request an initial grant of DACA or renewal of DACA under the guidelines established in 2012 and discussed below. Please check back for updates.
Return to topAmazon is down 2.3% at $813.09 a share after reporting fourth-quarter earnings following Thursday's closing bell.
The online retail giant beat on profit but missed on revenue. Expectations were high as Amazon was expected to report much stronger earnings and sales following a record holiday season for online sales.
Here are the most important numbers:
EPS (GAAP): $1.54 per share vs. $1.35 per share average analyst estimate
$1.54 per share vs. $1.35 per share average analyst estimate Revenue: $43.7 billion vs. $44.68 billion average analyst estimate (up 22% year-over-year)
$43.7 billion vs. $44.68 billion average analyst estimate (up 22% year-over-year) AWS Revenue: $3.5 billion (up 47% year-over-year from $2.4 billion)
Amazon also gave first quarter revenue guidance in the range of $33.25 billion and $35.75 billion, lower than the expected range of $34.52 billion to $36.95 billion.
Markets InsiderThe suffering of Syria’s little children knows no end. They have been slaughtered in their schools and gassed in their cradles by the Assad regime. More than a million are refugees; most are under the age of 11. And now they face one of the most horrible of human plagues: the paralyzing, suffocating disease of poliomyelitis, which mainly strikes kids under the age of five.
The World Health Organization has confirmed 10 cases in Syria so far, with more expected, and a full-blown epidemic possible. Indeed, as the WHO reports on its Web site, “as long as a single child remains infected, children in all countries are at risk.”
The sources of the Syrian outbreak are not yet confirmed. Genetic sequencing, now under way, should help nail those down. But circumstantial evidence suggests that foreign jihadists flocking to the ranks of Al-Qaeda-allied rebel groups brought this curse with them.
The global immunization campaigns carried out since 1988 have eradicated polio completely in most of the world. There had not been a case in Syria since 1999. But there are three countries where polio remains endemic: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. All have ferocious jihadist movements, and in areas where those groups thrive, their terror campaigns make immunizations difficult if not impossible to deliver. (The C.I.A.’s reported use of a door-to-door immunization survey as cover to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden in Pakistan certainly has not helped.)
All of the Syrian cases of polio reported so far have been in Deir al-Zour province near the Iraqi border. It is largely out of the control of the Assad regime, but is the scene of infighting among rebel factions.
A major outbreak in Somalia, another jihadist crossroads, offers a cautionary example. There, genetic sequencing shows the virus came from Nigeria. It’s not known whether the carriers were members of Boko Haram, Nigeria’s Al-Qaeda-allied group, but there has been increasing contact reported between the Nigerian terrorists and Al-Shabaab, the Somali-based organization whose members carried out the savage attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi in September.
Since May, 174 polio cases have been identified in Somalia, with the disease spreading across the borders to Kenya (14 cases) and Ethiopia (six cases).
The vast movement of refugee populations and other migrants means “this is a disease that can spread easily great distances before being detected,” says WHO spokesperson Oliver Christiaan Rosenbauer. The vast majority of carriers, especially adults, never know they’ve been infected. The contagion is passed on when the feces of a carrier enter the water supply, where the virus can remain active.
“Obviously where separation of water for drinking or bathing is not great, or children play in water that has been used for defecation, that is where the problem comes,” says Gregory Härtl, also of the WHO.
In the Horn of Africa, in response to the Somalia outbreak, the WHO has mounted an immunization campaign that now includes Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Yemen, South Sudan, Eritrea, Uganda, and other countries. Vaccination posts have been set up at key border crossings and transit sites, and, according to Rosenbauer, all this is starting to have an effect. Cases are starting to decline, especially in the area around Mogadishu where the outbreak began.
“Similar activities will need to be implemented now in Syria and neighboring areas,” says Rosenbauer, “and that’s certainly the plan, to implement a coordinated multi-country response to this.”
The measures already in effect in Syria are an interesting reflection of what happens when a country settles into a state of near-permanent war. As it happens, a campaign to give supplementary immunization against polio, measles, mumps and rubella to 1.6 million Syrian children already was planned to begin October 24 “in both government-controlled and contested areas,” according to the WHO. In the former, the Ministry of Health handles the campaign, while in the latter the Assistance Coordination Unit of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces will try to help administer the program.
It appears to have been district health officers for the ACU who first identified the polio |
the partisans, who demand certain things, as John McCain said in a very bombastic way.” On health care, he recognizes failure for the GOP was a very good thing indeed:
I actually think it’s a good thing for this reason, because I think Republicans looked over the cliff. And I think they saw that there were going to be a lot of people who were going to be hurt, particular people who don’t have much of a voice, who the machine in the system grinds down, and they pulled back. I don’t think that this is done. I don’t think it ought to be done. I understand there will be hearings in the U.S. Senate on what we can do about the exchanges. I mean, so, to — to a degree, I’m glad that they didn’t fulfill this — this pledge right now, but they have to work on it. And — and this is where they should call the Democrats in and they should demand Democratic participation.
Indeed, the notion that United States senators would defend inane legislation that would provoke great suffering because they “promised,” strikes us as a new, infantile low for Republicans.
Kasich concluded:
Why don’t we get the rank and file members who were there hopefully to serve the country and not their party or some ideology? Stick to your principals but figure out how to give and stop asking the leaders for permission.... Here’s the other thing, Chris, have some guts. You know, all these politicians run around worried about, well, you know, I’m going to get killed by the Tea Party or I’m going to get slaughtered by the left. Who are you surveying? We’ve got the stop listening to all the yelling and screaming. Those are the people who should be released listen to.
Kasich could not have laid it out more clearly — beyond civility (which Flake rightly defends), there has to be an injection of common sense, mature give-and-take and real courage to denounce name-calling but also the incessant demand for unattainable, radical ends. We would hope next time a ludicrous health-care measure comes along, Flake and other gown-up Republicans — for example, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio),who plainly knew the skinny repeal bill was a travesty but voted for it anyway, will join the GOP triumvirate that sunk the skinny repeal bill. The burden should not be on just three members to blow the whistle on their party’s shenanigans. We would like to see a larger group of rational Republicans work on a way to roll back the judicial confirmation wars, fend off irresponsible tax plans that blow up the budget, end talk of sabotaging Obamacare and insist on sensible, humane immigration policies.
The problems that Kasich and Flake identify will not be solved so long as lawmakers who know better — Sens. Portman, Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), to name a few — start bucking the loudmouths outside of Congress and the destructive extremists in Congress. Sober-minded op-ed’s and thoughtful books only count for so much. They must tell their leaders and colleagues “no” at crucial times and condemn outrageous language from the White House, cavalier attitudes about the impact of destructive legislation and, most important, Trump’s unpresidential behavior. Otherwise, we will we see no improvement in our dismal political culture. One cannot be considered “reasonable” or “moderate” if one votes lock-step with unreasonable, immoderate colleagues.12 Gallery: Fan builds scale model of Giants Stadium
The idea that would consume two years of his life and drain $20,000 from his bank account, the obsession that turned his garage into a jaw-dropping shrine for his favorite football team, came to him in the middle of the night.
Don Martini had been searching for a new project. He had built kayaks and gazebos and furniture in his Blairstown workshop, turned his backyard into a village with an elevated rail for model trains, a working windmill and a lighthouse. He needed something else. Something bigger.
“I’m going to build Giants Stadium,” he declared one morning, and his wife Janice replied the way you’d expect to a statement like that.
“You’re crazy,” she said.
But not even she could have known just how crazy. There is a line fans cross between liking a team and taking it to another level. Many tailgate before home games, but only a few do it with a professional grill alongside a Winnebago painted in team colors. Most know the names of their favorite players, but only a few know their birth dates, too.
Some might have a photo of Giants Stadium in their garage. Only one has the actual thing in his — or at least as close as there is in the world right now.
Nothing prepares you when you walk through the door, because the words “model” and “replica” are insufficient to describe what Martini has constructed. It is 20 feet long and 17 feet wide. It was built with an attention to detail that, truth be told, the original architects never had.
Giants Stadium was deemed obsolete soon after it opened. It was torn down in 2010 after just 34 years of service, and in the years since, few have mourned its demolition. Martini did. He loved it enough to spend eight hours a day for nearly two full years rebuilding it, selling his antique car to clear the space.
He had no plans. Just a vision.
“Have you seen the movie Mozart’s Amadeus?” Martini said. “Well, in the movie, the emperor commissions him to write an opera. In the process of writing it, the emperor would say, ‘I want to see the first scene.’ Mozart told him, ‘I don’t have anything to show you. It’s all right here in my noodle.’ ”
He points to his head — which, of course, is covered with a Giants cap.
“That’s the same way it was with this.”
LOVES TO CREATE
But Mozart had a clear reason for his life’s work. He was making music for the world. Martini built his stadium in a garage behind his family’s bagel store, in an isolated place where precious few have seen it.
So the first question is obvious: Why?
How does a 75-year-old grandfather and retired school teacher suddenly wake up and decide he’ll dedicate countless hours leaning over a table saw to cut 65,000 red-and-blue seats?
“I know, there should be 80,000,” he said, almost apologetically. “But there’s only so much room inside.”
The answer has as much to do with loving the Giants as it does with loving to build. Martini invented and patented a universal assembly jig for cabinet making that allowed him to retire in his early 50s, and in the two and a half decades since, he has spent his days and nights creating.
He took the plans for a 14-inch model train and turned it into a 17-foot piece of art that sits on a shelf in his living room. He built the massive TV cabinet a few yards away, and the dining room chairs on the other side of the room, and the sprawling deck that overlooks the fields for North Warren Regional High.
Each project became a little more challenging. It wasn’t enough to have one waterfall in his backyard village. He has nine. One birdhouse outside his gazebo, the one with stained glass windows in the roof, became five. Why would he build a remote control boat his grandkids could play with when he could build one big enough for them to ride in?
He considered building a 40-foot replica of the Empire State Building but gave up when he found out all the permits he needed. But even that seemed too mundane — other people have duplicated the world’s great buildings in all kinds of materials. He wanted something special.
His favorite football team was in the process of opening its new stadium when he decided to pay homage to its old one.
GETTING STARTED
The first challenge: Where to begin? Martini had photos and general specs from the internet but not much else. He spent weeks, through trial and error, getting the pitch of the three levels of the stadium just right. Then he had to figure out how to make all those seats.
He considered making them one at a time, but that could take years itself. He decided to take 8-foot-long pieces of a special moulding and make a small cut with his table saw every three-quarters of an inch.
“It was tedious, but I knew I had to do 100 a day or I’d never get done,” he said. “I couldn’t work on those all day because I’d go cuckoo.”
Each one of those distinctive eight coils, the ones that were crowded with foot traffic after games and smokers during them, took a week to craft with plywood, plaster and other supplies.
Those coils, as diehard fans remember, were separated with three escalators that went to the different levels. Martini had to order the Plexiglas cover for them, just 1/32nd of an inch thick, from a company in Arkansas.
That was always the challenge: Finding just the right pieces. He needed 235 tiny 5-watt halogen bulbs for the light stanchions, at $1.96, that he would fasten into place with special hose washers. The salesman at the lighting store had never received such a weird order.
“What the heck do you need these for?” he had to ask.
“I’m building Giants Stadium.”
“Life size?” the man replied.
“I’m crazy, but not that crazy.”
He installed two small TVs, one in each end zone — one plays Super Bowl XLII on an endless loop, the other shows the NFC Championship Game victory from that season. He bent strips of metal used on electric fences (paper clips or aluminum didn’t work) for handrails.
He got help from a computer savvy friend to make a glossy printout for the field, then added the benches and tiny orange Gatorade jugs. He even added sponsor billboards, and when the owner at Blue Ridge Lumber saw his, he was so happy that he gave Martini $200 in store credit.
But he didn’t stop at building a stadium. Martini painted the walls of the garage blue and hung autographed photos from each Super Bowl team. He built something he named “Giants Stadium Trolley Station,” with a working train and elevators, that would have alleviated hundreds of traffic jams had the Meadowlands planners thought of the same thing.
He added five Blue Angel fighter jets flying overhead, three cookie jars filled with blue-and-white M&Ms for the kids, a wall-sized photo of the New York skyline, even a stadium timeline and history lesson.
A fan could spend an hour in the room and not notice everything. But how would fans ever see it?
Martini didn’t start this project as some sort of football “Field of Dreams.” His friends have encouraged him to charge a few bucks for visitors, but that idea never appealed to him. He built it for himself.
Now and then, a Giants fan will enter his bagel shop and Martini will tell him, “I have something you’ll want to see.” The fan almost always protests — too busy, in a hurry, whatever — but Martini insists.
“And then they walk through the door,” he said, “and without fail, they say, ‘Hoool-eee …’ ”
His son, Don G., has encouraged him to give it to the Giants, maybe in exchange for season tickets. Team spokesman Pat Hanlon called it “a wonderful tribute to a building that housed many wonderful memories” and wanted to discuss logistical issues before accepting or declining the gift.
Even if the Giants agree to display it, Martini has mixed emotions about parting with his creation. He worries about damaging it during transport and enjoys coming into his garage to spend time with his Giants Stadium — the only one like it in the world. For now, at least.
“Maybe,” he said, “I could build another one.”
Steve Politi: spoliti@starledger.com; twitter.com/StevePolitiWorkers doze off in a bus after their work at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in November 2016. A fourth worker has been granted workers’ compensation for cancer. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
A Tokyo Electric Power Co. employee who developed leukemia after battling the Fukushima nuclear disaster was awarded workers’ compensation, the fourth responder whose cancer has been recognized as work-related, the labor ministry said.
The employee, who is in his 40s, worked at the now-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant from April 1994 to February 2016.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami battered the nuclear plant on March 11, 2011, the employee was engaged in emergency operations to send water to cool the reactor containment vessels and assess the extent of damage. He continued in this emergency role until December 2011, the ministry said Dec. 13.
During his entire time at the plant, his overall radiation dose totaled 99 millisieverts. However, 96 millisieverts were logged after the crisis unfolded.
After he developed leukemia in February 2016, the employee applied for workers’ compensation for his condition at the Tomioka Labor Standards Inspection Office in Fukushima Prefecture.
Four people, including the TEPCO employee, who were mobilized to deal with the nuclear crisis have been awarded workers’ compensation for cancer. Three of the cases were for leukemia.
According to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, 16 workers have applied for workers’ compensation for cancer, saying their exposure to radiation during the emergency operation at the Fukushima No. 1 plant caused their disease.
Five workers had their applications denied, while two withdrew their claims.
Labor authorities are scrutinizing the remaining five cases.
Workers at nuclear facilities who develop leukemia are eligible for compensation under the following conditions: the disease is diagnosed more than a year after the first exposure to radiation; their annual radiation doses exceed 5 millisieverts; and other factors that could contribute to the onset of the disease can be ruled out.
The conditions were set in 1976.
TEPCO estimates that 10,553 workers had annual doses of more than 5 millisieverts in fiscal 2011, which ended in March 2012.
The number of such workers has been steadily declining, but there were still 2,860 workers in that category in fiscal 2016, according to TEPCO.
Experts say more workers will likely apply for workers’ compensation for illnesses developed in the line of duty at the crippled plant.Gaijin Entertainment is ready to unleash the next two US tanks set to rumble into War Thunder when the Steel Generals updates launches into game. We have an exclusive preview of two of the tanks, the Twin 40mm Gun Motor Carriage M19 and the M26 Pershing. Check out the first ever published information and screens about this bruising pair of tanks!\
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Twin 40mm Gun Motor Carriage M19
American anti-aircraft vehicle based on M24 (Chaffee). Developed and produced in early 40s. Did not take part in WW2 and was mostly used during the Korean War. Equipped with a twin Bofors 40mm gun, which is still used by United States Air Force.
M26 Pershing
The first operational heavy tank of the United States Army. The tank is named after General John J. Pershing who led the American Expeditionary Force in Europe in World War I. It was briefly used both in World War II and in the Korean War. In May 1946, due to changing conceptions of the U.S. Army's tank needs, the M26 was reclassified as a medium tank.
Controlling Machine Guns
In the 1.45 update, players will be able to aim machine guns on tanks as well as guns. It will be done in the same way as the multi-turreted tanks. By pushing a hot-key, players will secure the controls of the machine gun.'We'll jam the whole of Pakistan': Thousands of protesters led by ex-cricketer Imran Khan clash with riot police in march to PM's house over claims he won fraudulent vote
March was led by Imran Khan and anti-government cleric Tahirul Qadri
They allege that the Prime Minister won 2013 election due to voter fraud
The two men demand that Nawaz Sharif step down but he has refused
Demonstration moved towards Mr Sharif's house after separate rallies
Roughly 125 were injured in the clashes with riot police in Islamabad
Thousands of Pakistani protesters clashed with riot police as they marched towards the prime minister's house in Islamabad.
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the protesters, including women and children, who were calling for the resignation of Nawaz Sharif. It is thought that roughly 125 people were injured.
The march's leaders, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and anti-government cleric Tahirul Qadri, allege that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif won the 2013 election due to massive voter fraud. They demand that he step down from his position but Mr Sharif has refused.
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Pakistani police have fired tear gas at thousands of protesters as they tried to march towards the prime minister's home in the capital, Islamabad
Supporters of Imran Khan, the former International cricketer turned politician, listen to his speech during an anti-government protest in front of Mr Sharif's home in Islamabad
Pakistani opposition protesters wearing gas masks shout anti-government slogans as they try to move toward the prime minister's residence following clashes with security forces. Police fired tear gas at the crowds
Supporters of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and Canadian cleric Tahir ul Qadri, climb a container which was used to block the way of the prime minister's house in Islamabad
Scores of protesters broke down a fence outside the parliament building adjacent to the prime minister's house, enabling hundreds of people to enter the lawns and parking area, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene.
Mr Khan and Mr Qadri called for the demonstration to move to the house after separate massive rallies in front of the parliament, where they have been staging a sit-in for days.
Some 20,000 police in riot gear were charged with blocking the procession.
In speeches, Mr Khan and Mr Qadri said they will remain peaceful and urged security forces to abstain from using force against the protesters.
Both Mr Khan and Mr Qadri, a dual Pakistani-Canadian citizen with a wide following, also demand reforms in Pakistan's electoral system to prevent future voter fraud.
Backed by parliament and a number of political parties, Mr Sharif has said he will not step down.
Government negotiators are trying to convince Mr Qadri and Mr Khan to end their protest and abandon the demand for Mr Sharif's resignation.
The demonstration began with a march from the eastern city of Lahore on August 14 - the country's Independence Day.
Mr Khan and Mr Qadri had called for millions of protesters to join but crowds have not been more than tens of thousands.
Nearly 125 people were injured in the clashes on Saturday between police and demonstrators, pictured, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
Pakistani opposition protesters throw stones toward the police, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the gathered crowds
Protesters march through the streets of Islamabad. The protesters' presence and heightened security measures have affected life and badly harmed business in the capital
The protesters' presence and heightened security measures have affected life and badly harmed business in the capital.
The rallies have remained peaceful, with families picnicking and men and women dancing to drums and national songs.
Riot police initially showed restraint to today's march but when the crowd started removing shipping containers used as barricades they fired tear gas that forced the crowds back.
TV footage showed protesters, including women and children, scattering in retreat.
Some fell to the ground and dozens were being treated in a hospital. Many, including two children, were shown being treated for the effects of tear gas.
Riot police initially showed restraint to today's march but when the crowd started removing shipping containers used as barricades they fired tear gas that forced the crowds back
The demonstration began with a march from the eastern city of Lahore on August 14 - the country's Independence Day. The two leaders called for four million people to take to the streets in support
Former cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, left, has called for Mr Sharif, right, to resign. He also demands reforms in Pakistan's electoral system to prevent future voter fraud
Anti-government cleric Tahirul Qadri, pictured announcing the failure of negotiations with the government earlier this week, allege that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif won the 2013 election due to massive voter fraud
Police official Farman Ali said the injured have been moved to a government hospital.
'They fired tear gas shells at us,' said Ahsanullah Fakhri, 28, who was bleeding from his leg, as he exited an ambulance with some seven other protesters who had multiple minor wounds.
'I think they are also firing some bullets, I think rubber bullets,' he added.
Mr Khan described the police action against the crowd as illegal.
He said: 'Now we will show this government, we will call for countrywide agitation and we will jam the whole of Pakistan.'
Interior minister Nisar Ali Khan quickly visited the scene to boost police morale.State records reveal that in the past two years, four law enforcement departments in Washington state have been suspended from the military surplus program known as 1033. The government program issues surplus military gear to state and local municipalities who show a need. Under the program, law enforcement agencies can apply to receive everything from Shop-Vacs to mine-resistant vehicles. All they need to pay is the cost of shipping. Now some of the weapons have gone missing. The East Wenatchee Police Department was suspended from the program in July last year for losing an assault-style M16 rifle. The rifle was eventually found in a locked locker that belonged to a sergeant at the department. The locker had not been opened or used for some time. State records show the officer responsible for the weapon was found negligent by the department and was removed from duty as a firearms instructor.
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The Grant County Sheriff’s office was suspended from the program in May last year. They, too, were missing an M16 rifle. Sheriff Tom Jones wouldn’t comment on the investigation since it’s still open with the state patrol. State records reveal that it’s believed that M16 was stolen. Emails between the department and the state show that the inventory of weapons from the 1033 acquisition were stored on the third floor of the courthouse annex, which had previously been a jail. The weapons were stored in a cell. At some point a detective attempted to open the cell and the lock wouldn’t function. The detective thought the lock was broken so he cut it and replaced it. It wasn’t until sometime later during an inventory that the department realized the rifle was missing. At that point it became clear that a more likely scenario was that that original lock was not in fact broken, but replaced by someone who was trying to cover up a theft. Sheriff Jones said the department has taken steps to ensure that this won’t happen again, including limiting access to the storage area.
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Televizija N1 saopštava da ni na koji način nije prekršila izbornu tišinu sa sadržajem svog večerašnjeg programa, za šta ju je optužila Srpska napredna stranka (SNS).
Zakon u izbornoj tišini zabranjuje isključivo promociju partija i partijskih aktivnosti. Iz tog razloga TV N1 danas nije izveštavala o aktivnostima opozicije prema RIK-u.
Odluku o svom programu televizija N1 donela je upravo u konsultaciji sa predstavnicima REM-a.
Zakon ne zabranjuje normalne programske sadržaje, koji nisu u vezi sa izbornim aktivnostima. Kao što u izbornoj tišini ne zabranjuje izveštavanje o aktivnostima vlade, zakon medijima tako ne zabranjuje ni izveštavanje o posledicama aktivnosti vlade ili vlada.
SNS je optužila Televiziju N1 da je prekršila predizbornu tišinu emitovanjem emisije Pressing u kojoj je gost bio novinar Dragoljub Žarković.
"Srpska napredna stranka saopštava da smo zgroženi brutalnim kršenjem izborne tišine od strane američke televizije N1, koja ni večeras nije odolela da zajedno sa Miškovićevim novinarom na najbesprizorniji način vređa inteligenciju građana Srbije i krši propise za vreme izbornog procesa", navodi se u saopštenju SNS i dodaje da je izbornu tišinu prekršio i dnevni list Danas "sa Tuđmanovim propagandistom Macanom".
Naprednjaci u saopštenju kažu da očekuju objašnjenje nadležnih regulatornih tela.
"Pitamo zašto uopšte postoje pravila kada očigledno ne važe za sve podjednako i zašto su od njih izuzeti američka televizija N1 i list Danas", piše u saopštenju SNS.Image caption Apartment buildings were damaged in heavy fighting in the al-Mezze area of Damascus
A firefight has erupted in Damascus, in one of the fiercest clashes in the Syrian capital since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule began.
Witnesses say machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades were heard from the heavily guarded district of al-Mezze, which hosts several security buildings.
Syrian TV said three "terrorists" and a security force member had been killed.
The UN estimates more than 8,000 people have died in the year-long uprising.
Meanwhile, a team of experts sent by special UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has now arrived in Syria to discuss ceasefire and monitoring plans, AFP news agency reports.
And in Moscow, the head of the Red Cross said that Russia had reacted "positively" to his call for a daily two-hour cessation of hostilities in Syria.
'Explosions'
Al-Mezze has previously been the scene of large anti-government protests.
One resident told Reuters news agency there was "fighting near Hamada supermarket and the sound of explosions there and elsewhere in the neighbourhood".
Analysis The fighting centred on a flat in al-Mezze. Residents nearby said two floors were burnt out after the clashes. Gunfire continued into the morning in the district, part of central Damascus. This is an upmarket residential area but it also contains a substantial security presence. The Free Syria Army is present in suburbs of Damascus but there are no records of any presence in this part of town. Close by is the al-Mezze 86 district, a security stronghold, whose residents are loyal to President Assad. Early last month, residents of 86 district fired at protesters who took to the streets calling for an end to President Assad's rule. Since then there has been heavy security in the area. However, some protesters managed to cut off roads by burning tyres and staging anti-Assad protests.
He said security police blocked side streets and cut off the street lighting.
Opposition activist Amer al-Sadeq told the BBC's World Today programme he had spoken to a contact in al-Mezze who reported four blasts within five minutes and then heavy gunfire.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights called the fighting "the most violent of its kind and closest to security centres in Damascus since the revolution began", adding that 18 government troops had been injured.
It said a cell of rebel fighters had fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the home of a leading army officer, but this has not been confirmed.
The gunfire continued into Monday morning but is now over.
One al-Mezze resident told AFP: "We were very scared but now the roads are clear and stores are open."
State television said that in addition to the dead, several people on both sides were injured.
In January, the rebel Free Syria Army briefly seized several Damascus suburbs.
The latest incident follows bomb blasts in Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo over the weekend.
The car bomb that exploded in Aleppo on Sunday killed at least two people and injured 30 others.
A day earlier, at least 27 people were reported to have been killed and 97 wounded in two explosions in the capital.
State TV described the blasts as "terrorist" attacks.
However, activists have accused the authorities of staging incidents to discredit opposition groups.
Reuters news agency on Monday reported residents of the eastern city of Deir Ezzor as saying that dozens of tanks had entered the city to try to dislodge Free Syrian Army rebels.
Pause plea
On Monday, a team of experts arrived in Syria to press Mr Annan's proposals for a ceasefire and monitoring.
Annan spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told AFP: "There are five people with expertise in peacekeeping and mediation. They will be staying for as long as they are making progress to reach agreement on practical steps to implement Mr Annan's proposals."
Image caption In some parts of Syria, rebel fighters, like these in Idlib province, openly brandish their weaponry
Meanwhile, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Jakob Kellenberger, travelled to Moscow to meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Mr Lavrov gave "positive indications of support... for the initiative of a two-hour cessation of fighting on a daily basis", a Red Cross spokesman said.
The ICRC says the pause is needed for the evacuation of the wounded and to allow in food and medicine.
Mr Kellenberger added: "I would like to note with satisfaction and gratitude that Sergei Lavrov shares our concern about these problems."
Russia is a key ally of Syria and, along with China, has thwarted attempts to form a UN resolution condemning the repression.
President Assad is trying to quell an increasingly armed rebellion that sprang from a fierce crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protests a year ago.
He insists his troops are fighting "armed gangs" seeking to destabilise Syria.
Image caption The Syrian government has been trying to suppress an uprising inspired by events in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The UN says thousands have been killed in the crackdown, and that many more have been detained and displaced. The Syrian government says hundreds of security forces personnel have also died combating "armed terrorist gangs".
Image caption The family of President Bashar al-Assad has been in power since his father, Hafez, took over in a coup in 1970. The country underwent some liberalisation after Bashar became president in 2000, but the pace of change soon slowed, if not reversed. Critics are imprisoned, domestic media are tightly controlled, and economic policies often benefit the elite. The country's human rights record is among the worst in the world.
Image caption Syria is a country of 21 million people with a Sunni Muslim majority (74%) and significant minorities of Alawites - the Shia heterodox sect to which Mr Assad belongs - and Christians. Mr Assad promotes a secular identity for the country, but he has concentrated power in the hands of family and other Alawites. Protests have generally been biggest in Sunni-dominated areas.
Image caption Under the sanctions imposed by the Arab League, US and EU, Syria's two most vital sectors, tourism and oil, have ground to a halt in recent months. The IMF says Syria's economy contracted by 2% in 2011, while the value of the Syrian pound has crashed. Unemployment is high, electricity cuts trouble Damascus, and critical products like heating oil and staples like milk powder are becoming scarce.
Image caption Pro-democracy protests erupted in March 2011 after the arrest and torture of a group of teenagers who had painted revolutionary slogans on walls at their school in the southern city of Deraa. Security forces opened fire during a march against the arrests, killing four. The next day, the authorities shot at mourners at the victims' funerals, killing another person. People began demanding the overthrow of Mr Assad.
Image caption The government has tried to deal with the situation with a combination of minor concessions and force. President Assad ended the 48-year-long state of emergency and introduced a new constitution offering multi-party elections. But at the same time, the authorities have continued to use violence against unarmed protesters, and some cities, like Homs, have suffered weeks of intense bombardment.
Image caption The opposition is deeply divided. Several groups formed a coalition, the Syrian National Council (SNC), but it is dominated by the Sunni community and exiled dissidents. The SNC disagrees with the National Co-ordination Committee (NCC) on the questions of talks with the government and foreign intervention, and has found it difficult to work with the Free Syrian Army - army defectors seeking to topple Mr Assad by force.
Image caption International pressure on the Syrian government has been intensifying. It has been suspended from the Arab League, while the EU and the US have imposed sanctions. However, there has been no agreement on a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to violence. Although military intervention has been ruled out by Western nations, there are increasing calls to arm the opposition.25. Heartbeats - The Knife
Deep Cuts (2003)
Remember how this whole thing began? Jealousy of my friend Dan's countdown, which he now appears mysteriously to have deleted was the motivator. This was Dan's number one, and a case could certainly be made. The Knife have long been one of the more interesting and experimental electronic acts going around, and they have a significantly better ear for a good melody than can be said of the majority of their peers.
But it's the weird, sparse, wobbling, ungrounded baseline here that really makes this one stay with you.
24. Banquet - Bloc Party
Silent Alarm (2005)
Bloc Party always suffered from a perception of being a bit of a bit of a poor-man's Interpol, and it's pretty easy to see how Interpol could have written this. It's almost got'movements' that play with the listener's expectations. A question that begins in soaring vowel-y falsetto is completed with a rapid-fire staccato of consonants.
"Why d'you feeeeeeeeeel/sonegated?"
The chorus relies again on phrases that start with the repeated long-format word "tuurning/coooming" followed by a response so rapid-fire it leaves pauses in the chorus where the notes should be.
And it follows in that fine literary tradition of conflating food and sex that began with humanity's very earliest origin myths.
23. Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
Give Up (2003)
Another indie song that made a successful crossover into television - both soundtrack and commercial, such that it really ought to have become thoroughly irritating.
But there's something about those curious, oscillating midi blips in tandem with the vocal that just doesn't seem to age.
It's also been scientifically established as the twee-est track still physically possible to dance to.
"They will see us waving from such great heights
'Come down now', they'll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
'Come down now', but we'll stay."
22. Hey Ya! - OutKast
The Love Below (2003)
The song that revived a million flagging dancefloors. All ages, all genres, all good. I believe this is the highest positioned song in my countdown to have spent significant time at number one internationally, so arguably the winnner of the People's Choice Award. The best and most successful song of the entire decade.
Please don't tell me rap has no musical dimension. It's the musical chops, the fact there's actually a melody present virtually throughout the entire track, it's the ability again of that melody to carry some unusually complex vocal shennanigans, and this is nowhere more in evidence than the "alrightalrightalrightalright" call and response breakdown.
This has always been where most rap artists just in-fill rather than create, in structural terms. But who DOESN'T remember where they first heard "Shake it like a Polaroid picture"?
21. Paper Planes - M.I.A.
Kala (2007)
Rap has always performed strongest when it wears it's rhythm and dance heritage lightest.
Full marks to the Producer, Major Lazer for the correct response when the artist announced she wanted to include four gunshots not just DURING the chorus, but AS the chorus lyric. Listen to this. One semiotically vacuous sound repeated for times creates a very pecific "meaning", that the listener actively interprets as language.
"All I wanna do is/ BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG/ and a' take your money."
There's no information missing from that sentence whatsoever.Two Michigan music stars on different sides of the political aisle drew very different reactions during Wednesday's Detroit Pistons game.
Eminem and Kid Rock both appeared on the JumboTron during the game against the Charlotte Hornets. While the crowd cheered for Eminem, they booed when Kid Rock appeared, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy noticed the difference in reception.
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”Without making a statement, they were able to make a statement,” he said of the crowd's response, according to the news outlet.
Van Gundy has been a critic of President Trump, calling the president "openly and brazenly racist and misogynistic" and slamming his travel ban as "fear-mongering."
Eminem and Kid Rock — real names Marshall Mathers and Robert Ritchie, respectively — have both been in the political eye lately.
Eminem made waves with a viral rap that tore into Trump and said “f--- you” to fans of his who support the president.
And Ritchie, a vocal Trump supporter, has flirted with a bid for Senate. He's considered a popular pick to challenge the state’s Democratic senator, Debbie Stabenow Deborah (Debbie) Ann StabenowOvernight Health Care: Senators grill drug execs over high prices | Progressive Dems unveil Medicare for all bill | House Dems to subpoena Trump officials over family separations Senators grill drug execs over high prices Land conservation tax incentives should inspire charitable giving, not loopholes MORE.
Both artists, despite their vastly different political views, grew up in the same politically charged Michigan county, as Politico reported.The Mass Effect series has traditionally allowed you to customize your main character. Some players take this as an opportunity to create inhuman abominations. Mass Effect: Andromeda has been no different.
The new character creator has a lot of |
emperor Aurelian (reigned 270-275 AD). The mills were supplied from an aqueduct, where it plunged down a steep hill.[10]
The site thus resembles Barbegal, although excavations in the late 1990s suggest that they may have been undershot rather than overshot in design. The mills were in use in 537 AD when the Goths besieging the city cut off their water supply. However they were subsequently restored and may have remained in operation until at least the time of Pope Gregory IV (827-44).[11]
Many other sites are reported from across the Roman Empire, although many remain unexcavated.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Davies, Oliver (1935). Roman Mines in Europe. Oxford.
Healy, A.F. (1999). Pliny the Elder on Science and Technology. Oxford: Clarendon.
Hodge, T. (2001). Roman aqueducts and Water supply (2nd ed.). Duckworth.
Ritti, Tullia; Grewe, Klaus; Kessener, Paul (2007), "A Relief of a Water-powered Stone Saw Mill on a Sarcophagus at Hierapolis and its Implications", Journal of Roman Archaeology, 20 : 138–163
Smith, Norman (1972). A History of Dams. Citadel Press.
Further reading [ edit ]The thoughts or ideas expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Moja Gear. We do, however, support a platform for freedom of expression and open discussion within the climbing community.
When a climb has a rating that applies to more men than women, it has a dude grade. What’s a dude grade? Nearly all dynos are good examples.
In all probability, a man did the first ascent and gave the climb the rating it has today, even if it is rarely repeated by a woman, even a woman who has climbed significantly harder than the grade suggests.
This is the definition of a dude grade:
a grade that reflects the difficulty for some and not others, that applies to more men and less women.
There are an awful lot of them out there. This is because the grading scales—you know, 5.10a and V3—were designed to give us dude grades. The ratings that apply equally well to everyone, those are the accidents, the coincidences, the result of random chance. The Yosemite Decimal System (YDS) and the V-Scale were both created by men for male bodies, leading to grades that don’t work for half the people who use them.
Dude grades aren’t about the experience of any particular person. If a woman feels like the grading systems are a good fit for her, she has my full support. Dude grades are about trends, about the demographics of the group of people who feel that the grades represent their experiences.
The things I say about grades will also resonate with some men, not to mention people who don’t identify as either gender binary. I make generalizations about gender in this short article, but I know that the world is not this simplistic. In looking closely at dude grades, we see how a homogenous group of climbers determined the rating standards that we use, and although the problems roughly trace gender lines, the issue is also about morphology, physiology, and the culture of the climbing community.
With that framing, come along on an autobiographical journey …
I started thinking about dude grades after spending time with an exceptional climber who I’ll call “Dana.” I began to notice how little grades seemed to matter to her. I’m not saying she doesn’t care about grades, because she does. They are every bit as important to her as they are to most climbers. Yet for Dana, grades often don’t capture her experience of climbing, and this is the sense in which they don’t have meaning.
There are V10s she can do, and V5s that continue to be projects after years of effort. I’d never seen such a broad range in someone’s abilities, consistently being shut down on climbs rated far below her limit. Dana is five feet tall, and this physiological fact has a profound impact on her relationship with climbing grades. The V10s she can do have enough holds for her to make the reaches or figure out idiosyncratic Dana-beta, and those V5s that she struggles on, they have long, body-specific movement.
Dana is short, but she is not a physiological anomaly. She is representative of a large group of climbers shorter than, say, 5’5”, most of whom are women. So I ask, what would climbing grades look like if they were determined by women?
Think about your favorite problem or route and then imagine how you would climb it if you were five feet tall. Maybe you already know the answer because this description fits you, you are already shorter than most of the climbers out there. If not, I ask the question knowing that it’s nearly impossible to answer.
Over the years, I’ve learned that I can’t predict Dana’s performance on a climb. Her morphology is so radically different from mine that I’m wrong more often than not. Because of this, I don’t know the extent of the changes that would result, yet I’m certain that there would be a grand reshuffling of the grades in all my climbing guides. For the first time, the grading scales would consistently make sense to women and their bodies.
One reason that dude grades are so prevelant is that the rating standards have always been determined by the morphology of men. Looking back at the history of climbing, it’s not surprising that this is the case. Men created them. There were some badass women climbing in the 1960s and 70s when the standards of the YDS were created, but if you look at their numbers during this influential time, they are a small minority.
Take the initial composition of the Stonemasters, the group of southern California climbers who developed the YDS. All men.
Consider the V-Scale, developed in Hueco Tanks in the 80s by John Sherman, another man.
The history of climbing in Yosemite Valley is chronicled in the wonderful film Valley Uprising, but although it covers a timespan of fifty years, you only need one hand to count the women it features. This is not a critique so much as a simple fact: the climbers who developed the grading systems were overwhelmingly male. In developing grading scales that captured their “manly” experience of climbing, they inadvertently made grading scales that fail to capture the experience of non-male climbers.
Even today, with more woman climbing than ever, the grading systems continue to be dominated by men. Grades are supposed to be based on a consensus within the climbing community, but this is more of an ideal than a fact.
In practice, grades are initially set by the first ascentionist and then modified through the input of a small group of core climbers in an area. Although there are a number of women participating in this process, the overwhelming majority are male. Besides them, the person with the most influence over grades is the author of the local guidebook. Here too, the gender asymmetry is startling. There are over fourty climbing guides to areas in California, and despite my best efforts, I can only find two with women authors. In a literal sense, climbing grades are written by men.
It’s impossible to know the effects that this has on individual climbers. Even if a woman doesn’t locate a problem with grades specifically, the results can be subtle and unseen. Stepping out of my own experience, the YDS and the V-Scale are often demoralizing to women.
For example, when climbers first walk into the gym, gender is a poor guide to climbing ability. Lots of guys are horrible, lots of women are great, and vice versa. Six months later, however, these same groups come into the gym, and the men are now climbing “harder” than the women. In retrospect, this isn’t surprising. Men created and maintain the rating systems that we use to judge difficulty. I doubt that anyone intended the rating systems to be sexist, but nevertheless, dude grades are ubiquitous.
We aren’t helpless bystanders in all this. Every time we use the grading systems we’re implicitly supporting dude grades and the sexist rating systems that create them. This is one reason that Ian McIntosh and I avoid grades entirely in the recent bouldering guide to Black Mountain. There’s not a single V3 or V9 in the entire book. In place of grades, we use colors that correspond to grade ranges.
If a dyno feels V5 for one person and V9 for another, why put a single number on it? Instead, we call this problem “yellow,” a color that generally corresponds to a range from V6-V8. Most climbers will find the difficulty to be in this range, while others will think it lies outside these bounds.
Some see this vagueness as a problem, but we see it as a virtue. There is already a broad range in how hard a problem feels, a range that spans across men and women, tall and short, slab climbers and gym rats. The color range reflects this breadth of experience instead of telling people how hard a problem should be.
We must do something, because dude grades are a problem for everyone. We all lose out by using grading systems that only take into account the experiences of half the people who use them. Many of my best climbing partners are men and women who are shorter than me. My heart drops every time one of them gets frustrated because they can’t do a climb that’s within their supposed grade “ability” due to reach. I want to be able to share with them the things I love about climbing, free of gender and morphological bias.
After all, aren’t grades supposed to tell you how hard a climb is whether or not you’re a dude?
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Explore moreFirefox may not get quite as much love as it's Google-y rival, but that doesn't mean it didn't get plenty of love in 2013. With plenty of add-ons and tricks to stay productive, keep your privacy, and customize your browser, here's the best coverage of Firefox from the past year.
This year, Firefox received no less enthusiastic attention from its fanbase. This year, we learned how to use Adblock to fix YouTube's biggest annoyances, erase your most embarrassing autocomplete suggestions, and how to manage more than nine tabs without ruining your browsing experience.
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Hola Unblocker is a browser extension that removes region locks and allows you to watch BBC iPlayer, Netflix, Hula, Pandora, and more regardless of where you live. It doesn't require any set up and works right out of the box.
Ever wish you could find out whether someone actually opened that email you sent, or whether they just ignored and trashed it? A service called Bananatag can tell you—but if you find that a little creepy, we've got the lowdown on how to protect yourself too.
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Custom search engines are one of the coolest features of any modern browser. With just a few keystrokes, you can search Wikipedia right from your address bar, do a custom Google search for Lifehacker articles, or even get driving directions to a specific location. Here are five searches you should enable right now.
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Firefox may not be as popular as Google Chrome these days, but it's still got one of the best extension libraries around. Here are the essential Firefox extensions you need to bend the web to your will
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Recently, we had a guest post on why you should never have more than nine browser tabs open, and it was quite controversial—even among some of us on staff. So, here's our counterpoint: it's okay to have a ton of tabs open, you just need a few tricks to keep them all organized.
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Google Reader may be shutting down, but Feedly is already an immensely popular alternative. Today they released 10 new features to help ease the transition.
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We all know that feeling: You've found an interesting article online, only to discover it wants you to click through 10 pages of a slideshow just to read the darn thing. Here are a few tricks to banishing multi-page articles forever.
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There's a strange joy in keeping 20 tabs open and pretending like you have the ability to multitask and actually manage all of them. But in reality, most browsers buckle under the pressure of too many tabs and you start to lose track of what you have open. Thankfully, there are a few great remedies for this. Here's a look at some of the best tab management tools for Chrome and Firefox that accomplish a variety of different tasks, from your browser's built-in features to the best powerful extensions.
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We've always loved coupon sites like RetailMeNot for finding discounts at a moment's notice, butCoupon Follow decided to take it a step further by integrating their coupon data into the checkout process. Their extension, Coupons at Checkout, suggests available discounts and promo codes on available online store pages so you don't even have to look them up.
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Feedly is easily your favorite RSS reader (and ours), but that doesn't mean it can't stand to get a few improvements. For those who like to tweak, here are extensions and user scripts that make Feedly even more useful.
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YouTube is infamous for its annoyances and its cluttered interface. If you want to just get down to watching videos without all the junk, Adblock Plus has added support for a new, streamlined YouTube experience that gets rid of all kinds of cruft.
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Firefox includes a couple of options for your new tab page. You can go with a grid of your most commonly visited sites, use the Firefox Start Page that has a Google search bar and quick-links to your history, add-ons, or downloads, or stick with the classic "about:blank." If you don't like those options, or you want something a bit more flexible, you do have options that add more features to every new tab. Let's look at some of them.
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Password management tool LastPass updated to 3.0 today, which includes a whole new design and layout that makes it easier to approach and easier to use, new mobile apps, support for shared passwords among family members, and more.
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A lot of us stare at a computer monitor for the bulk of our day and reading long articles or books is rarely a comfortable experience. With that in mind, here's a few steps you can take to make you reading experience less terrible.
When you sign up for a new web service, you're usually handing over a bit of personal information. At the very least, you're giving away your email address. MaskMe is a browser extension that lets you hide your information.
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It's no secret that email is grossly insecure. If you want a little privacy in your inbox, the easiest way to do it is to encrypt your messages, and Mailvelope offers free, OpenPGP encryption for most popular webmail services that's easy to configure and a breeze to use.
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Disconnect has always been one of our favorite privacy protecting browser extensions. Now Disconnect is even faster, and speeds up the web by shutting down ad-trackers, social widgets, and other snooping elements before they load, resulting in faster load times and less bandwidth consumed.
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Facebook Chat now includes a feature that lets you know when a friend has read your message—or when you've read theirs. If you'd prefer to keep that information under wraps, Chat Undetected will do it for you.
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Google got rid of the black navigation bar again. Many users feel that the new app launcher is a sub-par replacement. Thankfully, Proper Menubar brings it back with a vengeance.
Disconnect, makers of our favorite privacy-protecting browser extension, unveiled Disconnect Search today, an add-on that makes all of your searches, whether they're at Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and more completely private, regardless of whether you're using incognito or private browsing mode.'Attack On Titan' Season 2 News And Updates: Series To Take On Two New Arcs? To Release April 2017?
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"Attack on Titan" Season 2 might still be a little too far from its release, yet fans cannot hide their anticipation as numerous plot leaks continue to surface online.
This time around, the highly-anticipated "Attack on Titan" Season 2 is said to take on two new arcs featured in the manga version.
According to reports, "Attack on Titan" writer Hajime Isayama wrote new story arcs enough to cover season 2 including the "Clash of the Titans" and the "Uprising" arc.
Rumors claim that the inclusion of the "Clash of the Titans" arc in "Attack on Titan" Season 2 is already expected as Colossal Titan appears in the promotional poster of the series. The said poster features Colossal Titan trying to break into the walls while Erin, Armin and Mikasa are about to fight another Titan.
On the other hand, "Uprising" arc features the murder of Minister Nick as well as the attempted abduction of Eren and Historia.
Reports also reveal that the two arcs have ample amount of chapters with 15 for "Clash of Titans" and 36 for "Uprising." Fans believe it'll be sufficient to cover the entire season 2 and will have no shortage of resource material.
However, contrary to that, there are also rumors claiming that "Attack on Titan" Season 2 will somehow stir away from the manga's version since it is expected to be, at least, four arcs ahead of the anime. With that, fans expect that the anime series will come up with filler episodes.
As of this writing, no official confirmation about "Attack on Titan" Season 2 plots have been made yet. Fans of the series will have to wait a bit longer before they can witness the journey of their beloved characters.
"Attack on Titan" Season 2 is rumored to premiere in April 2017.
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For the past 20 years, a Queens factory owner has allowed artists to cover his building's facade with colorful names, superheroes, monsters, zombies, and much more. This "graffiti mecca" is a top destination for visitors from around the world. Some come to paint, others to admire the work or use it as backdrop for film and fashion shoots.
5Pointz is located in a largely industrial part of Long Island City, but that's about to change. Developers plan to replace the factory with two high-rise apartment towers. The proposal, for a 1,049-unit luxury compound, first surfaced in 2011. The New York City Council officially approved the plan last month.
Rendering of the potential development taking 5Pointz's place. (via NYC Dept. of City Planning)
Developers Jerry and David Wolkoff offered to provide 10,000-square-feet of "art panels and walls" in the new buildings. But that arrangement did not satisfy artists, who immediately filed a lawsuit and were granted a 10-day injunction. On Tuesday afternoon, the court ruled against a permanent injunction.Pakistan spinner Abdur Rehman is set to make his long-awaited debut for Somerset on Wednesday.
Rehman, 32, agreed to join the Taunton club as their overseas player on 1 July but issues with visa clearance have delayed his arrival.
But he has now been given the go-ahead to face Nottinghamshire in their County Championship clash.
"I expect him to get runs as well as wickets," director of cricket Brian Rose told the club website.
"The great thing about having someone like Rehman is that world-class spinners can take wickets on any surface, especially when it comes to bowling out the tail.
"But he is a very useful lower-order batsman and it will be good to have a left-hander going in around number eight."
It will be Rehman's first foray in English county cricket and he brings with him a wealth of international experience, having played 17 Tests, 23 one-day games and seven T20 matches for his country.Exclusive Look at New “Liberator” Comic — Radical Activist Superheroes
When I received this collection of comics, I had to drop everything and read all of them. Liberator is a series about young vigilantes who go above the law (and go underground) to rescue animals from vivisection labs, dogfighting rings, and anywhere else they are abused.
What I love about the series is that it presents a counter-narrative to the political reality of “eco-terrorism.” The comics are of course fictitious. But they are also grounded in radical activism, drawing inspiration from groups like the Animal Liberation Front. When presented in comic form, these characters seamlessly transition from so-called “terrorists” to freedom fighters.
“Real heroes don’t wear capes,” Liberator’s tagline says. “They wear ski-masks.”
These are sympathetic characters and inspiring heroes. And for that reason, I have no doubt vivisection groups and animal abusing industries are going to flip out about the collection. TERRORIST PROPAGANDA! I can see the press releases now.
Liberator Volume 1: Rage Ignition collects the series in a book, and also includes new material. It will be out next week. Liberator was created by real-life dog rescuer Matt Miner, and the book is being published by Black Mask Studios, the new comics publisher from Brett Gurewitz (Bad Religion), Matt Pizzolo (Occupy Comics), and Steve Niles (30 Days of Night).
The folks at Black Mask Studios were kind enough to let me run this preview of one of the new comics. They were all fantastic, but you can probably guess why I chose this one.
“Unlocking”
Written by Fabian Rangel, Jr.
Illustrated by Jonathan Brandon Sawyer
Colored by Doug Garbark
Lettered by CRANK!The Tweeter-in-Chief's Unpresidential Punctuation: Ignorance or Obfuscation?
Anyone with more than a passing interest in grammar, style, and usage has likely been chided once or a million times to focus on what really matters, because, after all, “You know what I mean!” Sometimes, of course, this is true; a clear typo or simple homophone mix-up, while potentially distracting, is unlikely to truly muddy the waters. As much as we all love to fight about the serial comma, it is rare indeed that its existence or omission actually renders a sentence incomprehensible enough for courts to get involved.
As such, it might seem that harping on the tweeting style of President Trump is merely an ad hominem attack, the last refuge of those who disagree with his politics but are too tired to do anything but take cheap shots. The high-minded thing to do would be to ignore his style to focus on the substance. Except that with Trump, the misuse of language and punctuation seems deliberately intended to obscure any potential substance.
“Now remember this. When I said wiretapping, it was in quotes. Because a wiretapping is, you know today it is different than wire tapping. It is just a good description. But wiretapping was in quotes. What I’m talking about is surveillance,” Trump said in an interview with Time magazine, referring to a series of tweets from March 4 in which he accused President Obama of wiretapping him, a claim that was near-universally disputed.
Indeed, he did use quotation marks (…in two of his four tweets on the subject), but then he’s constantly using gratuitous and incorrect quotation marks:
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/839101660886614016
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/842724011234791424
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/837492425283219458
You basically have to ignore the quotation marks, which appear to be used either for emphasis or to mark slightly slangy words (unnecessarily and incorrectly on both counts) in order for the remarks to make any sense. In fact, sometimes if you don’t ignore the quotation marks, his tweet implies the opposite of what he clearly means:
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/835814988686233601
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/835104946034991106
So these inappropriate quotation marks are lumped in with his nigh-Germanic capitalization style (“American People,” “Fake News,” “Repeal and Replace”), obvious typos, overuse of all caps, and oddly British habit of putting the titles of articles in single quotes as idiosyncrasies to be ignored, an artifact of his ignorance and/or refusal to employ or heed a copy editor…but then suddenly, chalking the quotation marks around “wiretapping” up to Trump being Trump is grounds for accusations of putting words in his mouth.
Convenient, that.
His habit of underusing commas or having sentence fragments all connected with dashes serves the same obstructing purpose; without the clear structural cues of a properly designed sentence and connectors/punctuation, it’s often incredibly vague. You assume what he’s getting at (in order for it to make any sense at all) and then he’s like “Haha, look who’s reading into everything and misinterpreting everything I say. FAKE NEWS!”
And that’s when he’s actually composing text. His speech is yet more inscrutable, such that transcribers find themselves in the unenviable position of trying to divine what Trump might actually mean in order to render it properly. Where does one sentence end and another begin? Does he return to his original thought after the digression or is he embarking on a new thought? Is this clause related to this other one or is it the start of a new thought (or a new digression)? Decisions on the punctuation of speech always have the potential for shaping its interpretation, but more so with Trump than is usual. It’s rare that a transcriber has to be cautious not to impose too much structure on a speaker’s words for fear of adding in meaning that wasn’t there rather than simply not quite capturing the nuance of what was.
Language matters. Precision matters. Punctuation matters. Consistency matters. It’s too easy to hide behind bad usage and incorrect punctuation and to accuse others of deliberately misinterpreting you or reading into what you’re saying—when they have to because you didn’t just out and say it. Language is how we communicate, and if you make it so people can’t tell what you mean, or if you refuse to allow meaning to be imparted to the language you use, you’re not communicating.
For Trump, this seems to be the goal: if he can only speak vaguely and ambiguously enough, he always has cover when attacked, can claim that others are deliberately manipulating his words, and can even decide what he meant after the fact. It is thus not shallow or petty to focus on how Trump says what he says, as the how is often more the point than the what.
Lauren Hinkle is a copyeditor and erstwhile transcriber who is very relieved not to have to make choices about how to punctuate this president’s speech.
Lauren Hinkle
April 14, 2017Administration will work to craft bill that ‘strikes a similar balance’ to defeated USA Freedom Act before expiration of a critical section of the Patriot Act
Legislation to divest the National Security Agency of its mass collection of US phone records has died. But when the next Congress convenes, the White House intends to revive it.
In its first comment since the USA Freedom Act failed by two votes to overcome a Senate filibuster, the White House signaled Wednesday it will pursue a new bill early next year that looks something like the defeated legislation.
“Going forward, we will work with Congress to formulate and pass legislation that strikes a similar balance” between security and privacy, said Ned Price, a National Security Council spokesman.
Price indicated the White House wanted to pass such a bill “urgently but carefully” ahead of “the impending June expiration of important national security tools”.
That expiration concerns Section 215 of the 2001 Patriot Act. The NSA claims that provision justifies its bulk US phone records collection, a legal assertion that is hotly contested, but its application is far broader. Section 215’s authorities for collecting business records has become a routine investigative tool for the FBI, and civil libertarians are united with NSA defenders in doubting that the GOP-led Congress will reauthorize it absent prior surveillance reforms.
A debate exists within civil libertarian circles about the value of holding out for an outright expiration of Section 215. Some favor expiration as a measure to both get rid of a bulk collection pretext and roll back an expansion of FBI powers. Others consider the expiration as leverage to re-up a bill that can constrain bulk collection while also winning other desired reforms, such as an adversarial process before the secret Fisa surveillance court and greater relaxations of the gag orders surrounding tech companies and telcos that receive surveillance demands.
Price praised the “broad range of constituencies” that backed the Freedom Act, “from civil libertarians, intelligence and law enforcement professionals, to prominent private sector voices”.
But civil libertarians and tech firms abandoned support for a House version of the bill that expanded the definition of what the government can collect – thanks largely to the input of the intelligence community’s top lawyer – based on fears that bulk collection would be repackaged and not ended.
The White House “strongly” supported both versions of the Freedom Act. Going forward, Price said he did not want to “proffer a judgment between the two versions”.
“We would support any legislation that ensures appropriate privacy and civil liberties protections, while preserving essential authorities that our intelligence and law enforcement professionals need,” Price said.
Amie Stepanovich, a lawyer for the digital rights firm Access and a prominent voice in the surveillance-reform debate, said that a new surveillance bill in 2015 would need to expand on the privacy and transparency provisions in the Senate version of the Freedom Act.
“As more time passes, the need for reform is only becoming more urgent. Access has supported USA Freedom and thinks it is a good place to start in the new Congress,” Stepanovich said.
“However, it is increasingly important that we move forward with reform that is also going to address many of the other invasive programs and authorities. We look forward to engaging with all stakeholders to protect privacy of all users against overly invasive surveillance.”
Passing a surveillance reform bill in the next Congress is far from assured. The Senate Republican leadership, soon to take up the majority, ardently objected to what had been a bipartisan Freedom Act by arguing that it was a gift to the Islamic State (Isis). While the expanded Republican House majority is ardently opposed to the White House, it is split on rolling back the NSA, particularly with Isis dominating the Washington agenda instead of Edward Snowden’s revelations about widespread surveillance.
But before the next Congress takes office in January, the Obama administration must decide whether to ask the Fisa Court for another 90 days’ worth of bulk collection of US phone data. The current court authorization expires on 11 December.
Price said the administration had not yet made a decision on another re-up. But throughout 2014, President Obama has sought the court’s blessing for ongoing phone records collection as what he has considered a stopgap until Congress passed a bill to divest the NSA of the practice.Mr Schmidt says he is concerned about the openness of the net
Chief executive Eric Schmidt said that Google was "concerned" about a deal and said it could have implications for the "openness" of the internet.
Last month Microsoft proposed a buyout of Yahoo for $44.6bn, a deal that was rejected by Yahoo's board.
At the time, experts said that the buyout was an attempt by Microsoft to challenge Google's dominance.
"We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft," Mr Schmidt said at a conference in Beijing.
"We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the internet, but I doubt it would be."
Last gasp
He highlighted the software firm's past history and "the things that it has done that have been so difficult for everyone".
In 2004 the European Commission fined Microsoft 497m euros for abusing its market dominance, a ruling the US company finally lost on appeal in September last year.
Yahoo has tried to fend off the bid from Microsoft
The Commission has since launched two new competition inquiries against Microsoft.
"We are concerned that there are things Microsoft could do that would be bad for the internet," said Schmidt.
His comments echo those of David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, who has previously said that any deal could exert an "inappropriate... influence" over the internet.
"This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the internet: openness and innovation," he said in a company blog earlier this month.
Earlier this month, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said the company would gain market share against Google in search and advertising, even if led to his "last breath" at the firm.
Decision delayed
Last week a contingent of Microsoft executives met up with their Yahoo counterparts in California.
No investments bankers attended Monday's meeting, nor was there any discussion about whether Microsoft was willing to raise its offer, according to reports.
Yahoo has been exploring different ways to fend off Microsoft since the bid was first launched six weeks ago. Possible alliances include with social networking site MySpace, web portal AOL or even Google.
Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp, which owns MySpace, has downplayed interest in Yahoo whilst AOL has outlined plans to buy social network Bebo, making a deal more complicated..
Any deal between Google and Yahoo, could fall foul of antitrust regulations, according to analysts.
However, reports suggest that Yahoo is in no rush to make any decision.
The firm had been given a deadline of 14 March by shareholders to nominate candidates to supplant its current board. Last week, Yahoo postponed the deadline from Friday to 10 days after it announces its annual meeting.
The meeting will not be announced before April and may not be confirmed until after the firm's first quarter results are released, according to reports.
Microsoft has threatened an attempt to oust Yahoo's 10 directors if it can't broker an amicable takeover.This month, anyone in Finland who buy a lactose-free skimmed milk drink called Eila at the supermarket will buying the world's first carton made entirely out of plant-based plastics—right down to the cap.
Tetra Pak, the packaging giant that produced the carton, is very proud of it. The company calls it "the world's first fully renewable carton package," and the key word here is renewable: The raw materials—the source—of the plastic in the carton came from plant-based sources, rather than petroleum-based ones. There are a few different types of plastic at play here, starting with the actual body of the carton, whose three layers are industrially derived from sugarcane, wood fiber, and sugarcane (in order of appearance). Then there's the plastic cap, which is also derived from sugarcane.
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It's easy to be confused by the various phrases and terms involved with engineering recyclable plastics. But make no mistake—we're still talking about plastics, and the ones used in this carton are variants of polyethylene, the most commonly used type of plastic in the world. Which means that the carton will need to be recycled just like all your other plastics—despite the fact that it came from a natural source. In reality, the name "bioplastics" is more than a little misleading for most consumers, who conflate it with "biodegradable," which it certainly isn't.
Tetra Pak's new carton was made through a collaboration with the Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem. Brazil is one of the world's biggest makers of the ethanol-based fuel, which is chemically derived from, yep, sugarcane. Over the past few years, it's also branched out into making polymers out of ethanol, as well. Right now, it reportedly produces 200 thousand metric tons of sugarcane-based polyethelene—the same stuff that Tetra Pak's new carton uses—every year.
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Not everyone agrees that sugarcane-based biofuel and plastics are the way to go. The environmental cost of farming that much sugarcane is high, as Scientific American explained a few years ago. But Tetra Pak's ultimate goal is to move beyond the stuff entirely, as bioplastics improve:
To be able to fully replace plastic from fossil fuels with renewable plastic – which is our long-term aim – will require technology development that makes it possible to use other raw materials beyond just sugar cane. [...] We are carefully monitoring the development of second-and third-generation bio-based plastics. We see possibilities in the future to make bio-based plastic from waste from agriculture, the forest industry, household waste and algae.
So this stuff is no silver bullet—but it's a step in the right direction. And keep in mind, the next time you see bioplastics advertised at the store: As great as it sounds, it may need to be recycled right along with the rest of your bottles. [EcoBusiness]Major engineering company Downer is pulling out of connecting internet users to the fibre network causing concerns about the financial viability of the contract and the impact on consumers.
Downer yesterday advised staff it would not be re-tendering when its contract ends in January.
Photo: 123rf
In a statement, the company said it would continue to be involved in the design, building and maintenance of the fibre network and keep up its work with the copper network.
But it will not link customers in Hawke's Bay, Gisborne, Hutt Valley, Masterton and the lower South Island to the fibre network when its contract ends.
"Downer deploys a combination of employees and owner/operators to deliver fibre provisioning and will continue to do so until Chorus finalises a transition plan for the fibre provisioning contract," it said in a statement.
Joe Gallagher, from the E tū union, said it was a bad sign for the roll out of fibre broadband.
"This is a big contractor with a national footprint and if they can't make money out of the contract then you have to ask what's going on."
Downer had been working hard to recruit and train staff, Mr Gallagher said.
"I think they've made a very hard decision to step away from it.
"I just can't believe that we continue to support Chorus getting away with running a low cost labour model."
Mr Gallager said Chorus had no respect for the workers carrying out the work.
It already takes about two months to get your house hooked up to the fibre network.
And there are concerns that Downer pulling out could make things worse for customers.
Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Craig Young said there was a risk of poorer service during the transition to a new contractor.
"We know there's a lot of pressure on not just getting these things in but also the cost."
However, Chorus chief executive Mark Ratcliffe said he was |
question was posed as to whether or not the Obama haters were engaged in un-American activity, George said yes, and Sarah said no.
While there is nothing un-American about criticizing the President of the United States or any other elected officials, there is something decidedly unpatriotic about what the right has been doing since Barack Obama won the 2008 election. At various times since Obama became president, Rush Limbaugh has claimed that he wants Obama to fail. Limbaugh has also claimed that the tea party wants Obama to fail, in 2009 he told Sean Hannity that he still wanted the president to fail, and who can forget an absolutely giddy Glenn Beck celebrating when the United States didn’t win the Olympics?
Wanting the president to fail is the same thing as rooting against your own country, and cheering against your own country is at best un-American. As the GOP has continued to drift out of the mainstream, their contempt for the country that allows them the freedom to question the president’s birth certificate has continued to grow.
Do Republicans hate America because they lost the 2008 election? Maybe, or maybe they are terrified of what the presidency of Barack Obama represents. President Obama is the embodiment of the fact that our country is changing. The age of unquestioned rule over our body politics is fading away. As the nation’s demographics move away from an aging white population and more towards younger black and brown people, the coalition that the Republican Party relies on to maintain power is destined to fade away.
The fact is that the Republican version of “their America” is becoming a relic of history makes them angry, so angry that they are easily manipulated by corporate billionaires into protesting against their own interests. In some cases that anger over the changing America that Obama represents has led to hatred. They hate this president, and the country that elected him.
As Clint Eastwood found out on Super Bowl Sunday, you don’t have to be pro-Obama to earn their wrath. All it takes is a positive message about America. Good news and positivity serve to feed their rage, and this anger is what drives many Republicans to hate America.AUGUSTA, Maine — For the second time in two years, the annual convention of the Maine Republican Party could be marred by in-fighting, although if 2010 is any indication, that might not necessarily hurt the party.
In the last few days, GOP Chairman Charlie Webster has come under criticism for announcing in a recent email that Charles Cragin of Raymond would be chairman of this weekend’s convention.
“Cragin has a reputation for fairness, objectivity and integrity,” Webster wrote. “He presided at several Maine GOP conventions prior to going to the Board of Veterans’ Appeals in Washington and we are delighted to have him serve in that capacity once again.”
The party’s own bylaws, however, indicate that a convention chairman must be selected at the convention, not beforehand. So, did party officials violate their own rules?
Brent Tweed, a Maine GOP state committee member from York County, wrote a follow-up email to party members urging them to remove any doubt by simply electing a chairman this weekend. Tweed nominated himself.
“In a year when election missteps have rocked our Maine Republican Party, I believe that we need a convention chair elected by the people and not appointed by established powers,” he wrote.
The Maine Republican Party state convention will be held Friday-Sunday, May 4-6, at the Augusta Civic Center.
The event is largely a party-building exercise and a chance for members to hear from congressional candidates and others.
But there is business to be done as well, the biggest task of which is to select delegates that will represent Maine at the National GOP Convention in late August. That process could prove tricky in the wake of the state party’s handling of the presidential caucuses in February.
On Feb. 11, the party declared former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney the winner of a presidential preference poll and de facto winner of Maine’s caucuses. That announcement was made before all the votes were counted, a move that angered supporters of Ron Paul, who finished a close second.
In the days that followed, GOP officials admitted they made mistakes by omitting certain votes and by not allowing Washington County Republicans to have their votes counted. The Washington County GOP canceled its caucuses on Feb. 11 because of a pending snowstorm.
The Maine GOP later updated its results to include Washington County. It didn’t change the outcome, but it also didn’t eliminate the black eye left on the party because of all the negative attention.
As the outspoken and sometimes polarizing head of the Maine GOP, Webster has taken the brunt of the criticism. That criticism bubbled over into a party meeting in early March during which some attendees wanted Webster to explain himself and others wanted him to step down.
After a two-hour closed door meeting, state committee members voted to keep Webster as Maine GOP chairman.
However if any bruised feelings spill over into this week’s convention, particularly by Paul supporters, Webster again could find himself in the middle of controversy.
Another large but mostly ceremonial part of the convention is the adoption of a party platform. That’s where the 2010 convention generated headlines.
This year’s version already is decidedly less controversial than the platform that was adopted two years ago, but it still contains a number of talking points, both for members of the Republican Party and for the party’s opponents.
Gone are obscure references to “Austrian economics” and calls to “reject the UN [United Nations] Treaty on Rights of the Child,” and plans to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education that were part of the 2010 platform supported overwhelmingly by tea party members.
Included are suggestions to “oppose all attempts to establish a Maine Woods National Park,” and to support “freedom to work laws” that allow employees to decide whether to join a union.
The 2012 version also contains a big section detailing accomplishments of Gov. LePage and the 125th Legislature, including enacting the largest tax cut in state history and passing welfare reforms that “terminated Maine’s status as a sanctuary state, turning off the magnet that draws illegal aliens to the state.”
A majority of the document, which is available on the Maine GOP website, contains many statements of policy that have long been supported by Republicans: support for states’ rights, support of the 2nd Amendment, belief in the “sanctity of life,” and defining marriage as “the union of one man and one woman.”
Perhaps the most controversial piece of the 2012 Maine GOP platform is the line about protecting the American legal system from Shariah, or the law associated with the Islam faith. Although many states have moved to consider bans on Shariah, lower courts have ruled that such bans are unconstitutional.
The 2012 platform still needs to be adopted by the party as a whole this weekend and, as 2010 proved, that’s not a done deal.
During the 2010 event, the original platform was scrapped at the last minute in favor of a tea party-backed document created largely by the Knox County Committee of the party.
Not everyone was happy about the last-minute change. Even Dan Billings, chief counsel to Gov. Paul LePage, concluded that the 2010 party platform contained “nutcase” stuff.
Still, the adoption of the 2010 platform that was seen by some as controversial didn’t affect the November elections that year. In fact, it might have helped: Gov. Paul LePage was elected and Republicans won enough seats statewide to wrest control of the House and Senate, which had been in the hands of Democrats for decades.
The Maine Democratic Party will hold its convention from June 1 through June 3.CALGARY- The weather outside is frightful, but people around Alberta are making the best of the blizzard, posting some humorous photos on social media.
From a voodoo snowman to a tricked-out bicycle/snowplow, the snow day had some feeling rather creative!
who wins the biggest drift contest today? this is along mcknight blvd near #yyc airport! @GlobalCalgary pic.twitter.com/hBgxlD99CC — Gord Gillies (@Gord_Gillies) December 3, 2013
Omg lol! RT @Vanterax: It may be time to call on the #abstorm troopers for help. pic.twitter.com/4tXf9wpe4k — Jill (@jedichica) December 3, 2013
PHOTO: Deena’s back door in Three Hills. She had to “pretty much crawl” to get to her car! #abstorm pic.twitter.com/aIIUNyqElb — Global Calgary (@GlobalCalgary) December 3, 2013
Geez, Jeff. Jeff hasn’t bought boots yet so he pushed out 3 cars in hole-y shoes this am! – Sarah #abstorm pic.twitter.com/fuxezrIl6f — Q107 (@Q107Calgary) December 3, 2013
Whosever car that is in downtown Pincher Creek… it’s only four months until the thaw. Maybe bum a ride? #abstorm pic.twitter.com/wV9Iu3M95W — Bryan Passifume (@echo_bryanpass) December 3, 2013
A friend of mine near Olds opened his door to this this morning. He decided to go back to bed #abstorm #abblizzard pic.twitter.com/zyKCLBkoB6 — Braden Latam (@BradenLatam) December 3, 2013
PHOTO: Thank goodness no one has moved into this house in Redstone yet! #YYC #abstorm pic.twitter.com/e0uZry7tOm — Global Calgary (@GlobalCalgary) December 3, 2013A lot of people have floated theories about what may have happened to Malaysia Airlines' missing jetliner. Terrorism. A fire. A remote landing. Even Courtney Love thought that she may have spotted its wreckage in the ocean.
But with the search largely at a standstill over the past few days, there isn't necessarily much more reasonable ground to cover. That may be why CNN chose to turn to more unreasonable ground yesterday, when it began posing theories that it received from Twitter to former US Transportation Department inspector general Mary Schiavo. "What if it was something fully that we don't really understand?" anchor Don Lemon asked, throwing out black holes, the Bermuda Triangle, The Twilight Zone, and "the movie Lost" as examples. "I know it's preposterous," Lemon says, "But is it preposterous, do you think, Mary?"
"But is it preposterous?"
Fortunately, we do have a good understanding of black holes and pop culture. "Well, it is," Schiavo says. She dismisses black holes and says that events chalked up to the Bermuda Triangle are often a matter of weather. She also points out that Lost is a TV show. "I always like things for which there's data, history — crunch the numbers," she says. The segment was spotted and captured by Talking Points Memo.
For now, the actual search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has turned to the Indian Ocean, where Australian officials report that satellite imagery has shown two potential pieces of wreckage, according to The Wall Street Journal. A diverted commercial ship is reportedly now on site searching for debris, but it is yet to find anything.Calling all vegans! Martha Stewart wants you!
The domestic diva is inviting vegans of all kinds to be guests at one of her shows dedicated to the topic.
Lifelong vegans and recent vegans are all welcome and encouraged to apply for tickets to be a part of the audience.
Interested?
You can request tickets for yourself and up to 3 more people at MarthaStewart.com. Using 3,000 characters or less (hey, at least she’s more generous than that one vegan who co-founded Twitter and only gives you 140 characters), tell Martha about yourself and the guests you’d like to invite.
So far, the site is only asking for vegans to apply as audience members. There is no information on what the show will cover or who else might be a guest. Stay tuned and well keep you posted if we find out more!
Photo: PR Photos
Possibly Related Posts:Last week, the administration of President Donald Trump sent shockwaves through the art world when it shared its federal budget, which calls for completely scrapping the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The president and his pals are evidently blind to the value of art, but as many of us know so well, both agencies have supported countless individuals and organizations with the roughly.004% of the federal budget that each receives annually.
To illustrate just how beneficial the NEA’s work has been, artist and environmental engineer Tega Brain has programmed a website that scrolls through the types of grants the NEA awarded last year alone. Like end credits of a movie, each funded project moves slowly down your screen in bright colors to form a simple but clear message: we really need the NEA.
“If this type of support didn’t exist, these communities wouldn’t have access to the modest but absolutely critical $10K or $20K grants that makes these projects possible,” Brain told Hyperallergic. “I hoped the site would show the assumption that NEA mostly funds privileged urban communities to be false. In fact, I’ve heard the odds of getting support in a rural area is much higher than in an urban place.”
Brain drew the data straight from the agency’s website; here, rephrased in one-liners that summarize each grant, you get a clear sense of the diversity of the funded projects: art workshops for state prisons in San Bernadino; a concert for LGBTQ youth in Minnesota; a music outreach program for immigrants and refugees in Nebraska; an indigenous film festival in Denver; a puppetry program in Detroit; a performance collaboration between artists and homeless veterans in Connecticut; and exhibitions that examine issues related to income inequality in Alabama, to name just a few. From the identities of those involved to the medium or format of each project to the regions where they occur, the information provided on Brain’s site makes abundantly clear that the NEA is an essential government agency that benefits a vast array of citizens across the country.
“Kickstarter raises large amounts of funding for creative practices; however, their crowdsourced model favors artists in dense urban areas with access to larger communities and networks,” Brain said. “If you live in a remote place, where it’s already hard to get attention and support for your art, you are going to have a much harder time promoting your work in a Kickstarter campaign. And you’re probably not going to be able to raise funds for community education and engagement projects or for residency programs that support an artist’s professional development as these things don’t yield specific outcomes. This is one of the many reasons why the NEA is so important.”
So what can you do to save public funding for the arts? Call your local representatives, and sign the official petition to the White House (although that may, scarily, not be accurately registering votes). You’ll find links to both options on Brain’s website as well; let’s work to ensure she could make another next year — but out of gratitude, rather than urgency.
h/t Technical.lyPlease enable Javascript to watch this video
CLEVELAND - The Fox 8 I-Team has uncovered a massive crime spree and prosecutors say the ringleader is just 14-years-old.
Three teens are facing a total of 133 charges. Prosecutors say they were involved in dozens of aggravated robberies and carjackings.
"In one case they robbed a mother in front of her three young children," said Assistant County Prosecutor Brian Kraft. "They wanted to steal her car, they held her there at gun point, they pulled her from the vehicle, they pistol whipped her in front of her children. A 7-year-old child then got out of the vehicle and told the young offender don't kill my mother. The young offender pulled the weapon on the 7-year-old and held him there at gun point."
The crimes were committed in just about a month. Prosecutors say the crime spree started January 18th and ended February 20th, when arrests were made.
"I am so glad they arrested them," said Jeanette Jordan, a manager at Angie's Soul Cafe. Officials believe Jordan was one of dozens of victims.
"I could tell they were babies but they had guns," Jordan said. "I am praying for them."
The teens are facing charges of aggravated robbery and kidnapping.
"It's shocking but it also demonstrates that we have a serous problem with the juvenile justice system that needs to be fixed," Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley said.
O'Malley credits aggressive police work by Cleveland police and a Third District detective in helping solve the case.
Officials say Detective Aaron Reese worked quickly to arrest the juveniles.
Prosecutors are filing a bindover motion on the 17-year-old and filing Serious Youthful Offender specifications on the 14-year-olds.A new artistic trend has broken out around the world which changes our perception of history dramatically. Colorizing historic photographs from the late 1800′s and early 1900′s changes their appearance from something historic and different, into a scene from today. The colorful image of Albert Einstein sitting beside the water gives us an entire new perspective on the genius. He goes from a brilliant historic relic, into a living brilliance of our era. The colorized photograph of Audrey Hepburn transforms our thoughts of beauty. Her photo goes from an intriguing historic photo to one of a sexy starlet of today. Historic events move forward decades, or even a full century, by the addition of color carefully planned and applied by artists like Jordan Lloyd, Dana Keller, and Sanna Dullaway.
London, 1945 (Photo credit: valdigtmycketfarg)
Hindenburg Disaster, 1937
Japanese Archers, circa 1860 (Colorized by Jordan J Lloyd)
View from the Capitol in Nashville, 1864 (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Albert Einstein in Long Island, 1939 (Photo credit: Paul Edwards)
Baltimore Slums, 1938 (Colorized by Jordan J Lloyd)
Unemployed Lumber Worker and His Wife, circa 1939
British Troops Board Their Train for the Front, 1939
Oscar II, King of Sweden and Norway, 1880 (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Old Gold Country store, 1939 (Colorized by Jordan J Lloyd)
Washington D. C., 1921 (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Charles Darwin, 1874 (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Abraham Lincoln, 1865 (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Theodore Roosevelt (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Louisville, Kentucky, 1937 (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation, 1963 (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Anne Frank, 1942 (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Kissing the War Goodbye, 1945 (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Nicola Tesla
Big Jay McNeely, Olympic Auditorium, 1953
Elizabeth Taylor, 1956
Charlie Chaplin, 1916
Mark Twain, circa 1900
Walt Whitman, 1887
Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels scowls at a Jewish photographer, 1933
Audrey Hepburn
Operation: Crossroads Atomic Detonation (Thank you Steven Vaught, Western Michigan University) (Photo credit: Sanna Dullaway)
Credits: Indulgd Amazon, Imgur, Jordan Lloyd, Dana Keller and special thanks to Sanna Dullaway. As seen on EWAO.Footage shows Ramsey County, Minnesota sheriff's deputy Brett Arthur Berry slamming K-9 partner to the ground [WCCO-TV]
A sheriff’s deputy in Ramsay County, Minnesota was charged with animal cruelty and assault against a public safety dog after being caught slamming his K-9 partner to the ground, then striking the animal inside a casino, WCCO-TV reported.
Officials in Carlton County arrested 48-year-old Brett Arthur Berry on June 15, after security cameras at the Black Bear Casino captured the attacks earlier this month. Berry was attending a certification course in the area at the time of the incident.
“It’s something that is certainly unusual,” Carlton County Attorney Thomas Pertler told the Duluth News Tribune. “I haven’t heard of another case like it.”
The criminal complaint against Berry stated that casino security began tracking him after staff kicked him out of a lounge for making “some unwanted advances.” He also “repeatedly made obscene gestures towards security personnel” after security ordered him out of the area.
The footage shows Berry picking the dog up by its neck, then throwing it to the ground.
“The dog then appeared to be afraid of the defendant despite the relationship between the dog and the defendant as a K-9 team and would not come back to the defendant when called,” the complaint stated.
The dog can also be seen entering the casino and getting stuck in a vestibule. After catching up to the animal, authorities said, Berry began “beating it repeatedly on or about the shoulder or ribs area.”
Carlton County officials were called to the casino around 3 a.m. that evening. The complaint stated that Berry “appeared to be under the influence” on the night in question.
A veterinarian later determined that the dog showed “no obvious signs of injury were apparent that would rise to the level of substantial or great bodily harm.” Berry is due back in court on July 23. If convicted, he faces 90 days in jail and/or a $1,000 fine for each charge.
Watch WCCO’s report below.
[h/t New York Daily News]The Liberal government's sell-off of Hydro One is a failure of political leadership -- not only from the governing Liberals but also the opposition NDP and Conservatives.
The sorry saga of liquidating Hydro One is the direct result of not having an honest debate at Queen's Park about how to fund transportation infrastructure. This is a perfect example of how partisan political games have real world consequences.
The NDP and PC parties have strongly opposed every new revenue tool for funding transit. And they spent the last election promising to build transit with fairy dust and magic money trees. The NDP even threatened to bring down last year's minority government if the Liberals raised taxes or tolls for transit.
The Liberals have wilted in the face of this opposition. We now have a desperate government -- plagued with spending scandals -- that will do anything to avoid being accused of raising taxes, even those recommended by their own experts.
The public still wants and needs the transportation infrastructure promised in the last election. So, the Liberals have a new magic money tree -- sell part of Hydro One for a short-term shot of cash that will deprive Ontarians of a reliable source of revenue for years to come.
This is a classic case of punting the problem to a future government and people should be mad as hell for being misled.
Liquidating Hydro One is a bad business decision for Ontario. Selling 60 per cent of Hydro One, as the Liberals propose, could cost Ontario $338.8 million every year, according to a report from economists David Peters and Douglas Peters prepared for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
The report also questions how much money the province would make from selling Hydro One. Contrary to the Liberal's claim of netting $9 billion from a 60 per cent sale, the CUPE report estimates that after paying fees to Bay Street bankers and lawyers as well as other issuance costs, Ontario would net just $5.94 billion.
The Liberals have hired a Bay Street banker to propose a plan that will clearly benefit Bay Street bankers. The benefits to the people of Ontario are less clear.
Selling Hydro One is not only a bad business decision, it also has public policy implications for upgrading Ontario's grid for the 21st century.
Grids around the world are undergoing a major change as smart grid technologies transform the way electricity is produced, stored and distributed. It is unclear how privatizing Ontario's transmission and distribution system -- our electrical highway -- will affect these innovations and the jobs and prosperity they will generate.
Private investors make their money by maximizing the amount of electricity being transmitted through their grid. Will they really want to support technologies that help people save money by saving energy? Renewable energy entrepreneurs already face barriers to the public grid. Will these barriers increase with a private one?
Sadly, these important public policy questions are being ignored at Queen's Park.
The Liberals have capped debate in an effort to ram through the omnibus legislation to sell Hydro One. Eight provincial watchdogs have criticized the Liberals for measures in the bill that would remove Hydro One from public oversight. The Liberals have no mandate to privatize Ontario's grid, and the bill should be subject to a robust public consultation process.
I agree with the government that Ontario desperately needs to invest in transportation infrastructure. But I disagree with their funding plan. The government's own expert panels proposed ways to fund transportation. Liquidating Hydro One was not one of them.
If the NDP and PC parties truly oppose selling a majority of Hydro One and still want to build transit, then they should be honest about how they would pay for transportation upgrades -- change the political game by pushing the Liberals to compromise on better funding options. No new tax will be popular, but sharing the heat would put good public policy before bad political games.
Is it too much to ask for more honesty and less hot air at Queen's Park?
MORE ON HUFFPOSTLONDON (Reuters) - High levels of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere mean the next ice age is unlikely to begin for at least 1,500 years, an article in the journal Nature Geoscience said on Monday.
Climbers trek on Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier near the city of El Calafate, in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, December 16, 2009. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci
Concentrations of the main gases blamed for global warming reached record levels in 2010 and will linger in the atmosphere for decades even if the world stopped pumping out emissions today, according to the U.N.’s weather agency.
An ice age is a period when there is a long-term reduction in the earth’s surface and atmospheric temperature, which leads to the growth of ice sheets and glaciers.
There have been at least five ice ages on earth. During ice ages there are cycles of glaciation with ice sheets both advancing and retreating.
Officially, the earth has been in an interglacial, or warmer period, for the last 10,000 to 15,000 years, and estimates vary on how long such periods last.
“(Analysis) suggests that the end of the current interglacial (period) would occur within the next 1,500 years, if atmospheric CO2 concentrations do not exceed (around) 240 parts per million by volume (ppmv),” the study said.
However, the current carbon dioxide concentration is of 390 ppmv, and at that level an increase in the volume of ice sheets would not be possible, it added.
The study based on variations in the earth’s orbit and rock samples was conducted by academics at Cambridge University, University College London, the University of Florida and Norway’s University of Bergen.
The causes of ice ages are not fully understood but concentrations of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, changes in the earth’s orbit around the sun, and the movement of tectonic plates are all thought to contribute.
The world is forecast to grow hotter as greenhouse gases continue to rise, increasing threats such as extreme weather events and sea level rise.
Scientists have warned that global temperature rise should be limited to within 2 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst effects of climate change but delays in curbing emissions growth are putting the planet at risk.Klymit Inertia X-Lite 2016 Review
A Innovative / Ultralight Sleeping Pad
My go to sleeping pads to date have revolved mostly around Thermarest variants - some ultralight and some not. This buying round I wanted to think outside my norm and take a chance on a sleeping pad I had always wanted to check out - Klymit's ultralight Inertia X-Lite. At 6.1 Oz. and 2.5" x 5.5" ( packed dimensions with bulb ), the X-Lite is just what I needed.
I opened the Backcountry package and was impressed how small the packed X-Lite is. It literally takes up less space than a standard 12 Oz. aluminum can but weighs less and is clearly designed for minimalist / ultralight purposes. My girlfriend asked, "Is that the sleeping pad?" in disbelief because she knows the size of two other sleeping pads I own. Included in the package are a separate bulb used to'micro' adjust the firmness and a patch kit. From a conversation with Klymit, some wanted / needed more firmness due to the sleeping pad's thickness ( 1.5" ) and the second 'bulb' inflation port handles that quite well. The r-value isn't provided but, from research, I found it comes in at roughly 1 to 1.5 which isn't much. Then again, I didn't expect more given its purpose. For those inclined, thermodynamic equations would solve the r-value mystery but wouldn't completely define it because of 'loft pockets' ( Open areas where material was removed ) allow sleeping bags to expand and provide better insulation. These are the by-product of Klymit's 'body mapping technology' to determine where material can be removed which is precisely how they are able to sell a sleeping pad this light. At best, you could determine the r-value where material exists.
Packed size - Includes sleeping pad, patch kit and bulb.
If you don't want to take the bulb well....
The next step was to inflate it and check out the comfort level although the real test would be during a planned trip to Colorado Springs / Manitou Springs the following week. I found the sleeping pad to be comfortable enough for me and on the Colorado trip, it served its purpose in 35-60 °F temperatures. I also wanted to know "How quickly does it inflate?" This was another surprise because it takes only 5-6 full breaths to fully inflate and if you need more or less firmness, then the use the bulb to'micro' adjust as you see fit.
Fill Valve - Standard for sleeping pads. Blow and twist when complete. Secondary valve used with the included bulb. Bulb attached - adjust until you are satisfied. Patch Kit - Klymit thought of everything it appears.
Top view of the Klymit Inertia X-Lite inflated. Bottom view of the Klymit Inertia X-Lite inflated.
CONCLUSION
The Klymit Inertia X-Lite is great minimalist / ultralight sleeping pad. It performs well in the environments I camp because I am okay with giving up a little comfort to ensure my pack stays light. In colder conditions, I may bring along a thicker pad and if that isn't needed, I'll happily stick with the X-Lite. If not, then there is nothing wrong with having a couple of sleeping pads in my 'quiver' - each for its own purpose and conditions.
Klymit seems to have done a great job innovating beyond material and if you are trying to remove weight and save space, the X-Lite is the pad for you. It is the lightest and most compact sleeping pad I have used and fills a sweet spot in my gear list. The cost? - I paid a little over $42 ( On sale from $59.95 ) - much less than a Thermarest Neoair X-Lite so now I have money to buy a thicker version if needed.
SPECS
Price $69.95 Weight 06.1 Oz / 173 G Dimensions 42" x 18" x 1.5" Inflation 2-4 Breaths Pack Size 2.5" x 5.5" Fabric 30D Top / 75D Bottom Polyester Warranty LifeTimer
INCLUDED ITEMSOriginally posted on Data Science Central
Thousands of articles and tutorials have been written about data science and machine learning. Hundreds of books, courses and conferences are available. You could spend months just figuring out what to do to get started, even to understand what data science is about.
In this short contribution, I share what I believe to be the most valuable resources - a small list of top resources and starting points. This will be most valuable to any data practitioner who has very little free time.
Map-Reduce Explained
These resources cover data sets, algorithms, case studies, tutorials, cheat sheets, and material to learn the most popular data science languages: R and Python. Some non-standard techniques used in machine-to-machine communications and automated data science, even though technically simpler and more robust, are not included here as their use is not widespread, with one exception: turning unstructured into structured data. We will include them, as well as Hadoop-based techniques (distributed algorithms, or Map-Reduce) in a future article.
1. Technical Material
2. General Content
3. Additional Reading
Enjoy the reading!Mentally disabled Otera Bibi, 42, wandered to a nearby village in West Bengal
Locals thought she was'stealing children,' tied her to a tractor and beat her
Otera tried to protest her innocence but onlookers could not understand her
Police rushed Otera to Jangipur hospital but she died of her injuries
Police detained villagers for questioning but nobody has yet been charged
This is the horrific moment a woman is tied to a tractor and beaten to death by a mob - after she was accused of being a child kidnapper.
Mentally disabled Otera Bibi, 42, had been living with her parents but wandered from her home to a nearby village in West Bengal, India, last Tuesday.
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Otera stopped inside the wooden hut of a local villager Dilip Ghosh - sparking fears that she was trying to snatch his ten-year-old daughter.
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A furious mob pounced on Otera - tying her to a tractor and attacking her for three hours with sticks and pelting her with stones.
Locals ripped off her clothes and shaved her head as they 'beat her mercilessly'', according to witnesses in the Mithipur-Panagarh village.
Otera is understood to have tried to protest her innocence but onlookers could not understand what she was saying.
Police arrived later in the afternoon and rushed Otera to Jangipur sub-divisional hospital but she died of her injuries after the attack in the Murshidabad district.
Locals ripped off her clothes and shaved her head as they 'beat her mercilessly'', according to witnesses in the Mithipur-Panagarh village
Murshidabad Superintendent of Police Mukesh said: 'A mob beat up the woman after a rumour spread that she was trying to lift children from the village.
'We have started investigating the murder case. We are trying to identify the people involved in the lynching as well as those who spread the rumour.'
Police detained several villagers for questioning but so far nobody has been charged over the death.
Otera stopped in a villager's hut - sparking fears that she was trying to snatch his ten-year-old daughter. Locals tied her to a tractor and attacked her for three hours with sticks and stones
They believed Otera was a child kidnapper after a similar incident last month in which a child vanished from the neighbourhood.
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But Otera's husband said his wife was'mentally challenged' while her family said they were not concerned at first when she went missing because she would often wander away from home for a day or two.With Harvey’s destruction still fresh on people’s minds, Florida hustled into action. Gov. Rick Scott activated the state National Guard to help with hurricane preparations, and he suspended highway tolls. On Monday, the governor declared a state of emergency and spoke with Mr. Trump, who offered “the full resources of the federal government,” Mr. Scott wrote on Twitter.
Most of the latest projections have Irma making landfall in Florida by Sunday, although it is unclear where exactly that might happen.
The Florida Keys, an especially vulnerable chain of islands, moved quickly to prepare for crushing winds and possible flooding. On Wednesday, schools will be closed and mandatory evacuations will begin, county officials said. The Keys’ three hospitals started evacuating patients on Tuesday.
Miami-Dade, the state’s largest county, announced that schools would close on Thursday and officials began putting emergency plans into place.
But Puerto Rico and the northern Leeward Islands are expected to be hit before that. It has been nearly a century since Puerto Rico was hit by a Category 5 storm, Mr. Norcross of the Weather Channel said.
Puerto Rican officials have warned that the island’s fragile electrical grid could be shut down for days, weeks or even months in some areas. In his news conference, Mr. Rosselló and emergency officials warned that with such powerful winds expected to thrash the island, infrastructure, houses and the phone system would inevitably be damaged.
For Puerto Rico, the hurricane could not have come at a worse time. The island is in the throes of an economic crisis and does not have money for a long rebuilding process.
“This is not going to be easy,” said Héctor Pesquera, the superintendent of public security in Puerto Rico.
Abner Gómez Cortés, the head of Puerto Rico’s emergency agency, warned that coastal zones were particular vulnerable — not so much because of rain, as with Harvey — but because of storm surges of up to 20 feet.
On Tuesday, the lines for fast-dwindling gas, food, water and hardware seemed interminable and anxiety mounted. One hardware store in San Juan had been nearly picked clean by afternoon.
“This has been like this for the last three days,” said Juan Carlos Ramirez, the store manager. “We’ve sold all of the most necessary items — flashlight, batteries, plywood.”
People standing in line said one of their biggest worries was the expected loss of electricity for long periods. “The infrastructure can’t cope with a hurricane,” Ashley Albelo, a shopper, said.
Outside a Sears, Maria Ruiz could not help but remember Hurricanes Hugo and George, which badly damaged Puerto Rico. “Destruction,” she said. “That is what we can expect based on past experiences, and it’s already a Category 5.’’
Similar fears were apparent on nearby islands. In Antigua, southeast of Puerto Rico, many businesses were closed. Supermarkets were overrun and gas stations were packed.SINGAPORE: A Singaporean man has been implicated in terrorism-related activities in the southern Philippines, said a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) spokesperson on Friday (May 26).
He has been identified as Muhamad Ali Abdul Rahiman @ Muawiya, and has been in the southern Philippines since the 1990s.
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However, MHA said there is no information about whether he is involved in the armed insurgency in Marawi City on Mindanao island, where the Philippine army has been trying to flush out rebels of the Islamic State-linked Maute group.
MHA was responding to media queries following reports that |
will appear for background which when clicked will enable you to choose from a set of stock photos.
There is quite a nice set of wallpapers available but I always like to go for one I find on the internet. An alternative way to set wallpaper is to find the image you like online, download it to a folder and then open the file in shotwell. You can then choose to set the image as the desktop background.
Connecting to the internet Fedora like all modern Linux distributions makes it easy to connect to the internet. Just click the network icon in the top right hand corner and a list of wireless devices is available. Both my home broadband and mobile broadband networks were found straight away. All I had to do was click on the network and enter the security key and I was connected to the internet. Flash and MP3 Fedora is all about freedom and neither Flash nor MP3s fall into that category. So what are the options? Well I normally in these occasions go searching for the quick fix of going to Google and searching for the answer. As this is Fedora however I wanted to investigate the free options on offer to see if we can truly work without proprietary software. Firstly there is the Flash issue. If you look in the Package Manager there is an option for Gnash, which is an open source Flash player. Gnash includes a FireFox add-in which is handy because the default browser in Fedora is FireFox. I decided to try Gnash out and to see if it worked I went to Youtube and unfortunately the image below says it all. I didn’t have much success. None of the videos would play. I therefore decided to try another Flash site called Miniclip which has online Flash games to see if the problem was isolated to Youtube. Unfortunately none of the games could be played. I read the Fedora documentation at this point (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flash). With regards to Youtube, the Fedora documentation makes the suggestion to sign up for WebM support and after doing this I was able to watch a good selection of Videos. Not all of them worked but the majority did. I could not find a way to get the games on Miniclip to play. I therefore bit the bullet and installed Flash. The truth is HTML 5 will take over at some point and the reliance on Flash will become less and less but Flash will be around for quite some time yet. I have tried Gnash more than once in the past and it doesn’t seem to improve. (Unless I am doing something wrong). At the moment Flash is still one of those things that is used often enough on websites to make it a necessity. Moving on to MP3s. Now the free compressed music format is OGG Vorbis. In order to realistically use OGG Vorbis regularly I need a few things. Firstly I need my personal music device to be able to support OGG. Now whilst my current player doesn’t support OGG there are a good selection of players available that do.
OGG players are available in most good electrical retailers and a few bad ones as well.
The next thing I need is to be able to get the music from my CD collection into OGG format. That is easily done as there are a number of converters available.
I also have a lot of music files already in MP3 format. Now here is a weird thing. You can convert from MP3 which is a compressed format to OGG which is also a compressed format with minimal if no degradation in quality. Again there are an abundance of tools for this job.
The final thing I would need to switch to OGG forever is an online store that sells music in OGG format. Now I have had quite a search online and there are no major online music stores providing music in OGG format.
For me that is a problem. If you can’t buy music in OGG format then you would have to buy it in MP3 format. If you buy it in MP3 format and you need a converter to convert to OGG then you are using proprietary codecs to perform the conversion.
I have come to the conclusion that I may as well stick with MP3 format. If there was a music store for OGG format music or FLAC then I would be more than happy to ditch MP3 as well as it would save the GStreamer plug-in issues that are encountered in certain distributions.
Fedora has documentation about how to get MP3s working and so I followed that guide and I was able to listen to MP3s. ( http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/MP3
Applications
Fedora comes with the following applications:
Games
Aisleriot solitaire
Freecell solitaire Graphics
Document viewer
Image viewer
Shotwell
LibreOffice Draw Internet Boxes – Virtual Machines
Firefox – Web Browser
Empathy – Mail Client
Remote Desktop
Transmission – BitTorrent Office
LibreOffice Sound/Video
Cheese – Webcam
Brasero – Disk burning
Rhythmbox – Audio
Videos – Video player There are a host of accessories and system tools available as well.
Installing applications
To install applications in Fedora you can use the graphic packagekit. Simply press the “Super” key and start typing “software”.
The graphical tool is nicely laid out. On the left hand side there is a list of categories and on the right hand side a list of applications that fall into the category. There is a search box as well which enables you to search by name or keyword.
You can check all the boxes of all the items that you wish to install and then click apply. This will then find all the dependencies for the applications you wish to install.
I had a small problem the very first time I ran this tool in that it constantly said “Queueing” and wouldn’t find any applications. The only way to solve this was to open a terminal and look for processes containing “packagekit”. I then killed the rogue process and the problem was solved and it has never come back.
The alternative to using the graphical tool is using Yum. Here is a basic cheat sheet ( http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/YumCommands ).
Yum is to Fedora what Apt is to Debian.
So what is in the repositories? Google Chrome isn’t in the repository. You can go to the Google website and download Chrome but when I did that I received the following error:
Again I decided to refer to the Fedora documentation ( http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Chromium ). This gives concise instructions on how to install Chromium.
If you really want to make your life easier in Fedora then visit this link http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration/ as it gives you the options required to get non-free software into Fedora.
What is new in Fedora 18?
If you are coming from Fedora 17 then you should perhaps read the release notes before upgrading. http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Release_Notes/
Summary
Ideally I would like to follow the Fedora concept and live in a “Free” world but realistically I don’t think that is going to happen any time soon.
Fedora is a really nice distribution.
Criticisms of the installer are a little over the top. Just read the documentation, read other people’s guides, watch a Youtube video.
The Gnome desktop also takes a lot of unwarranted criticism. It is a modern desktop for a modern way of computing. I think for a lot of users who just want to work without tinkering with configuring the desktop it is very intuitive and I can navigate to any application or window with one or two keystrokes.
Fedora is a crisp distribution. It feels very much a polished distribution in the same way that Ubuntu or Mint is and the only issue really is the lack of non-free software.
It is relatively easy to get around the non-free software issue by visiting the RPMFusion page and following the instructions.
I had a couple of errors early on but they went away and have never returned.
Thank you for reading.Teaching Huck Finn:
The Controversy and the Challenge
Resources on this Site: 1. The Struggle for Tolerance by Peaches Henry. 2. Racism and Huckleberry Finn by Allen Webb (includes list of works for teaching about slavery). Additional Internet Resources: 1. A site created for teachers by WGBH television to compliment the PBS special, "Born to Trouble," that focuses on the innovative Huck Finn curriculum developed in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. 2. The Huck Finn and Censorship Teacher Cyberguide developed for the California Online Resources for Educators Project. The Struggle for Tolerance: Race and Censorship in Huckleberry Finn Peaches Henry Satire and Evasion: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn, 1992 In the long controversy that has been Huckleberry Finn's history, the novel has been criticized, censored, and banned for an array of perceived failings, including obscenity, atheism, bad grammar, coarse manners, low moral tone, and antisouthernism. Every bit as diverse as the reasons for attacking the novel, Huck Finn's detractors encompass parents, critics, authors, religious fundamentalists, rightwing politicians, and even librarians.(1)
Ironically, Lionel Trifling, by marking Huck Finn as "one of the world's great books and one of the central documents of American culture," (2) and T. S. Eliot, by declaring it "a masterpiece," (3) struck the novel certainly its most fateful and possibly its most fatal blow. Trilling's and Eliot's resounding endorsements provided Huck with the academic respectability and clout that assured his admission into America's classrooms. Huck's entrenchment in the English curricula of junior and senior high schools coincided with Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, the Supreme Court case that ended public school segregation, legally if not actually, in 1954. Desegregation and the civil rights movement deposited Huck in the midst of American literature classes which were no longer composed of white children only, but now were dotted with black youngsters as well. In the faces of these children of the revolution, Huck met the group that was to become his most persistent and formidable foe. For while the objections of the Gilded Age, of fundamentalist religious factions, and of unreconstructed Southerners had seemed laughable and transitory, the indignation of black students and their parents at the portrayal of blacks in Huck Finn was not at all comical and has not been short-lived.
The presence of black students in the classrooms of white America the attendant tensions of a country attempting to come to terms with its racial tragedies, and the new empowerment of blacks to protest led to Huck Finn's greatest struggle with censorship and banning. Black protesters, offended by the repetitions of "nigger" in the mouths of white and black characters, Twain's minstrellike portrayal of the escaped slave Jim and of black characters in general, and the negative traits assigned to blacks, objected to the use of Huck Finn in English courses. Though blacks may have previously complained about the racially offensive tone of the novel, it was not until September 1957 that the New York Times reported the first case that brought about official reaction and obtained public attention for the conflict. The New York City Board of Education had removed Huck Finn from the approved textbook lists of elementary and junior high schools. The book was no longer available for classroom use at the elementary and junior high school levels, but could be taught in high school and purchased for school libraries. Though the Board of Education acknowledged no outside pressure to ban the use of Huck Finn, a representative of one publisher said that school officials had cited "some passages derogatory to Negroes" as the reason for its contract not being renewed. The NAACP, denying that it had placed any organized pressure on the board to remove Huck Finn, nonetheless expressed displeasure with the presence of "racial slurs" and "belittling racial designations" in many of Twain's works. (4) Whether or not the source of dissatisfaction could be identified, disapproval of Huck Finn's racial implications existed and had made itself felt.
The discontent with the racial attitudes of Huck Finn that began in 1957 has surfaced periodically over the past thirty years. In 1963 the Philadelphia Board of Education, after removing Huck Finn, replaced it with an adapted version which "tone[d] down the violence, simplify[d] the Southern dialect, and delete[d] all derogatory references to Negroes." (5) A civil rights leader in Pasco, Washington, attacked Twain's use of "nigger" in 1967 (6) two years later MiamiDade Junior College (Miami, Florida) excised the text from its required reading list after Negro students complained that it "embarrassed them" (7) Around 1976, striking a bargain with parents of black students who demanded the removal of Huck Finn from the curriculum, the administration of New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, agreed to withdraw the novel from required courses and confined Huck to the environs of elective courses and the school library. This compromise did not end Huck's problems in that northshore Chicago upper middleclass community, however, for as recently as March 1988 black parents "discovered" Huck in American Studies, an elective course team taught by an English teacher and an American history teacher, and once again approached school administrators about banning the book. (8)
The most outspoken opponent to Huck Finn has been John Wallace, a former administrator at the Mark Twain Intermediate School (Fairfax County, Virginia), who in 1982, while serving on the school's Human Relations Committee, spearheaded a campaign to have Huck stricken from school curricula. A decision by the school's principal to yield to the Human Relations Committee's recommendations was later overridden by the superintendent of schools. Repeatedly scoring the book as "racist trash," Wallace has raised the issue in other school districts throughout his twentyeightyear tenure in public education. Since the Fairfax County incident, he has appeared on ABC's "Nightline" and CNN's "Freeman Reports" and has traveled the country championing the cause of black children who he says are embarrassed and humiliated by the legitimization of "nigger" in public schools. Devoted to the eradication of Huck Finn from the schools, he has "authored" an adapted version of Twain's story. (9) Wallace, aggressively if not eloquently, enunciates many of the deleterious effects that parents and those who support them feel the teaching of Huck Finn in junior high and senior high schools has on their children. (10)
The fact that people from Texas to Iowa to Illinois to Pennsylvania to Florida to Virginia to New York City concur with Wallace's assessment of Huck Finn demands the attention of the academic community. To condemn concerns about the novel as the misguided rantings of "know nothings and noise makers" (11) is no longer valid or profitable; nor can the invocation of Huck's immunity under the protectorate of "classic" suffice. Such academic platitudes no longer intimidate, nor can they satisfy, parents who have walked the halls of the university and have shed their awe of academe. If the academic establishment remains unmoved by black readers' dismay, the news that Huck Finn ranks ninth on the list of thirty books most frequently challenged (12) should serve as testimony that the book's "racial problem" is one of more consequence than the ancillary position to which scholars have relegated it. (13) Certainly, given Huck Finn's high position in the canon of American literature, its failure to take on mythic proportions for, or even to be a pleasant read for, a segment of secondary school students merits academic scrutiny.
The debate surrounding the racial implications of Huck Finn and its appropriateness for the secondary school classroom gives rise to myriad considerations. The actual matter and intent of the text are a source of contention. The presence of the word "nigger," the treatment of Jim and blacks in general, the somewhat difficult satiric mode, and the ambiguity of theme give pause to even the most flexible reader. Moreover, as numerous critics have pointed out, neither junior high nor high school students are necessarily flexible or subtle readers. The very profundity of the text renders the process of teaching it problematic and places special emphasis on teacher ability and attitude. Student cognitive and social maturity also takes on special significance in the face of such a complicated and subtle text.
The nature of the complexities of Huck Finn places the dynamics of the struggle for its inclusion in or exclusion from public school curricula in two arenas. On the one hand, the conflict manifests itself as a contest between lay readers and socalled scholarly experts, particularly as it concerns the text. Public school administrators and teachers, on the other hand, field criticisms that have to do with the context into which the novel is introduced. In neither case, however, do the opponents appear to hear each other. Too often, concerned parents are dismissed by academia as "neurotics" (14) who have fallen prey to personal racial insecurities or have failed to grasp Twain's underlying truth. In their turn, censors regard academics as inhabitants of ivory towers who pontificate on the virtue of Huck Finn without recognizing its potential for harm. School officials and parents clash over the school's right to intellectual freedom and the parents' right to protect their children from perceived racism.
Critics vilify Twain most often and most vehemently for his aggressive use of the pejorative term "nigger." Detractors, refusing to accept the good intentions of a text that places the insulting epithet so often in the mouths of characters, black and white, argue that no amount of intended irony or satire can erase the humiliation experienced by black children. Reading Huck Finn aloud adds deliberate insult to insensitive injury, complain some. In a letter to the New York Times, Allan B. Ballard recalls his reaction to having Huck Finn read aloud "in a predominantly white junior high school in Philadelphia some 30 years ago."
I can still recall the anger I felt as my white classmates read aloud the word "nigger." In fact, as I write this letter I am getting angry all over again. I wanted to sink into my seat. Some of the whites snickered, others giggled. I can recall nothing of the literary merits of this work that you term "the greatest of all American novels." I only recall the sense of relief I felt when I would flip ahead a few pages and see that the word "nigger" would not be read that hour. (15)
Moreover, the presentation of the novel as an "American classic" serves as an official endorsement of a term uttered by the most prejudiced racial bigots to an age group eager to experiment with any language of shock value. One reporter has likened the teaching of the novel to eighthgrade kids to "pulling the pin of a hand grenade and tossing it into the all too common American classroom." (16)
Some who have followed Huck Finn's racial problems express dismay that some blacks misunderstand the ironic function Twain assigned "nigger" or that other blacks, inspite of their comprehension of the irony, will allow themselves and their progeny to be defeated by a mere pejorative. Leslie Fiedler would have parents "prize Twain's dangerous and equivocal novel not in spite of its use of that wicked epithet, but for the way in which it manages to ironize it; enabling us finallywithout denying our horror or our guiltto laugh therapeutically at the 'peculiar institution' of slavery." (17) If Wallace has taken it upon himself to speak for the opponents of Huck Finn, Nat Hentoff, libertarian journalist for the Village Voice, has taken equal duty as spokesperson for the novel's champions. Hentoff believes that confronting, Huck will give students "the capacity to see past words like 'nigger'.. into what the writer is actually saying." He wonders, "What's going to happen to a kid when he gets into the world if he's going to let a word paralyze him so he can't think?" (18) Citing an incident in Warrington, Pennsylvania, where a black eighth grader was allegedly verbally and physically harassed by white students after reading Huck Finn in class, Hentoff declares the situation ripe for the educational plucking by any "reasonably awake teacher." He enthuses: What a way to get Huck and Jim, on the one hand, and all those white racists they meet., on the other hand, off the pages of the book and into that very classroom. Talk about a book coming alive!
Look at that Huck Finn. Reared in racism, like all the white kids in his town. And then, on the river, on the raft with Jim, shucking off that blind ignorance because this runaway slave is the most honest, perceptive, fairminded man this white boy has ever known. What a book for the children, all the children, in Warrington, Pennsylvania, in 1982! (19)
Hentoff laments the fact that teachers missed such a teachable moment and mockingly reports the compromise agreed uponby parents and school officials, declaring it a "victory for niceness." Justin Kaplan flatly denies that "anyone, of any color, who had actually read Huckleberry Finn, instead of merely reading or hearing about it, and who had allowed himself or herself even the barest minimum of intelligent response to its underlying spirit and intention, could accuse it of being 'racist' because some of its characters use offensive racial epithets. (20) Hentoff's mocking tone and reductive language Kaplan's disdainful and condescending attitude, and Fiedler's erroneous supposition that "nigger" can be objectified so as to allow a black person "to laugh therapeutically" at slavery illustrate the incapacity of non-blacks to comprehend the enormous emotional freight attached to the hateword "nigger" for each black person. Nigger is "fightin" words and everyone in this country, black and white, knows it." (21) In his autobiography, Langston Hughes offers a cogent explanation of the signification of "nigger" to blacks:
The word nigger to colored people of high and low degree is like a red rag to a bull. Used rightly or wrongly, ironically or seriously, of necessity for the sake of realism, or impishly for the sake of comedy, it doesn't matter. Negroes do not like it in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so sympathetic in its treatment of the basic problems of the race. Even though the book or play is written by a Negro, they still do not like it.
The word nigger, you see, sums up for us who are colored all the bitter years of insult and struggle in America. (22)
Nonblacks know implicitly that to utter "nigger" in the presence of a Negro is to throw down a gauntlet that will be taken up with a vengeance.
To dismiss the word's recurrence in the work as an accurate rendition of nineteenthcentury American linguistic conventions denies what every black person knows: far more than a synonym for slave, "nigger" signifies a concept. It conjures centuries of specifically black degradation and humiliation during which the family was disintegrated, education was denied, manhood was trapped within a forced perpetual puerilism, and womanhood was destroyed by concubinage. If one grants that Twain substituted "nigger" for "slave," the implications of the word do not improve; "nigger" denotes the black man as a commodity, as chattel. (23)
In addition to serving as a reminder of the "peculiar institution" "nigger" encapsulates the decades of oppression that followed emancipation. "It means not only racist terror and lynch mobs but that victims 'deserve it.'" (24) Outside Central High in Little Rock in 1954 it was emblazoned across placards; and across the South throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s it was screamed by angry mobs. Currently, it is the chief taunt of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. In short, "nigger" has the odious distinction of signifying all "the shame, the frustration, the rage, the fear" that has been so much a part of the history of race relations in the United States, and blacks still consider it "'dirtier" than any of the oncetaboo foursyllable AngloSaxon monosyllabics." (25) So to impute blacks' abhorrence of "nigger" to hypersensitivity compounds injustice with callousness and signals a refusal to acknowledge that the connotations of "that word" generate a cultural discomfort that blacks share with no other racial group.
To counteract the Pavlovian response that "nigger" triggers for many black readers, some scholars have striven to reveal the positive function the word serves in the novel by exposing the discrepancy between the dehumanizing effect of the word and the real humanity Of Jim. (26) Fiedler cites the passage in which Huck lies to Aunt Sally about a steamboat explosion that hurt no one but "killed a nigger," and Aunt Sally callously responds, "Well, it's lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt" (chap. 32); he notes that the passage brims with humor at the expense of Aunt Sally and the convention to which she conforms. But Fiedler is also of the opinion that Huck does not get the jokedoes not recognize the humor of the fact that he and Aunt Sally by "dehumanizing the Negro diminish their own humanity. (27) It seems to Huck's foes (and to me) that if Huck does not get the joke, then there is no joke, and he becomes as culpable as Aunt Sally. However, Fiedler's focus on this dialogue is to the point, because racial objectors isolate it as one of the most visible and detrimental slurs of the novel. The highlighting of this passage summons contrasting perspectives on it. Kaplan argues that "one has to be deliberately dense to miss the point Mark Twain is making here and to construe such passages as evidences of his 'racism." (28) Detractors drawing the obvious inference from the dialogue, arrive at a conclusion different from Kaplan's, and their response cannot simply be disregarded as that of the unsophisticated reader. In order to believe in Twain's satirical intention, one has to believe in Huck's good faith toward Jim. That is to say, one has to believe that, rather than reflecting his own adherence to such conventions, Huck simply weaves a tale that marks him as a "rightthinking" youngster.
The faith in Huck that Twain's defenders display grows out of the manner in which he acquits himself at his celebrated "crisis of conscience," less than twentyfour hours prior to his encounter with Aunt Sally. There is no denying the rightness of Huck's decision to risk his soul for Jim. But there is no tangible reason to assume that the regard Huck acquires for Jim during his odyssey down the river is generalized to encompass all blacks. Further, Huck's choice to "go to hell" has little to do with any respect he has gained for Jim as a human being with an inalienable right to be owned by no one. Rather, his personal affection for the slave governs his overthrow of societal mores. It must be remembered that Huck does not adjudge slavery to be wrong; he selectively disregards a system that he ultimately believes is right. So when he discourses with Aunt Sally, he is expressing views he still holds. His emancipatory attitudes extend no further than his love for Jim. It seems valid to argue that were he given the option of freeing other slaves, Huck would not necessarily choose manumission.
Twain's apparent "perpetuation of racial stereotypes" through his portrayal of Jim and other blacks in Huck Finn bears relation to his use of "nigger" and has fostered vociferous criticism from antiHuck Finn forces. Like the concept "nigger," Twain's depiction of blacks, particularly Jim, represents the tendency of the dominant white culture to saddle blacks with traits that deny their humanity and mark them as inferior. Critics disparage scenes that depict blacks as childish, inherently less intelligent than whites, superstitious beyond reason and common sense, and grossly ignorant of standard English. Further, they charge that in order to entertain his white audience, Twain relied upon the stock conventions of "black minstrelsy," which "drew upon European traditions of using the mask of blackness to mock individuals or social forces." (29) Given the seemingly negative stereotypical portraits of blacks, parents concerned that children, black and white, be exposed to positive models of blacks are convinced that Huck Finn is inappropriate for secondary classrooms.
Critics express their greatest displeasure with Twain's presentation of Jim, the runaway slave viewed by most as second only to Huck in importance to the novel's thematic structure. Although he is the catalyst that spurs Huck along his odyssey of conscience, Jim commences the novel (and to some degree remains) as the stereotypical, superstitious "darky" that Twain's white audience would have expected and in which they would have delighted.
In his essay "Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke," Ralph Ellison examines the play Twain gives the minstrel figure. Though Twain does strike Jim in the mold of the minstrel tradition, Ellison believes that we observe "Jim's dignity and human capacity" emerge from "behind this stereotype mask." Yet by virtue of his minstrel mask, Jim's role as an adult is undercut, and he often appears more childlike than Huck. Though Ellison writes that "it is not at all odd that this blackfaced figure of white fan [the minstrel darky] is for Negroes a symbol of everything they rejected in the white man's thinking about race, in themselves and in their own group," his final analysis seems to be that Jim's humanity transcends the limits of the minstrel tradition. (30)
Taking a more critical stance than Ellison, Frederick Woodard and Donnarae MacCann, in "Huckleberry Finn and the Traditions of Blackface Minstrelsy," examine specific incidents throughout the novel in the light of the minstrel tradition. Denying that Jim is used to poke fun at whites, as some scholars suggest, Woodard and MacCann cite the appeal that the "ridiculous or paternalistic portrayals of Black Americans" held for "the white theatregoing audience," Twain's own delight in minstrel shows, and his "willingness to shape his message to his audience." (31) Noting that the stereotypical blackface portrayals were thought to be realistic by Twain and many of his white contemporaries, the pair highlight various incidents in Huck Finn that they think illustrate their contention that Jim plays the minstrel role to Huck's straight man. For instance, Huck's and Jim's debate about French (chap. 14) bears a striking resemblance to the minstrelshow dialogue that Twain deemed "happy and accurate imitation[s] of the usual and familiar negro quarrel." (32) Though Jim's logic is superior to Huck's, argue Woodard and MacCann, the scene plays like a minstrelshow act because "Jim has the informationbase of a child." (33)
Huck Finn advocates, tending to agree with Ellison's judgment that Jim's fullness of character reveals itself, offer readings of Jim that depart sharply from the Woodard and MacCann assessment. Some view Twain's depiction of Jim early in the novel as the necessary backdrop against which Huck's gradual awareness of Jim's humanity is revealed. These early renditions of Jim serve more to lay bare Huck's initial attitudes toward race and racial relations than they do to characterize Jim, positively or negatively. As the two fugitives ride down the Mississippi deeper and deeper into slave territory, the power of Jim's personality erodes the prejudices Huck's culture (educational, political, social, and legal) has instilled. Such readings of passages that appear to emphasize Jim's superstitions, gullibility, or foolishness allow Twain to escape the charge of racism and be seen as championing blacks by exposing the falseness of stereotypes. This view of Twain's motivation is evident in letters written to the New York Times in protest of the New York City Board of Education's decision to ban the book in 1957:
Of all the characters in Mark Twain's works there probably wasn't any of whom he was fonder than the one that went down the river with Huck Finn. It is true that this character is introduced as "Miss Watson's big nigger, named Jim." That was the Missouri vernacular of the day. But from there on to the end of the story Miss Watson's Jim is a warm human being, lovable and admirable. (34)
Now, Huckleberry Finn... is a great document in the progress of human tolerance and understanding. Huck begins by regarding Jim, the fugitive slave, very much as the juvenile delinquents of Little Rock regard the Negro today. Gradually, however, he discovers that Jim, despite the efforts of society to brutalize him, is a noble human being who deserves his protection, friendship, and respect. This theme of growing love is made clear throughout the book. (35)
In another vein, some defenders of Twain's racial sensitivities assign Jim's initial portrayal a more significant role than mere backdrop. The rubric of "performed ideology" frames Steven Mailloux's interpretation of Jim as he appears in the early "philosophical debates" with Huck. (36) Mailloux explains how a "literary text can take up the ideological rhetoric of its historical moment... and place it on a fictional stage." As "ideological drama," the literary textHuckleberry Finn in this caseinvites readers to become spectators and actors at a rhetorical performance. In fact, the success of the ideological drama depends upon the reader's participation: "The humor and often the ideological point of the novel's many staged arguments... rely upon the reader's ability to recognize patterns of false argumentation." Within the framework of rhetorical performances, then, Jim's minstrel scenes serve "as ideological critique[s] of white supremacy." In each case, however, the dominance of Jim's humanity over the racial discourse of white supremacy hinges upon the reader's recognition of the discrepancy between the two ideologies. (37)
The interpretive job that Mailloux does on the "French question" in chapter 14 exonerates the passage of any racial negativity. Huck's disdainful comment that "you can't learn a nigger to argue" renders the debate little more than a literary version of a minstrel dialogue unless readers recognize the superior rhetorician: "Of course, readers reject the racist slur as a rationalization. They know Huck gives up because he has lost the argument: it is precisely because Jim has learned to argue by imitating Huck that he reduces his teacher to silence. Far from demonstrating Jim's inferior knowledge, the debate dramatizes his argumentative superiority, and in doing so makes a serious ideological point through a rhetoric of humor." (38) The vigorous critical acumen with which Mailloux approaches the role played by Jim is illustrative of the interpretative tacks taken by academics. Most view Twain's depiction of Jim as an ironic attempt to transcend the very prejudices that dissidents accuse him of perpetuating.
Though there has been copious criticism of the Jim who shuffles his way across the pages of Huckleberry Finn's opening chapters, the Jim who darkens the closing chapters of the novel elicits even more (and more universally agreedupon) disapprobation. Most see the closing sequence, which begins at Huck's encounter with Aunt Sally, as a reversal of any moral intention that the preceding chapters imply. The significance that Twain's audience has attached to the journey down the riverJim's pursuit of freedom and Huck's gradual recognition of the slave's humannessis rendered meaningless by the entrance of Tom Sawyer and his machinations to "free" Jim.
The particular offensiveness to blacks of the closing sequence of Huckleberry Finn results in part from expectations that Twain has built up during the raft ride down the river. As the two runaways drift down the Mississippi, Huck (along with the reader) watches Jim emerge as a man whose sense of dignity and selfrespect dwarf the minstrel mask. No one can deny the manly indignation evinced by Jim when Huck attempts to convince him that he has only dreamed their separation during the night of the heavy fog. Huck himself is so struck by Jim's passion that he humbles himself "to a nigger" and "warn't ever sorry for it afterwards" (chap. 15).
From this point, the multidimensionality of Jim's personality erodes Huck's socialized attitudes about blacks. During the night, thinking that Huck is asleep, Jim vents the adult frustrations he does not expect Huck to understand or alleviate; he laments having to abandon his wife and two children: "Po' little Lizbeth! Po' little Johnny! It's might hard; I spec' I ain't ever gwyne to see you no mo', no mo"' (chap. 2.3). Berating himself for having struck his fouryear old daughter, Elizabeth, in punishment for what he thought was blatant disobedience, Jim tells Huck of his remorse after discovering that the toddler had gone deaf without his knowledge. Through such poignant moments Huck learns, to his surprise, that Jim "cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their'n. It don't seem natural, but I reckon it's so" (chap. 23).
Finally, in the welcome absence of Pap, Jim becomes a surrogate father to Huck, allowing the boy to sleep when he should stand watch on the raft, giving him the affection his natural father did not, and making sure that the raft is stocked and hidden. Thus Twain allows Jim to blossom into a mature, complex human being whom Huck admires and respects. The fullness of character with which Twain imbues Jim compels Huck to "decide, forever, betwixt two things." The reader applauds Hucks' acceptance of damnation for helping Jim and affixes all expectations for the rest of the novel to this climactic moment.
Having thus tantalized readers with the prospect of harmonious relations between white and black, Twain seems to turn on his characters and his audience. Leo Marx, who mounted the bestknown attack on the novel's ending in his essay "Mr. Eliot, Mr. Trilling, and Huckleberry Finn," describes it as a glaring lapse "of moral vision" resulting from Twain's inability to "acknowledge the truth his novel contained." (39) Readers' discomfort with the "evasion" sequence results from discrepancies between the Jim and Huck who grow in stature on the raft and the impostors who submit to Tom. Fritz Oehschlaeger's "'Gwyne to Git Hung': The Conclusion of Huckleberry Finn" expresses the frustrations that many experience regarding the evasion:
The... shift in tone from one of high seriousness to one of low burlesque is so abrupt as to be almost chilling. Clemens has simply made the issues too serious for us |
enna tattoos, praise Jesus.Sad that you apparently like these actors enough to get a tattoo of them, and they couldn't give less of a shit about Twilight."There are no rules that can bind you when you find your other half"Really? Gigantic bloody gashes seemed like a good idea for a tattoo?"You are my life now..."Dear God... I don't even... SERIOUSLY?RPattz is scared.I have no idea if this will be accepted. I just found all these myself on Google, and just thought ONTD would get a kick out of it.After dealing with angst-filled complaints from Windows Phone users for months, Microsoft's Joe Belfiore this week tried to reassure fans that the firm "hadn't forgotten about" them. But he did so via the Chinese microblogging service Weibo, which would make sense if those frustrated fans lived in China. Which... they don't.
This kind of thing makes me crazy—if only Microsoft had some other means of communicating with these fans. Maybe a corporate blog of some kind? No?—because it's emblematic of the inability to communicate that has hobbled Microsoft for years. And of the disconnect that the firm still has with its biggest fans, many of whom are thinking of jumping ship because "mobile first, cloud first" apparently really means "iOS and Android first, then we'll see what happens."
And seriously, I'm all about the brave face and stiff upper lip and all. But come on. Weibo?
Anyway, when it comes to improving mobile Office, suffice to say that 2014 saw the first-ever releases of full-blown Office for iPad, iPhone and Android, major improvements to Office Online, and absolutely no changes at all to the Office Mobile that's built-into Windows Phone, an app that dates back several years now with few if any improvements along the way. (There hasn't been a single meaningful change to Office Mobile since Windows Phone 8.0 shipped over two years ago, at the very least.)
What we did know before Belfiore's Weibo post was that Microsoft has been plotting an "Office Touch for Windows" for years, and that over time things have evolved. Now, Office Touch will be a universal app that works on both Windows and Windows Phone. And now it will be artificially delayed until the release of Windows 10, which paradoxically should see the "end" of Windows Phone anyway, since it will be reportedly melded with Windows RT into a single product. So Office Touch for Windows won't ship—in final form at least—until late 2015. Or later if Windows 10 is delayed again.
So. What did Mr. Belfiore actually communicate?
"I want to acknowledge the comments and letters you all have sent, noting that you've been frustrated seeing Microsoft launch new applications like Office on iOS and Android, without accompanying news around what will happen on Windows Phone," he wrote in his post. "I want to assure you that our Office team has not forgotten about Windows Phone – we're just aligning all of our news and announcements to a single event. You'll hear much more about what we have planned before Chinese New Year."
A quick Google Search reveals date is Thursday, February 19. Microsoft is holding a Windows 10 event in Redmond on January 21, which is almost exactly a month before that, so I suppose we should expect this news at that event or at some China-based event, perhaps, which could happen in the interim.
Don't live in China? Then you'll thrill to learn that Microsoft is also working hard to improve Windows Phone... specifically for China. That stuff will be revealed in the coming months and... whatever.
I assume and hope that Belfiore is simply trying to keep a lid on what Microsoft will announce later this month and that 2015 will be nothing like 2014. But as a long-suffering Windows Phone fan, I've received precious little good news this past year. I do understand the need to attract the next billion. But let's not actually forget about your current users and biggest fans in the process, Microsoft. Please.‘You guys save lives, we save phones’ – paramedic whose mobile was wrecked on the job given free replacement
PARAMEDICS face tough situations on the job every day, and it’s nice to know some of those who are able to are helping our front line lifesavers out.
Victorian medic Mike Ray was called to help a man who was attempting suicide by entering the sea. His efforts, as well as those of his partner and police, were successful and the man was saved.
“As a Paramedic, we occasionally find ourselves in unpredictable situations, helping people in their hour of most need. Sometimes they realise this, sometimes they do not,” Mike said in a public post on Facebook.
“In all the commotion… I did not have time to remove my iPhone, or anything else, from my pockets, and it was irreparably water damaged.
“With no expectations, I took it to Apple [in Narre Warren], who upon hearing the story offered to replace the phone at no cost.
“The kind words of the Apple [employee,] ‘you guys save lives, we save phones,’ were certainly not unnoticed.”
I rarely write posts like this and am far from a fan of Apple’s products, but that is not the point of sharing this story. The gesture of the staff who handled Mike’s replacement is a strong one, and hopefully sets a precedent for successful businesses giving back to their communities.
Now if only Apple would pay its taxes we could better fund our support services. A free phone is great and has made a positive impact in one lifesaver’s world, but we cannot let that gloss over the billion-dollar multinational’s cheating of the Australian people.
If you or someone you know is having difficulties with depression or anxiety, you can contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 or at www.beyondblue.org.au for support and advice.KORN frontman Jonathan Davis has confirmed to Westword that he is working on a project with BIG & RICH, the American country music duo composed of Big Kenny and John Rich. He said: "The BIG & RICH thing, I'm doing a country record. It's a record to commemorate the Bakersfield sound. I'm not going country or touring as a country artist. But it's a compilation of a whole lot of Bakersfield-sound songs that I'm covering with country artists.'
He continued: "It's pretty cool. BIG & RICH did 'Waitin' In Your Welfare Line' from Buck Owens. They're doing the background harmonies and all that shit. It's not like I'm trying to go country, though. I'm from Bakersfield, and it was a huge thing back in the '60s. I wanted to pay homage to that."
Davis also spoke about his collaboration with shock rocker Marilyn Manson. He said: "We're going to get together and write some music and see what happens. I'm going to get back and start working with him on ideas and shit. We hadn't talked for a long time and we recently hooked up again. He was one of my best friends back in the day. We just rekindled our friendship and started talking a lot about doing something together. I love the dude to death. He's a great guy. So I'm down to do something cool."
Manson said this past summer that he was working on "Southern-sounding" acoustic blues material — and that it will feature Davis. Speaking in a Reddit session with fans, Manson revealed that a "completely unexpected" project he hinted at was an unplugged record, explaining, "That's some of the plans of the style of music that I'm working on right now. I don't know what it'll turn into. Some of it will be with Jonathan Davis, I think, because he has plans of doing something similar — something that might even cross over the boundaries of being more Southern-sounding."
Manson added: "I did record [1995 EP] 'Smells Like Children' in Mississippi, which is where the blues came from, so there might be something more acoustic and blues in my future. I like the rawness of it."
Manson and Davis last joined forces in 2002 on a song called "Redeemer" for the soundtrack of the movie "Queen Of The Damned".(CNN) -- An Oakland, California-area transit police officer was captured on video forcing an unruly man into a heavy-duty glass window, which shattered, during an arrest at a passenger station.
The video, posted on YouTube, shows an unidentified Bay Area Rapid Transit officer in a scuffle with a man whom authorities identified as Michael Joseph Gibson, 37, of San Leandro, California.
Gibson, who appears disgruntled and gesturing while on a train at the West Oakland Station, is pulled off the train by an officer, who has the man in an arm grip.
The officer forcibly walks the man toward the station wall, which is topped by large windows, and one window shatters as the officer appears to force the man against it. It was unclear exactly what caused the glass to break.
The incident happened about 5:40 p.m. PT Saturday (8:40 p.m. ET), according to a statement from BART police Sunday. The officer sustained facial lacerations and a concussion, while Gibson suffered cuts to his hand, forearm, palm and a cut to his head. Both were treated at a hospital.
"This is a use-of-force case that we will thoroughly investigate," BART Police Patrol Commander Daniel O. Hartwig said in a statement. "We will review all available information and video and are requesting anybody with any other video or information to please come forward."
Once released, Gibson was booked into the Santa Rita County Jail. He faces charges of battery on a police officer with injury and resisting arrest -- both felonies -- and public intoxication, a misdemeanor.
The officer was placed on leave due to his injuries, authorities said.
The suspect's sister, Lisa Gibson, of Antioch, California, said Sunday that her brother was diagnosed with bipolar/schizophrenic disorder and is under a doctor's care. She said he was released from hospitalization earlier this month.
She said her brother appears to have been intoxicated in the video. Still, she blasted the officer who made the arrest, saying, "Whoever this officer is shouldn't have a job. He has no integrity and a combative mind-set."
Saturday's scuffle is the latest incident to draw attention to BART.
Johannes Mehserle, a former BART officer charged with murder in the January shooting death of an unarmed man at a transit station, faces trial in Los Angeles County.
The circumstances of the shooting -- also caught on video -- prompted widespread media coverage and protests. In an October order moving the case, a judge cited those as factors affecting the likelihood of a fair trial in Alameda County, where the shooting happened.The online hacktivist collective Anonymous claims it has knocked almost 500 Israeli websites offline in a coordinated cyber-attack in support of the people of Palestine.
The group has also published the emails, passwords and phone numbers of Israeli officials as part of the OpIsrael campaign.
Also called OpIsraelBirthday, the cyber-attacks were launched on 7 April to coincide with the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, with most websites knocked offline by distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS).
The websites targeted are predominantly Israeli government and administration websites. However some of the websites which Anonymous claim to have attacked - such as the Israel Agricultural Research Organisation - are currently online.
Leaked emails and phone numbers
In addition ot trying to knock websites offline, one of the groups spearheading the attack - known as AnonGhost - has published what it claims are emails, passwords and phone numbers of Israeli government officials.
According to a video posted on YouTube, the reason for the attack is Israel's attacks on the people of Gaza:
"The further assault on the people of Gaza, who have been flooded by your sewage, terrorised by your military apparatus, and left to die at the border while waiting for medical attention will not be tolerated anymore."
The group has called on supporters around the world to take part in the attack, posting links on Twitter and other social media channels to websites which give details on how to take part in the attacks and which websites to target.
Sabu
Some in the collective have warned however that this will leave many of those taking part open to identification and possible prosecution, especially if they have limited technical knowledge and are unable to mask their IP address.
Some of the more conspiratorial members of Anonymous have even suggested this backs up rumours that the US government is using former LulzSec hacker Sabu (aka Hector Monsegur) to instigate OpIsrael.
Reports also suggest that pro-Israeli hackers have launched a counter-attack against the OpIsrael website to post pro-Israeli messages on the site. The website is currently offline.
OpIsrael
This is just the latest cyber-attack by Anonymous groups targeting Israel, with one under the same OpIsrael banner last April promising to "wipe Israel off the face of the internet" - a claim which failed to transpire.
In November of 2012 the group once again launched an OpIsrael campaign in retaliation for attacks on Gaza, claiming to have defaced 87 websites.Looking at everything through numbers and equations just makes more sense than trying to wade your way through some overly complicated man made emotional veil of confusion… However, I’m certain I’m not alone when I say I’ve made some bad decisions that were terribly enjoyable, and some very good decisions that were unbearable. I know dedicating myself to understanding math and science is a good thing… It satisfies me and fulfills my rational mind. But when I find myself back in reality again, I often just feel alone. I find it difficult to enjoy things that most people do. It’s rare that I can have a conversation where I completely relate with someone else and connect on an intellectual level. I know these “nerdy people” who do math and science are perceived to see the world in a different way than most, and though that may be true in some situations, I for one would still like to feel a sense of belonging.
So I’m curious how the many scholarly people in the mathematics/computer science world perceive their world around them. How do you see your role in society? Do you feel like you belong where you are?Editor's note: Nancy Grace's new show on HLN, "Nancy Grace: America's Missing," is dedicated to finding 50 people in 50 days. As part of the effort, which relies heavily on audience participation, CNN.com's news blog This Just In will feature the stories of the missing.
This is the 47th case, and it will be shown Tuesday at 9 p.m. on HLN.
Former child actor Joseph "Joe" Pichler was 18 when he disappeared from his hometown of Bremerton, Washington, more than five years ago.
Friends last saw him in the early morning of January 5, 2006, in Pichler's apartment, where he had been playing cards. After several people were unable to reach him in the coming days, they reported him missing. His vehicle subsequently was found abandoned behind a Bremerton restaurant four days after he was last seen, according to his family.
His family still doesn’t know what happened to him.
Pichler worked as a child actor in local commercials before moving to Los Angeles in the mid-90s. He appeared in movies such as "The Fan," "Varsity Blues" and "Children on Their Birthdays" before moving back to Bremerton, where he graduated high school. He looked forward to moving back to California to resume acting, his family said.
Watch Nancy Grace Monday through Sunday starting at 8 p.m. ET on HLN. For the latest from Nancy Grace click here.New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will announce Thursday he is pulling his state out of the Common Core education standards, bowing to pressure from teachers and parents, as well as conservative fears about government overreach.
Christie, who is expected to declare his candidacy for President in the coming months, began a review of the standards a year ago, just as the issue began bubbling up in town-hall meetings in New Jersey and on the campaign trail.
Developed as a bipartisan proposal by state governors and states’ chiefs of schools six years ago, Common Core has become increasingly toxic politically among conservatives. Several Republican governors who initially supported the Common Core have backed out in recent years, and others have worked hard to distance themselves from it.
Christie’s announcement comes the same day that a lawsuit regarding Common Core, initiated by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who once supported the standards, was heard in a Baton Rouge court. Jindal is suing the U.S. Department of Education for allegedly “coercing” states into adopting Common Core by tying $4.35 billion in federal funding from Race to the Top, and waivers from No Child Left Behind, to the adoption of high standards.
The Obama Administration has moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that states were never required to adopt Common Core in particular, but instead to adopt any “rigorous standards” of their choosing. Forty-six states signed onto Common Core after it was finalized in 2010.
“It’s now been five years since Common Core was adopted. And the truth is that it’s simply not working,” Christie will say in a speech at Burlington County College in New Jersey on Thursday afternoon. “It has brought only confusion and frustration to our parents. And has brought distance between our teachers and the communities where they work.”
The move sets up a contrast between himself and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who remains a supporter of the standards. While Bush has distanced himself rhetorically from the policy, choosing not to use the words Common and Core, his education foundation helped fund and advocated for their implementation nationwide. Ohio Governor John Kasich, a likely GOP contender, has also stood up in defense of Common Core, condemning those in his party who have turned their back on them.
“Sometimes things get to be political and they get to be runaway Internet issues,” Kasich said in New Hampshire in March. “We don’t want the federal government driving K-12 education, and in my state — the state of Ohio — that is simply not the case.”
The reversal comes as Christie’s political fortunes are at a crossroads. His poll numbers have continued to wane from the lingering effects of the politically motivated closure of approach lanes to the George Washington Bridge and a weak fiscal picture in the Garden State. But Christie is pegging his hopes for success on New Hampshire, the libertarian-minded state where the Common Core standards are especially divisive.
Christie is tasking David Hespe, the commissioner of the state’s department of education, to lead a panel that will develop a new set of standards for the state.
“I have heard far too many people — teachers and parents from across the state — that the Common Core standards were not developed by New Jersey educators and parents,” Christie will say according to prepared remarks from his office. “As a result, the buy-in from both communities has not been what we need for maximum achievements. I agree. It is time to have standards that are even higher and come directly from our communities. I agree. It is time to have standards that are even higher and come directly from our communities.”
Common Core has also been a major bone of contention in Democratic states, where opposition to the standards is linked to objections to an uptick in standardized testing. Last year, Chicago schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett tempted federal sanctions by announcing that she did not intend to force her students to take the tests associated with Common Core. Tens of thousands of New York State students also opted out of the Common Core testing regime.
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Write to Haley Sweetland Edwards at haley.edwards@time.com.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. small business optimism jumped in December to its highest level in more than eight years, the latest sign of strength in the economy even as dark clouds settle over global growth.
A shopper carries her groceries to her car after shopping at a grocery store in San Diego, California September 30, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake
The outlook was further bolstered by other data on Tuesday showing job openings approached a 14-year high in November.
“There are concerns about global growth, but the fundamentals for the U.S. economy are very solid and what’s going on overseas should only be a minor drag,” said Gus Faucher, a senior economist at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh.
The National Federation of Independent Business said its Small Business Optimism Index increased 2.3 points to 100.4 last month, the highest reading since October 2006.
The index, which is back at its pre-recession average, was bolstered by a surge in sales expectations as well as hiring, capital outlays and business expansion plans.
The small business sector accounts for about half of the country’s overall gross domestic product and makes up the largest share of hiring.
In a separate report, the Labor Department said job openings, a measure of labor demand, increased 2.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted 4.97 million in November, the highest level since January 2001.
“It doesn’t get any better than this for the economy. This is another sign that the labor market is tightening up and we are already starting to see more help wanted signs out there in store windows,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank in New York.
STRONG JOB GROWTH
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report is one of the indicators being closely watched by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and other policymakers at the U.S. central bank as they contemplate the future course of monetary policy.
It confirmed the recent strong trend in job growth and suggested an acceleration in 2015.
While hiring remained below pre-recession levels, there is little doubt the jobs market is tightening.
The JOLTS report showed there were 1.82 people for every open job in November. That was the smallest ratio since January 2008 and compared to 1.86 in October.
“We view this ratio’s continued decline as indicative of a reduction in labor market slack,” said Jesse Hurwitz, an economist at Barclays in New York.
With more slack being absorbed, wage growth should pick up. There are signs an acceleration is under way.
The NFIB survey showed more businesses are raising wages, with a quarter of respondents in December reporting higher compensation - the largest share since January 2008.
Coupled with the growing signs of a tightening jobs market, it suggests a surprise drop in average hourly earnings in December’s employment report was a fluke.
“That leaves the slump in average hourly earnings in December looking even odder,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.
The NFIB compensation measure correlates closely with the government’s quarterly employment cost index, which is widely regarded as a better gauge of wage growth.
About 17 percent of businesses in the NFIB survey plan to raise compensation in the coming months.Apple’s upcoming release of OS X Mountain Lion takes several features from iOS 5, but also introduces the world to some new features that are also coming to iOS 6. According to trusted sources, iOS 6 will include iCloud Tabs support, Mail VIPs, and a simple, yet handy and so-far praised Notification Center enhancement.
iCloud Tabs is a feature that allows iCloud users to view a list of tabs opened in the Safari web browser across multiple iOS devices and Macs. Although previously rumored, iCloud Tabs is not a feature – in its initial implementation in iOS 6 and Mountain Lion – that syncs your entire current web browser work across devices. When the iCloud Tabs button is clicked on an iOS 6 device (or Mac), all the tabs opened on each device are simply shown in a synchronized list. From here, users can quickly pickup individual tabs that they were working on across their Apple devices. The iCloud Tabs button on the iPhone and iPod touch is hidden behind the Bookmarks toolbar.
Another subtle, yet much requested, feature from Mountain Lion is Mail VIPs. Like in Mountain Lion, Mail VIPs in iOS 6 puts a star next to emails received from a specified group of people. VIPs assigned to iCloud accounts will sync with iCloud across iOS 6 iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, and OS X Mountain Lion Macs. OS X Mountain Lion users have so-far praised the feature, as many users find themselves constantly looking for email from a select group of contacts.
More details after the break…
Mockup of Do Not Disturb toggle (thanks, Spencer Caldwell)
The third, and final bit, of OS X Mountain Lion in iOS 6 that we have heard about is a “Do Not Disturb” feature in iOS 6. When we revealed that the ability to quickly disable alerts and banner for notifications in OS X Mountain Lion, the news was covered and regarded by many Mac users and news outlets as a small addition in terms of functionality, but a major enhancement in terms of user productivity. With the iOS device display sizes, and the full-screen applications on these devices, the ability to easily turn on and off notification alerts is very helpful. Sources say, that while the option is present directly in the Mountain Lion Notification Center, the Do Not Disturb toggle is stationed like the Airplane Mode button in settings (mockup above).
iOS 6 is currently scheduled to reach customers this fall, and it will also include a revamped Maps application in addition to many more enhancements. The new software will launch alongside a brand-new iPhone with both several internal and external changes.INDIANAPOLIS (Feb. 13, 2014) – A manhunt spanning three days ended Thursday morning at a southwest side home after police arrested a man accused of fatally shooting a pizza delivery driver.
Daniel Jaffke, 30, was shot and killed after making a delivery to the Capital Place Apartments on Friday, Jan. 31.
On Thursday, police arrested 27-year-old Shawn Wilson of Indianapolis in connection with Jaffke’s murder. Detectives tracked Wilson to a home in the 3200 block of Byrkit Street, where he initially refused to give himself up. He later surrendered. Preliminary charges against him include murder, robbery and carrying a handgun without a license.
Wilson’s arrest followed a three-day manhunt. Police found a pickup truck stolen from the Fountain Square area Thursday morning in the driveway. Inside the home, police recovered several guns, methamphetamine and paraphernalia associated with a motorcycle gang.
Jaffke was an accomplished musician who delivered pizzas to earn extra money, according to family members. He played several different instruments and also had a full-time job as a skilled machinist. He was the youngest of five sisters and a brother.
Previous stories:
Pizza delivery driver shot and killed on south side after armed carjacking
Man shot and killed remembered as accomplished musician
Memorial fund set up for slain pizza delivery driverMichael Oberdick owns two small gadget repair shops in northwestern Ohio. He and his technicians spend their days at iOutlet replacing busted screens, repairing battered motherboards, and generally making life easier for people who’ve done something stupid with their gadgets. He found this job far easier just five years ago, when he started repairing phones for friends. Back then, anyone with basic tools, a little patience, and an instruction manual could fix just about anything.
But these days, performing all but the most basic repairs requires specialized tools and knowledge that companies like Apple and Samsung guard jealously. That makes it hard for people like Oberdick to earn a living, and for people like you to repair your phone when you drop it. And that is why Oberdick made the long trip to Lincoln, Nebraska, to spend three minutes urging state lawmakers to approve a right-to-repair bill.
“If we do not continue fighting for the right to repair, we may not be here in a few years,” he told me. “It wasn’t a choice, in my opinion, to show up. It was a necessity.”
WIRED Opinion About Kyle Wiens is the co-founder and CEO of iFixit, an online repair community and parts retailer internationally renowned for its open source repair manuals and product teardowns.
Oberdick joined dozens of gadget fixers and recyclers, mechanics and farmers at a hearing on March 9 in Lincoln to support legislation making it easier for consumers to repair broken products. Nebraska is one eight states considering right to repair legislation this year. Bills pending in Kansas and Wyoming focus exclusively on farm equipment, but legislation in Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, and Tennessee apply to all consumers electronics.
Right to repair laws, also called fair repair laws, typically require manufacturers to publish repair manuals and sell the parts, diagnostic software, and tools needed to fix their products. The goal is to ensure consumers can repair their own devices, or pay an independent outfit to do so. Simply put, these bills argue that you bought the device, and you should be able to repair it.
Not long ago, anyone with the time, tools, and patience could repair damn near anything. That changed as computers and processors took on a greater role in just about everything you own. The mobile revolution exacerbated the problem. Packing increasingly sophisticated technology into smaller, sleeker devices led manufacturers to adopt new manufacturing techniques. That made it far more difficult for home tinkerers to fix a laptop, a television, or smartphone—let alone a car or farm tractor—making independent repair outfits essential. Then manufacturers started using copyright laws to keep their repair manuals offline, proprietary fasteners to seal their products, and in some cases, digital rights management to protect their software.
“We have a growing list of devices that we cannot service at all,” Jason DeWater, a professional repair technicians who owns iFixOmaha, told lawmakers.
DeWater told lawmakers his employees cannot safely open a growing number of devices without specialized documentation, diagnostic software, and tools. Even if they succeed in opening a device, they can't always get the parts needed to repair it. That helps manufacturers and hurts you, the person who paid good money to buy that device in the first place. Nikon stopped selling replacement parts to independent shops in 2012, for example, all but shutting down independent repair shops and monopolizing repairs with its 20-odd authorized shops.
The problem hits rural areas especially hard. If you're among the 2 million people who live in Nebraska, don't let anything happen to your iPhone. The state has exactly one Apple store. Warranty mail-in services can help, but take days to do what someone like DeWater can do in hours.
Even if someone like DeWater can get into your device this time, there's no guarantee he can do it next time. Manufacturers constantly update their designs and their manufacturing techniques, requiring independent techs to start from scratch with each new device. When Apple introduced proprietary Pentalobe screws, repair shops had to reverse engineer them and build the tool needed to remove it. Gluing down the batteries in the iPad required repair shops and recyclers to create a method of removing it. I do this stuff for a living, and even I found the Samsung S7 Edge maddening. It remains one of the most challenging things I've ever disassembled. You try opening one without cracking the glass.
Making repairs difficult leaves consumers with one choice: Replacement. And that invariably means the busted device ends up in a landfill, or a recycler. And guess what? The same short-sighted policies that make it difficult to repair your phone or tablet make it equally hard to recycle it. All the challenges facing independent repair shops effect independent recyclers, too.
Right-to-repair legislation would make it easier to fix anything electronic. Laptops. Televisions. Drones. Smart refrigerators. Even tractors. Anything driven by a processor or controlled by software has become all but impossible to repair. Just ask a farmer. Ten years ago, any farmer with a lick of sense could repair a tractor or other equipment, or summon a mechanic to do it. Now they find themselves beholden to dealerships with proprietary software and diagnostic tools. Two years ago, I tried to help a friend repair a blown sensor on his six-figure tractor, only to find this simple operation required access to diagnostic software protected by digital rights management—software John Deere refused to sell him. He's hardly alone in this.
“It’s imperative that you keep equipment running. Farmers have been able to do that for generations, but now that little brain—that software component—is stopping the mechanics of it from moving,” Republican state senator Lydia Brasch said during the hearing in Lincoln. She introduced the right-to-repair legislation to help farmers fight that monopoly on tractor repair, but recognizes its importance to all consumers. “It’s about ownership rights, is what it boils down to,” she said. “We should all able to choose where and how we repair our equipment.”
Of course, the companies making these devices have deployed battalions of lobbyists to defeat these bills. And they offer the most outlandish reasons for opposing them. You'll hurt yourself. Knock-off artists and copycats will glean trade secrets. Unscrupulous repair techs might claim to be factory trained. John Deere argued that rogue farmers might hack their tractors to dodge emissions requirements. Apple claimed a right-to-repair law would flood Nebraska with black-hat hackers.
Such concerns have little basis in reality, but that didn't stop interests aligned with the industry from tabling Nebraska's legislation. But the fight is far from over. It continues in seven other states where lawmakers feel you, the consumer, ought to be able to decide for yourself whether, where, and how to fix that gadget you paid for. It's a fight for self-reliance, a fight for the environment, and a fight to wrest control away from manufacturers and return it to you.
After testifying in Lincoln and making the trip home, Oberdick received "hundreds" of supportive messages from repair technicians. He plans to continue fighting for right to repair bills because he believes the issue is of vital importance to consumers, to small businesses, and to the environment. Manufacturers want to throughly control how people use the products they sell, but their interests rarely align with those of society. It’s time to fix that.The feds will spend just about $10,000 subsidizing health insurance costs for a poor, middle-aged man who lives in Georgia - and just $3,000 buying the same guy in nearby Tennessee a near-identical plan.
This is the weird world of financing the Affordable Care Act, where the prices that the insurers charge for health care directly impact how much Obamacare will cost the federal government.
John Graves, a researcher at Vanderbilt University, has spent some time toying around with data on premium rates across the country. The federal government has made this data accessible through the HealthCare.gov site. It will show you the premiums for a moderate level plan for each county in the 35 states where the federal government is running the marketplace.
The health law guarantees that, up to 400 percent of poverty level, shoppers on the marketplace won't have to spend more than a certain percent of their income on insurance premiums. The higher you get up the income scale, the larger chunk of your income your expected to kick in.
Someone who earns 100 percent of the poverty line (right now, $11,490 for an individual) is only expected to spend 2 percent of his or her income on health coverage, or $19 for a monthly premium. If the insurance plan charges more than that - and there's a good chance it does - the federal government has to kick in the difference.
In a state like Wyoming, for example, the cost of a medium level plan (or, for the wonks, the second-lowest cost silver-level plan) is $743 per month. Since the enrollee is only putting up $19 per month, that leaves the federal government footing a bill of $724 per month or $8,688 annually.
It's not totally clear why certain pockets of the country - Southern Georgia, for example, or the whole state of Wyoming - ended up with significantly higher premium costs than the rest of the country. Graves thinks that some of it has to do with this being the first year of insurers bidding on the new marketplaces, and having to do a bit of guesswork on what premiums ought to be.
In Wyoming and Georgia, where there are only two plans selling on the marketplace, those guesses came back especially high.
"To some extent, this might reflect the way they're going out of their current population to figure out who the exchange enrollees are going to be," Graves says. "The fact that this process was so blind, that they've never dealt with an insurance expansion this side and don't know what other insurers in the state are going to do, that leads to guess work."Trump Urges America to Give Russia a 73rd Chance
Joe Schaefer Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 14, 2017
WASHINGTON, DC — Standing in the White House kitchen this morning, President Trump made an impassioned plea for America to look beyond the decades of Russian betrayals and efforts to undermine Western democracy, and instead of cutting ties for good, to find the compassion to give Russia just one more chance to make things right.
“Hey, Russia screwed up big time. There is no denying they are in the wrong on this one, and on all those other ones,” offered the President with a shrug. “But what good is sanctioning Russia when it has already spent so much time sanctioning itself?”
Lowering his voice, Trump explained that he had spoken candidly with America’s estranged adversary during the recent G20 summit. “I don’t want to get into details, but Russia has a lot of shit it’s dealing with at the moment. It’s got way too much inner turmoil to notice who else it is hurting.”
Trump then pointed out that America seemed to be its best self when it was with Russia. “It’s great you have your independence, sure, but being the world’s sole superpower can get awfully lonely sometimes.”
“All I’m saying is that, in spite of Russia’s repeated attempts to erode America’s legitimacy, security, and power, don’t lose sight of the most important power of all,” said Trump matter-of-factly before taking a taking a sip of coffee. “The power to forgive.”
“No need to make any decisions right now. In the meantime, we have a huge domestic agenda to focus on,” concluded the President. “When America is ready to let bygones be bygones, I’ll have a secret back channel ready.”If those of us in the Republican party cannot let go of the personal animosity that exists against each other and unite against the Democratic party, then the 2016 election will be the last election in American history. What I mean by this is if Hillary Clinton becomes our next President then America will enter the longest period of uninterrupted Democrat rule since |
ist for 10 years, and I’ve seen cases of this condition skyrocket since smartphones became popular. I should write a paper.”
Someone should. A cursory search for “occipital neuralgia smartphones” will bring up a recent report from the Sioux City Journal that warns of the strain our handheld devices put on our necks. One journal article cited in the article explains how tilting your head forward 60 degrees puts an extra 60 pounds of pressure on the top of your spine and surrounding muscles. This, unsurprisingly, can lead to pain:
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Image via Surgery Technology International
“People who were voracious readers, they would have these symptoms,” pain specialist Dr. Jeremy Poulsen told the paper. “If those nerves are constantly being impinged by the muscles spasming and pulling, that leads to conditions such as occipital neuralgia—basically it’s headaches that can be miserable.”
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I can attest: the headaches are miserable! But what was I going to do? I do read voraciously on my smartphone, largely because reading is a big part of my job. I also like to play SimCity BuildIt, a flawed but awfully addictive smartphone game. I can stop playing games, but I really do need to respond to emails on the go. Do I prop up my phone in front of my face all the time? I’d look like a real weirdo.
Luckily, there is a straightforward treatment for occipital neuralgia. But it’s not a cure. After our enlightening conversation and shared Google searches, Dr. Cardiel filled up a half dozen syringes with a cocktail of steroids and numbing agents. She calmly explained that she was going to inject the nerves above my neck with this solution, causing the back of my head to go completely numb. However, the solution would travel through the nerves and block them from sending the signals that were causing my headaches.
It hurt. I think the doctor gave me about 20 separate injections, after which I came frightfully close to passing out. After regaining my composure on the examination table, Dr. Cardiel told me that I should feel better after about a day, and I did. However, if I really wanted the headaches to stop, I’d have to keep my head up straight. She gave me some literature that also encouraged yoga and massage as methods for relieving the tension in my neck, both of which sounded much better than the injection technique.
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All that said, I’ll never look at my smartphone the same way again. Or at least I’ll try not to. Like all of us, I’ve depended on the technology more and more over the years, but I’ve paid less and less attention to how I’m using it. A few weeks ago, Sploid posted this animation making fun of our embarrassing smartphone addiction. I laughed at the time, but now I realize that it’s not really that funny.
Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
So in a couple of months, I’ll head back to the neurologist and probably get more needles stabbed into my head. The hypochondriac in me is glad that my headaches don’t point to something more serious, something like brain cancer. But it’s going to be a struggle to change my smartphone habits. Even though it’s hurting me, I can’t imagine life without my beloved little pocket computer.
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Update 03.14.2016: After nine months of relative peace, my headaches recently came back with a vengeance. The electric, searing pain felt immediately familiar but somehow worse—probably because I’d been enjoying feeling normal for so long. Not even prescription painkillers helped.
But I knew this was going to happen. The shots that I’d gotten last summer to treat my headaches were supposed to wear off after a few months. However, I’d been focusing on better posture and less smartphoning. Then my life got a little more stressful, and I could feel myself tensing up. This is exactly what causes occipital neuralgia and its unique brand of brain hurt.
Anyways, I went back to Dr. Cardiel and had another round of shots. Getting needles stabbed into the back of your head is not fun, but it’s worth it. So if you ever have weird headaches that won’t go away, go see a neurologist. It can be a little anxiety-inducing! As my doctor told me, however, you shouldn’t have to live your life in pain.
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This post was originally published on 06/08/2015.
Illustration by Tara JacobySlovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek isn’t one to shy away from provocative observations. In a video published on the portal Big Think, he takes on something that is commonly employed as a sensible cultural practice: Political correctness. The academic calls it a form of “cold respect.” He argues that giving space to an occasional exchange of “friendly obscenities” allows for more closeness and gives way to honest exchanges.
Žižek reports several episodes in which his lack of politically correct boundaries has served him well, from dealing with the ethnic tensions in former Yugoslavia to becoming friendly with two black Americans after jokingly making a racist remark: “You blacks, like the yellow guys, you all look the same” he reports saying to them, adding, “they embraced me and they told me, you can call me nigga.”)
“I’m well aware that we should not just walk around and humiliate each other,” says the philosopher. And yet he finds that “there is something so fake about political correctness”—something that, according to him, prevents a true overcoming of prejudice and racism. Žižek explains:
That’s my problem with political correctness. It’s just a form of self discipline which doesn’t really allow you too overcome racism. It’s just oppressed, controlled racism.
Žižek’s words might be blunt, but his point is valid.
Political correctness stems from the understanding that racism and inequality exist, and that in lieu of fixing those problems, prettier language will do the trick—as if by using inoffensive words and avoiding crass jokes we are to paint over the filth of reality. Politically correct expressions, to Žižek, become patronizing because they actually highlight inequalities. As the philosopher notes, “one needs to be very precise not to fight racism in a way which ultimately reproduces, if not racism itself, at least the conditions of racism.”
The subtext of every carefully chosen, politically correct, expression is that there are still people in a position so privileged that they need to refer to “others” in a way that is not offensive—that doesn’t, for instance, make reference to their origin, or skin color. The implication is that there is nothing possibly offensive in the speaker’s skin tone or their origin. Jokes and blunt words can’t scratch their confidence—no, it’s only the rest of the population who needs the protection of politically correct language.
Beyond the offensive jokes, avoiding politically correct language is also about calling things by their name. Just like a family friend’s three-year-old nephew who, back from his first day of kindergarten, excitedly told his parents: “I have a new friend! He’s all brown!”
And it is not just race, of course, that Žižek talks about. Gender, disability–anything that diverges from norms presented in society or media–are all coated with neutral words and behaviors, by the very people who claim to be accepting of it. This special language, despite its intentions, serves to reinforce certain conditions as special, fragile, and weak.
Can we dare to see differences for what they are—nothing else than differences? And can we ever safely name them, perhaps even with the occasional offensive joke?
Perhaps adopting a little of Žižek’s attitude would indeed result in what he refers to as a ”wonderful sense of shared obscene solidarity.” It might generate misunderstanding, but if a more light-hearted approach is adopted in a genuine way, that would reflect a profound belief that the other isn’t weaker, doesn’t need anyone’s protection, and is at our level—hence can openly be made fun of, just as we do of ourselves.
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.From Second Life Wiki
Reverse HTTP is an experimental protocol which takes advantage of the HTTP/1.1 Upgrade: header to turn one HTTP socket around. When a client makes a request to a server with the Upgrade: PTTH/0.9 header, the server may respond with an Upgrade: PTTH/1.0 header, after which point the server starts using the socket as a client, and the client starts using the socket as a server. There is also a COMET-style protocol which will work with HTTP/0.9 or 1.1 clients that do not know how to perform this upgrade.
March 2009: Zero and Donovan submitted an Internet-Draft formally describing this.
Below is an example transcript using Reverse HTTP. Lines on the left are traffic from the client to the server. Lines on the right are traffic from the server to client. Lines with a red background are HTTP requests. Lines with a green background are HTTP responses.
The transcript was created by sniffing the traffic from running this script [1].
Request Response
client -> server server -> client POST / HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:9999 Accept-Encoding: identity Upgrade: PTTH/0.9 HTTP/1.1 101 Switching Protocols Content-type: text/plain Upgrade: PTTH/0.9 Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 20:14:45 GMT Content-Length: 0 GET / HTTP/1.1 Host: 127.0.0.1:65331 Accept-Encoding: identity accept: text/plain;q=1,*/*;q=0 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-type: text/plain Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 20:14:45 GMT Content-Length: 15!dlrow,olleH
COMET Fallback
If the client or server is incapable of upgrading from HTTP, a COMET-style protocol can be used instead. The server can maintain an event queue and require that the client repeatedly POST to the queue's resource to receive events. Below is a protocol trace using JSON as the protocol encoding.
POST / HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:9999 Accept-Encoding: identity HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-type: application/json Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 20:14:45 GMT Content-Length: 210 {'message-id': 'xxx','method': 'GET','request-uri': '/', 'http-version': 'PTTH/0.9', 'headers': [['Host', '127.0.0.1:65331'], ['Accept-Encoding', 'identity'], ['Accept','text/plain;q=1,*/*;q=0']], 'body': } POST / HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:9999 Accept-Encoding: identity Content-type: application/json Content-length: 193 {'message-id': 'xxx', 'http-version': 'PTTH/0.9','status': 200,'reason': 'OK', 'headers': [['Content-type', 'text/plain'], ['Date', 'Tue, 13 May 2008 20:14:45 GMT']], 'body': '!dlrow,olleH'} HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-type: application/json Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 20:14:45 GMT Content-Length: 2 {}
A response of {} from the server means no server-side event occurred within some timeout, and that the client should poll again if it wants to keep receiving events.
Another idea is to use text/plain encoding instead of JSON, and just have the actual text of the HTTP request in the response, and the text of the response in the next request. In this case, the message-id would be relayed in a header instead of in the body. Perhaps the message id should always be relayed in a header and never in the body?OTTAWA — Canadian military personnel at one of Quebec’s largest bases are being warned they could face charges if they hit the “like” button on certain material posted on social media.
They are also being told to restrict access to their own social media sites and are prohibited from commenting publicly on any political decision, an order that encompasses everything from local politics to non-military federal and provincial issues.
Military personnel at Canadian Forces Base Bagotville, Que., are being required to sign document acknowledging these rules. A witness signature is also required.
Canadian Forces personnel sent Postmedia a copy of the rules, noting they had been threatened with charges by a commanding officer for questioning the legality of what they saw as severe restrictions on their personal freedoms.
But the Canadian Forces says there is nothing unusual about the form, which was distributed in February.
“Education is a good practice,” spokeswoman Capt. Marie-France Poulin said in an email. “The aim of this internal procedure is really to make sure that 3 WING personnel know their personal responsibilities/laws, etc about social media use and especially operational security rules.”
She said there were no security breaches or other issues that prompted the creation of the new document.
Rules concerning social media and public commentary vary for the army, navy and air force, according to the Department of National Defence.
The army has asked its members to follow general rules when using social media, including refraining from derogatory comments and avoiding comments that could violate operational security, the DND noted in an emailed statement. It has also asked its members to check privacy settings on social media accounts regularly.
But the army does not require its soldiers to sign a form regarding those rules, the statement noted.
The Royal Canadian Navy has similar rules. But only navy personnel on the West Coast are required to sign a form acknowledging those rules, according to the statement.
The aim of this internal procedure is really to make sure that 3 WING personnel know their personal responsibilities/laws, etc about social media use.
In March of 2014, the Royal Canadian Air Force issued direction on social media, noting the existing military rules about public comments.
“Commanders at each air force Wing have the authority and latitude to brief their members on the finer points of orders and directives when deemed necessary — whether related to social media use or otherwise,” the DND statement said. “Commanders at various units or wings may — at their choosing — require expressed acknowledgement from members, such as a signature on a form, as a record of confirmation from those who have reviewed the information.”
Ottawa lawyer Michel Drapeau said the Canadian Forces form is a sweeping attempt to stifle any right for military personnel to have an opinion on any subject. “What does it matter to the military if you want to comment about an issue in your community that has nothing to do with the Canadian Forces,” asked Drapeau, a retired colonel. “Will you be charged if you want to post a complaint about a local bylaw, for instance?”
Drapeau said such a form would never survive a legal challenge in civilian court or during a court martial. But military personnel could face administrative punishment from their commanding officers, something that would be difficult to defend against, he added.
In 2013, the Canadian Forces required physically and mentally wounded soldiers to sign a form acknowledging they would not criticize senior officers on social media outlets or discourage others in uniform with their comments on such sites as Facebook and Twitter.
In addition, the wounded were told not to disclose “your views on any military subject.”
The Canadian Forces denied that the form was an attempt to stifle criticism.
• Email: dpugliese@postmedia.com | Twitter: davidpuglieseChapter 26: Finally Had Enough Of This Shit
Hey! Friends! We're almost to the climax! Exciting, right? Well, I'd hope that it is, otherwise then there wouldn't be much of a point to reading this story, right? Wait, wait, don't leave! It's close to the big finish! Trust me, it's worth it. But, before we get to our big finale, we should check in with our favorite criminal duo one more time. How about it? Well, you have no choice in the matter. So, let's get to the story, shall we?
xxx
"God DAMN IT!" Roman swore as he slammed his fist on his desk.
How DARE someone outbid him on that scarf? It was genuine, one-hundred percent silk! Now it was going to some damn plebian, who would rub his greasy mits all over it! He wouldn't know how to pull it off like only Roman could!
Sighing, Roman clicked out of the internet browser tab. So much for his online shopping venture. Adjusting his hat, he decided that he could stand to go for a walk. A man like him needed to keep in shape, after all. He didn't want to outgrow his finely tailored suits, after all. Plus, he should probably go looking for Neo. If she was gone for an extended amount of time, then that would only mean something bad or very messy happened. And, then he would have to pay for a cleaner, and that wasn't fun. Those bastards usually weren't available on Saturdays, anyway.
So far, this Saturday wasn't looking all that great.
Walking out of his office, Roman strolled calmly towards the main storage area. If Neo was going to be anywhere, she'd probably be near where people normally gathered. Wait. Faunus weren't people. Scratch that, where life forms normally gathered. After all, those White Fang mutts could stand to be good target practice for Neo.
However, as he walked into the main storage room, Roman was a little surprised that Neo wasn't in there. Instead, the only signs of life was a group of White Fang members, just sitting around a table and drinking. And not working. That was the part that annoyed Roman. What was he not paying them for? If they didn't have any terrorist stuff to do, then they could at least keep an eye on Neo. And killing she may or may not have done while she wasn't being watched was their fault now.
"Hey! Mutts!" Roman announced at the group. Only a few people looked up at Roman, only to go back to drinking straight form their bottles.
"Ya see my girl around here?" Roman continued. "Pink and brown hair? Yay high? Sadist?"
"Nooooo… We haven't…" one man, staring at the table groaned.
"Useless," Roman muttered under his breath. Then, raising his voice, he asked, "And what the hell are you doing? Get busy!"
"Our friends are gone…" another White Fang member miserably moaned.
"What?" Roman asked, confused.
"The lieutenant and Rick… Gone," the White Fang member clarified.
Roman adjusted his hat as he thought. Well, considering how shitty it normally was to be a member of the White Fang, it really wasn't a shock to him that some animals would either die or just run away.
"Meh," was all Roman had to say. He couldn't care less. What was more important now was finding Neo before she made a rather expensive mess.
Sighing in annoyance, Roman spun on his heel and walked back towards the office. He'd just text Neo on her scroll. And, if she didn't reply, Roman would just get Perry on the search for her. He was the only remotely competent animal here.
Speaking of Perry, Roman saw that he was waiting in front of the door. And, judging by the way he was picking at his cuticles and just generally fidgeting, he probably had some unpleasant news to bring him.
As soon as Roman walked up to the office door, Perry snapped to attention and said, "Sir!"
"What, Perry?" Roman dully asked.
"I, um, got some mews for you," reported Perry.
"Anything good?" Roman pressed.
Perry nervously licked his lips. "…No?"
Roman couldn't resist the sigh welling out of his throat. He had a feeling that he would be doing a lot of sighing today. "Come in," Roman offered as he walked into his office.
Perry followed in, just as he was told, and sat in a chair in the corner. Likewise, Roman wasted no time slumping back into his desk chair. With a sweeping, sarcastic hand gesture, Roman sneered "Proceed."
"Well… uh… Cinder's coming back later. I think she wants a progress report on those bombs. H-have we even built those yet, by the way?" explained Perry.
"Nope, YOU haven't. Seriously, do I have to give your little friends a treat to work, or what?" Roman suddenly fumed. "We just have a PILE of bomb parts over there, and they haven't even been touched since we got the damn stuff!"
"I, erm, can't assemble bombs, sir. I don't have the know-how," Perry sheepishly admitted.
Roman massaged his furrowed brow. "Look, when's she coming by?"
"Tomorrow evening. The normal time," Perry said.
Leaning forward onto his desk, Roman nodded at what Perry had said. Then, out of the blue, he asked, "Perry, do you like working here?"
"Huh?" Perry confusedly grunted.
"Do you like working for the White Fang?" Roman clarified.
"Well, yeah, sure. I mean, it isn't exactly all what I heard it was when I signed up, but I guess I can't argue with it," admitted Perry, picking at his cuticles again.
"How much do you get paid?" Roman asked further.
"I don't," Perry replied, sounding a little disappointed with that thought. "I have to take up a buncha part-time jobs to pay rent…"
"How sad," noted Roman. "Say, how'd you like to work for me?"
"…Aren't I doing that now?" Perry asked.
Roman waved his hand to dispel that confusing statement. "No, no, you're not getting it. Leave the White Fang, and be under my payroll. Trust me, boy, I pay handsomely." He finished statement with a small smirk.
"Wouldn't I just be leaving behind all my comrades?" questioned Perry.
"Are those even your friends out there? Because they usually treat you like shit," Roman (quite rightly) pointed out.
Perry had to admit that Roman did have a point. There wasn't anyone person that he could call a friend here. They treated him like some lackey, used up all his cash to buy stuff, and he was sure that some of his fellow White Fang members had blatantly stolen from his possessions before. Plus, they kept on calling him a race traitor. Just because he was getting along with Roman fairly well didn't mean that he turned his back on Faunus kind.
Then, an ironic thought hit Perry: despite joining up to stick it to humans, a human was the only person to treat him relatively fairly ever since he started operating for the White Fang. The truth of it all stung to him. He just couldn't deny it any longer. Sure, Roman treated him as an assistant, but at least he wasn't outright bullied by him. And now, he was offering to pay him out of his own pocket? It was too good of an offer to resist.
"No… They're not my friends," Perry decided.
"Then why should you work for them? Look, all I'm saying, is that you'd be better off running with me. So, wanna take me up on this?" Roman finally offered.
By now, Perry was internally fuming over his revelation. If anything, his Faunus comrades had treated him worse than any human. At least humans didn't bully him and use him extensively. He guessed that some weren't all that bad. Roman wasn't all that bad. So, his response didn't take all that much thought. "Deal."
Standing up from his chair, Roman offered out his hand for a shake. "Glad to have you on board, Perry," he smirked. Perry reached out and took Roman's hand, giving it a firm shake. Now it was official. Perry worked for Roman now.
Sitting back down, Roman picked up his scroll from the desk. "Now, we need to let Neo know that you joined up," he said mostly to himself.
But, as he was going to open up the texting app, Roman heard his ringtone go off on his scroll. "You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life/See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen"
The pupils in Roman's eyes narrowed as he recognized the number. Shit, she was calling NOW?!
Answering the call, Roman began with the charming introduction of, "What the hell do you want you bitch?!" Perry could only look on in confusion at Roman's sudden outburst.
Perry could hear the leather of Roman's glove squeak as he clenched and unclenched his free hand. Then, Roman shouted into his scroll again. "No, he isn't FUCKING mine! You're just gaming the system! Now STOP! STOP TAKING MY SHIT!"
Before Perry could quietly ask what was going on, he was stopped by more of Roman's angry ranting. "NO, FUCK YOU! I GOT THE FUCKING PAPERWORK! YOU DON'T HAVE A DAMN THING ON ME!"
Roman angrily slammed his fist on his desk. "FINE! YOU'RE DONE, YOU HEAR ME?! DONE!" Hanging up on the call, roman angrily shoved his scroll into his pocket and got up from his desk.
Perry confusedly watched Roman walk out of the office, only to walk back in a minute later holding a can of gasoline. "Okay, first assignment, Perry," Roman said through gritted teeth.
"…What was all that about?" Perry quietly asked.
"Not important, just listen," Roman continued. "I'm going to text you an address, okay? I want you to burn down that place. Simple as that."
"Huh?" went Perry.
"Look, no questions. You'll get paid, don't worry. Just do this, and we'll be golden." At that, Roman tossed that can of gas into Perry's arms and began to push him out the door.
"Wait!" Perry cried. "What should I do after that?'
"Lay low for a day and get back to me! Okaygreatjobtigernowgetouttherethanksbye," Roman muttered as he finally shoved Perry out the door and shut it behind him.
Roman groaned. Of course his ex would call for more support payments. Of course this Saturday wasn't going to be good. At least he got someone to "take car" of this little situation. Hopefully, he'd show that bitch by burning down her house. Now she'd get a taste of how it felt when someone took away her shit.
Walking back over to his desk, Roman opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He didn't even bother to get out a glass as he just chugged the fire water straight from the container. Sighing, he sat back in his desk chair and pulled out his scroll. He needed to text Neo. They were going to take a small vacation tomorrow. And possibly for a week, if the whole fire thing somehow got traced back to them. It was best to lay low, just to be safe. Besides, they had the opportunity to avoid Captain McFirebitch and her young shit-wards. That was more than enough of a reason for Roman.
Fortunately for him, Roman didn't need to send out a text. Out of nowhere, Neo just opened the office door and calmly sauntered into the room. Well, as calmly as someone playfully twirling a viscera-covered parasol while covered in blood could. So, by Neo standards, it was more like that her legs were shaking from the sheer pleasure of her implied sadism.
Roman just decided to skip over what she was out doing, and to the question of how bad the damage was. "Animal, or person?" he sighed.
Neo breezily raised one finger, indicating that she'd killed an animal. Roman breathed a sigh of relief. People were such a pain to clean up after. At least with animals, he could just toss on the freeway and make it look like it got killed by being run over.
"Okay…" Roman breathed. Across from him, Neo happily slid into the chair in front of his desk. "We've got news."
"…?" Neo hummed.
"We're taking the day off tomorrow… and probably the day after that. Sound good?" explained Roman.
Without questioning why, Neo nodded her head in agreement. That sounded fine to her. But, she couldn't help but ask something that was on her mind earlier today. "…?"
"Right now? Well, I guess we have the time," Roman replied. Seriously, it wouldn't be a day with Neo of she didn't ask for a trip to get some ice cream. But, the girl was worth it. She was easily the most reliable partner Roman had worked with in a while.
Neo let out a merry squee as she tried to climb out of her chair. Alas, he legs were still a little weak. Her hobby sure had taken her energy from her, all right. There were a few interesting stains on her clothes that could attest to that. And no, not just the blood stains.
Roman went to Neo's side and helped her out of her chair. But, he kept in mind to keep her slightly away from his chest. He didn't want to get blood all over his jacket. White, dry-cleaned suit jackets and blood never mixed well.
Now that the height-challenged sadist was on her feet, she and Roman walked out of the office, and outside the warehouse. The both of them were at least feeling good next to each other. That's what partners were for, right?
In fact, they were so happy, that neither Roman nor Neo noticed the police van parked slightly down the street from the warehouse's gate. If they could hear the inhabitants of that van, they would have heard that their target was confirmed, and that this was definitely thee White Fang Hideout. They would have also heard that the presence of Roman alone was more than enough proof. But, because they didn't have such excellent hearing, none of that information was picked up.
Instead, Roman and Neo climbed into Roman's town car parked across the street, and drove down the street, in search of an ice cream joint.
Lucky them. Through sheer coincidence, they had somehow avoided the incoming shitstorm to follow.
But hey, luck works for all peoples, right?
xxx
And thus our favorite villains exit, stage left! To be honest, I couldn't bring myself to have Roman, Neo, and Perry arrested or killed in the climax. And, it's not just because I like the characters. I also have plans for them in the future. So, don't worry about that! Other people's asses will be kicked in their stead! Plus, much like the running theme of this story, luck can just randomly happen. So please, don't shit on me for this. Just enjoy it! Lie back, and think of fan fiction! That's the spirit!
This is The Draigg, and I… have to clean up all the viscera Neo left behind…This is a bicycle project whose aim is to create a cycle with a retro style mixed with a slightly more contemporary cafe racer model. Influenced by new and vintage fashions, this bike rides extremely low, and the material used to create it is chosen for its aesthetic beauty as well as its structural virtues. One of these materials is copper, which makes this a total steampunk bike without any of the steam shooting out of it. Perhaps you’d like some propulsion?
The rest of the materials other than the copper are modern – lots of carbon fiber is chosen and bright colors will come into the project this bike into the future and deep into the past. With the best of both worlds working for you in this masterfully designed two-wheeler, you’ll be blasting down hills in streaks of chrome, copper, and gold in no time. Flashy!
Designer: Carlos PereiraImage caption Eighty homes were evacuated in Warmley in 2013 after a pipe bomb was found
A science fan who made six pipe bombs after being inspired by a television show has been jailed for six months.
Michael Thomas, 40, was part of a group of friends who made the explosive devices before taking them to a quarry in Corsham, Wiltshire, to detonate.
But one was accidently carried home in a sports bag by Thomas, who placed it in his shed in 2006.
It was found in 2013 and 80 homes were evacuated while the police and an Army bomb squad were called in.
The bomb squad carried out a controlled explosion at nearby Barrs Court Park, while residents took shelter for five hours in a nearby supermarket.
Image copyright PA Image caption Bristol Crown Court heard the bomb was found when Thomas's ex-wife cleared out the shed
Bristol Crown Court heard Thomas separated from his wife in 2010 and on 17 August 2013 she decided to clear out his shed at their former marital home in Kennmoor Close in Warmley, near Bristol.
Prosecuting, Nicholas O'Brien said: "She found a sports bag and having opened it she saw a number of pellets and a copper pipe, with green cord poking out the end.
"It is serious and dangerous but really it seems to be a rather juvenile, amateur interest in explosives."
Thomas was arrested in Somerset the following day and officers who searched his computer discovered material relating to making explosives.
The stock controller later admitted a charge of making an explosive substance.
Image copyright PA Image caption Judge Michael Roach said Thomas's behaviour in Kennmoor Close was "reckless"
Judge Michael Roach said the incident was a "serious offence" and those "reckless enough" to build such devices should go to prison.
"There's no doubt at all that this is a serious offence. On any view you were enormously reckless," he told him.
"I accept that there was no sinister purpose of that device but the potential for it being on a street, unguarded, available in a residential area makes it obvious that the risks were significant."
Representing Thomas, Sam Jones said his client, who moved to Bridgwater in Somerset, was a hard-working family man in a new relationship, and with two young children.
Mr Jones said one of the bombs was set off inside a microwave, "inspired by a programme called Brainiac".
As Thomas was led to the cells, the judge said: "What a sad day for your family."“He asked, ‘Did that mean you got a pardon?’ ” Ms. Langkil said. “I told him, ‘No sir, it did not.’ He said, ‘We can’t hire you.’ ”
A granddaughter was going on a field trip with her class and the school was looking for chaperones.
“The form asked if I was a convicted felon,” Ms. Langkil said. To keep from embarrassing her granddaughter, she pulled out.
Virginia has a program of “simple pardons” that grants official forgiveness for past crimes to people who have finished their terms and proven themselves in various ways to be worthy citizens. Two Virginia governors were sympathetic to her, but said they could not help: They were unable to pardon her for a crime committed in another state.
New York State offered her a “certificate of relief of disabilities,” which essentially restored her civil rights in New York State but says in bold type at the top, “This certificate shall NOT be deemed nor construed to be a pardon.”
She has applied to three governors of New York for a pardon. Mercy is a risky proposition for politicians at every level.
“Pardons are extraordinarily rare in New York State,” Donald D. Fries, director of the New York executive clemency bureau, wrote to Ms. Langkil in May, adding that they were considered “only when there is overwhelming and convincing proof of innocence.”
That’s not law; that is policy, and it conveniently shields governors from having to consider exercising their absolute authority to grant pardons, which erase a conviction, or clemency, which can lessen punishment.Rep. Kathleen Rice: Senator Al Franken and Rep. Conyers should step down: “There’s no reason for the public to trust us if we can’t even call people out” https://t.co/sxRfskdfnN pic.twitter.com/hIT1797r60
On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Representative Kathleen Rice (D-NY) called on Senator Al Franken (D-MN) and Representative John Conyers (D-MI) to resign from Congress and criticized both President Trump for and House Minority Leader Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for protecting Alabama Republican Senate nominee Judge Roy Moore and Conyers, respectively.
Anchor Wolf Blitzer asked Rice, “Was Senator Al Franken’s apology today enough to merit him staying in the US Congress? What do you believe?”
She answered, “I don’t think so. I think if you ask any person on the street, do you think the action that CBS took with Charlie Rose was appropriate? Or Louis C.K., or anyone else in Hollywood, Harvey Weinstein they would say, ‘Yes, they took the right action.’ Why can’t we do the same thing in Washington? What is so problematic, and the reason why I’m being so vocal on this issue, Wolf, is because what we are saying in Washington is there’s a set of rules that apply to people who are not politicians in Washington, and there’s totally different set of rules that apply to elected officials serving in Congress. And that’s why there is such distrust of government and Congress, just in general, across the board.”
She continued, “People are seeing us circle the wagons and protect our own. Whether it’s Donald Trump not coming out against Roy Moore, and supporting him to the extent that he is, or if it’s Nancy Pelosi protecting John Conyers and saying that she leaves it up to him to make the right decision. I think that’s ridiculous. I called on John Conyers to resign.”
Blitzer then followed up, “So you want both Conyers and Franken to resign?”
Rice responded, “I think they should. And I think that that’s what most people feel would be an appropriate consequence for these elected officials.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchettThe German Finance Ministry said five million stamps celebrating Germany’s victory at the World Cup had been printed ahead of their game with Argentina in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. German Finance Ministry
Germany was so confident it would win the World Cup that it pre-printed a run of five million stamps commemorating its soccer victory before the final game even took place.
Just hours after Germany’s victory in Rio de Janeiro, the German Finance Ministry presented a new stamp honoring the new World Cup champions on Monday.
The stamp, presented with logistics and mailing company Deutsche Post AG, was printed “during the last few days, before the outcome” of the final, a spokeswoman for the finance ministry said. Similar plans were made in 2006 when Germany hosted the World Cup, “but the plans got shelved as Germany didn’t |
, I just collected my toys based on character, images on the packages, the books inside, and ads that I saw from TV. And even though Playmates Toys was listed on each packaging, it did not stand out to me. All I knew was that I loved these toys, flaws and all. I would laugh about Shredder’s chest not having a shirt. We painted up undercover Donatello toys to have all four Turtles in their undercover coats. I would roll my eyes at how goofy the Channel 6 characters came out to be. But these toys remained something special to me. True the cartoons, movies and comics all helped keep me looped into the fandom, but the toys were what brought me in.
I remember in 1991, I started to try and read magazine stories about the Turtles. I wanted to know about the behind the scenes. I learned about Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird and how Palladium RPG Books introduced them to Surge Licensing and how Surge brought in Playmates Toys. I learned that Playmates Toys had a big role in making the Ninja Turtles cartoon even come to be.
At that moment, I realized how important Playmates Toys really was to most of the entire fandom for Ninja Turtles. How each of the people who took part in that chain of events deserves equal credit for the success of Ninja Turtles. The creators, Eastman and Laird, brought life into the Turtles, which caught the attention of Kevin Siembieda from Palladium Books, who then got a hold of Eastman and Laird, starting up the TMNT RPG books. Kevin Siembieda shared his passion with Mark Freedman, who owns Surge Licensing. Kevin Siembieda helped Mark get in touch with Eastman and Laird, who convinced them to take him on for licensing. Mark got a hold of Playmates Toys, who didn’t just make the Turtle toys, but funded the entire first five episodes of the original cartoon series. Now ask yourself, would you know of TMNT if it wasn’t for any of these people here? Together they brought TMNT into the mainstream to be the amazing characters that we’ve all grown to love.
Playmates Toys kept becoming more a part of my home, as I collect the toys as they come out. The toys are seen through my room and even through the rest of the house. I was thrilled when they stayed on after the big changes in 2000 with Ninja Turtles and even more excited in 2009 when I learned that Playmates Toys would remain the toy makers for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Viacom. This meant so much to me, that the company which helped the Turtles become what they are today is still there, bringing new stuff to the table for the fans who follow them.
Through my travels, I’ve had the honor of meeting people behind the company. Starting with a man name Michael back in 2007. We did email prior to meeting in person, as I was upset that the Turtles were a no show to an appearance at two different Toy R Us that I went with my family over five hours away. I knew the three areas where the costumes could’ve came from so I sent each company an email saying how the Toys R Us were set up and fans were there. But the Turtles did not show. Playmates Toys replied saying how they’re sorry, and thought that those two cancelled out of the tour. It was their mistake. They sent me some toys as an apology. I thought that would be the end of my contact with them since I did not know any of them personally. It was to my surprise when Michael found me at New York Comic Con in 2007 and started to hang out with my friends and I for the day.
When 2009 rolled around and I learned earlier that year that Michael was no longer with Playmates Toys, I once again thought that any connections to the company were now done. I went on enjoying my fandom, and remained friends with Michael as he’s a fun and nice guy to know. He always makes me laugh and he likes to pick on me for Totally Obsessed, by doing the line “Follow Your Heart”. I do not make friends just because of where they work. It takes an awesome person for me to want to remain friends, and he is a totally fun and amazing person.
It was in 2012 when I met Pat Linden of Playmates Toys at San Diego Comic Con. I asked about doing interviews for Cowabunga Corner and got the honor to go to Playmates Toys and interview Pat in their TMNT room. I got to meet many more members of the crew from Paula, John, Karl, Jeff and many others. Everyone I’ve met at Playmates Toys has been very nice and wonderful to talk to. It’s always a pleasure getting to hear their insights of the toy lines and sharing my feedback, good and bad, of the toys that have hit the market.
Since 2012, I’ve kept contact open with Playmates Toys. It’s always great to see them at events. I enjoy getting to look at the booth at Toy Fair and love when we can do interviews for Cowabunga Corner. This is a great group of people, bringing forth toys for kids that can be enjoyed. And while there are some that one may not find favorable, there are many toys that they release that are just outstanding for a children’s toy line. This company does a lot for the fandom and keeps making toys worth buying.
For the past three years, my family has been going through it rough and it seems to keep getting worse for us. In 2013 my sister broke her neck, my Great Aunt fell and hurt herself, and my dad had a triple by pass. While in the hospital, they found cancer in my Great Aunt. We lost her in early 2014 and the family realized that with my dad’s health we could not afford to keep the family house. We started to move into my Great Aunt’s Mobile home, which is too small for all of us and our stuff that was in the house. While working on getting things sorted out on what we’re going to do, a flood happened that just took any and all hope away from us. I can not stress the depression that I felt in Fall of 2014, as my mother, Phoenix and the fandom was the things that kept pulling me forward. My con family at Youmacon 2014, helped pull me out of that depression.
In a last attempt to save the house, I started a GoFundMe in early 2015. The goal needed to save the house was more than I figured we could raise, but any amount would at least help take the stress off of my family in the end. Doing a fundraiser thing of any type is hard, while you have the supporters you also get the people who want to rip you apart for asking for help. While the GoFundMe did not save the house, it did knock down what we owe on it, and took some of the stress off of my family. And the people who made the biggest dent was Playmates Toys.
I remember when I first saw their donation, I broke down in tears as I could not believe it was real. The company that introduced me to one of the things that’s helped me the most in my life, the company that fills my room with products, the company that has so many amazing folks that I see as friends came through and tried to help save my family in a major way. I still tear up thinking about this, as I can’t help but be extremely thankful for everything they’ve done. Playmates Toys made 2015 a bit brighter for my family and made the transaction of losing the house a little easier.
If not for Playmates Toys, I do think that Cowabunga Corner would’ve closed up under the pressures from these past few years. Though thanks to the wonderful people at Playmates Toys, I am inspired to keep moving forward with the blog, with the fandom and with living to still work to fulfill my dreams. It just takes one kind gesture to help someone who’s down on their luck, and they really went above and beyond.
Twenty-six years of my life Playmates Toys has played a huge role in inspiration, friendship and support. For this, I am thankful to have them in my life!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!For the time being, VwS will no longer be participating in Rainbow 6, and is parting ways with the Rainbow 6 Roster. This move is being considered as an "indefinite hiatus" as the organization has no official plan for returning to Rainbow 6, but does not rule out the possibility. This move comes as a result of the members on the team deciding to go separate ways i.e. pursuing other career options, school etc. The organization and its leadership wishes all the players on the Rainbow 6 roster, the best of luck in the future.
The CEO of VwS Gaming, Joe, gave his thoughts regarding the issue:
“This team had an exceptional work ethic and it goes to show with the great performance they had this season. It was an absolute pleasure working with all of them and I want to wish all the guys apart of the team the best of luck in the future.”Freedom of the press will not be safe in the UK under new domestic surveillance laws unless more legal safeguards are put in place, journalists say.
Their calls fall on the 800th anniversary of freedom of the person enshrined by law under the Magna Carta, and follow the release of a landmark report on the bulk surveillance of British citizens last week by Britain's spying watchdog.
The Magna Carta has become synonymous with limitations on government power. But as they stand, current domestic spying laws are "undemocratic, unnecessary and – in the long run – intolerable," concluded, David Anderson QC, Britain's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, in his report A Question of Trust.
A 2000 law called the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) "has been patched up so many times as to make it incomprehensible," he wrote. His main recommendation is that the law be scrapped and a new one made. It would ensure judicial authorisation both for interception warrants relating to journalists, and the identity of their sources, and for public authorities seeking communications data relating to journalists.
Prime Minister David Cameron responded to the report by rejecting its proposal to strip ministers of the power to authorise spying on UK citizens — including journalists. On the whole the government responded to the report in the House of Commons by indicating the law will be overhauled with a draft bill appearing in the fall.
For journalists, "it's a matter of how the mechanisms are put in place," said Sarah Kavanagh, a senior spokesperson for the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) referring to its calls to get judges as the only ones signing off surveillance order.
Also in Anderson's recommendations, she said, he makes no mention that journalists should be alerted that their phone and Internet records are being sought, nor suggests a process to appeal their seizure.
"If you don't get told, you have no chance to challenge that," she said. The NUJ broadly welcomes the report and the government response, Kavanagh added.
But the case of Tom Newton Dunn, political editor of The Sun, who had had his phone records seized during the "Plebgate" scandal in September 2012, she said, throws into sharp focus why further legal safeguards are needed.
The scandal broke when Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, then Government Chief Whip, called police officers at Number 10 "f*****g plebs" when they wouldn't open a gate for him.
Surveillance powers were used to seize Newton Dunn's records after he received leaked police logs confirming the event from the Met. The phone tap was used to trace the leak back to its source in the police department. The NUJ warns that these powers could be used to discover other whistle-blowers.
If Anderson's recommendations are followed to a T, without an appeal process, Kavanagh said, Newton Dunn would still be left in the dark that his records were being sought and have no way of fighting back. She also raised concerns about the lack of oversight even when a warrant is sought and called for this to also be strengthened.
On 4 November 2014 Sir Paul Kennedy, the interim Interception of Communications Commissioner, said that his office is only able to review about 10% of the domestic surveillance warrants filed by police.
"I've done one full-blown investigation since July," he told the Home Affairs Select Committee's RIPA Inquiry. "I'm not going to say there haven't been cases where journalists have been the target of an investigation," Kennedy said.
"What I would like to happen is journalists say what protection they need, and what the police say what they need in order to do their job."
Journalists are now telling them, said Santha Rasaiah, director of legal, policy and regulatory affairs at the News Media Association (NMA) which promotes media interests to government.
"The NMA welcomes the recommendation to scrap RIPA," Rasaiah said, "but would press the Government for further safeguards, including restrictions on surveillance powers," and for journalists to be notified when their records are sought and a process of appeal to be set up.Amid layoffs at the studios involved, the game will switch to a single-player RPG.
First rumored in 2007, and shown off at E3 2010, Dark Millenium Online will drop the "Online" moniker from its title to offer an "immersive" RPG with single- and multi-player elements. THQ CEO Brian Farrell said the decision was made looking at current market trends - read ToR battling to steal WoW's numbers - and realizing it would take a lot more money to pull off any kind of success. Farrell called other companies to see if they were interested in ponying up the cash needed, but no one returned his calls. He decided to cut THQ's losses and make a spectacular single-player game, after writing a pink slip for 120 diligent game designers.
"As previously announced, we have been actively looking for a business partner for the game as an MMO. However, based on changing market dynamics and the additional investment required to complete the game as an MMO, we believe the right direction for us is to shift the title from an MMO to a premium experience with single and multiplayer gameplay, robust digital content and community features," said Brian Farrell, President and CEO of THQ Inc.
Farrell said the amount of work gone in justifies the shift rather than cancelling the game outright. "Because we believe strongly in the high-quality and vast creative work that is in production, this is the right decision for both our portfolio and for gamers devoted to this powerful property."
Games Workshop, the company behind the Warhammer 40K miniatures game, is fine with the shift in focus. "We are genuinely excited about the new direction that THQ is taking with Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium," said Jon Gillard from Games Workshop.
I'm not sure how Gillard can be "genuinely excited" about laying off almost 120 people. The collapse of the staff at THQ's development houses continues with a total of 118 full-time employees dismissed from Relic Entertainment and Vigil Games. Vigil will complete Dark Millenium and Darksiders II, while Relic will concentrate its efforts on the Dawn of War branch of RTS 40K games.
As always, The Escapist sends its support to those affected by the layoffs at Relic and Vigil.MELBOURNE Victory will need to steel its resolve to keep Mitch Nichols as J. League club Cerezo Osaka consider making an improved bid for the midfielder.
Victory failed to entertain a $200,000 offer for Nichols from Cerezo this week, playing hardball with the Japanese side.
Incoming Cerezo coach Ranko Popovic has Nichols on his wish list as he prepares for the Japanese season, beginning in March.
"I make no secret that we are trying to attract Mitch to the club and he's a player I admire very highly," Popovic told SBS.
"I need to finalise things with Mitch because he's a player I really want, but if we can't work out a way then I need to turn my attention elsewhere."
Cerezo is understood to be considering its next move in the wake of Victory's knock-back, but is likely to offer an increased fee for the talented Queenslander in the next fortnight.
News_Rich_Media: Melbourne Victory midfielder Kosta Barbarouses tells Sunday Shootout that Melbourne Victory can win the A-League title.
Nichols has been a revelation for Victory this season, playing as a roaming attacking midfielder and forward in their unique 4-2-2-2 formation.
The potential transfer has the hallmarks of Mark Milligan's mooted move to Crystal Palace, which fell through after the Premier League club failed to meet Victory's demands.
Nichols' agent Buddy Farah, who also manages Milligan, urged the club to find a win-win outcome.
"The club should be open-minded on this and look for the best deal for both parties if the player wants it and the offer is there," Farah said.
The potential transfer comes at a crucial moment for both club and player.
Under Kevin Muscat, Victory is making good progress towards an A-League championship tilt but Nichols' departure would deprive the club of its most fluent attacking force.
Nichols has an eye on making Ange Postecoglou's World Cup squad, and his prospects could potentially be enhanced - along with his weekly salary - with a J. League move.
However, if Nichols found himself on the outer in Osaka, he could also throw away his dream of playing in Brazil.
Currently in sizzling form and playing each week at Victory, Nichols would know a switch to a bit-part role could end his World Cup hopes.
He last played for the Socceroos in July's East Asian Cup with a largely A-League based squad, missing out on Postecoglou's first 22-man group called up for November's home win over Costa Rica.Pin 0 Shares
One of the ways that you might be wasting your money could be due to the effects of anchoring. Anchoring is one way that retailers and others try to get you to spend more than you might normally spend. The effect of anchoring can also be seen in your other financial decisions, including investing decisions.
The idea of anchoring is that you use a value you know to make a decision about something you may not know about. Often the anchor price or value does not actually have a bearing on the actual value.
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Investopedia offers a great definition of anchoring:
When anchoring, people base decisions or estimates on events or values known to them, even though these facts may have no bearing on the actual event or value.
Anchoring can affect the way you make money decisions in your daily life, as well as in more long-term situation.
Spending More Money On Retail
One of the most common ways anchoring is used is to encourage you to spend more money than you normally would. This can be related to the idea of buying something in a “middle price range.” Something expensive will be presented next to something that is less expensive (but still not the least expensive). The idea is to get you to purchase something that is pricier than you would purchase normally.
Anchoring works at stores, when you see something expensive. That price for the item is “anchored” in your mind as something that you can expect to pay. So, when you see something next to it that is a little bit cheaper, that item suddenly seems like a good deal. The cheapest version of the item might work just as well, but it suddenly seems too cheap. Is there something wrong with the quality? Instead of getting the cheapest possible item, you go with the mid-range price. It feels like a good deal because you didn't pay the highest price, and you also feel good because you didn't “cheap out.” You feel like you got a good value, even if you probably would have saved money and still been fine with the lowest priced item.
Anchoring In Investing
Anchoring in investing is another issue. During times when your stock is losing value, Investopedia points out, you might be inclined to hold on to the stock because you want to at least “break even.” You don't want to sell until the stock at least reaches the price you paid for it. This is another form of anchoring. In your mind, the stock is “worth” a certain amount because that is the price at which you bought it. Even if the fundamentals have changed, and you should cut your losses (or harvest them for tax purposes), the “worth” of the stock is anchored in your mind.
Anchoring also works on a wider scale in the markets. A stock might remain stubbornly high because a certain expectation for price has been promoted. This could very well be seen in the Facebook IPO. There is already an expectation of what the stock should be valued at, so the market could easily adhere to the principle of anchoring when Facebook becomes publicly available.
Making Better Decisions
It's up to you to recognize anchoring situations. Instead of letting a fixed price set the value, consider what you want to pay before you head to a store or restaurant. Do research on investments to avoid letting your emotions rule you too far when making buy and sell decisions. Be aware of the effects of anchoring, and work to combat them.
Pin 0 SharesThe Left has run a successful campaign to interfere with the lives and businesses that employ skilled labor for centuries now.
One of the chief methods by which it has accomplished this is by expropriating children from their families, interfering with the traditional system of apprenticeship, making family businesses run on residential property illegal, and by mandating a universal system of education which churns out a mixture of half-capable proles and indolent Brahmins with expensive educations to act as pliable bosses.
Marxism and its offshoots has been the typical method for the Left to co-opt skilled labor by encouraging them to organize into protection rackets, often run by political operatives, and paid for out of the wages of skilled laborers who have been hoodwinked into believing emotive gibberish about solidarity. If you still believe in ‘solidarity,’ I invite you to visit the American cities of:
Detroit, MI
Bethlehem, PA
Flint, MI
Cleveland, OH
Buffalo, NY
Rochester, NY
Syracuse, NY
Camden, NJ
And any other ‘rust belt’ or former ’empire state’ city that you can think of. Shout “solidarity!” inside of a ruined factory in the Great Lakes region. Perhaps the ghost of a union man will holler back at you.
The reason why the Left desires to co-opt and destroy workers who actually know what they’re doing is because their very capability is a threat to the notion of egalitarianism. The notion that a man needs to work at a trade for years before he becomes capable to practice it on his own explicitly devalues formal education.
As every unionized American industry in the 20th century has become an economic pit of failure, the Left has switched to organizing cartels of government workers who are protected from competition by marginally competent gunmen. Additionally, they’ve attempted to shake down idiot-proles working in unskilled positions. None of these methods will work out for the Left in the long-term, because the workers that they suck the blood out of are going to wind up the same way as all the workers that they ‘helped’ during the 20th century.
The American software industry, and the broader less-regulated technology industry, is one of the last remnants of high-paid skilled labor remaining in the United States. The workers as individuals and as groups have been under daily assault by the Red press. Red professors, Red feminists, and traitorous workers hoping to curry favor with Red political operators have joined in on attacking the remaining companies that skirt the federal law (scribbled by Reds, passed by Reds waving American flags) to maintain high hiring standards.
Why else does the Left hate skilled workers?
The idea of skilled labor puts Managerial Brahmins at a disadvantage. They can’t understand and don’t like a business that takes specialized knowledge to run.
Skilled workers make lots of money. The Left wants to steal as much of it as they can to pay off their vast hordes of hungry morons with a political grudge.
Skilled labor is unfriendly to women who are unwilling to sacrifice their ability to have and care for children and to compete in a harsh professional environment.
Skilled labor is typically only accessible to people who are of above-average intelligence and discipline. Deficiencies in either can be rectified by surfeits of either, but both can’t be lacking.
The Left is typically too busy to care about the interests of skilled labor. Skilled workers are often interested in advancing to political positions (‘making the leap to management’), which also gives them a tendency to either defect against the interests of their brothers, or to be politically anodyne so as not to harm their chances of advancement.
Professional conservative political operatives tend to be completely indifferent to the interests of skilled workers. Part of this is because most American conservatives are just gelded outer party members who exist to act as political buffers for their superiors in the professional Left. The other reason is that Managerialists with a fundamentally leftist perspective on the human species tend to fund the major conservative foundations.
This is one of the reasons why both parties tend to do whatever they can to flood the labor market with foreigners, and do nothing to dismantle the inherently anti-skill mentality of the modern bureaucratic state. Milquetoast psuedocaptains of industry will murmur about ‘meritocracy’ out of the sides of their mouths without explaining what they really mean.
Perhaps this is because they remember what happened to William Shockley, the inventor of the transistor, when he spoke out against the tyrannical leveling labor legislation that continues to ruin America to this day. His example shows that a position at Stanford and a record as an ingenious scientist and businessman are not enough to protect you from the long knives of the Left. The public firing and mass-libel of Brenden Eich occurred for far less.
What should rightists do to defend the interests of skilled workers? Unfortunately, there’s not much that can really be achieved at this stage other than to staunch the bleeding by informing skilled workers who may be dazed by the daily attacks on their professions and companies (and by extent, their livelihoods, their families, and their property) by the bloodthirsty Red press.
Every day, propagandists at failing companies like The New York Times collectively lick their fangs, publishing libelous hit pieces against the culture of skilled workers, particularly in software engineering. The workers themselves tend to be unwilling to take sides, because they know that making a public stand could result in them losing their career, by extent harming their wives and children should they have them.
The trouble with these methods is that an economic model that rests on forcing people to become pliant morons to be manipulated ‘scientifically’ and within a wise program of ‘regulation’ by clueless Harvard graduates is that it is not a globally competitive one. It was never a terribly good idea, but Washington Experts will cling to it until the end.
In history, the difference between incompetent government and competent government is the one between annihilation and independence.
If it will remain possible to maintain advanced civilization on this continent, skilled workers are going to need to cut those guys out of the arrangement. They’re going to need to say “no” to reducing hiring standards, to accepting pay cuts to hire incompetents for political purposes, and to the notion of taking orders from wretched leftists who want nothing more than to suck their betters dry, to leave their cities in ruins, and their families destroyed.
The typical response of a skilled worker to this political assault is to wonder to themselves what they have to say to make it all go away.
The only accurate answer is: “Nothing, because they will never stop until they have taken everything that you have and crushed everything that you care about.”
The critical weakness of the destroyers is that they can’t achieve what they want if there is resistance, whether active or passive. And to resist, there needs to be awareness of what must be resisted, how, and where.
The Right should also realize that it will never get anywhere by sucking the toes of eccentric magnates looking to buy Republican politicians because they’re for sale at a cheaper price than Democrats are. It is also an enormous waste of resources to beg for votes within a political structure that systematically operates against the interests of the Right.
Instead, the focus should be on the capable people who keep the trains running, the servers from failing, the crude oil pumping, the power running, and the lights staying on. It is those people who are being denigrated, dishonored, and terrorized on a daily basis by the political scribblers who have never worked a day of real work in their entire lives, with a head full of crass sarcasm which conceals a murderous agenda.NOTE: This news article has been updated with the latest information. Click here to read this updated news article now.
Ransomware has been the fastest growing cybercrime of the year. The FBI says cybercriminals could rake in almost $1 billion from these attacks in 2016 alone. Yikes!
These types of attacks become extra dangerous when mixed with one of the most popular sites in the world. That makes this new ransomware attack that is spreading through a Facebook app so horrifying.
Ransomware is quickly becoming the common cybercriminals favorite method of attack. That's because it is easy to mass deploy, payoffs can be massive, and with the use of Bitcoin as currency, payment exchanges can be virtually anonymous.
We've just learned of a ransomware attack that is being deployed through Facebook Messenger. What's worse is that it's a form of Locky ransomware, which has no decryption program to get rid of it. We've warned you before of the dangers of Locky ransomware.
What to watch out for
Here is what you need to watch out for with this ransomware attack:
People are receiving strange messages through Facebook Messenger that only contain an image. It looks like a photo is sent as an attachment that you need to click on to view. The fake photo ends in.svg.
The photo is actually a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) file. It's not a real photo; instead, it's a JavaScript attack.
If you try opening this file, you will be directed to a fake YouTube site with a video from Facebook. You will then be asked to install a Chrome extension so that you can watch the video. Here is what the fake YouTube site with Chrome extension looks like:
Warning! This Chrome extension is malicious and could install malware onto your gadget. The malicious downloader is known as Necumod, which would be used to download the Locky ransomware.
What you should do
Do not click on an SVG file - If you get one of these messages through Facebook Messenger, do not click on the photo.
- If you get one of these messages through Facebook Messenger, do not click on the photo. Warn your friends - If you get a message with the SVG file, more than likely your friend has been hacked. Let them know immediately so they can warn others not to click on the malicious link.
- If you get a message with the SVG file, more than likely your friend has been hacked. Let them know immediately so they can warn others not to click on the malicious link. Deny Chrome Extension - If you do click on one of these SVG files by mistake, you still have time to avoid the ransomware. When you are directed to the fake YouTube site and are asked to install the Chrome Extension, do NOT do it.
- If you do click on one of these SVG files by mistake, you still have time to avoid the ransomware. When you are directed to the fake YouTube site and are asked to install the Chrome Extension, do NOT do it. On your browser, click menu.
Select More Tools >> Extensions.
On the extension you want to remove, click Remove from Chrome.
A notice to remove the extension will appear. Click Remove.
Remove the extension - If you went as far as installing this malicious extension, remove it immediately. Here are the steps to remove it: On your browser, click Menu. Select More Tools >> Extensions. On the extension you want to remove, click Remove from Chrome. It's the button that looks like a trash can. A notice to remove the extension will appear. Click Remove.
- If you went as far as installing this malicious extension, remove it immediately. Here are the steps to remove it: Protect your gadget with internet security software
More news stories you can't miss:
How to speed up a slow phone in 5 minutes or less
7 secret iOS 10 features used by the pros
New Amazon phishing scam spreading like wildfire!
Please share this information with everyone. Just click on any of the social media buttons on the side.About
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For years I've done all I can do to help my children live a fun, healthy and loving life but what do you do or say to your child when they are being bullied and made to feel alone? Or worse when you dont know that your child is being bullied. Students who experience bullying are at increased risk for poor school adjustment, sleep difficulties, anxiety, depression and suicide.
64% of children who were bullied did not report it; only 36% reported the bullying.
This is why I created the Diabetic Joe Book series. This series give kids the ability to interact and connect with the characters they see. Each character within the series has some "issue" they deal with that ultimately leads to some form of bullying.
Take our lead character for example: Diabetic Joe. He is a 7 year old kid going into 2nd grade. He is fun, loving, full of personality and loves an adventure. Joe deals with a hidden illness, type II diabetes. He has a tendancy to over do it on the sweets and snack affecting his health and his weight. He gets made fun of because he doesnt "look" like all the other kids and gets bullied daily. In the series, we see Joe get challenged and take steps to improving his health thru various scenarios and how his friends help him become the best Joe he can be. We see how he deals with bullying and what actions he takes to ensure a genuine and positive outcome. Our children will learn from these actions and use them for later in life. Some other highlights in the book is the relationship these characters have with family and friends.
Diabetic Joe: Sketch
The issues with which our children are facing have become more challenging in the digital age. Depression, bullying, weight problems, family problems: the horrors that come with these issues are undeniable, and in a lot of cases, they are unavoidable too, unless we do something about it.
We believe that we dont have to wait to teach our kids the factors of bullying once they happen but rather teach them before anything happens so they are well prepared and aware of what they can do if they or someone they know are subjected to bullying.
More than half of bullying situations (57%) stop when a peer intervenes on behalf of the student being bullied.
The Diabetic Joe series of animated books is designed to help children deal with these issues in a healthy, positive manner in order for them to grow up to become well-adjusted adults. Sadly, there is an epidemic of suicides brought on by these issues, and it is up to all of us to pitch in and work to roll back this tide.
Diabetic Joe: Animated
In each book, Diabetic Joe and his friends set an example for readers with their actions and decisions in response to the personal battles they are fighting. The characters Diabetic Joe, Healthy Bob and Skinny Julie are in grammar school. They live in the same world and face the same health and social issues your children are dealing with. Life is filled with a laundry list of issues for example: Being over or under weight, wearing glasses, not being popular, feeling lonely, not eating healthy, not exercising, and being bullied. And diseases like type 2 diabetes is becoming too common with our children.
We believe in the power of art.
In order to get the message across, we lean heavily on the artistic to ensure that each child can connect and find comfort in what they are looking at. We take each page as its own project, sketching out the idea, the characters and the backdrop to reflect the message that is being said.
Each book will be around 30 pages covering a multitude of social issues, like the one below where skinny Julie deals with family trouble at home.
Diabetic Joe: Book 2 "Standing Together" (Sketch)
Diabetic Joe: Book 2 "Standing Together" (Animation)
Your finances, your clothes, your home – these are things that can be taken away from you in an instant – but your education, that is something that is yours for life.
Come along with Diabetic Joe as he faces adventures related to bullying, weight problems, depression, and a range of other issues. Right now, we are turning to Kickstarter for help raising $25,000.
These funds will cover the costs for sketching, animating, writing, publishing, marketing, website, social media management, distributing and much more.
This is a series from which kids everywhere can benefit. We look to contintually expand our characters and animation so we can connect with kids on greater and greater levels. We appreciate your support at this crucial stage, and we thank you graciously for your time and your donation.
God bless,
- Diabetic Joe Familybrandon-jennings-kyle-singler-4-9-14.jpg
Brandon Jennings said the Detroit Pistons need to practice shooting more.
(AP Photo)
ATLANTA -- Brandon Jennings didn't have the greatest of weeks but the Detroit Pistons point guard said Friday that his team's errant shooting may be reparable with repetitions. "If you ask the question about why we're not making shots, we don't shoot," Jennings said after Friday's 99-89 loss to the Atlanta Hawks. "We don't shoot in practice. We haven't really had a chance to work on our games or anything. When we do have shootarounds, we're not able to get up shots like we should." The practice-poor Pistons have played 13 games already, losing 10 of them, and rank at or near the bottom of the NBA in the most important shooting categories. Jennings said the Pistons would make good use of the three off days upcoming, with practices on Sunday and Monday. But they have to do a better job making use of game-day shootarounds too, he said. "I just think if you're going to have shootaround in the morning, I think it's good that you get loose and you should work on shots that you're going to take in the game," he said. "Even before, after practice, we've got to start getting in the gym, just working on our game more." Is it the responsibility of players or coaches to make sure those shooting repetitions happen? "Both," Jennings said. Jennings didn't have the best of weeks. The Pistons have lost four in a row. Jennings was warned by the league for a flop in the third quarter of Wednesday's loss to Phoenix, |
parties facing financial damage could claim legal standing to fight in court against a NAFTA withdrawal, and try forcing the U.S. justice system to make a decision.
Enter the opposing view.
Joel Trachtman of the Fletcher School presented a paper at the conference arguing the president can’t do it alone. It said a unilateral Trump pullout would be virtually unprecedented; Trachtman identified 112 treaties the U.S. had terminated, and he found almost no examples of a president acting alone.
“Only a very small number — one to four,” he wrote.
It’s especially tough for the president in this case, he says.
First, it involves trade where Congress has a constitutionally recognized role. Furthermore, the 1994 NAFTA law remains on the books. Finally, he argues that the 1994 law makes a telling distinction: it stipulates that the original Canada-U.S. trade legislation would end in the event of a withdrawal, but does not make the same guarantee on NAFTA.
Trachtman also cites the seminal 1952 Youngstown Steel case, which curbed a president’s power to contradict a law passed by Congress.
Nearly two dozen scholars attended the conference, from Yale, Harvard, UCLA and elsewhere.
Some are dead-set against Trachtman’s view. Others agree with him that presidential powers are limited.
The latter group includes one of the co-authors of a paper presented there, Tim Meyer of Vanderbilt University, who said in a recent interview: “If the president were to rip up NAFTA and then sort of jack tariffs way up, I think somebody would be able to say … ‘You’re actually violating U.S. domestic law.”‘
Believers in presidential power include one of Washington’s most respected trade-watchers, Gary Hufbauer of the Peterson Institute. In his view, the president could invoke NAFTA’s termination clause, Article 2205, which allows a country to withdraw on six months’ notice. After six months, Hufbauer says, Trump could decide whether to follow through and reimpose tariffs.
Some trade lawyers confess that it’s confusing.
At another conference last month, Scott Lincicome of the pro-trade Cato Institute described a variety of befuddling possibilities. One is a zombie-like scenario: Trump announces a pullout, then doesn’t follow up with actions, there are no new tariffs, and NAFTA stumbles along, half-dead.
“So you’re all getting a nice window into the fun we trade lawyers have had for the last year, trying to figure all of this out,” he told conference-goers at Cato.
“It’s a paradise for trade lawyers — as long as your clients are willing to accept ‘I don’t know.’”The Fate of Ionia hangs in the Balance
(Saturday, December 11th 2010, ~19:30)
In less than six hours, the entirety of Runeterra will be able to witness the writing of history. I`m not going to go into the details, it`s all over the news and on everybody`s lips for weeks now.
As I`m lazily looking at the hourglass I can`t help myself from being somewhat morally conflicted about the whole matter. Tonight the skill of ten people will decide everything... again.
In retrospect I can easily state that Ionia is now accursed soil. Ever since the Noxian High Command laid eyes on it, nothing but the worst of matters have happened.
Noxus has lost a powerful ally with Sivir questioning the logic behind the High Command. Noxus then lost so many of its assassins who were sent after the Battle Mistress.
Ionia was invaded and for the first time in ages, they showed Runeterra that the peaceful can fight (how peaceful can a nation declare itself to be when the Kinkou resides within and when one every tribe and village has its own devastating martial arts?). But fighting was not enough. They could only defend as their efforts to push back the enemy away from Ionian shores proved too great of a challenge. Countless lives were lost on both sides but the High Command proved to be numerically greater. The portrait of Irelia`s father comes to mind. Master Yi is now the last practioner of the Wuju Style and without finding an apprentice to whom he can pass on his knowledge, time will soon claim him and his `art` will be lost forever.
If that wasn`t enough, the now legendary conflict between Warwick and Soraka took place which resulted in the Chemist of Zaun losing his humanity and gaining the body we all know and fear while the Ionian Isles lost their Divine Starchild.
Now a respected monk has turned his own body into a pillar of fire, making his martyrdom the key to this rematch. While the Institute of War values all life, how will the history books remember the ever-incandescent sacrifice of this monk?
As it now stands, at least 8 out the 10 champions who were decided eligible to defend Ionia for the match are willing to fight not to reclaim their lands but to get revenge on Noxus. It would seem that even if Ionia claims victory, Noxus will not be entirely defeated since in the years of occupation it has manged to greatly scar the mentality of the `peaceful` Ionians.
Meanwhile, with the recent disappearance of the du Couteau family-head, Jericho Swain plots dominion over all of Noxus and probably even the High Command. While du Couteau`s daughter will be conquering for Noxus, it seems odd that the Master Tactician was never part of the final batch of candidates. Also notably absent are Dr. Mundo and Warwick, the latter more probably removed from the list in order to prevent another clash of apocalyptic magnitude with the Starchild.
Are there currently no Unconquering Noxians in the three occupied regions? Men and women who managed to settle down and raise families, peacefully? Are there no Undefending Ionians either on the Isles or in Noxus? Nobody gets to choose who they are, where they were born and the doctrines their nation forces down on them. So I ask what will happen to these people who are seen as pariahs by both nations?
Also, as the first match begins, will we watch because we need to know what our future holds or will we watch because we demand entertainment? And if so, in what exact point in time did the lives of thousands of innocent bystanders become our entertainment?Story highlights Investigation centers on disappearance of at least 100 people at Bogota, Colombia, prison
Prosecutor: "The victims were inmates, visitors and people who had nothing to do with the prison"
(CNN) Colombian authorities are investigating the disappearance and possible dismemberment of at least 100 people whose bodies were allegedly thrown into a sewer system underneath a notorious prison in Bogota.
The investigation is focusing on La Modelo, one of Colombia's largest and most overpopulated prisons. But officials say the practice of dismembering people and tossing their remains into sewers might have also happened at other prisons in cities such as Popayan, Bucaramanga and Barranquilla between 1999 and 2001 and possibly later.
Caterina Heyck Puyana, a special prosecutor in charge of the case, said Wednesday that the Colombian attorney general's office has been investigating what happened at La Modelo for months.
"Towards the end of last year we began investigating the possible disappearance and dismemberment of an undetermined number of people at La Modelo prison in Bogota," Heyck said. "The victims were inmates, visitors and people who had nothing to do with the prison. Their remains were thrown into the drain pipes of the sewer system."
The investigation
Read MoreManufacturer: Privateer Press
The fires of continent-spanning war engulf western Immoren, forging great leaders in a crucible of conflict. Bold commanders orchestrate grand strategies and daring battlefield tactics, their actions bringing glorious victory-or the despair of final defeat. Do you have the courage and cunning to lead your forces to ultimate triumph? Take command and muster the military might of an entire nation to conquer the Iron Kingdoms!
Warmachine High Command is a deck-building card game for 2-4 players set in the steam-powered fantasy world of the Iron Kingdoms. This stand-alone game can be played with just the contents of this box or combined with other Warmachine High Command products for a customizable experience. Leverage your resources, rally your armies, and dominate your foes to set your banner above all of western Immoren!
Contents:
386 Cards
- 89 Cygnar Cards
- 89 Khador Cards
- 89 Protectorate of Menoth Cards
- 89 Cryx Cards
- 15 Winds of War Cards
- 15 Location cards
Rulebook
Players: 2-4
Game Length: 60 minutes
STAY ORGANIZED!SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 23, 2017 – Intel Corporation’s board of directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.2725 cents per share ($1.09 per share on an annual basis) on the company’s common stock. This represents a dividend increase of five percent on an annualized basis. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2017, to stockholders of record on May 7, 2017.
About Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), a leader in the semiconductor industry, is shaping the data-centric future with computing and communications technology that is the foundation of the world’s innovations. The company’s engineering expertise is helping address the world’s greatest challenges as well as helping secure, power and connect billions of devices and the infrastructure of the smart, connected world – from the cloud to the network to the edge and everything in between. Find more information about Intel at newsroom.intel.com and intel.com.
Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries.
*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.A COURT has ordered two young girls to spend weekends with their sex offender father provided he puts a door on their bedroom they can lock.
Judge Robert Benjamin, in the Family Court's Hobart branch, ruled that the girls "need some protection from (their father), particularly at night".
However, the risk of sexual abuse was "diminished when they are awake and alert".
Judge Benjamin said that the father, who was convicted of downloading child pornography, must have an "adult friend" stay with him when the girls stayed overnight.
He added that until the youngest turned 14, the girls must "share the same room so they can have the mutual support of one another".
A Family Court counsellor said that the girls, aged ten and eight, "are at an age and maturity when awake, dressed and together it would be unlikely the father would act inappropriately toward them".
"However, at night, when they were asleep or partly asleep and not aware of each other's whereabouts, they would be less secure."
The case has outraged women's groups, who say it puts the girls at risk to satisfy the father's desire to see them.
The eldest girl has told counsellors that she was afraid to stay overnight with her father.
The father was convicted in 2007 of three child pornography offences, including filming images of child pornography on his computer. He also created links and shortcuts to child porn sites.
In sentencing the man for the offences, a judge in Tasmania said he was "far from convinced" he posed no risk to children and put his name on the sex offenders register for five years.
His wife left him, and has since been fighting to restrict his access to their two daughters.
The Family Court found the father had invited one of the girls into his bed, and had "demonstrated affection toward her in a way that was, in all the circumstances, inappropriate for a child of that age".
The eldest girl told counsellors she "did not want to spend time alone with her father".Coral reefs are about as colorful as the ocean gets—except when they bleach. Overly warm water can cause corals to spit out the colorful, photosynthetic, single-celled symbiotes that live inside them and produce most of their food. If the heat passes before the corals starve to death, their symbiotes can return, bringing color and health back to the coral.
As the globe warms, widespread bleaching events are occurring with disturbing frequency. These tend to occur during times of El Niño conditions in the Pacific, which add a temporary boost to the warming water at some reefs. The current record-strength El Niño is sadly no exception.
Researchers contributing to Australia’s National Coral Bleaching Taskforce recently completed a survey of the state of the iconic Great Barrier Reef. The results show that it is currently experiencing the worst bleaching event we’ve ever seen there. Overall, 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef has bleached to some degree. The northern half of the reef has been hit the hardest, with about 80 percent categorized as severely bleached. The far southern portion has escaped the warmest water, and the area of severe damage there drops to around 1 percent.
In a press release for the survey, James Cook University’s Andrew Baird said, “North of Port Douglas, we’re already measuring an average of close to 50 percent mortality of bleached corals. At some reefs, the final death toll is likely to exceed 90 percent. When bleaching is this severe it affects almost all coral species, including old, slow-growing corals that once lost will take decades or longer to return.”HI all,
Recently there has been a heathed debate in the CF office on how to give rank points on Quick Play (QP) and Custom Play (CP).
The problem: QP is more fair, and therefore you should get only rank points on QP. But QP doesn't allow for great community, and community is what binds players. Moving rank points from QP to CP would drive the community away from the game.
In CP you can choose your opponents and game modes. So you can ladder on the FFA ladder, by playing only speed games, or corner games. You might be a pro in one, but be really bad in the other one. Beside this you can choose your opponent, and play against someone you know is worse than his rank suggests (let alone, you can just boost your way to the top). To combat this, we could force you to play QP, taking away most unfair advantages, and give a true way to compare each others skill.
On the other hand, CP is a more social play. You can easily follow your friends. Agree on what you want to choose from. Take some time to socialize. Experiment with new fun game modes.
We want to ask you, how do you think about this?
What would be your best experience, from the point of view of a starter, till a professional?
Which other game does solve this problem in an ellegant matter? So we can learn and implement it into CF?
I hope to get a lot of feedbackMINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Minneapolis police chief Janee Harteau says one of her biggest goals is to get guns out of the hands of violent criminals.
With three homicides in the city in three days, the total is now 37 this year. There were 32 murders in all of last year.
Police chief Janee Harteau says it isn’t easy to predict when and where these homicides will happen because the motives vary. She says the common denominator in most homicides this year has been guns in the hands of the wrong people.
The Minneapolis City Council will likely approve Mayor Betsy Hodges’ reappointment of Harteau for Chief of Minneapolis Police Department soon. Harteau’s second term would begin next year, and she says her main goals are reaching youth growing up in difficult circumstances and getting guns out of the hands of previously convicted violent criminals.
MAD DADS founder V.J. Smith has been working to curb crime in Minneapolis since 1998.
“Our community is in dire need of healing,” he said.
Of the three separate deadly shootings this week, police have made one arrest in connection with the shooting death of 28-year-old Jessica St. Marie. Police arrested Gerald Cepeda Saturday morning. Investigators say he knew St. Marie and has lengthy criminal record. The shooting happened while she was waiting for the bus on East Lake Street and Park Avenue South.
“Jessica came from a tough upbringing,” Smith said. “She was a girl that had a rough time. She went to treatment, but she was smart and people loved her.”
Smith says reaching the youth and providing more educational and job-related resources are the key to keeping homicide numbers low.
“This isn’t a problem we can arrest away,” he said.
Harteau says she agrees.
“We need to figure out how do we prevent these homicides,” she said. “When some are domestic or interpersonal disputes you cannot predict and people have access to guns.”
Harteau says she is not advocating changes to more gun laws, but a greater focus on keeping guns out of the hands of the wrong people.
“This is about responsible gun ownership, and making sure guns are not in hands of people who are already violent,” she said.
The chief says the increase in homicides is a troubling trend across the country, but Minneapolis has become consistently safer since the mid-90s.
“There was a time when we were ‘Murderapolis’ and we were in the 100’s, but that doesn’t make me happy today,” Harteau said of the number of homicides during peak years of gang violence. “What you’re seeing now is those who were convicted with the early gang wars — their kids are now coming up. These folks are coming out of prison, so we are having those two worlds collide.”
Smith believes reaching young people from difficult homes will help in the future, but it’s going to take a partnership between police, city government, and the community.
“We’ve got to figure out how to heal of poverty, economics, housing and abuse of drugs, abuse of violence,” he said. “We’ve got to heal from all that.”
Chief Harteau says she is starting a special group of investigators assigned to look at shooting deaths to try to make connections between the crimes and hopefully stop retaliations.
V.J. Smith will hold a vigil Sunday for another homicide victim from this week — 19-year-old Elija Larkin — where he was shot and killed on the corner of 30th and Emerson at noon.When is the Metro Exodus release date? 4A Games has revealed a load of Metro Exodus gameplay details including more open levels, a new backpack system, and more.
4A Games’ atmospheric Metro series has consistently pulled off the difficult balance of being considered a cult classic, yet also wildly commercially successful. Artyom’s next foray into this ravaged world of bandits and mutants is, according to the studio, the most ambitious project 4A have ever attempted.
Artyom and Anna return for this third installment which sees the now-married pair embark on a continent-spanning, year-long journey in a colossal locomotive. The train, which is upgraded over the course of the trek, serves not only as a method of transportation in Metro Exodus’ gameplay, but is also a makeshift home for the ever-growing group of ragtag survivors that you’ll pick up along the way.
Ahead of Metro Exodus’ release date, there are plenty of new features to be excited about. There’s also a newly introduced backpack system for weapon and kit upgrades out in the field, new creatures to deal with, new factions to meet, sprawling open levels (don’t worry, there are claustrophobic linear ones to explore, too), and the promise of the most ambitious Metro story yet attempted in the videogame series. This is everything we know about Metro Exodus.
Metro Exodus release date
It feels rather odd to say, but we’re quite happy to hear that we’ll be able to get into the post-apocalypse early. The Metro Exodus release date is February 15, 2019. We were ready to pack our bags and venture out to the wastes of Russia on the 22nd, but the launch time has been moved back a week.
Metro Exodus open-world
There isn’t exactly such a thing as a Metro Exodus open-world: its structure will remain pretty similar, segueing between linear sections and open areas. This time, however, Metro Exodus’ levels are 100 times bigger than Last Light’s – creative director Andriy Prokhorov tells us that the map for Echoes, the level from Last Light which features a crashed plane, was dwarfed when the team laid it on top of one of Exodus’s open maps.
The claustrophobic ‘corridor shooter’ gameplay of previous games in the series is still present and correct, but is complimented by the broader Metro Exodus setting. In our first experience of Metro Exodus gameplay at E3 2018, we found that the game is all the better for exploring beyond the tunnels. And we’ve since played another slice of the game at Gamescom, experiencing a more focused – but still very open – level from later in the game.
The mantra behind the design is ‘Stalker meets Metro,’ the upshot of which is that you’ll be able to explore these open areas at your own pace. Each section will be linked by more linear levels, and you’ll still find indoor and underground sections within them, so there’s no need to worry about an absence of tunnels – Prohorov confirms that there will be plenty of opportunities to visit the metro system.
Exodus will take place across different cities and locations, visited during a year-long journey undertaken by protagonist Artyom. The nuclear winter has subsided, and now seasons are taking hold again, so there will be much greater environmental variety.
We also get a Metro Exodus day/night cycle, which will change how your enemies behave and give you new tactical options in the field. For instance, foes will go out on patrol during the day, but will rest at base at night. That means bases will be quieter during the day, but you will be more visible.
Another change is that there are now surface locations which aren’t irradiated (though the radiation hasn’t entirely subsided yet, so you will still need your mask and a bagful of filters in some areas).
More like this: Shoot all the baddies in the best FPS games on PC
Since the world is so big, you’re going to need a way to get around. In Metro Exodus you’ll be making your way across the country in a large armoured train, named the Aurora. The team is thinking of this upgradeable Metro Exodus train as a “moving settlement,” and you’ll be accompanied on the vehicle by a small band of survivors from the outset. You can chat to NPCs and get new weapons or upgrade existing ones.
You’ll start with just the engine, which has a cramped living quarters built into it. But over the course of the Metro Exodus campaign you’ll add more carriages and upgrade it. You’ll also pick up many more survivors along the way who will join your crew.
Metro Exodus gameplay
The Metro games are masterclasses in tension, atmosphere, and environmental detail. This, according to the team, won’t change – 4A is working hard to ensure that none of Metro’s characteristics are diluted by the addition of larger locations and less directed progression. An overarching story will keep things on the move, even when you’re just exploring, and help to point you in the right direction when you’re not hemmed in by the comforting, rounded walls of a tunnel.
When it comes to Metro Exodus’ gameplay, combat and enemy encounters will be more dynamic, as 4A has made significant changes to enemy AI and behaviour to accommodate the larger locations. Now enemies will wander about, and be more or less common within the game’s various biomes. The upshot of this is that we won’t all have the same experiences or encounter the same enemies while exploring.
Something else that has been added as a result of the new large open areas is Metro Exodus’ backpacks. Linear levels allowed 4A to simply place a trader in a location before an almighty scrap, so the new system for Exodus allows you to maintain and upgrade your weapons and kit, as well as craft items, out in the field. Using it won’t pause the game, however, so you’ll have to be smart about when you choose to set it down. Probably best not to do so while surrounded by a pack of watchers, then.
Metro’s weapons have always revelled in being slightly shonky and unreliable, but now you’ll also need to maintain them at workbenches through Metro Exodus’ weapon cleaning and customisation system. Keeping those pressurised weapons in good condition is key to making sure they don’t let you down during an inopportune meeting with a Dark One. Let the filth build up, and you’re playing with fire, so you’ll need to take the time to clean them whenever you find a workbench.
Read more: Test your mettle in these tough survival games
Weapons also have five hardpoints to which you can attach upgrades such as barrels, compensators, and muzzles. While you can tweak your weapons on-the-go to an extent, you have many more options to upgrade your arsenal at workbenches. That said, there is no Metro Exodus bullet economy this time: rather than exchanging valuable ammo for upgrades, you will need to scavenge your environments for junk and chemicals to sell.
There is also now a day/night cycle which changes the way encounters play out. Enemies might patrol an area during the day and hole up closer to base at night, for example. And if you tackle a task at night, then there will be many more opportunities to skulk in the shadows and hide from sight than if you try to move around unfriendly territory in daylight.
Metro Exodus story
The game picks up a little while after Metro: Last Light’s ‘enlightened’ ending, which the team considers canon. We’ll still be playing as Artyom, who is now married to Anna, but this time we’ll be setting out from Moscow and travelling East across Russia by rail in order to find somewhere safe to live.
The world you’re trying to survive might be massive, but Metro Exodus’ story is just as ambitious – in fact, “story comes first”, according to the series’ creator. To fit a narrative that is the series’ most complex yet, Metro Exodus’ script is twice the length of Last Light, 2033, and of the DLC combined. New faces introduce themselves alongside a litany of returning characters to make the largest cast of characters the series has seen so far, though with no less ambition when it comes to portraying the close relationships the series has explored in the past.
Metro Exodus trailers
The Metro Exodus story trailer above and shows more of the beautiful train you’ll be riding, and some distinctly less attractive men you’ll be battering. This time it’s told from the perspective of Artyom’s wife, Anna, a top sniper who shares her husband’s belief in a world beyond the subterranean Metro.
The Metro Exodus trailer from Gamescom 2018 shows off the horrors that await in the darkness. The game’s new day/night cycle will add even more variety and tactical depth than ever before.
Artyom and his mates on the Aurora aren’t the only humans out there. We see our train home steaming its way to the Volga, one of the game’s gargantuan open areas.
The Metro Exodus trailer from The Game Awards reveals more about the game’s story as Anna implores Artyom to rein in his forays into the Russian wastes.
The first Metro Exodus trailer is the 2017 announcement one above. After our trudge through a snow-covered street and a typically dank tunnel, we get to see the game’s larger world which includes regions that have escaped the deathly haze of radiation.
Metro Exodus system requirements
The Metro Exodus system requirements are hardly as tough as the ruthless post-apocalypse, so most rigs should be able to get it running just fine. If you get shot in the leg by a human enemy or mauled by a monster, we might not be able to say the same for you.
MINIMUM
OS: Windows 7 | 8 | 10
Windows 7 | 8 | 10 CPU: Intel Core i5-4440 or equivalent
Intel Core i5-4440 or equivalent RAM: 8GB
8GB GPU: GeForce GTX 670 | GeForce GTX 1050 | AMD Radeon HD 7870
GeForce GTX 670 | GeForce GTX 1050 | AMD Radeon HD 7870 VRAM: 2 GB
2 GB DirectX: 11 or 12
RECOMMENDED
OS*: Windows 10
Windows 10 CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K or equivalent
Intel Core i7-4770K or equivalent RAM: 8GB
8GB GPU: GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce RTX 2060 | AMD RX Vega 56
GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce RTX 2060 | AMD RX Vega 56 VRAM: 8 GB
8 GB DirectX: 12
HIGH
OS*: Windows 10
Windows 10 CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K or equivalent
Intel Core i7-8700K or equivalent RAM: 16GB
16GB GPU: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2070 | AMD RX Vega 64
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2070 | AMD RX Vega 64 VRAM: 8 GB
8 GB DirectX: 12
EXTREME
OS*: WINDOWS 10
WINDOWS 10 CPU: INTEL CORE I9-9900K or equivalent
INTEL CORE I9-9900K or equivalent RAM: 16GB
16GB GPU: GeForce RTX 2080 Ti
GeForce RTX 2080 Ti VRAM: 11 GB
11 GB DirectX: 12
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And there you go: everything we know about Metro Exodus. Once again, Russia is shaping up to be a rather unforgiving place, so you might consider hardening your sensibilities with the best horror games on PC. Equally, you could sharpen your shooting skills with the best FPS games. In the meantime, we’re going to train ourselves by riding London’s underground trains over and over until Metro Exodus’ release date.One of the ways that Intel has kept netbooks from cannibalizing notebook sales is by imposing a limitation on netbook screen sizes—netbooks that use the Atom N series have been restricted to screen sizes no bigger than 10.2 inches. But rumor has it that Intel will lift this restriction in the second half of the year, and allow larger screens on netbooks that use the dual-core N550.
This move isn't too surprising, given that netbook sales have started to level off as a percentage of mobile sales. Intel is probably looking for a way to keep netbooks interesting, and offering more form factors is one of them. It's also the case that Intel has been pitching the Pine Trail + Broadcom CrystalHD combo as a way to do 1080p video on a netbook—and 1080p certainly makes more sense for larger screens than it does on a sub-10" panel.
A final argument for the restriction's elimination is that it's quite likely that the coming wave of ARM-based "smartbooks" will include units with screen sizes above 10.2 inches. Intel won't want the Atom platform to be arbitrarily restricted in competing with ARM-based offerings, so now is as good a time as any to do away with the ban. That way, OEMs get the all-clear to work on larger Atom-based netbooks that will hit the shelves in the second half of the year, as ARM A8- and A9-based smartbooks start to trickle out onto the market from Lenovo and other vendors.
The increase in screen size raises one question: at what point is a netbook no longer a netbook? I don't have an answer to this, so I'd like to ask the readers to weigh in on the question. Is it a specific price point? A particular form factor or range of form factors? A combination of price, form factor, and flash memory for a main storage pool?Your most dangerous possession? Your smartphone
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Forget what's in your wallet -- beware your smartphone. It's becoming one of your most dangerous possessions.
If your phone was stolen a few years ago, the thief could make prank calls and read your text messages. Today, that person can destroy your social life -- you said what on Facebook?! -- and wreak havoc on your finances.
Now that smartphones double as wallets and bank accounts -- allowing users to manage their finances, transfer money, make payments, deposit checks and swipe their phones as credit cards -- they are very lucrative scores for thieves. And with 30% of phone subscribers owning iPhones, BlackBerrys and Droids, there are a lot of people at risk.
"It's crazy the amount of information on that phone -- it's like carrying a mini-computer around with you, except that more people know the settings on their computer than they do on their phones at this point," said Nikki Junker, social media coordinator and victim advisor at Identity Theft Resource Center. "People are incredibly at risk as technology improves."
And mobile banking use is expected to soar by nearly 55% next year, according to recent data compiled by TowerGroup, a research firm for the financial services industry.
They found that while 17.8 million consumers used mobile banking last year, 27.4 million are expected to use it this year, and 53.1 million consumers are forecast to adopt it by 2013.
"We're now past the early adopters and starting to hit the early maturity phase," said George Peabody, director of emerging technologies at Mercator Advisory Group. "So much of our screen time is shifting from PCs to smartphones, and the banks want to be there and know they have to be there."
In addition, the volume of mobile payments -- buying boots via Zappos iPhone app, for example, or paying bills -- is expected to climb to $214 billion by 2015, up from $16 billion in 2010, according to Aite Group, another financial services research firm.
And pay-by-phone is only going to get easier as our devices come embedded with Near Field Communication (NFC) devices that allow you to pay for your morning latte by waving your phone at the cash register.
Companies like Blaze Mobile and Bling Nation already let you pay major retailers by swiping your smartphone thanks to a sticker adhered to the outside of your phone. Meanwhile, an app created by mFoundry brings up an image of your Starbuck prepaid card barcode and lets you scan it in lieu of a credit card.
"A lot of players are now pushing to drive the contactless technology," said Gwenn Bezard, research director at Aite Group specializing in banking and payments. "While you're not going to wake up tomorrow and everyone is going to be using mobile payments, it's going to grow over the next years -- and from a very low base."
Watch your phone! Security attacks on smartphones climbed to an all-time high in 2010, according to AdaptiveMobile, an international mobile security firm. Specifically, attacks on Google's Android smartphones quadrupled, and smartphones running Java-based applications jumped 45%.
"Bad guys are following where the people are going -- and people are going to smartphones," said Peabody. "As smartphone prices continue to decline and even more people get them, that's definitely the new place for bad guys to go."
While storing a password and keeping your phone locked is a good start, it's not going to protect you from professional fraudsters.
"Don't think that having an initial password set on your phone can stop people from getting in there," said Junker. "It's a very low level of protection -- you can even find 30-second videos on how to crack smartphone passwords on YouTube."
If you use mobile banking or make online payments frequently, you should invest in anti-virus protection and check with your bank about any security or identity theft protection features that you can enable.
Most smartphones also offer remote wipe-out services -- like MobileMe for the iPhone -- that automatically erase the information on your phone if you claim it as lost or stolen.
If you bank with your phone by accessing its website rather than opening an app, be extra careful when typing in the address. Some identity thefts create domains with the same address as major banks with two letters switched in hopes a consumer will accidentally land on the site and enter their username and password, said Junker.
And make sure you immediately log out of any bank apps or sites where your financial information is stored as soon as you're finished. While your identity is still at risk if your phone is stolen, this will buy you time to wipe out your information as soon as you realize it's gone.Two days after his 58th anniversary, Georg Weiss probably made himself the most beautiful gift: Together with Oliver Kainz and Jochen Krumbach, he celebrated the first VLN victory for the Ferrari 488 GT3 of the Wochenspiegel Team Monschau at the 59th ADAC ACAS H&R-Cup. After the race duration of 4:07:19,670 hours, team manager Weiss took the chequered flag as winner. The advance to the second-placed crew of Otto Klohs, Mathieu Jaminet and Lars Kern in the Porsche 911 GT3 R of Manthey-Racing was 52.755 seconds. Into third place finished Michael Ammermüller and Jeffrey Schmidt in the Audi R8 LMS of Montaplast by Land-Motorsport.
“At the beginning of my stint, I was not sure whether the gap to the Manthey-Porsche would be sufficient to secure our win”, Weiss admitted. “So I am now extremely happy that we finally made it for the first time after ten years with our team to score this victory. This is a big moment for me.” After many years with Porsche race cars, the 2017 season is the first year for WTM-Racing to compete with a Ferrari 488 GT3 in all VLN races. The Italian super sports car from the Maranello factory suits Weiss really well. “I have a big confidence in the car. And in addition to the good performance, we have an air conditioning system in the car which we use of course in the hot summer temperatures like today”, he adds with a smile.
The victory of the WTM-Ferrari was the second victory of a Ferrari in the history of the VLN endurance championship at the Nürburgring. The first one dates back to the 14th of May 2011 when the driver duo Marco Seefried and Jamie Melo Junior won the race in a Ferrari F458 entered by Farnbacher-Racing.
The Manthey trio was happy with their second position. “Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to win the Pro Am classification today for the third time in a row, but we are on the second step of the winners’ podium and that is absolutely fantastic”, said Klohs and Porsche test driver Kern added: “Otto completed eight laps in his stint |
opposing coach to game-plan around him. Unfortunately, Butkus played for some very bad Chicago teams that never even made the playoffs in his 8 years.
Earl Campbell – RB Houston Oilers, New Orleans Saints 1978-1985
74 TDs, 9,407 YDs
Earl Campbell was the most powerful running back that sports fans had ever seen. His body was a battering ram for a very bad Houston Oilers franchise that depended upon his talent to win games ( just not Super Bowls) and eventually ruined his body.
Dan Fouts – QB San Diego Chargers 1973-1987
254 TDs, 43,040 YDs
When Dan Fouts left the NFL, he was number one in most offensive categories for quarterbacks. Fouts led the high powered Chargers offense for 14 years and performed at a level that most had never seen at his position.
Even with all of his dominance, the Chargers failed to even make it to the final game of the year.1 of 13 View Caption
Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Abigail Tapia, 15, is comforted as she speaks about missing her aunt, Silvia Avelar-Flo Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Linda Hoffman, one of the founders of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, leads a pray Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Atticus Juarez, 3, nephew of Silvia Avelar-Flores, who was detained by ICE agents in a Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Ariana Juarez, 2, who's mother was detained by ICE agents and taken to an undisclosed l Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Ariana Juarez, 2, who's mother was detained by ICE agents and taken to an undisclosed l Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Abigail Tapia, 15, becomes emotional as she speaks about missing her aunt, Silvia Avela Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Carlos Juarez, a legal permanent resident of the United States becomes emotional as he Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Officers momentarily gather outside of their offices in West Valley City as Mormon Wome Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune A family photo of a family torn apart is displayed as Mormon Women for Ethical Governme Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Carlos Juarez, holding his daughter Ariana, 2, is joined by family and friends as Mormo Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Ariana Juarez, 2, center, who's mother was detained by ICE agents and taken to an undis Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Dovie Peterson joins Mormon Women for Ethical Government and other concerned citizens a Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune Mormon Women for Ethical Government and other concerned citizens gather at the DepartmeThe Horn of Africa with location of Goda Buticha and sites mentioned in the text. Credit: C. Tribolo et al in PLOS ONE
While eastern Africa was a departure point for modern human dispersals Out of Africa in the Upper Pleistocene, little is known about the modern humans who lived in the Horn of Africa during the period between 70,000 and 5,000 years ago, partly due to the lack of well-dated archaeological sites in the region. As a result, the important behavioral change from Middle Stone Age (~300,000-30,000 years ago) to Later Stone Age (from >50,000 years ago), occurring within this time frame is not well documented in the Horn of Africa.
An international team of researchers from Ethiopia, France, Israel and the USA have recently published in journal PLOS ONE the results of an extensive sedimentological and geochronological study at the Goda Buticha cave, in southeastern Ethiopia. The site has yielded a rich assemblage of stone artefacts, assigned to the Middle Stone Age in its lower sequence and to the Later Stone Age in the upper part of the sequence.
Additionally, numerous animal bones, and fragments of ostrich eggshell, some fashioned into beads, were found. The Goda Buticha sequence is also significant because it contains human remains, a rare type of find from late Middle Stone Age/ Late Stone Age sites in eastern Africa.
The study used detailed sedimentological analyses of the sequence, the chronology of which was framed and refined by a combination of Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating of the sediments and radiocarbon dating of charcoal. The team thus documented a securely-dated archaeological sequence with ages ranging from ca. 65,000 to 1,000 years ago.
Lithic artefacts from Complex I and Layers IIc and IId-IIf of Goda Buticha. Credit: Tribolo, C. et al in PLOS ONE
The sequence displays a long hiatus (between 25,000 and 8,000 years ago) in sedimentation and in human activity, corresponding in time to the generally dry period observed in many local and regional climate records. Continuity of human occupation may not have been possible in this area during that time. Lithic artefacts found in levels dating to c. 8,000-6,000 years ago (post-dating the hiatus), however, show a combination of Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age industries. This emphasises the time-transgressive and complex nature of technological and cultural changes in the Horn of Africa from the Middle to the Later Stone Age.
Co-author Dr Alice Leplongeon, researcher at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge commented, “We know very little about Modern Humans who lived in the Horn of Africa between 70,000 and 5,000 years ago. Goda Buticha contributes to fill this gap as it is one of the rare sites in the Horn of Africa with dates ranging from 65,000 to 1,000 years ago. In addition, the hiatus in the sequence suggests that human occupation may not have been possible, at least locally, during the driest episodes of the period."
The original open access article is published in PLOS ONE: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0169418
The Research was conducted under the permit of the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage (ARCCH, Ethiopia) and funded by the French National Research Agency, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the National Geographic Society, Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Regional Priority Program <Heritage, Resources, Governance>, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History Small Grants Program and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska- Curie grant number 655459.(CNN) Donald Trump, defying skeptics and overcoming an avalanche of mockery from establishment Republicans, has extended his streak as the party's presidential frontrunner for almost five months.
With the Iowa caucuses less than two months away, Republican leaders are growing deeply alarmed by Trump's resilience. Anxious that his lead may not fade before the voting starts, GOP strategists have begun to brace for a long and painful nomination fight, with Trump's opponents hoping to grind him down over a period of months.
In a new CNN/ORC poll released Friday, Trump leads the GOP field of White House hopefuls at 36% — his broadest support this cycle. In a distant second place is Ted Cruz at 16%, giving Trump his widest lead this year, followed by Ben Carson at 14% and Marco Rubio at 12%. Just two days before, a Quinnipiac University poll showed Trump on top at 27%, followed by Rubio at 17% and Carson and Cruz tied at 16%.
The back-to-back polls are yet another confirmation of Trump's remarkable ability to withstand an onslaught of criticism. Since launching his campaign in June, the billionaire has barreled from the center of one controversy to the next, repeatedly bypassing predictions of demise from all corners of the political world.
But even in the face of more evidence of Trump's endurance — and grudging recognition that a Trump victory is no longer outside the realm of possibility — many establishment Republicans still insist that ultimately, the businessman is unlikely to clinch the nomination. They are starting to anticipate a protracted primary race that extends far beyond the early states and possibly into the summer, in which the party slowly wears Trump down.
Former Republican Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who was a close adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, said while Trump has clearly locked in a solid bloc of supporters, the majority of GOP voters are still up for grabs.
"In order to get the nomination, you have to get the majority of the votes at the convention. The presidential election is not going to be won in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina -- it has to be won by a composite of all 50 states," Leavitt, who did not rule out the possibility of a Trump nomination, said in an interview.
He predicted that in the end, "there will be a consolidation of those who don't want him to be nominee."
Senior GOP officials have been reticent to publicly scold Trump, particularly as the candidate has continued to dangle the threat of a third-party run.
"People are reluctant to take him on because he lashes back like ISIS," said former Nevada Republican Gov. Robert List, who believes there's only a "small chance" that Trump becomes the nominee. "He has a wicked tongue and no reluctance to use it."
List also warned about the long-term damage that a Trump victory would unleash on the GOP.
"He's the typical sort of person that historically folks thought of as a typical Republican — wealthy, country club guy who has a strong will and doesn't listen a lot to hard working folks," List said. "I don't think that's the kind of a symbol that we want to put forth."
Nevertheless, party leaders are beginning to lay out contingency plans for a Trump victory.
The executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee circulated an internal memo offering advice to 2016 GOP Senate candidates, acknowledging that Trump "could win." Ward Baker advised Republicans to avoid getting "drawn into every Trump statement and every Trump dust-up" and to steer clear of the businessman's "more extreme positioning."
The internal NRSC memo, first reported this week by The Washington Post, offered a striking and rare glimpse into how the party is making concrete preparations to handle a Trump nomination.
For months, Trump's inflammatory rhetoric aimed at ethnic groups has alarmed establishment Republicans, particularly in light of the GOP's painstaking efforts in recent years to broaden its base. The real estate mogul has offended numerous demographic groups — Hispanics, Asian-Americans and more recently, Muslim Americans.
In the aftermath of last month's Paris terrorist attacks perpetrated by ISIS, Trump has doubled down on widely disputed claims that he saw thousands celebrating in New Jersey in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
And speaking before the Republican Jewish Coalition on Thursday, Trump caused a stir when his remarks appeared to play to offensive stereotypes about Jewish people.
"I'm a negotiator like you folks, we are negotiators," Trump told the crowd of influential Jewish donors. "Is there anybody that doesn't renegotiate deals in this room? This room negotiates them -- perhaps more than any other room I've ever spoken in."
Former Virginia Republican Rep. Tom Davis, who served as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said there is real concern among GOP political strategists working on House and Senate races about a Trump nomination.
With such a lightening rod presidential nominee, down-ballot candidates would face tremendous pressure to turn their backs on Trump in order to win their respective elections, Davis said.
"You run your own race, you target independents, and Republicans who are likely to defect — you try to hold them. It's the only thing you can do," said Davis, who personally believes it would be "very difficult" for Trump to become the party's nominee. "It's difficult to disown the top of your ticket... but you need to put distance between yourself and the top of the ticket."Hi Robin, first, I would like you to guide us through your DreamHack preparation and give us some insight how the recording of the TV6 show was. What do you remember specifically from this period? Looking back would you say that the recording of the TV show had a good impact on your training or not?
Well our preparation for DreamHack was a bit too extreme I'd say, we had close to 3 weeks of bootcamp prior to the event because of the recent tournament results we had and we really wanted to get back in shape for the biggest tournament of the year. I do feel however that we played great during dreamhack up until the final where we really underperformed. Not taking anything away from fnatic, they played great, but I feel that we could've done a better job than we did vs. them.
The recording of the TV6 show was a very fun experience for all of us. It was a lot of hard work, they said for about 60 minutes of recording, they get around 1 minute of solid material for the TV show, so you guys can just imagine how many hours we spent filming it. A 14 minute episode took us around 14 hours to record. So yes I do believe that it did have an impact on us as players, but after the success the TV Show had with everyone that watched, I think it was worth it.
When your nickname is Fifflaren, when you won nearly everything in 2013, when you put all your energy into winning THE tournament of the year, how do you come back from a loss in the final?
Well, it's always painful to lose a tournament when you played great up until the final. But CS:GO is growing at a pretty fast pace, so even though we ended up losing the DreamHack finals, we knew that there would be more tournaments like that to look forward to, and now in 2 weeks we have EMS One Katowice, so we are looking to redeem ourselves by trying to win that tournament.
Shed some light onto the recent changes within the team. Why did you decide to give the lead to GeT_RiGhT after DreamHack Winter 2013? Was it a team call or Xizt’s decision?
Our team has always been based on communication in-game or outside of the game, we had a meeting after DreamHack and talked about what we could do to try and improve, GT wanted to give calling a try for our last 2 tournaments of the year to see how it was, and we also wanted to give Xizt a chance to get back to his form that he had at the start of the year. So in short, GT wanted to try and call and Xizt wanted to get his old form back. Fifflaren, the TV star. Now that you are ingame leader again. Why did you go back to the position you filled back in 2012 when NiP started?
After our holiday break we had at the end of 2013 / early 2014 we had another meeting the day before we started to practice to see if GT still wanted to call and what our overall thoughts were on our playstyle and what we could do to improve heading into the 2014 tournaments, we felt that we needed a bit more structure and that's where I came in the picture. Back in 2012 when we first formed the team, I was the in-game leader because I came from a source background and the game was at the time very similar to CS:Source, so it made sense for me to call. After a few tournaments when our 1.6 players got used to the game, we swapped to Xizt to give players a more free role in-game, which turned out to be a good decision. But as of late, teams have really improved and we wanted to get some structure back in the team, which is where I come in again as an in-game leader. What would you say is the key difference between your leading style and the style of Xizt?
I think the major difference is structure. Xizt had a very laid back style of calling, utilizing our aimers to get picks and work from that. My way of calling is a bit more structured, now don't get me wrong. I still give the players room to do what they do best, but with a more structured approach.
As the new team captaing what are your main goals in 2014? Is winning EMS One Katowice your main objective?
Our main goal right now is obviously to win EMS One Katowice, but we still have a lot of work to do. We will bootcamp 1 week prior to EMS so hopefully we get everything sorted on time. Can NiP be crowned at the EMS Katowice? When watching NiP there is always a point of uncertainty, the sniper position. It could be said that you share this position with f0rest depending on the map and position. Will this change now that you are in-game leader again?
I wouldn't really say that we have a set sniper in our team. Sometimes I might buy it, sometimes forest might buy it, or even get_right. It really depends on the map and the situation, on some maps we don't even use a sniper. So that won't change now that I took over. We will buy what suits the situation the most, it might be an AWP, or it might be a rifle.
Thank you for replying to our questions, as per usual the last words belong to you.
Thanks for the interview! Shoutout to our fans and to our sponsors. Also we sure to check out our new homepage www.nip.glQ: Why is Cisco acquiring a security company like OpenDNS now? What does this mean for Cisco's current security network/platform?
A: Customer networks are rapidly becoming more decentralized as more and more user traffic is bound for the internet and SaaS based applications. This often takes the form of a direct Internet connection from a remote site or a direct connection from a mobile device. As this happens traditional security capabilities and controls must also shift to the cloud. Cisco is always focused on anticipating and capturing disruptions and OpenDNS positions Cisco to accelerate this disruption.
This acquisition builds on Cisco's Security Everywhere approach by adding broad visibility and threat intelligence from the OpenDNS cloud platform, accessed by more than 65 million users daily. OpenDNS' Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform is fast and easy to deploy, accelerating time to value for customers as part of their defense architecture or incident response strategies. OpenDNS' threat protection capabilities complement and enhance Cisco's current cloud security offerings across the Cisco franchise. After close we will integrate them as combined offers with greater value and differentiated capabilities. Together, Cisco and OpenDNS will enhance advanced threat protection across the full attack continuum — before, during and after an attack.
Q: Can you explain OpenDNS' technology or product offerings?
A: OpenDNS offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that is fast and easy to deploy, accelerating time to value for customers as part of their defense architecture or incident response strategies. OpenDNS provides broad visibility and threat intelligence from their cloud platform, which is accessed by more than 65 million users daily.
Q: What is Cisco's security strategy?
A: Cisco provides one of the industry's most comprehensive advanced threat protection portfolio of products, solutions and services that is integrated, pervasive, continuous and open. Cisco's threat-centric approach to security reduces complexity, while providing unmatched visibility, consistent control and advanced threat protection across the entire attack continuum — before, during, and after an attack.
As more workloads move to the cloud, adding complexity to the extended network, Cisco further leverages the power of the cloud and cloud-delivered security, using it to accelerate time to value and enhance threat visibility for faster discovery of advanced threats that may have penetrated defenses. By embedding security everywhere across the extended network, security becomes an enabler for business to take full and secure advantage of opportunities presented by new digital business models and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Q: What product gaps in Cisco's security portfolio did the business try to address with this acquisition?
A: This acquisition builds on Cisco's Security Everywhere approach adding broad visibility and threat intelligence from the OpenDNS cloud platform, accessed by more than 65 million users daily. OpenDNS' Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform is fast and easy to deploy, accelerating time to value for customers as part of their defense architecture or incident response strategies. OpenDNS' threat protection capabilities complement and enhance Cisco's current cloud security offerings across the Cisco franchise. After close we will integrate them as combined offers with greater value and differentiated capabilities. Together, Cisco and OpenDNS will enhance advanced threat protection across the full attack continuum — before, during and after an attack.DJ Patil is arguably the most well-known data scientist in the world. He’s the Chief Data Scientist for the White House, he built the first data science team at LinkedIn, and along with Jeff Hammerbacher, is credited by Forbes as coining the term “data scientist.”
So, how did Patil climb to the top of the data science ranks? How does his journey compare to the current data scientist landscape? And what are the takeaways for would-be chief data scientists? Well, we’ve got some data on that.
The educational backgrounds of data scientists
It may come as a surprise to learn that Patil’s journey started in community college. After high school he attended De Anza Junior College, where according to a comment on his LinkedIn profile, he realized he “was pretty good at math.” In his article, How I Became Chief Data Scientist, he writes about how one of the most valuable things he took away from community college is his love for mathematics.
All through high school, I was a mediocre math student (and that’s putting it kindly). But then I took a calculus class — and it rocked my world. The lecturer really took the time to explain deep concepts and helped me see the intrinsic beauty. Today, when I explain some of the concepts I learned back then, I still call upon the way it was explained to me all those years ago.
Patil’s background in mathematics is fairly common among data scientists with graduate degrees, ranking in the top five:
But beyond a pure Mathematics degree, it’s interesting to note that nine out of the top 10 backgrounds require a foundation in mathematical intuition; Business Administration/Management being the only outlier — though an MBA is hardly a “math-free” degree. And the list as a whole is very STEM-centric.
The above analysis focuses only on the backgrounds of data scientists who have a graduate level degree because, like Patil, the majority of data scientists have a graduate degree.
Data science degrees: Bachelors, Masters, Ph.D.
While Patil’s education started in a community college, he went on to get a BA in Mathematics from University of California, San Diego., then a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Maryland. His trajectory is common of many data scientists. In our research, we found over 79% of data scientists earn a graduate degree.
42% of current data scientists list a master’s degree as the highest degree attained, while 38% earned a Ph.D. like Patil. However, we also found some underlying trends that will likely impact how this breakdown looks in the coming years.
When we looked at the ratio of Ph.D.s to master’s degrees broken out by levels of experience — junior data scientist, senior data scientist, and chief data scientist — we found that the ratio of Ph.D.s to master’s degrees for chief data scientists is actually less than that of senior data scientists.
While Ph.D.s aren’t the most popular degree among chief data scientists today, they will be very soon. Highly-educated senior data scientists will advance into the role, and Patil’s path will become much more common for junior data scientists looking to advance their career. So, is that the best path for would-be data scientists to take?
How to become a chief data scientist
While it does seem like more and more data scientists are pursuing a Ph.D., having a Ph.D. is not necessarily required to be successful. The general consensus is that no one needs a Ph.D. to do the work of data science. Instead, it’s likely that what we’re seeing here is the migration of Ph.D.s into data science.
The rising demand for data scientists has opened up a new career path for many Ph.D.s, and they’re taking it. How to make the transition from Ph.D. to data scientist is a hot topic and data scientists turned Ph.D.s from Twitter, Quora, and Birchbox have all shared detailed advice on how and why they made the jump.
As senior data scientists move into the role of chief data scientist over the coming years, a Ph.D. may be the norm, but there’s no reason to expect it will stay that way. If the title data scientist retains its popularity, it’s likely we’ll see more people pursue educational paths tailored to that career, rather than pursue Ph.D.s only to make the jump into data science.
Because ultimately, what makes someone like Patil so successful as a data scientist isn’t the degrees. It’s the thing spark he found during his calculus class at community college — a love of numbers, the draw of mathematical concepts, and the curiosity that drives him to always learn more.Guardians who are searching for their kid’s first scooter might need to consider markdown gas controlled mechanized scooters. A shoddy first scooter can permit the guardians to first ensure the tyke will appreciate riding the scooter and is develop enough to deal with the obligation.
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When Keith Ellison ran for Congress he was incessantly attacked by the Islamophobia industry. For years he was assaulted by hostile Conservative organizations and lobbyists as a “stealth Jihadist.” His victories were viewed as a sign of “creeping Islamization.”
To this very day the fact that he is in Congress is still a sore point that produces all sorts of vitriolic hatred on the Right.
Ironically, the Christian fundamentalists who rant and rave about the phantasm of Muslim fundamentalist takeover of the USA are only projecting their own (hidden) inner desires. It is the Christian Dominionists who have a theology of covertly taking the levers of power and tilting the USA towards theocracy.
In their drive for dominion Dominionists are also extremely anti-Muslim. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the Christian Dominionist Manchurian candidate, who many slate to be the 2016 GOP presidential candidate recently participated in a rally where one of the participants called on President Obama to “put the Quran down.” Cruz jumped on the anti-Sharia law bandwagon and made the conspiratorial claim that “Shariah law is an enormous problem” in the USA. Sen. Cruz will also be appearing at the rabid anti-Muslim Islamophobe David Horowitz‘s “Restoration Weekend” Conference in November.
Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and other Tea Party members in Congress were the key drivers behind the ugly and embarrassing shutdown of the USA government. Journalist Deborah Caldwell explains the reason and rational of the forces behind this movement and reveals the connection between their theology and future plan for the USA.
Caldwell’s article was written before the deal that prevented the USA from defaulting but its message is very relevant.:
Huffington Post
If the U.S. breaches its debt ceiling this week, bringing with it the global financial panic economists predict, leaders of a little-known far-right movement called Christian Reconstructionism can claim partial responsibility. Their goal: to eradicate the U.S. government so that a theocratic Christian nation emerges to enforce biblical laws.
That’s right — laws out of the Book of Leviticus prohibiting adultery, homosexuality, and abortion, with penalties including death by stoning.
The key leader of this movement is Gary North, founder of the Institute for Christian Economics in Tyler, Texas. He’s a long-time associate of Ron Paul, intellectual godfather of the Tea Party movement — the very people responsible for Congressional deadlock over the government shutdown and debt ceiling debate.
Paul and North go way back. North served on Paul’s first congressional staff in 1976, and North describes himself as Paul’s “original staff economist.” Earlier this year, Paul announced plans for a curriculum for home schoolers that will teach “biblical” concepts. The director of curriculum development for the program? Gary North.
In an Oct. 4 column in The Tea Party Economist, North describes government default as a “fake threat.” So it can’t be a surprise that the Tea Party caucus isn’t taking government default seriously.
And what of the connection between this group and Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who almost singlehandedly created the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis?
Cruz is the son of Rafael Cruz, a Texas pastor who directs Purifying Fire Ministries. According to a biography page for the True the Vote summit in April 2013, Rafael Cruz became active in politics during the 1980 presidential campaign, joining the Religious Roundtable, founded in 1979 to involve conservative Christians in politics. “The Religious Roundtable was a Judeo-Christian organization that mobilized millions of Christians all across the United States and helped elect Ronald Reagan,” Cruz said. “It was a precursor of the Tea Party, even before the Moral Majority.”
What to make of all of this? For the last few weeks Tea Party-leaning members of Congress have been described as “kooks” and “crazies” by the Washington establishment, liberals, moderate Republican leaders, and the media.
The name-calling might be satisfying to those who oppose the Tea Party, but it’s entirely untrue. These are people who are patient, determined, deliberate, and rational.
I know this because I spent many years as a reporter covering religion and politics, more than four of them in Texas. So I’ve been watching conservative Christians for a long time, since the era of the late Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, to the days of Pat Robertson’s early Christian Coalition, and on to the culture wars of the 1990s and early 2000s.
During the years I covered religion, I watched politicking creep into evangelical congregations from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to Texas and beyond. In New Jersey, I interviewed the state coordinator of the Christian Coalition who in those early days revealed to me the movement’s stealth plan to “take over” the Republican Party, “precinct by precinct.”
Later, when I was working in Dallas, I wrote another story, this time about a movement to “take down” the nation’s public schools, promoted by the Alliance for the Separation of School and State, among other groups. As it turns out, Ron Paul was one of the signers of the group’s proclamation to “end government involvement in education.”
Then there were the annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, which during those years was engaged in an epic battle between conservative and moderate factions. At the time, a group of fundamentalist Southern Baptists had hatched a plan to “take back” the denomination. Over about 25 years, they prevailed.
At one such meeting in the Superdome in New Orleans, a distraught pastor told me he believed something darker than a desire for conservative theology was driving the battle in his denomination, and he handed me a sheaf of papers describing Christian Reconstructionism. He claimed that the fundamentalists wanted to use the denomination as a launching pad to bring down the federal government and usher in a Christian nation ruled by biblical laws.
Was it true? I didn’t know. I kept the file and referred to it occasionally in the following years as I reported on the Religious Right.
Recently, however, I came across a line from North’s book Unholy Spirits that gave me pause. He wrote, “The ideas of the Reconstructionists have penetrated into Protestant circles that for the most part are unaware of the original source of the theological ideas that are beginning to transform them.”
And then there are newsletters stretching back to 1977 on Gary North’s website, describing “guerilla tactics” and “bottom-up theocracy” to achieve Christian Reconstructionism’s goals.
The unifying principle of all these data points: a long-term covert plan of destruction for the Republican Party, the nation’s public schools, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. And, of course, for the nation itself.
But why? In his 1991 book, Christian Reconstructionism: What It Is, What It Isn’t, North writes, “Reconstructionists… do not believe that the will of the political majority is the final law in society.” They believe that the Bible is.
In order to make their vision of society a reality, they are willing to wait a long time and to engage in politics to make it happen. “We are to work at our callings and wait on the Lord to place us in positions of influence in his time,” according to North’s book.
Once in power, they assert their brand of Christianity: “Christian Reconstructionists further insist that Jesus Christ is Lord of political leaders,” he writes. “All political leaders are directly responsible to Jesus Christ in the discharge of their public office, as well as in their private lives… Practically, this means that political leaders should seek the guidance of Scripture in framing their political positions and programs.”
Interestingly, Reconstructionists don’t seem to care about actually holding onto power in the conventional sense: “The purpose of getting involved in politics, as Reconstructionists see it, is to reduce the power of the State,” according to North’s book.
And they are willing to wait to get what they want. “History is with the Reconstructionists as they advocate a return to God’s law as the standard for righteous living, for the individual in self-government as well as elected officials in civil government,” North writes.
That is what makes the debt ceiling debate so chilling. The Reconstructionists have waited a long time to be in powerful positions. And now that they possess power, they are perfectly willing to use it to “reduce the power of the state” so that the God of the Old Testament can swoop in to rule the Christian nation they believe will result from chaos.
And from where they sit, blowing up the financial system is a pretty good way to make it happen.Close view
Panjandrum, also known as The Great Panjandrum, was a massive, rocket-propelled, explosive-laden cart designed by the British military during World War II. It was one of a number of highly experimental projects, including Hajile and the Hedgehog, that were developed by the Admiralty's Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD) in the final years of the war. The Panjandrum was never used in battle.
Development [ edit ]
The DMWD had been asked to come up with a device capable of penetrating the 10-foot-high (3.0 m), 7-foot-thick (2.1 m) concrete defences that made up part of the Atlantic Wall. It was further specified that the device should be capable of being launched from landing craft since it was highly likely that the beaches in front of the defences would act as a killing ground for anyone attempting to deliver the device by hand. Sub-Lieutenant Nevil Shute calculated that over 1 long ton (1,016 kg) of explosives would be needed in order to create a tank-sized breach in such a wall. The delivery method for such a quantity of explosives posed a significant problem, and one of the concepts discussed ultimately resulted in the construction of the prototype "Great Panjandrum". The proposed device was composed of two wooden wheels, ten feet in diameter with steel treads a foot wide, joined by a central drum fitted with the explosive payload. It was to be propelled by sets of cordite rockets attached to each wheel. It was predicted that when deployed with a full 4,000-pound (1,800 kg) load, Panjandrum would achieve speeds of around 60 mph (97 km/h), simply crashing through any obstacles to reach its target. The name "Great Panjandrum" was chosen by Shute as a reference to Samuel Foote's famous extempore nonsense paragraph (though Foote's term was actually "the grand Panjandrum"), and in particular to its closing line "till the gunpowder ran out at the heels |
object from S3.
Creating an S3Object is easy, we just need to supply a connection, a bucket and a key.
Now that we have means to talk to S3 and read files from it we could move on to have a closer look to Avro files and how to write them in Clojure.
Working with Apache Avro in Clojure
Luckily there is a good library that we can use to work with Avro files in Clojure, so we don’t need to re-invent the hot water this time. Abracad provides serialization and deserialization for Clojure data structures with Avro that can be persisted to disk or used in message passing systems like Kafka for example. We are going to persist the data to disk this time.
Before we can write any Avro entry to disk we need a schema for the data that we are collecting here. There are some challenges coming up with the right schema but we can jump these hoops.
First and foremost Avro does not let “-” to be used as the field separator in Avro schemas we have to use “_” instead. Since Amazon allows null values for certain fields we need to reflect that in our schema. Defining nullable fields is easy, we just use an array of possible types for the type as in the example above. There is no strong support for dates yet, we are going to store it as string for now. After we generated the schema we can use it to create an Avro file.
Summarising
As you can see Clojure provides pretty good tools to work with Amazon S3 and Avro files. The codebase is pretty small (559 LOC) and it already does a lot. In the next articles in the series I am going to make it asynchronous and faster with core.async (channels) and finish the code to upload the converted files to S3 afterwards. Even though I have processed two months worth of log with s3-logrotate already and it works reasonably well it is just a prototype this stage. I am going to improve it during the upcoming months.
The full code is available here check it out:
Sponsored by StreamBrightThe App Store eventually became more transparent and logical with its review process. And I didn’t stop developing iPhone apps for more than a few months: I enjoyed it too much, and knew, for better or worse, that it was the future. That app still sits there, never to see the light of day. It was a lot of work back then, for nothing, but I’ve moved on to create a few successful indie apps.
My latest rejection — of a weather app I developed a few months ago—has me fuming. Now, I personally see weather apps, like to-do apps and flashlight apps before them, to be one of those lowest-common-denominator apps. They’re relatively easy to build, so lots of them get built by mediocre developers, and the store gets overrun. I was fully aware of this going in.
“There was thunderous applause.”
Which is why I was determined to build something magical, something I’d not seen before. While Apple’s own weather app had nice realistic graphics of weather conditions, other apps were trending toward a very minimal interface using a simple vector icon to represent the weather. I wanted to build something that would appear as if you were looking out of a window. I created OpenGL animations for various weather conditions, including a thunderstorm. Not a video, mind you, but computer generated conditions that looked and moved realistically—weather CGI, essentially. Apple rejected it on the grounds that it was too simple: “We encourage you to review your app concept and evaluate whether you can incorporate additional content and features.”
Originally I wanted to test the waters for such an interface, to see if people would like it before I added additional features—but I was willing to play ball. So I added some things I’d planned to hold off until later. The app integrated with your calendar. It showed hourly forecasts with minute-by-minute precision, and beyond. It showed sunrise and sunset with its animations and a nice moon at the correct phase. It would even notify you of inclement weather without you having to lift a finger.
It was also rejected. This time, the reason read: “It is less about a specific quantity of features…Rather, it is about the experience the app provides.” Does this strike anyone as unfair?
Apple states, in legalese:
“Apps should be engaging and exciting, enabling users to do something they couldn’t do before; or to do something in a way they couldn’t do before or better than they could do it before.”
Everyone can get to the weather, that’s a given. But no one had built anything that let you do it this way before. I eventually gave up, though. I suppose I trusted Apple—if they said that no one wanted to see weather in a beautiful realistic animation, then no one wanted to see it.
You might understand my shock when they unveiled a revamped weather app today. And its most defining new feature? Animated weather. Rain fell, snow drifted, hail dropped, and thunderstorms stormed—just as my app had so confidently done months before. And the audience loved it. When the lightning flashed, there was thunderous applause.
I’m not naive enough to claim Apple actually took my idea. I’m sure they happened to be working on a similar concept. I’m just saying they may have unfairly biased the review process, not wishing for someone to debut a key new aspect of their beloved OS before they were able to do so—not wanting anyone to steal their thunder.
According to Apple, no one wanted a flashy weather app. They were so certain of this, they built one themselves.SPIEGEL: Your client Abed Tavancheh was supposed to have been arrested last Tuesday. What do the authorities in Iran accuse him of having done?
Naser Zarafshan: Abed Tavancheh fights for freedom of expression and democracy. He had already been arrested four times and sentenced to eight months' imprisonment. A part of the current allegations against him relate to these activities. The primary charge, though, has to do with an interview he did with SPIEGEL in September about the tense atmosphere in the universities. The state prosecutor says that by doing this he spread "propaganda against the holy order of the Islamic Republic" and that he "incited unrest."
SPIEGEL: How did the authorities become aware of the interview?
Zarafshan: Immediately after the publication of the interview, a "special report" was published in a large, extremely conservative daily newspaper. The report labeled SPIEGEL a "Zionist magazine" and Tavancheh was harshly attacked as a "US-oriented left winger." Subsequently the state prosecutor summoned him.
SPIEGEL: Did the case go to trial?
Zarafshan: The interrogation was followed by three hearings before a revolutionary tribunal. I was even not summoned to two of the hearings. One cannot hope for justice there. We cited the right to freedom of expression which is guaranteed in our constitution. Nevertheless the court considered the interview to be a "violation of national security." For this, Tavancheh got a new prison sentence of one year.
SPIEGEL: Did your client accept the verdict?
Zarafshan: No, we don't recognize this verdict, which wasn't even given to us in writing. Because my client assumed he would be arrested, he quickly left the courtroom.
SPIEGEL: Now the authorities are looking for Tavancheh. Does he now regret having given the interview?
Zarafshan: My client knew what he was getting into. He stands by every sentence.CLOSE Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton came out on top in the New York presidential primaries. VPC
Donald Trump arrives to speak during a primary night campaign event on April 19, 2016, in New York. (Photo: Julie Jacobson, AP)
NEW YORK — Donald Trump scored an easy win in Tuesday's New York primary and was poised to claim the vast majority of his home state's 95 delegates as he predicted imminent victory in the Republican presidential nomination race.
"We don't have much of a race anymore," Trump said during a victory celebration at Trump Tower, the same venue where he launched his presidential bid back in June.
Arriving on stage to the booming sounds of Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," Trump said it would be "impossible" for rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich to catch him in the Republican delegate race and that he would have enough support before the convention opens July 18 in Cleveland.
"We are going to have an amazing number of weeks," Trump said in a shorter-than-usual victory speech.
In order to take all 95 of New York's delegates, Trump would have to win more than 50% of the the votes statewide, and more than 50% in each of New York's 27 congressional districts. Late Tuesday it appeared he would end up winning all but a handful of the total.
Kasich, taking second place in New York, appeared to be winning a few delegates — his first since winning the Ohio primary March 15 — but Cruz was likely to be shut out.
The Republican presidential race now heads to other northern and eastern states where Trump is expected to do well. Five states hold primaries next Tuesday — Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut and Rhode Island — and Cruz and Kasich have already begun campaigning in those places..
"This is the year of the outsider," Cruz told a crowd in Philadelphia. "I’m an outsider."
The Texas senator remains second in the GOP delegate chase but will trail Trump by nearly 300 in the wake of the New York results.
Kasich, speaking at a town hall Tuesday in Annapolis, Md., predicted a "deadlocked" convention that would give him a chance.
"There are no rules for the convention,” Kasich said. “None have been created yet and even if they create rules, you can be nominated from the floor.”
Trump, who stressed his opposition to existing trade deals and his status as a political outsider during his New York campaign, appeared to be rallying following weeks of reversals.
After a double-digit loss to Cruz in the Wisconsin primary April 5, Trump watched as the Texas senator scooped up groups of delegates at various state conventions and meetings in recent days. Trump accused Cruz and Republican officials of trying to "steal" the nomination from him via a "crooked" delegate selection process.
In his victory speech, Trump said his supporters would not stand for a "rigged" nomination system.
Trump has reorganized a campaign that failed to anticipate the state-by-state struggle for individual delegates. The businessman retained veteran Republican strategist Paul Manafort, who has assumed most of the responsibility for running the campaign.
In New York and beyond, Cruz and Kasich have sought to block Trump from securing the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the Republican presidential nomination on the first ballot at the convention in July in Cleveland. Delegates would be unbound on subsequent ballots, and anti-Trump opponents hope to pick up support.
Though Trump currently lacks a majority of awarded GOP delegates, he told Fox and Friends on Tuesday, "We're in a position where we'd like to see if we can close it out."
Making trade a major part of his New York campaign, Trump stressed the losses of manufacturing jobs in cities throughout the state and emphasized that Cruz and Kasich have backed trade deals.
The Manhattan businessman told supporters at Trump Tower that he would push for better trade deals, and added that "we're going to keep the jobs here."
Cruz suffered in the Empire State after his crack this year that Trump represents liberal "New York values."
Many New Yorkers, even those who oppose Trump, expected the businessman to win the popular vote in his home state.
Michele Shellard, 54, who saw Kasich speak in Schenectady, said Trump is "so powerful with Republican faithful downstate and upstate." She said Trump "really has a forceful campaign," but she hoped Kasich could pick up a few delegates.
Carol Kennedy, 55, an auditor from Schenectady, said she would prefer Kasich, who is more of a "center" candidate.
"The other candidates are a little too far right," Kennedy said. "OK, a lot too far right."
Jaidann Juston, 32, a Mexican-American Trump supporter in New York City, said, "I want to live the American dream, and for me, Trump is the epitome of the American dream like he’s just the American dream times a hundred."
His family immigrated to the USA illegally in the 1960s and resides in New Mexico, but he is all for building a border wall. "I am for the wall on the Mexican border," Juston said. "I really do think that Mexico will pay for the wall."
Contributing: Deirdre Shesgreen, Emiliana Molina, Medill News Service
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Sqxd2pThe great snipe is one of several northern bird species vulnerable to climate change. Photo by Lars Edenius/Umea University
UMEA, Finland, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- New research details the vulnerability of northern birds in a warming climate. The study, published in the journal Ecological Applications, calls on conservationists to devote extra attention to northern species being squeezed out by global changes.
Researchers in Finland and the United States worked together to determine which birds breeding in subarctic and Arctic regions will be most affected by climate change. Scientists catalogued the breeding behaviors and habitat characteristics of 180 species. Climate forecast models helped ecologists get a sense of how these behaviors and habitats will be affected by rising temperatures and shifting vegetation types.
"By carrying out this type of analysis, we have been able to predict what species are most at risk and why," ecologist Anouschka Hof said in a news release.
The latest analysis singled out three characteristics of bird species most threatened by climate change: limited geographical distribution, niche habitat requirements and limited rates of reproduction. Examples of species which meet all three requirements are: the great snipe, the rough-legged buzzard, the red-throated pipit, the common swift, the horned lark and the bar-tailed godwit.
RELATED Radar reveals bird pile up on shores of the Great Lakes
To improve the chances of survival and adaption, researchers suggest conservation efforts focus on protecting the wintering, breeding and stopover grounds of vulnerable species.
"Long-distance migratory birds are the most sensitive ones," Hof added. "And if the climate warms up, breeding grounds will decrease to bird species that have adapted to breeding in the cooler climates in the north. The problem is particularly serious to the species with long brooding periods and with specific requirements regarding their breeding habitat."
RELATED Ocean warming affecting Arctic fish and birdsA VETERAN factory worker is defying a cancer diagnosis to support a marathon sit-in redundancy protest now approaching its 100th day.
A VETERAN factory worker is defying a cancer diagnosis to support a marathon sit-in redundancy protest now approaching its 100th day.
Henry O'Reilly -- who worked at Cork firm Vita Cortex for more than 40 years -- was last month diagnosed with liver, spleen and pancreatic cancer.
He is now responding well to treatment.
His diagnosis only came after he contracted what was suspected to have been pneumonia while supporting the sit-in at the freezing Cork plant since December 16 last.
While Mr O'Reilly cannot physically participate in the sit-in anymore, he supports his former colleagues by keeping in touch with the protest on a daily basis.
"Treatment is going well and the success rate is somewhere between 50pc and 90pc," he said.
Last night, Cork TD Ciaran Lynch hailed Mr O'Reilly as "a true hero" and said his commitment to his fellow workers underlined the determination of the Vita Cortex staff to see justice done.
Mr O'Reilly modestly played down his ongoing role in the protest but admitted that his greatest regret was not being well enough to attend a special fundraising concert staged in Cork for the Vita Cortex workers last month by his idol, Christy Moore.
"I just couldn't go -- I was too tired and just wasn't up to it," he said.
Saturday marks the 100th day of occupation at the plant. Vita Cortex has insisted it doesn't have the cash to fund the top-up redundancy payment that the workers insist they were promised.
Irish IndependentStudents at Philadelphia area colleges and universities were told to be alert Monday after a nonspecific threat of violence was made online.
The FBI and the ATF issued an alert to all Philadelphia area colleges and universities because of the threat of a 2 p.m. attack. The FBI released the following statement:
Out of an abundance of caution, the FBI Philadelphia Field Office notified local colleges and universities of a social media posting which threatened violence at a Philadelphia-area college or university for Monday, October 5.
No specific college or university was identified in the posting. We encourage students, faculty, and employees at area colleges and universities to follow the guidance of their campus security officials.
Philly-Area Colleges on Alert After Online Threat
Colleges and universities in the Philadelphia region were put on alert Monday morning after a threatening post on social media was found. NBC10’s Matt DeLucia has more details about this threat and what schools are doing about it. (Published Monday, Oct. 5, 2015)
The FBI will continue to work with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners to investigate threats of violence, and, as always, we ask the public to report suspicious activity to law enforcement.
Drexel University alerted their students and staff of the threat in a post on their Public Safety page.
"Although the FBI has assured us there is no specific threat to a particular college or university, we are taking this very seriously and are taking extra precautions to protect the Drexel community," a Drexel University official wrote.
Online Threat Against Philly Area Colleges and Universities
An online threat against Philadelphia area colleges and universities prompted a warning from the FBI and ATF. NBC10's Doug Shimell speaks to local students who are on edge in the wake of the deadly shooting at an Oregon community college. (Published Monday, Oct. 5, 2015)
The school plans on increasing patrols on campus Monday. Drexel Police and Allied Security officers have been notified. They are also working with University of Pennsylvania Police and Philadelphia Police.
Officials urged Drexel students to call Drexel Public Safety at 215-895-2222 or 911 if they noticed any suspicious activity, person or package.
Villanova University officials also sent an alert to all students, faculty and staff notifying them of the threat.
"The information includes a specific date of Monday, Oct. 5, 2015," wrote Villanova Public Safety Director David Tedjeske. "Authorities have no other knowledge of a specific threat. In response, the University has notified the Radnor Police Department and is working in conjunction with them to enhance protection of the campus. In addition, the Public Safety Department has increased security patrols. We ask that you remain aware of your surroundings and report any suspicious activity or behavior to the Department of Public Safety at 610-519-4444."
#BREAKING: TUPD alerting students of 'a threat of violence has been made online against “a university near Phila.”' pic.twitter.com/NRi13QfaFB — Temple Update (@TempleUpdate) October 4, 2015
Another alert sent to Temple University students and faculty provided more details on the threat.
"Temple University, along with other colleges and universities in our region, has learned from the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) that a threat of violence has been made online against 'a university near Philadelphia,'" a Temple University official wrote. "This posting states an action could take place at 1 p.m. central (2 p.m. eastern) Monday, Oct. 5, 2015."
Philadelphia University, The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Delaware sent out alerts as well.
Officials have not revealed where they found the threat. However, several reports have mentioned a post on the popular imageboard website 4chan in which a user writes,"On October 5, 2015 at 1:00 PM CT, a fellow robot will take up arms against a university near Philadelphia. His cries will be heard, his victims will cower in fear, and the strength of the Union will decay a little more."
Schools as far out of the city as Bethlehem, Pennsylvania's Lehigh University also warned students of the threat.
"We are in ongoing contact with local and federal authorities, and, under an abundance of caution, the Lehigh University Police Department is increasing patrols and presence on and around campus," said an alert sent to Lehigh students. "We ask that you report any suspicious activities or concerns to the LUPD at 610-758-4200 (x84200 on campus)."
News of the threat comes only a few days after a gunman killed nine people and injured nine others before taking his own life at a community college in Roseburg, Oregon.All political candidates call themselves freedom-lovers, but they are not. Neither major party really opposes government control of the economy or of our personal lives. I'm a libertarian because I see the false choice offered by political left and right: Democrats talk about personal liberty; Republicans talk about economic freedom. But what they do once in power belies their words.
I say we're best off if government just leaves us alone to our peaceful cooperation with whomever we please. Let politicians advocate moral behavior. Let them give to charities. But leave government—which is physical force—out of it.
That's why I like Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico. He's the Libertarian Party candidate for president. As governor, Johnson vetoed 750 bills, and yet he got re-elected in that blue state.
I asked Johnson what it means to be a libertarian.
"Fiscally responsible, socially accepting... more liberal than Obama on several issues, more conservative than Romney on several issues."
Johnson proposes to cut federal spending by more than 43 percent:
"Balance the federal budget now. I think that unless we do that, we're going to find ourselves in a monetary collapse."
To do that, he'd go where the money is. He'd cut the big programs that will soon bankrupt us. That includes Medicare. Conventional wisdom says what he's proposing is cruel and, for a politician, suicidal.
"Look, we've got to slash Medicare spending. If we don't, we're going to find ourselves with no health care whatsoever. Medicaid, same thing. Military spending, same thing."
The left claims that without social spending, people would starve in the streets!
"This is the exact reaction that I got as governor of New Mexico, having vetoed all that legislation.... Kids were going to starve, all the worst things were going to happen, and none of them did. And I got re-elected."
Who would decide what part of Medicare to cut?
"Give this up to the states. Fifty laboratories of innovation and best practice... (instead of) Washington top-down, Washington-knows-best -- that's what has us in the situation that we're in right now."
Johnson also says, "End the wars." Won't a pullout of our troops mean the terrorists win?
"We have hundreds of millions of enemies... that, but for our military interventions, we would not otherwise have. So let's take military spending back to 2003 spending levels. Start out with the premise that we should provide ourselves with a strong national defense. But 'defense' here is the operative word. Not 'offense' and not 'nation-building.' We're building roads, schools, bridges, highways and hospitals in other countries, and we have those needs here in this country."
In one of Johnson's campaign ads, he compares the U.S. Constitution to the U.S. tax code.
"One is simple and about equal rights for all. The other is extremely complex and anything but equal rights for all. It's crony capitalism in a nutshell. It's the root of evil. Individuals, groups, corporations pay for loopholes. Both parties sell those loopholes. Eliminate the IRS. Abolish income tax (and) corporate tax."
How will government get money?This article is over 3 years old
Former Norwegian prime minister, who drew criticism for awarding prestigious prize to Barack Obama, to be replaced by deputy in unprecedented move
Norway’s Nobel peace prize committee has demoted its chairman, Thorbjørn Jagland, in a move unprecedented in the long history of the award.
The committee, which said the former Norwegian prime minister would remain as a committee member, gave no reason for its decision.
However, the renowned diplomat drew criticism shortly after becoming committee chairman in 2009 for awarding the prestigious Nobel to newly elected US president Barack Obama.
The move stunned the world and the recipient alike, as Obama had been in office less than nine months and the US was waging simultaneous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
After six years at the helm of the committee, Jagland, 64, will be replaced by deputy chair, Kaci Kullmann Five, the organisation said on Tuesday.
“There was broad agreement within the committee that Thorbjørn Jagland was a good chair for six years,” Kullmann Five told reporters, but declined to comment on the discussion.
Commentators and former Nobel laureates had criticised the committee’s decisions under Jagland’s stewardship.
Hitting back at critics after Obama’s prize, Jagland said the organisation wanted to praise the US leader’s early vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and capture “the spirit of the times, the needs of the era”.
Last year, a federal study estimated that the US will spend $1tn (£649bn) upgrading its nuclear arsenal over the next three decades.
A year after Obama received the prize, the committee drew Beijing’s ire for handing the prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, a move that effectively put Norway-China relations on ice.
And in 2012 Jagland became the face of a body that handed the award to the European Union for its commitment to “peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights”.
“The EU is clearly not the ‘champion of peace’ that Alfred Nobel had in mind when he wrote his will,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in an open letter with two other former laureates.
Jagland, a former leader of Norway’s Labour party who has served as prime minister, foreign minister and speaker of parliament, spent much of his career trying to bolster support for Norway to join the EU.
Tuesday’s action raised questions of whether the Nobel committee – which has awarded the peace prize almost every year since 1901 – will begin to show more political colour.
Traditionally, its five members are appointed by parliament but claim total independence in their decision-making.
Jagland’s demotion reflects a shift into a majority of committee members nominated by rightwing parties, which won Norway’s 2013 general election.
“This can be interpreted as an attempt by the rightist government to exert more political control over the committee than has been customary,” Nobel historian Asle Sveen told AFP.
Others expressed more grave concerns. “This introduces a new principle by which we associate the chair of the Nobel committee with the new majority political colour,” wrote Harald Stanghelle, editor of daily newspaper Aftenposten.
“This raises the question: Is the Nobel committee as independent of a political point of view as it should be?”Olympians headed to Rio de Janeiro have already been told to be cautious of the virus Zika.
But Olympic swimmers, sailors and windsurfers will have to look out for more than that, because the city’s waters have what health experts are calling a “petri dish of pathogens,” including bacterias that cause diarrhea, vomiting and even death to those with weakened immune systems.
“Foreign athletes will literally be swimming in human crap, and they risk getting sick from all those microorganisms,” Dr. Daniel Becker, a local pediatrician who works in poor neighborhoods, told the New York Times. “It’s sad but also worrisome.”
Feces from a nearby sewage plant reportedly pours into the water untreated and human and animal dead bodies are found in the water with “upsetting regularity,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
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The government promised to clean up the waste in Guanabara Bay and the beaches surrounding Rio seven years ago, but officials admitted their efforts have fallen short. The Olympics start on Aug. 5.
But government officials say specific areas where athletes will be competing meet World Health Organization Safety standards. And windsurfers practicing on the more highly contaminated areas say it’s not a big deal.
“We just have to keep our mouths closed when the water sprays up,” Afrodite Zegers, 24, a member of the Dutch sailing team, which has been practicing in Guanabara Bay, told the New York Times.
That wasn’t good enough for those participating in a surf competition a few months ago. The venue of the competition had to be moved to Grumari when piles of trash floated up to the beach at the original location. But moving the location wasn’t enough.
“There were roughly 12 surfers last year that fell ill and had very similar symptoms to me. Nausea, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea,” Ace Buchan, one of the world’s top surfers, told Public Radio International. “That’s nearly a quarter of all the competitors, male and female.”
An Australian pharmaceutical company developed “super condoms” to give further protection against the Zika virus to their athletes, though regular condoms are supposed to protect against the mosquito-borne and sexually-transmitted disease. But right now it seems health officials have no solution for Rio’s waste-infected waters besides telling them to keep their mouths closed.Like it or not, smart homes are coming. The good news is that these solutions won’t be expensive forever.
Take IVYLINK for example. Said device is a smart power socket that is currently raising money through a crowdfunding campaign at Pozible. The price starts at just $6! Yes, that’s six US dollars per power socket which, with the help of IVYLINK, becomes a smart power socket.
The official pitch goes like this:
IVYLINK is a power socket that hooks up to your WiFi, allowing you to switch it on and off remotely with just your smartphone. Flip on your heater an hour before you get home, or turn the living room lamp off without getting out of bed. At an affordable price that gets lower the more you buy, there are plenty of possibilities.
The IVYLINK campaign is ending soon, so if you want to order yourself a single unit for this amazing price, you better act now. There are few different models to choose from and you should be able to find the one that works for you…
It’s amazing how gadgets are getting more affordable with the day. Lovin’ it. 😉A book deal at 23. A stellar career. An enviable lifestyle. But AMY MOLLOY says: 'Being a success is lonely and so joyless. I wish I was mediocre like my friends'
High achiever: Amy Molloy says it's hard being a lonely and joyless high-achiever. 'I wish I could be mediocre', she says
Every few months I meet up with a friend and our evening follows a pattern.
Now in her 30s, she tends to crash from one career crisis to another and inevitably will have just quit one job and be searching for her next.
She’ll arrive with a hangover, minus her wallet, meaning she won’t be able to pay for dinner.
At some point during the meal, she will always say the same thing: ‘You’re so lucky, Amy — you’re so driven and successful.’ She envies my life, my career, my salary, my prospects.
But the truth is I envy her failure. It’s hard being a lonely and joyless high-achiever. I wish I could be mediocre.
From a young age, my drive to succeed has been overpowering. My mother says that even when I was a toddler, I lived at an accelerated pace, always busy, always striving.
When I was ten, my class would be tested on their times tables every Friday and my dad and I spent two hours every night practising. It’s not that I had pushy parents — they only did what I asked of them. As a child, I remember thriving on feeling superior to my classmates.
I was a straight-A student from primary school to university, where I studied journalism. I got my first job as soon as I graduated, working at a national newspaper, and was repeatedly promoted until I was the editor of a leading fashion magazine by the time I turned 28.
I also set myself the goal of having a book published by 30 and beat my target, signing a publishing deal at 23 for a sum large enough to get me on the property ladder.
Listing my achievements may sound boastful, but I’m not trying to make people envious of me. Quite the opposite.
Being successful is torturous. It’s isolating — you lose weekends, holidays and (if you’re not careful) your social life.
Some people can struggle to be around the super-successful. They think I’m looking down on them and maybe sometimes, subconsciously, I am.
My very high standards are not limited to my professional life.
I was a champion gymnast as a child and have run seven marathons as an adult. My diet is stringent — I don’t have alcohol or sugar.
If you think I sound boring, you’re not the first — I’m not fighting off social invitations. Dinner with my scatty, jobless friend is often the only night out on my calendar.
My husband and I met in an exercise class when I was 24, just as my book was published. A few months after we started dating he asked why he hadn’t met many of my friends. I had to admit I didn’t have any.
I could use the excuse that women are jealous of me, but it’s not that simple. It’s true I have been the victim of envy, with supposed friends accusing me of getting ‘too big for my boots’.
However, I’ve also never made an effort to build bridges with those I see as less ambitious than I am.
For a long time, I saw socialising as a waste of time and money.
In my first year at university, I did try to embrace the drinking culture, but by the second year, I couldn’t keep up the pretence of caring. While my flatmates were partying, I’d be slaving over my coursework.
DID YOU KNOW?
41 per cent of people in their 20s feel stressed. Just 15 per cent said the same 40 years ago
Did that make me a bore? Yes, but I’d rather be a bore than be in second place.
Maybe I would have formed allegiances in the workplace if I hadn’t been fast-tracked up the career ladder so quickly. When I was promoted to editor of the fashion magazine, I heard a lot of unkind whispers.
I was referred to as the ‘golden child’ — and it wasn’t meant as a compliment. Like many high-achievers, I’m extremely self-critical, so I just added their doubts to my own.
While my parents are proud of me, they always play down my achievements. My mum rightly says: ‘No parent should be in awe of their children.’ My older sister is a biochemist who oversees medical trials and is also a world champion triathlete.
My parents’ house in Buckinghamshire is full of trophies from our sporting achievements, yet victory is so normal that it’s greeted with indifference.
And I will admit that I find having such a driven personality to be debilitating.
Sometimes on a Saturday morning, I lie in bed and cry, knowing I have two options for the weekend: to work and feel exhausted or take time off and battle the guilt that I’m lazy.
Author: My husband and I met in an exercise class when I was 24, just as my book was published
My husband, John, 43, a recruitment consultant, is a lot more laidback than I am. He works to live, while I live to work.
He’s a calming influence on me. He says his job is to make me relax, which isn’t an easy task, but he often tricks me into it. He invites me to go for a cycle ride, knowing I see this as beneficial to my health, but then will make sure he pedals slowly, so it turns into a leisure activity.
His favourite coffee shop has no mobile phone reception, so he knows that I can’t check my emails there.
We want children, though I initially worried about the effect starting a family would have on my career prospects. However, John is open to the idea of being a stay-at-home father, which eases many of my concerns. Though it sounds odd, I worry that my children will also be high achievers.
It’s a burden, so I hope that, unlike me, they will be happy rather than successful. You make all those sacrifices — yet eventually, you gradually lose your love for your career.
I never feel satisfied. Within weeks of every promotion or pay rise I become agitated, as my feet itch to move forward.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I’m only at the beginning of my career and have no idea how I’ll maintain the same pace.
I earn more money than I need. In theory, I could cut down on my workload and still pay my mortgage.
But I’m waiting for that epiphany moment — that moment when I wake up and feel proud of myself; when I feel that I am worth something.
My worst fear is that my biggest success is behind me. What if I’m a 20-year-old prodigy and a 30-year-old has-been?
It may sound like everything I touch turns to gold, but I’ve had many failures. I have probably missed 90 per cent of all the targets I have set for myself.
The difference is I shoot for ten times more than the average person and it’s these few victories that make me seem exceptional. But I’m certainly not immune to failure. Three months ago, I lost my job, when the magazine I edited folded.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I’m only at the beginning of my career and have no idea how I’ll maintain the same pace
Walking out of the meeting with human resources, I was surprisingly calm. I texted my husband and parents with the news; I didn’t want to deal with their sympathy.
While all my colleagues commiserated each other in the local bar, I went for a jog, alone, to plot my next course of action.
Now that I’m a freelance writer, my ambitions have no boundaries. When I was an editor and woke up in the middle of the night with a brainwave, I forced myself to go back to sleep, knowing I couldn’t act until I got into the office the next morning.
Now I can work any time — and I do. Even my husband, who is usually so understanding, complains that I spend the entire week locked in my office at home.
It’s rare that I have genuine fun and the closest I get to relaxing is reading a magazine for research. I watch people laughing in cafes and wish I could be that idle.
I’m beginning to see how one-dimensional — not to mention boring — a |
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), Sen. Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE (Fla.) and former "Apprentice" host 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.
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The largely sedate crowd perked up when Bush took the stage, chanting "Jeb" when Bush bashed his Democratic and Republican rivals.
“And while the reality TV star is still doing well, it looks like you all have reset things.”
“We need someone who can defeat 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,” Bush told the crowd, again motivating his supporters to shout his name.
“Not just Hillary Clinton. Apparently maybe 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 as well. Who knows?”
Sanders beat Democratic rival Clinton by about 20 points on Tuesday.
Bush’s communications director Tim Miller took Bush’s comments toward a step further, taking shots at leading finishers of the New Hampshire primary — Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich — by name.
“Kasich ran a one-state campaign,” Miller told a group of reporters at the rally. “He does not have a viable path to the nomination at all, and he certainly does not have a viable path to success in South Carolina, a state where support of the military is critical.”
Miller chalked Trump’s big lead in the Granite State to the open primary where independents can vote with either ballot. “[Trump] obviously did very well tonight with independents but... in states where it’s a Republican primary, Trump’s going to struggle.”
“After tonight, hopefully that’s a wake-up call to everyone to get on board.”
With 68 percent of precincts reporting, Bush was hovering at fourth place, 0.3 points away from tying Cruz for third place.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 briefly paused his rally in Indiana Monday morning to compliment a supporter who used an expletive to sum up the Democratic presidential candidate's message for the “billionaire class.”
"I think that when the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, we got some other choices that we can make,” Sanders told supporters in Evansville.
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“That choice is to tell the billionaire class,” he continued, when a man in the audience interrupted with a shout of “to f--- off.”
The interjection prompted laughter from Sanders, who said approvingly, “Well, that is one way to phrase it.”
"I myself am constrained,” he joked. "I can’t quite phrase it like that, but that’s not bad.”
The Vermont senator said the four-letter word conveyed his point “very succinctly,” noting that he liked it but couldn’t repeat it.
"But it’s something with eff off,” Sanders quickly added.The Christmas tree that will soon stand in Boston Common, an annual gift from the city of Halifax, was cut from a backyard in northern Nova Scotia, where, for the past 17 years, the only decoration that hung on it was an old black tire swing for the kids.
“They’re all grown up now,” said John MacPherson, who raised two children with his wife, Ethel Ann, in a small county of Nova Scotia called Antigonish.
“I’ll be a bit sad to see it go, because it’s where the kids played,” his wife added. “But I’ve got to suck it up. I think it’s a great contribution and we’re honored to be asked.”
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The family also has a distant connection to the tree’s next home: John MacPherson’s mother, Kay, has extended family in Boston, and she hopes some of them will be able to attend the official tree-lighting ceremony to be held Dec. 4.
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“I’m just so excited,” Kay MacPherson said. “I’m so proud of my son, my daughter-in-law, and my grandchildren. It’s wonderful.”
This year’s tree is dedicated to the memory of Thomas M. Menino, Boston’s longest-serving mayor, who died in October.
The MacPhersons agreed to donate the 48-year-old spruce after staff from the provincial government knocked on their door a few months ago, asking if they would consider sending the tree as a gift to Boston.
“I’m right on one of the main highways,” John MacPherson said, figuring the government official must have caught a glimpse of the tree while driving by one day.
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The MacPhersons’ tree, which naturally has its own Facebook page and Twitter handle called @TreeforBoston, was chosen because it was big and healthy, said Tim Whynot, an official at the Department of Natural Resources in Nova Scotia who coordinates the Boston Christmas Tree project.
Its journey south will be the longest yet, more than 700 miles, in the long tradition between Boston and Halifax.
Antigonish, a small, northern college town, is farther from Boston than that of any previous year’s tree. It’s the home of St. Francis Xavier University, which claims that its university “X-Ring” is the third most recognizable ring in the world, after the Super Bowl and papal rings.
This is the 43d consecutive year that Halifax has sent a Christmas tree to Boston as a token of thanks for acts of generosity in the midst of tragedy nearly 100 years ago. Early in the morning of Dec. 6, 1917, a fully loaded ammunition ship bound for action in World War I collided with another vessel in Halifax harbor. The resulting blast, known as the Halifax Explosion, was one of the most catastrophic events in Canadian history.
More than 1,600 people were killed instantly, and the death toll rose by hundreds more during an ensuing snowstorm and winter. Thousands of others were injured and many were left homeless. Unaware that an explosion was imminent, a large proportion of the victims suffered serious eye injuries from flying glass and debris while watching through windows as one of the ships burned.
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Financial aid poured into Halifax after the disaster from different parts of Canada, as well as from Chicago and around the world, but Massachusetts — and Bostonians in particular — showed tremendous generosity. In addition to hosting memorial services and raising funds, Boston sent surgeons, doctors, nurses, and medical supplies.
To say thank you, the first Christmas tree was sent to Boston the following year. After waning for a while, the tradition was resurrected in 1971 and has continued ever since. An annual memorial is held on Dec. 6 in Halifax to commemorate the explosion.
Last year, Nova Scotian marathon runners ran in front of the tree as it left the city, to honor the victims of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.
Ken Ingram is a Global Journalism Fellow at the Munk School in the University of Toronto.The Armani suit you bought on a whim? That may take a couple of weeks.
The tailbone tattoo you got during spring break? That may take a few years.
But the $1.5 billion stadium you helped erect as a taxpayer? That may come with buyer's remorse you never get over.
The number that started in the $700 million range has ballooned into a 10-figure titan now staring down San Diego. The billion-and-a-half-dollar price tag for a new Chargers home is as loud as any concert or contest the venue would host.
NFL stadiums cost twice as much as they did 10 years ago, and cities are more reluctant to pay. NFL stadiums cost twice as much as they did 10 years ago, and cities are more reluctant to pay. SEE MORE VIDEOS
Where that money would come from has long been a source of tension in this city, but how that money would directly affect the fan's experience is less frequently discussed. And while there are an array of questions you could ask regarding the amenities, architecture and additions all that cash could provide, the essential one is this -- would it be worth it?
Here is what we know about Qualcomm Stadium now: It stinks. And not just in the decrepit, outdated figurative sense, but in the I'm-breathing-in-urine-fumes literal sense, too.
Cracks are numerous. The WiFi is dubious. And the ancient JumboTron is just plain humorous.
Still, while new digs would add some swagger to Dean Spanos' stride at the annual owner's meetings, how much would it do for, well, you?
The places to look when making such forecasts are Santa Clara, Arlington, Tx., and East Rutheford N.J., where three billion-dollar-plus stadiums have popped up in the past six years. Remember those PC vs. Mac commercials, where the frumpy four-eyes stands beside the hip millennial? Yeah, that isn't too much different than juxtaposing Qualcomm against any of these facilities.
Take visibility, for example. Qualcomm's views were always better suited for the Padres than they were for the Chargers, as the first row of seats are approximately 70 feet from the football field. But in 5-year-old MetLife Stadium, home to the Jets and Giants, first-row seats from the 50-yard line are 46 feet from the field -- the shortest distance in the NFL.
Of course, not everyone can snag such a quality spot. While new stadiums can reduce the number of nosebleed seats, they can't eliminate them completely. But at AT&T Stadium, home to the Cowboys, that might not matter.
Jerry Jones' crown jewel not only hangs a 180x72-foot hi-definition video board from the ceiling, it has placed 3,000 Sony LCDs throughout luxury suites, concourses and concession areas. No joke -- it would be a challenge to miss the game for more than a few seconds in that place.
Then again, with fantasy football reigning supreme in 2015, you'd have to think that fans are just as interested in the other 12 or 13 contests on a given Sunday. At Qualcomm, however, trying to surf the web on a smartphone can be about as futile as the Chargers' run game. In fact, a Sports Illustrated story from two years ago mentioned how a Chargers exec couldn't email a member of his staff during a game because of a poor internet connection.
That wouldn't happen at Levi's Stadium. The 49ers' home is an homage to Silicon Valley technology as much as it is architectural splendor.
Forget that there are more than 1,000 WiFi access points supporting bandwidth 40 times larger than any U.S. stadium. Forget that GPS locators tell you where the nearest beer or restroom is, either. Levi's Stadium also features an app that allows you to order food from your seat and watch replays from 13 different camera angles.
And when you consider the martini lounges and on-field patios at MetLife Stadium, the Hall of Fame Museum coming soon to AT&T stadium, and the concession upgrades everywhere, you can start to imagine what $1.5 billion can engender.
But again: Is it worth it?
If it means keeping the Chargers in town, there are many that would say yes. But you also have to take into account that all these amenities, all this luxury and technology, is only available for eight games a year.
There is no doubt that the quality and distinct features of a baseball stadium can decidedly impact attendance. Ballparks are like cathedrals, where the Fenways, Wrigleys and Chavez Ravines use their ambiance to attract crowds 81 times per year.
But football stadiums? Come on. Devoted fans would assemble anywhere.
It's not architecture or technology that makes CenturyLink Field and Arrowhead Stadium the most electrifying venues in the NFL — it's the 120-decibel crowds that make the deaf hear and the hearing deaf.
Should a billion-and-a-half dollar stadium be constructed in San Diego, it could become the standard by which all other NFL facilities are measured. It could also keep a franchise home.
Failure to build something would likely cost this town the Chargers. But if taxpayers are involved, they have to consider whether it's worth the cost.Today, we were lucky enough to get the chance to preview one of the most highly anticipated new roller coasters of 2017, Mystic Timbers at Kings Island. Members of the media were granted the first rides on the new coaster this morning and let me tell you, it did not disappoint!
To appreciate all of what this coaster has to offer you first need to understand its backstory:
The Miami River Lumber Company decided to set up shop in this dark section of the Ohio forest, little did they know what was lurking there. They opened their doors for business on April 15, 1983 and stayed open for only one day. During that first day workers that were spotted fleeing from the work shed, screaming about what they had found inside. They jumped in their truck and tried to make a getaway, but failed when they ran into the entrance of the mill; they were never seen again. Until now the forest and lumber yard have been abandoned. Some form of security is there now and they try to keep people out, but if you enter you will be captured by the forest and given a thrilling journey in a truck just like the one that crashed many years ago.
As you approach the Rivertown section of Kings Island you now see wooden coaster track peeking over the tree tops, inviting you in. But when you walk closer you start hearing this announcement:
WARNING: DO NOT ENTER. A MANDATORY AND ON GOING LOCK DOWN FOR THE MIAMI RIVER LUMBER COMPANY IS IN ORDER. REPEAT: DO NOT ENTER.
We entered anyway.
After walking past the abandoned truck, you make your way up and into the station which is an old warehouse. Attached to the warehouse is some shed looking thing… but we’ll talk about that later.
On to the ride itself. As you leave the station you meander for a short distance before heading up the lift (meanwhile security is still trying to get you to leave the area). The first drop on this coaster is incredible for only being 100 feet tall. It takes a sharp left nose-dive down toward the ground, nearly hitting it and then immediately shoots you back over the lift hill and into the rest of the course.
From start to finish, Mystic Timbers has you in its clutches. Airtime hill after airtime hill, twist after twist, this ride never lets up.
It uses the the park’s terrain to its full potential. Fast, smooth, low-flying coasters are my favorite, so needless to say I loved this ride.
Kings Island has definitely scored again with this new world-class coaster. Mystic Timbers has something for everybody. It is intense enough for thrill seekers and enjoyable enough for the little ones. Great Coasters International was able to put all of their best elements into this one ride.
The amount of detail the park put into the ride is phenomenal as well. From the trains that look like they themselves are from 1983 to the themed queue, it is very well put together.
Oh wait, did I forget something?
WHAT. IS. IN. THAT. SHED?
Sorry folks, you need to experience this one for yourself. All I will say is that it is the perfect ending to a perfect coaster. It adds a little something special where other coasters just send you right back into the station.
Do you have any plans to come ride this new coaster? Make sure to let us know what you think!
We will be back at Kings Island tonight (April 13th) for the first riders auction charity event, so make sure to follow us on social media for updates and our thoughts as we take night rides on Mystic Timbers!First - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Gallery - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/g… Prev - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Next - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Very eclectic little page covering lots of short points that couldn't quite stand as their own pages. Much of it reflects my own personal experience.For me, I've never had an appointment with my endo where I was actually seen on time. Including being early and waiting to be brought into another room where I can continue to wait. That said, she IS an excellent doctor, so all the waiting is kind of a small price to pay. ^_^When I first went to see her though, I hadn't changed my name yet, so I filled out all the paperwork using my legal name at the time. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to write in my preferred name, so I was called the first time using my "unpreferred" name just like Rain. But a quick, little "hey, I prefer to be called..." changed that. If only it was always that easy.The part that's exclusive to Rain though, is her and Emily having some awkwardness with regards to their secret relationship. That's just 'cause I haven't had any cute blushy moments between since coming back. XD©2004-2016Rain, all characters and all other aspects of the story are copyright material belonging to me.Follow Rain on Facebook - www.facebook.com/RainWebcomic/ Buy Rain: Vol. 1, 2 and/or 3 - www.lulu.com/spotlight/LittleL… Also t-shirts/mugs/notebooks/etc - www.redbubble.com/people/littl…BY:
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he knew Benghazi was a "terrorist attack" from the beginning, despite the Obama administration touting the incident was a "spontaneous demonstration."
Panetta made the comments on MSNBC on Tuesday during an interview with Andrea Mitchell.
"I didn't have any specific information, but the fact was–when you bring grenade launchers to a demonstration, there's something else going on," Panetta said. "And I just, from the very beginning, sensed that this was an attack. This was a terrorist attack on our compound."
In the secretary’s new book, Worthy Fights, he outlines his criticism of President Obama and the administration for its inaction, especially in regard to pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq and other foreign policy issues.
Panetta, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama before becoming secretary of defense, was particularly critical of the administration’s coverup about the Benghazi attacks.
During the interview Panetta said Obama lacked the passion required of a leader.
Panetta’s new book hit shelves Tuesday.Texas is a jobs monster. Over the past two years, 37 percent of the net new jobs in the country were created in the state, a track record that governor and maybe GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry is quick to tout. He credits his conservative, pro-business policies; skeptics say it’s mainly owed to immigration and the high prices the state is getting for its oil. But there’s another possible contributor to Texas’s growth that no one is talking about: the drug trade.
Sixty percent of the U.S.’s southwestern border is part of Texas, and it’s the 60 percent that smugglers like best: long stretches of nothing, delineated by a river shallow enough for trucks to drive across, eventually leading to major cities that lie on highway routes to all points north, east, and west. Texas dominates drug entry into the U.S., which means it dominates the wholesale drug trade. It’s a big business: The DEA’s rough guess is that $27 billion in drug proceeds flow back out of the U.S. to Mexico, Colombia, and so on. And another pot of money stays here.
Jack Schumacher, a recently retired Texas-based DEA agent, says that at least half the drug shipments coming from Mexico stop and offload in Texas. The product is repackaged in small units and resold at a considerable markup, with a share of the gross staying in the state. Even some of the money that gets expatriated to Mexico winds up back in Texas, laundered through Mexican currency exchanges. The state’s relative security is the draw. If you have a few million, says Schumacher, would you invest in a war zone or a bank in San Antonio? The DEA warns that traffickers are cleaning up their proceeds by buying businesses in South Texas. They also spend on guns, warehouses, security guardsand on luxury cars and houses. In San Antonio, a high-dollar trafficker can buy a $2 million or $3 million place and exist for a long time, he adds.
Mexicans in Texas are hardly new, but in recent years it’s middle- and upper-class families in Mexico’s north who have also made the exodus, bringing their savings and businesses with them. While most seem to be fleeing the kidnapping and extortion back home, one observer has a different take: Some people, including me, suspect that some of these people come with funds from the drug trade, says Michael Lauderdale, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Texas. Whatever the explanation, the new arrivals are good for the real-estate trade.While housing prices are declining in the rest of the country, El Paso has held its own because Mexican nationals are able to come over and buy homes in the $100,000 to $300,000 level, says Tanny Berg, a commercial-real-estate developer in the city. Restaurant owners in Ciudad Juárez have closed up and followed their old customers across the river. (It should be noted that over the past six months, the migration has slowed.) Meanwhile, in McAllen, the Chamber of Commerce says, about 95 percent of inquiries about starting a business now come from Mexicans, up from 30 percent in 2006.
How much does all of this add to Texas’s economy? It’s hard to come up with an exact number, especially when it’s so easy to look the other way. Our politicians don’t want to acknowledge the pivotal and central role Texas plays in drug trafficking, says Tony Payan, a political-science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso. Those are not comfortable questions to ask.Tom Gianni / AP David Coleman Headley is shown in a courtroom sketch from May 2011.
CHICAGO - David Headley, an American who admitted scouting targets for the 2008 Islamic militant raid on Mumbai and later agreed to testify against the plotters to avoid the death penalty, was sentenced on Thursday to 35 years in prison.
The sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, was the maximum sought by federal prosecutors.
The attacks killed more than 160 people, including six Americans. Headley, a 52-year-old U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, admitted videotaping sites that were targeted by the Mumbai attackers.
He was arrested in 2009 and pleaded guilty to 12 charges, including conspiracy to bomb places of public use and commit murder and plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper.
After entering his plea in 2010, Headley cooperated with U.S. investigators and foreign intelligence agencies to avoid the death penalty and extradition to India, Pakistan or Denmark, agreeing to testify in foreign judicial proceedings, the government said.
In a memorandum filed with Judge Leinenweber earlier this week, the government said "there is little question that life imprisonment would be an appropriate punishment for Headley's incredibly serious crimes but for the significant value provided by his immediate and extensive cooperation."
Last week, Judge Leinenweber sentenced Pakistani-born businessman Tahawwur Rana to 14 years in federal prison for providing support to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the Mumbai attacks.WATCH: Sen. Cruz Reads Dr. Seuss During Obamacare Filibuster
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, is now on the sixth hour of a filibuster that he hopes will slow debate on a measure that removes a provision in a House bill that funds the government but defunds Obamacare.
As our friend Frank James explains over at It's All Politics, the filibuster comes just six days before the federal government outlasts its spending authority.
"I intend to speak until I cannot stand," Cruz said on the Senate floor, during a speech that started at 2:42 p.m. ET.
A little after 8 p.m., the freshman senator said he wanted to read "bedtime stories" to his two daughters and he launched into Green Eggs And Ham.
Here's video:
YouTube
As Frank noted, Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said Cruz's speech is not really filibuster, "because the vote to end debate and bring up the House bill would go on as scheduled" on Wednesday.I’m happy to announce that the libvirt project is now supporting Go language bindings as a primary deliverable, joining Python and Perl, as language bindings with 100% API coverage of libvirt C library. The master repository is available on the libvirt GIT server, but it is expected that Go projects will consume it via an import of the github mirror, since the Go ecosystem is heavilty github focused (e.g. godoc.org can’t produce docs for stuff hosted on libvirt.org git)
import ( libvirt "github.com/libvirt/libvirt-go" ) conn, err := libvirt.NewConnect("qemu:///system")...
API documentation is available on the godoc website.
For a while now libvirt has relied on 3rd parties to provide Go language bindings. The one most people use was first created by Alex Zorin and then taken over by Kyle Kelly. There’s been a lot of excellent work put into these bindings, however, the API coverage largely stops at what was available in libvirt 1.2.2, with the exception of a few APIs from libvirt 1.2.14 which have to be enabled via Go build tags. Libvirt is now working on version 3.0.0 and there have been many APIs added in that time, not to mention enums and other constants. Comparing the current libvirt-go API coverage against what the libvirt C library exposes reveals 163 missing functions (out of 476 total), 367 missing enum constants (out of 847 total) and 165 missing macro constants (out of 200 total). IOW while there is alot already implemented, there was still a very long way to go.
Initially I intended to contribute patches to address the missing API coverage to the existing libvirt-go bindings. In looking at the code though I had some concerns about the way some of the APIs had been exposed to Go. In the libvirt C library there are a set of APIs which accept or return a “virTypedParameterPtr” array, for cases where we need APIs to be easily extensible to handle additions of an arbitrary extra data fields in the future. The way these APIs work is one of the most ugly and unpleasant parts of the C API and thus in language bindings we never expose the virTypedParameter concept directly, but instead map it into a more suitable language specific data structure. In Perl and Python this meant mapping them to hash tables, which gives application developers a language friendly way to interact with the APIs. Unfortunately the current Go API bindings have exposed the virTypedParameter concept directly to Go and since Go does not support unions, the result is arguably even more unpleasant in Go than it already is in C. The second concern is with the way events are exposed to Go – in the C layer we have different callbacks that are needed for each event type, but have one method for registering callbacks, requiring an ugly type cast. This was again exposed directly in Go, meaning that the Go compiler can’t do strong type checking on the callback registration, instead only doing a runtime check at time of event dispatch. There were some other minor concerns about the Go API mapping, such as fact that it needlessly exposed the “vir” prefix on all methods & constants despite already being in a “libvirt” package namespace, returning of a struct instead of pointer to a struct for objects. Understandably the current maintainer had a desire to keep API compatibility going forward, so the decision was made to fork the existing libvirt-go codebase. This allowed us to take advantage of all the work put in so far, while fixing the design problems, and also extending them to have 100% API coverage. The idea is that applications can then decide to opt-in to the new Go binding at a point in time where they’re ready to adapt their code to the API changes.
For users of the existing libvirt Go binding, converting to the new official libvirt Go binding requires a little bit of work, but nothing too serious and will simplify the code if using any of the typed parameter methods. The changes are roughly as follows:
The “VIR_” prefix is dropped from all constants. eg libvirt.VIR_DOMAIN_METADATA_DESCRIPTION because libvirt.DOMAIN_METADATA_DESCRIPTION
The “vir” prefix is dropped from all types. eg libvirt.virDomain becomes libvirt.Domain
Methods returning objects now return a pointer eg “* Domain” instead of “Domain”, allowing us to return the usual “nil” constant on error, instead of a struct with no underlying libvirt connection
The domain events DomainEventRegister method has been replaced by a separate method for each event type. eg DomainEventLifecycleRegister, DomainEventRebootRegister, etc giving compile time type checking of callbacks
The domain events API now accepts a single callback, instead of taking a pair of callbacks – the caller can create an anonymous function to invoke multiple things if required.
Methods accepting or returning typed parameters now have a formal struct defined to expose all the parameters in a manner that allows direct access without type casts and enables normal Go compile time type checking. eg the Domain.GetBlockIOTune method returns a DomainBlockIoTuneParameters struct
It is no longer necessary to use Go compiler build tags to access functionality in different libvirt versions. Through the magic of conditional compilation, the binding will transparently build against every libvirt version from 1.2.0 through 3.0.0
The binding can find libvirt via pkg-config making it easy to compile against a libvirt installed to a non-standard location by simply setting “PKG_CONFIG_PATH”
There is 100% coverage of all APIs [1], constants and macros, verified by the libvirt CI system, so that it always keeps up with GIT master of the Libvirt C library.
, constants and macros, verified by the libvirt CI system, so that it always keeps up with GIT master of the Libvirt C library. The error callback concept is removed from the binding as this is deprecated by libvirt due to not being thread safe. It was also redundant since every method already directly returns an error object.
There are now explicit types defined for all enums and methods which take flags or enums now use these types instead of “uint32”, again allowing stronger compiler type checking
With the exception of the typed parameter changes adapting existing apps should be a largely boring mechanical conversion to just adapt to the renames.
Again, without the effort put in by Alex Zorin and Kyle Kelly & other community contributors, creation of these new libvirt-go bindings would have taken at least 4-5 weeks instead of the 2 weeks effort put into this. So there’s a huge debt owed to all the people who previously contributed to libvirt Go bindings. I hope that having these new bindings with guaranteed 100% API coverage will be of benefit to the Go community going forward.
[1] At time of writing this is a slight lie, as i’ve not quite finished the virStream and virEvent callback method bindings, but this will be done shortly.Part 2 of two parts
Exclusive by Raïssa Robles
The Duterte administration has gone out of its way to target and deride professional media. Facebook propagandists such as Mocha Uson and Jimmy Bondoc, as well as their thousands of followers, regularly belittle journalists as “presstitutes” and “bayaran.” They claim the mainstream press shouldn’t be believed because all reporters are on the take.
Yet when those Duterte supporters and propagandists (including entertainers-turned-government officials) held a press conference on March 28, they apparently didn’t hesitate to pay off the media they mocked.
The press conference held at “a hotel along Timog” Avenue in Quezon City, Bondoc said, was supposed to discuss the April 2 rally in Luneta and featured six Duterte supporters, four of them public officials by virtue of the fact that they were appointed to their posts by the president (they should look up the terms “sinecures” and “sharing of spoils”). At some point during that event, the journalists, as well as bloggers, were given “gas money.”
The proof is there in black and white. Listed in the breakdown of expenses that Jimmy Bondoc posted on his Facebook page were the following:
“Gas money? What does gas money mean?”, I asked Jimmy Bondoc, now an assistant vice president in charge of the Entertainment Department of PAGCOR, the state regulatory agency for gambling, which is directly under the Office of the President.
Bondoc explained it was intended for the journalists who had to take public transport like taxis.
I told him, “sa aming journalists, suhol yon. We never accept.” In my profession, taking (and asking) money from sources — variously called “lagay”, “suhol”, “coffee money” “for the boy” and “envelopmental journalism” — is a gross ethical breach, if not an outright corrupt practice.
Bondoc admitted he’d been told the same thing on FB, where someone commented that it would have been better if they had not given reporters “gas money”.
At first, Bondoc claimed he was a newbie when it came to holding press conferences and had mistakenly believed giving money to the press was standard procedure.
Then he blurted out to me, “kaya pala yung mga ABS(CBN) – to their credit – binalik.”
From what he had posted in the tally of expenses, it would seem that “some”, and not just the ABS-CBN TV crew, had refused and returned the payoffs.
Bondoc told me it was for him “a lesson learned”. However, he said he had done it for “humanitarian reasons”, especially for the radio journalists, for whom he expressed pity.
He also added that besides, what they had given was far less than the P5,000 to P8,000 per reporter usually being handed out, which he described as the going rate.
But later, he defended the “gas money” that his group, the D.A.V.A.O. Movement, had given to the media and the bloggers.
“It’s not suhol,” he insisted.
I told him that in my industry, it was.
Bondoc promised he would not do it again.
This payoff incident, done so very casually, flabbergasts me in so many ways.
First, there is currently a systematic and deliberate attempt on the part of Duterte supporters, particularly Mocha Uson and her ilk, to denigrate professional media.
Second, they keep hammering on the theme that #changeiscoming.
Third, they keep calling media “bayaran” but in truth and in fact, they themselves don’t hesitate to pay off. By doing so, they demonstrate a very cynical and hypocritical view of their so-called crusade to change Philippine society.
And fourth, four government officials were holding that press conference where the payoffs took place: MRTCB board member Mocha Uson, Bondoc of Pagcor, Arnell Ignacio of Pagcor and Tourism Undersecretary Kat de Castro.
Watch the video here:
DAVAO Movement, pangungunahan ang pagtitipon sa Abril 2 sa Luneta BALITA: DAVAO Movement, pangungunahan ang pagtitipon sa Abril 2 sa Luneta Posted by PTV on Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Did they all approve of the “envelopmental journalism” that the D.A.V.A.O. Movement was resorting to? Could we then say that government officials were contributing to the corruption of the press?
UPDATE:
Critics (i.e., howling trolls) have been belittling part 1 of this report, claiming it is inaccurate about the March 23 press conference. The trolls have been repeatedly jeering that the March 23 presscon was only for the purpose of announcing that an impeachment complaint against Vice President Leni Robredo would be filed and that it had nothing to do with the Luneta rally.
With various degrees of condescension, trolls told me to view a video.
Well guess what? I did. And what video makes clear is that the March 23 presscon also tackled the April 2 #palitbise rally at the Luneta. It was brought up by lawyer Bruce Rivera, a co-organizer of the D.A.V.A.O. Movement that raised the funds for the #palitbise rally through Gava gives. Watch the video below starting at 46 minutes up to 48 minutes and 21 seconds.
Duterte supporters have also claimed that the video reveals that the crowdfunding by the rally organizers was mentioned by De la Salle University teacher Antonio Contreras. True, it was mentioned, but as I said in Part 1 of my report, the name of the crowdfunding platform Gava Gives was specifically kept out of the picture. Watch the same video starting at 48:24 up to 49 minutes and 14 seconds.
However, I would like to correct myself in this paragraph in Part 1 which reads:
First, during a press conference held on the #palitbise rally on March 23, 2017, Jimmy Bondoc’s group hid from the press the fact that the organizers were actually raising money for the rally through the crowdfunding platform, Gava Gives.
It should read as follows:
First, during a press conference held – on the PLANNED IMPEACHMENT OF VICE-PRESIDENT LENI ROBREDO AND THE # |
radical land reform bill worthy of its name. The coming months will be very interesting indeed."The Selden Corridor Initiative will begin to create linkage to other developments underway," said Susan Mosey, executive director of Midtown Detroit Inc., the nonprofit development organization leading the efforts.
Barcade, a national chain that couples craft beer with classic video games, will open its first Michigan location at 666 Selden St.
The building will also house a brewing school that will offer a bachelor's degree in fermentation science in partnership with Eastern Michigan University. The school is being funded by Midtown Detroit and 3Mission Design and Developers, which owns Jolly Pumpkin Pizzeria and Brewery on Canfield in Midtown, according to a news release.
Jolly Pumpkin is also planning a new restaurant called North Cookshop for the ground floor of 644 Selden St. The restaurant will be a "natural extension of North Peak and Jolly Pumpkin" and aim to bring the atmosphere of a northern bar to the city, said Jon Carlson, co-founder and managing partner of Northern United Brewing Co., which brews for Jolly Pumpkin.
North Cookshop's menu will consist of wood-fired pizza, meats cooked over cherry wood, salads and sandwiches.
Carlson said the aim of the nearby brewing school is to invite the neighborhood to get involved in the expanding industry.
"The craft beer industry looks too much like me," he said, adding that the school is encouraging women and minorities to take part.
According to developers, the second floor of 644 Selden St. will house the Creative Company Accelerator, which will include 9,000 square feet of flexible co-working, classroom and office space. That is being launched by Midtown Detroit Inc., with funding support from Capital Impact Partners and Detroit Development Fund, and will focus on promoting job creation opportunities for women and minority-owned businesses.
A public outdoor workspace for tech startups and entrepreneurs is also planned.
Finally, there are plans for the development of 14 eco-homes, to be designed by Detroit-based architectural firm SmithGroupJJR. Most of the units will be two bedrooms and about 1,400 square feet, with a front and backyard and garage, said Paul Urbanek, vice president and design director with SmithGroup.
Units cost $300 per square foot, putting the total price around $420,000, Mosey said. One unit will be purchased by Midtown Detroit and partners, and rented as affordable housing to a family at 60 percent of the average medium income.
The homes will be designed as a new type of building typology that includes rooftop solar panels, solar thermal hot water heating system, rain barrels and other features.
Funders of the Fourth Street Ecohomes include Invest Detroit, Midtown Detroit Inc., Enterprise Community Partners, First Independence Bank and Bank of Ann Arbor.
In anticipation of increased traffic, the city will introduce angled parking on Selden Street between Cass Avenue and Third Street.Thank you to Mike Hlas for writing about this first and bringing it to the nation's attention.
We at BHGP have guessed, from time to time, that Kirk Ferentz's stock has dropped among Iowa fans. Yes, it seems like a safe guess, but that's what it is, a guess, and usually the closest we can get to realizing a consensus is the "anecdata" of people's comments here, or callers-in to Gary Dolphin's show, or random grousing from friends.
Rare is the opportunity to hear impromptu, consensus opinions from large, essentially random cross-sections of Iowans on a subject like this, which is why we so richly enjoy the fact that comedian Lewis Black stumbled into a great many audience members' opinions on Ferentz a couple weeks back.
Here's the setup: Lewis Black was in Riverside on a comedy tour. You may or may not like his comedy, but the specifics of his act isn't what's important here, so let's not get hung on that. Anyway, Black was doing a Q&A after the show, as comedians so often do, and wouldn't you know it the Q&A is available to watch streaming on his website. Not all comedians grant us Internet residents such luxury, because if they did, you'd be able to see/hear me ask Nick Offerman about his genitals at his Englert visit last week. It was his idea. Sort of. I digress.
At 17:30 or so, Black is riffing on the state of the educational system in America and accountability or whatever, and he unwittingly solicited the biggest laugh of the night:
Black: "If the University of Iowa football team doesn't do well, what do you—fire the coach, don't you?" Crowd: [Legit 20+ seconds of sustained laughter and hollering]
And that's it right there. The discussion continues, obviously, and Black is eventually dumbstruck by the notion that Ferentz would be the highest-paid state employee for 16 years running—yeah, when you put it that way, yeahhh—but if you ever had a scintilla of doubt that Ferentz's welcome is wearing thin, those 20 seconds of hysterics should tell you everything. It was as if Black had asked Los Angelenos something like "your public transit system's probably good here, right?" or if he went to Purdue and openly assumed there was anything to do in West Lafayette.
Black then grouses about his own school's woes, and he's a UNC alum, so obviously yes—things can be worse—but as his point winds down, he grins and says "I'm just saddened by the fact that you're saddled with a coach that sucks!"
The line, as we see, absolutely kills.
BHGP does not have an open line of communication with Gary Barta, nor can we speak to his state of mind—yes, shocking—but if the mere mention of your favorite coach's job status (the guy to whom you gave a de facto lifetime contract) sends the average Iowan into sustained shrieks of acerbic laughter, that can't possibly be a pleasant experience, right? January 2010 wasn't that long ago; that's when Iowa, still basking in the glow of an Orange Bowl victory and a Top 10 finish, signed Ferentz to that massive contract. And now it's little more than a running gag.
There's your hoi polloi, loud and clear. It's not even unearned, it's not even excessive, it's not even a surprise. This is how it is now, and how it'll probably be for a while. So... you might as well laugh.California poverty rate rises in 2010 for fourth year in a row
Six million residents last year had incomes below the federal poverty line of $22,113 for a family of four. Nearly 1 in 5 California residents lacked health insurance in 2010.
"The latest data show that the Great Recession had a very profound impact on California, particularly families with children," said Jean Ross, executive director of the nonpartisan research group California Budget Project. "We saw a very significant increase in poverty and a significant decrease in the purchasing power of the income of the typical California household."
Nearly 1 in 5 residents lacked health insurance last year, one of the highest rates in the nation. Median household income in the state, when adjusted for inflation, fell 4.6% to $54,459. That's the largest decline in a single year since record keeping began.
About 6 million Californians had incomes below the federal poverty line of $22,113 for a family of four in 2010, census data released Tuesday show. That's 16.3% of the population, up from 15.3% in 2009.
The number of Californians living in poverty grew for the fourth straight year in 2010, more evidence that continued high unemployment and a struggling economy are weighing on the state's families.
Sluggish consumer spending is slowing California's recovery in the short term. But the consequences of poverty can reverberate for decades.
Children raised in poverty are less likely to go to college than children from wealthier families, and they often have more health problems throughout life, Ross said. That could have negative consequences for California's workforce, which already has a shortage of educated workers, according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution.
Also Tuesday, a law enforcement group called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids warned that rising child poverty rates could lead to higher crime rates in the future.
"Childhood poverty is a consistent risk factor for becoming a violent criminal or a victim of crime," said Miriam Rollin, the group's national director.
California's unemployment rate averaged 12.4% in 2010. In July, there were 2.2 million unemployed in the state, and unemployment was at 12%. One-third of the unemployed — about 727,000 people — have been out of work for a year or more, and many have exhausted their unemployment benefits.
Erik Navratil, 17, has spent the last four years in transition since his father lost his job as a mortgage broker. The teenager is staying with friends because his family lost their house. His mother, father and brother each are living in different places until they can scrape together enough money for rent.
"Our lives are in turmoil," Navratil said.
His mother, Catherine Navratil, said the separation has been hard on everyone. She said the worst was when Erik volunteered to drop out of school to help support the family. She refused to let him do it.
"It's horrible. I have minor children and I couldn't even be with them," she said. "It broke my heart. You want to be there to comfort them when they're sad and upset."
Food stamps have helped the family survive, she said. About 1.4 million Californians participated in the federal food stamp program in 2010, up from 1.1 million the year before.
Government cash assistance to low-income families with children was rolled back in the most recent state budget, said Ross of the California Budget Project. That reduced the amount of time families can receive aid to four years, from five. Grant levels were reduced 13% starting in June, she said.Introduction
Microservices are components of an application developed as independent services. The concept of microservice is all about breaking down your application into independent set of services. Often when writing a monolithic application, the code base can grow quickly and in spite of being well-structured, debugging, performing changes, applying fixes and deploying can become challenging and nightmarish.
One approach obviously is to apply appropriate design patterns like ‘High Cohesion’ that makes every component of an application look more functionally independent and the application itself more cohesive. But this form of cohesiveness is more component driven than business. As you write more code, more dependencies are added and it can break the very fabric of cohesion.
Monolithic applications can be envisioned with the new architectural concept based on microservices. Application can be decomposed into small independent services based on domain functionality. The service code can be a set of business functions that speaks one domain vocabulary. The advantage of course is drawing a strict domain boundary and keeping the codebase small and restricted to that domain functionality. An application overall forms a perspective of small services than one large codebase.
“The microservice architectural style is an approach to developing a single application as a suite of small services, each running in its own process and communicating with lightweight mechanisms, often an HTTP resource API. These services are built around business capabilities and independently deployable by fully automated deployment machinery. There is a bare minimum of centralized management of these services, which may be written in different programming languages and use different data storage technologies.” – As stated by Martin Fowler
One question often asked at various forums and presentations on microservices is: How small your services should be? A service written in a traditional construct-like language may have more lines of code than say a service written in a more modern scripting-like language. Given this fact, it also depends on how you wish to decompose your application. It’s a classical OOPS Abstraction phenomena! A chessboard of 64 squares, whether you perceive it as 4 large squares of 16 or 16 squares of 4 each. Your service should neither be too small or too big. It should just about focus on the domain functionality that is addressed in few lines of code. The codebase of the service should not grow after a goal of addressing a business functionality is achieved. The term ‘micro’ can be misleading. Breaking your application into a very small fine grained services (probably even breaking each module) could lead to complexity in development and deployment if there arises too much inter-dependencies.
Each service should be an independent entity capable of being deployed in isolation of other service bundles. Often the deployment itself should be distributed in nature and not tied to a single tier. A more prevalent example is of PaaS which offers a platform, to build and deploy your application, as collection of services. Encapsulation is the key when developing microservices. A service should consist of code which can be easily changed without affecting other services. If your service contains common code not tied to a service functionality, it could lead to tighter coupling with other services which can affect the modularity and make the deployment a more complex affair.
A well-defined communication pattern should be devised in order for service to talk to each other. One such pattern is the API based communication. The concept of API has become more prominent with the advent of RESTful services. Each service can be envisioned as a RESTful service which can talk to other service through a well-defined API using a URL. The communication pattern should be technology or language agnostic. Only the relevant aspects of the service should be exposed as API and the rest should be conveniently encapsulated.
Key Advantages of Microservices based Architecture
More technology and tool options
As discussed earlier, each service should be developed as an independent entity and therefore the choice of programming language or technology involved should not matter. We should be able to choose the most viable or appropriate technology option to write the service. This eliminates the culture of writing in only one programming language or follow a specific standard that could lead to a more tightly coupled architecture. Sometimes there are technologies that offers greater performance or flexibility and we should be able to use that to develop our service and not restrict to a particular technology.
Because each service is independent of each other, adapting to new technology or completely replacing the technology for that service is more easy and acceptable. Imagine an application developed using a framework ‘A’ which goes obsolete in few years. Now replacing ‘A’ with the new framework say ‘B’ would involve a complete rewrite of the application. If your application is divided into independent services, one can make a choice of technology or language that makes it more convenient to write the service and even more so if it has to offer greater performance benefit.
Mixing technologies also has its fair share of concerns. Technologies written for one particular environment and services developed around that environment could scale easily but if any one of its service uses the technology not part of that environment it could lead to difficulties in devising a right communication pattern. All in all, a polyglot style of programming should be the order of the day when envisioning a microservices architecture.
Ability to handle failure condition
Systems are made to fail. System or machine failures are handled through appropriate clustering and fault tolerance design. A monolithic application going down can have a wider impact. All the important functions are unavailable until the application is looped back to normal. Recovery from a failure condition often becomes too tedious, complex and slow. The microservices design helps you recover the application quickly and healthily.
As the services are autonomous and independent of each other, one service going down does not impact the whole system. For example, an ecommerce web application could have say two services running for its home page: 1. Listing of products 2. Mini dashboard showing the store activity. If say, the second service goes down, one can still view the product listing while the dashboard can simply flash a message ‘We will be back soon’.
On demand provisioning and scaling
The idea of microservices easily translates into cloud. Every cloud vendor will have an on-demand provisioning facility where you could provision for resource quickly when needed. The same concept applies to services. Each service can be provisioned and therefore auto-scaling can be applied only to that service. You only pay for what you provision. Imagine if you have to provision complete monolithic system and make it auto scaled, it can increase your cost three-fold. With microservices architecture, you only pay for service that you feel is important to provision and scale.
Ease of deployment
We discussed this earlier, a large monolithic application can be tedious to deploy. One change and the complete application undergoes build and deploy process. Often a large codebase takes hell lot of time to build. For many large complex system, it could take hours to build and deploy the change. So the obvious process is to aggregate all the changes and deploy the same at a later time (often scheduled). Now this approach could get error prone. If there is any error found during the test (or for that matter even during build), it has to undergo the bug fixing or rollback process and again undergo a complete build cycle before it is deployed. This affair can get frustrating for the developers and release managers.
With microservices, you can avoid building the system as a whole. You only build service that has undergone changes keeping the rest of the system untouched. It makes your deployment faster, smoother and cleaner. If there occurs any problem within that service, rolling back or fixing it becomes easy as it is done in isolation independent of other services.
Modular approach to development
When you have large codebase, the development process can take a toll. Often a large team is working on different pieces of code that could lead to issues with configuration management. It is always recommended to the divide the application into modules of importance and development team can then be formed to handle each module. Microservices architecture automatically fits into modularity approach. Because each service provides a specific domain functionality, we could have development team structured based on domain modules. It can bring in lot of productivity and efficiency in the overall development process.
Service reusability
Services by definition are self-contained and reusable components. With microservices, we build a service functionality that can be perceived and used by many external applications. The service itself is reusable. Apart from being inherent part of the system or application, it can also be exposed to the outside world. A traditional tightly coupled architecture may have components that can be reused only within the confines of that application. Microservices architecture goes a step forward and allows you to envision a service that can be made reusable enterprise wide and across organizations.
Easily replaceable
Every organization probably will have one large traditional legacy system that is waiting to be decommissioned. Imagine the cost and time associated with the migration. A microservices based architecture makes your system easily replaceable. The whole system is composed of mini services and each service can be easily replaced with the new implementation when required, thereby minimizing the cost, time and increasing the overall application manageability. Rewriting a service is more easy and manageable than rewriting the whole application. One can also quickly decommission an old service and easily replace it with a new service.
SOA and Microservices
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a set of design principles where multiple services form an orchestration to fulfil a business goal. Microservices is one approach towards implementing SOA. The very concept of SOA emerged to tackle the challenges involved in the traditional tightly coupled architectures. The whole objective of SOA is software reusability. The concept of SOA is often too heavyweight to digest. Many organization till today struggle to understand and realize the SOA architecture. SOA itself needs introspection when it comes to messaging protocol like SOAP, service granularity, service interoperability and middleware solutions. Microservices on the other hand is a natural and easy way to achieve SOA. It’s a minified SOA where one takes gradual steps in forming a service based ecosystem.
Conclusion
The article talked about microservices as autonomous components developed as services. They are small domain specific functions as services that together makes up a complete system. They are negotiated using a well-defined API. Some of the advantages of microservice based architecture include ease of deployment, reusability, modularity, easy scaling and manageability.Thirteen Ways to Channel Inauguration Angst
Sarah Miller Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jan 19, 2017
He’ll swear to be faithful, photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore
The day of reckoning has finally come. Liberal public enemy #1 is about to officially enter the White House. Whether you’re one of millions afraid to lose their healthcare or you’re from one of the many groups (races, religions, genders, etc.) that Trump has targeted, there’s enough anxiety to go around.
That’s why I’ve thrown together a list of ways you can channel your Trump rage into something a little more productive.
After the election and throughout the holidays, I drank a lot. Red-wine hangovers, whiskey stupors, beer bloat — like Trump voters, I made unwise choices I regretted later. My friend Heather and I are being teetotalers this month. Screw you, peer pressure! I’m going drop some pounds and not misunderstand 90 percent of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story because a flask is present.
2. Budget for Birth Control
Sex educator Kait Scalisi lays it all out for you in this excellent article. Have more sex. Make sure you are safe, because who the fuck knows what will happen to a woman’s right to choose? If you’re on the pill, make sure you budget 11 months’ worth in case it won’t be free anymore. Consider an IUD. Consider cutting the strings short on that IUD lest your partner(s) complains that it’s poking his penis. Finally, pick up a Plan B or two or three.
3. Budget for Fun
Sites like FunCheapSF catalogue free or cheap events in the Bay Area. Try something new. Enter to win tickets every week, and then actually show up to the event no matter what or where it is. Comedy, harp music, burlesque: they have it all.
4. Join a Fitness Cult
Sweating with your newfound besties will take your mind off of the inauguration. The more all-consuming, the better. Megaformer sounds mysterious. What about crawling like a baby? There’s always the old standbys: Bikram, boot camp, CrossFit, P90X and the November Project.
5. Believe in the Multiverse
The multiverse theory hypothesizes that there are an infinite number of parallel universes in addition to the one we’re in. For a fun introduction, read the sci-fi thriller Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. The book is flawed (don’t think too much), but you won’t put it down. Imagine that you could wake up in a universe similar to the one you’re in now, but in which Trump isn’t PEOTUS.
6. Get Yourself a Present
Feel your feels. These gifties will help you process all your politics-related emotions. Wipe your ass all over Trump’s face or repeatedly stab Mike Pence. My favorite is #13. It’s free.
7. Speak Up
Tell your story. Be brave. Take a class at the Marsh and write and perform your own solo show. Learn how to rap with Rap Force Academy. Pitch a story to The Bold Italic.
8. Show Up
On the night after the election, I joined SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice). The SURJ website also has a fine list of social-justice affiliate groups that need your help. If you can’t make it to Washington for the inauguration demonstration (or if you have to work on Friday when the demonstrations are happening around the Bay Area), join the Women’s March in Oakland or San Francisco.
9. Relax
Go for a soak, a steam and a sauna. Onsen is San Francisco’s newest bathhouse. Hidden in the Tenderloin, it’s just $30 for an hour and 45 minutes. I thoroughly enjoyed my coed experience on New Year’s Eve, especially the fresh abalone and duck skewers I scarfed down afterward in their restaurant.
10. Banish Negative Thinking
This is the year to battle your anxious brain. Acknowledge that you’re ruminating or putting yourself down. Challenge your negative thoughts. Try Socratic questioning. Breathe.
11. Eat
Restaurant Week begins just before the inauguration. Dine out instead of watching Donald Trump swear (to be faithful). (Restaurant Week hack: all restaurants adhere to the same prices for lunch and dinner during Restaurant Week. Pick the most hoity-toity restaurant and get a five-star meal at a discount.)
12. Dance It Out
Start a new Sunday-morning tradition with the Ecstatic Dance community. Be in your body. Dance your own dance. Connect.
13. Join a 2017 Reading Challenge
Learn how to cope, and how to fight back. Or just escape into a book. Join a monthly book group that actually reads with their eyes. Borrow an electronic book from the public library. Read it on BART.
Suggest your own in the comments section!This article is updated regularly. Bookmark it (Ctrl + D) to get redirected to the latest version.
This is one of many articles on the best computers parts
Do you want to know what are currently the best CPUs, graphic cards and other components?
Check out the Best Computer Parts for Your Money page.
This is one of 3 articles dedicated to storage drives:
1. Best External Hard Drives, SSDs and USB Flash Drives
2. Best Internal SSDs (this article)
3. Best Internal 2.5″ and 3.5″ Hard Drives
February 2019 Update: What’s new?
1. Price cuts on the Mushkin Source SATA III SSDs
2. Price cuts on the Crucial MX500 SATA III SSDs
3. Price cuts on the Samsung 860 EVO SATA III SSDs
4. Price cuts on the Intel 660p NVMe SSDs
5. Added the ADATA XPG SX8200 and HP EX950
6. Replaced the Samsung 970 EVO by the 970 EVO Plus
7. Up to date prices
SSD FAQ: What is a SSD and why do I want one?
Read a quick recap on what a SSD is and why you want one in our SSD FAQ.
What capacity should I pick for my SSD?
Are you asking yourself: ‘How much storage capacity do I need for my computer?‘
Visit the ‘How to choose the right SSD storage capacity and pay less for your computer‘ article.
If you have the time to do research… but who does in this busy world?
I know that not everyone has the time to read detailed SSD reviews. This is why I write this guide: To help you save your money, time and sanity by letting you know what are the best SSDs based on what you need.
What are my recommendations based on?
Click on a category to jump to the recommendations.
SATA III SSDs: 2.5″, mSATA and M.2 SATA III SSDs: Lower price and performance
PCI-Express SSDs: Highest performance SSDs, higher price
NVMe PCI-Express M.2: Highest performance possible!
NVMe protocol offers the highest performance possible, but requires a PC compatible with NVMe M.2 drives.
This is an Worldwide Guide!
Do you live in the USA?
Use Amazon, B&H and Newegg for your purchase.
Do you live outside of the USA?
No problem. B&H offers worldwide shipping.
My recommendations are based on the prices found at Amazon, B&H and Newegg on February 14th 2019.
Prices fluctuate every day, so I recommend that you click on the links and double-check the prices yourself to see if there’s a better deal available.
Best Low Cost SSD:
Mushkin Source
In terms of dollars, this is the least expensive SSD that I recommend.
The Mushkin Source, while offering lower performance than higher-end models, holds it own against other low-cost SSDs.
I recommend this SSD for anyone looking to upgrade their hard drive for higher performance at the lowest cost possible for a SSD.
While it is significantly faster than a hard drive, I don’t recommend it for any kind of intensive workstation type of workloads.
It’s a fine choice if all you do is gaming, web browsing, Office work, casual work, for a POS, etc.
It’s available either as a 2.5″ SATA III drive, or a M.2 SATA III drive.
Get the Mushkin Source 2.5″ SATA III SSD:
120GB: Amazon and Newegg ($24.99)
250GB: Amazon and Newegg ($35.99)
500GB: Amazon and Newegg ($55.99)
1TB: Amazon and Newegg ($109.99)
Get the Mushkin Source M.2 SATA III SSD:
120GB: Amazon and Newegg ($29.99)
250GB: Amazon and Newegg ($36.99)
500GB: Amazon and Newegg ($65.99)
1TB: Amazon and Newegg ($119.99)
Best Mid-range SSDs:
Crucial MX500
The Crucial MX500 offers great performance for a SATA III SSD, not far behind the Samsung 860 EVO and it’s one of the least expensive SSD on the market, making it easy to recommend.
On top of that, you get a 5 years warranty.
For a laptop, a PC boot drive, media drive, or game library drive, the Crucial MX500 is a good SSD at a great price.
The Crucial MX500 V.S. the Crucial MX300 and the WD Blue
The Crucial MX500, recommended, offers significantly better performance than the Crucial MX300 and WD Blue, often at lower prices on top of that!
For a workstation, with requirements for higher sustained performance, a lot of writes and top-notch random access, I recommend a much higher performance M.2 PCI-Express SSD.
The Crucial MX500 is available as a 2.5″ and M.2 SATA III drive.
Get the Crucial MX500 2.5″ SATA III:
250GB from Amazon, B&H ($49.95) and Newegg ($49.95)
500GB from Amazon, B&H ($67.95) and Newegg ($69.99)
1TB from Amazon, B&H ($134.95) and Newegg ($139.99)
2TB from Amazon, B&H ($289.95) and Newegg ($289.95)
Get the Crucial MX500 M.2 SATA III:
250GB from Amazon, B&H ($49.95) and Newegg ($49.95)
500GB from Amazon, B&H ($67.95) and Newegg ($69.99)
1TB from Amazon, B&H ($134.95) and Newegg ($139.99)
Great Performance, Low Power and Encryption:
Samsung 860 EVO:
Want higher performance than all SATA III SSDs other than the much more expensive Samsung 860 Pro? The Samsung 860 EVO offers that.
It also offers lower power consumption than the Crucial MX500, making it ideal for laptops where you want a long battery life and great performance.
You get also hardware encryption support and a 5 years warranty with the Samsung 860 EVO.
In other words, the Samsung 860 EVO is a great all around SSD, offering pretty much everything that you could want from a SATA III SSD, without costing that much more.
The Samsung 860 EVO is available as a 2.5″ drive, a M.2 SATA III drive and a mSATA drive.
Get the Samsung 860 EVO 2.5″ SATA III:
250GB from Amazon, B&H ($59.99) or Newegg ($57.99)
500GB from Amazon, B&H ($79.99) or Newegg ($77.99)
1TB from Amazon, B&H ($147.99) or Newegg ($147.99)
2TB from Amazon, B&H ($297.99) or Newegg ($297.99)
4TB from Amazon, B&H ($697.99) or Newegg ($697.99)
Get the Samsung 860 EVO M.2 SATA III:
250GB from Amazon, B&H ($67.99) or Newegg ($67.99)
500GB from Amazon, B&H ($97.99) or Newegg ($96.00)
1TB from Amazon, B&H ($167.99) or Newegg ($167.99)
2TB from Amazon, B&H ($347.99) or Newegg ($347.99)
Get the Samsung 860 EVO mSATA:
250GB from Amazon, B&H ($67.99) or Newegg ($67.99)
500GB from Amazon, B&H ($97.99) or Newegg ($96.99)
1TB from Amazon or B&H ($167.99) or Newegg ($167.99)
Highest SATA III Performance, Low Power, Encryption, 5 Years Warranty:
Samsung 860 Pro:
Want the highest performance 2.5″ SATA III SSD available on the market?
Then you want the Samsung 860 Pro.
If your computer supports M.2 PCI-Express SSDs, get a PCI-Express SSD instead, as they offer significantly higher performance than SATA III SSDs and buying the Samsung 860 Pro makes no sense.
If your PC doesn’t support M.2 PCI-Express SSDs and you don’t have space nor desire to have an add-on card PCI-Express SSD, this is the highest performance SSD available with a SATA III connection.
Ideal for workstations, high-end PCs, any demanding workload, any environment where reliability, sustained performance, endurance and/or a long warranty matters.
You also get low power consumption for a longer notebook battery life, AES 256-bit, TCG Opal 2.0 & IEEE-1667 encryption support and a 5 years warranty.
Get the Samsung 860 Pro:
256GB from Amazon, B&H ($87.99) or Newegg ($87.99)
512GB from Amazon, B&H ($147.99) or Newegg ($147.99)
1TB from Amazon, B&H ($297.99) or Newegg ($297.99)
2TB from Amazon, B&H ($497.99) or Newegg ($493.99)
4TB from Amazon, B&H ($997.99) or Newegg ($1124.95)
Best M.2 PCI-Express SSDs:
The SATA III protocol limit SATA III SSDs to less than 600MB/s transfer rates. PCI-Express SSDs don’t have that limitation and can reach far higher rates!
In other words, PCI-Express SSDs enable much higher performance than SATA III based SSD.
Just make sure that your computer is equipped with a M.2 PCIe slot. Otherwise, you’ll want a PCI-Express expansion card. You can also but a M.2 PCI-e SSD with a M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter card, meaning that you’ll plug the M.2 SSD into the PCIe adapter card, which you’ll then plug into a PCI-Express slot on your motherboard.
PCI-Express expansion card SSD:
Convert your M.2 SSD into a PCI-Express expansion card SSD:
All M.2 PCI-Express SSDs can be used in a PCI-Express slot, with a M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter card.
NVMe M.2 PCIe SSDs
In order of performance, from the slowest PCIe SSD (still faster than SATA III SSDs) to the highest performance model.
Intel 660p
Newly released, the Intel 660p is the first consumer SSD that uses the new QLC flash storage technology.
Its biggest pro: Higher capacities at a lower price!
QLC flash memory allows it to store more data within the same quantity of flash memory, driving down costs by reducing the number of memory chips required to reach a certain storage capacity.
On the downside, this means that:
1- Endurance is reduced:
Write endurance is rated at 100TB for the 512GB model, 200TB for the 1TB model and 400TB for the 2TB model. Do you want a SSD for a workstation with a lot of write operations with heavy files, like video editing? Then this might not be the ideal drive for you. However, for the average user, this is plenty enough endurance for your SSD to easily last over a decade. Intel warranties this SSD for 5 years.
2- Performance is lower compared to SSDs with TLC flash memory:
That said, the Intel 660p is equipped with a high-performance SLC cache, that will cache data and accelerates performance until it fills up. Its size varies depending on the capacity of the SSD and how full it is. In other words, the more free capacity you have, the faster your SSD will be.
When the cache isn’t full, which is the vast majority of time, unless you’re working with very large data files (40GB+) or your drive is over 75% full, the Intel 660p write performance is competitive with higher-end TLC drives, such as the ones I recommend below. When it comes to read performance, it is competitive with other lower-end PCI NVMe drives and much faster than SATA III SSDs. For the average user, the Intel 660p offers excellent performance in most tasks, at an outstanding price.
Overall, it’s priced around the same as entry-level or mid-range SATA III SSDs and it offers far superior performance in the vast majority of scenarios, so it’s easy for me to recommend.
Get the Intel 660p NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2:
512GB from Amazon, B&H ($79.00) or Newegg ($79.99)
1TB from Amazon, B&H ($139.99) or Newegg ($134.99)
2TB from Amazon, B&H ($249.00) or Newegg ($243.50)
Mid-range PCIe NVMe SSDs:
SM2262 controller based SSDs:
– HP EX920
– ADATA XPG SX8200
– Mushkin Pilot
– Intel 760p
Solid State Drives based on the Silicon Motion SM2262 controller offer better performance than lower performance entry-level PCIe NVMe SSDs, based on the Phison E7 (MyDigitalSSD BBX), Phison E8 (Kinstron A1000 and MyDigitalSSD SBX), the QLC Intel 660p or models without a DRAM cache.
The HP EX920, the ADATA XPG SX8200 and the Mushkin Pilot are all based on the SM2262 controller, with reference firmware. The Intel 760p is also based on the SM2262 controller, but with a custom firmware. Simp ly put, all four SSDs offer similar performance, with the Intel 760p slightly better in some cases and slightly worse in other cases.
Warranty wise, the HP EX920 and Mushkin Pilot are covered |
and methamphetamine are under schedule 2 because they began life with medical use. But even though they are scheduled, the system is not really working for these illegally produced drugs. One of the main limitations of the control system is that the Psychotropic Convention was not designed to control illicit markets. It was designed to control and regulate legitimate pharmaceutical markets to prevent their diversion into illicit markets.
The report mentioned proposals to increase the flexibility of scheduling drugs under the Convention and to amend the drug-control treaties to make them more responsive to the current situation. Neither proposal has gained traction, however. Due to the ease of manufacturing methamphetamine, methcathinone, and certain other stimulants, control measures are focusing less on preventing drugs from crossing borders. Instead, they are centering on increasingly long prison sentences for manufacturers and traffickers as well as regulations on large purchases of precursors such as ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. The International Narcotics Control Board and Commission on Narcotic Drugs help coordinate this fight by adding additional precursors to the Tables of chemicals controlled under the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.
In 1997, ECOSOC called on nations to help enforce international law by cooperating "with relevant international organizations, such as Interpol and the World Customs Organization... in order to promote coordinated international action in the fight against illicit demand for and supply of amphetamine-type stimulants and their precursors." That resolution also called on governments overseeing precursor exports "to inquire with the authorities of importing States about the legitimacy of transactions of concern, and to inform the International Narcotics Control Board of the action taken, particularly when they do not receive any reply to their inquiries".[38]
Crystal meth has emerged as a commonly abused drug, from the American and European rave scenes to East Asia.
Pockets of high-intensity clandestine production and trafficking, such as rural southwest Virginia, exist in most industrialized nations. However, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime believes that East Asia (particularly Thailand) now has the most serious amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS) problem in the world. A 2002 report by that agency noted:[39]
For many countries the problem of ATS is relatively new, growing quickly and unlikely to go away. The geographical spread is widening... Abuse is increasingly concentrated among younger populations, who generally and erroneously believe that the substances are safe and benign. The abuse of ATS is threatening to become part of mainstream culture. The less optimistic suggest that ATS is already embedded in normative young adult behavior to such an extent that it will be very difficult to change, notwithstanding the issues of physical, social and economic damage.
The Office called on nations to bring more resources to bear in the demand reduction effort, improving treatment and rehabilitation processes, increasing private sector participation in eliminating drugs from the workplace, and expanding the drug information clearing house to share information more effectively.
Canadian noncompliance [ edit ]
In 2000, the International Narcotics Control Board chastised Canada for refusing to comply with the Convention's requirement that international transactions in controlled psychotropics be reported to the Board. INCB Secretary Herbert Schaepe said:[40]
From Canada there is just a big, black hole. We don't know what is going into the country, nor coming out. We cannot monitor the international movement of these substances, which is our mandate. The lack of controls in Canada means that they could be destined for fake companies that will divert them into the hands of traffickers. Traffickers in third countries could be getting them through Canada. Normally, Canada has a very good reputation for fulfilling its international obligations, but here it is just breaking the treaty – a treaty that it ratified a long time ago. It is very disturbing.
Licit drug problems [ edit ]
In an unusual departure from its normally pro-industry leanings, the INCB issued a press release in 2001 warning of excessive use of licit psychotropics:
... the Board points to loose regulation, unreliable estimates and information regarding medical needs, aggressive marketing techniques and improper or even unethical prescription practices as the main reasons for the oversupply of such controlled substances as benzodiazepines and various amphetamine type stimulants. Easy availability leads to overconsumption of such substances, either in the form of drug abuse or by fuelling a culture of drug-taking to deal with a variety of non-medical problems... Insomnia, anxiety, obesity and child hyperactivity as well as various kinds of pain are listed among the most common problems to be treated by prescribing psychotropic substances. The Board is especially concerned that preference is given to quick solutions without looking at the long-term effects, as prolonged, excessive consumption of such drugs could result in dependency and other physical and mental suffering.
The Board also warned that the Internet provides "easy access to information on drug production and drug-taking," calling it "a growing source of on-line drug trafficking." The Board pointed out that some Internet suppliers sell controlled drugs without regard to the Convention's medical prescription requirements.[41]
List of controlled psychotropic substances [ edit ]
Source: INCB Green List (28th Edition, 2017, PDF version)
Statistics [ edit ]
All Schedules consist of 116 positions and common generalization clause for salts. Schedule I also contains generalization clause for stereoisomers. There are also 2 specific generalizations, both for tetrahydrocannabinol stereochemical variants. There are no exclusions.
More statistics 116 positions: 20 psychedelics 14 phenethylamine psychedelics 5 tryptamine psychedelics 1 ergoline
28 stimulants (excluding lefetamine)
2 synthetic cannabinoids
2 positions representing 7 tetrahydrocannabinol isomers and their stereochemical variants
4 dissociatives
56 depressants 12 barbiturates 36 benzodiazepines (including 1 z-drug) 2 carbamates 2 qualones 4 other depressants
1 position – zipeprol
1 position – lefetamine (with stimulant and opioid effects)
1 semisynthetic opioid
1 synthetic benzomorphan opioid
Schedule I [ edit ]
Contains 62 positions (including 1 position for six tetrahydrocannabinol isomers), generalization clause for stereoisomers, specific generalization for tetrahydrocannabinol stereochemical variants and common generalization clause for salts.
More statistics 28 positions: 19 psychedelics 13 phenethylamine psychedelics 5 tryptamine psychedelics 1 ergoline
3 stimulants
2 synthetic cannabinoids
1 position representing 6 isomers of tetrahydrocannabinol and their stereochemical variants
3 dissociatives
Phenethylamine psychedelics:
Tryptamine psychedelics:
Stimulants:
Synthetic cannabinoids:
Isomers of natural tetrahydrocannabinol:
tetrahydrocannabinol, the following isomers and their stereochemical variants: (9R)-Δ 6a(10a) -tetrahydrocannabinol — 7,8,9,10-tetrahydro-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-1-ol (9R,10aR)-Δ 6a(7) -tetrahydrocannabinol — (9R,10aR)-8,9,10,10a-tetrahydro-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-1-ol (6aR,9R,10aR)-Δ 7 -tetrahydrocannabinol — (6aR,9R,10aR)-6a,9,10,10a-tetrahydro-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-1-ol (6aR,10aR)-Δ 8 -tetrahydrocannabinol — (6aR,10aR)-6a,7,10,10a-tetrahydro-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-1-ol (6aR,9R)-Δ 10 -tetrahydrocannabinol — 6a,7,8,9-tetrahydro-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-1-ol (6aR,10aR)-Δ 9(11) -tetrahydrocannabinol — (6aR,10aR)-6a,7,8,9,10,10a-hexahydro-6,6-dimethyl-9-methylene-3-pentyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-1-ol
Dissociatives:
Ergolines:
The stereoisomers of substances in Schedule I are also controlled, unless specifically excepted, whenever the existence of such stereoisomers is possible within the specific chemical designation.
Salts of all the substances covered by the four schedules, whenever the existence of such salts is possible, are also under international control.
Schedule II [ edit ]
Contains 17 positions, specific generalization for tetrahydrocannabinol stereochemical variants and common generalization clause for salts.
More statistics 17 positions: 10 stimulants
1 phenethylamine psychedelic
1 position representing an isomer of tetrahydrocannabinol and its stereochemical variants
3 depressants 1 barbiturate 2 qualones
1 dissociative
1 position – zipeprol
Stimulants:
amineptine
amphetamine and its isomers (dextroamphetamine and levoamphetamine)
fenethylline
methamphetamine and its isomers (dextromethamphetamine and levomethamphetamine)
methylphenidate and its isomers (dextromethylphenidate and levomethylphenidate)
phenmetrazine
Phenethylamine psychedelics:
Natural cannabinols:
Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol — (6aR,10aR)-6a,7,8,10a-tetrahydro-6,6,9-trimethyl-3-pentyl-6H-dibenzo[b,d]pyran-1-ol, and its stereochemical variants (dronabinol is the international non-proprietary name, although it refers to only one of the stereochemical variants of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, namely (−)-trans-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol)
Depressants (barbiturates):
Depressants (qualones):
Dissociatives:
Other:
Salts of all the substances covered by the four schedules, whenever the existence of such salts is possible, are also under international control.
Schedule III [ edit ]
Contains 9 positions and common generalization clause for salts.
More statistics 9 positions: 6 depressants 4 barbiturates 1 benzodiazepine 1 other depressant
1 semisynthetic opioid
1 synthetic benzomorphan opioid
1 stimulant
Depressants (barbiturates):
Depressants (benzodiazepines):
Depressants (other):
Semisynthetic agonist–antagonist opioids:
Synthetic agonist–antagonist opioids – benzomorphans:
Stimulants:
Salts of all the substances covered by the four schedules, whenever the existence of such salts is possible, are also under international control.
Schedule IV [ edit ]
Contains 62 positions and common generalization clause for salts.
More statistics Schedule IV (62): 47 depressants 7 barbiturates 35 benzodiazepines (including 1 z-drug) 2 carbamates 3 other depressants
14 stimulants
1 position – lefetamine (with stimulant and opioid effects)
Depressants (barbiturates):
Depressants (benzodiazepines):
Depressants (carbamates):
Depressants (other):
Stimulants:
Drugs with both stimulant and opioid effects:
lefetamine (SPA) — open chain opioid having also stimulant effects
Salts of all the substances covered by the four schedules, whenever the existence of such salts is possible, are also under international control.
Regulated elsewhere [ edit ]
The following are scheduled by Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.
Cannabis:
cannabis — the flowering or fruiting tops of the cannabis plant (resin not extracted)
cannabis resin — the separated resin, crude or purified, obtained from the cannabis plant
extracts and tinctures of cannabis
Coca leaf, cocaine and ecgonine:
Coca leaf – the leaf of the coca bush (plant material), except a leaf from which all ecgonine, cocaine and any other ecgonine alkaloids have been removed
cocaine (methyl ester of benzoylecgonine) — an alkaloid found in coca leaves or prepared by synthesis from ecgonine
ecgonine — its esters and derivatives which are convertible to ecgonine and cocaine
All other drugs scheduled by the narcotic convention are agonist-only opioids (and natural sources of them).
Not scheduled by UN conventions [ edit ]
Plants being the source of substances scheduled by this convention are not scheduled (see Psychedelic plants and fungi and Organic plants sections).
Partial list of psychotropic substances currently or formerly used in medicine, but not scheduled:
Of course there are also many designer drugs, not used in medicine.
See also [ edit ]
Notes and references [ edit ]A Melbourne Council opposes a new Dan Murphy's packaged liquor outlet because its concerned it would increase the number of family violence incidents within the municipality
The City of Casey in outer suburban Melbourne is concerned because, despite having high levels of domestic violence, the State Liquor Licensing Commission has approved construction of a Dan Murphy’s packaged liquor outlet in the municipality.
According to The Age the proposal to establish the bottle shop in a “family violence hot spot” has sparked calls for an overhaul of liquor licensing approvals.(Liquor licensing must consider family violence say councils after booze barn approved in hot spot):
The newspaper said the City of Casey experienced the highest number of family violence incidents of any local council in Victoria in the twelve months to September 2015. With 70 bottle shops it also has the highest number of packaged liquor outlets in the State.
It contrasted the approval with the recent report of the Royal Commission into Family Violence:
The Commission considers that greater attention should be paid to the relationship between alcohol supply and family violence in light of the evidence showing that alcohol misuse increases the severity and frequency of family violence.
It’s well established there’s a relationship between alcohol consumption and family violence, but is there a causal relationship between the number of bottle shops and family violence?
At first glance the answer might seem to be yes. After all, as The Age reports, Casey has both the largest number of packaged liquor outlets and the highest level of family violence in the State.
But hang on; with around 283,000 residents, the City of Casey is by far the largest municipality in Victoria. So it’s not that surprising it has the most bottle shops and the most family violence incidents.
But that’s in absolute terms. When differences in population are taken into account, Casey ranks twenty seventh in terms of the number of bottle shops per capita of all 31 Melbourne municipalities.
And when family violence incidents are measured on a per capita basis, it ranks eighth in Melbourne (the numbers are in the graphic at the bottom of The Age’s article, but you have to look for them).
In fact six of the seven Melbourne municipalities with higher per capita rates of family violence than Casey also have fewer bottle shops per capita!
On the basis of the numbers provided by The Age, it doesn’t look like there’s much of an association between bottle shops and family violence.
The Age only shows the rank order of municipalities. So I also looked at the Victoria Police statistics for the rate of family incidents; these are based on 2011-12 data but that won’t change the broad points I want to make.
They show Casey recorded 12.0 family violence incidents per 1,000 population. With 23.9 incidents per 1,000 population, the regional City of Latrobe had the highest rate in the State. (1)
The key thing these statistics show, though, is that there is no correlation between the rate of family violence and the density of bottleshops in Melbourne’s municipalities (see exhibit).
I don’t find that surprising. As the Commission points out, alcohol use is associated with a relatively small proportion of family violence incidents (but they tend to be more severe and chronic).
Also, this is packaged alcohol; whether there’s 60 or 70 bottle shops might affect travel time a bit but it isn’t going to change consumption all that much. That’s probably especially so in the case of those who get repeatedly violent with their families when drinking. (2)
Short of something approaching prohibition, putting a cap on the total number of packaged liquor outlets seems more likely to inconvenience the great majority of men and women in Casey who drink responsibly than it is to measurably reduce family violence.
My analysis might be “quick and dirty” but it suggests policy-makers should actually make sure they’ve got reliable evidence that it works before they resort to imposing caps on packaged liquor outlets. (3)
Importantly, focusing attention on what might be of limited relevance or even possibly a dead-end takes attention away from developing the sorts of policies that might really ameliorate the association between family violence and alcohol consumption.
Policy-makers might instead note that outer growth area municipalities in Melbourne have higher rates of family violence than middle and inner municipalities. It’s likely the characteristics of those populations provide a better explanation than bottle shop density.
For example, outer suburbs have high proportions of young families, households on low incomes, high levels of housing stress, and disadvantaged households.
It’s worth noting too that although the Royal Commission into Family Violence specifically discusses regulation of alcohol supply, it’s recommendation relating to this aspect (one of 211 recommendations) is hardly forceful:
The Victorian Government ensure that the terms of reference of the current review of the Liquor Control Reform Act 1998 (Vic) consider family violence and alcohol-related harms. The review should involve consultation with people who have expertise in the inter-relationship between family violence and alcohol use.
It pays to look closely at proposals to address social problems indirectly. They can give the appearance of action but too often achieve little or nothing and avoid tackling the underlying cause.
______________Andy Hurley (second from left) with Fall Out Boy bandmates Joe Trohman (left), Pete Wentz (second from right) and Patrick Sump (right) before an appearance on the “Today” show in June. Credit: Stephen Lovekin
By of the
In 1991, Andy Hurley, then a sixth-grade student at Menomonee Falls North Middle School, had an assignment: Write about your future.
His first sentence: "I think I will be in a band 25 years from now."
Hurley, 35, is indeed playing in a band for a living. Actually, he's in one of the most popular rock bands in the world, Fall Out Boy.
As the drummer, he's less well-known than frontman Patrick Stump, bassist and onetime tabloid magnet Pete Wentz, and lead guitarist Joe Trohman. But Hurley is arguably the most fascinating member of Fall Out Boy: a softspoken, easygoing, hyper-intelligent, tattoo-covered, cross-fit-obsessed, straightedge vegan who loves his friends so much, he lets them live at his home, rent-free.
While his bandmates moved to California long ago, Hurley's home has been in Milwaukee — a nearly 6,000-square-foot, five-bedroom, million-dollar-plus home on North Lake Drive. The house, the city — they provided him with much-needed retreat at the end of every grueling tour.
The journey has had its struggles, both professionally and personally.
Hurley's father, a physician, died when he was 5. And when he was 9, his mother, Ann, was diagnosed with breast cancer. He thought he would lose her, too.
He didn't. Ann today lives in Franklin with her husband of two years; Andy was her man of honor at the wedding. There's a room in her home that includes a shrine to her son, from band posters to an action figure to a platinum record framed on the wall.
Her son, she said, "as a child, was angry....He was ending up with the wrong kinds of kids...I feel that music saved his life."
'First thing I didn't give up'
In middle school, Andy Hurley started playing percussion. In a fake obituary he wrote for school, he hoped he'd be remembered for playing 1,000 drum sets, signing 100 million autographs and for his 100 world tours. He got into groups like Nirvana and Slayer and Black Sabbath. He kept detailed logs of all the different drumsticks he used.
"Music is the first thing I didn't give up," Hurley said, in part because of a series of band and percussion teachers "who pushed me further than I would have on my own."
When he was 15, Hurley immersed himself in the hard-core punk scene in Milwaukee, and when that wasn't enough, he would travel to Chicago to play or hang out with similar bands. That was when he was inspired to become straightedge — meaning he wouldn't take drugs or drink alcohol — and a vegan.
He played drums in radical bands like Racetraitor and Killtheslavemaster, with Wentz as an occasional bandmate. Then, "when we were all burned out on doing such serious political bands," Hurley said, Wentz and Trohman established Fall Out Boy.
"It definitely took a lot of coaxing" to get Hurley in the band, Trohman recalled. But after the band had gone through two other drummers, he became part of Fall Out Boy just in time to record the band's debut album, "Take This To Your Grave," in 2003 at Smart Studios in Madison.
"He started making the band musically very tight. He elevated our level of musicianship," Trohman said. "He takes everything he does very seriously. It helps that he doesn't do drugs, he doesn't drink alcohol. His dedication to the band made everyone want to do the band more in the beginning."
From touring in a rundown van to becoming famous, Hurley in many ways has been the band's rock.
"Pete and Patrick and I, we all love each other, but we've always hated each other at some point for various reasons," Trohman said. "With Andy, I don't think anyone has anything disparaging to say."
Today, Fall Out Boy is riding the success of six albums, three of which have reached the top of the Billboard charts. The band has won a host of awards, including a People's Choice for Favorite Alternative Band, although a Grammy is still on Hurley's wish list. Its most recent work, "American Beauty/American Psycho," released in January of this year, sold more than 218,000 equivalent copies in the first week alone.
"I would love to keep doing it forever," Hurley said. "If we did end tomorrow, I would be so stoked and proud of everything I've done and how I lived my life. I feel like I've had enough experiences for multiple lives."
A pact with friends
That's certainly true of Matthew Mixon, a video producer and Hurley's roommate. He hasn't paid rent at Hurley's Milwaukee home since 2007.
When Mixon and Hurley were freshmen at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, "we were eating Thai food after class, talking about money our bands could make, dreaming big. And somebody said, 'Whoever gets big off this (expletive) has to buy a house that we can all live in and play music."
Hurley honored the pact — and more.
"He took me to the MTV Video Music Awards," Mixon said. "He always picks up the check....And (his friends) have had these once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to experience all these things with him."
In return, Hurley's roommates take care of the house and make sure the bills are paid on time, Trohman said. "For Andy, friends are his family."
When he's off the road, Hurley spends time with his roommates "24/7," Mixon said. "We do the same stuff we did in high school. We play video games and board games all the time, and we love hanging around with each other.... He's the same dude through and through."
Hurley appreciates the circle of local support.
"It grounds me, and has kept me out of this world that does affect people," Hurley said as he sipped coffee at one of his favorite places in town, Alderaan Coffee on N. Water St.
This summer, Fall Out Boy is co-headlining amphitheaters across the country with rapper Wiz Khalifa for the "Boys of Zummer" tour. Milwaukee isn't on the route — The Rave hosted the band just last December — but the band will be at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park, Ill., Saturday.
Hurley is eager to play in Milwaukee again. "Playing there has always been my best shows," he said. "My mom is there with all of her friends. I usually have 30 to 40 people on the guest list. It's infinitely more stressful. But I rise to the stress and I play better because of it."
His mother is fascinated to see how he handles his status.
"He is such a good kid," she said. "He is very caring and he is always interested in seeing me when he's home. He'll take us behind the scenes after the shows in Milwaukee and Chicago. So many people want to talk to him. It's just astounding to me to watch him interact with others. There isn't any of this highfalutin stuff. He just doesn't have it in him."
Finding a new home
After this tour is done, for the first time Hurley will not be coming back to Milwaukee. He has a brand-new residence in Portland, Ore. It's on 48 acres, with a pool and a private beach.
The winters here are rough, he said, and the frequent commute to Los Angeles has been hard.
"I'm going to be devastated when he leaves," his mother said. "I know he has his own life, and he keeps saying I'm going to come back a lot and fly you out here."
He's already sold his Lake Drive house. But his Milwaukee friends and roommates — seven of them — will be waiting in Portland. They're all moving with him. And Hurley hopes he'll have a couple of months off toward the end of the year to hang out with them.
"Portland is only a two-hour flight from Los Angeles. It's really similar (to Milwaukee) where it's kind of this big, small place and has a really amazing community, and it's bigger in terms of veganism," Hurley said. "But I've always felt like Milwaukee was a member of the family."
"My heart will always be here."
More on music
Find out about the week's must-see shows, concert tickets and more in the new newsletter "Piet Levy's Music Picks." Subscribe at jsonline.com/newsletters.
Piet talks about concerts, local music and more on "TAP'd In" with Jordan Lee, 8 a.m. Thursdays on WYMS-FM (88.9).
IF YOU GO
Who: Fall Out Boy and Wiz Khalifa
When: 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre; 19100 South Ridgeland Ave.; Tinley Park, Ill.
How much?$20 to $62.75 at the box office and livenation.com.WASHINGTON — As the largest tax rewrite in decades powered through Congress, lobbyists found themselves sprinting to keep up and find ways to persuade, influence or cajole the small group of lawmakers empowered to tweak language in the final version of the joint Senate and House bill.
The lobbyists and their allies opened their wallets wide to fund advertisements, phone banks and field campaigns. They leaned on longstanding relationships with lawmakers and staff, dashed off letters to congressional leaders and wrote checks to secure a few minutes of precious face time at fund-raisers.
They brought families struggling with rare diseases to Capitol Hill. Some deployed an outside-in approach, enlisting rank-and-file allies in both chambers to bend those writing the bill to their point of view. Others went for the jugular, trying to use partisan politics to prevent a provision from getting through.
The winners and losers in the $1.5 trillion bill are just beginning to emerge after a scramble that, in different times, would have taken months or weeks, instead of days, and involved scores of lawmakers, not a handful.Jan 11, 2015-
The national convention of CPN Maoist concluded in Tulsipur on Saturday, with Netra Bikram Chand being elected as the party general secretary. The convention approved course of action of the “unified people’s revolution” of the party.
The convention passed the party’s policy of launching an armed revolt immediately in the country if new constitution is promulgated by January 22. The party decided to adopt a two-tier front: the underground front under the leadership of Chand and the open front led by Tilak Pariyar.
The party decided to revive “people’s government”—the structure the then rebel Maoist party had followed, challenging the state authority during the decade-long insurgency in the country. The Chand-led outfit also proposed to form a military wing.
Party spokesperson Khadka Bahadur Bishwakarma said that the convention declared Indian expansionism and its compradors as the principal enemy of the party. Of the 65 member central committee, 58 were elected as members. Some of the party leaders are said to be semi-underground.
Published: 11-01-2015 08:55Feminist Laci Green has faced backlash from left-wing activists, radical feminists, and former friends after she was revealed to be in a relationship with popular anti-SJW YouTuber Chris Ray Gun.
Though the anti-SJW community welcomed Green’s openness to engaging in more open debate with people who disagree with her views in a recent video, the feminist YouTuber revealed on Twitter that social justice warriors angry with her had allegedly doxed her and harassed her family.
shoutout to whichever sjw asshole leaked my private info on facebook & sent a torrent of people to harass me and my family for "colonizing". — Laci Green (@gogreen18) June 7, 2017
“Nobody has the right to tell you who you can date, who you can love, who to share your body with,” posted Green this week, after she was attacked for dating someone with different political beliefs. “Your body and your life belong to you.”
nobody has the right to tell you who you can date, who you can love, who to share your body with. your body and your life belong to you. 💚 — Laci Green (@gogreen18) June 5, 2017
“My, how quickly some feminists who claim to be anti-harassment, anti pile-on, or anti sex-shame turn around and do just that,” she continued. “Amazing.”
my, how quickly some feminists who claim to be anti-harassment, anti pile-on, or anti sex-shame turn around and do just that. amazing. — Laci Green (@gogreen18) June 6, 2017
In a video titled “Taking the red pill?” last month, Green revealed that she had started to talk to people of different opinions and was planning to host debates with anti-feminists.
Green, who hosted MTV’s digital series Braless and was named by TIME as one of the “30 Most Influential People on the Internet” in 2016, was immediately attacked by leftist activists following the video, and a follow-up video titled “Caught between extremes” and has since generated even more backlash following the announcement of her relationship.
sorry but I gotta ask: are you dating chris? I know you're probably tired of seeing this but the uncert… — yup. ❤️ https://t.co/BM1Ys0Xhj0 — Laci Green (@gogreen18) June 5, 2017
Oh holy shit, Laci Green completely lost it. Holy fucking hell. Peak white cis feminism. And the Anti-SJWs just LOVE it. — Glitzerkatze (@Natanji) May 11, 2017
https://twitter.com/144px/status/862910713744023552
https://twitter.com/144px/status/862910020576563200
I don't want to make friends with antifeminists. Far more productive to befriend someone at YouTube who could delete all their channels. — Steve Shives (@steve_shives) May 12, 2017
Don't date alt-right. Don't date gamergate. Don't date white supremacist. No, not even if you like them. In their words: Fuck your feelings. — Zinnia: Adult Transhuman Female (@ZJemptv) June 5, 2017
Steve Shives, who is known online for the large amount of Twitter users he has blocked, claimed that Green’s embrace of open debate and discussion was the “embrace” of “white supremacy.”
Mic drop from @theLLAG on Laci Green's embrace of antifeminism and white supremacy. pic.twitter.com/4lcd5dXvtp — Steve Shives (@steve_shives) June 3, 2017
Actor Benjamin O’Keefe added that Green’s desire for civilized debate between both sides of the political spectrum equated to “not giving a fuck about: her friends, women, people of color, interacial [sic] couples, trans people, [and] Muslim people.”
https://twitter.com/benjaminokeefe/status/871792946747715584
During a discussion with one Twitter user, Green declared that “people [with] very liberal values are being pegged ‘nazis’ and ‘white supremacists’ for [different] opinions.”
in my view, it's them/you not listening. people w very liberal values are being pegged "nazis" and "white supremacists" for diff opinions. — Laci Green (@gogreen18) June 5, 2017
“To many people, this approach is profoundly alienating,” she continued. “It operates on fear, shame, and censorship rather than open dialogue & room to grow.”
to many people, this approach is profoundly alienating. it operates on fear, shame, and censorship rather than open dialogue & room to grow. — Laci Green (@gogreen18) June 5, 2017
This is not the first time Green has been harassed for diverging from social justice dogma, having previously allegedly received death threats for using the word “tranny” in 2009, according to Daily Dot.
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.Fashioning himself as a kind of new wave civil rights prophet on Monday, conspiracy talk show host Glenn Beck predicted that his “long term” listeners would rise up and become “civil rights leaders” themselves before going on to “save the nation” from an unspecified threat.
“Things are going to get tougher,” he solemnly said. “And quite honestly, I believe I have said from the beginning, and I know this to be true more and more every day, that it will be this audience that saves the nation.”
“I no longer believe that it’s going to be saved in the way that we thought it would be,” Beck went on. “It may only be saved in remnants and pieces. There may only be portions of people that are actually living the constitution, but it will be saved. The American spirit will not be snuffed out.”
“I don’t know what’s coming,” he added. “I do know tough times are coming. And I do know that real civil rights leaders will rise. I don’t know who they are. If you’re listening to this program and you’re listening long term, they’re probably going to be you.”
Beck has long tried to position himself and the tea party movement as the modern day heirs to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., going so far as to stage his “Rally to Restore Honor” on the anniversary of King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, giving his own talk just steps away from where King stood.
Despite his attempts to co-opt the civil rights movement, Beck is adamantly opposed to a key tentpost of Dr. King’s legacy: economic justice. “I think that is part of it but that’s a part of it that I don’t agree with,” he told Fox News host Chris Wallace in 2010. “The real agenda should be equal justice, an equal shot.”
Beck also once shamed an actual civil rights leader — Rep. John Lewis (R-GA), who famously marched with King — after he walked arm-in-arm with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “They locked arms because they wanted to compare themselves to the civil rights activists,” Beck said during a 2010 Fox News broadcast. “How dare you?! Look at these people! They refused to get up! But Nancy Pelosi? I don’t know how you can’t be offended by that.”
It was just a year later when he was forced off the network, amid an advertiser boycott staged in response to his claim that President Barack Obama has “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”
This video is from “The Glenn Beck Show,” published Monday, June 3, 2013, snipped by Right Wing Watch."DOMA [The Defense of Marriage Act] is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment." Amy Howe, counsel to the Supreme CourtHuge victory for equal rights today, as the Supreme Court ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional. This means that all same sex married couples in the United States now have the same rights under federal law as opposite sex married couples.Many marriage laws are defined by states, so same sex marriage is still only recognized in states that have legalized it. However, for the thousands of couples in those states, they are now granted rights under over a thousand federal marriage laws, for example, being able to file federal taxes jointly, being able to have joint health insurance, etc.I am so thrilled that my country's leaders decided that gay and lesbian couples are the same under the law as straight couples. I look forward to a bright future for me and my future husband, when I find himSketch by me, vector by Jake Shop Tsh |
-students of wrestling and boxing.
For example, when he advised a man of abominable reputation, who was running for office, a certain Vetrasinus, to stop the town-talk about himself, and Vetrasinus replied that many who had fought with him in the arena were now praetors, the Emperor took it with good grace. (HA)
Alleged Murder of Lucius Verus
Many stories are told of Lucius Verus’ debauchery and Marcus is arguably portrayed as turning a blind eye. This perhaps began earlier but appears to have become much worse during the war and after Lucius’ return to Rome. The HA chapter on Lucius Verus recounts tales of Lucius’ debauchery in detail and says of Marcus:
But Marcus, though he was not without knowledge of these happenings, with characteristic modesty pretended ignorance for fear of censuring his brother. One such banquet, indeed, became very notorious. […] The estimated cost of the whole banquet, it is reported, was six million sesterces. And when Marcus heard of this dinner, they say, he groaned and bewailed the fate of the empire. (HA, Lucius Verus)
It suggests Marcus sent Lucius to the east with the hope of changing his habits.
This diversity in their manner of life, as well as many other causes, bred dissensions between Marcus and Verus — or so it was bruited about by obscure rumours although never established on the basis of manifest truth. But, in particular, this incident was mentioned: Marcus sent a certain Libo, a cousin of his, as his legate to Syria, and there Libo acted more insolently than a respectful senator should, saying that he would write to his cousin if he happened to need any advice. But [Lucius] Verus, who was there in Syria, could not suffer this, and when, a little later, Libo died after a sudden illness accompanied by all the symptoms of poisoning, it seemed probable to some people, though not to Marcus, that Verus was responsible for his death; and this suspicion strengthened the rumours of dissensions between the Emperors. (HA)
However, rumours of poisoning were very much the norm in Rome when someone of note died unexpectedly. The HA chapter on Marcus also says:
And yet, for waging the Parthian war through his legates, he [Lucius Verus] was acclaimed Imperator, while meantime Marcus was at all hours keeping watch over the workings of the state, and, though reluctantly and sorely against his will, but nevertheless with patience, was enduring the debauchery of his brother. In a word, Marcus, though residing at Rome, planned and executed everything necessary to the prosecution of the war. (HA)
In addition to another mention of Marcus turning a blind eye to Lucius’ excesses, it’s insinuated that Lucius took a back seat. He reputedly let his generals, particularly Avidius Cassius, fight the war, although it’s also claimed that Marcus contributed to the military strategy from back at Rome. Yet Lucius later claimed the glory of celebrating a triumph at Rome.
It’s elsewhere implied that Marcus was suspected of wanting to claim the glory of Rome’s victory in the Parthian War by travelling east to join the troops late in the game.
Immediately thereafter he returned to Rome, recalled by the talk of those who said that he wished to appropriate to himself the glory of finishing the war and had therefore set out for Syria. (HA)
This is somewhat negated by the fact he turned back, and never visited the east during the war. However, there are several references to the notion that Marcus played an important role in the Parthian War behind the scenes and perhaps resented Lucius taking the glory, especially as he seems to have contributed little despite being stationed in Syria with the troops.
A more serious allegation arises, mentioned several times, that Lucius’ death was somehow caused by Marcus.
Such was Marcus’ sense of honour, moreover, that although [Lucius] Verus’ vices mightily offended him, he concealed and defended them; he also deified him after his death, aided and advanced his aunts and sisters by means of honours and pensions, honoured Verus himself with many sacrifices, consecrated a flamen for him and a college of Antonine priests, and gave him all honours that are appointed for the deified. There is no emperor who is not the victim of some evil tale, and Marcus is no exception. For it was bruited about, in truth, that he put Verus out of the way, either with poison — by cutting a sow’s womb with a knife smeared on one side with poison,a and then offering the poisoned portion to his brother to eat, while keeping the harmless portion for himself — or, at least, by employing the physician Posidippus, who bled Verus, it is said, unseasonably. After Verus’ death [Avidius] Cassius revolted from Marcus. (HA, Marcus Aurelius)
Note that even the author of the Historia Augusta appears to view these rumours as absurd. Again, when someone of note, especially an Emperor, died suddenly, Romans inevitably loved to gossip that they had been murdered.
The end of the above passage is peculiar. Avidius Cassius revolted six years after Lucius Verus’ death but the HA seems to imply some unspoken connection between these events. Indeed, if rumours existed that Marcus had murdered Lucius that would potentially have lent weight to Cassius’ rebellion. It could also be that the author of the HA seeks to imply that Cassius or his supporters spread this gossip.
The same rumour is repeated in the chapter on Lucius Verus but again the author of the Historia Augusta categorically dismisses it as ridiculous gossip. Using a knife smeared on one side with poison to cut meat was a notorious technique of assassination.
There is a well-known story, which Marcus’ manner of life will not warrant, that Marcus handed Verus part of a sow’s womb which he had poisoned by cutting it with a knife smeared on one side with poison. But it is wrong even to think of such a deed in connection with Marcus, although the plans and deeds of Verus may have well deserved it; nor shall we leave the matter undecided, but rather reject it discarded and disproved, since from the time of Marcus onward […] not even flattery, it seems, has been able to fashion such an emperor. (HA, Lucius Verus)
Could Marcus have murdered Lucius Verus? Possibly. In The Meditations and his private letters to Fronto, though, Marcus seems quite affectionate toward his brother. Also, it was at Marcus’ behest that Lucius was appointed co-emperor in the first place, and Marcus betrothed him to his own daughter. The death of Lucius came at a very inopportune time for Marcus, at the start of the Marcomannic War. Finally, Lucius’ reported symptoms (sudden loss of consciousness and trouble speaking) actually resemble those of the plague, which had broken out nearby, making it seem more plausible that the disease had claimed him.
The HA chapter on Lucius Verus elsewhere once again raises and disputes this rumour, throwing in the gossip that Lucius had slept with Marcus’ wife. So altogether three different people were rumoured to have been responsible for poisoning Lucius Verus: Marcus, his wife Faustina, and Lucius’ wife Lucilla. Clearly the gossip was running wild.
There was gossip to the effect that he had violated his mother-in‑law Faustina. And it is said that his mother-in‑law killed him treacherously by having poison sprinkled on his oysters, because he had betrayed to the daughter the amour he had had with the mother. However, there arose also that other story related in the Life of Marcus, one utterly inconsistent with the character of such a man. Many, again, fastened the crime of his death upon his wife, since Verus had been too complaisant to Fabia, and her power his wife Lucilla could not endure. Indeed, Lucius and his sister Fabia did become so intimate that gossip went so far as to claim that they had entered into a conspiracy to make away with Marcus, and that when this was betrayed to Marcus by the freedman Agaclytus, Faustina circumvented Lucius in fear that he might circumvent her. (HA, Lucius Verus)
This last rumour that Lucius plotted to overthrow Marcus but was assassinated himself before he could carry out the plan is also found in Cassius Dio.
Lucius gloried in these exploits [of the Parthian War] and took great pride in them, yet his extreme good fortune did him no good; for he is said to have engaged in a plot later against his father-in‑law Marcus and to have perished by poison before he could carry out any of his plans. (Cassius Dio)
As noted above, Marcus was believed to have been co-ordinating the Parthian War behind the scenes but also accused of trying to steal Lucius’ glory by considering travelling out to the east to join him. We’re also told that after laying Lucius Verus to rest, Marcus hinted to the senate that he should be credited himself with the victories of the Parthian War.
Later, while rendering thanks to the senate for his brother’s deification, he darkly hinted that all the strategic plans whereby the Parthians had been overcome were his own. He added, besides, certain statements in which he indicated that now at length he would make a fresh beginning in the management of the state, now that Verus, who had seemed somewhat negligent, was removed. And the senate took this precisely as it was said, so that Marcus seemed to be giving thanks that Verus had departed this life. (HA)
As we’ve seen the HA elsewhere claims that it was in fact true that Marcus was responsible for strategy in the Parthian War. This seems problematic because Marcus was at Rome, far removed from the armies in Syria, and the delay in communication caused by such a distance would have severely limited his ability to co-ordinate the military strategy. We also know that Marcus dropped use of the title Parthicus after Lucius death, which seems to confirm the conflicting story that he was reluctant to be credited with the victory himself. (On the other hand it could have been a deliberate effort to scotch the rumour that he’d murdered Lucius and sought to take credit for his achievements.)
The Civil War of Avidius Cassius
The HA reports an excerpt from a purported letter from Lucius Verus to Marcus Aurelius, which is generally considered to be a fake as it mistakenly calls Antoninus Pius Lucius’ grandfather and Marcus’ father, falsely implying that Marcus had adopted Lucius. (That said, it is contradicted a few lines later where Hadrian is called Lucius’ grandfather, so it may just be a scribal error.)
Everything we do displeases him [Cassius], he is amassing no inconsiderable wealth, and he laughs at our letters. He calls you a philosophical old woman, me a half-witted spendthrift. (HA, Avidius Cassius)
The civil war declared by rival “Emperor” Avidius Cassius in 175 AD against Marcus certainly proves that he faced serious opposition within the empire. Cassius had some powerful supporters for his rebellion, including a number of senators, the prefect of Alexandria, and presumably several other Roman generals. He was acclaimed by the Egyptian legion and had a strong base of support in his own province of Syria. After the civil war was quelled, Marcus had to deal with the simmering unrest in Syria, especially in its capital, the epicentre of the rebellion, Antioch. Until then, he’d never visited the east, and he cold also be criticized on the basis that his failure to tour the eastern provinces contributed to the simmering discontent there that culminated in Cassius’ rebellion in Syria.
[Marcus] pardoned the communities which had sided with Cassius, and even went so far as to pardon the citizens of Antioch, who had said many things in support of Cassius and in opposition to himself. But he did abolish their games and public meetings, including assemblies of every kind, and issued a very severe edict against the people themselves. And yet a speech which Marcus delivered to his friends, reported by [the lost biography of] Marius Maximus, brands them as rebels. And finally, he refused to visit Antioch when he journeyed to Syria, nor would he visit Cyrrhus, the home of Cassius. Later on, however, he did visit Antioch. Alexandria, when he stayed there, he treated with clemency.
Which citizens of Antioch and what exactly did they say? Serious measures were taken by Marcus after the war to prevent further uprising there suggesting that significant unrest continued. Lucius Verus had previously made his base at Antioch during the Parthian War but was reputedly ridiculed by the natives. Perhaps that left a lasting resentment and desire for an alternative ruler.
The citizens of Antioch also had sided with Avidius Cassius, but these, together with certain other states which had aided Cassius, he [Marcus] pardoned, though at first he was deeply angered at the citizens of Antioch and took away their games and many of the distinctions of the city, all of which he afterwards restored. (HA, Avidius Cassius)
The HA attributes the following letter to Avidius Cassius, where Marcus is accused, despite being the “best of men”, of being overly tolerant of those who sought to grow rich under his rule. Cassius came from a wealthy Syrian family of exceptionally noble descent so he may simply be snobbish about Marcus’ tendency to promote men of humble origins to high office in a meritocratic fashion, e.g., as in the case of his two most senior generals on the northern frontier: Claudius Pompeianus and Pertinax. Pompeianus was also a Syrian, like Avidius Cassius, but of very humble origins and yet they were probably the two most powerful generals in the empire and at a time contenders for the throne. It’s easy to imagine Cassius would have been critical of Pompeianus’ status given his low birth and he would perhaps have the notion of Pompeianus being elevated above him as emperor, intolerable.
Unhappy state, unhappy, which suffers under men who are eager for riches and men who have grown rich! Marcus is indeed the best of men, but one who wishes to be called merciful and hence suffers to live men whose manner of life he cannot sanction. Where is Lucius Cassius [apparently an error for C. Cassius Longinus], whose name we bear in vain? Where is that other Marcus, Cato the Censor [i.e., Cato the Elder]? Where is all the rigour of our fathers? Long since indeed has it perished, and now it is not even desired. Marcus [Aurelius] Antoninus philosophizes and meditates on first principles, and on souls and virtue and justice, and takes no thought for the state. There is need, rather, for many swords, as you see for yourself, and for much practical wisdom, in order that the state may return to its ancient ways. And truly in regard to those governors of provinces — can I deem proconsuls or governors those who believe that their provinces were given them by the senate and Antoninus only in order that they might revel and grow rich? You have heard that our philosopher’s prefect of the guard was a beggar and a pauper three days before his appointment, and then suddenly became rich. How, I ask you, save from the vitals of the state and the purses of the provincials? Well then, let them be rich, let them be wealthy. In time they will stuff the imperial treasury; only let the gods favour the better side, let the men of Cassius restore to the state a lawful government. (HA, Avidius Cassius)
The need for “many swords” is puzzling as Marcus had massed a huge army in the north but perhaps alludes to the emphasis his strategy placed upon the use of diplomatic negotiation rather than military force. It’s likely Avidius Cassius was a more hawkish military commander than Marcus.
Cassius Dio appears to say that a number of Roman senators as well as generals, heads of state, and kings, were implicated in Cassius’ rebellion, and also that when he pardoned a number of co-conspirators the senate were worried it would pave the way for similar uprisings to recur in the future.
A law was passed at this time that no one should serve as governor in the province from which he had originally come, inasmuch as the revolt of Cassius had occurred during his administration of Syria, which included his native district. (Cassius Dio)
On the one hand, this was prudent of Marcus. On the other hand, it arguably implies it was a serious mistake for him to have appointed Cassius governor in his home province of Syria in the first place, as this allowed him to gain so much power that he inevitably became a danger to the throne. The very fact of the civil war points to an obvious line of criticism against Marcus for allowing it to develop by granting too much power to Cassius and perhaps not doing enough to keep secure loyalty from the people and the legions of Syria, Egypt, and the other regions who went over to Cassius.
Various Uprisings
The Civil War of Avidius Cassius proves that Marcus had a rival for the throne and powerful internal enemies. However, there were also several lesser uprisings in the east and other parts of the empire. There was unrest far away in Britain where the legionaries early in Marcus’ rule had reputedly sought to acclaim their governor, Statius Priscus, as a rival emperor to Marcus.
The histories mention that there was a violent uprising of the Bucoli or Herdsmen in Egypt against Roman rule, which spread rapidly to become a general armed uprising, during which the Roman garrison in Egypt was defeated in battle and Alexandria was besieged and nearly lost.
The people called the Bucoli began a disturbance in Egypt and under the leadership of one Isidorus, a priest, caused the rest of the Egyptians to revolt. […] Next, having conquered the Romans in Egypt in a pitched battle, they came near capturing Alexandria, too, and would have succeeded, had not [Avidius] Cassius been sent against them from Syria. (Cassius Dio)
Why would the Herdsmen revolt? The most likely explanation is that they felt that they were suffering economically due to the expense of the Marcomannic War. Throughout the empire there was probably also unrest over the loss of soldier’s lives during the northern campaign.
Marcus recruited many captured barbarians into the army during the Marcomannic War. He also tried to resettle many on lands within the empire but this met with mixed success:
Some of them [captured enemy soldiers] were sent on campaigns elsewhere, as were also the [returned] captives and deserters who were fit for service; others received land [to settle] in Dacia, Pannonia, Moesia, the province of Germany, and in Italy itself. Some of them, now, who settled at Ravenna, made an uprising and even went so far as to seize possession of the city: and for this reason Marcus did not again bring any of the barbarians into Italy, but even banished those who had previously come there. (Cassius Dio)
These two measures may have been perceived by him as more just alternatives to enslavement of captured enemies. We’re told he expelled the resettled barbarians from Italy, but not from the provinces, so the general policy of resettlement presumably continued.
Alleged Infidelity of Empress Faustina
There were clearly many rumours in circulation accusing Marcus’ wife, the Empress Faustina the Younger, of adultery. As with allegations of poisoning, gossip about the infidelity of powerful Romans’ wives was fairly common in Rome. We’re told several times that Marcus was criticized for turning a blind eye to these rumours. Some of the time, accusing Faustina of adultery seems to have served the purpose of implying that Commodus was not Marcus’ legitimate son, although this doesn’t seem the only motive for the stories.
The HA is speculating in the following passage when it says it “seems plausible” that Commodus was not the son of Marcus but born to Faustina from an adulterous relationship. One piece of tangible evidence that we possess in abundance appears to count against this: statues of Commodus show that he bore a striking physical resemblance to Marcus, his father. The HA adds a salacious anecdote about Faustina and Marcus ritually bathing in the blood of Commodus’ supposed true father, a gladiator. This obviously seems very out of character for Marcus. It should be noted that even after admitting that he is speculating about what “seems plausible” the author of the HA further qualifies this graphic part of the story as an embellishment current among the people.
Some say, and it seems plausible, that Commodus Antoninus, his son and successor, was not begotten by him, but in adultery; they embroider this assertion, moreover, with a story current among the people. On a certain occasion, it was said, Faustina, the daughter of Pius and wife of Marcus, saw some gladiators pass by, and was inflamed for love of one of them; and afterwards, when suffering from a long illness, she confessed the passion to her husband. And when Marcus reported this to the Chaldeans, it was their advice that Faustina should bathe in his blood and thus couch with her husband. When this was done, the passion was indeed allayed, but their son Commodus was born a gladiator, not really a prince; for afterwards as emperor he fought almost a thousand gladiatorial bouts before the eyes of the people, as shall be related in his life. This story is considered plausible, as a matter of fact, for the reason that the son of so virtuous a prince had habits worse than any trainer of gladiators, any play-actor, any fighter in the arena, anything brought into existence from the offscourings of all dishonour and crime. (HA)
The HA continues this passage by claiming that the stories about Commodus being born in adultery was very widespread, although doubt has already been cast on their plausibility.
Many writers, however, state that Commodus was really begotten in adultery, since it is generally known that Faustina, while at Caieta, used to choose out lovers from among the sailors and gladiators. When Marcus Antoninus was told about this, that he might divorce, if not kill her, he is reported to have said “If we send our wife away, we must also return her dowry”. And what was her dowry? the Empire, which, after he had been adopted at the wish of Hadrian, he had inherited from his father-in‑law [Antoninus] Pius. (HA)
This isn’t impossible but there’s no known basis for assuming that Marcus’ claim to the throne actually depended in any real way on his being married to Faustina. Marcus’ claim to the throne came from his adoption by Antoninus Pius and his “grandfather” the Emperor Hadrian, not because of his later marriage to Faustina.
But truly such is the power of the life, the holiness, the serenity, and the righteousness of a good emperor that not even the scorn felt for his kin can sully his own good name. For since [Marcus Aurelius] Antoninus held ever to his moral code and was moved by no man’s whispered machinations, men thought no less of him because his son was a gladiator, his wife infamous. (HA)
Elsewhere the HA adds an anecdote about Marcus being ridiculed in public over his wife’s alleged infidelities. He was reputedly criticized by the people of Rome for doing nothing in response.
It is held to Marcus’ discredit that he advanced his wife’s lovers, Tertullus and Tutilius and Orfitus and Moderatus, to various offices of honour, although he had caught Tertullus in the very act of breakfasting with his wife. In regard to this man the following dialogue was spoken on the stage in the presence of [Marcus Aurelius] Antoninus himself. The Fool asked the Slave the name of his wife’s lover and the Slave answered “Tullus” three times; and when the Fool kept on asking, the Slave replied, “I have already told you thrice Tullus is his name”. But the city-populace and others besides talked a great deal about this incident and found fault with Antoninus for his forbearance. (HA)
Regarding Faustina, every indication is that Marcus held her in very high regard. In The Meditations he thanks the gods that “my wife is such as she is, so obedient, so affectionate, so straightforward” (1.17). This obviously contradicts the image of an unfaithful, scheming and deceitful woman emerging from the rumours. Indeed, after her death, Marcus honoured her very highly despite the allegations apparently made against her.
He asked the senate to decree her divine honours and a temple, and likewise delivered a eulogy of her, although she had suffered grievously from the reputation of lewdness. Of this, however, Antoninus was either ignorant or affected ignorance. He established a new order of Faustinian girls in honour of his dead wife, expressed his pleasure at her deification by the senate, and because she had accompanied him on his summer campaign, called her “Mother of the Camp”. And besides this, he made the village where Faustina died a colony, and there built a temple in her honour.
Commodus
Today, Marcus is often blamed for appointing his son Commodus as his heir as he turned out to be a bad emperor, according to sources such as Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta. Some points about this should be clarified firs, though. We can presume that it was initially expected that his younger co-emperor and adoptive brother, the Emperor Lucius Verus, would outlive Marcus. Lucius would therefore have initially been Marcus’ supposed successor. While Lucius was still alive, though, immediately after the Parthian War and outbreak of the Antonine Plague, Marcus appointed two of his sons, Commodus and his younger brother Marcus Annius Verus, as Caesar, his official heirs. This was probably at the behest of the senate who were concerned about stability because of the possibility the two emperors might die suddenly from plague or in the impending war on the northern frontier.
At this point, presumably the expectation was if Marcus died Lucius would continue to rule with Commodus becoming his co-emperor when old enough, and that later Commodus would rule jointly with his brother Marcus Annius Verus, much as the “brothers” Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus had done. Marcus clearly favoured joint rule, having two co-emperors sharing power, as a means of securing stability. This approach may also have been favoured by the senate. It provided another check against the risk of a sole emperor becoming too much of an autocrat or tyrant. However, Commodus was only about five years old when he was made Caesar, official heir to the throne. Marcus probably barely knew him and certainly had no idea what his character would turn out like. Moreover, for eight years, they would mostly be apart, with Commodus at Rome and Marcus busy on the northern frontier with the army. As we’ve seen, Lucius died suddenly in 169 AD leaving Marcus as sole emperor, with his sons mere children, too young to be acclaimed emperor. Moreover, Marcus Annius Verus would die around the same time, leaving Commodus as Marcus’ only surviving son and the natural heir to the empire. Lucius had no children.
Although most previous emperors had adopted their heirs that was because they lacked adult sons who could assume power. The Roman people nevertheless instinctively believed in the natural succession of rule, from father to son. The senate worried that any situation where an individual who has a claim to the throne was left in the wings inevitably led to instability and the threat of civil war. So Marcus could not easily have replaced Commodus with an adopted heir. Moreover, once Commodus had been appointed Caesar, as a small child, Marcus could not easily have reversed that decision. Of course, one option would have been to have had Commodus assassinated but despite allegations of poisoning, etc., we can assume that was not something Marcus would have considered ethical. (We might ask why Marcus chose to have children in the first place if it meant that he would be put in this awkward situation, having a hereditary heir forced on him whose character could not be known in advance to be suitable.)
We can see that Commodus’ rise was rapidly accelerated in response to the civil war of Avidius Cassius. Marcus immediately called him, now aged fifteen, from Rome to the northern frontier, to assume the toga virilis, and officially become an adult citizen. In 177 AD, Marcus appointed Commodus his co-emperor. So strictly speaking, Commodus didn’t just succeed Marcus, but rather their reigns overlapped by three years. It’s not clear to what extent Marcus realized that Commodus was going to be a bad emperor. However, some accounts suggest that it was in this final years that his true character became apparent, although by then he was already acclaimed emperor.
According to Cassius Dio, Commodus wasn’t so much wicked as easily led and became progressively corrupted by a crowd of hangers-on.
This man [Commodus] was not naturally wicked, but, on the contrary, as guileless as any man that ever lived. His great simplicity, however, together with his cowardice, made him the slave of his companions, and it was through them that he at first, out of ignorance, missed the better life and then was led on into lustful and cruel habits, which soon became second nature. And this, I think, Marcus clearly perceived beforehand. Commodus was nineteen years old when his father died, leaving him many guardians, among whom were numbered the best men of the senate. But their suggestions and counsels Commodus rejected, and after making a truce with the barbarians he rushed to Rome; for he hated all exertion and craved the comfortable life of the city. (Cassius Dio)
Herodian also portrays Commodus as not initially wicked but rather naive and easily swayed. In particular he claimed that Marcus intended Commodus to stay under the watchful eye of his brother-in-law the general Pompeianus on the northern frontier but Commodus found excuses to leave for Rome, and away from Pompeianus and the military he rapidly fell under the sway of corrupt advisors.
However, the HA says that earlier in Commodus’ life, Marcus had sometimes vacillated, dismissing and then re-appointing corrupt advisors, whose company his son craved.
The more honourable of those appointed to supervise his life he could not endure, but the most evil he retained, and, if any were dismissed, he yearned for them even to the point of falling sick. When they were reinstated through his father’s indulgence, he always maintained eating-houses and low resorts for them in the imperial palace. (HA, Commodus)
Commodus apparently spent most of his time travelling with Marcus or stationed on the northern frontier after the outbreak civil war, when he was aged about fifteen. So this remark is puzzling because it doesn’t seem intended to refer to his earlier life as a child growing up in Rome but as an adult, during Marcus’ reign, yet throughout this time Commodus was probably seldom at the imperial palace in Rome.
The HA claims that on his deathbed Marcus finally realized that Commodus was going to be a terrible emperor.
Two days before his death, it is said, [Marcus] summoned his friends and expressed the same opinion about his son that Philip expressed about Alexander when he too thought poorly of his son, and added that it grieved him exceedingly to leave a son behind him. For already Commodus had made it clear that he was base and cruel. (HA)
Likewise,
It is said that he foresaw that after his death Commodus would turn out as he actually did, and expressed the wish that his son might die, lest, as he himself said, he should become another Nero, Caligula, or Domitian. (HA)
As we’ve seen, though, by this point there was very little Marcus could do about it except plead with Commodus to remain under the supervision of his son-in-law Claudius Pompeianus and other trusted advisors.
Miscellaneous
There’s a story about Marcus’ mother wishing Antoninus dead, so her son would succeed him as emperor more quickly, but it’s largely rendered trivial by the surrounding remarks.
Moreover, he showed great deference to his father, though there were not lacking those who whispered things against him, especially Valerius Homullus, who, when he saw Marcus’ mother Lucilla worshipping in her garden before a shrine of Apollo, whispered, “Yonder woman is now praying that you may come to your end, and her son rule.” All of which influenced Pius not in the least, such was Marcus’ sense of honour and such his modesty while heir to the throne. (HA)
Marcus waited 23 years to succeed Antoninus, far longer than anyone probably expected, so it’s unsurprising people might joke that he (or his family) were feeling impatient.
This is not presented by the HA as a criticism of Marcus but modern historians believe that on being acclaimed Marcus and Lucius provided an exceptionally large donative to the praetorian guard. They promised the common soldiers twenty-thousand sesterces apiece, and even more to officers. It’s not clear why they would do this as Rome faced no immediate threat at this time and there’s no indication the praetorians were restless.
Around 176 AD, Marcus visited Athens for the first time and was initiated into the Eleusianina mysteries.
After he had settled affairs in the East he came to Athens, and had himself initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries in order to prove that he was innocent of any wrong-doing, and he entered the sanctuary unattended. (HA)
This suggests that he felt it necessary to make a public demonstration of his innocence, perhaps because of rumours circulating such as those accusing him of assassinating Lucius Verus.
This final passage is barely a criticism either but it does show Marcus backtracking on a decision he apparently made in anger or frustration following a political betrayal at the height of the First Marcomannic War.
Against Ariogaesus [the king of the Quadi] Marcus was so bitter that he issued a proclamation to the effect that anyone who brought him in alive should receive a thousand gold pieces, and anyone who slew him and exhibited his head, five hundred. Yet in general the emperor was always accustomed to treat even his most stubborn foes humanely […] It can be seen from this, then, how exasperated he was against Ariogaesus at this time; nevertheless, when the man was later captured, he did him no harm, but merely sent him off [in exile] to Alexandria. (Cassius Dio)
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Like this: Like Loading...Betty Southard Murphy, a trial lawyer who became chairwoman of the National Labor Relations Board and the first woman to serve on the board, died on Oct. 16 in Washington. She was 77.
The cause was pneumonia, said David Grant, a partner at the Washington law firm Baker & Hostetler, where Mrs. Murphy had been a partner since 1980. She lived in Alexandria, Va.
When Mrs. Murphy was sworn in as a member and chairwoman of the labor board in February 1975, President Gerald R. Ford said he had appointed her “not because she was a woman” but because she was “the most qualified and best respected person.” The board is responsible for safeguarding workers’ organizing rights and preventing unfair labor practices.
By then, Mrs. Murphy had already served as administrator of the Wage and Hours Division of the Department of Labor, which enforces federal laws regarding minimum wages, overtime pay, child labor and migrant labor, among other employment issues.
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A Republican, Mrs. Murphy was the labor board’s chairwoman for two years and a board member through 1979. She then rejected President Jimmy Carter’s decision to give her only an interim appointment.Riot Fest single-day lineups are here and Danzig returns to Riot Fest. Find out what bands are playing on what day and snag your single-day and two-day tickets before they’re gone.
Single-day, two-day tickets, and three-day passes are ON SALE NOW.
And make sure to keep an eye out, the final two full-album performances will be announced tomorrow morning.
TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW
September 15th – 17th at Douglas Park. Chicago, IL.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15th
Nine Inch Nails, New Order, A Day To Remember, Dirty Heads, Vic Mensa, Ministry, Death From Above, Action Bronson, X, Mayday Parade(Performing A Lesson In Romantics), The Cribs, LIARS Buzzcocks, The Story So Far, State Champs, Four Year Strong, INVSN, Chon, The Hotelier, Saul Williams, Nothing More, Radar State, Tobacco, Seaway, Like Pacific, Sleep On It, Grayscale, Skating Polly, Warm Brew, HDBeenDope,
and featuring Hellzapoppin’ Circus Sideshow Revue
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16th
Queens of the Stone Age, Wu-Tang Clan, Mike D (DJ Set), At The Drive In, Danzig, Gogol Bordello, Taking Back Sunday, New Found Glory, Fidlar, Bad Brains, Peaches, The Lawrence Arms (Performing Oh, Calcutta!), Bayside (Performing The Walking Wounded), Dead Cross, Streetlight Manifesto, GBH, Shabazz Palaces, Fishbone, (Performing Truth & Soul), Knuckle Puck, Cockney Rejects, Black Pistol Fire, Slaves (UK), Versus, RVIVR, The Smith Street Band, Potty Mouth, The Regrettes, Cold Beat, Gin Rummy,
and featuring Hellzapoppin’ Circus Sideshow Revue
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17th
Jawbreaker, Paramore, Prophets of Rage, M.I.A., TV on the Radio, Dinosaur Jr. (Performing You’re Living All Over Me), Pennywise, Built to Spill (Performing |
and GTDC2. Indel formation was lower for the full-length G10 RNP (FSCN3: 0.013 and 0.16% indel for G10 and trG10, respectively; GTDC2: 0.025 and 0.035% indel for G10 and trG10, respectively). Very few indels were observed at HBD (0.010 and 0.011% indel for G10 and trG10, respectively), and indels at other β-globin genes (HBE1, HBG1, and HBG2) were not detected over background (Fig. 1E).
Optimizing candidate Cas9 RNPs and ssODNs to edit CD34+ HSPCs The results of RNP delivery to K562 cells encouraged us to investigate using this approach with HSPCs, recognizing that editing efficiency can differ between cell types. We used the trG10 sgRNA, which showed robust HDR and few off-target effects in K562, and reoptimized HDR in adult mobilized peripheral blood HSPCs, which are the cells most relevant for therapeutic gene editing to address SCD. Because these cells were obtained from healthy WT donors, our initial experiments used ssODNs bearing a WT-to-SCD mutation. We first explored optimization of electroporation conditions, template design, and RNP/ssODN dose in HSPCs (fig. S3, A and B). To selectively interrogate editing in viable cells, we used NGS to assay HSPCs cultured under erythroid expansion conditions for 7 days after editing (erythroid-expanded), along with edited HSPCs cultured for only 2 days (unexpanded). During initial treatments, we found that treatment with 100 pmol of RNP led to a decline in viability (fig. S3C), and used 75 pmol of RNP as a lower dose in subsequent in vitro experiments. We also tested the effects of the small molecule SCR7 on editing in HSPCs. This NHEJ inhibitor has been reported to increase HDR-mediated editing in some cell types, but we did not observe an improvement in HDR in HSPCs (fig. S3A) (44, 45). We observed appreciable initial levels of editing at the sickle SNP in HSPCs, with HDR rates between 6 and 11% (Fig. 2, A and B). After 5 days of erythroid expansion, HDR rates increased, with up to 33% editing at both high and low doses of RNP (150 and 75 pmol, respectively). Total editing (%HDR + %NHEJ) in expanded HSPCs was between 66 and 72%, indicating good delivery of the trG10 RNP to HSPCs. In general, higher editing was accompanied by some reduction in viability, as measured by fewer cells remaining after treatment, particularly at a high, 150 pmol dose of RNP (fig. S3C). The asymmetric ssODN was most effective in K562 cells (T111-57) drove HDR more efficiently at a lower Cas9 dose of 75 pmol RNP per 150,000 HSPCs, whereas a shorter template (T111-27) was more efficient at a higher dose of Cas9 (150 pmol RNP per 150,000 HSPCs) (Fig. 2A). In a separate experiment, we confirmed high rates of HDR by ddPCR (fig. S3D). These experiments demonstrate efficient in vitro editing of CD34+ HSPCs using the Cas9 RNP, including HDR-mediated sequence replacement using ssODNs without a selection marker. As was the case with K562 cells, in HSPCs we found low but measureable conversion of HBB coding sequence to HBD (0.2 to 2%), and rates of conversion increased after expansion of edited cells (fig. S3E). Fig. 2. Editing of WT human CD34+ HSPCs by the Cas9 RNP. (A) Analysis of editing in unexpanded HSPCs (left) and erythroid-expanded HSPCs (right), using trG10 RNP and under conditions as indicated. Templates, which are asymmetric about the G10 cut site, were designed as described in the text. All graphs show three biological replicates, and error bars are ±SD. (B) Modification (HDR+Indel) at off-target sites in HSPCs edited with the trG10 RNP and template T88-107, as compared to untreated cells. The bars for HBB, OT1, FSCN3, and MNT represent three biological replicates, with error bars (±SD); the others are each a single replicate. Targets were selected using the online CRISPR Design Tool. (C) Indel formation at on- and off-target sites by Cas9 mutants with increased specificity (HF1 and eSpCas9-1.1), in HSPCs, as compared to WT Cas9, all complexed to the G10 sgRNA and no ssODN. The absence of an ssODN reduced indel formation overall. All data are shown as n = 3 biological replicates, with error bars (±SD). To analyze how allele frequencies in the HSPC population translate to the editing of alleles in individual HSPCs, we repeated our best editing condition in CD34+ HSPCs (75 pmol trG10 RNP and 100 pmol T111-57), recovered the cells in HSPC expansion medium for 2 days, and plated single edited HSPCs by limiting dilution in erythroid expansion medium. After 14 days of growth, 96 edited clones were individually genotyped by multiplexed NGS (Table 1). In this experiment, 21% of alleles were HDR. However, these alleles were spread among 32% of the cells. This increased prevalence of edited cells relative to edited alleles is predicted by the independent assortment of alleles within a population (although we observed that homozygous genotypes were still overrepresented relative to a prediction based on random assortment) (46). Table 1. Zygosity of clonal colonies of CD34+ HSPCs edited with the trG10 RNP. HSPCs were edited with 75 pmol of the trG10 RNP (similar to Fig. 2) and cloned by limiting dilution. Of the resulting clones, 96 were then genotyped by NGS. The fraction of all three alleles, the frequency of clones with at least one copy of each of the three alleles, and the frequency of all six genotypes are indicated. View this table: We analyzed off-target activity of the trG10 RNP in HSPCs using the target selection criteria described above for K562 cells (Fig. 2B). Most predicted genic off-targets showed no detectable indel formation, although cutting at the previously observed intergenic site remained high (OT1, ~80% indel). The rates of off-target cleavage observed in HSPCs generally corresponded to observations in K562 cells, although the rates were often reduced (for example, rate of FSCN3 is ~0.05% in HSPCs versus up to 0.16% in K562 cells). As an additional test of the effects of off-target activity of the trG10 RNP, we used overamplification PCR to detect the presence or absence of translocations between the on-target site at HBB and selected off-target sites (OT1, HBD, FSCN3, and MNT) in both K562 cells and HSPCs edited with trG10 (fig. S4). Translocations between OT1 and HBD with HBB were observed in K562 cells. Most sites showed no translocations in HSPCs; one translocation may have occurred between OT1 and HBB in HSPCs, but the frequency of this event is not known. We also tested whether trG10 has off-target activity at cancer-associated genes. Although these sites bear little similarity to the trG10 protospacer, even low levels of activity in such locations would be a concern. We used a capture library (Illumina TruSight Cancer) to sequence 94 genes and 290 cancer-associated SNPs to ~8000-fold coverage each. Relative to unedited cells, we found a small number of indel mutations enriched in K562 cells edited with the trG10 RNP, typically at less than 1% of alleles (table S2). Almost all of these mutations were present in unedited cells. In contrast, no indels were detected in similarly edited HSPCs. These results highlight the importance of performing rare off-target event detection in the target primary cell type and suggest that the trG10 RNP may not have substantial genotoxic liabilities, although this has not been tested at clinical scale. Two mutant variants of the Cas9 protein have been reported to reduce off-target effects in cell lines, even at highly similar off-target sites such as OT1 for the G10 RNP (47, 48). We expressed and purified the eSpCas9-1.1 and HF1 variants of Cas9, paired them with the G10 sgRNA to form RNPs, and used them to edit WT CD34+ HSPCs in the absence of an ssODN. We used NGS to determine the on- and off-target editing frequencies (Fig. 2C). As expected based on our recent observation of enhancement of indel formation by oligonucleotides, the on-target indel formation was reduced in the absence of an ssODN (Fig. 2B versus Fig. 2C) (38). Compared to WT Cas9, both HF1 and eSpCas9-1.1 showed even further decreased on-target indel formation at the HBB locus, for example, an almost fivefold decrease in indels for HF1. However, both modified enzymes also completely eliminated all previously observed off-target events, including the prevalent OT1 intergenic off-target (Fig. 2C).
Correction of the SCD mutation in SCD HSPCs to produce WT hemoglobin Our success in WT-to-SCD editing in HSPCs implies that the same method could be used to edit SCD to WT in HSPCs derived from SCD patients. Because human erythropoiesis does not occur when human HSPCs are xenografted into mice, and the availability of SCD HSPCs is limited, we evaluated the effects of correcting the SCD mutation in HSPCs in vitro, by carrying out erythroid differentiation of edited HSPCs. We obtained CD34+ HSPCs from whole blood discarded after exchange transfusion of SCD patients. Because the HF1 and eSpCas9-1.1 proteins yielded reduced levels of on-target editing and the predominant off-target from WT Cas9 lies in an intergenic region with no known function, we focused on experiments using more efficacious WT Cas9. We corrected the SCD mutation using the trG10 RNP and ssODNs carrying an SCD-to-WT edit. These SCD-to-WT templates, denoted by the suffix “S,” encode the same number of mutations as the WT-to-SCD templates, with the base identity different only at the SCD SNP. Measuring editing by both NGS and ddPCR, we found that SCD HSPCs were edited at levels similar to those observed in WT HSPCs from mobilized blood, with up to 25% of alleles corrected to WT at high RNP dose and 18% corrected at low RNP dose (Fig. 3A and fig. S5). Fig. 3. Correction of the SCD mutation in SCD HSPCs. (A) Editing the SCD mutation in unexpanded CD34+ HSPCs from the whole blood of SCD patients, assessed by NGS. (B) HPLC trace depicting hemoglobin production in SCD HSPCs edited with 200 pmol of the trG10 RNP and the T111-27S donor, as compared to untreated HSPCs, after differentiation into late-stage erythroblasts. Increases in HbA, HbF, and HbA2 are apparent. au, arbitrary units. (C) Stacked bars showing HPLC results, with HSPCs edited as indicated before differentiation into erythroblasts. (D) Globin gene expression in SCD HSPCs edited as in (C), determined by RNA-seq. All experiments include a single replicate for each of the four treatment conditions. To analyze the hemoglobin production potential of corrected HSPCs, we differentiated pools of treated HSPCs into enucleated erythrocytes and late-stage erythroblasts and measured hemoglobin by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) (21, 28, 49). We found that corrected HSPC pools produce substantial amounts of WT HbA, with a concomitant decrease in sickle hemoglobin (HbS) (22.2 to 22.4% HbA, 48.0 to 50.6% HbS at low-dose RNP, 29.3% HbA, and 38.7% HbS at high-dose RNP) (Fig. 3, B and C). We also observed a substantial increase in fetal hemoglobin (HbF) in edited cell pools (16.3 to 17.4% HbF in edited cells versus 2.0% HbF in unedited cells). We used RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to measure globin transcript abundance in pools of edited SCD HSPCs differentiated to erythrocytes (50). Globin transcript levels showed a trend similar to protein levels after editing, with sickle HBB transcripts decreasing from 56.7% of all transcripts to ~9% and WT HBB transcripts increasing from 0.1 to 13% across all three editing conditions (Fig. 3D). Consistent with the increase in HbF protein, we observed about threefold increase in the expression of γ-globin (HBG1 and HBG2) mRNA. Thus, corrected pools of cells produce decreased sickle β-globin, increased adult WT β-globin, and increased fetal (γ) globin.Progress continues to be made on the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran today, with Western powers finally deciding to end their demands for “disclosures” of more past research by Iran as part of the deal.
Iran has insisted that what they’ve disclosed is the full extent of the past research on nuclear arms, a program scrapped years ago. The US has continued to demand Iran disclose additional research, and wanted a public admission of guilt as part of a final pact.
With the deadline just days away now, officials seem to have finally figured out that a deal on current nuclear activities is far more important than a public shaming over what nuclear actions did or did not happen years ago.
Despite the progress, negotiators say that “big gaps” remain between the two sides on the final pact, mostly centering around how fast the sanctions will be removed and how much civilian uranium enrichment Iran will retain.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzBy Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and leaders of five Nordic nations presented a united front against Russia on Friday, expressing concern about Moscow's military buildup in the Baltics and calling for sanctions against Russia to continue.
The leaders of Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland gathered at the White House for talks that focused on Russia and the crisis in Syria and Iraq that has sparked a flood of migrants to Europe.
Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014 alarmed its Nordic and Baltic neighbors. With the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) considering ways to try to deter further Russian aggression, the White House wants to show support for its northern European allies.
Obama said the six countries were united in their concern about Russia's "aggressive military presence" in the Baltic and Nordic regions. The Baltic countries are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Last month, a Russian jet fighter intercepted a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane flying a routine route over the Baltic Sea, and two Russian jets buzzed a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the sea.
NATO is planning its biggest build-up in eastern Europe since the Cold War to counter what the alliance considers to be a more aggressive Russia. Sweden and Finland are not NATO members.
"We will be maintaining ongoing dialogue and seek cooperation with Russia, but we also want to make sure that we are prepared and strong, and we want to encourage Russia to keep its military activities in full compliance with international obligations," Obama said after meeting with the leaders.
The president is limited by the political calendar in what he can promise, given that his second and final term ends next year on Jan. 20. Americans are set to hold presidential elections on Nov. 8.
The visit will culminate in a star-studded state dinner in a tent with a transparent ceiling, with lighting, flowers and ice sculptures evoking the northern lights.
Pop star Demi Lovato, known for her support of liberal causes, will perform after guests enjoy a main course of ahi tuna, tomato tartare, and red wine braised beef short ribs.
Obama lauded the humanitarian and environmental accomplishments of his guest nations, which have been key supporters of an international deal to curb climate change that the White House sees as a key part of Obama's legacy.
"There have been times where I've said, why don't we just put all these small countries in charge for a while? And they could clean things up," Obama said.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Jeff Mason in Washington; Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Richard Chang)Healthcare providers sometimes can get caught up in a political storm. When this happens, audits can be used as a weapon to help preferred providers muscle into a market. This appears to have happened recently in New Mexico.
Let’s go back in time.
On Sept. 14, 2010, Susana Martinez was in Washington, D.C. She was looking for campaign contributions to run for the governorship of New Mexico. She visited the office of the government lobbying division of UnitedHealth Group and picked up a check for $25,000.
The next day, Martinez published an editorial claiming that Bill Richardson’s administration in New Mexico was tolerating much “waste, fraud and abuse” in its Medicaid program. Eventually, she was elected as the 31st governor of New Mexico and took office Jan. 1, 2011.
According to an email trail, by the fall of 2012, Martinez’s administration was busy exchanging emails with members of the boards of directors of several healthcare companies in Arizona. During this same period, the Arizonans made a number of contributions to a political action committee (PAC) set up to support Martinez. At the same time, officers from New Mexico’s Human Services Department (HSD) made a number of unannounced visits to Arizona.
The lobbying continued in earnest. Hosted in part by UnitedHealth money, the head of HSD visited Utah’s premier ski resort, and the bill was paid for by an organization financed in part by UnitedHealth. The governor’s chief of staff was treated to dinner at an expensive steakhouse in Las Vegas. There is suspicion of other contacts, but these have not been identified. All of these meetings were confidential.
The governor continued to publicly criticize health services in New Mexico. She focused on 15 mental health providers who had been in business for 40 years. They were serving 87 percent of the mental health population in New Mexico and had developed an extensive delivery system that reached all corners of the state.
Martinez honed in on one mental health provider because the CEO used a private aircraft. He was accused of using Medicaid funds to finance a lavish lifestyle. None of this was true. It turned out that the owner had operations all over the state and used the plane for commuting, but it made for good sound bites to feed the press.
The state decided to raise the pressure against the providers. Public Consulting Group (PCG), a Boston-based contractor, was called in to perform an audit of mental health services. In addition to taking samples and performing analyses of claims, PCG was asked to look for “credible allegations of fraud.”
In legal terms, the phrase “credible allegations of fraud” carries much weight. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it can be used to justify punitive actions against a provider. It is surprising that only “allegations” are necessary, not demonstrated proof. The reality is that in practical terms, a provider can be shut down based on allegations alone.
In a letter regarding its work, PCG stated that “there are no credible allegations of fraud.” Evidently, that was the wrong answer. PCG was kicked out of New Mexico and not allowed to complete its audit. HSD took over.
The PCG letter had been supplied to HSD in a Microsoft Word format. In a stunning act, HSD removed the statement concluding that there were “no credible allegations of fraud.” HSD continued to use the PCG letter, but only in this altered form.
HSD continued to insist publicly that there were credible allegations of fraud. Since PCG had been kicked out before completing the audit, a HSD staff attorney took the liberty of performing several statistical extrapolations that generated a repayment demand of more than $36 million. During testimony, the attorney admitted that the extent of his experience with statistics was an introductory course he had taken years earlier in college.
Two years later, statistical experts from Barraclough NY LLC who are elected fellows of the American Statistical Association examined HSD’s work and concluded that it was faulty and unreliable. They concluded there was zero credibility in the extrapolations.
But for the time being, the extrapolations and audits were powerful tools. On June 24, 2013, all of the aforementioned 15 nonprofits were called into a meeting with HSD. All were accused of massive fraud. They were informed that their Medicaid payments were to be impounded. The money needed to service 87 percent of New Mexico’s mental health population was being cut off.
The next day, UnitedHealth announced a $22 million investment in Santa Fe. We have not been able to track down the direct beneficiaries of these investments. However, we do know that the governor’s office immediately issued a press release on their behalf.
The 15 New Mexico providers were being driven out of business. This had been planned well in advance. Shortly thereafter, the government of New Mexico, through HSD, [approved] issued $18 million in no-bid contracts to five Arizona-based providers affiliated with UnitedHealth. These are the same companies that had been contributing to the governor’s PAC.
These five Arizona companies then took over all mental health services for New Mexico. Their first step was to begin cutting back services. To give one example: patients with two hours therapy per week were cut back to 10 fifteen-minute sessions per year.It was the beginning of a mental health crisis in New Mexico.
As of today, two of the Arizona providers have abandoned their work in New Mexico. A third is in the process of leaving. What is the result? Thousands of New Mexico mental health patients have been left with no services. Entire communities have been completely shut [cut] off. The most vulnerable communities have been hit the hardest.
Through litigation, the 15 original providers forced the New Mexico Attorney General to examine the situation. It took a long time. All of the providers now are out of business. The Attorney General reported a few weeks ago that there were never any credible allegations of fraud.
This should mean that the impounded money would be returned to the 15 providers. After all, the legal reason why it was impounded in the first place has been shown to be false. One would think that the situation could return to normal.
The original 15 should be able to continue their business, and hire back the more than 1,500 persons they had been forced to lay off. Once the impounded monies are returned to the providers, they will be able to pay their legal bills, which now add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Unfortunately, that is not happening. HSD still is claiming that the $36 million extrapolation is due, and that actually, the providers owe the state money. The New Mexico government is not budging from its position. The litigation continues.
Meanwhile, New Mexico now is tied with Montana in having the highest suicide rate in the continental United States.
About the Author
Edward M. Roche is the founder of Barraclough NY LLC, a litigation support firm that helps healthcare providers fight against statistical extrapolations.
Contact the Author
Roche@barracloughllc.com
Comment on this Article
editor@racmonitor.comBarack Obama and His Deep State Operatives Are Attempting to Sabotage the Duly Elected President of the United States
RUSH: It appears, ladies and gentlemen, that the people on our side still haven’t learned a single lesson about how to deal with the Democrat Party and the media, the American left — of course, that’s all the same group of people. It’s patently obvious. It’s really frustrating to me. All of this should have been anticipated. All of this was easily predictable. I think somebody I know pretty well did.
And the way this is all being handled today — and people have the best intentions. The heartfelt desire to defend Jeff Sessions by pointing out the Democrat hypocrisy, when are we gonna learn that Democrat hypocrisy doesn’t exist? There is no such thing as Democrat hypocrisy in the media. You’re never gonna beat these people back by pointing out how they’ve done the same thing that they’re accusing us of doing. It’s never gonna work! This story is not about Jeff Sessions.
By the way, greetings and welcome. Great to have you. Rush Limbaugh, 800-282-2882.
This story is not about Jeff Sessions. This story is not about illegal talks between Trump and his campaign people and the Russians. This story is about Barack Obama and the Democrat Party attempting to sabotage the Trump presidency and do everything they can to either render it meaningless and ineffective or to get him impeached or force him to resign. That’s what the story is. And that is what has to be attacked, not defended.
We have no reason to be on defense all the time. We won the election. These people are barely hanging on. This is all they’ve got. And there’s no evidence, despite a year and a half of allegations of illegal contact between Trump, his campaign, and the Russians. There is no evidence.
Now you know why I have been harping on this almost daily for so long, because this is the only option the Democrats have open is to try to convince as many people as possible that Hillary should have won the election, that Trump is illegitimate, that Trump’s victory was the result of cheating and fakery and maybe foreign espionage. That’s all they’ve got.
Now, if you take a look at what they’re doing, they’re going after all of the people who are the closest advisers to Trump. They took out Rudy Giuliani right after the election with stories about his supposed ties to foreign governments. They took out Michael Flynn. And how did they do that? They decided to harp on the fact that Flynn had lied to Pence about something of tremendous, major import, forcing Trump to get rid of Flynn on the basis he’s not trustworthy, the guy lied to Pence.
How are they going after Sessions? Sessions lied. Sessions lied to Franken. Now Trump has no choice but then to get rid of Sessions. This is what they’re trying to do. Now, do not misunderstand me. I’m not saying Sessions doesn’t deserve to be defended and I’m not saying this shouldn’t be explained, because I’m gonna do that today. I’m talking about tactics and strategy, the immediate knee-jerk reaction when these allegations come is to accept their premise, and once we do that, we’re cooked.
No matter how much brilliance we come up with, no matter how much evidence to refute what they’re saying, if we accept the premise, we’re cooked. We have got to redefine what this is really all about. It is all about Barack Obama and the Democrat Party attempting to unseat President Trump. It’s all about sabotage and a scandal from the highest levels of the Democrat Party. That’s what is happening here. And that’s what people need to be told.
All of this needs to be explained to casual observers, American citizens, as to what is really going on. You know, I can play the game of defending Sessions. I’ve got all the Claire McCaskill tweets that show she met with the Russian ambassador and bragged about it even though she’s saying that Sessions should quit for having to do it. Sessions in his testimony during his confirmation hearings, this was not even about anything official. It was about that phony, fake dossier that the media and BuzzFeed had published.
Sessions was being asked questions about a dossier that was packed full of lies that nobody even maintained was true except the media. As I say, I’m gonna get to all of this in due course, but I actually think, folks, that the focus here needs to be on Obama and the Democrats and their motives. And I’ll tell you what’s driving this is Trump’s speech. Trump’s speech on Tuesday night has scared the devil out of these people.
They thought Trump was gonna continue to be what they think is a bumbling fool, you know, fortunately, luckily running into good things and eventually he was gonna start bumping into bad things, and he’s gonna screw everything up. He didn’t know politics. He didn’t know the establishment. It was gonna be easy to do end runs around him, and that speech came, and in their minds, that’s the greatest speech they’ve ever heard, and it scared the hell out of ’em.
Now, they were gonna do what they’re doing today anyway, but their intensity has been ratcheted up. I mean, I could point out all of the hypocrisy I want. Remember when special prosecutor was appointed for Loretta Lynch’s meeting with Bill Clinton just before the election? No, you don’t remember that because it didn’t happen. What was at all about? The Clintons and their Crime Family Foundation were under FBI investigation. They might still be, for all we know. But we don’t hear any clamoring to get to the bottom of that.
It looks like the Democrats were conspiring to cover up influence peddling and God knows what else. The Clintons were out selling access to the White House and her future presidency. Last time I checked, all of this is what led to the Republicans being elected. The Democrat Party has soiled itself in front of the American people, and they don’t want any more of them. That’s why Trump won.
You know what Sessions ought to do? “Yeah, yeah, I talked to the Russian ambassador about our grandchildren. You know, he’s got some grandchildren, I got some grandchildren, that’s what we were talking about.” Well, that’s what Loretta Lynch and Clinton said they were talking about on the airplane one week before a decision was coming down from Comey on whatever was gonna happen with the Clinton investigation into her emails and stuff. I can point that out and you go, “Yeah, yeah, right.” And you know what it’s gonna get us? Nothing!
Even in the court of opinion it’s gonna get us nothing because it accepts the premise that Sessions did something wrong and therefore we can mitigate that by pointing out, “Well, look what the Clintons did.” It doesn’t work that way. We should learn after 30 years, it doesn’t work that way. The Democrats are never held accountable for hypocrisy. There is no such thing where they are concerned in the eyes of the media and others who hold them accountable or don’t. I know the desire to defend Sessions. He’s a great man. He’s a decent man. He’s a good man.
And there’s no way he would do what they want you to believe. But it’s not about the reality, folks. It’s about the perception — and if we accept the premise, then that sets the perception almost in stone. And they’re gonna go after Sessions for the same reason that they made Trump get rid of Flynn. “He’s not trustworthy. He lied to me, lied here, lied to Pence. I don’t know, I gotta…” How do you not get rid of Sessions after having gotten rid of Flynn on that basis? So here come the calls from the Democrats: Impeachment! Special prosecutor!
There’s no evidence. Folks, there isn’t any evidence of anything, except the Obama administration and its holdovers in the deep state tried to sabotage the duly elected president of the United States. That is the story! That is what is happening! And it’s happening right in front of our eyes. It’s not even a secret. We see the results of it every day in the New York Times, which I believe is complicit with Obama and the Democrats in this attempted sabotage. I have no doubt. A special prosecutor, everybody is clamoring for? To investigate what?
What is there to investigate? Allegations? Seriousness of the charge? They’re trying to isolate Trump from the people he trusts. They’re trying to isolate Trump from the best people around him because they believe that Trump, without intelligence and guidance nearby, will fumble and stumble on his own because he doesn’t have a brain. He doesn’t have political instincts, and he doesn’t know what’s going on. Now, we’re told that Barack Obama was a huge statesman. “Oh, yeah, we so miss the statesman-like composure and stature of Barack Obama!”
Let me ask you this off the New York Times story. I’m assuming you all have heard all about all this now, and I don’t need to waste time setting the table with what happened, although as I… (interruption) Know what? (interruption) Okay, well, then I’ll circle back to it, but I don’t want to waste a lot time reporting things that people already know, because that just accepts the premise, too. “Hey, man, look what’s in the New York Times.” What’s in the New York Times and what’s in the Washington Post are just the latest attempts to sabotage and undermine the Trump presidency, and it had better be fought back on that basis.
It had better be dealt with on that basis, not that Jeff Sessions did something wrong. Not that there is an impeachable offense here. There isn’t any evidence, and they have been investigating this for over a year and a half. Hang on on that. I just want to make one point here. Because here we have the New York Times and the statesman-like aura of Barack Obama, and, “Oh, how we miss it! Oh, jeez, we long for it so much to return.” If Obama has known about all of this for all of this time, why wait until now?
Why wait until after Trump’s inaugurated?
Why not release what you knew about the so-called contact between Trump and his campaign people and the Russians in order to head off his election? Well, they tried, folks. Don’t think they didn’t try! They don’t have any evidence for it. They tried all last summer. They tried all October. The New York Times had a huge piece on this in October. But they had to say — way down, buried near the end — that the officials involved in the investigation still have no evidence that there were actual contacts. Why didn’t these Obama deep-state people become whistleblowers?
They’ve been there for four, eight years. I mean, if this has been going on this long, where were these people before today, before last week, before January? Why didn’t they go to their respective inspectors general in all these departments and blow the whistle on what they supposedly knew was going on with all of this contact between Trump and his campaign and Russia? Why didn’t they go to Obama? All these deep-state guys leaking all this, why didn’t they go to Obama and say, “Mr. President, it’s horrible what’s going on out there.
“The Trump campaign is talking to the Russians; they’re trying to sabotage the Hillary campaign!” Well, they did, and Obama went out and said there’s nothing to this. President Barack Obama back in December denied all this was going on. Here it is, and it’s a Breitbart story: “Obama Crushes Conspiracy: No Evidence That Russia Tampered with Votes in Election.” December 13, 2016, just three months ago. “No Evidence That Russia Tampered with Votes in Election — President Barack Obama emphatically denounced the conspiracy theory saying Russians successfully tampered with the American voting process.
“‘We were frankly more concerned in the run up to the election to the possibilities of vote tampering, which we did not see evidence of,’ he said. ‘And we’re confident that we can guard against.’ During an interview with The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, Obama downplayed the hack of a private email account of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, defending his administration for revealing in October that the Russian government was connected. ‘None of this should be a big surprise,’ Obama said, ‘Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union.’
“Obama dismissed the hack and the leaked emails as ‘not very interesting’ and lacking ‘explosive’ revelations. He puzzled as to why it was an ‘obsession’ by the news media despite the knowledge that the Russians were responsible.” Yeah, they’re trying, but they didn’t succeed in doing anything. That’s Obama in December! So what has changed? In December: “Obama Crushes Conspiracy: No Evidence That Russia Tampered with Votes in Election.” Was Obama lying then? Why would he lie? Why didn’t he tell everybody?
He told Daily Show, Trevor Noah; it got picked up here by Breitbart. The New York Times didn’t pick it up. The Washington Post didn’t pick it up. But I remember telling you about it. And Obama did the same thing in March when the subject came up. Every time it came up all during last year, Obama pooh-poohed it. And you know why? Because it would have been a black mark on his administration. If the Russians had been able to hack the election while he’s president, what does it say about his national security apparatus?
So he’s out there all last year and as recently as December saying (summarized), “There’s nothing to this. No evidence that Russia tampered with the votes in the election,” which is something I’ve been maintaining for even longer than Obama said it. It’s absurd and it’s preposterous, and yet that’s what they continue to build all of these allegations on is contact between the Trump campaign and the Russians. So I’m just telling you, folks. The story here is not Jeff Sessions. Don’t get sucked into this. The story is Valerie Jarrett moving in to the Obama family home.
What the hell’s up with that?
There’s a story here is about how Obama and his people are running the resistance operation |
most of his production, while taking the middle base. The wraith army made sure the dropships were safe, and the rest of the game ended up being the slow, inevitable death of the former KT Terran.In the losers match, Larva dominated Hint with his mutalisk play, with Hint only having a few HTs and dragoons to defend with. Hint was left with a shattered economy, and Larva was so far behind that when the two armies clashed, Larva ate every single storm but still crushed Hint. Ample was better prepared for the mutalisk play, and the damage done was limited. Still, after having failed a bunker rush, Ample was behind, and was unable to do any damage with the goliath army he had. Larva decided to make things a bit more even by attacking into a sieged up position with only hydralisks, and Ample was allowed to snowball off it, pushing on with his mech army. With no dark swarm there was little Larva could do.Game two saw Larva once again going for mutalisk play, and Ample once again defending nicely, though he was contained on two bases. When he finally did move out, his army got annihilated twice by lurkers. The game seemed to be won by Larva as he brought out the cows, but a fully saturated hidden base for Ample allowed him back into the game, along with some fancy drop play. Ample's excellent multi-tasking meant the end of the line for Larva.Usually I'd pick beast to make it to the quarterfinals, if not the round of 16, but with Sonic swapping up the groups, placing beast up against Sky and Mong as well as newcomer KaZe_Hyun, I'm having doubts. Sky's vT is something scary, which was proven already in the first matches against Mong. With constant aggression and map awareness akin to that of Killer, Sky would deny Mong's patented mass drops, and do sufficient damage in the early game to steamroll the Terran player. The combination of Mong's seemingly lackluster play as of late and Sky's scary PvT (not a single best-of-series loss since the 11th SRT), put Sky in the winners match.It's common knowledge that beast has a pretty good ZvZ, so it was fair to expect a 2-0 against newcomer KaZe_Hyun. However, Hyun went for an earlier expansion, and defended beast's push in the first game, before winning with a counterattack before beast's spire finished. Though beast did win the next two games in a fairly convincing fashion, with superior macro and mutalisk control, KaZe_Hyun definitely got to prove himself as more than “just another SOSPA Zerg”.New Heartbreak Ridge is known for cannons on the high-ground behind the natural, but beast's proxied hatchery was something somewhat new. Had it not been scouted fairly early by Sky's probe, it could definitely have done some serious damage, but with it failing, beast was too far behind to claw his way back in, meaning Sky moved on to the round of 16.The newcomer Zerg got another chance to prove himself in his game against Mong in the losers match, and he definitely did. Though his initial mutalisk opening got shut down hard by Mong's three valkyries, he would continue to brawl it out, taking some pretty decent engagements, but ultimately facing an army too big for him to handle. In the final match, Mong went for bio play against beast, and seemed to be on a whole other level to the Zerg player, in complete control of both games, pulling off a 2-0 victory.We've reached the final group of the round of 32, which was supposed to be BeSt's group. Sadly, BeSt called it off, and got replaced by a second Chinese player, protoss Zhanhun. The only thing that seemed certain about this group was hero's inevitable domination. Already in the first match, with hero against fairly unknown terran `iOps]..Han, hero outplayed his opponent at every turn, resulting in a slightly uneventful 2-0.Sadly, due to lag issues, the second match between Zhanhun and Terror, was a walkover in Terror's favor, meaning we skipped right to the winners match. Terror has been banned from Afreeca for a while, so with his return, no-one really knew what to expect, though I don't think anyone expected him to beat hero. hero's one-base muta play easily won him the game, with Terror having too few mutalisks and too few zerglings after going for an expansion.Luckily for the BW lovers out there, Terror and Han were still here to make sure we had some entertaining games. For the first part of their match, the Terran amateur danced along with Terror, with nice bio control, and defending the mutalisks handily. However, he was unable to do any actual damage, and Terror was allowed to macro up to lurkers, defilers and ultralisks. The game featured sloppy and scrappy play, and was extremely entertaining. Did I mention that one huge drop Terror made where he also made a manner hatch in Han's main? Being so far ahead, Terror didn't care much about mines or siege tanks, as he charged in with ultralisks and zerglings, smothering Han with his swarm.Game two saw Han in complete control. Terror was unable to do anything with his mutas, and an early bio push from Han forced zerglings and sunkens, meaning Terror had little to no economy. Terror attempted a lurker bust, but it failed completely, taking us to game three, where the mutalisks were allowed to do more damage. Keeping Han's economy down, he also bought enough time to get up a lurker defense and defilers. Terror even made some guardians to harass the natural of the Terran, and a devourer to defend them. Still, the Zerg kept running straight into mines, and into Han's defended choke, meaning the Terran was able to stay in the game for a looong time before Terror, on twice the bases of the Terran, managed to close it out.Looking for a way to spice up your table? Look no further! Table runners are a great way to dress up any table! They can come in all shapes, sizes and styles so it’s easy to get a little creative and choose a unique look for your table. Check out these awesome, easy DIY table runners that you can make yourself for any special dinner occasion. Enjoy!
1. Ruler Table Runner
Start your back to school party decorations with this DIY Ruler Table Runner. (Tutorial via Country Living)
2. Table Runner From Plastic Canvas Circles
This modern table runner comes from humble beginnings: plastic canvas rounds and yarn scraps. (Tutorial via CraftyPod)
3. DIY Pinwheel Table Tunner
Learn how to make a pinwheel and turn it into a pretty table runner! (Tutorial via Green Wedding Shoes)
4. Crochet a Hexagon Table Runner
This hexagon table runner is perfect for your country or primitive home. Use it on your kitchen or dining room table for a cozy look. (Tutorial via Tuts+)
5. Woven Burlap Table Runner
This pretty woven burlap table runner will make your table look elegant for any occasion. (Tutorial via Fab You Bliss)
6. Geometric Table Runner
Create a fun 3-D table runner that will have your guests talking for days! (Tutorial via Ruffled)
7. DIY No Sew Ruffled Table Runner
Make this super easy no sew burlap table runner with ruffles using only a glue gun and scissors. (Tutorial via Liz Marie)
8. DIY Splatter Paint Popsicle Stick Runner
For your kid’s birthday party, you might want to try making this DIY popsicle stick table runner. It’s very easy but enjoyable to make. (Tutorial via At Home in Love)
9. Polka Dot Table Runner
Set your table in style with this beautiful polka dot table runner made from paper. (Tutorial via The Craftinomicon)
10. Recycled Rags Table Runner
Knit a rustic table runner using your old sheets and pillowcases! (Tutorial via Creative Jewish Mom)
11. DIY Rainbow Table Runner
Pretty table runner for a party made from pieces of craft felt. (Tutorial via Say Yes)
12. DIY Macrame Table Runner
Easy macrame project that can be made for $12 in less than an hour! (Tutorial via The Urban Acres)Mark Dayton is in the pole position
A couple of weeks ago now the StarTribune released the results of their Minnesota poll. That poll showed Governor Mark Dayton with his highest approval ratings (58 approve, 29 disapprove) since he became Governor back in 2011. There is now confirmation that Mark Dayton is in an excellent position for re-election with the release, by KSTP, of a poll conducted by their preferred pollster, SurveyUSA.
SurveyUSA (3/2, no trend lines):
Mark Dayton (D-inc) 51
Marty Seifert (R) 34
Undecided 15 Mark Dayton (D-inc) 53
Scott Honour (R) 33
Undecided 14 Mark Dayton (D-inc) 53
Dave Thompson (R) 32
Undecided 15 Mark Dayton (D-inc) 52
Jeff Johnson (R) 34
Undecided 14 Mark Dayton (D-inc) 52
Kurt Zellers (R) 31
Undecided 16 Mark Dayton (D-inc) 52
Rob Farnsworth (R) 31
Undecided 17
(MoE: ±4.3%)
Mark Dayton’s leads range from 17 points to 21 points, and he’s over 50% against everyone. The last time a pollster asked head-to-head questions was Public Policy Polling all the way back in October and they found Mark Dayton with leads ranging from 10 points to 12 points.
It’s never a good idea to use the results of a different pollster for trend lines, but if you were to do such a thing you would see that in comparison to that PPP poll Mark Dayton scores a few points higher while all of his opponents score a few points lower.
As these numbers imply, none of the GOP candidates for Governor are all that well known, as they all clock in between 31% and 34%. That will change when there is a nominee and that nominee becomes more familiar to Minnesotans.
But when the incumbent is starting from above the 50% mark, that means not only does the eventual nominee have to increase their own name recognition, but they also must bring the incumbent down some.TribLIVE's Daily and Weekly email newsletters deliver the news you want and information you need, right to your inbox.
Allegheny County Airport Authority officials on Tuesday announced a proposed $1.1 billion overhaul that includes building a new landside terminal attached to Pittsburgh International Airport’s existing airside terminal, eliminating a tram between the two facilities and opening up more space for private developers.
The current landside terminal could be redeveloped or torn down, while the airside terminal would be renovated and redesigned to provide 51 gates for airlines — about a dozen more than are being used today. The existing terminals are 25 years old.
“This facility was built as a connecting hub for an airline (US Airways) that doesn’t exist. Now we have an opportunity to make it ours,” said Allegheny County Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis.
Authority officials say the project is necessary to replace outdated facilities that don’t fit current needs and are too costly to maintain. The proposed project is expected to reduce operating and maintenance costs by $23 million a year.
A new, expanded security checkpoint would shorten the time that passengers spend in line waiting to get to their flights, while a new baggage system would reduce the time they wait for their bags after a flight, officials said.
“This project will be a huge boost to the region, both in terms of what a revamped facility means and also the number of jobs that will be created by this project,” Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said. “This announcement is coming at a key time for both the airport and this region.”
Construction of the new, single-story landside terminal between the airside terminal’s C and D concourses is expected to start in 2019 and be completed in 2023, Cassotis said. The current landside terminal would remain open until then.
The project would not be funded by local tax dollars such as municipal, real estate or other taxes provided by Allegheny County or its municipalities, Fitzgerald said.
Bond money would be used to finance most of the project costs. Revenue from airport parking, concessions and retail sales also would be used, along with revenue from Consol Energy’s Marcellus shale gas drilling operations on airport land, Cassotis said.
Seventy-five percent of the debt used to build the current airport is scheduled to be paid off next year, freeing up the authority’s ability to borrow money for the proposed project, Cassotis said.
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Too much space
The existing airport opened 25 years ago. It was built largely to the specifications of the former US Airways, then one of the nation’s most profitable airlines. The county’s former Department of Aviation, the forerunner to the airport authority, borrowed more than $900 million to pay for that project and the authority continues to make related debt payments.
US Airways’ fortunes changed in the early 2000s, and it closed its Pittsburgh hub in 2004. More than 500 daily flights and 10,000 jobs vanished during a period of upheaval. At one point, the authority walled off the far ends of two unused concourses to cut maintenance and utility costs. Annual traffic that approached nearly 21 million passengers in the early years of the airport dipped below 8 million as recently as 2014, records show.
Traffic is rebounding. It reached about 8.3 million passengers last year and was up about 6 percent through the first six months of this year.
But still, 36 of the airport’s 75 gates and five of its baggage belts typically go unused on a daily basis.
“The airport was built 25 years ago for an application that’s no longer valid. Pittsburgh is no longer a large hub airport,” said Mike Boyd, a Colorado-based airline industry consultant. “You have to invest money to make the airport work for the future. This shows rational thinking. If you’re going to do something, do it right.”
Based on early conceptual designs for the proposed project, the tram between the existing airside and landside terminals would no longer be used, Cassotis said. The baggage delivery system that carries luggage between the terminals on conveyor belts also would also be eliminated.
The project also calls for a new roadway system and a new parking garage, Cassotis said.
The authority predicts that more than 5,000 people would work on the project during construction, and the project would have a direct and indirect economic impact of nearly $1.7 billion.
Airport leaders have not yet decided the fate of the current landside terminal.
“We could either be very interested in seeing if a developer is interesting in using this building and rehabbing it … or it could come down,” Cassotis said.
Tearing down the existing landside terminal is projected to cost about $20 million, officials estimated.
“There will be more land opened up for development. We heard there are people looking,” said Cassotis, giving a nod to online retail giant Amazon, which is looking for a place for its sought-after second headquarters.
One hurdle for Amazon choosing Pittsburgh is the lack of a nonstop flight to Seattle. If Amazon chose Pittsburgh, nonstop service to Seattle could easily be added, Cassotis said, but the airport would like to have it before then.
“I think this is the kind of forward-thinking initiative Amazon will be looking for,” Fitzgerald said. “This announcement today, a month before we’re going to be submitting our proposal, is perfectly aligned with what we’d like to see.”
Other alternatives
Other options considered include renovating the existing landside and airside terminals and building a new airside terminal.
Airport and airline officials felt the chosen option would be more cost-effective in the long run and better meet the needs of airlines and passengers, Cassotis said.
Allegheny County Airport Authority board members voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with the chosen alternative.
Airport officials did not invite the public to weigh in on the alternatives beforehand because it was more important that the airlines sign off, Cassotis said.
“The airlines are paying for this, so it has to work for the airlines,” Cassotis said. “In terms of whether we keep the facility or how many gates, that really needs to be left to us and the airlines. Now that we’ve made a decision on what the footprint will be, we can go to the community and say, ‘What kind of features should be here? What else could we include?’ ”
Public meetings will be held in Allegheny County for people to provide that type of feedback, Cassotis said. Other nearby counties can request similar meetings.
The project would require Federal Aviation Administration approval before it can move forward.
The airport authority is paying Chicago-based consultant Ricondo & Associates Inc. $7.6 million to develop the master plan, according to airport spokesman Bob Kerlik.
For more information, visit PITtransformed.com.
Theresa Clift is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 412-380-5669, tclift@tribweb.com or via Twitter @tclift.I love the product and will really enjoy using it when all the necessary parts to make it work come together. Unfortunately the Amazon description of the product is very vague and there is no information telling you that you need to purchase additional controllers if you wish to play the sports game. The game pad does not make for a satisfactory experience. Furthermore there is nothing to tell you that additional controllers need a motion sensor, which does not come with some of the accessory controls and must be purchased separately. We were able to find what we thought were the right controllers at Wal Mart - but the packaging was very deceptive and the motion sensors were not included. Second trip to Wally's discovered that they did not stock those sensors. Had we known these parts were needed we and they be listed in Amazon we would have purchased them. In fact we did order an additional controller through Amazon at time of the purchase, but now we have no idea if it will include the needed motion sensor or not. It is sold by a second party and has not arrived yet. So our birthday party for the kids bowling tournament will not be happening as the game is non functional for the lack of parts. The need for additional controls and sensors should be explained both with purchase of the console and the Sports Pak of games Nintendo sells. Very disappointing and very un-Amazon.Turkish Airlines opens new route to Ukraine
ANKARA - Anadolu Agency
A file photo taken on March 16, 2013 shows a Turkish Airlines aircraft taking off from Ataturk Airport in Istanbul. AFP Photo
Turkish Airlines, Turkey’s flagship carrier, will begin flights to Zaporizhya, Ukraine, from Istanbul on Dec. 28, the airline said in a statement.Service to Zaporizhya, a city in the south of the country that sits on the Dnieper River, will run four times a week.The new destination brings the airline’s total number of destinations in Ukraine to six, the statement said Dec. 28.“With existing services to Kyiv, Odessa, Dniprepetrovsk, Lviv and Kherson, Turkish Airlines now adds Zaporizhya, one of the largest cities in Ukraine, to its expanding network,” said the statement.“Additionally, for the first six months of operation to the new destinations, there is a special offer for Turkish Airlines frequent flyer program Miles&Smiles members, with a 25 percent reduction in the miles needed to redeem either award tickets or upgrades,” said the statement.SPIEGEL ONLINE: Everybody acknowledges the need for greater coordination of economic policies in Europe. The question is whether there should be an economic government comprised of all 27 European Union member states or whether it should just be within the 17 euro-zone countries?
Rostowski: Everything that can be done within the 27 states should be done there. Those things that have to be done among the 17 but do not need to be considered among all 27 can be handled by the euro-zone members. Sometimes, however, it seems there is a tendency on the part of some euro-zone members to exclude the other 10 EU countries because that might make decision-making easier. That can only be acceptable in situations where it is absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of the euro zone.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: As a country which is not a member of the euro, would you not object to a two-speed Europe?
Rostowski: It is quite clear that we need a great deal more macroeconomic integration within the euro zone. We are very much in favor of that, as is the United Kingdom. The reason is very simple: If we do not have greater macroeconomic integration, then we face a high probability of the dissolution of the euro zone. That would be an absolute catastrophe for everybody. Not only for the deficit countries within the euro zone, but also for the surplus countries where unemployment world soar to levels not seen since World War II. It would also be a catastrophe for the other EU members who are not part of the common currency. Given that choice, we are definitely in favor of greater macroeconomic integration.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why have you dismissed proposals for an economic government by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy as "stale"?
Rostowski: I haven't dismissed them, but I didn't see a great deal that was new in these proposals. Having the heads of state and government of the euro zone meet twice a year is quite far from being a joint economic government. My impression is that Germany and France do not mean the same thing when they talk about economic governance.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How optimistic are you that closer economic policy coordination will occur?
Rostowski: Everybody agrees that economic policy coordination is a good idea. The problem is that people usually have demands about others' behavior rather than about their own. I have never met a finance minister from any country who has come to me to ask: What should I do in my macroeconomic policy to suit you?
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you understand the German resistance to joint euro bonds?
Rostowski: I will say something that will be unpopular among German readers and politicians: When we are talking about a much higher degree of integration, we are essentially talking about a much higher degree of solidarity. That includes the idea of standing behind the liabilities of partners. Europe is faced with the choice of greater solidarity or dissolution. The euro has already been created, and its collapse would be catastrophic also for Germany. There is, therefore, no choice other than to go forward. Whether that integration comes through "euro bonds" or something else, is secondary. But, of course, just as there can be no Europe without solidarity, there can be no solidarity without responsibility. The beneficiaries of solidarity must show the requisite responsibility. And the higher degree of integration that we need must ensure both solidarity and responsibility.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Should economic governance be organized on an intergovernmental level, meaning between the governments of the member states, or through the EU institutions?
Rostowski: It is hard to imagine how we could have something that was a stable and continuous mechanism that depended exclusively on intergovernmental cooperation. We do need the European Commission as a neutral referee. One can imagine emergency response happening on the basis of intergovernmental cooperation, but not much more than that. On the other hand, a solution to this great threat must be found. If the institutions that have been created to make the "community method" function -- i.e. the European Commission, the European Council (the powerful body of European leaders) and the European Parliament -- don't succeed in being part of the solution, then that will be taken as evidence that we can't get things done quickly enough through the community method.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: When will Poland join the euro?
Rostowski: When it is safe to do so. At the moment it is not safe. At the moment the euro is not constructed in a way that is safe for Europe as a whole -- neither for the surplus nor for the deficit countries.Motorola Droid RAZR Ultra and RAZR M Ultra
‘Ultra’
‘M’
Coming to Verizon: Droid RAZR Ultra, RAZR M Ultra, from Motorola — @evleaks (@evleaks) June 26, 2013
source:
source: @evleaks
This is hardly a surprise for those of you who follow PhoneArena as our sources have earlier confirmed that Motorola has at least 3 phones in the pipeline after the Moto X The only thing that is known right now is the name of those devices, making it evident that Motorola will not dump the RAZR brand, and Verizon will also stick with Droid.Do these two phones have anything to do with the much hyped Motorola Moto X? Chances are these are different devices, but that’s just our guess here.Thewill obviously be a new name of a Motorola family of products, and thepart in the name of the second device could mean that it’d be a mid-sized device, if we take the Motorola RAZR M as a clue. Keep in mind that this is an unconfirmed leak and until we hear an official unveiling take this with a grain of salt.A decade before Donald Trump would make good on his repeated threats to run for president, the breakout reality TV star called his current rival Hillary Clinton “a really, really great person,” while ruminating on her chances to be the first woman to win the White House.
“Now that she knows that so many Americans are behind her, I know that she’ll be thinking long and hard about the Oval Office in three years. It’ll be interesting to see how the process ends up… and also to see Bill Clinton as the first husband.”
Trump’s statements were made in 2005 on his radio show, the aptly named Trumped!, which ran from June 2004 to 2008. On the daily 90-second program, which he predicted would be the start of his takeover of the medium (“Biggest launch in radio history... bigger than Rush Limbaugh,” Trump told The New York Times ), the Republican presidential nominee treated listeners across some 400 Clear Channel networks to Apprentice recaps and generic business advice, hocked products like suits and seminars, weighed in on the day’s news, and waxed poetic about life, women, celebrity gossip, and random topics such as anti-vaxxers and the existence of ghosts.
Though some program topics and transcripts can still be accessed through the now defunct Trumped! website, the full transcripts and actual recordings had been seemingly lost to time until BuzzFeed found and published the show’s demo earlier this year. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal also posted eight of the recordings to its website.
The Daily Beast has tracked down six months of full Trumped! transcripts—124 episodes in all—from 2005. These newly available scripts—gifted by Adam Eisenstat, who once served as the director of communications for Trump University, and used the radio spots along with company press releases and the real estate tycoon’s books to transform into the “Voice of Trump”—provide yet another window into The Donald’s opinions on a variety of issues, many of which have changed drastically since he announced his candidacy in 2015.
“The personal connection Americans have with radio makes it a strong fit for the commentary and advice I’ll be sharing,” Trump said on the show’s website. “Business, entertainment, politics, the media—watch out! You’re all fair game.”
Warning aside, Trumped! was less biting social or political commentary and more Deep Thoughts, and often a place where present-day foes, from Hillary Clinton to Eminem, were praised and called friends.
In a transcript from March 2005, Trump references a poll reporting 81 percent of people surveyed would vote for a woman president in 2008.
“So the next question, naturally, is which woman will make history,” he said. “More than half the voters polled think that New York Democrat, a really, really great person, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, should try for the job. A significant majority of those women polled said that a female president would be better than a male president in handling domestic issues.
“I know one thing. If I saw somebody that I liked and if she were a woman, I’d vote for her right away.”
A few months later, Trump dedicated another show to the topic of Clinton’s White House chances. Again he commented on a poll, this one showing majority support for a Clinton presidency in 2008.
“For her part, Hillary says she is currently spending all her time and energy focused on winning reelection to the United States Senate,” he said. “She doesn’t have the time to think about the White House. But nobody’s thinking that she’s not thinking about a presidential run in 2008. Now that she knows that so many Americans are behind her, I know that she’ll be thinking long and hard about the Oval Office in three years.
“It’ll be interesting to see how the process ends up… and also to see Bill Clinton as the first husband.”
This wasn’t the first time Trump spoke well of Hillary Clinton or her electability, and it wouldn’t be the last. As reported in The Wall Street Journal, Trump also devoted a 2008 radio show to Clinton on which he said she would “make a good president.”
Trump has of course changed his tune. In recent days, Trump has called Clinton “crooked,” “lying,” “a disaster,” “dangerous,” “incompetent,” “pathetic,” “SAD!” “unfit,” and “the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency.”
An email requesting comment from Trump campaign spokesperson Hope Hicks was not returned, but Trump has previously explained his high praise for Clinton and others, chalking it up to tactical business decisions.
There was no Twitter in 2005. Instead, the radio show seems to have been Trump’s favored repository for his opinions and outbursts.
On Trumped! the Republican front runner shared a strong affinity for people charged with crimes.
Commenting on a Nashville woman facing charges for hiring a stripper for her 16-year-old son’s birthday party, Trump said, “C’mon. The boy is 16 years old and probably going on 30. The mother loves her son. She’s not looking to hurt him. Give her a break.”
During the trial of Robert Blake, the actor accused and ultimately acquitted of murdering his wife in 2001, Trump noted Blake’s reported alibi, calling it “the worst excuse I’ve ever heard.”
Still, Trump said: “I hope he’s found innocent. [Blake’s wife] was bad news and anybody who uses the excuse that they left their gun in the restaurant and therefore wasn’t in the car when she was shot, can’t be all bad.”
Over several episodes, he weighed in on the Michael Jackson trial. When Jackson was acquitted on multiple counts of child molestation in June 2005, Trump said, “Michael could have left that California courtroom in handcuffs facing as many as 52 years in prison. Instead, he’s a free man and I’m happy for him... Michael, for a little while at least, keep a low profile. Stay out of the tabloids and, for goodness sake, don’t say hello to those little boys.”
Trump often offered unsolicited advice on his show.
In one March episode, Trump warned listeners about get-rich-quick scams.
“If it seems too good to be true, it usually is. The rule is, weed out a lot of the so-called opportunities immediately because there’s so much nonsense going on and usually it’s been done many times before. Not to be a pessimist, but the world is filled with scoundrels looking to make a dishonest buck. Believe me, I’ve met many of them and they are bad. They’re smart. They’re cunning. They’re very, very dishonest.”
Trump might be in a position to know about such scams—he is currently a defendant in three separate lawsuits claiming he conned people out of millions of dollars through Trump University, a real-estate seminar program that New York’s attorney general has called “a fraud from beginning to end.”
In June 2005, Trump spoke on the growing movement against vaccines, based largely on a scientific paper that had been discredited four months earlier.
“Now I’ve known a few parents that are very good people but they just don’t get it when it comes to medicine. They don’t want their daughters or sons to have polio vaccines; they don’t want anything like it. It’s really pretty sad and pretty scary. You know, the polio epidemic was a disaster until the vaccine came out so why wouldn’t you allow your kids to have it?”
Time seems to have shifted Trump’s views. In 2014, Trump tweeted, “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!”
He now says vaccines should be spaced out, an opinion refuted by every major medical association.
Another one of the Republican candidate’s favorite topics was women and sex.
In March 2005, Trump said, “sex is the most fun of all,” and noted that “real estate—particularly making a lot of money in real estate—can be very, very sexy.”
In June, he railed against puritanical hypocrites offended by sex in film. “I don’t understand why people find sex more disturbing that violence in the movies. Why are we more obsessed about sex—which is a natural occurrence—than with violence?”
On women, Trump often meditated on the hotness or notness of various celebrities.
“Now here’s a topic I certainly know a lot about… sexy women. They’ve caused me a lot of trouble,” he said in March of 2005.
Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl performance was a “ disgusting peepshow,” and Britney Spears “has gone down, there’s no question about it.” About Angelina Jolie, Trump said, “I never really understood that one because I watched Angelina Jolie with Billy Bob Thornton and she was all over the guy. After you watch that, I mean, do people really dig her?” And Cate Blanchett, “doesn’t have the elegance or the style,” to play Katherine Hepburn.
But Trump also had his favorites. In April, he bemoaned the lack of new Cameron Diaz films. “C’mon Cameron. Get back to work. You’re a terrific actress. We want to see your movies.” In June, he gushed about Paris Hilton: “I’ve know Paris since she was a baby and she was always even a beautiful baby. And over the years many people have underestimated Paris Hilton. But don’t underestimate her.” And in August, he joined Team Jennifer: “I actually happen to think that Jennifer’s better looking than Angelina.”
Trump also praised women for attributes other than beauty. In January, he spoke of the balancing act of working mothers: “I have a lot of women who work for me and they work long hours. Sure, I think it’s sometimes harder for some women because they have to juggle taking care of their families with their careers. I don’t envy that. I don’t envy them. But that doesn’t mean they don’t work just as hard or show just as much skill.”
Infidelity was of particular interest as well. On several shows, Trump makes self-deprecating jabs about his extramarital affairs: “Seventy percent of Britons said infidelity can be forgiven. I guess I haven’t gone out with very many British women.”
In March, Trump, who had just married his third (and current) wife, Melania, two months earlier, shared dismay that a Boeing executive should be fired for an extra-marital affair. “If you really did a poll, I would bet you most of the powerful men running companies are having affairs,” he said.
Trump sometimes veered more into the political, calling NASA’s manned missions, and possibly the entire program, a waste of money (“Maybe some money should be taken out of our space program and put into things like cheaper energy,”), supporting an Arnold Schwarzenegger proposal to ban junk food in schools (“I know schools really rely on the funding dollars that they get from snack food and soft drink companies. But it shouldn’t be at the expense of children’s health,”), and complaining that the United Nations would do a “ terrible job ” of renovating their headquarters.
According to Trump, the spike in oil prices after Hurricane Katrina wasn’t due to the shutdown of oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, but instead was “just a bunch of countries getting together and saying let’s use this terrible hurricane in order to lift our fuel prices even higher.
“It’s not Katrina. It’s the oil producing states. It’s Saudi Arabia saying, “Let’s screw the public.”
Only once did he comment on race on the show. When his pitch for a “ blacks-versus-whites ” season of The Apprentice was unsurprisingly canned by an offended public, he said that while the idea “may be very reflective of our country and the sad state of things, it may not be the best idea to highlight it even further.”
And on the topic of ghosts, Trump took a firm stance: “Personally, I’m not a believer. I think when people die they hopefully have better things to do than bug the people that are still alive.”The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.
The Federal Reserve has just given Goldman Sachs conspiracy kooks a field day. Neel Kashkari, whose claim to fame is running the U.S. bank and autos bailout fund during the financial crisis, will be in charge of the central bank’s Minneapolis office starting next year. That leaves the investment bank’s alumni in charge of three of the 12 regional branches.
Robert Kaplan, who led Goldman’s investment banking business before leaving in 2006, took over the Dallas Fed in September. His former colleague William Dudley, once Goldman’s chief economist, has been in charge of the New York Fed for almost seven years. That’s the most powerful of the dozen regional offices as it gives him a permanent seat on the Federal Open Market Committee that decides interest rates.
It’s a pretty easy leap to construe the trio as a cabal. Virtually all other regional bosses are Fed lifers, aside from Atlanta chief Dennis Lockhart, who cut his teeth at Citicorp. The Kashkari appointment is therefore great fodder for anyone seeking evidence of a system in thrall to Wall Street, especially as it comes fresh on the heels |
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PFC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he's being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.
Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.
He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing "almost criminal political back dealings."
"Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public," Manning wrote.
Wired.com could not confirm whether Wikileaks received the supposed 260,000 classified embassy dispatches. To date, a single classified diplomatic cable has appeared on the site: Released last February, it describes a U.S. embassy meeting with the government of Iceland. E-mail and a voicemail message left for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Sunday were not answered by the time this article was published.
The State Department said it was not aware of the arrest or the allegedly leaked cables. The FBI was not prepared to comment when asked about Manning.
Army spokesman Gary Tallman was unaware of the investigation but said, "If you have a security clearance and wittingly or unwittingly provide classified info to anyone who doesn't have security clearance or a need to know, you have violated security regulations and potentially the law."
Manning's arrest comes as Wikileaks has ratcheted up pressure against various governments over the years with embarrassing documents acquired through a global whistleblower network that is seemingly impervious to threats from adversaries. Its operations are hosted on servers in several countries, and it uses high-level encryption for its document-submission process, providing secure anonymity for its sources and a safe haven from legal repercussions for itself. Since its launch in 2006, it has never outed a source through its own actions, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
Manning came to the attention of the FBI and Army investigators after he contacted former hacker Adrian Lamo late last month over instant messenger and e-mail. Lamo had just been the subject of a Wired.com article. Very quickly in his exchange with the ex-hacker, Manning claimed to be the Wikileaks video leaker.
"If you had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months, what would you do?" Manning asked.
From the chat logs provided by Lamo, and examined by Wired.com, it appears Manning sensed a kindred spirit in the ex-hacker. He discussed personal issues that got him into trouble with his superiors and left him socially isolated, and said he had been demoted and was headed for an early discharge from the Army.
When Manning told Lamo that he leaked a quarter-million classified embassy cables, Lamo contacted the Army, and then met with Army CID investigators and the FBI at a Starbucks near his house in Carmichael, California, where he passed the agents a copy of the chat logs. At their second meeting with Lamo on May 27, FBI agents from the Oakland Field Office told the hacker that Manning had been arrested the day before in Iraq by Army CID investigators.
Lamo has contributed funds to Wikileaks in the past, and says he agonized over the decision to expose Manning – he says he's frequently contacted by hackers who want to talk about their adventures, and he has never considered reporting anyone before. The supposed diplomatic cable leak, however, made him believe Manning's actions were genuinely dangerous to U.S. national security.
"I wouldn't have done this if lives weren't in danger," says Lamo, who discussed the details with Wired.com following Manning's arrest. "He was in a war zone and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air."
Manning told Lamo that he enlisted in the Army in 2007 and held a Top Secret/SCI clearance, details confirmed by his friends and family members. He claimed to have been rummaging through classified military and government networks for more than a year and said that the networks contained "incredible things, awful things... that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC."
He first contacted Wikileaks' Julian Assange sometime around late November last year, he claimed, after Wikileaks posted 500,000 pager messages covering a 24-hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. "I immediately recognized that they were from an NSA database, and I felt comfortable enough to come forward," he wrote to Lamo. He said his role with Wikileaks was "a source, not quite a volunteer."
Manning had already been sifting through the classified networks for months when he discovered the Iraq video in late 2009, he said. The video, later released by Wikileaks under the title "Collateral Murder," shows a 2007 Army helicopter attack on a group of men, some of whom were armed, that the soldiers believed were insurgents. The attack killed two Reuters employees and an unarmed Baghdad man who stumbled on the scene afterward and tried to rescue one of the wounded by pulling him into his van. The man's two children were in the van and suffered serious injuries in the hail of gunfire.
"At first glance it was just a bunch of guys getting shot up by a helicopter," Manning wrote of the video. "No big deal... about two dozen more where that came from, right? But something struck me as odd with the van thing, and also the fact it was being stored in a JAG officer's directory. So I looked into it."
In January, while on leave in the United States, Manning visited a close friend in Boston and confessed he'd gotten his hands on unspecified sensitive information, and was weighing leaking it, according to the friend. "He wanted to do the right thing," says 20-year-old Tyler Watkins. "That was something I think he was struggling with."
Manning passed the video to Wikileaks in February, he told Lamo. After April 5 when the video was released and made headlines Manning contacted Watkins from Iraq asking him about the reaction in the United States.
"He would message me, Are people talking about it?... Are the media saying anything?" Watkins said. "That was one of his major concerns, that once he had done this, was it really going to make a difference?... He didn't want to do this just to cause a stir.... He wanted people held accountable and wanted to see this didn't happen again."
Watkins doesn't know what else Manning might have sent to Wikileaks. But in his chats with Lamo, Manning took credit for a number of other disclosures.
The second video he claimed to have leaked shows a May 2009 air strike near Garani village in Afghanistan that the local government says killed nearly 100 civilians, most of them children. The Pentagon released a report about the incident last year, but backed down from a plan to show video of the attack to reporters.
As described by Manning in his chats with Lamo, his purported leaking was made possible by lax security online and off.
Manning had access to two classified networks from two separate secured laptops: SIPRNET, the Secret-level network used by the Department of Defense and the State Department, and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System which serves both agencies at the Top Secret/SCI level.
The networks, he said, were both "air gapped" from unclassified networks, but the environment at the base made it easy to smuggle data out.
"I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like 'Lady Gaga,' erase the music then write a compressed split file," he wrote. "No one suspected a thing and, odds are, they never will."
"[I] listened and lip-synced to Lady Gaga's 'Telephone' while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history," he added later. "Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis... a perfect storm."
Manning told Lamo that the Garani video was left accessible in a directory on a U.S. Central Command server, centcom.smil.mil, by officers who investigated the incident. The video, he said, was an encrypted AES-256 ZIP file.
Manning's aunt, with whom he lived in the United States, had heard nothing about his arrest when first contacted by Wired.com last week; Debra Van Alstyne said she last saw Manning during his leave in January and they had discussed his plans to enroll in college when his four-year stint in the Army was set to end in October 2011. She described him as smart and seemingly untroubled, with a natural talent for computers and a keen interest in global politics.
She said she became worried about her nephew recently after he disappeared from contact. Then Manning finally called Van Alstyne collect on Saturday. He told her that he was okay, but that he couldn't discuss what was going on, Van Alstyne said. He then gave her his Facebook password and asked her to post a message on his behalf.
The message reads: "Some of you may have heard that I have been arrested for disclosure of classified information to unauthorized persons. See CollateralMurder.com."
An Army defense attorney then phoned Van Alstyne on Sunday and said Manning is being held in protective custody in Kuwait. "He hasn't seen the case file, but he does understand that it does have to do with that Collateral Murder video," Van Alstyne said.
Manning's father said Sunday that he's shocked by his son's arrest.
"I was in the military for five years," said Brian Manning, of Oklahoma. "I had a Secret clearance, and I never divulged any information in 30 years since I got out about what I did. And Brad has always been very, very tight at adhering to the rules. Even talking to him after boot camp and stuff, he kept everything so close that he didn't open up to anything."
His son, he added, is "a good kid. Never been in trouble. Never been on
drugs, alcohol, nothing."
Lamo says he felt he had no choice but to turn in Manning, but that he's now concerned about the soldier's status and well-being. The FBI hasn't told Lamo what charges Manning may face, if any.
The agents did tell Lamo that he may be asked to testify against Manning. The Bureau was particularly interested in information that Manning gave Lamo about an apparently-sensitive military cybersecurity matter, Lamo said.
That seemed to be the least interesting information to Manning, however. What seemed to excite him most in his chats was his supposed leaking of the embassy cables. He anticipated returning to the states after his early discharge, and watching from the sidelines as his action bared the secret history of U.S. diplomacy around the world.
"Everywhere there's a U.S. post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed," Manning wrote. "It's open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format. It's Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It's beautiful, and horrifying."
Update: The Defense Department issued a statement Monday morning confirming Manning's arrest and his detention in Kuwait for allegedly leaking classified information.
"United States Division-Center is currently conducting a joint investigation" says the statement, which notes that Manning is deployed with 2nd Brigade 10th Mountain Division in Baghdad. "The results of the investigation will be released upon completion of the investigation."I thought that it’d be fitting to end 2013 with a savory breakfasty recipe, perfect for international hangover day, also known as January 1st. This recipe is great for any meal of the day, and leftovers hold up very well. I made it for dinner the other night with a side of these Tangy Lemon Dijon Green Beans, which went really well together.
Onion and Goat Cheese Frittata
Ingredients
8 large eggs
½ cup finely grated Parmesan
3 large fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces
3 large fresh sage leaves, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup thinly sliced onion
⅓ cup goat cheese
Directions
Preheat oven to 400oF.
Whisk first 7 ingredients in a medium bowl; set aside.
Heat oil in in a medium ovenproof nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté until soft, about 6 minutes. Reduce heat to low. Stir in egg mixture. Spoon dollops of goat cheese evenly over.
Cook until frittata begins to set, about 2 minutes. Place in oven, and cook for about 17-20 minutes. Slide the frittata onto a platter. Cut into wedges; serve hot or at room temperature.
Notes:
1) If you don’t have or don’t use a lot of sage, and/or don’t want to buy a whole bunch for just 3 leaves, it’s still good with more basil and rosemary to replace the lack of sage.
2) I use more salt and pepper than it call for.
3) It doesn’t set much for me on the stove,so I just cook it for the two minutes and then the 20 in the oven.
4) And it doesn’t slide easily onto a platter, so I serve it in the pan.
AdvertisementsVictor Barnard (Washington State Patrol)
A self-styled Minnesota church leader who was arrested in Brazil last year on allegations of sexually assaulting two 15-year-old girls pleaded guilty on Tuesday to felony sex crimes, prosecutors said.
Victor Barnard, a 55-year-old self-proclaimed pastor, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and prosecutors are recommending a prison sentence of 30 years, Pine County Attorney Reese Frederickson said.
“The agreement was approved by both of our victims and essentially if we had gone to trial and prevailed on all counts he’d have only faced 30 years,” Frederickson said by phone.
Barnard’s attorney, Dave Risk, said Barnard chose to plead guilty to “spare the victims, the families, and the communities from what would otherwise be a difficult and salacious trial.”
“From that perspective, that was a commendable thing he did,” Risk said.
Barnard founded the River Road Fellowship, recruiting followers to a camp in rural Minnesota and convincing some to allow their young daughters to live with him, the U.S. Marshals Service said.
He allegedly kept the girls in a housing area known as Shepherd’s Camp, it said.
After some adult members began questioning what he was doing, Barnard moved his family and the church to Washington state. A number of his followers, including the young girls, left with him, the agency said.
Barnard was initially charged with the 59 counts related to the assaults, which authorities said occurred between 2000 and 2009, before he dropped from sight. It was unclear when he went to Brazil, but the U.S. Marshals Service said they believed he was receiving assistance from followers in Brazil before his capture there.
Risk said the two victims were 15-years-old at the time of the assaults for which he pleaded guilty and said Barnard admitted assaults continued over a period of years.
His sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 28, Frederickson said.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)Your first name
On Monday, the Obama administration reached its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees in a single fiscal year.
The Department of Homeland Security tweeted a message commemorating a milestone, but a hashtag the department included in the post drew heaps of Internet outrage.
This is the United States of America. Taking in refugees at times of crisis is the right thing to do. #RefugeesWelcome — Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 29, 2016
Some users urged the the federal government should be trying to take in Christian refugees “who are being slaughtered and raped just because of their religion,” while others took umbrage with the administration’s willingness to help refugees while there are so many impoverished and homeless Americans already living in the country. (RELATED: White House Celebrates Bringing In 10,000 Syrian Refugees)
@DHSgov @babypundit Make sure you take Christians who are being slaughtered and raped just because they are Christian. — Terry Stromsky (@tstromsk) August 29, 2016
@babypundit @vonnmonaco @DHSgov HELPING AMERICAN CITIZENS THAT WON’T CHOP OFF OUR HEADS IS THE CHRISTIAN THING TO DO pic.twitter.com/4rufcKcJWl — Deena (@dckolarik) August 29, 2016
@DHSgov this is the united states of america, not the middle east where they belong. Not one more refugee should come here — Sheev (@Mjolnir613) August 30, 2016
@DHSgov SAYS WHO??? PERHAPS YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED THE AMERICAN CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY FIRST! #NoRAPEFUGEES #OBAMA4TREASON — Deena (@dckolarik) August 29, 2016
@DHSgov this is the united states of america, not the middle east where they belong. Not one more refugee should come here — Sheev (@Mjolnir613) August 30, 2016
@DHSgov And its your job to do better to bar those who would harm us. Until you fix ur vetting process not one more should be let in. — Joseph Jaramillo (@JKJ308) August 29, 2016
@DHSgov @WhiteHouse You are totally wrong. What about helping Americans? Homeless, Veterans, people in poverty? They need help! — Kent Moyer (@KentMoyer) August 30, 2016
@KentMoyer @tamaraleighllc @DHSgov @WhiteHouse It is inexcusable to allow any veteran to be homeless while providing homes for immigrants! — Dorothy O’Reilly (@DorAnnCecil) August 30, 2016
OMG, poor people really exist? BY ALL MEANS, LET’S MAKE THEM *OUR* PROBLEM! What could be more fun than hordes of 3rd-worlders? @DHSgov — Myron Gaines (@DeafFromAIDS) August 30, 2016
@DHSgov Of all people to Tweet this message. What a joke. — Neil® (@DolfanNeil) August 29, 2016
@DHSgov @WhiteHouse this is why we’re the easy target for terrorism. Good job. #trump2016 — Kathy The Great (@PoliticalKathy) August 30, 2016
@DHSgov putting Americans lives at risk! Bring n 3World Muslims who believe Rape is legal! NOT telling r Governors where ur putting them! — ✝ Dawn #MAGA (@dawngpsalm63) August 30, 2016
.@DHSgov
>call yourself “Homeland Security”
>let in thousands of potential terrorists pic.twitter.com/oaVqPFAfzI — Libertarian 2hu (@Libertarian2hu) August 30, 2016
Follow Datoc on Twitter and FacebookThe Mario Party Party Tracker
( MPP7 UPDATE : New graphs and tables below, and new updated sections for each of our players. I added in stats to dice rolls throughout the game for MPP7. Enjoy?)
Hello everyone, and welcome to my insanity.
We are currently falling head first into the remaining four Mario Party Parties in the next couple of months while Dan is still on the west coast, so I thought it would be fitting to compile ALL of the data of the past couple of years and assemble The Mario Party Party Tracker.
The main function of the tracker to me personally is a way to show who's winning the overall game of Mario Party Party(MPP). As we all know Dan is ahead of his competition in terms of wins in Mario Party, having 3 wins out of the 6 games that have been played so far. The ultimate problem with the Giant Bomb series would be if Dan managed to get two more wins before Mario Party 10 and make it mathematically impossible for anyone else to catch up. If that happened, the all-important narrative of the series would dissolve into nothing.
The solution of this would be to track the overall game a little bit differently. With the MPP Tracker, the overall positions are tracked by the percentages of stars and coins owned by each competitor. For example, at the end of the first Mario Party, Dan owns 7 stars (and 16 coins) out of the possible 13 stars (and 70 coins) that was on the board by the end of the game, so his percentage number of owned stars/coins ended up being 53% of the board. These stats are carried over from game to game.
I wanted to factor in coins to the overall percentage owned on the board, so I started at one star being equivalent to 30 coins. However, I wanted the standings of every Mario Party to be congruent with my Tracker. So I had to adjust the value of the coins on the tracker until I got my desired results. If you look at MPP 4, you can see that each of the competitors had an absurd amount of coins, making the value of the coins go down (616 coins on the board at the end). So the best value for the coins I could get without any of the results being wonky would be 160 coins to one star.
Quick note: if you want to make it simpler for yourself, you can just focus on the total number of stars owned. And if we manage to end in a tie, then you can factor in the rest.
With all of that out of the way, let's see where our current standings are in regards to the MPP Tracker:
Current Standings Player Position % Owned Behind Stars Coins Mini-Game Award Coin Award Happening Award Mario Party Wins Dan Ryckert 1 39.18% Leader 52 649 5 2 3 4 Jeff Gerstmann 2 24.87% -14.31% 32 573 1 3 2 0 Drew Scanlon 3 22.14% -17.04% 30 269 1 1 2 2 Brad Shoemaker 4 13.80% -25.38% 18 280 0 1 2 1
Dan Ryckert
With Mario Party Party 7, Dan continues to prove his point: Mario Party is a game of skill. Dan increases his lead in the overall meta game, and currently has twenty more stars than anyone else. At this rate, Dan can probably tank if he wanted to and still come away with the highest amount of stars & coins.
In MPP7, Dan made great use of the Boo orb that steals his opponent's stars, trapping other players 5 times. He also came away with the most mini-game victories with 9 solo wins, and was on the winning side of a game 25 times total (Dan gained coins from mini games over 50% of the time).
Dan's late game in MPP7 was down right inspirational. On turn 41, Dan used a flutter orb to gain a star and rolled a dice to gain another star in one turn. Two turns later he had another two star turn via his Boo steal orb. Two turns after that, he had a three star turn because of two more boo steal orbs that were laid out on the board.
2. Jeff Gerstmann
Jeff has still not won a game of Mario Party, however he is clearly the most consistently good player of Mario Party whether he wants to admit it or not.
After trailing Drew by a very small margin, Jeff has finally moved forward into second place in the overall meta game of Mario Party Party. Outside of Dan, Jeff also gained a lot by using his Boo steal orbs, stealing three stars throughout the game.
3. Drew Scanlon
Drew... had a pretty rough game. The only reason he came out ahead of Brad was because of a star awarded to him in the "Bullshit Finale" 51st turn for him using the most orbs out of everyone else. However, it should be noted that even though Drew didn't have a good outing, there are some good things to say about his performance. Most notably the VICIOUS use of the Pirhanna Orb, which trapped his opponents a whopping six times in MPP7. He was also a lot better at the Gondola ride than Dan was.
Brad Shoemaker
Brad finished in last again, making this his fourth time. However, he did have the second most wins in mini-games. Unfortunately, Brad didn't make good use of his orbs. In fact, he made zero use of his orbs, since no other players fell on any of his traps.
---
If you want to take a look at the stats for yourself and missed the link at the top, here it is again:
The Mario Party Party TrackerChaos Code
Originally an arcade only game, Chaos Code was released as a downloadable game on Asian PSN on December 19, 2012 And then later world wide. While it was an arcade exclusive, Chaos Code had updates v1.01 and v1.02 which added balance changes and new characters Celia II KAI, and MG Hikaru to the game. The boss character Kudlak-SIN was rebalanced for regular gameplay in the PS3 version. The arcade version was later ported to Nesica with new balance changes, this version is called "New Sign of Catastrophe" or "NSC" as a reference to the Nesica hardware. That patch would eventually find its way to the PS3 version. Later a series of updates came to arcade moving the version title to it's current number NSC 2.11 which is current with the new PS4 release. At this time, there is no release date for regions outside of Japan and Hong Kong, but Arc System Works has stated that they will release it eventually worldwide.
Story
"Early civilization of mankind has finally reached the height of its prosperity. The advancement of the universe finally begins! The ongoing development of energy involving many scientists has finally come to a close thanks to one person. This new energy can not be exhausted while maintaining it's power indefinitely.
The energy has been named Chaotics. Heterogeneous energy was being used at the time. Within 10 years, it has taken it's place in the universe as the main energy source of all mankind.
It eliminates the problem of energy shortage, which has been a concern to the universe. The professor was blissfully unaware at the time that this new energy would rapidly advance all of civilization to the point of an evolutionary halt. It seemed as if...we have stumbled into our own demise.
However, at it's point of discovery, it was no longer an exaggeration to say that Chaotics will be the future power source of all the world. As the developer of Chaotics, the professor went into hiding and wrote the words of the mystery called Chaos Code. The Earth Union government, which was desperately trying to hide the disappearance of scientists to further understand the power of Chaotics has successfully managed to become a superpower through media propaganda.
The creation of the Chaos Code somehow became known to the government and to the public. The professor announced that there will be a huge prize for whoever finds it.
What exactly is Chaos Code? There are other groups and organizations who try to outwit the government, but the government always tries to get ahead using any means necessary. Those who seek power believe that you will be able to dominate the Chaotics if you obtain it. Some believe it will grant wishes, others have their own reasons to find it.
Within the blink of an eye... a competition for the Chaos Code has begun."Citing a prior family commitment, Tom Brady declined an invitation to be feted as Super Bowl champion by President Obama in the ubiquitous Rose Garden ceremony that seems like it’s given to everyone from NFL teams to winners of your nephew’s third-grade soccer league. It’s too much, okay. The president is a busy man and doesn’t need to be making fairly obvious jokes about Deflategate and Bill Belichick’s hoodie. And the man doesn’t care that you’re bringing him a jersey. First of all, he wears suits to work. He’s not a high-school sophomore. Secondly, no matter how bad his dad jeans or first-pitch abilities may be, even the president knows the etiquette of never wearing a jersey with your own name on the back.
Anyway, back to Brady: His absence clearly fits whatever political motive you’re assigning to it, especially when you consider he visited the White House all three times during the George W. Bush years. I don’t want to say it’s a conspiracy, so I’ll type it instead: Totally a conspiracy. If you’re on the right, Brady obviously dislikes the president and this is a power move, a la Tim Thomas, the Boston Bruins goaltender who once declined his invite and said it was because he didn’t like Obama. Maybe the “prior family commitment” was chilling with the Koch brothers, who knows? But if you’re on the left, you know Brady no longer needs to slum it with his teammates at the White House, not when he and Gisele can go dine there anytime simply by hitting up the prez’s secret cell number that’s only known by Jay, Beyonce and everyone on The Voice except Adam Levine.
Anyway, the gist is Brady’s not there. Now run wild with your baseless reasonings.This approach—one of mimicking the media companies it parodies—makes sense for a publication that wants to “call out bullshit,” as Bolton put it. So The Onion’s new design will seem familiar to anyone with a hearty media diet. All the fashionable flourishes are there: larger headlines; infinite scrolling; a responsive design fit for desktop, tablet, and mobile screens; a ton of white space; basically, the works. (Also: "unlimited clicks," "optimization for the Motorola RAZR," and "no plate tectonics.") It's an attempt to keep up with the visual language of digital media, and as far as I can tell, it succeeds.
The Onion, as anyone who reads it will tell you, mines humor out of media trends. In recent years, though, the company has turned that formula on its head to finance itself. As the site lampooned sponsored content with a characteristically sharp eye, its corporate overseer, Onion Inc., set in motion a plan to beat media companies at the same game. With a strategy that seems meta even by satirical standards, The Onion’s BuzzFeed doppleganger, ClickHole, has become a force on the social web in its own right: The Onion set out to lampoon stories designed to be shared on Facebook by successfully making stories that people want to share. Now, The Onion is not just a comedy website. Onion Inc. cannot be described, simply, as a publisher. It has been transformed into a bonafide digital media company—with a profitable, in-house advertising agency in tow—that wants to succeed where the targets of its barbs have not.
Within the next year, the company plans to spin off several new websites, launch a studio to develop films and TV shows, and possibly, raise money from new investors. "We want to be one of the few new media companies that's able to figure out these changes that are taking place," Mike McAvoy, the president and chief operating officer of Onion Inc., told me. An avalanche of money is waiting for whoever effectively blurs the line between publishing and advertising. "Ultimately, we see everything as converging, and if you're a great content creator, your business will thrive," he said.
Is Onion Inc. thriving? McAvoy declined to share detailed budget figures, but says that profit has increased over the last five years. The business makes money. Which is notable, especially in media, where profitability is no guarantee. The company’s success is directly tied to the emergence of Onion Labs, a full-service advertising agency that operates in-house. It's difficult to overstate the rise of Onion Labs. A bit more than three years ago, it didn't exist. Today, it's responsible for 81 percent of Onion Inc.'s total revenue. (I'm going to repeat that: 81 percent!) Whatever you call the work they do—branded entertainment, branded content, sponsored content, native advertising—Onion Labs has clearly become the linchpin of the company's future.Look behind the drumbeat of attacks on Russia for allegedly causing Trump to be elected and what you find is a sneaky, vicious attempt to defame the courageous whistleblowers who have brought into the light of day some of the nasty secrets of the imperialist political establishment.
Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning. They and others have risked their freedom to make public government documents which prove, among other embarrassments, that there has been a hidden agenda behind the U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other places. Manning is being held in solitary confinement in a military prison where she has attempted suicide twice, all because she sent to Wikileaks hundreds of thousands of Pentagon documents that revealed the true nature of the war in Iraq.
Some of the documents Wikileaks has put online involve emails of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her staff. For this, Wikileaks director Assange is being accused of colluding with Vladimir Putin. The screaming headlines are a throwback to the Red Scare days — a diversion from how the real backers of Trump were able to put this bigoted and dangerous billionaire in the White House.
Covering up war crimes
Yes, Hillary Clinton has been part of the gang that carries out wars on behalf of big business, all in the name of “national security” and “human rights.” So have thousands of other ambitious politicians, Republicans and Democrats, who are carefully groomed to put a good face on organized slaughter in the “vital interest” of the U.S.
Both George Bushes have been part of the gang. So have Gen. Colin Powell, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and many, many others. You don’t get to be in the inner circles of the imperialist state without being vetted for your loyalty to the class of billionaires who run this country and for your ability to lie to the people.
Lyndon Johnson was part of that gang when he claimed that a little Vietnamese PT-boat attacked giant U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin. That became the flimsy excuse for escalating a war in which 2.6 million U.S. military personnel, mostly young draftees, were sent into a nightmare that killed almost 4 million Vietnamese, devastating Cambodia and Laos as well. Johnson was dutifully repeating a lie concocted by the foreign policy establishment.
After years of tumultuous mass opposition to the Vietnam War, in 1971 whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, an analyst for the Pentagon, smuggled out reams of documents exposing the lies. For his leak of what came to be called the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was charged with conspiracy, espionage and theft of government property. The war was soon over, the Vietnamese had won, and the charges against Ellsberg were eventually dropped. However, the Pentagon kept the documents “classified” for another 40 years, even though they had been published in book form and read by millions.
In the same vein, Secretary of State Colin Powell, earlier a four-star general, went before the U.N. Security Council in 2003 with false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — replete with ridiculous charts to “prove” it — so the Pentagon could go in and devastate that country in pursuit of profits for the oil monopolies.
Now the FBI, the CIA and the major corporate news media have joined forces to smear today’s whistleblowers. They want to discredit Wikileaks by claiming, without providing any proof, that Russia was behind its leaks about Clinton, which Assange vehemently denies. As Assange pointed out in a press conference on Jan. 9, Wikileaks began posting the leaked emails before Trump was even the Republican nominee.
At that time, Bernie Sanders was still attracting large crowds of distressed workers all over the country and financing his campaign with a huge number of small donations. It was only after the Democratic Party leaders made sure that not only would Sanders not get the nomination but also that his movement’s demands for economic justice would be iced out of its campaign that the Trump candidacy, with its phony promises of jobs, began picking up steam.
Trump also got a helpful nudge right before the election from FBI Director James Comey, who publicly accused Clinton of endangering national security with her emails. The same FBI is now charging the whistleblowers with helping Trump win, on behalf of Russia. You can’t make this stuff up.
Long live the whistleblowers! Keep the leaks coming!A prototype is a preliminary model of something. Projects that offer physical products need to show backers documentation of a working prototype. This gallery features photos, videos, and other visual documentation that will give backers a sense of what’s been accomplished so far and what’s left to do. Though the development process can vary for each project, these are the stages we typically see:
About this project
NIWA — Nixie tube round watch.
NIWA is a nix |
night if you want!” If he only knew…
Time was warped and flew by. Many examples – I remember being on lap four thinking almost halfway already but… it was after 3 in the afternoon. Then, as night was closing, I was mentally preparing myself for a long and deep night but I only had two laps in total darkness. This was a good thing because the dark was trying to lull me to sleep. If that last lap had not been at day break it could have been a deal breaker. I only felt sleep deprived during laps seven and eight on the descents. I was finding myself virtually hypnotized by the undulating yellow line with my brain ready to switch off in an instant – I knew I was in a very dangerous zone here. I started loudly talking myself through this, slowing down and stopping a couple of times just to regroup. At one point I was all the way down to mile 66 – the truck was at 64 – but had to stop and do some jumping jacks and just sit. It was crazy, scary and the hardest part of the ride but I made it. I’m still surprised that I didn’t have these issues during the boring climbing part rather than during the otherwise exhilarating descents.
I should mention my latest acquisition; I’d been hearing about Barry Beams and his Oculus bike light on and off for the last year or so but never really paid it much attention; I have a couple of good lights even though they took some mounting engineering on my part every time I wanted to use them. Long story short, I pulled the trigger and bought his light that is widely used by RAAM riders and IS designed to mounted upside down if you want to as I do. It’s 1800 lumens and you switch out the batteries when one dies rather than having to recharge the whole light. He got it here for me Wednesday, in time for the weekend, and I can’t even tell you how happy I am with this thing. Not only was the light incredibly bright (didn’t need anywhere near the brightest setting) but the optics were like that of a car; fantastic peripherals and a distant throw. I was able to descend at about 75% of full speed in the dark (in between naps) and I only held back because I was worried about critters.
I got to see yet another sunrise on lap nine – my last full lap, hello euphoria – and the daylight made it all better but my eyes started playing tricks on me again. I kept seeing “hikers” on the side of the road that were not hikers at all but precisely arranged branches. I’m glad because I’m sure true hikers would not have appreciated my singing, ok, caterwauling, even a little bit. (ROXXXANNNEEE) The euphoria from lap nine was quickly erased about halfway up when I realized my Garmin was trying to puke…took long enough…I was chugging along when I decided to have a look at the numbers. I had it on battery save mode the entire ride for obvious reasons so had to tap the screen to wake it up anytime I wanted to see what was going on. Tap. Nothing. Tap. Nothing. TAP TAP TAP NOOTHIINNNGGG!!!! OMG the world was coming to an END!!! This can’t be happening!! I had taken plenty of pictures of the screen and could validate the ride to the record keepers but there would be no altitude correction (read; another lap!) and just a general PITA plus Strava would not recognize it fully if it was submitted manually. No big deal but it was a big deal, I’m sorry.
The screen finally came back on WITH my data. I quickly scrolled over to see what the battery level was – I knew it was low but I brought a battery and cable so I wasn’t too worried. Decided at 20% that I’d better just go ahead and connect it. Except it wouldn’t charge. Ah, F..! I still had about 45 minutes to get to the top and 25 down. Guess I’d better get crackin!! So I did, the screen stayed dark because of battery save mode and I made myself not look. Made it to the top, the screen lit up with autopause, (didn’t want to stop but wanted to see) still had 14% left. I shot down the mountain, did a power slide into the parking lot, ripped the truck key out of my jersey, threw open the door, said a quick prayer to the cycling gods, plugged in the gps with a different cable – it was charging!! Couldn’t take any more chances and saved/uploaded the file successfully. Did not need that stress even a little bit but honestly was expecting a Garmin puke at some point or another, always happens on my (really) long rides. The 820 has been the most stable unit overall so far though. Haven’t investigated yet why it wouldn’t charge out there but that sucked!
It wasn’t quite celebration time, I still had to do another 2,000 feet in order to qualify for High Rouleur (10,000 meters) recognition. If I could do 29,029 feet, I could do 32,828, right? Got about 50% charge on the Garmin in the meantime and headed back out. That was the longest 2,000 feet ever! It was sinking in on that little ride just what I had done, I couldn’t and still can’t wrap my head around it but it feels good whatever it is.
Total distance was 251.2 miles. Total elevation was 33,100. 9 and 2/3 climbs up that beast. 43 hours awake. Average speed 10.8 (snort). You know you’re going slow when the butterflies dart between your rolling spokes successfully. Max downhill speed 40mph. My lap time was consistent overall at about 2:17 during the daylight and 2:35 after dark. Lap 9 was the slowest daylight lap at 2:22 – even with the Garmin debacle. I was definitely getting tired. Total elapsed ride time was 23:10 but I started rolling around 5:10 a.m. and I think I finished riding at around 10 or 11 a.m.
The time in between laps took longer than I wanted them too but between eating, drinking, switching water bottles, bathroom, changing kits, charging devices, checking and recording data (never, ever trust Garmin), weather and so much more, minimum stop time was anywhere between 20 minutes to well over an hour. Ouch. And it was never “restful” but I really didn’t want the legs to cool anyway. One thing that did help the stops to go a little more expeditiously was taking notes on my phone of things I needed to do when I did stop. It really helped me remember and to stay streamlined especially as the brain was getting fuzzy. Really fuzzy.
Speaking of eating and drinking; I ate/snacked pretty much non-stop from Thursday afternoon until the finish. Obviously I didn’t eat much at all while actually riding – most ascents I had a snack at the top and tried to eat whatever I could between laps. I grabbed a pizza on the way out of town that served me well over the weekend but I was surprised today to find I’d still managed to drop 4.5 pounds.
The poor truck was destroyed; I didn’t have time for housekeeping – there were bags of food and crap everywhere; all over the dash, in the passenger seat, on the floor, it looked like some slob lived in it, I was so embarrassed and glad I knew no one and that no one really cared. It probably smelled like a homeless person lived within as well; I was a truly special kind of foul; covered in many layers of sweat, bugs plastered all over my body, especially in my hair, grit from the wet road. Such a lady.
The planets truly did align in order for this to have been as flawless as it was. This was a 100% solo effort, no physical moral support, no one preparing food or beverage for me, no one making sure everything was charged, no one to bail me out if I crashed or broke down either mechanically, physically or mentally. No one. Those of you who know me know that this is how I like it best.
And this is where the self-aggrandizing stops. So many people and situations worked with me in the background to make this a success; Rich of course I wouldn’t have done this is you didn’t at least begrudgingly give me your blessing. You finally did after seeing how this was consuming me. You were convinced I was going to go flying off the side of the mountain never to be seen or heard from again. I didn’t. Didn’t get eaten by a bear either. Bonus.
Josh Brown, in trying to find light in your situation, I found motivation: Christ, if you can fight cancer, I can fight a mountain. You were in the back of my mind during the good and the bad. Get better, dammit, this is bullshit.
Carole Stanton, my bestest riding buddy for planting the seed of long distance endurance stuff. YOU were the one that convinced me and coddled me in the early days. This is your fault, own it sister.
Stephen for making it real; if you can do it, I can do it.
Matt Lodder, you may not see this but my bikes are phenomenal. I credit you for my lack of mechanical issues. You do amazing work, my bikes have never been better. You have also helped me solve the hot foot problem almost 100% – there’s no way I could have done this ride as they were before. And Dennis for pointing me in this direction for what was only supposed to be a fitting.
Barry at Oculus Lights for getting my incredible new light to me on time. What a maiden voyage for your light and it did not disappoint. I’ll be suggesting it to anyone that asks about it or that mentions they need a light. You are head and shoulders above anything else out there – some of the best bike money I’ve spent. Wait, let’s not talk about the bike money I’ve spent..!
Tom Hewitt and Atomic Cycles for the ass kicking rides that never fail to put me in my place! Wish I could make more of them! And, for always being there for my occasional bike/equipment crisis and, of course, for being an awesome cheerleader!
And so many incredible riders that motivate me to ride faster, further, harder; Rich Beliveau, Chuck Forrest, Carole Stanton, Mike Dunlap, Gernot Wolfram, Stephen Magee, Josh Brown, Marc Poland, Chris “Soul Crusher” Field, Sue Pregartner, Chuck Lee and so many, many more.
Would I do it again? HELL YES! I was planning the next one (and the one after) before this even started. Nobody has marked Mitchell yet…any takers??
AdvertisementsIt’s not surprising that a lot of believers accept common myths about non-believers. After all, religions are based on unprovable stories (i.e., myths), and it would take some effort for believers to look into what they’ve heard about atheists.
Now, in one tidy compilation, 50 Great Myths about Atheism by Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklen, readers have a handy batch of myths about atheism and atheists along with the research and the arguments against those myths. I use the word arguments here, of course, in the philosophical and academic sense, rather than in the yelling-in-your-face-and-degenerating-into-name-calling sense. I’ve summed up and paraphrased some of my favorite examples:
3 of My Favorite Myths:
1. Atheists are arrogant. Au contraire. Like suffragettes, Jews, Blacks, gays, and others, atheists have long been a (sometimes-self-)silenced minority. Fear of repercussions does that. Now that atheism has managed to achieve a bit of cumulative mass, some of the majority like to harp on the outspokenness of some atheists. Passion is not arrogance. Strong opinions aren’t a sign of arrogance. My grandfather used to say he didn’t speak up for himself because he wanted people to know that some Jews were poor and quiet. I think that a lot of people who are called arrogant are demonstrating that my grandfather’s way isn’t a choice they’re willing to make.
2. Atheists are to blame for religious fundamentalism. I’ve seen this incredible claim made in print (see my previous post on the academic book There is No God). Supposedly if you focus on the incompatibility of science with religion, you’re pushing believers toward an even more fundamental version of their faith. Belief by spite? Nah. The authors of 50 Great Myths end their five-page discussion of this myth by saying any such effect, if it exists at all, would be marginal.
3. Atheism depends on faith, just the same as religion. This one’s an assertion that can be tricky for a casual atheist to counter: it’s so easy to end a dispute with, “I just know there’s no god, and you can’t prove there is.” The fact is that atheists don’t simply have faith that their beliefs about the world make more sense than the beliefs of the supernaturalists. They use their minds, their cognitive faculties, and they deduce that, as there is no evidence for a god, there’s no point in believing in one. Believers, of course, do believe their “evidence” is foolproof, but all their arguments can be countered as unscientific.
After Blackford and Schüklenk dispense with all those myths, they provide a brief history (under 40 pages out of 274) and discussion of the rise of modern atheism. I doubt that anyone whose mind is made up and who believes deeply in the supernatural will suddenly acknowledge the inevitable reasonableness of atheism. Still, it’s nice to have the arguments set out succinctly and appealingly on the page.
The same pair of authors wrote the enlightening 50 Voices of Disbelief, about which I posted previously elsewhere as “Why Atheists Stop Believing.”
This elegantly written book deserves a wide readership. A bonus is the inclusion of comics from “Jesus and Mo.”
Copyright (c) 2013 by Susan K. PerryJoin Our New Slack Community For Gophers
Why Are We Doing This?
GopherCon was an amazing experience for many of us who had the privilege to go. We met so many great people. Some for the first time and many who we had relationships with on social sites such as Twitter and G+. On my last night in Denver I started to feel sad. I didn’t want to lose that camaraderie I had made with these friends. I just kept thinking, how could this be sustained?
After a couple of weeks of experimenting and talking with friends, Ed Gonzalez introduced me to a product called Slack. Within 5 minutes we registered a group, invited our friends and asked a few of them to be admins. Within a couple of days we had 25 people in the community. Everyone was really excited about the platform and the possibilities it brought to community building.
We thought it would be awesome to publicly open up the group to the community. Slack is an invite only system, so to make the community inclusive we recognized the need for a central authority that everyone would trust. We also wanted to put a structure in place that would minimize and monitor those who wanted to be a disruption. After many discussions we came up with following structure:
Gopher Academy (GA) will be the central authority for the group.
GA has the trust of the community and is a place for those who want to teach, build community or need help with events. GA currently manages a successful blog, the GopherCon conference, and recently the Go Newsletter has joined their efforts.
Members will be assigned as administrators to help monitor conduct and add new users.
GA is too small to do this alone. When a need arises, GA will recruit people to be administrators. Choosing administrators will be based on the number of members and the different time zones and activity. The only function of adminstrators is to get new members online and monitor compliance with the code of conduct.
Following people have been assigned as administrators.
Brian Ketelsen, Erik St. Martin, Cory LaNou, Levi Cook, Chris Schaefer, Nathan Youngman, Trevor Bramble, Julia Poladsky, Ed Gonzalez, Satish Talim and William Kennedy.
Members are required to follow the code of conduct.
This code of conduct has been published and all members are required to be good citizens. Those who violate the rules will be subject to being revoked from the community.
You Have Questions?
We hope many of you consider joining the community. We think Slack brings something special that you will recognize as soon as you join. We know that you will have questions and we want to do our best to answer them. Here are a few questions that we had:
Why are we using Slack and not IRC?
Slack has native clients for desktop and mobile devices. The features that Slack brings and their tools really enhance community building. We think members will get more out of Slack than IRC. Slack allows easy pasting of code snippets, files, and longer text posts.
How can I be invited to join?
GA has setup an invite form. Provide your full name and email address and an invite will be sent to you. We also have an email address, support@golangbridge.org. If the form is for any reason not working for you, send your request to that email address and one of the administrators will pick it up and send you an invitation.
How can I become an administrator?
GA will determine when a need arises to add more administrators. This will be based on the number of members the community has to service and the different time zones and activity. If you are interested in being an administrator, please submit your request to GA.
Does being an admin give that person God-like power?
No, it’s just a group of people who will help on-board new members and ensure that the code of conduct is being followed. It’s not a popularity contest or a social club.Election 2016: 5 things we've learned from where the leaders have been
Updated
We've followed Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten around Australia for eight weeks. Here's an update on what their movements reveal about strategy.
To win the election on Saturday July 2, Labor needs to seize an extra 21 seats, but the Coalition only needs to lose 15 before the nation returns to a hung Parliament.
Much of the internal party polling suggests the Coalition will retain power but surrender some of its majority to Labor.
Figuring out where the major party leaders have been travelling shows exactly what their game plans have been through this marathon campaign — and each party's favourite seats.
1. Both major parties are giving the same areas attention
This is a national campaign but if you thought your local shopping centre was missing out on awkward baby hugging and latte sipping by the big players — you might be right.
These heatmaps show Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop's campaign travels, and Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek's electoral targets throughout the eight-week campaign.
It clearly shows Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne as popular destinations.
North Queensland, Adelaide and Perth have also received plenty of attention — but if you live in regional Australia, away from the coast, you have largely been ignored (although notably the Nationals leader's "wombat trail" is not captured here).
2. The key battles are in NSW and Queensland
We hear much about how western Sydney and Queensland are key battlegrounds in any election — much of that is simply because there are a greater number of seats in those regions, and many are on slim margins.
For many elections, there has been the adage that "if the swing is on in Queensland, it's on".
This campaign has been no different.
The ALP is targeting nine seats in Queensland stretching from the far north of the state to suburban Brisbane.
Hence why both leaders and their deputies have spent significant time campaigning in Queensland.
The feeling among party operatives is the Coalition has been able to sandbag some of those seats, but will surrender a few to the ALP.
Sydney's population means there are more seats in play, but so far all eyes are on marginal seats in the west and south-west of the city. Redistribution has been kind to the ALP, with some seats now notionally Labor anyway.
Both parties have made appearances in Adelaide, where there is significant concern about popular SA Senator Nick Xenophon.
While his team of candidates is likely to have more of an impact in the Senate, at the very least they will erode support for the major parties in the lower house — if not snag a seat or two.
3. Labor is spending more time in enemy territory
Labor's campaign has been more aggressive, spending considerably more time in Coalition-held electorates.
Mr Turnbull and Ms Bishop have sought out more friendly audiences, shoring up support in Coalition-held seats.
There is a simple reason for this — the Coalition has to hang on to its majority, while Labor has to steal seats to have any chance of forming government.
4. Both parties are hitting the marginals
Both sides of the fight are mainly targeting marginal seats, or seats considered "fairly safe" — that is, seats with a margin of just over the 6 per cent threshold to be considered marginal.
Again, these are in the key regions where the parties are hoping to either make gains or back in their vulnerable candidates.
Macarthur and Lindsay in Sydney's west are marginal Liberal seats, and have been visited regularly by both Mr Turnbull and Mr Shorten.
Liberal deputy Julie Bishop has been acting as an advance campaigner for Mr Turnbull, arriving in key Adelaide electorates just days before her leader touched down.
She has also been sent in days after Mr Turnbull has swept through, seeking to capitalise on his efforts in key Victorian seats such as Dunkley, which covers parts of south-east Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula.
Labor deputy Tanya Plibersek has spent a significant amount of time in Queensland just days after her leader jetted out of town, strengthening the attack on LNP-held seats such as Herbert and Capricornia, centred around Townsville and Rockhampton.
5. Both parties have the same favourite seats
Unfortunately for most of the country, only about a third of the 150 House of Representatives electorates will actually decide the outcome on Saturday.
Both Mr Turnbull and Mr Shorten have only visited around 50 electorates each.
Of the 20 most-visited seats by the leadership teams, only one is held by Labor.
When it comes to picking out the most sought-after seats for the Coalition and Labor, western Sydney and Queensland are where the battle began and where it ends.
All of the top five most-visited seats are marginal or fairly safe Coalition seats.
Labor has made five visits each to the Sydney seats of Barton and Lindsay, as well as the north Queensland seats of Herbert and Leichhardt.
A favourable redistribution means Labor is likely to snatch Barton — but the Coalition is feeling more comfortable it can fend off the Opposition's other attacks.
The Coalition is sandbagging Macarthur in Sydney's south-west, with the Liberal leadership team visiting that electorate six times throughout the campaign.
Topics: federal-elections, federal-government, federal-parliament, federal-election, australia
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By of the
More than half the school districts in the four-county Milwaukee metro area saw enrollment decreases at the start of this school year, according to data released by the state last week that provides a preliminary count of kids in public schools this year.
But while many traditional districts adjust for fewer students, enrollment is up - way up - in some of Wisconsin's largest virtual charter schools, where students do most or all instruction online and don't need to live anywhere near the district where that school is located.
The uptick in virtual school enrollment comes on the heels of new state legislation that lengthened the period for families to enroll in the state's open enrollment program. In 2011-'12, more than 37,300 students used the program to attend a school outside their home district.
The legislation, supported by many Republicans who favor more school choice, may have benefited virtual programs and other charter schools because they could spend more time recruiting students and families. But it's caused headaches for district leaders and business managers trying to keep track of where kids are - and how much state aid money should come or go with them.
"It's a conundrum," said Blake Peuse, superintendent of the Northern Ozaukee School District. "It was more predictable even just a few years ago."
State enrollment counts are important because they help determine how much state funding a district receives and how much money it can raise under state-imposed revenue caps.
In the fall, districts use the updated enrollment numbers to complete their budgets and set the property tax levy. Sustained drops in enrollment generally mean less money for districts; enrollment increases generally help a district's bottom line.
But as more students use open enrollment, the traditional third Friday of September enrollment count becomes a less accurate picture of how many kids are being educated in a district.
For example, data posted to the Department of Public Instruction website last week shows an unaudited enrollment count of 850 students this year in Northern Ozaukee, down from 879 last year.
But there were fewer heartbeats in seats than that on Sept. 21.
That's because the district, based in Fredonia, also hosts Wisconsin Virtual Learning, an online K-12 charter school that has a total enrollment of 725 students this year, 14 of whom are district residents.
Northern Ozaukee counts the district residents in its virtual charter school, but not the more than 700 other nonresident students. Those students get included in the September count of their home districts.
Districts who receive students through open enrollment collect a set amount of money from the open enrollees' home districts at a later date.
In the metro area, 30 of the 51 area school districts in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha counties counted fewer students this September than last fall.
Milwaukee Public Schools continued its enrollment decline this year, dropping 1.34% from last year to 84,736 students in September 2012, according to the state's preliminary data.
But that number includes students who use open enrollment to leave the district and receive their education elsewhere. Last year, 5,944 Milwaukee resident students took advantage of that option.
Ten of Milwaukee County's 18 school districts saw enrollment increases this September. Franklin Public Schools saw an increase of 81 students for an approximate 2% enrollment increase, and Greenfield saw 72 more students for a 2.3% increase.
West Allis-West Milwaukee also saw about a 2% increase, with 174 more students this year compared with last year.
"The past three years we have seen an increase in younger residential students and their families moving into our district," said Brian Vissers, spokesman for West Allis-West Milwaukee.
Suburban districts drop
Meanwhile, some of the districts losing the most students - beyond MPS - are in wealthier suburbs.
All five Ozaukee County districts lost enrollment.
Twelve of Waukesha County's 19 school districts saw enrollment declines, according to the preliminary counts. One of them, the Mukwonago School District, lost 126 students this year, a 2.6% decrease from last year.
Superintendent Paul Strobel said the number wasn't a surprise. The district graduated a class of 400 students last year and has an incoming class of fewer than 300. The county's birthrate is declining, and fewer homes are being built in the area, he said.
"Every year a percentage of families graduate their last child from high school," Strobel said in an email. "For example, my children graduated in the 1990s, and I am still living in the same house - it has not turned over to a younger family with school-age children."
Virtual schools grow
At the same time, virtual, online K-12 education is showing growth in Wisconsin. Last year 25 virtual charter schools around the state enrolled a total of 4,907 students, according to state data. This year there are 28 virtual charter schools.
The state does not release preliminary enrollment data for charter schools, but of 13 virtual schools that responded to reporters' inquiries 10 reported at least a 15% increase in enrollment over last year, with seven of those gaining at least 30% more students.
Waukesha's eAchieve Academy, a middle and high school, grew to 264 part-time students this year, up 30% from last year's 203 students.
Full-time enrollment at eAchieve grew 16% to 900 students this year.
Christopher Schulteis, logistics and marketing manager at eAchieve, attributed the increase to the school's growing popularity since opening in 2004 and a longer window for the state's open enrollment program.
"We had a big push at the beginning of the open enrollment period, a lull in the middle and a big rush at the end," Schulteis said. "It's the same kind of pattern as other years, but it's just drawn out a little longer."
Wisconsin Act 114 (Senate Bill 2) was enacted in 2011, and extends the open enrollment period from three weeks to three months, beginning in February of each year. Schulteis said adapting to the change was a challenge, but the school was able to add all of the open enrollment students that applied.
Wisconsin Virtual Learning, the charter school in Northern Ozaukee, increased enrollment to 724 students this year, up more than 17% from last year.
Chetek-Weyerhaeuser School District's Link2Learn Virtual Charter School saw the largest increase, more than doubling in size from 26 students to 58. The state's largest online program, the McFarland School District's Wisconsin Virtual Academy, added 906 students for an 85.63% increase.This article is about the item of cutlery. For the mountain in New South Wales, see The Breadknife
A modern bread knife
Burns patent bread knife
Bread knives are used for cutting bread and are one of many kitchen knives used by chefs. The serrated blades of bread knives are able to cut soft bread without crushing it.
History [ edit ]
One such knife was exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago by the Friedrich Dick company (Esslingen, Germany).[1] One design was patented in the United States by Joseph E. Burns of Syracuse, New York.[2] His knife had sections of grooves or serrations, inclined with respect to the axis of the blade, that form individual small cutting edges which were perpendicular to the blade and thus cut without the excessive normal pressure required of a scalloped blade and without the horizontal force required by positive-raked teeth that would dig into the bread like a wood saw. There were also sections of grooves with the opposite direction of inclination, separated by a section of smooth blade, and the knife thus cut cleanly in both directions in both hard and soft bread.
Measurement [ edit ]
Bread knives are usually between 15 and 25 cm (6 and 10 in). An offset serrated knife uses an offset handle to ensure the cook's knuckles will not touch the cutting surface when the blade has cut all of the way through the food.
References [ edit ]One of Japan’s leading politicians has poisoned already toxic relations with China and South Korea by saying that wartime sex slaves were a necessary evil.
Toru Hashimoto, who is mayor of Osaka and co-leader of the right-wing Japan Restoration Party, also said “American soldiers should use more prostitutes. Soldiers are put in extreme situations in which they can lose their lives”, he told the US military commander in Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost prefecture and home to 75 per cent of American bases in the country. “They are overflowing with energy. We have to think about the way they can let it out somewhere.”
Mr Hashimoto said that when he made the suggestion earlier this month, the commander “appeared frozen, smiled wryly and said it is banned”. A Pentagon spokesperson later called the suggestion “ridiculous”.
The son of a small-time gangster, Mr Hashimoto is tipped as a future prime minister, despite a string of controversial bon mots. In 2011 he said that Japan needed a dictatorship and should revise its “pacifist” constitution. “Not being able to have a war on its own is the most pitiful thing about Japan,” he has said.
Sex slaves
Speaking yesterday, he again denied that Japan forcibly rounded up Asian woman as sex slaves, known euphemistically as “comfort women”.He then appeared to suggest that the practice was a part of war.
“To maintain discipline in the military, it must have been necessary at that time. For soldiers who risked their lives in circumstances where bullets are flying around like rain and wind, if you want them to get some rest, a comfort women system was necessary. That’s clear to anyone.”
Historians widely agree that the Japanese military may have enslaved up to 200,000 Asian women during the second World War, mainly from China and Korea. Japanese nationalists have long argued that the women were prostitutes recruited voluntarily from local populations.
Prime minister Shinzo Abe has threatened to reverse Japan’s long-standing position on the issue and retract an official apology. But he has recently appeared to pull in his horns, arguing that he does not want to make it a political or diplomatic issue.
South Korea reacted strongly to Mr Hashimoto’s comments yesterday and said Japan should “stop distorting history” and “contemplate the pain and suffering it brought to its neighbours”.
Tokyo is involved in separate territorial disputes with both Seoul and Beijing and has angered both countries with a series of incidents that appear to suggest a lack of contrition for the war.Consume this in normal quantities and you will be fine. © 2016 Jason Kolenda, Iceman/Thinkstock
The comforting packet of powder that turns boxed mac and cheese into a creamy delight has always seemed a little bit … chemical. And now the New York Times is here to back up your suspicions: “The Chemicals in Your Mac and Cheese,” a headline blared Wednesday.
It’s a specific type of chemical, phthalates, that has been “detected” in boxed mac and cheese. The story is largely a warning that these chemicals are possibly dangerous, particularly for pregnant women and children. Which, yikes—kids really like that stuff, and so do pregnant women, probably. (Honestly, who doesn’t like boxed mac and cheese?)
The story suggests you ought to try to limit your exposure—and it ends with a list of recommendations for how to make your own mac and cheese, complete with New York Times recipes. But the story is incomplete at best and fearmongering at worst. It’s a piece about toxicity, but there is one glaring omission: dosage, or an explanation of how much phthalate exposure is dangerous to human health.
Here’s the Times:
Now a new study of 30 cheese products has detected phthalates in all but one of the samples tested, with the highest concentrations found in the highly processed cheese powder in boxed mac and cheese mixes.
“The phthalate concentrations in powder from mac and cheese mixes were more than four times higher than in block cheese and other natural cheeses like shredded cheese, string cheese and cottage cheese,” said Mike Belliveau, executive director of the Environmental Health Strategy Center, one of four advocacy groups that funded the report. Others were the Ecology Center, Healthy Babies Bright Futures and Safer States.
Detecting phthalates in all but one of the samples is one thing. Far more important is how much of the substance the researchers found. (Toxicologists have a saying: The dose makes the poison.) And what matters still more is how the amount found in the cheese powder compares to the amount that can actually harm you.
The new study that “detected phthalates” in boxed mac and cheese is not clear on either point. It’s worth noting that this study was published not in an academic journal but on an advocacy site called kleanupkraft.org. (It seems to be the joint effort of many advocacy groups, which together make up the Coalition for Safer Food Processing and Packaging, but no scientist is listed as the author.) I’m not saying that all information has to be published in a peer-reviewed journal to be valid, but the basic standards that apply to scientific publishing would have helped provide answers to critical questions that are left hanging.
Part of the problem is that there is no accepted threshold for how many phthalates you need to consume for them to harm you. I talked to Sheela Sathyanarayana, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle and Seattle Children’s Hospital, and she confirmed that it’s difficult to say. (I also reached out to toxicologists on this question, but I didn’t hear back. I’ll update if I get a clear answer.) “There’s really no dose that we know that will lead to significant health effects,” she said. She noted that she had not run the numbers herself yet, but said that you’d probably need to eat multiple boxes a day to start seeing clear negative health effects.
That’s not to say phthalates aren’t dangerous. A body of evidence suggests that in high concentrations, they can disrupt the production of testosterone, and there are also links between the chemicals’ presence and other neurological and behavioral problems. But does boxed mac and cheese offer a uniquely high and risky exposure to these chemicals? The New York Times story doesn’t make that clear. The closest it comes to specificity on this point is to say the groups “found high levels in all of them,” though it does not specify how it decided that the levels are “high.”
How do phthalates end up in mac and cheese anyway? They’re not an ingredient in the powder—they’re in the packaging that carries the product and the machines that make it. That means that trace amounts can end up in the products produced. For what it’s worth, normal, non-powdered cheese also contains trace amounts of phthalates, because it comes into contact with plastic. Phthalates are very common—they are used in cosmetics, skin creams, pesticides, lubricants, fragrances, pharmaceutical products, etc., according to a 2002 report from the Food and Drug Administration. That report continues:
Unlike some chemicals, like dioxin, lead, or mercury, that tend to persist and build up in various tissues, phthalates are generally not persistent, though under some circumstances, phthalates do tend to accumulate in certain organs. But because exposures are so frequent and common, some level or body burden of the phthalate family of chemicals can regularly be detected.
I reached out to the FDA for comment, but the response from press officer Megan McSeveney didn’t directly address boxed mac and cheese. She wrote:
The substances in food contact materials may migrate at low levels when the materials come into contact with food. The FDA regulates all substances in food contact materials that are reasonably expected to migrate into food based on their intended use. This includes the use of some phthalates in food packaging. There must be sufficient scientific information to demonstrate that the use of a substance in food contact materials is safe under the intended conditions of |
be totally fine just by virtue of having a gun.... I hate it when people say, ‘See, you’re a Republican after all!’ because I have a gun. I'm staunchly liberal, and it’s offensive and annoying to me that someone would think that. It bothers me when conservatives think liberals want to take everyone's guns away. For the most part, I think liberals just want stricter gun laws, which I strongly support.”
At the aptly named, Google-friendly The Gun Range in central Philadelphia, state law makes it possible for someone who's never once fired a gun to simply show up with a driver's license and nod their way through a 20-minute tutorial, then rent a handgun and a shooting lane and blast bullets at pieces of paper for an afternoon. (Unlike in New York City, where I live, and where you have to spend $427 just to apply for a gun license that requires passport photos and your Social Security card and actual paper checks, which have to be hand-delivered in person to an office in Kew Gardens, Queens, which is roughly as easy as hand-delivering it all to Narnia.) I went alone, carrying a purse and some bad memories I hoped to exorcise.
Yuri, the gun-range owner, told me to give the hot-pink, man-shaped silhouette on my target a new nose; I gave him a new nose, a new mouth, and a stray puncture wound near his shoulder. Then Yuri had me shoot at the "8" on the target—the "8" he pointed at being right where my hot-pink assailant's junk would have been, had I not put twenty rounds through it. A memory I'll think back on fondly and a little wistfully from time to time, I'm sure.
I shot for two hours, until a new blister on my hand began to bleed. Somehow the never-not-alarming sound of gunfire, the manual difficulty of shoving bullets into a magazine, the stinging pain of scraping my palms over and over again across the ridges of a slide, and the burnt stench of hot brass shells added up to a pleasurable routine. I shot a pistol for the first time in the same week I tried SoulCycle for the first time, and it was way better than SoulCycle.
It wasn't until a week later, when I dragged a suitcase through the door of the apartment I rent alone, that I thought about my ex-boyfriend. It was right after Thanksgiving, and I'd only just gotten home and unpacked when someone knocked on my door unexpectedly. It was late. I froze, and for a half-second, I wondered: Would I feel less creeped out about opening my door if I had a Glock 17 tucked in the dresser drawer ten feet from the entryway?
Chances were I wouldn't even be able to get to the gun in time if it were some soft-knocking serial killer. But if just having the gun would make me feel safer, sleep better, worry less about what might happen if a post-date "come over for a drink at my place" rendezvous suddenly took a turn for the worse, did it matter?
Anyway, it turned out to be Seamless. I'd scheduled a late-night dinner delivery from the airport tarmac before take-off and then promptly forgotten about it.
A Woman in Arms Jess Holt, 27 | Bozeman, Montana*
“I own a variety of shotguns and rifles, as well as two handguns; I honestly don’t know the exact number. I truthfully have never purchased a firearm. All the guns I own have been given to me in some way or another. My father was a prolific gun collector, as were his ancestors, so several of those guns have simply wound up in my hands on special occasions, like Christmas and birthdays.... At times, I think of guns as simple tools—they help dispatch rodents and pests that cause damage to our machinery and livestock on the ranch.... Other times, I think of guns as exquisite pieces of art. There are beautiful, hand-tooled shotguns in my father’s collection that have never even fired a shot, and if I ever even touch them, I wipe my fingerprints off with a sheepskin chamois.” *Name has been changed.
Lola, who often carries her gun strapped to her chest, actually worries less about the open world than the house she sleeps in. When I asked her for an example of a time she felt safer having a gun, her first response was, "when my husband travels and I'm home alone."
Of course, Lola also wears a gun on her person in case she encounters more visible, public danger, too. When Lola set out to buy her first handgun and holster in 2013, her priorities were aimed at this kind of prevention, and they were of a distinctly female sort: She worries about being assaulted while walking to her car late at night after work, so she wanted a gun she wouldn't have to carry in her purse, a favorite souvenir of thieves and attackers who target women.
"Guns are like…guns are like birth-control pills," she explained to me with a laugh. "They're a dime a dozen, and there are so many variables among women. If you pick up one and it doesn't work for you, you try another one."Ashton Kutcher Files for Divorce
Ashton Kutcher Files for Divorce from Demi Moore
Exclusive Details
has finally pulled the trigger, filing for divorce from... over a year after the couple split up... and now we know why he waited.34-year-old Ashton filed the docs today in L.A. County Superior Court, citing irreconcilable differences. He uses his full legal name 'Christopher A. Kutcher.'Sources familiar with the situation tell TMZ... Ashton waited so long because he wanted to give Demi the chance to file first... it was a whole dignity thing. After a year... when Demi showed no signs of making her move, Ashton finally did.Ashton and 50-year-old Demi have no children together. They were married in September 2005 and separated in November 2011.According to the docs, the property rights of Ashton and Demi will be worked out later.Ashton and Demi split in the wake of cheating allegations involving Ashton and another woman. Ashton is currently dating his "" co-starIn a press conference today, Donald Trump condemned Obama for ordering flags to half-mast adding that fallen soldiers are not heroes.
“They are not heroes,” said Trump before immediately modifying his original remarks,”They’re heroes ’cause they were killed. I like people that weren’t killed, OK?”
“Captain America, Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, Wolverine; these are real heroes, and they never die,” Trump continued. “Especially Wolverine, that guy wouldn’t have been stopped by some bullets that were probably made by some Chinaman.”
Trump then doubled down on his statements after some members of the crowd began to heckle him.
“Listen, I’m rich, and I don’t think we should be rewarding dying by lowering our majestic red, white and blue,” Trump said. “Obama is only lowering the flag halfway because it’s part of his ultimate goal of lowering it all of the way. Put our flag back up, Obama!”
When journalists pointed out that the super heroes Trump listed had previously died in comics, Trump countered with, “comics are for nerds, I’m talking about the far-superior, more lucrative movies,” to which the crowd began booing.
Follow Stubhill News on Twitter and Facebook for all your campaign needs.Lars Gustavsson, creative director of Battlefield 4, at the Battlefield 4 event stated to reporters that a third installment in the Battlefield: Bad Company franchise will happen. He clarified that it won’t happen immediately because of the many EA-DICE developed titles happening. Gustavsson said:
My feeling is that I would love to do it. For me, when we started the company with 1942, it was really a work of passion… And then we worked our way through the era of different wars, and I loved them all, like my little babies. When it came to Bad Company, it was creative freedom; don’t take yourself too seriously.
He then stated that whether it can happen right now or not as EA-DICE developed titles; Mirrors Edge 2 and Star Wars: Battlefront, were announced for next-generation consoles. He said that the Bad Company team hasn’t been forgotten and are out there and will make a comeback when the time is right.
Have a read about how Battlefield 4 PC Beta benchmarks hint at brighter prospects for AMD CPUs
Battlefield: Bad Company made its debut as a consoles exclusive on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2008, followed by a sequel dubbed Battlefield: Bad Company 2 which saw its release in 2010 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC as well. Bad Company received positive response from critics for its humorous story-line and technical aspects including sound, atmosphere and the game engine.
Excited to hear that there will be a Bad Company 3? We are too. Let us know in the comments below about your opinions.Installing a corrupt ROM or other critical file seems to be the most common way people are “bricking” (i.e., rendering unusable) their Amazon Fire TVs. Files can be corrupted when downloaded or when being transferred/pushed to the Fire TV with no indication that something has gone wrong. That’s why it’s important to test a file’s integrity on the Fire TV itself before using it to replace critical parts of the Fire TV operating system. It’s not enough to test files on your computer after downloading them. My past and future guides will now all include steps, which reference this post, to test file integrity.
The way to check a file’s integrity is to calculate its md5 value. An md5 value is a 32 character alphanumeric value that is unique to each file. The website that you downloaded the file from should have listed the file’s md5 value, sometimes called an md5sum value. I list each file’s md5 value on my ROM and recovery download pages in the notes area next to each file. If the md5 value you calculate using the guide below matches the md5 value listed on the download page, then you know the file has been transferred to your Fire TV intact and can safely be used.
Follow my guide to install and setup BusyBox on your Fire TV, if you haven’t done so yet. Transfer the file to be tested to your Fire TV, if you haven’t done so yet. Connect to your Fire TV via ADB, if you haven’t done so yet. Run the command:
adb shell Run the command:
/system/xbin/busybox md5sum PATH-TO-FILE
Be sure to replace PATH-TO-FILE with the full path to the file being tested.
For example: /system/xbin/busybox md5sum /sdcard/bueller-51.1.5.0_515020820-rooted.zip After a few seconds you will see 32 alphanumeric characters displayed, followed by the file’s path.
For example: b7005dd3cc0b6a15dae21b0170aeae85 /sdcard/bueller-51.1.5.0_515020820-rooted.zip If the 32 characters displayed match exactly to the md5 characters listed on the file’s download page, then you know the file is intact and can be used. If the characters do not match, you should delete the file from your Fire TV using the following command:
rm -f PATH-TO-FILE
Be sure to replace PATH-TO-FILE with the full path to the file being deleted.
Then re-download and re-transfer the file to your Fire TV and repeat this guide. To exit out of adb shell, run the command:
exit
Follow AFTVnews on Twitter / Facebook and subscribe via email to be the first to learn when new articles go live. Follow me, Elias Saba, on Twitter and Instagram to see what I'm working on before it's posted here.
ShareTweetShare+1Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is under fire from Democrats who say the House intelligence committee chair should recuse himself from the committee's investigation into Russia, because he's too close to President Trump. Can Nunes retain his credibility as the investigation plays out? (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
If not now, when?
New signs of increased pressure on House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes are emerging that could complicate his efforts to prevent a serious investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Yet most Republicans are still standing by him. What will it take to change this?
The hits on Nunes keep on coming. His hometown newspaper, the Fresno Bee, editorialized this week that his conduct has been “inept and bewildering” as he “betrayed the Constitution and its separation of powers by running like an errand boy to the White House.” A writer at the conservative National Review bluntly called on Nunes to step down, pointedly asking “why is Devin Nunes still chair of the House Intelligence Committee” when the country “needs leaders. It needs competence. It needs integrity.”
A few Republicans are turning on Nunes. Rep. Charlie Dent, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican, is calling for the Senate Intelligence Committee to take the lead on the Russia investigation, characterizing the House investigation as “paralyzed.” Meanwhile, Trump’s approval in Gallup hit a new low today of 35 percent, which theoretically should induce Republicans to contemplate whether it might soon be time to distance themselves from him.
Yet Nunes has cavalierly dismissed calls that he step aside. Sen. John McCain has called for a bipartisan select committee to investigate, and Sen. Lindsay Graham has questioned Nunes’ “objectivity,” but very few other Republicans have joined them.
Still, the optics of this story are just getting worse and worse for Nunes. On Monday, Democrats on the Intelligence Committee called for Nunes to step down, following his admission that the source for the classified information he refused to share with his colleagues — and which he claimed proved that Trump campaign associates were targets of U.S. spying — came from inside the White House itself.
What’s more, new press reports will make it increasingly difficult for Nunes, by fleshing out the ways in which Trump’s ties to Russia may extend beyond an admiration for President Vladimir Putin or an intention to recast U.S. foreign policy in the region. Media scrutiny is focusing daily on Trump’s financial ties with Russian oligarchs. As Reuters reported earlier this month, dozens of people with Russian passports or addresses have spent nearly $100 million on Trump-branded luxury properties in Florida, including businessmen with political, military, and intelligence connections. This week brought new reports of meetings between Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, and the head of a state-owned Russian bank with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. And a new USA Today piece raises additional questions about Russian investments in Trump real estate holdings.
Trump vehemently denies any business dealings with Russia. But his unprecedented refusal to disclose his tax returns has effectively blocked scrutiny of his financial dealings — a fact that is highlighted by the continued drumbeat of reporting that is revealing how little we really know, and by Democrats who are all too happy to remind everyone of Trump’s lack of transparency in the context of the Russia story.
Indeed, Democrats are increasingly focusing attention on Trump’s financial ties, seeing this as fertile ground for potential new revelations. Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, has formally asked the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is running its own investigation, to examine Trump’s financial ties to Russia. As Wyden wrote to his Committee colleagues: “Efforts to understand these relationships and to separate fact from speculation have been hampered by the opacity of the finances of President Trump and his associates.”
On the House side, Trump is getting a huge assist from Nunes. But if his Senate counterparts heed Wyden’s call, Nunes’ collaboration with the White House could start to look even thornier than it does now. Nunes cannot hold to this posture forever.This morning I broke from my usual media consumption routine during my weekend shift of Hot Air work. Normally I leave the television tuned in to CNN’s New Day with Victor Blackwell and Christi Paul. After a couple of hours I shut it off. The reason was that there were really only two stories being covered over and over again. One was the imbroglio over the various women accusing Donald Trump of groping or kissing them and the other was the Wikileaks release of John Podesta’s emails. That’s probably a fair balance of two major campaign stories if we want to pretend that there’s no element of media bias at play, but one of them was being discussed for vast blocks of time while the other received a quick question for two guests to debate for a minute or so and then they cut to commercial.
Care to guess which story was which?
This got me thinking yet again about the recent claims that Donald Trump is engaged in some sort of war on the media. How horrible! The man is clearly trying to undermine our democracy. This theme jumps out at me in every batch of headlines I crack open these days. For examples, look no further than the story which our own Larry O’Connor broke open earlier this week about DNC Chair Donna Brazile feeding debate questions to Hillary Clinton. Larry interviewed Jake Tapper about it and he described it as journalistically horrifying.
How much do you know about that story? If you get all of your campaign information from cable news I’m guessing the answer is not much. In fact, while it may have happened briefly, I haven’t personally seen it so much as mentioned on CNN over the past few days. There’s been the odd coverage of some of the other emails, but not this story. By contrast, I now know virtually every detail of the Trump accusations, down to the level of what sorts of clothing the women were wearing, their seating arrangements on planes or in clubs and the names of their mothers and sisters who they complained to.
Still, the media largely finds any criticism of the balance in their coverage to be a cause for further attacking Trump rather than an examination of their own practices. Paul Farhi at the Washington Post complains, The press always got booed at Trump rallies. But now the aggression is menacing. Paul Waldman went further, declaring that Trump’s “war on the media” has failed.
But now, it’s important for Republicans to understand this critical fact about Trump’s outright declaration of war against the media: It’s failing. It hasn’t intimidate reporters into giving him the adulatory coverage he wanted; in fact, if anything it has encouraged them to investigate him as thoroughly as possible and describe him accurately as the uniquely disturbing and threatening candidate he is.
Joe Concha, writing at The Hill, put the media’s coverage of the campaign in perspective when he compared the network news air time allotted to accusations made by several women against Trump versus the amount of time they spend talking about the Clinton related Wikileaks revelations. And I’m asking you to really pay attention to this short snippet even though it involves some math. (Emphasis added)
In viewing recordings by The Hill of each of the major network news evening newscasts, which are watched by an average 22-24 million viewers each night collectively, the newest batch of Wikileaks revelations — which include derogatory comments of Catholics by senior Clinton campaign officials and more disturbing examples of collusion between the media and said campaign (See: newsworthy stuff) — was covered for a combined 57 seconds out of 66 minutes of total air time on ABC, NBC and CBS. In a related story, allegations by four women against Donald Trump accusing him of unwanted sexual advances was covered a combined 23 minutes. Add it all up, and one presidential candidate’s negative news of the day was somehow covered more than 23 times more than another candidate’s negative news of the day.
Keep in mind here that this is the ratio of coverage for all of the various Wikileaks stories about Clinton. The mentions of the specific collusion between TV One co-host Roland Martin, Donna Brazile and Clinton campaign was only a tiny fraction of that. But isn’t this, at least in some ways, the most shocking story of all to emerge from the dusty vaults of John Podesta’s G-mail account? We’re talking about a story where the media isn’t just providing unbalanced coverage, but actually aiding and abetting the Clinton campaign in a presidential debate. If we have evidence of even one instance of this going on, why would anyone already distrustful of the media bias landscape choose to believe the protests coming from cable news talking heads?
So where is CNN’s coverage of this critical story? To their minor credit, while it’s not being discussed on the air, their website does at least hold a single article on this debacle from Brian Stelter. (Though to find it you need to do a search on the key phrase “Donna Brazile” and then scroll down past her bio, her CNN profile, some complaints about Ted Cruz from June of this year and several articles from the Democrats’ convention in Philadelphia before finding this piece which was published on Tuesday.)
In it, he concludes that there almost certainly was a leak to Brazile and she absolutely sent at least one question to the Clinton campaign. (She’s refusing to answer the charge directly, of course.) And we should be clear here that it was text taken from Roland Martin’s question. None of Jake Tapper’s questions showed up in the emails. But still, this should be one of the biggest stories of the campaign, and yet you barely hear a peep about it.
Is Donald Trump engaging in a “war on the media” this year? I suppose so. But they certainly seem to be asking for it.A police officer checking backpacks as part of Blackhawks parade security stops a man carrying two pistols and ammunition, right in front of City Hall. Mary Ann Ahern reports. (Published Friday, June 28, 2013)
Officials say there's no reason to believe a Matteson man arrested Friday morning near Chicago City Hall with two guns on him was planning on harming anyone at the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup victory celebration.
Still, 37-year-old Roger Harrison faces two felony counts of unlawful use of a weapon and one count of marijuana possession.
Bail was set at $75,000 Saturday when Harrison appeared in bond court, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Harrison, of the 3100 block of Holden Circle, was taken into custody just moments before the Blackhawks parade traveled east on Washington Street. An officer stopped Harrison and asked to check his backpack.
Harrison initially tried to walk away but the officer refused to let him leave and began the search. He was quickly handcuffed and put into a police van parked on LaSalle Street after the officer discovered a gun in Harrison's backpack. Another officer found a smaller gun in Harrison's pocket.
At least one of the guns appeared to be loaded.
Adam Collins, a police spokesman, told NBC Chicago via email: "As we made clear prior to today’s events, police would be doing searches of large bags and backpacks and this arrest is a clear example of the effectiveness of those efforts."
Based on a conversation with Harrison, officials said there was "no indication he was planning anything."
Another man was arrested near the same location but there was no immediate word as to why.Ray Rice said over and over that he didn’t plan on leaving Baltimore this offseason.
Now, it appears that plan will come true.
The Ravens applied the franchise tag to Rice on Friday, which will keep him from becoming an unrestricted free agent and pay him about $7.7 million as part of the one-year deal. His four-year rookie contract was set to expire in March.
“As we have in the past, placing the franchise designation on a player allows us to keep negotiating on a long-term contract,” Ravens General Manager Ozzie Newsome said. “Our goal is to keep Ray Rice a Raven. We’ve done this with other outstanding players through our history, including Haloti Ngata a year ago.”
Franchising Rice guarantees that he’ll be back in Baltimore for at least one more season, but more importantly, it buys time for the two sides to work out a long-term deal before the start of the season.
That’s what the Ravens did last year with Ngata. They franchised Ngata to keep him from hitting the open market and then agreed on an extension in September.
The same could happen with Rice, who said he ultimately wants a long-term deal and understands the franchise tag is a tool that can help make that happen.
The fifth-year running back is coming off the best season of his career, where he rushed for 1,364 yards and collected a league leading 2,068 yards from scrimmage. He was selected to his second Pro Bowl and accounted for 16 touchdowns – 12 rushing, three receiving and one throwing.
Locking up Rice is one of the Ravens’ top offseason priorities, as he took on more of a leadership role last year and was one of the team’s top weapons. He has proved to be an elite running back in the NFL, averaging 1,962 total yards in his three seasons as the Ravens starter.
Baltimore is also involved in contract extension talks with quarterback Joe Flacco, who has one year remaining on his rookie deal. Since Rice and Flacco entered the league as the Ravens first two picks in 2008, the Ravens are 44-20 in the regular season and have won at least one playoff game in each of their four seasons.
Having both of them back allows the Ravens to keep together their offensive core, which finished fourth in the AFC in scoring.Apple Watch wireless charger. Apple Apple has joined the Wireless Power Consortium, an industry group that develops a widely-used wireless charging standard, an Apple spokesperson told Business Insider.
Apple joined WPC late last week, a WPC spokesperson said. WPC oversees a charging standard called Qi that insures interoperability among different products and brands that support wireless charging. Qi tech can be found on devices like Samsung's Galaxy S7 smartphone, for example.
When using a Qi charger, the user merely drops his device on a compatible charging pad and it can draw power without plugging a cord in, although the pad needs to be connected to the wall.
Although Apple's iPhone 7 doesn't use wireless charging, unlike many of its smartphone competitors, the Apple Watch uses a proprietary wireless charging puck to charge up. However, that puck is not compatible with other Qi chargers.
The Apple Watch charger is using a modified version of Qi that is not interoperable with other wireless chargers. "The Apple Watch charger that comes with the device is Qi based, but the firm decided not to submit it for interoperability testing," a former WPC VP said in 2015.
Despite Apple's penchant for secrecy, it frequently joins important industry groups so it can participate in the development of new technologies and understand where they're going. For example, it recently hosted a meeting of the Unicode Consortium at its headquarters.
An Apple spokesperson provided this statement:
"Apple is an active member of many standards development organizations, as both a leader and contributor. Apple is joining the Wireless Power Consortium to be able to participate and contribute ideas to the open, collaborative development of future wireless charging standards. We look forward to working together with the WPC and its members."
Here's what WPC said about adding Apple to its members list:
"The companies with the largest market share in mobile phones are now members of the WPC and discussing the standardization of wireless charging. As we have seen in the past year, Qi has become the de facto standard for wireless power, and this year we expect to see even more momentum by the entire ecosystem."
Apple is rumored to be adding wireless charging to the next model of the iPhone, which is expected to launch this fall, but Apple declined to comment on future products.The “thing” has finished and Monty Don has Monty gone. What next? This post includes soppyness.
Summer has passed. Monty has gone. The allotment is done. What a stupid thing to say though! An allotment is never done.
What is done though is the “thing”, and I’m pretty happy with myself and what I’ve achieved.
The first time I met Mr D I presented my plans to him and he said, and I quote “these are the best plans I’ve seen for the series so far”. He may have just been being polite, but I like to think that he liked them because they were simple, realistic and achievable.
In fact he advised me to stick to just half of the plan but, because I like a challenge, I only went and did the whole bloody thing, like a legend!
The woodchip drama worked itself out in the end (after a tip off we, er, liberated some from another alllotment site) and the pubshed, now officially christened the Ross & Crown was a roaring success. First cider was poured around 10am. We even had a game of darts using chard as the ockie.
(The trip to the pub afterwards ended up being quite debauched. Not with the D-man obviously. He’s a pro and had another reveal thing to go to anyway.)
Because this has been for a telly thing I don’t want to spoil it too much (I’ve probably said too much already), however I’d like the opportunity to thank a few people.
Firstly there’s Sara Venn of Incredible Edible Bristol. She’s been my rock (not in a Paul Burrell way, that’s weird) and has always been there to offer advice, support and patience, even when I’m asking the most ridiculous of questions. And most importantly, allotment aside, she has been a window into a whole new world (for me anyway) of kindness and community and for which I will be eternally grateful!
Then there’s my best mate Simon. I’m not going to get too soppy here, because he reads this and yer’know, we’re bloke blokes right, but the support of him, his kids and family has been excellent. Especially since he’s been having a few tribulations himself. And a special shout out to his dad Rex for supplying shelves, bricks and even the name for my scarecrow. Hope your colleagues don’t take the piss too much!
There’s the TV people themselves. Especially Beatrice, Max and Bob. They’re motivation and encouragement inspired me to overachieve.
Also:
The guys from Wellesbourne allotments. Thanks for the inspiration guys!
Bristol Wood Recycling Project and B&Q for the cheap/free wood.
Lucy my allotment neighbour.
Foxy for the lift.
Bill.
Grandad for the gnome.
So what next? Not a lot really. It’s October tomorrow so it’s just a case of prepping stuff for the winter (winter is coming GoT fans). I’d like to grow “something” over the coming months but not sure what or how. Especially things that I can eat on Christmas Day. So any tips would be warmly received.
I’ll also be helping Sara out with a few things over the next month or so, including more Hairy Biker fun – this should keep my fingers green (please Google Incredible Edible Bristol. It’s, well, incredible).
All in all it’s been a pretty decent summer really. And I’m as surprised as anyone in discovering that I might actually be excited about this gardening malarkey. Who knew?
There was one night that stands out though, it involved just me, my plot, cider and sunset, this, I realised, was my happy place.
The positive effects are almost too many to list, so I’ll summarise: having an allotment and doing a bit of volunteering is good for mind, body and soul. It’s made me a better person basically.
This show will be going out next springtime so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime I’ll keep on bothering you with my ramblings.
But I’ll leave you with this: a pub shed evolution collage. Four words that have never appeared in a sentence like that before!
Cheers!
AdvertisementsMove over, Rice-A-Roni—San Francisco ’s about to get a new signature treat. After wildly successful receptions in New York City in the summer of 2016 and Los Angeles earlier this year, the Museum of Ice Cream is preparing to work its sweet-toothed magic on Fog City denizens.
Located just two blocks from Union Square, the Museum of Ice Cream will transform one of the city’s most iconic buildings—the Union Savings Bank at 1 Grant Street, a Beaux-Arts landmark that partly took inspiration from Rome’s Pantheon —into a colorful ode to everyone’s favorite frozen treat.
Inside, visitors will be treated to a whimsical array of interactive (and perfectly Instagram-ready ) installations, including a candy garden, a Pop Rocks cave, a push-pop art installation, a cherry-on-top sky, and a mochi ice cream tasting room, courtesy of Los Angeles-based My/Mo Mochi Ice Cream. A rotating lineup of California ice creameries, including Salt & Straw, It’s It, and Bi-Rite, will be on hand to offer visitors a special “scoop of the week.”
Of course, the pièce de résistance—as was the case in both New York and Los Angeles—is the museum’s now-famous sprinkle pool, where guests can literally dive into a dream-like swimming pool filled with more than 100 million custom-designed sprinkles, which will be situated underneath the historic building’s 45-foot-dome ceilings. Before you get any funny ideas: No, the sprinkles aren’t edible, but it’s the one attraction you won’t want to miss, and the closest you’ll likely ever get to living out your childhood fantasies of paying a visit to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Room.
Though the Museum doesn't open until September 17, tickets go on sale online to the general public at 9 a.m. Pacific on Friday, August 25. (AmEx card members got an early shot at tickets, which have already sold out.) Considering that the New York location sold 30,000 tickets in the first five days alone, you may want to set a reminder if you’re looking to be one of the first people to experience the pop-up deliciousness. (No closing date has been announced yet.)It was during Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign that the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” entered the popular political lexicon.
The saying was coined by Clinton advisor James Carville, who argued that the ’92 campaign should simply focus on the problem of rising unemployment, as Americans’ basic economic situations would drive their perceptions of the state of the country and the quality of leadership provided by President George H.W. Bush, Clinton’s opponent.
Since that time it’s been taken as an article of faith that one of the most important drivers of voters’ perception is economic conditions on the ground. But this election cycle may bring this belief into question.
According to Peter Atwater, socionomist and president of the research and analysis firm Financial Insyghts, this is because the correlation between actual economic conditions and people’s perception of the economy is breaking down, and perhaps wasn’t all that strong to begin with. “The transmission of our economic reality into our economic perception is not straightforward,” Atwater wrote in a recent blog post. He points out that there is a strong correlation overall between the economic confidence index compiled by polling firm Gallup and the unemployment rate. But when you dig deeper into the data, the relationship looks much weaker.
Atwater decided to analyze the relationship between confidence and the unemployment rate on a year-by-year basis. He found that the “relationship between ECI and Unemployment appears to change year to year—sometimes dramatically.” The following chart illustrates this fact, with each line representing another year of the recent economic recovery. As you can see, sometimes economic confidence goes up when unemployment goes down (as represented by the lines that slope downward from left to right), but sometimes just the opposite happens (as represented by the upward-slopers).
Atwater talked to an analyst at Gallup who tried to chalk these strange relationships to unusual events, like the debt ceiling crisis of 2011 and the government shutdown of 2013. Another theory, posited for the negative relationship between confidence and unemployment last year, was slowing growth, because Americans may take economic facts other than the jobless rate into consideration when deciding how they feel. But what about the fact that average wages rose faster last year than any year since 1967, when the Census Department began measuring the statistic? Surely rising pay should increase economic confidence, but according to Gallup it didn’t.
This research should worry Hillary Clinton, if you believe that voters’ perceptions of the economy drive their decision whether or not to support the incumbent party. And Atwater gives some reasons why Clinton supporters might latch on to this disconnect as reason to worry that positive economic data will not help her. He writes:
I would also caution against viewing specific events as contributors to our level of confidence... While [it] may seem intuitive that the Debt Ceiling Crisis and the Government Shutdown negatively impacted confidence in 2011 and 2013, respectively – it is far more likely that both events were in fact symptoms, if not outright consequences of falling confidence. When confidence is weak, zero sum thinking naturally takes hold and reaching a political compromise is especially difficult... Many events that would intuitively suggest even weaker confidence levels to come frequently mark THE low in confidence. Rather than causing confidence to fall further, these events instead mark the bottom. For example, as [the following] chart shows, the 2008 banking crisis didn’t cause American confidence to fall further; it reflected that confidence had fallen already to an extreme. The collapse of Lehman Brothers – not to mention the “spontaneous” formation of the Tea Party – was a symptom of exceptionally weak social mood.
Atwater, then, is pretty sure that it’s not events that are causing changes in confidence, but changes in confidence that are driving events. But what actually causes waves of optimism and pessimism in people is much harder to understand. This thought, Atwater argues, can be unsettling, because people like to know why things are they way they are. But Atwater’s research has led him to believe that these changes, while mysterious, are real and important. They cannot be argued away by pointing to reality, because human beings aren’t necessarily convinced by objective facts. And that could spell bad news for the Clinton campaign come November.Sharrod Rowe and Kimberly Adams share a quiet moment after the South High School football team and boosters present them with the jersey and letter jacket their son, Sha-kym Adams, would have earned this year.
In this land of 10,000 lakes, water has long offered Minnesotan children a way of life and leisure. But jumping in is riskier for some kids than for others.
Recent drowning deaths in the Twin Cities reflect a sad national reality: Black kids are far less likely than whites to know how to swim. They are more than three times as likely as white kids to drown. In Hennepin County, blacks make up 1 in 8 residents but account for 1 in 3 drowning deaths handled by the county medical examiner the past decade, according to an MPR News analysis.
In many states, the differences between white and black drowning rates are negligible. But in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, African-Americans are nearly twice as likely to die from drowning, federal data show.
The solution seems obvious: Teach children of color how to swim well. The reality, however, is more complicated, swimming advocates and families say. |
adult film stars do. It may be awkward to exchange proof of HIV results on a first date, but it is not at all awkward—and usually de rigeur—to do so on an adult film set.
Imagine a hypothetical statute that made unprotected sexual intercourse between unmarried persons a criminal offense. In other words, if two consenting adults met at a bar and decided to go home for a sexual encounter, the law would require that they always use condoms until and unless they marry. The statute, though difficult to enforce, would be said to help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted disease, and perhaps force partners to have more honest conversations about the risks associated with their sexual activity.
I have no doubt that such a statute would be voted down at the ballot box. Most people would find the hypothetical statute to be a tremendous violation of their sexual freedom, even if they could not precisely articulate a reason why. And indeed, even if a court eventually sustained the hypothetical statute against a constitutional challenge, I have no doubt that a legislature would eventually repeal it. One reason might be that the hypothetical statute would deprive individuals of the dignity of risk. Human interactions, particularly sexual ones, are filled with risks, whether emotional or physical. To deprive single individuals of the ability to navigate these risks on the same terms as married individuals would be a denial of the single individuals’ dignity.
And so it must be with the Los Angeles Act. As even Justice Scalia has said, “our salvation is the Equal Protection Clause, which requires the democratic majority to accept for themselves and their loved ones what they impose on you and me.” Plainly, “sex workers” are not now, nor will they ever be, a protected class requiring heightened scrutiny under the equal protection clause. But, would 56% of Los Angeles County residents accept for themselves the requirements that they have imposed on adult film stars? I sincerely doubt it.Getty Images
The peeved parents of a youth soccer league in Santa Clara are seeking legal action after losing soccer fields for the next two months due to Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium.
According to Ramona Giwargis of the San Jose Mercury News, the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League filed a suit on Wednesday in hopes of stopping the NFL from taking over soccer fields adjacent to the stadium. The space is expected to used as a media village for the Super Bowl, a stipulation agreed upon by the city in bidding for the championship in 2013.
“We’re not trying to ruin the Super Bowl,” said Gautam Dutta, an attorney representing soccer league. “But we want to make sure the kids are provided for. And right now, time’s up. The fields could be paved over as early as Monday.”
The NFL would have access to the fields from January 4 to March 2. Afterward, the NFL has agreed to replace the fields, but that isn’t viewed as satisfactory by the soccer league, which will have displace up to 250 soccer games during the occupation.Top 14
Clermont sign All Black to replace Sivivatu
ESPN Staff
Clermont are the favourites to sign Zac Guildford © Getty Images Enlarge
Clermont Auvergne have reportedly agreed a two-year deal for All Blacks winger Zac Guildford.
According to L'Equipe, Guildford, who has 10 caps for New Zealand, will arrive at the club ahead of next season and will step into the shoes left by Sitiveni Sivivatu who is off to Castres.
Guildford, who will play for the Crusaders in 2014, has a year to run on his deal with Hawke's Bay but has an exit clause in his contract which would permit him to join Les Jaunards. And Hawke's Bay CEO Mike Bishop has previously said his team could not compete with an offer from Clermont.
"The only way we can do that is if we win Lotto," Bishop said. "In many ways New Zealand rugby can't compete. It is just the chance of representing the All Blacks that keeps many players in this country."
© ESPN Sports Media LtdDONALD Trump’s first overseas trip as US President was portrayed as a series of headline-grabbing gaffes, but it now looks like a serious disaster.
There were numerous opportunities for satire — an awkward handshake with the French president, wife Melania slapping his hand away, a painful meeting with a solemn Pope, a childish guestbook note at a Holocaust Museum, Mr Trump apparently ignoring his host at the G7 summit, his shoving Montenegro’s PM out of the way and a cringeworthy “curtsy” to the King of Saudi Arabia.
But behind the theatre of it all were some alarming developments, and world leaders have been vocal in their displeasure.
While the White House has publicly declared the nine-day trip to the Middle East and Europe a resounding success, Mr Trump is holding urgent meetings with his top aides back in Washington to fix what is looking like a dire situation.
Angela Merkel has openly announced that the US has lost Germany’s trust, and the doubts are growing across the rest of the world — even in the West Wing itself.
Here’s why the President has a problem.
THAT NATO SPEECH
Mr Trump caused shockwaves at his first NATO summit in Brussels last Thursday, when he told 23 of the 28 member nations they owed “massive amounts of money” to funding the military alliance.
He refused to explicitly endorse the longstanding Article 5 principle of mutual defence, instead criticising NATO countries who have not put two per cent of their gross domestic product towards military spending. He also told the meeting “the Germans are bad, very bad” for their trade surplus, and should stop selling millions of cars to the US, Der Spiegel reported.
His behaviour has attracted anger and criticism from world leaders, commentators and politicians.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called him out at the meeting, saying free trade was good for everyone.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said in a statement on Monday that Mr Trump had “shown the world an America that appears rudderless and in crisis”, adding: “I urge him to right the ship and take steps to reassure our allies that we stand by our NATO commitments without qualification.”
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the President’s “brash and condescending lecture to NATO leaders disrespected our closest allies” and that his dishonouring of a defence pact vital to global security “emboldens Russian aggression in Europe.”
LOSING EUROPE
The President took a harsher stance against European allies than leaders in the Middle East, refusing to “lecture” Saudi Arabia or advocate a two-state solution in Israel.
In a speech on Monday, Ms Merkel reiterated her message from Sunday that “the times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over” and that “Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands”.
The German Chancellor added to those comments at a conference on sustainable development in Berlin, saying: “It became clear at the G7, when there was no agreement with the USA, how long and rocky this path would be.”
And she had a clear warning for the US President: “Anyone who today puts on national blinkers and no longer has eyes for the world around him is, I am convinced, ultimately out on a limb.”
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel underlined her point, saying that while it was important to maintain dialogue with Washington, Europe was now the priority.
Ms Merkel’s forthright remarks came after the US President’s NATO insult and refusal to endorse a global climate change accord at the G7. Mr Trump said he would made a decision on the Paris Agreement in the next week or so.
THE RUSSIA CONNECTION
The drama overseas comes at an inopportune time for the Trump administration as it battles serious allegations about suspected ties with Russia.
The President’s son-in-law and trusted confidant Jared Kushner is the latest senior adviser to come under scrutiny over his links to Vladimir Putin’s regime in the FBI probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Washington Post reported he had sought to establish a secret communications line between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin and met with the head of a Russian bank that was on a US sanctions list.
John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s chief of staff during the Monica Lewinsky investigation and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, said the Trump team needs to “organise itself so that this becomes isolated” and that the President was “constantly throwing gasoline on the fire.”
Mr Trump’s “catastrophic” trip would certainly please one leader — Mr Putin. Russia has previously been restrained by NATO from further aggressions, in the Crimea, for example.
The pressure is likely to come to a head when fired FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee, with murmurings of “impeachment” still refusing to die.
Just returned from Europe. Trip was a great success for America. Hard work but big results! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2017
‘UGLY AND DANGEROUS’
Already, sparks are starting to fly in America. “Donald Trump is doing damage to the deepest and most broadly agreed foreign-policy interests of the United States,” former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote in The Atlantic. “He is doing so while people associated with his campaign are under suspicion of colluding with Vladimir Putin’s spy agencies to bring him to office. The situation is both ugly and dangerous.”
One unnamed official told The Daily Beast: “When it comes to diplomacy, President Trump is a drunk tourist.”
The Trump administration is in a “perpetual quagmire on side issues,” chief executive of Newsmax Media Chris Ruddy told the Wall Street Journal. In the West Wing, that has reportedly led to an atmosphere of “backbiting and insecurity.”
There are suggestions the President may move staff around or fire and hire new advisers.
One thing seems clear, the President’s nine-day trip was far from the resounding success the White House wants us to think it was.
— With wires
emma.reynolds@news.com.au | @emmareynBuffalo Wild Wings Inc. says that it will focus its energy on upcoming soccer tournaments, among other initiatives, to turn around a decline in first-quarter same-store sales.
Chief Executive Sally Smith said the chicken wing restaurant chain US:BWLD was “dissatisfied to report a same-store sales decline.” Company-owned restaurants experienced a 1.7% drop, and there was a 2.4% drop at franchised restaurants.
Buffalo Wild Wings shares are up 2.5% in Thursday trading. Shares are down 28% for the past year. The S&P 500 is down 0.9% for the last 12 months.
See also: Buffalo Wild Wings shares fall more than 10% on earnings outlook
Smith outlined a number of initiatives to drive sales in 2016: strengthening the lunch program; continuing its takeout program, which represented 16% of gross restaurant sales in the first quarter; exploring ways to make its Wing Tuesday promotion more appealing, and adding a Happy Hour menu on May 2; and “winning the market for soccer.”
Buffalo Wild Wings has joined with Heineken and PepsiCo. Inc. PEP, -0.08% in hopes of capitalizing on two major tournaments happening this summer: Copa América and the Euro Cup.
“Soccer is a growing sport in the United States and we’ll be the place to watch all the action on the pitch for the major tournaments this summer,” Smith said in a statement.
See also: How to cut the cord on the NBA playoffs and just about every other sporting event
Some analysts believe that the summer soccer tournaments, as well as the Summer Olympics in Rio and other sporting events, will provide the company with an opportunity for a lift. Wedbush analysts, for example said in a Tuesday note that they believe these events will be “potential near-term drivers of same-store sales growth.”
The bank rates Buffalo Wild Wing stock outperform with a $180 price target, which it lowered from $200.
But many analysts chose to focus on the downward revision to the company’s 2016 outlook and other factors that could negatively impact future results. Wedbush, for example, said the lowered guidance was “conservative.”
“Given our recent sales trends and an increasing outlook for the cost of traditional chicken wings, we believe earnings per diluted share in 2016 should be $5.65 to $5.85,” CEO Smith said in a statement. The previous outlook was for $5.95 to $6.20 per share. The FactSet consensus is $5.78.
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“Strategies announced so far seem to be tweaks rather than shifts, suggesting the worst may not be over,” wrote Credit Suisse in a Wednesday note. The bank said this was the company’s first negative same-store sales result since the fourth-quarter 2010 “and continues a recent trend of deceleration.”
“Continuation of weak comps may also raise further questions about Buffalo Wild Wings’ value proposition and store growth plans,” analysts said.
Credit Suisse rates Buffalo Wild Wings underperform and lowered its price target to $120 from $142.
Goldman Sachs removed the company from its “conviction buy” list, even though the bank’s analysts believe the company is in a better position to compete due to upcoming sporting events, among other factors.
“[H]owever, we remove it from the conviction list on the risk of industry headwinds further affecting the top line,” the bank wrote in a Wednesday note. Other risks listed are chicken wing price inflation, a sporting season disruption, and delays in tech rollout plans.
Goldman Sachs lowered Buffalo Wild Wings’ price target to $166 from $185.With the seniors struggling to qualify for the World Cup, the Under-21 and Under-20 teams did not win a single match in their respective European Championship and World Cup this summer, a situation that Mourinho finds baffling.
"I'm just curious about reading the situation because it's sad when the Under-20s, they draw against Iraq," said Mourinho. "The Under-21s, they go and lose against Israel. It's not normal when England has the best football."
Mourinho was put off by the limitations of the international calendar when he met with Football Association officials in 2007 to discuss succeeding Steve McClaren as England manager.
"We had contact and I thought about England," he said. "I was very young and I was very proud. My plan at that time was just to try to motivate myself for a job that doesn't fulfil me.
“What do I do? During the day I'm not training, so I have to go and see them train in their clubs. I have to go and send my goalkeeper coach to work separately.
“At weekends I see every match. I need to analyse and monitor the players. When they were speaking to me about it, the next match was France-England. I was, 'OK, France-England, after that 'what's the next?' The next was one month later against Kazakhstan. No, no."
Mourinho did stress that he wants to help develop young English players and believes that getting the right structures of competition is vital.
"I have to smell it," he said. "I'm very curious. If I can support it with my experience I will. I need to understand how the competition is working because for example in Spain, my kid (who is 13), even when he was 10 he was playing in the championship with 16 teams, 30 official matches playing with the best teams in Madrid. In my time in England before it was not like that. Now I'm not sure.”
Mourinho also outlined the attacking style he wants from Chelsea but stressed that the demands of the Premier League will create its own limitations.
"We have the players but we play in a different league to Madrid," he said.
"My Chelsea from 2004 to 2006, wouldn't win the Scudetto, my Inter wouldn't win the Premier League, my Chelsea wouldn't win La Liga, my Real Madrid wouldn't win the Premier League, my Real Madrid wouldn't win the Scudetto. The characteristics of the league is a big limitation for a certain kind of football.
"The owner always spoke to me the same line that I am saying: we want to play good football, we want to play every match to win, we want to be considered an attacking team. Our philosophy is to try to be dominant every game knowing that when we play against good teams, we also have to defend.”Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement Pope Benedict XVI, who is making his first papal visit to Africa, has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids. The pontiff, who preaches marital fidelity and abstinence, said the practice only increased the problem. "A Christian can never remain silent," he said, after being greeted on arrival in Cameroon by President Paul Biya. The Pope is also due to visit Angola on his week-long trip, where thousands are expected to attend open-air Masses. Some 22 million people are infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UN figures for 2007. This amounts to about two-thirds of the global total. 'Painful wounds' HIV/Aids is a tragedy that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem
Is Catholicism good for Africa? According to Vatican figures, the number of Catholics in Africa has been rising steadily in recent years. Baptised Catholics made up 17% of the African population in 2006, compared with 12% in 1978, the Vatican says. Pope Benedict said on the eve of his trip that he wanted to wrap his arms around the entire continent, with "its painful wounds, its enormous potential and hopes". HIV/Aids was, he argued, "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem". The solution lay, he said, in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer". FROM THE BBC WORLD SERVICE Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
More from BBC World Service Speaking at the airport in Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, the Pope called on Christians to speak up in the face of violence, poverty, hunger, corruption and abuse of power. Sexual abstinence While in Africa, the pontiff is expected to talk to young people about the Aids epidemic and explain to them why the Catholic Church recommends sexual abstinence as the best way to prevent the spread of the disease. He gave a similar message to African bishops who visited the Vatican in 2005, when he told them that abstinence and fidelity, not condoms, were the means to tackle the epidemic. The BBC's Caroline Duffield, in Cameroon, says people in Yaounde have been energetically sweeping and cleaning everywhere in preparation for Pope Benedict's visit. The Pope also met an imam from Cameroon's Muslim minority The Pope will stay until Friday in Yaounde, where he will meet bishops from all over Africa who will be taking part in a meeting at the Vatican later this year to discuss the Church's role in Africa. In Angola, which is still recovering from 27 years of civil war, Pope Benedict will meet diplomats posted in Luanda and is expected to urge the international community not to abandon Africa. The pontiff is also due to hold private talks with political leaders in the two countries, both of which have been accused of corruption and squandering revenues from natural resources.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionBy Jeff Jenkins in News | February 18, 2015 at 8:02PM
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A bill that would expand broadband in West Virginia cleared its first Senate committee Wednesday with an expected stiffer test coming.
The Senate Transportation Committee forwarded the bill that would put the state in charge of a middle mile network.
Retired Judge Dan O’Hanlon, who is currently the director of WVNET and vice chancellor of technology at the HEPC, said WVNET could manage the network, which he said would serve as an interstate of sorts for broadband.
“We would be managing basically the infrastructure and then encouraging companies to provide the last mile particularly in the small towns where we get so many complaints that they don’t have access. Not just access to broadband but affordable broadband,” O’Hanlon said.
The bill would create a 2,600-mile fiber network. The $78 million project would be paid for with bonds.
Frontier Communications lobbyist Kathy Cosco said her company has invested millions and continues to expand its service. She says state-run networks haven’t been greatly successful in other states.
“The construction of a state-owned middle-mile network will be duplicative of the existing network infrastructure, come at a significant risk to the taxpayers, so that if an eventual transition back to the private sector occur unnecessarily putting at risk the state’s bond rating,” she said.
CityNet President Jim Martin told the committee without an adequate middle-mile network broadband would not be able to be provided to rural areas. He said current middle-mile networks in the state go to more populated areas.
The state’s Chief Technology Officer Gale Given said she’s needs more facts before deciding if a state-operated middle-mile system would be a good idea.
“Perhaps this network is necessary but perhaps only half of this network is necessary,” she said.
The bill heads to the Senate Finance Committee for consideration.#10 #10 #10 #10 #10 #10 #10 #10 #10
Tyronn Lue Full Name:Tyronn Jamar Lue
Position: Point Guard
D.O.B.: May 3, 1977
Height: 6-0
Weight: 178 lbs
College: Nebraska '98
Birthplace: Mexico, MO
Current Team: Washington Wizards
UPDATES 3/04/02- I added a FORUM for you to add comments and questions, I also added a Tyronn Lue QUIZ. give it a try.
1/31/02- I added a new page to the wizardsdays section. I also changed the pictures on the entrance and contents pages.
1/18/02- I added an article to the news section. It is a very interesting article about Tyronn. It's a background/bio of Tyronn's career. It's on the washington wizards website. Check it out CLICK HERE! TO SEE ARTICLE!
1/03/02- Happy New Year 2002!
Download your own copy of Tyronn Lue wallpaper from the washington wizards official site. They also have Kwame Brown, Richard Hamilton, and Brendan Haywood.
Click Here for your copy of Wizards wallpaper
12/29/01- I added more quotes to the quotes page. I also updated the news page. I also changed the picture on the entrance page. I will periodically change the picture on the entrance page and the contents page, for a little variety.
12/19/01- I added a third page of pictures to the lakerdays gallery.**Note** MANY THANKS TO LIS WAGNER for all the pictures. I appreciate all your help!!!****
12/17/01- I changed the contents page. I added more pictures to the lakerdays gallery and the collegedays gallery.
Disclaimer: I am not in affiliation with Tyronn Lue or the NBA or any of its affiliates. This is an unofficial site created by a fan for fans only. All logos in this site are copyrighted to the NBA. All photos found on this site are copyrighted to the various photographers who took them. This site has been created solely for entertainment purposes and no copyright infringement is intended.
Please click on one of the links below Salla Claret's Weekly Survey What do you like most about Tyronn Lue? He plays for the Wizards His basketball skills His hair His face His body His overall looks His personality His attitude Everything Other
Current results Biographie/Background Just a little background check. Find out where he grew up, his friends and influences, and his basketball career. News Find out what's happening in the news regarding Tyronn. Archived and current news. Pictures Lots of Pictures. Pictures of Tyronn in action, college days pictures, Laker days pictures, and some current Wizards pictures. Quotes Check out what some interesting things people had to say about Tyronn and some interesting things he said himself. Tyronn Lue Forum This is where you can display your comments on Tyronn Lue and the Wizards. You can also interact with other Ty Lue fans. Take My Tyronn Lue Quiz Take this quiz and test your knowledge on Tyronn Lue.Viktoria Telek is a successful commercial real estate broker in Florida who has been named to the “Top 30 Under 30” list by Realtor Magazine. Despite her intense career, Viktoria recently won Shape Magazine’s “Hot Body” contest where she beat out thousands of applicants and was featured in the September 2010 issue with a full page spread. So how does she maintain a fitness model body with such a busy career? Check out my interview with her below to learn more!
1. Hey Viktoria, thanks so much for your willingness to share your insights into staying in shape with a busy professional lifestyle. So for starters, have you always been in such great shape? Was there a time in your life where you didn’t exactly have a fitness model body?
I have always been very active and enjoyed playing sports. But, as I approached my sophomore year in college I noticed that my metabolism began to slow down and I could no longer eat everything I wanted to. I also realized that I needed to start working out in order to maintain my weight. I started off in the gym with 30-45 minutes of cardio on the elliptical or running outside. I gained about ten pounds from my freshman year of college and kept it for about 4 years. I did not know how to properly train or eat so I could only maintain my weight. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I was able to take my shape to next level. Especially, for busy professionals your time is limited so you must train effectively to burn maximum calories. Working out for me is just as important as all the other things I have to do during the day and always make it a point to fit in my schedule.
2. What kind of workouts, or activities do you? Are there any that form the core of your exercise regimen?
After years in the gym, I realized that in order to be consistent and effectively live an active lifestyle you have to enjoy your workout. I now teach boot camp classes outside on the beach and in the park 4 days a week for 1 hour. The focus of all my workouts includes cardio interval training, body weight exercises that target the core and exercises the incorporate the total body to effectively burn maximum calories in the least amount of time. In addition I enjoy boxing, dancing, snowboarding, yoga, outdoor activities including running, biking, tennis, beach volleyball, and water sports such as wakeboarding, kiteboarding, SUP (stand-up paddle boarding), surfing, and swimming. If you look forward to your workout or physical activity then you will want to be active every day.
3. How many days per week do you workout and for how long?
I believe once working out become a part of your lifestyle you will want to be active every day. I typically train 6 days a week for an hour and do one of my favorite activities on the weekend.
4. Many women are terrified of strength training because they will get “bulky”. Do you do any strength training? What would you say to women who fear getting “bulky” with strength training?
I love this question because I used to have the exact same fear. No one believes me now but I have always struggled with having “big arms”. My body type is very muscular and I was not born with tiny arms. Even after losing my college 10 lbs my arms still made me look bigger and I refused to use weights. Finally, I have successful shredded the fat and sculpted my arms to what they are today by incorporating strength training into my workout. For women seeking lean sexy arms you need to incorporate light weight training into your workout. The key is to use light weight, 15-20 repetitions per set and incorporate cardio in your workout. I highly recommend pushups and boxing.
5. Can you share a quick sample workout routine that you do?
One of my favorite workouts is the YouTube video called- Lean Sculpted Arms Workout. (Please see bottom of article for a video of this workout!)
6. How would you describe your eating approach, or strategy? Any favorite healthy foods, meals, or snacks?
I practice the art of portion control. I always start my day off with a healthy breakfast and then a snack 2 hours later, lunch 2-3 hours later, an afternoon snack 2-3 hours after lunch, then a light dinner and even a small snack after dinner. It is all about calories in and calories out. There are no miracle diets or tricks, you just simply need a well balanced diet, small portions every 2-3 hours to keep your metabolism up. I also believe that once you have achieved your diet goals to avoid overeating you should not cheat yourself of your cravings. If you have a craving for say, chocolate have a piece. Enjoy it slowly and don’t eat the whole candy bar!
7. One of the top excuses for why people don’t work out is lack of time. How do you find time, or make the time for exercising with such a busy schedule?
In life you have choices and the ability to prioritize what is important to you. For me, my day is not complete until I have a good sweat. Everyone can find time (even just 15 minutes) in their schedule. By making a commitment to your body, you WILL see changes. If you have kids you can take them to the park and run with them or do your pushups and squats while they play. Having a workout buddy is also a great way to stay committed and enjoy your time working out.
8. Industrial real estate is a very competitive business. Has being fit helped you have more energy and focus to succeed in your career?
Industrial real estate is a competitive business and typically male dominated which is why being fit and involved in sports has added to my success and ability to gain respect from other professionals and clients.
Eating healthy and being active will improve your overall quality of life, enhance your career potential, allow you to achieve your goals, boost energy, build lean stronger muscles, increase endurance, gain confidence and help you live a more productive life. People admire and acknowledge the dedication one has to have to stay in shape. The ability to manage your time and commitment to maintaining a healthy & fit lifestyle are great qualities not only to look and feel good but also in your workplace.
9. Most working professionals frequent cocktail parties and other social functions with a lot of temptations to consume unhealthy foods and drinks. Do you have any tips for avoiding these pitfalls?
This is a great question and social functions can get you off track very easily, especially with everyone around you indulging. The number one advice is to eat before you go to the social function. Have you ever been to an event that had healthy snacks, low- fat foods and fat free deserts?
Stay on schedule and eat a light meal before heading off to the event. Once at the event a key to avoid any temptations keep your mind off the food & desert tables and enjoy everyone around you. If you feel the urge to indulge take a few minutes to think about how hard you have worked and walk away. Usually, you will become engaged in a new conversation and completely forget about that calorie packed appetizer. If you choose to have a drink, make sure you stick to a glass of wine and vodka with soda or tonic water. Avoid the high calorie and sugar packed “pretty” drink specials.
While everyone goes for the cakes, pies and other sweets, I suggest enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee. Not only will it satisfy your sweet craving, but the caffeine also acts as a hunger suppressant.
10. At the office, there are also many temptations to eat unhealthy foods. Do you have any tips to share for staying healthy at the office?
Another great question and challenge I had to overcome. The office is a place of constant temptations that you have to avoid every day. I used to not only eat one cookie but kept going back to the kitchen until there were no more cookies left. Now, I don’t even take a bite. If I have a craving I stick a piece of gum in my mouth or wait 5 minutes for the craving to go away. Before you grab a cookie, a piece of cake or chocolate ask yourself is a sugar rush for few minutes worth an extra hour of working out?
Here’s a video Viktoria demonstrating a workout that combines some of her favorite arm exercises with cardio:
Viktoria graciously offered to answer any questions, or comments you may have below in the comment section, but we’re taking this offer down within a couple weeks of this post! For more on Viktoria, you can check out her fitness website www.TheSouthBeachBootCamp.com.
Update: Commenting is now closed.Note pad (Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Belief in God is essential
KEVIN WINGATE
Muncie
According to Christian teaching, the chief end of man is to know God. That’s why we’re here. But most people, sad to say, spend little or no time getting to know God.
Claiming that we are more enlightened than our “primitive” ancestors and can dispense with belief in God reveals unmatched arrogance. Sir Isaac Newton, whose scientific investigations enlightened mankind about various natural phenomena, was a believer in God and spent considerably more time studying Bible prophecy than doing science. Even today, there are many highly acclaimed scientists and philosophers who believe in the God of the Bible.
Atheists who still desire to discredit the Bible make all sorts of ignorant assertions. For example, it is said that the Bible condones slavery and therefore cannot be used as a moral guide. The Bible does not condone slavery, especially as it was practiced in antebellum America. God does not want anyone to be in any kind of bondage. Yes, the Bible does mention bondservants and how they should be treated, but servitude in ancient Israel was not unlike indentured servitude in the American colonies, many of whose earliest inhabitants immigrated at someone else’s expense.
Finally, a few questions. How do atheists know that slavery is evil? Where does their morality come from? Are they not borrowing God’s own standard of justice to make their case against him? Could it be that their sense of right and wrong comes from having a conscience given to them by God?
Is it too late?
RAYMOND BURCHAM
Dunkirk
Can traditional American freedoms and culture be saved from being relegated to the ash heap of history? It seems that in recent years America’s constitutional religious liberties have been dissolved at a rapid pace. We seem indifferent and oblivious to the decline of our God-given, Founding Fathers-instituted constitutional rights.
Our Founders enshrined the free exercise of religion as the very first freedom in the Bill of Rights. Protection of freedom to religious liberty is the foundation for all the other freedoms we enjoy. There is no such thing as a free society without religious liberty. If we lose our religious liberties in this, our country, we will have lost everything. And we are on the verge of doing that.
Our religious liberties and freedoms are not “politically correct” and are about to be discarded as outdated and bigoted. We who believe the Bible will become known as bigots. Senior citizens, of which I am one, are especially pained by what we see going on. We have seen over the course of our lives where our country has come from, where we are, and where we are headed.
George Washington said, “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”
To fail to do the above will most assuredly relegate us to the ash heap of history. If we do the above, we may find our way back to freedom.
Read or Share this story: http://tspne.ws/2cijvCLWhile doing research previous in preparation for the Venus ISRU series, one of the questions that I knew needed a good answer was “how do you actually send vehicles to/from a floating cloud colony?” Unlike the any other near-term manned spaceflight destination, there isn’t a fixed point of land that you can touch-down on. Also, with its thicker atmosphere and only slightly lower gravity, launch from Venus will likely take two stages. How do you recover stages if they can’t return directly to launch site? If you can’t come up with a good answer to these questions that doesn’t require crazy advanced technology, it could be a showstopper. Because a flying cloud city isn’t very useful if you can’t get to it.
This morning, I had an epiphany. One of the papers I had read over the past year or two about Venus missions was a paper by Geoffrey Landis on low-altitude Venus balloons[1]. One of the mind-blowing conclusions from this paper was that you could make a 1mm thick titanium spherical pressure vessel about 3.8m in diameter that could both survive reentry, and function as a “balloon” that would hover at around 5-10km altitude. This got me thinking…
Rocket stages are relatively low density when empty… Could you get a rocket stage post-burnout to float in the Venusian atmosphere? If so, could you do it at an altitude high enough that the temperature wouldn’t destroy the stage?
Short answers: Yes, and maybe.
In order to figure this out, I needed a few pieces of information. First, I needed a good estimate for the atmospheric density on Venus with respect to altitude. It took some digging, but I eventually found this table in another paper by Geoffrey Landis[2]:
In case you’re wondering, the best curve fit I could get (R=.99991) for the first 60km was rho = -0.000340*H^3 + 0.055606*H^2 – 3.184604*H + 64.563149
Because the floatation altitude is the altitude at which the density of the stage equals the atmospheric density, we need to estimate the density of the empty stage. For this we need the inert mass of the stage and the approximate external volume of the stage. To simplify the volume calculation, we’re assuming that the only volume in the stage is the tanks themselves. This is a bit conservative, as the volume of engines and other structures also helps a tiny bit, but it’s much easier to get an estimate of the tank volumes than any of the other relevant volume numbers. Even tank volumes typically aren’t published, so we estimated them by taking the propellant load, estimating the tank mixture ratio (unless we knew it), estimating the propellant bulk density at launch, and estimating the amount of ullage space. I created a spreadsheet to calculate these density numbers, and to then estimate the resulting “flotation |
filed a complaint seeking to sell the Crested Butte property and use the proceeds to pay off creditors in the bankruptcy, after paying the debt against the condo and paying Andrea Chernushin her half of the sales price.
In an Aug. 10 filing, Andrea Chernushin disputed that "this Court has subject matter jurisdiction in any matter related to the Crested Butte Property as that property is no longer an asset of the Debtor's Estate since the Debtor's death in June 2016."
In a Dec. 12 filing, Cohen argues that bankruptcy courts have exclusive jurisdiction over the assets in a bankruptcy estate, including "every conceivable interest of the debtor" held on the date a bankruptcy petition is filed, regardless of the death of the debtor. When the bankruptcy was filed, ownership of the condo was not disputed, Cohen argues.
But that federal bankruptcy law is in conflict with a Colorado law, specifically the law of joint tenancy with right of survivorship. That law allows a property jointly held to transfer to the survivor, and the deceased owner's interest is terminated.
So which pertains? Federal bankruptcy law or state law?
Federal law, Cohen says in his motion, quoting from the U.S. Constitution, which states that federal law "shall be the supreme Law of the Land... Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
"The prospect that property of the estate could be eliminated or removed absent a motion by the trustee and an order of the court is counter to all aspects of the United States Bankruptcy Code," Cohen argues.
On Dec. 29, Andrea Chernushin filed a request seeking an extension of time until Jan. 16 to file a response and cross-motion for summary judgment, which would ask the judge to let her keep the house. "Mrs. Chernushin maintains that Colorado law and bankruptcy law are clear here and that summary judgment should actually enter in her favor on this issue," the motion states.
"Defendant Andrea Chernushin owned the Crested Butte Property as a joint tenant with her deceased husband until June 9, 2016 when he passed away. Defendant Andrea Chernushin is now the sole and exclusive owner of the Crested Butte Property," the filing states.
It adds she is "now the sole owner of the Crested Butte Property as the surviving tenant" and the bankruptcy trustee has no claim to it.
Chernushin's lawyer disciplined
Paul Gefreh, a Colorado Springs lawyer who represented Gregory Chernushin in bankruptcy court, has been disciplined by the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel related to that case.
Gefreh, a former bankruptcy trustee, was suspended from practicing law for one year and one day, with all but three months to be stayed upon successful completion of a one-year period of probation. The suspension was effective Nov. 16.
Gefreh was accused of filing a Chapter 13 bankruptcy for Chernushin and maneuvering to try to save his home from liquidation, although Gefreh knew his client didn't qualify for Chapter 13, because his debts were too high.
The Attorney Regulation Counsel also noted in the suspension notice that Gefreh claimed Chernushin had no income during the two years prior to the bankruptcy filing, even though Chernushin had admitted in his disciplinary record that he'd received more than $300,000 during that period. Gefreh acknowledged to authorities it was "professionally inappropriate" to file under Chapter 13.
Gefreh was found to have violated five tenets of Colorado's Rules of Professional Conduct dealing with ethics, frivolous claims, false statements, dishonesty and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.By now, you’ve probably read Patriot News columnist David Jones’ rabble-rousing piece outlining some of the reasons behind Bill O’Brien’s departure — specifically quoting O’Brien during profanity laced tirade against so-called “Paterno people” that supposedly drove him right out of Happy Valley. If you haven’t, you should.
I couldn’t help but feel compelled the first time I read the story Tuesday night. On the surface, it has significant shock value and information you won’t find anywhere else. But then I read it again. And again. And now, three days later, I find myself reading it for the dozenth time and growing angrier and angrier at an ill-conceived quote that went viral and once again damaged our collective identity for no good reason.
Before I explain, let me make two things clear:
1. Joe Paterno’s legacy has no bearing on the ridiculousness of this story and O’Brien’s comments. It’s a complete non sequitur to the negative impact of this story as far as I’m concerned. Let’s not distract the point with those arguments.
2. I’m actually a big fan of David Jones. I don’t always agree with his opinion, but he’s one of the most eloquent and well-connected writers on the beat and I have immense respect for his work. No matter how angry you might be at Jones for this one, don’t let this incident devolve into ad hominem.
Now, to the story. Here’s an excerpt of a conversation Jones had with O’Brien in early December, which he left unpublished until Tuesday:
O’Brien’s ire also was raised that day by my suggestion that a faction of Joe Paterno-era loyalists seemed to me to be miffed by Vanderlinden’s departure or dismissal, depending upon their view, and that they might want some sort of explanation. The former linebackers coach had been the second-longest-tenured member of the staff, dating to 2000, one of only two remaining staff members hired by the legendary coach. This really got O’Brien going: “You can print this: You can print that I don’t really give a —- what the ‘Paterno people’ think about what I do with this program. I’ve done everything I can to show respect to Coach Paterno. Everything in my power. So I could really care less about what the Paterno faction of people, or whatever you call them, think about what I do with the program. I’m tired of it. “For any ‘Paterno person’ to have any objection to what I’m doing, it makes me wanna put my fist through this windshield right now.”
This entire exchange is just a head scratcher. It was doomed from the beginning, starting from when Jones made the false assertion that “Paterno loyalists” specifically were miffed about the Vanderlinden dismissal. I’ve heard very few people mention the Paterno connection as a reason to be upset about Vanderlinden’s departure. No, people are confused about the Vanderlinden dismissal because he was a great coach, independent of his Paterno affiliation.
Is O’Brien really so thin skinned that he can’t understand why fans would want answers about why one of the best position coaches in the country was fired? I don’t know why Vanderlinden was dismissed, and I trust that O’Brien had a good reason for his dismissal. But to fault fans for questioning a decision to let a coach go, with no explanation, who seemingly developed Pro Bowl-caliber linebackers year in and year out? That has nothing to do with Joe Paterno, and they’re fair questions to ask.
The second part of the exchange is just as absurd: “So I could really care less about what the Paterno faction of people, or whatever you call them, think about what I do with the program. I’m tired of it.”
This is coming from a man who was one of the most ubiquitously loved college football coaches in the entire country. In two years, I can count the number of Penn State fans on one hand — Paterno loyalist or otherwise — who did not support Bill O’Brien. To claim that Paterno loyalists were in any large number against O’Brien or what he did with the program is a lie. O’Brien was adored at Penn State by essentially everyone in the community — I suspect only a handful of coaches would have a higher approval rating at any level of football.
Sure, some of the more traditional fans were upset about O’Brien’s decision to put names on the jerseys and a few other small decisions. They have a right to be, because for many people, tradition is important and change is hard. But even the fans upset about those relatively inconsequential changes almost always supported and loved O’Brien.
Obviously, O’Brien had plenty of valid reasons to leave. Coaching in the NFL is the top of the profession, and he made no secret that it was a dream of his. He’ll undoubtedly be making more money. Now he can just coach football instead of being forced to act as an ambassador for he university, something he never really embraced. But, to tell David Jones that the reasons for leaving Penn State are fans questioning a high-profile coaching change and fans being unhappy with the direction of the program? The former is reasonable; the latter is simply untrue.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was an instance of confirmation bias — David Jones, after all, coined the term “JoeBots” to describe the folks that are still fighting to restore Paterno’s legacy. Jones asserts “Some of his frustrations revolved around what he saw as the lack of leadership at Penn State” but offers no flippant quotes or insults about that nugget. And then again, maybe O’Brien does actually harbor some deep-seated hatred for any fan who dare question the departure of the best linebackers coach in the country. I don’t understand it, but it could be true.
So why do I care? If this was just a typical Jones column that gets passed around for a day or two and then falls into the abyss, as most things tend to do on the Internet, it wouldn’t really matter. But telling Joe Paterno loyalists to fuck off was, of course, too much for the national media to pass up.
More than 41,000 articles now show up on Google that include the terms “O’Brien” and “Paterno people”. Almost every national outlet picked up the story — ESPN, USA Today, Yahoo, Fox, Daily News, Washington Post, Sporting News, Philadelphia Magazine, and Chicago Tribune just to name ten. Of course, the articles didn’t mention the fact that almost every Penn Stater loved and embraced O’Brien — that we believed in him almost unequivocally and that, ultimately, he had honest NFL aspirations all along. No, that quote and those articles paint a picture of a crazy Penn State cult that ran O’Brien out of town like a bunch of lunatics, a situation that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s an incredibly damaging narrative, and there’s no going back at this point.
Steve Jones had similar things to say on his radio show yesterday. Jones dedicated the first 15 minutes to discussing the article, saying “I don’t think (Dave Jones) had it quite right.”
“I think more context was needed beyond everyone just picking up this story,” Jones said. “You can’t paint with a broad brush unless you come to the table with a full palette. Dave needs a fuller palette to give perspective on what this actually means.”
Just another day at Penn State, where one off-the-record, fallacious quote paints the entire community as an insufferable cult. Here’s to a new coach and a new era.
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About the Author
Kevin Horne Kevin Horne was the editor of Onward State from 2012-2014 and currently holds the position of Managing Editor Emeritus, which is a fake title he made up. He graduated from Penn State with degrees journalism and political science in 2014 and is currently seeking his J.D. at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law. A third generation Penn Stater from Williamsport, Pa., Kevin is also the president of the graduate student government. Email: [email protected]
East Renovation Continues With Approval For Sproul, Geary Halls Penn State’s Board of Trustees approved the next phase of East Halls renovations at its meeting Friday, setting the stage for construction to begin on Sproul and Geary Halls.Like Natural Human Intestines
In a breakthrough for regenerative medicine, scientists have grown intestinal tissues with functional nerves in a laboratory setup using human pluripotent stem cells. The synthesized tissue was used to study Hirschsprung’s disease, a congenital condition where nerve cells are missing from the colon, causing complications in passing stool. The research is detailed in Nature Medicine.
A pluripotent stem cell is a precursor cell to all the other types of cells in the body. In a petri dish, the stem cells were treated in a biochemical bath that triggered the formation into intestinal tissue. The novel part of the study was the construction of a nervous system on the intestinal organoid. The researchers manipulated neural crest cells to grow a system of nerves. By putting together the neural crest cells and the intestinal tissue at the exact time, they successfully grew together into a complex functional system.
The tissues were transplanted into mice. They worked successfully and showed a structure “remarkably similar” to that of a natural human intestine.
Lab-Grown Organs
The scientists see that in the future, this development could have greater potential in studying diseases, such as Hirschsprung’s, and treating them.In his first major intervention in the debate, the Most Rev Justin Welby said he could not support David Cameron’s same-sex marriage Bill in its current form.
He warned that the reform “weakened” the concept of the “normal” family as the basis for a strong community and replaced traditional marriage with something “less good”.
Archbishop Welby has been reluctant to join the public condemnation of the reforms, despite widespread opposition from Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Muslims and other faith organisations.
The Church of England has previously adopted a more conciliatory position towards the reforms, acknowledging that parliament was likely to pass the Bill and seeking to secure legal protections from ministers to stop churches being forced to conduct gay marriages.
The government says the Bill, which will be voted upon in the Lords on Tuesday, contains a “quadruple lock” of measures to safeguard the Church of England against legal challenges on human rights grounds.
Archbishop Welby said the plan “may have some chance of withstanding legal scrutiny” in the European courts but many faith groups remained fearful.
Speaking on the first day of debate on the Bill in the House of Lords, the Archbishop warned that legalising same sex marriages would be a social problem, not a faith issue.
“We think that traditional marriage is a cornerstone of society,” he told peers.
“Rather than adding a new and valued institution alongside it for same gender relationships, which I would personally strongly support to strengthen us all, this Bill weakens what exists and replaces it with a less good option that is neither equal nor effective," he said.
“The concept of marriage as a normative place for procreation is lost; the idea as marriage as covenant is diminished; the family in its normal sense, predating the state, and as our base community of society, as we have already heard, is weakened.
“It is not at heart a faith issue,” he said. “It is about the general social good. So with much regret but entire conviction I cannot support the Bill as it stands.”
Do you agree? Would gay marriage “diminish” Christian marriage and damage the fabric of society?
The Archbishop criticised the Bill for mistakenly treating marriages and weddings as the same thing. Gay couples can have equality without needing to be able to marry, he said. “Two things may be equal but different."
The Bill also fails to deliver equal rights for homosexuals because it distinguishes clearly between same-sex and opposite-sex marriage, “thus not achieving true equality”.
“The result is confusion. Marriage is abolished, redefined, and recreated, being different and unequal for different categories.”
The new definition of marriage is “an awkward shape” with same-sex and opposite sex marriages “scrunched into it” but not fitting well, the Archbishop said.
The Lords debate follows an overwhelming vote in favour of the Marriage (same sex couples) BIll in the Commons last month.
Lord Dear, a former chief constable, urged peers to reject the "ill-considered" Bill. He warned that it risked inflaming hatred of homosexuals and was a "moral minefield".
“We find ourselves in a world where an ill-conceived Bill seeks to overturn centuries of tradition, heedless of public opinion and religious leaders and blind to the laws of unintended consequences," he said.
However, the government warned that the future of marriage as an institution depended on opening it up to modern society.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston said: “I am speaking in support of those same-sex couples who want the opportunity to marry because very simply this government considers their love and commitment to be no different from that of opposite sex couples.
“We believe same-sex couples should be able to marry if they want to and extending that choice is the right thing to do for them and the right thing to do for the future of marriage,” she said. If marriage is to continue to flourish, “we need the institution to reflect our modern inclusive society”.
The opposition said many Labour peers were also delighted to support the Bill.
Peers are expected to vote on whether to block the Bill on Tuesday.
The leadership of the Church of England has been torn over whether it would undermine its position by using its votes in the Lords to oppose the reforms.
Bishops have been told privately not to turn up en masse to vote against for fear that it could trigger a political backlash.
One of them, the Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill, even posted a message on his website explaining that he would be staying away from the debate as he had been advised it would be seen as an "abuse of privilege" for all of the bishops in the Lords to attend.
The statement was promptly amended as the Church attempted to deny pressure was being applied on bishops to abstain.
In the debate, the former Bishop of Oxford, Lord Harries, said he supported same-sex marriage and attacked the Church's failure to embrace civil partnerships when they were first proposed.
"I think the idea of a lifelong partnership is a beautiful one," he said.
However, the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Rev Tim Stevens, said he would abstain.Villagers from Beit Iksa, on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem, reportedly have received notice from the Israeli military that they intend to seize 3,176 acres of land from the villages “for military purposes.”
The details of the seizures are scant at the moment, and the military is refusing all comment, but the villagers reportedly received a preliminary warning about the plan back in 2012, and today’s notice reiterated the plans, with orders to vacate by the end of 2017.
Beit Iksa has seen better days, and the village already lost some territory in 2009 to a high-speed rail project. Their close proximity to Israel’s Route 1 is seen as objectionable by many Israeli hawks.
Most of the village’s land lies on the Israeli side of the West Bank barrier, and is unusable by the residents at any rate. It is unclear if the new confiscation is going to include area on the Palestinian side of the barrier.
Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz"Private companies should fund, build, and run more of the basic infrastructure of American life."
That's how the Washington Post sums up a key tenet of the Trump administration's thinking on infrastructure, in an article Wednesday that outlines the White House's push to privatize "some public assets such as airports, bridges, highway rest stops, and other facilities."
President Donald Trump's budget proposal, released Tuesday, calls for spending roughly $200 billion over 10 years to spur at least $800 billion in state, local, and private infrastructure investment.
"Trump advisers said that to entice state and local governments to sell some of their assets, the administration is considering paying them a bonus," the Post reported. "The proceeds of the sales would then go to other infrastructure projects."
The plan also calls for speeding up the regulatory review process, with a fact sheet (pdf) from the White House describing the current environmental review and permitting process as "fragmented, inefficient, and unpredictable." And as Bloomberg reported: "One of the more controversial elements of Trump's outline was reducing the tolling restriction on interstate highways to attract private investment. Trump also supports allowing the private sector to construct, operate, and maintain interstate rest areas, according to the plan."
The Post continued:
The infrastructure initiative is being shaped by White House officials and a task force representing 16 federal departments and agencies. In addition, there is a committee of outside advisers co-chaired by billionaire developer Richard LeFrak, a Trump friend. SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts
LeFrak said the administration's effort, which is being led by Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, [Transportation Secretary Elaine] Chao, and others, is a sweeping attempt to rethink how infrastructure gets built. LeFrak said the issues are intensely personal for Trump, who spent his career in real estate and sees this as an area where he can make a lasting impact.
But as attorney and Public Banking Institute founder Ellen Brown warned in a recent column: "Moving assets off the government's balance sheet by privatizing them looks attractive to politicians concerned with this year’s bottom line, but it's a bad deal for the public. Decades from now, people will still be paying higher tolls for the sake of Wall Street profits on an asset that could have belonged to them all along."
Furthermore, Brown wrote:
Countering the dogma that "private companies can always do it better and cheaper," studies have found that on average, private contractors charge more than twice as much as the government would have paid federal workers for the same job.A 2011 report by the Brookings Institution found that "in practice [PPPs] have been dogged by contract design problems, waste, and unrealistic expectations." In their 2015 report "Why Public-Private Partnerships Don't Work," Public Services International stated that "[E]xperience over the last 15 years shows that PPPs are an expensive and inefficient way of financing infrastructure and divert government spending away from other public services. They conceal public borrowing, while providing long-term state guarantees for profits to private companies." They also divert public money away from the neediest infrastructure projects, which may not deliver sizable returns, in favor of those big-ticket items that will deliver hefty profits to investors.
Indeed, congressional Democrats, who have called for large-scale infrastructure investment, criticized Trump's proposal as a "sleight of hand," decrying its "fuzzy math" and deep cuts to other key initiatives including Amtrak, public housing revitalization, and the TIGER program, which awards grants to states for transportation projects.
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) called Trump's plan "crap," while Caroline Behringer, a spokeswoman for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement: "Trump's budget would take existing money from cities and states that pays for roads, bridges, and transit, and would give it to billionaires and corporate interests...[W]e need a real, bipartisan plan, not tax cuts disguised as an infrastructure plan."
Infrastructure is not the only area where the Trump budget prioritizes privatization. As Common Dreams reported, the administration is also seeking to cut public education programs in order to promote voucher and charter school initiatives, while some critics warned that under Trump's budget, "the slow roll to [Veterans Affairs] privatization is underway."Darren Aronofsky, the Director of Pi (1998), Black Swan (2010) and the upcoming Noah (2014) starring Russell Crow, has teamed with film writer Ari Handel to produce Noah; a new 72-page graphic novel featuring the biblical characters of the Old Testament, and the comic preview to the movie. Most Hollywood talents murder the story of Noah, making him a character of either schizophrenic quality, has no idea the relationship between God and man, or of the cliche prophet who speaks softly, and seems transcendently phony. For further emphasis see Jon Voigt's Noah's Arc (1999), and Charlton Heston's effervescent portrayal of Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956). Attack me if you will, but Heston's Moses is absurdly overacted.
Aronofsky's Noah, however, is a warrior. He is a hard, but humble man. He is youthful, with pre-teen children, and one adopted girl. His world is overrun with the dregs of society; they who stayed behind because of their wickedness when Noah's great-grandfather Enoch and his city were taken into Heaven. Now he is having visions of the great deluge, and of its ultimate consequences.
While Noah of the bible is assured of his destiny, and the destiny of the world, this Noah is not. His relationship with what he calls “the creator” is guesswork at best. Having suffered the wickedness of man, and seen the fulfillment of its sins Noah is not so sure he wants to repopulate the world. He is reluctant to even get started on the arc, until a fantastic miracle spurns him to action.
Throughout the book parts of “The Book of Genesis” are quoted to set the mood. And although many liberties are taken, the story is no less relevant, or less fantastic.
Why I like it: Noah stands on its own as a tightly written story, with transcendent illustrations by Canadian comic book artist Niko Henrichon. The book does not spit on Christian morals every other page. Even the villain, the leader of the remnants named Tubal-Cain is a human character who exhibits traits of darkest black, and lightest light. Murderous and compassionate. He is Noah's compliment, more dark than light to Noah's more light than darkness. The environment is surreal yet believable. Immersion in its fantastic concepts is as easy as stepping into a high mountain desert. The arc has no concrete form. The effect is that the sacred vessel remains mysterious and metaphysically appealing amid the madness.
The color palette is fleshy, and cool, communicating an apocalyptic feeling while dancing on our hopes. Throughout the novel the story draws you in, and whips you through the pages. Even as the flood is raging, there is plenty of drama to be had on the inside. And we are left breathless until the very end. And I won't say the end is rosy, or gleeful. It is fitting, and it is human.
Why I don't like it: It exalts the abstaining of meats, and gives the consumption of animals to the wicked. Not all righteous are vegan, and not all meat consumers are evil. Yep. There is a strange race of beings drawn from out of the blue that nevertheless perform their part, and are a representation of the relationship between the divine and mankind. There is an episode of immorality.
Why it doesn't matter whether I like it or not: it's an excellent story. It is not biblical. Understanding that will help the religious look past the quirks and appreciate the vision. Remember we're talking about Darren Aranofsky, who made films like Pi (1998) and Requiem For A Dream (2000). His ambition in creating worthy works of art is unbounded, and it has proved nothing but a benefit to those of us who consume and appreciate good media. I am looking forward to the film, with open mind, and excitement to see these panels come to life on the big screen March 28th. Be there!Indigenous elders often say that memory is in the blood and bone, that our stories are passed not just verbally but through a kind of genetic memory.
Well, it turns out that may not be far from the truth. Amy Bombay is Anishinaabe from Rainy River First Nation in Ontario.
Amy Bombay with her family. (courtesy Amy Bombay) She's an assistant professor of psychiatry at Dalhousie University in Halifax, and has been studying the impact of trauma and how it reverberates through generations. She was drawn to this field of study, specifically related to residential schools, because of its effect on her own family.
"Both my grandparents on my father's side attended, and most of my aunts and uncles on that side as well," she explained.
When she started her research 10 years ago, Bombay said she began by focusing on mental health outcomes, exploring why Indigenous Peoples in Canada and elsewhere suffer from higher levels of psychological distress.
"What we found was that... those who had a parent or grandparent who went to residential school seemed to be at increased risk for psychological distress, suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and this is in both adults and youth," she said.
Though our bodies are designed to deal with stress, Bombay said when the stress becomes chronic, our bodies are no longer able to keep up. That's when problems happen.
Bombay said in addition to the psychological and social pathways, there is evidence epigenetic pathways are involved in the transmission of trauma. That evidence has been studied in the children of Holocaust survivors, in regard to changes in the expression of DNA, not changes to underlying DNA.
"We now know that experiences and the environment can turn on or off genes, so the function of those genes is changed," Bombay explained. "In terms of how that is transmitted generationally, we know that if those changes happen to be in the germ line, so in the egg or the sperm, they have the potential to be transmitted across generations."
Though Bombay said you cannot draw exact correlations between the children of Holocaust and Residential School survivors, there are clear similarities between the two groups.
"We conducted our own research in relation to the residential school system and found a lot of the same issues like this conspiracy of silence around talking about this issue. And this research is consistent with populations that have undergone collective and historical trauma around the world," she said.
"So not only in relation to the Holocaust, but we know these big historical and collective traumas are associated with a number of negative outcomes. Which are expected."
Bombay has seen this research play a role in the process of reconciliation. And said taking the data out into communities and explaining it, has broken the silence.
"A lot of people didn't know why their parents had so many problems, or they didn't know why their parents acted the way they do," she said. "Learning about these intergenerational effects really helped a lot of people heal and elicited forgiveness within families and communities."
Click the listen button above for the full interview with Amy Bombay.It was a dark evening in our parliament’s history. Many has been the occasion when parliament has stood up against bad, dangerous government. Last night was not one of them. The Conservative Brexit government said to parliament “we don’t have a clue what will happen if you vote for Brexit – but vote for it anyway.” And it did.
MPs vote to give May power to trigger article 50 – as it happened Read more
The Liberal Democrats were the only UK-wide party that voted against. Labour could have joined us and blocked Theresa May’s hard Brexit, but chose to sit on its hands. There will be families today fearful that they will be torn apart, no longer feeling welcome in Britain. Their only crime is that a member of the family was born somewhere else in the EU. Shamelessly, the government is using such people like chips in a casino. Shamefully, Labour has let them.
Jeremy Corbyn could have ensured ministers were held to account in Brexit negotiations, but gave his parliamentarians a night off and wrote a blank cheque to the government. May will try to use this to deliver the hardest and harshest of Brexits few voted for, endangering another union (this one the United Kingdom), damaging our economy and reducing the life chances of young people.
Labour is meant to be the opposition. For all the party’s hard-left posturing, its politics of the placard, on the biggest question in a generation, Labour might as well have decamped to the Tory benches. Despite having so few MPs, we are now the only opposition to this government.
Apparently, May will trigger article 50 soon, despite rearing back from doing so today. I suppose we should be grateful on this occasion that our prime minister is a ditherer. To trigger article 50 while government Brexit strategy is in chaos would be an act of historic recklessness.
Ministers have simply not done the work to provide new trade deals. Even Liam Fox admits crashing out of the single market without new arrangements would be “bad” for Britain, itself a magisterial understatement. But if May rushes headlong into a panicked triggering of article 50 without a clear idea of what she wants out of negotiations, she will have left us at the mercy of 27 countries who have heard little but table-thumping and empty threats from ministers. Despite the sacking of wise heads such as Michael Heseltine, it is vital that Conservatives who believe in economic sanity find their voice. Just as Tory MPs are reminding the government of its manifesto commitment not to raise national insurance, so they must remind May of her party’s manifesto commitment to stay in the single market.
Huge swathes of the population are disenfranchised by the lemming-like Labour-Tory rush over the cliff edge into a hard Brexit. Manchester Gorton will see a byelection in an area where 60% of people voted remain. Labour assumes it will win, but waving through Brexit is endangering worker rights, environmental protection and the future of immigrants. Many will be mystified: why wouldn’t a progressive fight the Tories on this?
If you haven’t, you can’t plausibly fight them on anything else. Just as you can’t have a hard Brexit and a strong economy, you can’t have a hard Brexit and a strong NHS. The Brexit squeeze, caused by a falling pound and rising prices, will gnaw at consumer confidence which has been bolstering the economy. Make no mistake, with tax revenues struggling, the chancellor will shrink the state. And as ever, it will be the poor who pay the price.
Meanwhile, the very future of our union has been jeopardised by the so-called Conservative and Unionist party (I guess we should no longer be surprised: the Tories delighted in being “the party of business”, once). For genuine patriots – I’m not talking about the Tory/Ukip nationalists whose patriotism is built on mistrust of “others” – this is a nightmare: as an English patriot, I face the prospect of losing friends across the Channel and family the other side of Hadrian’s Wall.
The Guardian view on another Scottish vote: Theresa May’s homemade crisis | Editorial Read more
It is tempting to despair. But we can’t give up. I am proud the Liberal Democrats are the only party fighting to protect our place in the EU while safeguarding that earlier union. All progressives should rally to this cause. If we fight hard Brexit, we can protect the union. And if we protect the union, together we can fight hard Brexit.
Events can still derail hard Brexit. A worsening economy could force Tories to come to their senses. And the longer it rumbles on, the clearer it will be that ministers have no plan. At every point progressives must fight, from securing pension rights for EU nationals who have paid taxes here for years to staying in Europol so we don’t see a recreation of the Costa del Crime.
The Tories want to jump into the darkness. We don’t need to jump with them.Tim Ferriss is many things–including a writer, a tango dancer, and a kickboxer–but he’s certainly not a conventional promoter. Ferriss, the author of two New York Times best sellers (The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body), is releasing his third book, titled The 4-Hour Chef, and he’s using the Internet (and YouTube in particular) as one of his most important resources.
Ferriss, who previously used a video trailer to promote The 4-Hour Body, has redoubled his efforts for his new book, releasing two engaging trailers to his 4-Hour Chef YouTube channel, becoming one of the first authors to utilize YouTube as a video marketing tool. “I really do enjoy being first to try things,” said Ferriss, “even if I end up taking a couple hours in the back as the guy on the front lines.”
Ferriss created his YouTube material with the help of the Mekanism ad agency. One trailer features a hi-fi series of jumpy images, all brought together through a series of quick match cuts. The second takes an interview with fellow author Todd Henry and places it in front of a cleverly composed series of hand-drawn images.
In both cases, Ferriss made sure that his videos featured a production quality not present in the book trailers released by other authors. “The [previous] book trailers were all fairly dry and they were relatively low budget; maybe there was some sort of Animoto type text being used.” said Ferriss, “I wanted to make a book trailer that from a cinematic standpoint looked just like a movie trailer.” Sure enough, the more cinematic of the two trailers could easily belong to a fast paced Hollywood thriller.
The two trailers have drawn great traffic; the cinematic one has received 1.5 million views while the explanatory one sits around 550 thousand. Though these are undeniably high numbers, Ferriss understands that this is still a highly specific cross-section of potential customers. “It’s fascinating that there are people like Epic Meal Time, who are getting close to 3 million subscribers, where there’s still such a large segment of the population who won’t know them unless they have a cable TV show with a small fraction of that viewership.” he noted. “But it’s slowly being displaced where they can have both but the digital is becoming more powerful with every passing day.”
The 4-Hour Chef‘s use of YouTube is only part of the way it is appealing to a digitally-inclined crowd. In addition, the book’s distributor is Amazon; it is one of the first books that the online retail giant has published. Ferriss chose to work with Amazon thanks to its unparalleled ability to contact its customers directly. “The biggest advantage of working with Amazon Publishing is the same advantage you have working with YouTubers over traditional TV.” he explained, “Most TV shows do not have direct access to their consumers because their customers are networks, their customers are ad agencies.”
Much in the same way a YouTube channel can directly message its subscribers, Amazon can go straight to the potential customer: “Amazon is the only publisher out there that if they so chose could send an email to 20 million people who are likely to buy your book,” said Ferriss. The drawback is significant: several brick-and-mortar retailers have boycotted Ferriss’ book; a large percentage of the book’s sales will have to come from the Internet, which provides another reason why Ferriss is so interested in YouTube-based promotion.
As for the book itself, it is a “cookbook for any skill that is disguised as a cookbook for food.” Ferriss, a “lifelong non-chef” uses his own methodology (described in the more informative of the two trailers) to quickly become an expert on any subject, and hopes to inform his readers how to do the same. If that’s not enough of a reason to buy the book, it may also have bacon-flavored |
Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s work has been re-mixed and re-told in innumerable science fiction stories. His plays have informed more than 30 episodes of Star Trek; works by renowned authors like Aldous Huxley and Isaac Asimov; and countless cyberpunk adaptations, including one project helmed by iconic comic creator Stan Lee. The Bard also inspired a race of malevolent aliens in Doctor Who, provided the basis for umpteen alternate history novels, and appeared as a time traveler in way too many sci-fi shows. Some of his plays have even been published in “the original Klingon.” Nerd dedication knows no bounds.
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It’s not surprising that Shakespeare surfaces so often in science fiction media—it’s hard to find a genre that isn’t influenced by his work. But The Bard’s influence runs far deeper than an amusing guest spot on a show about time travel. RELATED: 8 Books About Messages from Outer Space
The Tempest, thought by many to have been Shakespeare’s last play, made an undeniable impact on sci-fi. Shakespeare scholar A.D. Nuttall in his book Shakespeare the Thinker credited The Tempest as “inventing science fiction.” While Nuttall’s claim might be a stretch, the play inspired numerous sci-fi classics. Perhaps most famously, The Tempest was the basis for the 1956 film Forbidden Planet, in which the crew of Starship C-57D visits planet Altair IV in search of an expedition that crash-landed years ago. There, they encounter the Prospero-like Commander Edward Morbius, and his daughter Altaira, the sole survivors of the doomed initial expedition. RELATED: 5 Technologies from Science Fiction That Could Be Awesome in Real Life Forbidden Planet replaced Prospero’s magic with Morbius’ scientific knowledge, but it’s still recognizable as Shakespeare’s story. For instance, the character Robby the Robot—one of the first movie robots with a distinct personality—is an analog for The Tempest’s Ariel. The Robby the Robot character was later featured in other sci-fi movies and shows, permanently altering what audiences expected from on-screen robots.
Forbidden Planet has its own version of The Tempest’s Caliban, too. Many people connect The Monster of the Id, created when Morbius’ subconscious is made manifest, to the half-man, half-monster from Shakespeare’s play. The Tempest also influenced Aldous Huxley’s iconic dystopian novel Brave New World, which takes its title from Miranda’s exclamation upon first seeing the men marooned on the island by the eponymous tempest: “Oh wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! Oh brave new world, that has such people in it. “ (Prospero is less impressed: “’Tis new to thee.”) RELATED: 8 Freaky Predictions from Dystopian Novels That Have Come True
The play was also the basis for a Season 3 episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, “Requiem for Methuselah,” in which the Enterprise crew lands on a remote planet in search of a cure for Rigellian fever. More recently, science fiction writer Dan Simmons turned to The Tempest for his books Ilium and Olympos, which transport the play’s characters to a distant future. Clearly, The Tempest provides sci-fi writers with plenty of inspirational raw material. The play’s exploration of identity, shot through the lens of not-quite-human characters like Ariel and Caliban, prefigured the ways in which androids and aliens are depicted in many science fiction narratives. What’s more, Prospero and Miranda arrive on the island after fleeing threats against their lives in Milan. Upon their arrival, the pair develop a fraught relationship with the native inhabitants of their new home. Science fiction often follows a similar narrative, in which humans flee a threatened or threatening Earth only to face ethical and personal dilemmas while colonizing a new land. RELATED: The Surprising Origins of Wonder Woman The Bard was born 21 years after Copernicus published his landmark text On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, and there may be references in Shakespeare’s work to the cosmological sea change that occurred during his lifetime. Dan Falk, author of Science of Shakespeare, told The Smithsonian that during the Elizabethan era, science was shaking people’s perception of big-picture things like the heavens, or the concept of infinity. In his book, Falk cites the work of Peter Usher, an astronomer who views Shakespeare’s canon through a scientific lens, and who interprets Hamlet as an allegory for the “cosmological worldviews” of Shakespeare’s time.
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Question: When I read that Srila Prabhupada did not believe astronauts ever landed on the moon I was taken aback. I have come to admire him and his teachings but this I cannot follow. I have looked into all sides of the moon landing "controversy" and it is very clear which side has the facts. My other concern is Prabhupada stating that the sun is closer then the moon in Vedic cosmology. No scientist would agree that the sun is closer than the moon.
Did we go to the moon? Is the moon farther from Earth than the sun?
Our Answer:
About whether the astronauts went to the moon:
We accept the statements in the Vedas as divine, infallible, and perfect knowledge because they come from the omniscient Supreme Lord.
The scientists' theories are always changing, and thus are imperfect at every step, changing every few years.
Srila Prabhupada appeared to take the Vedic statements and apply logic and reason and form an opinion in each case.
The Vedas describe the moon as a heavenly planet whereas the place the astronauts visited was like a desert. That is one reason Prabhupada doubted they went there.
Being a heavenly planet, it can only be attained by one in the mode of goodness. The astronauts, being in the modes of ignorance, or perhaps passion at best, thus were not qualified to attain the moon planet. That is another reason that Prabhupada doubted they went there.
One devotee-scientist, Sadaputa Prabhu (Richard L. Thompson, Ph.D. 1974 Cornell), suggested perhaps the astronauts went to a place with the same three-dimensional coordinates as the moon, but which differed in the fourth dimension. Both modern science and Vedic knowledge support the idea of more than three dimensions. An analogy can be made to searching for a plush penthouse apartment in three dimensions. If you get only two dimensions right, you can end up in a trashed out basement instead of the plush apartment on the top floor.
Another point from the Vedic perspective that could be made is the more conscious and more powerful lunar beings could have diverted the scientists to another place without their being aware.
Regarding the statement the moon is further than the sun:
The statement is the moon is higher above the earth disk (Bhu-mandala) than the sun.
Sadaputa Prabhu found the distance from the earth to the sun accepted by modern astronomers is the same as the lateral distance from the center of Bhu-mandala (Mount Meru) to the orbit of the sun around the earth described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam. It is not the sun's height above Bhu-mandala that is the same as the earth-sun distance. What "height above Bhu-mandala" corresponds to in terms of modern physics is not clear. Sadaputa Prabhu noticed there is a direct relationship between the tilt of the orbit from the ecliptic plane and the height above Bhu-mandala.
During Krishna's time, 5000 years ago, they predicted the solar eclipses properly so that both the Vrindavan residents and Dvaraka residents were able to travel to Kurukshetra in time for it. Thus their knowledge of the sun-moon motion could not be grossly inaccurate.
Although the description of the cosmology in the Puranas seems far different than our modern understanding, the Jyotish sastras, i.e. Surya-siddhanta and Siddhanta-siromani, in the Vedic tradition have values close to the scientist's values.
I would not be too disturbed about these points. Ultimately human life is meant for understanding we are eternal spiritual beings and awakening our love for the Supreme Spirit who is our origin.
The cosmology of Bhagavatam is meant to glorify the Lord as the creator, not to present the universe as humans see it on this insignificant planet, just one of many, many in the universe.Man Found Running Through Alley with Clown Mask and Weapon Around Midnight
A man was arrested in Sheboygan Wednesday night after being found running in the alley with a clown mask on.
According to Sheboygan Police, the incident occurred around 11:30 PM in the alley near North 3rd and Erie Avenue.
Residents called police when they saw a man running in the alley with a clown mask.
Officers found a 20-year-odl man with a clown mask and concealed weapon.
He was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon.
Sheboygan Police Department said in a statement it recognizes that dressing in this fashion is not illegal though trespassing on property, harassing residents, posting threatening messages on social media, and any other illegal activity is and can result in a citation or an arrest.
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emailThis is not a Photoshop.None of this is made up. And no, it's not click-bait either.And no, I didn't have ANYTHING to do with this. So try not to Napalm the messenger.So, you know that Squadron 42 is one of the games promised as part of the Star Citizen project.That would be this shite right here:Well, what you don't know is that, Chris is apparently spending all his time on mocap because he's making a movie (think cutscenes) like it was the 1990s all over again.Meanwhile, wife Sandi, is promoting the "hit" game as part of a....*GASP* reality show. That aside from all the movie shoots she has been doing on backer funded property in LA.I kid you not. These were dug up within the last 24 hours and verified to be true. Seriously.Video Games & Cheerleading Dames featuring SQUADRON 42And here you thought they were, you know, actually MAKING A FUCKING GAME!!The first half of the offseason’s roster building is over. Sure, there are a few scattered free agents who will sneak onto rosters mostly undetected over the next several weeks, but those deals will be more about value than they will be about need. In terms of teams going out into the market and trying to fill the holes on their roster, the capital commitment period is finished. The Jets needed cornerbacks and bought a bunch. The Eagles didn’t need a running back, then they needed a running back, and then they had all the running backs. Problem solved.
That leaves the second portion of the offseason. The NFL draft, which begins on April 30, is also about value, of course, but each organization has surely identified a need or two it will hope to fill. Even teams that adhere closely to the Best Player Available approach will hope that the best player available happens to be at a position where they aren’t so heavily stocked. Let’s take a look at the biggest need(s) remaining on each team’s roster and how likely it is to find a solution to that spot in the upcoming draft.
That search starts in Arizona, where the Cardinals have had the same part missing for the entirety of the Bruce Arians era …
Arizona Cardinals
Biggest Need: Pass-rusher
Other Needs: RB, C, NT
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to suggest the Cardinals should have been in pursuit of a pass-rusher during each of the last three offseasons. They’ve managed to succeed without one, but the people who helped them do so aren’t around anymore. In 2013, they got a final gasp from John Abraham, who delivered 11.5 sacks at the age of 35. In 2014, with Abraham missing virtually the entire season, defensive coordinator Todd Bowles went with a defensive-back-heavy approach and blitzed on 43.1 percent of opposing dropbacks, the third-highest rate in the league. The creative Bowles left in January to take over as head coach of the Jets, leaving Arizona back in the pass-rushing weeds.
Arians and general manager Steve Keim chose to mostly stay the course in free agency, taking a flier on former Steelers star LaMarr Woodley, who is now three years removed from his last season as an above-average performer. Otherwise, the Cardinals are hoping to continue developing Alex Okafor, who led the team with eight sacks last season. New defensive coordinator James Bettcher, formerly the team’s outside linebackers coach, is expected to continue in Bowles’s image of creating pressure with heavy blitzes.
After two years of success, you can’t blame Arians and Keim for betting on themselves, but it would seem logical for Arizona to go after an edge rusher, even in the hopes of having someone to rotate with Woodley, Okafor, and Matt Shaughnessy. Having found Okafor in the fourth round two years ago, Keim may look for another pass-rusher in the middle rounds and use the 24th pick on offensive help. Given that the Cardinals averaged a league-low 3.3 yards per carry last season, that help could come in the form of a running back like Georgia’s Todd Gurley or Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon.
Atlanta Falcons
Biggest Need: Pass-rusher
Other Needs: RB, OL, S
Don’t worry about this getting repetitive: The Ravens are next, and they definitely don’t need any help getting after opposing quarterbacks. The Falcons also went into last offseason with a desperate need to add a pass-rusher (ironically, after letting Abraham go the previous year), but the only addition they made was washed-up Giants end Osi Umenyiora. Umenyiora was second on the team in sacks … with 2.5, and that was only two sacks behind team leader Kroy Biermann.
New head coach Dan Quinn will be installing the same defense he ran under Pete Carroll in Seattle, and his first priority will be finding a Leo defensive end to serve as his primary pass-rusher. While the Falcons imported O’Brien Schofield alongside Quinn, a long-standing knee injury prevents Schofield from playing a significant number of snaps. Picking eighth, it would be shocking to see the Falcons pass on one of the bevy of pass-rushers lurking at the top of this year’s draft class. Dante Fowler (Florida), Shane Ray (Missouri), Vic Beasley (Clemson), and Randy Gregory (Nebraska) are among the Leo candidates Atlanta will be choosing from at no. 8.
Baltimore Ravens
Biggest Need: Wide receiver
Other Needs: TE, DE, CB
Cap constraints forced the Ravens to let Torrey Smith go this offseason, and while his 49-catch, 767-yard line might seem pedestrian, remember that the 2011 second-rounder drew 11 pass interference penalties for another 229 yards, which was a full 100 yards more than any other wideout in football. The Ravens got a useful debut season out of Steve Smith, but the 35-year-old’s production rapidly faded as the season went along:
Receptions Targets Yards TD First Half 41 69 675 4 Second Half 38 65 390 2
I value my life, so I don’t want to suggest that no. 89 is cooked. But given that Dennis Pitta may never return from his refractured hip and the second wide receiver on Baltimore’s depth chart is Marlon Brown, another weapon for Joe Flacco seems like an obvious place to head.
The good news for Ravens fans is that the top of this draft class is wideout-heavy, as Todd McShay’s most recent top 32 includes no fewer than five. I just wonder if Ozzie Newsome will go in that direction. During his 13 years as Baltimore’s general manager, the Ravens have taken just four wideouts among their 40 picks during the first three rounds of the draft, and that group — Torrey Smith, first-rounder Mark Clayton, and third-rounders Yamon Figurs and Devard Darling — didn’t deliver Baltimore a star wideout. If Newsome is ever going to take a shot in the first round, this is the year.
Buffalo Bills
Biggest Need: Offensive line
Other Needs: QB, ILB, S
Well, that’s not entirely true. Buffalo’s biggest need is clearly at signal-caller, but with its first-rounder shipped off to Cleveland and little buzz about midround quarterback options like Bryce Petty and Brett Hundley, the Bills are unlikely to solve their quarterback quandary in the draft.
In thinking more realistically, the Bills have two selections before the fifth round, at 50 and 81. After surrounding their middling quarterback options with weapons like LeSean McCoy, Charles Clay, and Percy Harvin this offseason, Buffalo might try to improve what was one of the league’s worst offensive lines from a year ago. Adding Richie Incognito, who was subpar in Miami even before his bullying case went public, is a stopgap solution at best. Buffalo should be considering athletic interior linemen like South Carolina’s A.J. Cann and Hobart’s Ali Marpet to try to create holes for McCoy in 2015.
Carolina Panthers
Biggest Need: Offensive tackle
Other Needs: CB, WR, DE, S
Panthers GM Dave Gettleman excitedly announced he wouldn’t have to shop at the dollar store this offseason, but with Carolina still recovering from its trip to cap hell, Gettleman only managed to upgrade to the thrift store. Additions like Ted Ginn and Jason Trusnik aren’t going to light the world on fire, and while Gettleman has been able to find useful players at bargain-basement prices the last couple of years, he’ll have to really make magic happen to upgrade his offensive line.
Having allowed still-unsigned incumbent left tackle Byron Bell to hit the market this offseason, Gettleman signed two of the worst tackles in football to compete for starting jobs. Both Jonathan Martin and Michael Oher have names that grossly outstrip their production, and they’ll be in the running with Nate Chandler for meaningful snaps in front of Cam Newton. Chandler is no. 78 in the below attempt to murder Newton:
A tackle, any tackle. Do it for Cam.
Chicago Bears
Biggest Need: Defensive line
Other Needs: LB, CB, S, WR
With their defense having collapsed to 25th and then 28th in DVOA over the past two seasons, the Bears needed to find new defensive pieces whose jerseys hadn’t been burned, either on the field by opposing receivers or in effigy in the parking lot. New general manager Ryan Pace took steps in that direction by adding Pernell McPhee, Mason Foster, and Antrel Rolle during free agency.
Pace can continue that push by adding depth up front in this year’s draft. He inherits a pair of relatively high 2014 picks in second-rounder Ego Ferguson and third-rounder Will Sutton, but the Bears are otherwise relying on veteran question marks like Jay Ratliff and Ray McDonald. USC’s Leonard Williams won’t be waiting at no. 7, but the Bears could be in the running for 5-technique Oregon end Arik Armstead or 339-pound Washington nose tackle Danny Shelton.
Cincinnati Bengals
Biggest Need: Outside linebacker
Other Needs: QB, DE
The Bengals headed into the offseason with a gaping hole in their pass rush, having posted the league’s second-worst sack rate in 2014. They indirectly solved that problem by bringing Michael Johnson back into the fold after the former Bengals end washed out as a free agent in Tampa. Johnson isn’t a great pass-rusher in his own right, but his presence should allow Wallace Gilberry to return to a situational pass-rushing role.
That leaves Cincinnati looking for help at outside linebacker, where 2013 breakout contributor Vontaze Burfict is a question mark after microfracture surgery on his knee. Marvin Lewis doesn’t traditionally value his outside linebackers very highly, so it’s unlikely the Bengals would spend a first-round pick on a player there, but they should consider adding an athletic option like Washington’s Shaq Thompson in the middle rounds.
Joe Robbins/Getty Images
Cleveland Browns
Biggest Need: Quarterback
Other Needs: WR, TE, DE
Unlike the Bills, the Browns could put together a feasible trade offer to grab Marcus Mariota with the second pick if they were so inclined, thanks to their pair of first-rounders. It would be disappointing to give up on Johnny Manziel so quickly, but the Manziel first-round pick is a sunk cost at this point; if the Browns really believe in Mariota (or can somehow convince the Buccaneers to pass on Jameis Winston), Manziel’s presence on/near the roster shouldn’t get in the way.
If they don’t trade up, the Browns should target their other concerns. Having lost Josh Gordon to another suspension and Jordan Cameron to free agency, Cleveland GM Ray Farmer has assembled a group of receivers exclusively out of players who were available on your fantasy league’s waiver wire last season. Dwayne Bowe! Brian Hartline! Andrew Hawkins! Smells like auto-draft! With Gary Barnidge and Jim Dray at tight end, the Browns could add a wideout in the first round and follow that up with Minnesota’s Maxx Williams, the draft’s top tight end, at no. 43.
Dallas Cowboys
Biggest Need: Defensive line
Other Needs: CB, S, RB
As tempting as it might be for the Cowboys to replace DeMarco Murray with one of the draft’s top running backs, one of the benefits of spending three first-round picks on offensive linemen was supposed to be that the Cowboys could plug any ol’ running back into their backfield and succeed. Dallas should draft a running back to compete with Darren McFadden & Co., but it would be healthier to wait for somebody like Indiana’s Tevin Coleman or Miami’s Duke Johnson in the second or third round.
Instead, the Cowboys should try to give Rod Marinelli something to work with up front. While Marinelli was able to get competency out of retreads like Jeremy Mincey and George Selvie last year, the Dallas defensive line desperately needs an infusion of young talent. 2014 second-rounder Demarcus Lawrence will be back after missing most of his rookie season with a broken foot, but the Cowboys could sorely use an interior pass-rusher to prevent opposing quarterbacks from stepping up in the pocket, especially with Henry Melton having left for Tampa Bay in free agency. If they do go after a running back or a defensive back in Round 1, Ohio State’s Mike Bennett would be a very viable option at 60.
Denver Broncos
Biggest Need: Offensive line
Other Needs: ILB, S, TE
Where Gary Kubiak goes, a zone-blocking scheme follows. Kubiak cut his teeth as the Denver offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach during the glory days of the late ’90s, when the Broncos could have turned you or me into a 1,000-yard back. He built a dominant rushing game around Arian Foster in Houston, and last season he quickly turned around one of the league’s worst rushing attacks in Baltimore. He’s already making noise about wanting a fullback, so while the Broncos will still throw the ball plenty of times with Peyton Manning at quarterback, don’t believe for a second that Kubiak is leaving the Denver offense unchanged.
He’ll need some offensive linemen to help the process along. Having let Orlando Franklin leave for San Diego, the Broncos could realistically target an upgrade at left guard, center, or right tackle, depending on how Kubiak wants to employ Manny Ramirez. The recent trade for backup Ravens center Gino Gradkowski shouldn’t dramatically affect Denver’s draft plans; it could find room for Pitt’s T.J. Clemmings or LSU’s La’el Collins in the starting lineup with the 28th pick.
Detroit Lions
Biggest Need: Defensive tackle
Other Needs: RB, OL, CB
Knowing they were likely losing Ndamukong Suh and Nick Fairley in free agency, the Lions were surely delighted to trade two midround picks to the Ravens to acquire Haloti Ngata. Ngata should help cover for Detroit’s losses on the interior, but he’s also 31 and in the final year of his contract. There’s no guarantee the Lions will have Ngata after this season.
With primary backup C.J. Mosley also a free agent, the Lions still need to add interior linemen to keep their run defense afloat, both in 2015 and the years to come. The ideal pick for the Lions would be Texas defensive tackle Malcom Brown, a bruising run defender who would allow Ngata to penetrate into the backfield and attack opposing quarterbacks. McShay has the Lions taking Brown at no. 23 in his most recent mock draft, but it would be a surprise to see him fall that far. Detroit might prefer to attack the problem with multiple picks, but having dealt its fourth- and fifth-round picks to acquire Ngata, that’s a luxury it probably can’t afford.
Green Bay Packers
Biggest Need: Cornerback
Other Needs: ILB, TE
Need is a relative term; the Packers have one of the deepest rosters in football and could do just fine in 2015 if they happened to forget about the draft and failed to show up altogether. Assuming that Ted Thompson & Co. don’t oversleep for three days, they have enough flexibility to justify doing whatever they want with their picks. They got by at inside linebacker last year with Sam Barrington and a dose of Clay Matthews, but the Packers would surely prefer to move Matthews back to his natural position at outside linebacker in the long term, even if he does move inside at times to terrorize guards in pass protection.
Given how the draft regards inside linebackers as lower-value propositions, it’s more likely Thompson will target a cornerback at the bottom of the first round. The Packers are thin outside after losing Davon House and Tramon Williams in free agency, while slot corner Casey Hayward is entering the final year of his rookie deal. Even if Thompson thinks he can re-sign Hayward, the Packers will likely look at Washington’s Marcus Peters or LSU’s Jalen Collins with the 30th overall pick. And regardless of what they do, chances are it will work.
Joe Robbins/Getty Images
Houston Texans
Biggest Need: Inside linebacker
Other Needs: WR, OLB, QB
Another team with question marks at quarterback and no way to answer them, the Texans will probably avoid the position altogether, given that they spent a fourth-round pick on Tom Savage last year. They’ll want to surround Savage, Brian Hoyer, and Ryan Mallett with weapons, but GM Rick Smith spent a first-round pick on breakout wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins two years ago and went after veterans Nate Washington and Cecil Shorts as buy-low replacements for Andre Johnson. The Texans could still add a wide receiver with one of their first two picks, but they’re more likely to go after a speedy project like Auburn’s Sammie Coates in the third or fourth round.
They might be better off focusing at inside linebacker, where Brian Cushing is a perennial injury concern who looked like a shell of his former self during the first half of the 2014 campaign. Houston upgraded its run defense by adding Vince Wilfork up front, but if Cushing isn’t healthy, the Texans don’t have the sort of rangy coverage linebacker they’ll need against Coby Fleener and Julius Thomas in the years to come. The 16th pick is too early for UCLA’s Eric Kendricks, but that’s the exact sort of player the Texans will want to target if they trade down. Bill O’Brien might also look back to his Penn State days and draft Mike Hull, who called O’Brien the best coach he ever had.
Indianapolis Colts
Biggest Need: Safety
Other Needs: C, RB, OLB
Andre Johnson’s new home is Indianapolis, where general manager Ryan Grigson has gone on a shopping spree this offseason in the hopes of winning a Super Bowl. The Colts are deeper than they’ve ever been during the Andrew Luck era, especially on defense, but they still need a starter to play alongside Mike Adams, who is versatile enough to play either free or strong safety. LaRon Landry wasn’t the answer, if only because the question wasn’t, “Who is someone who has arms that don’t fit into T-shirts?”
Grigson did just sign Dwight Lowery, an intriguing low-cost option, but that shouldn’t stop them from pursuing a safety in the draft. Indy can’t go get longtime stalwart Antoine Bethea back from San Francisco, but it could very well consider Alabama’s Landon Collins with its first-round pick if he falls to no. 29. The Colts could also be in the running for Gurley or Gordon as part of a running back rotation with new starter Frank Gore.
Jacksonville Jaguars
Biggest Need: Cornerback
Other Needs: RB, C, DE, S
The Jaguars also invested heavily in free agency this offseason, but it’s fair to say they weren’t quite as ambitious as Grigson’s Colts. One of the problems with their roster construction is that they’re locked into players who haven’t yet proved themselves. Luke Joeckel has been a mess during his first two seasons, but the Jags just gave Jermey Parnell a five-year deal that basically locks Joeckel in at left tackle for the next two years. Blake Bortles wasn’t as effective as Teddy Bridgewater or even Derek Carr as a rookie, but we’re still a couple of years away from coming to any conclusion about his long-term future. The Jaguars need better play out of those spots, but directly improving them in the draft is unlikely.
Dave Caldwell will likely instead use his first-rounder, the third overall pick, on a defensive piece. While the Jags remain thin at best at cornerback, that selection will probably fall up front, where Jacksonville could take Leonard Williams if Winston and Mariota come off the board 1-2. Their pass rush was quietly excellent last year, but if Williams is off the board, the Jags could instead head for their Leo of the future and take their pick of the draft’s many pass-rushers. Fowler has publicly suggested he would be stunned if the Jags don’t take him third, but I’m not so sure they will. Remember that Jacksonville managed to keep its interest in selecting Bortles quiet during the entire draft process last season; if it does want Fowler, it won’t be happy he spilled the beans.
Kansas City Chiefs
Biggest Need: Defensive end
Other Needs: WR, C, ILB
It’s scary to look at the Kansas City depth chart at wide receiver after new arrival Jeremy Maclin, given that it hints at serious roles for De’Anthony Thomas, Jason Avant, and Junior Hemingway. The Chiefs will surely add a wide receiver of some nature in the draft, and it will help that they finally have their full complement of picks after making it through the compensation from the Alex Smith trade. With more draft value from compensatory picks than anybody else in the draft, the Chiefs can afford to take a couple of wide receivers in the middle rounds.
As thin as they are at wide receiver, though, they desperately need depth on their defensive line. While nose tackle Dontari Poe is a freak of nature who somehow manages to play nearly 90 percent of Kansas City’s snaps, the ends around him include question marks like Jerel Worthy, Vaughn Martin, and Mike DeVito, who snapped his Achilles last year. The Chiefs badly need an athletic end who can hold up against the run, and they would likely be thrilled if Armstead fell to them at no. 17.
Come back tomorrow for Part 2!
This article has been updated to correct the name of Raiders quarterback Derek Carr.Two suspected poachers have been arrested and a third is believed to have been killed by a lion in the Kruger National Park (KNP) last week. According to the two that got caught, the trio went into the park on the night of March 12 to set up snares to catch animals, KNP spokesman William Mabasa said in a statement on Tuesday.
“They returned on the night of the 13th to see if they caught anything. On their way back they came across some hippos, which charged them and they ran in different directions.” Two of them got out of the park safely, but got worried when their friend didn’t return by Tuesday.
The two men were arrested in Mkhuhlu village, where they lived, near Hazyview. They took the police to the spot where they had last seen their accomplice. “Some blood and torn clothing were found.” Rangers found a human skull in the Pretoriuskop section of the park on Saturday. It was believed the third man had been caught and eaten by a lion.
Two Poachers Apprehended
To Read the Full Article…Click Here
Like this: Like Loading... RelatedKeohane's goal was his first of the season
Bury suffered their first loss since the opening day as Exeter got their first home win since April.
Matt Grimes' curling free-kick gave Exeter an early lead before Daniel Nardiello, Ryan Lowe and Danny Mayor all went close for the Shakers.
Tom Soares levelled after the break with a rasping drive from 18 yards out.
Exeter secured a third successive win late on when Jimmy Keohane scored from close range after Bury keeper Rob Lainton fumbled a deep free-kick.
Media playback is not supported on this device Flitcroft on Exeter v Bury
Bury manager David Flitcroft told BBC Radio Manchester:
"We had a lot of chances, enough to win two games.
"We rushed opportunities, didn't miss the first man, didn't pick players out and it's mad because that's all we work on in training.
"We've created so much and opened them up so many times and only got one goal.
"I keep saying to this team, if we can't win it, don't lose it and they've not been able to do that today."May 17, 2014; Cleveland, OH, USA; A Cleveland police officer stands guard as fireworks light the sky after the game between the Cleveland Indians and the Oakland Athletics at Progressive Field. Oakland beat Cleveland 6-2. Mandatory Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports
In case you somehow missed it, today is July 4th — you know, Independence Day.
You won’t read about it in history books, but the Indians celebrated the 4th of July with some fireworks of their own on this date 8 years ago, clobbering the Yankees by a score of 19-1 in Cleveland.
Jake Westbrook pitched 7 strong innings for the Tribe, allowing only 5 hits and an unearned run. He struck out 3 and walked 3, and improved to 7-4 on the season. Edward Mujica added two scoreless innings of relief, allowing 4 hits and striking out 1.
Yankees starter Shawn Chacon couldn’t even make it out of the second inning, only retiring 4 batters. In his inning and a third of work, he allowed six hits — including three home runs — and 7 runs total, all of them earned. He struck out 1 and walked 3. Reliever Ron Villone was able to pitch 2 2/3 scoreless innings, allowing only 2 hits and striking out two batters.
The Indians scored 9 runs in the fifth inning against T.J. Beam and Mike Myers. Beam retired 2 batters but allowed 6 earned runs on 6 hits, while Myers recorded the final out of the inning but allowed 3 runs (2 earned) and gave up 3 hits and 2 walks.
Scott Proctor pitched 2 innings and allowed 3 more runs on 4 more hits, while Kyle Farnsworth pitched a scoreless eighth inning.
The Indians received contributions from all around the lineup, and the only starter without a hit was Jason Michaels, though he was hit by a pitch and scored a run. Six players drove in multiple runs: Ronnie Belliard, Jhonny Peralta, Travis Hafner, Victor Martinez, Todd Hollandsworth, and Aaron Boone. Peralta and Hafner each hit 2 home runs, while Martinez and Belliard each hit one as well.
Grady Sizemore went 3 for 3 with 2 walks, adding an RBI and scoring 3 runs.
As a team, the Indians went 9 for 16 with runners in scoring position. Despite their offensive outburst, they also left 9 more runners on base.
The game lasted 3 hours and 10 minutes, and was played in front of a crowd of 29,368 fans.
The Indians improved to 39-43 with the win, and would go on to finish the season at 78-84 — even with a Pythagorean Record of 89-73. That season, the Tribe scored a whopping 870 runs, which was second in the majors (behind only the Yankees, interestingly enough). They also allowed 782 runs, which was 5 below the league average that season.
The Yankees, meanwhile, fell to 46-35 after the loss. They went on to finish 97-65, and ultimately lost in the ALDS to the Tigers in 4 games.So I know Stranger Things season two is coming out very soon, but in the mean time you should be watching Mindhunter.
Love true crime? You’ll fucking love this show. Plus it’s directed by David Fincher a.k.a an incredible director who knows how to film fucked up shit in a beautiful way.
The show is based on a real book written by two FBI agents who began interviewing America’s most infamous serial killers in the 1970s. Be warned though, the show is slow moving at times and there’s more talking than there is violence. However, if you like true crime such as myself- you’ll find it to be fascinating.
This show is smart, very well shot, the music is good, the intro could be shorter, but if you get past episode two you’re in for a damn good time.
here’s the trailer
AdvertisementsThe first solar eclipse to span the entire United States has lots of people justifiably excited. The midday disappearance of the Sun is a truly novel and moving experience |
had to circumvent Public Safety, which was the result of days of preparation, according to CUMB head manager Vivian Klotz, BC ’20.
“It was all about building back from ‘We need to have Orgo Night in 209, so how do we get in?’” Klotz said. “We went in multiple groups, we had shifts, there was a multi-page long plan.”
Band members entered Butler 209 in waves in the hours leading up to midnight, concealing their instruments and gear in backpacks. Larger instruments, such as drums and trombones, were secretly stored in 209 beginning early Thursday morning and were monitored by members throughout the day, Klotz said.
Students began pouring into Butler shortly before midnight on Thursday night, at which point it was unclear whether any members of the band were in the building. Over 200 students were present by midnight, while over a dozen Public Safety officials stood watch at the entrances to the room.
When the clock struck twelve, more than two dozen band members congregated in the center of the room, changed into their CUMB attire, and began playing ‘Roar, Lion, Roar.’ Though Public Safety officials initially closed off both sets of doors to 209, they began letting students into the room after about 10 minutes. Public Safety officers did not stop band members or take down their UNIs as they left Butler after the performance.
Members of CUMB sit in 209 before midnight. Dressed in their signature shirts, band members performed in the middle of the room, some standing on chairs and desks to be more visible. CUMB performed for about an hour. More than 200 people gathered in 209 to watch the performance. Cameron Danesh, member of CUMB, conducts the band. Students and CUMB members alike danced to the music throughout the performance. CUMB continued to play music as it exited Butler.
The push to have Orgo Night return to Butler has come largely at the hands of the Columbia University Band Alumni Association, which delivered a petition signed by hundreds to the Office of the University President Lee Bollinger this morning. Since the decision to restrict the band’s access to Butler was made last year, many alumni have responded negatively.
“The administration should be encouraging a beloved tradition that helps students combat the stress that everyone—administrators included—complains about,” Band Alumni Association member Dan Carlinsky, CC ’65, said on Thursday afternoon. “Especially a tradition that they’ve been promoting and using for decades to sell the school to prospective students and to stroke alumni with appeals to the memory of Orgo Nights past.”
Klotz said that band members were made aware of possible disciplinary action before deciding whether to take part in the performance.
“I was well aware that were possibly going to be repercussions because there are very few other instances of big groups of students going against administrative word like this,” Klotz said after the performance. “Yes, we fear repercussions, but right now we’re just planning on having a good time, so there’s not much else we can do.”
Check back for updates.
news@columbiaspectator.com | @columbiaspecI had more or less seriously vowed not to have a pumpkin beer before October 1, my feeling being that this is a time for Oktoberfest beers—it still being September. When October arrives, then I’ll consider having a pumpkin beer.
I made an exception last night, September 19 [2013], only because of #BeerChat, a weekly endeavor on Twitter, Thursday nights at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Anyone is welcome to join in each week–just use the hashtag #BeerChat with your Tweets and you’re in.
Last night the guest hosts were @RateMyPumpkins, also found on Facebook and at the ratemypumpkins website. Started by two women near Boston, the site appears to have a group of fanatics (obviously) who are plowing through and reviewing 61 pumpkin beers in 61 days, ending appropriately enough on Halloween.
[For those suffering deja vu, I put up this post yesterday to announce the chat, but said I’d return today to revise and expand it.]
Meanwhile, I went local and picked up a couple of bottles of Wolaver’s Pumpkin Ale. The Vermont brewery claims to have brewed the nation’s first certified organic beers, made with 100% organic malt and hops, and there’s that USDA sticker right on the label.
This is a pumpkin beer from the spiced school, where a little goes a long way in my opinion. (Actually, one or two pumpkin beers a season is about my speed. Drinking 61 of them is a little scary.)
The Wolaver’s is an attractively clear, burnt orange beer, with a nice, restrained balance in the spicing. It skews toward clove, and comes off as bright and tasty, not too sweet, lightly peppery, still a pleasing ale instead of merely an ersatz pie. According to their tasting calendar the RateMyPumpkins folks will be having it tomorrow, so I may have to revise the post again after their take is in, unless they see fit to chime in here.
Benjamin Moore, a beer blogger from Maine, started up #BeerChat and still hosts from time to time under his @ActiveBeerGeek guise. But lately he’s been dragooning guest hosts to take over the hour, the usual format to ask a handful of questions around some beery topic. Then whoever is on Twitter and aware at the time can dive in.
It’s not easy to imagine two less likely pumpkin beer fanatics than Nicola Chamberlain and Alexandra Dietrich. Nicola is a molecular and evolutionary biologist working at Boston’s Museum of Science, while Alexandra Dietrich is a mezzo-soprano leading what appears to be a busy life of performing and teaching in and around Boston. Nonetheless, this is their second consecutive year of going all-in on pumpkin beers and posting the results.
They asked six questions last night:
Q1: Pumpkin beer is a controversial style – often people LOVE it or HATE it. What about you? Why?
Q2: PUMPKINGATE – do you wait until a specific date to drink pumpkin beer or do you drink it the second it hits shelves?
Q3: Are you a sweet or savory pumpkin beer drinker? Do you want a cold pint of pumpkin pie?
Q4: Do you think pumpkin beer brewers should strive to use fresh pumpkin in the ingredients, or is puree an acceptable substitute?
Q5: Spices, which do you love or hate in pumpkin beer? Are any over or underused?
Q6: Southern Tier Pumking claims to be the king. Does anyone “dethrone” the monarch or are you a loyal subject?
That actually seems to be nine questions, but what the heck. The last question was asked with something of a drum roll, since the New York brewery’s Imperial Pumking Ale takes the controversial style and doubles down for a deliberately over-the-top brew. Last year it tasted to me like pumpkin pie dosed with a hearty layer of whipped cream. It actually made me laugh in its sheer audacity. But while it’s not a beer I could drink a lot of, I’d have another should I stumble across a bottle this year.
As might be imagined, answers to the other questions were all over the map, but considering how controversial pumpkin beers can be (they sure got Q1 right!), the ticker tape-like Twitter feed unfurled with as much civility as speed. The two camps actually seemed divided into LOVE and MEH; the haters probably didn’t bother tuning in to begin with.
Some sent along pictures of their beers–Josh Short @ShortOnBeer displayed his pint glass of Pumking with a rim of crushed pumpkin seed and brown sugar. Others talked about homebrew recipes, others made recommendations for their favorites, among them: Anderson Valley Fall Hornin’ Pumpkin Ale, Alaskan Pumpkin Porter, Frog Hollow’s Double Pumpkin, Epic Brewing’s Fermentation Without Representation Imperial Pumpkin Porter, Propeller Pumpkin Ale, Tyranena Painted Ladies Pumpkin Spice Ale, Cape Ann Brewing’s Fisherman’s Pumpkin Stout, Shipyard’s Smashed Pumpkin Ale, and plenty more.
One of last night’s participants was @OnPumpkinBeer, who’s been reviewing pumpkin beers since 2011 on his website. He hasn’t gotten around to the Wolaver’s yet this year, but gave it a thumbs up in 2012. In a blind tasting over at Boston.com four testers put 16 pumpkin beers through the paces this year and selected the Wolaver’s as their top pick.
Whatever one’s own Great Pumpkin Beer might be, there’s no lack of ’em out in the patch. Have fun with the harvest.
Name: Pumpkin Ale
Brewer: Wolaver’s Organic, Middlebury, Vermont
Style: Organic pumpkin ale
ABV: 5.8%
Availability: Seasonally, east coast
For More Information: https://www.facebook.com/wolaversYash Amin grows the world's hottest chillies in the backyard of his Mt Eden home.
It looks like a harmless green pepper but its searing heat induces tears, sweat and sizzles the lining of your mouth.
The Carolina Reaper is the world's hottest chilli and Yash Amin has them growing in his backyard in Auckland.
"I'm used to handling hot chillies but it's really, really hot," the Mt Eden resident says.
ELESHA EDMONDS / FAIRFAX NZ Yash Amin, a chef, has grown his own chillies in his backyard for years.
"There was once when I just touched it and I washed my hands four or five times and I could still feel them tingling."
Also hidden among the herbs and produce in Amin's garden are previous hottest chilli record holders.
There's the Bhut Jolokia, also known as the ghost chilli, which is said to be 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce.
ELESHA EDMONDS / FAIRFAX NZ Amin's homemade “suicide sauce” contains more than three kinds of chillies including the Carolina Reaper.
Alongside it is the exceptionally hot Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper which is the size of golf ball.
Amin, a chef by trade, has grown his own chillies for years having worked in hotels around the world where "everyone likes hot food".
His most notable positions include working as an executive sous chef at the Hilton Dubai and the Hilton Trinidad hotels.
"When I was working there they used to make this very, very hot pepper sauce," Amin says.
"Because I can eat a fair bit of chilli I was still able to handle it but my god it was very, very hot."
The father-of-two began growing different varieties of chillies off his balcony of the hotels he lived at and has continued doing so since he moved to New Zealand.
Amin says he's now managed to adapt a hot sauce with his homegrown chillies.
At first he gave away his homemade "suicide sauce" through the website Neighbourly but soon the sauce gained too much interest for him to handle all the orders.
He also set up a small stand at a farmers market and sold out in an hour.
Amin says he plans to continue to make the sauce in small batches and see if the interest continues.
The Carolina Reaper has held the Guinness World Record as the hottest chili pepper since 2013.
For context, Amin only uses one-and-a-half Carolina Reaper peppers when cooking a very hot chicken curry for 100 wedding guests.
How to handle the spice:
Amin's advice after eating a chilli is not to reach for a glass of water to soothe the burning.
"If you drink water it's probably going to make it worse," he says.
"It somehow transmits all the capsaicin which is the active ingredient in the chilli all over your body."
Ideally you should eat a spoonful of sugar or a dark chocolate, Amin says.
Milk may also work although Amin says sugar soothes the mouth quickly.The Stasi would have been so pleased Share This:
The Telegraph (04/05) expands, A European Union directive, which Britain was instrumental in devising, comes into force which will require all internet service providers to retain information on email traffic, visits to web sites and telephone calls made over the internet, for 12 months. Police and the security services will be able to access the information to combat crime and terrorism. Hundreds of public bodies and quangos, including local councils, will also be able to access the data to investigate flytipping and other less serious crimes.
I've been watching the interaction of trends in the US and the UK for several years. Just as America's staunchest ally in foreign policy (Iraq and Afghanistan) is the UK so, too, are they closely allied in cultural trends like political correctness and political ones like surveillance policies. What happens in the UK seems to wash up on North American shores as a proposed legislation in Congress within a year or two.
I am under no illusion that privacy on the Internet actually exists but the open archiving of all internet activity in order to make it available to government agencies on all levels feels like a difference in kind from what has been happening. It is rather like the current corruption in government. Politicians have always been corrupt but now there is a shocking openness about their grabs for power and money, about the stolen tax funds they publicly heap on others within the oligarchy (e.g. large banks). There used to be a sense of discretion, of limits...sometimes even of shame that surrounded the process. Now, it seems, all restraints have been lifted and there is only the naked face of power that sees no need to dissemble. No need even to pay lip service to civil liberties or any other tatter of personal freedom.
Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, is correct when he states,: "I don't think people are aware of the implications of this move. It means that everything we do online or on the phone will be known to the authorities. They are using this to produce probably the world's most comprehensive surveillance system."
BTW, I do not for a second believe assurances by officials that the identities of the sender and receiver will be archived but not the contents of messages. And, no, I am not paranoid. How many times have we been given official assurances that were blatant lies? -- "the police don't retain DNA," "airlines don't have a suspected terrorist list." Nor do I believe this is primarily a move to fight terrorism. Indeed, anyone who does believes this will not be used as a tool for social control is criminally naive.
If people organize opposition or resistance, I hope they do it off-line. Back to category overview Back to news overview Older News Newer News
Printer Friendly Wendy McElroy - Tuesday 07 April 2009 - 06:45:57 - Permalink Yesterday, Christopher Null reported on the Yahoo Tech site, In a move that even the most nonchalant of privacy advocates is crying foul over, the UK has put into effect a European Union directive which mandates the archival of information regarding virtually all internet traffic for the next 12 months. The program formally goes into effect todayThe Telegraph (04/05) expands, A European Union directive, which Britain was instrumental in devising, comes into force which will require all internet service providers to retain information on email traffic, visits to web sites and telephone calls made over the internet, for 12 months. Police and the security services will be able to access the information to combat crime and terrorism. Hundreds of public bodies and quangos, including local councils, will also be able to access the data to investigate flytipping and other less serious crimes.I've been watching the interaction of trends in the US and the UK for several years. Just as America's staunchest ally in foreign policy (Iraq and Afghanistan) is the UK so, too, are they closely allied in cultural trends like political correctness and political ones like surveillance policies. What happens in the UK seems to wash up on North American shores as a proposed legislation in Congress within a year or two.I am under no illusion that privacy on the Internet actually exists but thearchiving of all internet activity in order to make it available to government agencies on all levels feels like a difference in kind from what has been happening. It is rather like the current corruption in government. Politicians have always been corrupt but now there is a shocking openness about their grabs for power and money, about the stolen tax funds they publicly heap on others within the oligarchy (e.g. large banks). There used to be a sense of discretion, of limits...sometimes even of shame that surrounded the process. Now, it seems, all restraints have been lifted and there is only the naked face of power that sees no need to dissemble. No need even to pay lip service to civil liberties or any other tatter of personal freedom.Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, is correct when he states,: "I don't think people are aware of the implications of this move. It means that everything we do online or on the phone will be known to the authorities. They are using this to produce probably the world's most comprehensive surveillance system."BTW, I do not for a second believe assurances by officials that the identities of the sender and receiver will be archived but not the contents of messages. And, no, I am not paranoid. How many times have we been given official assurances that were blatant lies? -- "the police don't retain DNA," "airlines don't have a suspected terrorist list." Nor do I believe this is primarily a move to fight terrorism. Indeed, anyone who does believes this will not be used as a tool for social control is criminally naive.If people organize opposition or resistance, I hope they do it off-line.These garbage men really stink.
Selfish Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts — a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The Post has learned.
Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.
“They sent a message to the rest of the city that these particular labor issues are more important,” said City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens), who was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot.
Halloran said he met with three plow workers from the Sanitation Department — and two Department of Transportation supervisors who were on loan — at his office after he was flooded with irate calls from constituents.
PHOTOS FROM THE STORM
STORIES FROM THE BLIZZARD
TAKING A PLOWER NAP
NO SENSE OF MTA URGENCY
VIDEO: BLOOMBERG: WE DID NOT DO A GOOD JOB
The snitches “didn’t want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation,” Halloran said. “They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file.”
New York’s Strongest used a variety of tactics to drag out the plowing process — and pad overtime checks — which included keeping plows slightly higher than the roadways and skipping over streets along their routes, the sources said.
The snow-removal snitches said they were told to keep their plows off most streets and to wait for orders before attacking the accumulating piles of snow.
They said crews normally would have been more aggressive in com bating a fierce, fast-moving bliz zard like the one that barreled in on Sunday and blew out the next morning.
IGNORED BROOKLYN STREET IS THE BURY, BURY WORST
STEVE CUOZZO: PSYCHO CYCLE POLICY
KELLY’S SUV IN SKID CRASH
JFK PUSH COMING TO SHOVE
VIDEO: A SLOW SNOW CLEANUP
The workers said the work slowdown was the result of growing hostility between the mayor and the workers responsible for clearing the snow.
In the last two years, the agency’s workforce has been slashed by 400 trash haulers and supervisors — down from 6,300 — because of the city’s budget crisis. And, effective tomorrow, 100 department supervisors are to be demoted and their salaries slashed as an added cost-saving move.
Sources said budget cuts were also at the heart of poor planning for the blizzard last weekend. The city broke from its usual routine and did not call in a full complement on Saturday for snow preparations in order to save on added overtime that would have had to be paid for them to work on Christmas Day.
The result was an absolute collapse of New York’s once-vaunted systems of clearing the streets and keeping mass transit moving under the weight of 20 inches of snow.
The Sanitation Department last night denied there was a concerted effort to slow snow removal.
“There are no organized or wildcat actions being taken by the sanitation workers or the supervisors,” said spokesman Matthew Lipani.
Joseph Mannion, president of the union that represents agency supervisors, said talk of a slowdown “is hogwash.” But he admitted there is “resentment out there” toward Mayor Bloomberg and his administration because of budget cuts.
His counterpart at the rank-and-file’s union, Harry Nespoli, has also denied there is a job action, though he admitted his guys are working lucrative 14-hour shifts.
Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said only: “We would hope this is not the case.”
But multiple Sanitation Department sources told The Post yesterday that angry plow drivers have only been clearing streets assigned to them even if that means they have to drive through snowed-in roads with their plows raised.
And they are keeping their plow blades unusually high, making it necessary for them to have to run extra passes, adding time and extra pay.
One mechanic said some drivers are purposely smashing plows and salt spreaders to further stall the cleanup effort.
“That is a disgrace. I had to walk three miles because the buses can’t move,” said salesman Yuri Vesslin, 38, of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg — quickly becoming the public face of failure this week — spent a second consecutive day yesterday defending himself to critics of his administration’s handling of the storm.
He took reporters to The Bronx to explain that the city is coming back to life and to tout his administration’s efforts.
“Can’t work much harder,” Bloomberg said.
But Hizzoner admitted, “We didn’t do as good a job as we want to do or as the city has a right to expect.”
Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty promised that every street will have been plowed by 7 this morning, but then he offered this hedge: “Will somebody find a street that I missed? Maybe.”
Bloomberg and Doherty also offered a series of excuses for the failed response to the blizzard. They blamed residents for shoveling snow into streets that had already been plowed and for tying up 911 with non-emergency calls.
“This was a failure in the operations and ultimately, as the mayor tells us very often, the buck stops with him,” said Councilman Vincent Ignizio (R-SI).
Additional reporting by C.J. Sullivan and Anthony Affrunti
jmargolin@nypost.comSeries Trident Z RGB
Memory Type DDR4
Capacity 16GB (8GBx2)
Multi-Channel Kit Dual Channel Kit
Tested Speed 3000MHz
Tested Latency 16-18-18-38-2N
Tested Voltage 1.35v
Registered/Unbuffered Unbuffered
Error Checking Non-ECC
SPD Speed 2133MHz
SPD Voltage 1.20v
Fan lncluded No
Height 44 mm / 1.73 inch
Features Intel XMP 2.0 (Extreme Memory Profile) Ready
Featuring a completely exposed light bar with vibrant RGB LEDs, merged with the award-winning Trident Z heatspreader design, and constructed with the highest quality components, the Trident Z RGB DDR4 memory kit combines the most vivid RGB lighting with uncompromised performance.The uncovered light bar is designed for visual gratification in full RGB. The default lighting sports a fluid full spectrum rainbow wave. Downloadable software allows expanded effect and color customizations to the memory modules. Color match your build and rethink the possibilities with RGB.S.U.C.K.I.T. aka Super Utra Cool Kit Incorporating Trams
There is a guide now http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=716407439 Here in this collection I will be posting all the tram objects and stuff I make.- Update 1, 5-4-16: added Freeplace versions of my tramtubes.- Update 2, 2-7-16: added 90 deg corner version of my tramtubes.These Tramtubes are inspired by the The Hague-Rotterdam Metro line, Erasmusline, elevated tram/metro tracks.The parts are found under the park tab. Placing tram track or other infrastructure is done with a road-anarchy mod with the road height set to 12m.I will accept suggestions for new parts in the comments below, beware its only a suggestion. S.h.i.t.posting down there means I will concider it as an option for future expansion of the kit.A lot more parts and stuff to come!!!Please rate, upvote, like, favorite, share or whatever you want to do to support me.BREAKING… Refresh for latest: Actor James Gandolfini died suddenly after a suspected heart attack while on holiday in Rome to attend the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily. He was 51. (UPDATE: The autopsy confirmed that Gandolfini indeed died of a heart attack.) Gandolfini will be forever known for his portrayal of mob boss Tony Soprano on the seminal HBO series The Sopranos, which eventually won him 3 Emmy Awards and a $1,000,000-an-episode paycheck. Overweight, balding, rough around the edges with a thick New Jersey accent, Gandolfini was the opposite of a marquee leading man, destined to be a character actor. Yet he proved through his masterful acting that he could make Tony Soprano sexy and smart, towering and powerful. Chris Albrecht who greenlighted the crime family saga at HBO in 1999 and approved Gandolfini in the role, just emailed Deadline: “Absolutely stunned. I got the word from Lorraine Bracco and just got off with Brad Grey who had just heard from David Chase. We had all become a family. This is a tremendous loss.” (Grey was the executive producer and Chase the creator of The Sopranos.) And Gandolfini’s managers confirmed the actor’s death. “It is with immense sorrow that we report our client James Gandolfini passed away today while on holiday in Rome, Italy,’ said Mark Armstrong and Nancy Sanders. “Our hearts are shattered and we will miss him deeply. He and his family were part of our family for many years and we are all grieving.”
David Chase, the show’s creator, issued this statement today: “He was a genius. Anyone who saw him even in the smallest of his performances knows that. He is one of the greatest actors of this or any time. A great deal of that genius resided in those sad eyes. I remember telling him many times, ‘You don’t get it. You’re like Mozart.’ There would be silence at the other end of the phone. For [wife] Deborah and [children] Michael and Lilliana, this is crushing. And it’s bad for the rest of the world. He wasn’t easy sometimes. But he was my partner, he was my brother in ways I can’t explain and never will be able to explain.” Gandolfini reunited with Chase for The Sopranos creator’s feature film debut Not Fade Away, a 2012 drama in set in 1960s New Jersey in which the actor co-starred as the father of a teenage rock ‘n’ roll band lead singer. Fans anticipated a Sopranos movie from the pair, possibly a prequel about the Sopranos’ grandparents first coming to America from Italy and starring Gandolfini.
Brad Grey, The Sopranos‘ executive producer who’s now chief at Paramount, told Deadline: “Jimmy was one of the most talented, authentic and vulnerable actors of our time. He was unorthodox and truly special in so many ways. He had the sex appeal of Steve McQueen or Brando in his prime as well as the comedic genius of Jackie Gleason. I’m proud to have been his friend and grateful for the extraordinary years I was lucky enough to work with him. My heart and support goes out to his wonderful and loving family.” Added longtime Sopranos executive producer Terence Winter, creator/exec producer of Boardwalk Empire, “I’m truly crushed at the passing of my friend Jim Gandolfini. He was a gifted, fearless actor, respectful of everyone he met, and extraordinarily generous in every possible way.”
“I am shocked and devastated by Jim’s passing,” Gandolfini’s TV wife on The Sopranos, Edie Falco, said. “He was a man of tremendous depth and sensitivity, with a kindness and generosity beyond words. I consider myself very lucky to have spent 10 years as his close colleague. My heart goes out to his family. As those of us in his pretend one hold on to the memories of our intense and beautiful time together. The love between Tony and Carmela was one of the greatest I’ve ever known.”
Said Gandolfini’s therapist on The Sopranos, Lorraine Bracco: “We lost a giant today. I am utterly heartbroken.” His on-screen sister, Aida Turturro: “I’ve not only lost a great friend, but a true brother, on screen and off. James was the most generous actor to work with, but more so, a man with a heart of gold.”
Gandolfini’s fellow mobster on The Sopranos, Tony Sirico who played “Paulie”, had this to say: “Jim was one of my best friends in life, he was there whenever I needed him. Not only did he help me with my career, but also in life, god bless him. He and I were always helping the troops, we even went to combat zones to visit the Marines. He will be missed.”
HBO just told Deadline that it will put a card honoring Gandolfini after the episode currently airing on HBO Signature reading, “HBO mourns the loss of James Gandolfini, a beloved member of the HBO family.” The pay channel also released this statement: “We’re all in shock and feeling immeasurable sadness at the loss of a beloved member of our family. He was special man, a great talent, but more importantly a gentle and loving person who treated everyone no matter their title or position with equal respect. He touched so many of us over the years with his humor, his warmth and his humility. Our hearts go out to his wife and children during this terrible time. He will be deeply missed by all of us.”
Gandolfini was set to topline a new limited series for HBO, Criminal Justice, one of several projects he had in the works. Oscar winner Steve Zaillian is director/executive producer on the project and told Deadline: “I worked with Jim before The Sopranos and after it, and throughout these many years he has always been the same man. A real man, like they don’t make anymore. Honest, humble, loyal, complicated, as grateful for his success as he was unaffected by it, as respectful as he was respected, as generous as he was gifted. He was big, but even bigger-hearted. I’m so saddened to lose my friend, and sadder still for his family.”
Related: UNFINISHED BUSINESS: The Projects James Gandolfini Left Behind
Gandolfini’s portrayal of Tony Soprano was one of TV’s largest-looming TV anti-heroes — the schlub we loved, the cruel monster we hated, the anxiety-ridden husband and father we wanted to hug in midlife crisis when he bemoaned, “I’m afraid I’m going to lose my family. Like I lost the ducks.” In the most maddening series finale in recent history — an episode chock full of references to mortality (life, death, a William Butler Yeats reference to the apocalypse, a bathroom reference to a “Godfather” bloodbath) — his was the show’s last image, seen just as the words “Don’t stop” were being sung on the jukebox. It generated such extreme reaction that the series’ fans crashed HBO’s website for a time that night trying to register their outrage that it ended with a black screen, leaving them not knowing whether Tony Soprano had been whacked. (Related: THAAAT’S What We Were All Waiting For?) Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof referred to The Sopranos‘ infamous ending in his tribute to Gandolfini. “You created an icon. And you cut to black way too abruptly,” he wrote on Twitter. In large part to Gandolfini’s charisma (“Jimmy was the spiritual core of our Sopranos family,” Chris Albright, who is now CEO of Starz, noted today), that Season 5 of The Sopranos in 2004 remains the most watched series in HBO history with 14.4 million viewers on average.
Gandolfini’s breakthrough screen role came with his portrayal of Virgil, the philosophizing and woman-beating hit man, in Tony Scott’s True Romance. Though his list of credits including dozens of movies were dominated by his signature pay TV role, he parlayed his success in middle age into a broad Hollywood career in front of and behind the action in film, television and on stage. He remained in business with HBO and in 2006 signed a development deal with its film distribution company Picturehouse. In 2007, he produced the documentary Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq, in which he interviewed 10 injured Iraq War veterans. He returned to the stage in 2009, appearing in Broadway’s God Of Carnage with Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels. In 2010, Gandolfini produced another documentary, Wartorn: 1861-2010, in which posttraumatic stress disorder and its impact on U.S. soldiers and families was analyzed. More recently, he starred in the HBO film Cinema Verite and executive produced Hemingway & Gellhorn for the pay channel. After appearing on the big screen again in The Taking of Pelham 123 reboot and In the Loop, Gandolfini was in the recent features The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and Zero Dark Thirty.
Born in 1961 in Westwood, New Jersey, Gandolfini’s official bio says the Rutgers graduate spent years as a Manhattan bouncer and nightclub manager. He discovered his lifelong profession in the late 1980s when a friend took him to a Meisner technique acting class. He and made his Broadway debut in the 1992 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire with Alec Baldwin and Jessica Lange. His New York stage credits also included On the Waterfront, One Day Wonder with the Actor’s Studio, and Tarantulas Dancing at the Samuel Beckett Theatre. On film he was cast in small but pivotal roles as Geena Davis’ plumber boyfriend in Angie, a loyal Navy lieutenant in Crimson Tide, the enforcer/stuntman in Get Shorty. After he played the mobster in True Romance, it wasn’t long before his he made a living at it in The Sopranos. During the show’s 6-year run, he also won three straight Screen Actors Guild Award besides Emmys for lead drama actor.English boxer
Julius Francis (born 8 December 1964) is a former British heavyweight champion boxer who participated in many noteworthy boxing matches in the 1990s and 2000s. In 2007, he also participated in a mixed martial arts bout. During his boxing career, he fought the likes of Mike Tyson, Oleg Maskayev, Vitali Klitschko, Axel Schulz, Alexander Dimitrenko, and John Ruiz.
Boxing career [ edit ]
Early career [ edit ]
After a troubled youth that saw him spend several spells in prison,[1][2] Francis turned pro in 1993 at the late age of 28 with a five-round knockout of Graham Arnold. He put together six wins (3 by knockout), including two in the US, before being matched, somewhat prematurely, with future world heavyweight champion John Ruiz. Francis was stopped in 4 rounds by body shots.
In 1995 Francis won Southern Area title fights against Damien Caesar and Keith Fletcher. However, he squandered a big opportunity in an eliminator, when far ahead on points after nine rounds, hard hitting Scott Welch came from behind to drop him three times and stop him in 10. After this fight, Welch would go on to win the British title and challenge for a world title, while Francis was dropped by his team and relegated to journeyman status.
Later in 1995, he took a fight in Russia and was outpointed by local Nikolai Kulpin and, in London, lost a debatable decision by half a point to veteran Michael Murray.
Francis showed marked improvement in 1996, knocking out ex-victim Caesar in the first round to regain his Southern Area title, outpointing Michael Holden, and scoring the biggest win of his career to date as he took on hard hitting "Big Bad" James Oyebola and destroyed the giant Nigerian in 5 one sided rounds.
The big win over Oyebola got Francis a February 1997 shot at Zeljko Mavrovic for his European title, on the champion's home turf of Austria. Francis "stole" Mavrovic's bizarre mohawk haircut for the fight and even dyed it blonde. In the fight itself, Francis strangely took a knee from body shots in the 8th and watched the ref wave the fight off. Mavrovic would go on to lose on points to Lennox Lewis in a World title challenge, a fight that Lewis would say in 2006 was "the hardest of my career".[citation needed]
Experienced pro [ edit ]
In June, Francis was back, outpointing the hard hitting Zambian Joseph Chingangu in London for the Commonwealth title, and in September retained his Commonwealth title and won the vacant British title with a 6th-round knockout of Garry Delaney in Northern Ireland.
His manager Frank Maloney was unsuccessful in attempting to move Francis up in 1998, as he was outpointed in Germany by local icon Axel Schulz in a European title eliminator, and a second visit to German shores saw him decked three times and stopped in the second round by giant Ukrainian Vitali Klitschko. Klits |
have been following the law," Schroeder said. "To me, this ruling really re-affirms our board of trustees has been very professional. They take their taxing authority very seriously."
Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/1C5aMcnLearn more about Bush Honeysuckles
The two species of honeysuckle shrubs, planted (Morrow's (Lonicera morrowii) and Amur) (L. maackii), that cause the most frequently observed invasive problems in Missouri will be referred to collectively as bush honeysuckles. Two other species, Bell’s (L. x bella) and Tartarian honeysuckle (L. tartarica), are also considered when referring to bush honeysuckles. Bell’s and Tartarian honeysuckle have similar impacts to natural communities and similar management implications.
Effects on Natural Communities
Bush honeysuckles will invade a wide variety of natural communities with or without previous disturbances. Affected natural communities can include: lake and stream banks, marsh, fens, sedge meadow, wet and dry prairies, savannas, floodplain and upland forests and woodlands.
Control Recommendations
Recommended Practices in Natural Communities of High Quality
Control measures may enlist one or more of the following techniques: prescribed burning, hand pulling of seedlings, cutting and herbicide treatments. A recently introduced pest, the European Honeysuckle aphid, somewhat controls flower and fruit production in some of the bush honeysuckles. Heavy infestations cause tips of branches to form "witches' brooms" or deformed twigs. This often greatly reduces fruit production. Native ladybug beetles, however, have been noted to control this aphid.
In fire-adapted communities, spring prescribed burning will kill seedlings and kill the tops of mature plants. Bush honeysuckles readily re-sprout and repeated fires are necessary for adequate control. It may be necessary to burn annually or biennially for five years or more for effective control.
Seedlings may be hand-pulled when soils are moist. All of the root should be removed or re-sprouting will occur. Physical removal by hand-pulling smaller plants or grubbing out large plants should not be used in sensitive habitats. Open soil and remaining root stocks will result in rapid re-invasion or re-sprouting of honeysuckles and other exotic species.
Bush honeysuckle stems can be cut at the base with brush-cutters, chainsaws or hand tools. After cutting, a 20-percent solution of glyphosate should be applied to the cut stump either by spraying the stump with a low pressure hand-held sprayer or wiping the herbicide on the stump with a sponge applicator to prevent re-sprouting. Glyphosate is available under the trade names Roundup and Rodeo, products manufactured by Monsanto. While the Roundup and Rodeo labels recommend a 50- to 100-percent concentration of herbicide for stump treatment, a 20-percent concentration of Roundup has proven effective (Note: some products containing glyphosate or another herbicide may be pre-diluted, so be sure to read product labels to understand herbicide concentration levels). It is not known if this lesser concentration is effective for Rodeo also. Rodeo can be used in wetlands and over open water, but Roundup is only labeled for use in non-wetlands. Herbicides should be applied to the cut stump immediately after cutting for best results. Application in late summer, early fall or the dormant season has proven effective. Some re-sprouting may occur with a follow up treatment being necessary. Glyphosate is non-selective, so care should be taken to avoid contacting non-target plants. The wood of bush honeysuckles is very tough and easily dulls power tool blades. Underplanting of native species following honeysuckle removal may be necessary to reestablish a desirable composition of ground cover, shrubs and understory trees. This may also minimize the risk of reinvasion by bush honeysuckles and other exotic species.
Recommended Practices on Lands Other Than High-Quality Natural Areas
Methods given above for high-quality natural communities are also effective and preferred on buffer and disturbed sites. When an area with bush honeysuckle lacks sufficient fuel to carry a fire, herbicides may be necessary to obtain control.
In dry, upland areas, a foliar spray of 1-percent glyphosate will control seedlings. A 1.5-percent foliar spray of glyphosate just after plant blooming in June will control mature shrubs. Application should occur from late June to just prior to leaf color changes in fall. The herbicide should be applied while backing away from treated areas so as not to walk through the wet herbicide.
In areas near water, a foliar spray of 1-percent Rodeo (glyphosate) with Ortho-X27 spreader, will control seedlings. Application should occur from late June to just prior to changes in leaf color in the fall. Foliar application of a 1.5-percent solution of Rodeo (2 oz. Rodeo/gallon clean water) will kill mature plants if all foliage is sprayed. This control method usually requires less labor but more herbicide.
In addition, Krenite controls bush honeysuckle when applied according to label instructions. Any treatment should be rechecked in following years for reinvasion. Glyphosate is a nonselective herbicide and care should be taken to avoid contacting non-target plants with herbicide. Do not spray so heavily that herbicide drips off the target species. By law, herbicides may only be applied according to label instructions.
Failed or Ineffective Practices
The herbicide Garlon does not control bush honeysuckle.You may occasionally hear the term "role-playing game" mentioned now and then, and may even hear mention of certain games, like Dungeons & Dragons or Vampire: The Masquerade. The term RPG (short for role-playing game) is often used to describe certain types of videogames, but just to make things clear, this page is about the "pen and paper" or "tabletop" RPGs that many people play while sitting together and speaking to each other. RPGs are a form of interactive storytelling, in which all of the participants act out the roles of characters in the story. In all, it's very similar to the childhood game of "let's pretend" or "cops and robbers," but with rules and a referee. Unlike other games, RPGs do not typically have clearly defined winners and losers - individual characters may have goals that they are trying to achieve, but overall, the goal of the game is to create a satisfying story. One of the best ways I have heard to describe role-playing to a non-roleplayer is this one: Think of some of your favorite boardgames that you like to play, now or when you were younger; popular games like Monopoly, Battleship, Clue, Stratego, or Risk. Try to imagine playing one of those games while stepping into the role of a shrewd businessperson, a Navy captain, a master detective, or Army General. Now, instead of just rolling dice, drawing cards, and moving pieces around the board, you're acting out that role, interacting with the other players who are doing the same thing, and creating a story as well as playing a game. Now take that idea a step further - instead of competing with the other players, you are working with them as a team, to accomplish a specific goal. One of the players that is acting as "gamemaster" is presenting situations to you, describing where your characters are and what they can see (and even hear, feel, smell, and taste), and playing the roles of anyother characters (friendly or otherwise) that your characters interact with. This player prepares the story beforehand (by writing it and stocking it with characters, or reading a prepared story), describes the scenes and events of the story as they unfold, and tells the other players the results of their actions. A player's character is usually defined by a set of numbers or words that describe different qualities about the character. For example - a Dungeons & Dragons character with a Strength score of 18 is very strong (stronger than any character with a lower score), and a Vampire character with two dots in the Acrobatics skill is pretty good at jumping and tumbling. As you can see from this basic example, the rule systems between different role-playing games can work in very different ways.
In most of these games, dice are used to generate random numbers to resolve certain events (such as whether a character can climb a slippery wall, or if an attempt to fast talk a guard will work). These dice come in an array of shapes and sizes; a common set of dice includes 4-, 6-, 8-, 10-, 12-, and 20-sided dice. Some games use a complete set of these dice (Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu are two examples), while others may only use one particular kind (GURPS uses only 6-siders, for example, while the World of Darkness games use only 10s). In others, dice are replaced with other randomizers such as cards, or in some cases, removed altogether in what is often called a "diceless" system.
Miniature plastic or metal figures are used in some games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, to help the players visualize where their characters are in a scene. They aren’t used in many RPGs, however, so you frequently will not see them at a game session. There are also strategy wargames that use the same or similar figures – these games are also a lot of fun, but are not quite the same thing as a role-playing game (even though RPGs were actually born from the wargaming hobby).
RPGs are usually played in a comfortable area with a table where everyone can relax while they play and have somewhere to put their books, notes, and dice. There is a “sister” hobby to RPGs called Live Action Role Playing (or LARP for short) where players dress as their characters and occasionally use props and/or foam weapons during the game.
HOW IT WORKS
Here is an example of how the character's abilities and dice are used to determine the results of an action in a roleplaying game. In this example, a group of players is participating in an espionage RPG, and one of the players thinks she has discovered the warehouse where some hostages are being held. When she tells the gamemaster that her character wants to check out the back of the building, she finds an opportunity to put her character's skills to work: Gamemaster: You sneak around to the back of the building. The alley is damp and dark, and you see stacks of pallets, a dumpster, and some old garbage cans. Next to the dumpster, you see a padlocked door. No one seems to be around. Player: Sarah is going to try to pick the padlock. She has a Lockpicking skill of +5. Gamemaster: The lock looks new, and well made. It's going to be pretty challenging to pick. Roll a 16 or higher to get it open. (The player rolls a 20-sided die and adds 5 to the result, hoping to get a result of 16 or higher. If she does, her character will have successfully picked the lock - if not, she will have to find another way in...) Depending on the results of that die roll, the gamemaster will describe what happens to Sarah, and the player may get to respond with further actions that she would like the character to take. Other players may step in to have their characters get involved as well, and the game (and story) continue in this way. There are, of course, exceptions to all of this. Some RPGs, as mentioned above, do not use dice at all. Some may not have a gamemaster, or may use a system where the players help direct what happens in the story, taking some of the control away from the gamemaster. There are even some RPGs where the players are working against each other, and trying to make everything go their way. But the basic concept is still the same - a game where a group of players cooperate to create a satisfying story.Shortage of steering gears supplied by Robert Bosch slowed BMW’s production
News Hour:
German carmaker BMW said a shortage of steering gears supplied by Robert Bosch slowed production of its 1 series, 2 series, 3 series and 4 series BMW models and caused stoppages at its plants in South Africa and China.
“Our supplier Bosch is not currently able to provide us with a sufficient number of steering gears for the BMW 1 Series, 2 Series, 3 Series and 4 Series,” BMW said in a statement on Monday, reports Reuters.
BMW plants in Tiexi, China, and Rosslyn, South Africa have extended or pulled forward planned interruptions to production, the carmaker said.
“We are taking advantage of the flexibility of our processes to minimize economic damage. We expect that Bosch, as the responsible supplier, will compensate for damages,” BMW said.
Bosch was not immediately available for comment.
Like this: Like Loading...This week, Eddie Murphy was cast to play Richard Pryor’s father in the upcoming biopic about the legendary comedian, but might Murphy be waxing his own nostalgia and preparing for a return behind the mic? According to reports, Murphy made a surprise guest appearance at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles last night, where he delivered a short 10-minute set. It marked the first time he had done stand-up publicly in 25 years.
Update – 5:00 p.m.: There are conflicting reports on whether Murphy actually took the stage, and the Comedy Store is doing little to help clear up the confusion.
You never know who will pop in at The Store… — The Comedy Store (@TheComedyStore) March 20, 2015
Update – 7:00 p.m.: It’s been confirmed that Murphy did in fact make a surprise appearance and go on stage at the Comedy Store last night. However, he is said to have pulled an SNL, suggesting his appearance was short lived and left much to be desired.
It seems we have Murphy’s longtime friend Arsenio Hall to thank for Murphy’s appearance:
Yo @Eddiemurphy … just went on at the @TheComedyStore! #cathartic – Come on and Take 5 one nite! — Arsenio Hall (@ArsenioHall) March 20, 2015
Below, revisit Murphy’s 1983 comedy special Delirious.Steve Harper is available as a free agent and we know Steve can do a job for Newcastle in the absence of Tim Krul this season, although Newcastle may have wanted to move on and use their current remaining experienced goalkeepers in the squad – 24 year-old Karl Darlow and 29 year-old Rob Elliot.
Karl´s foot injury comes at a bad time after he picked it up a few weeks ago before Tim Krul´s devastating ACL knee injury that could see him out of the game for up to a year.
Steve Harper – could rejoin Newcastle in January
Newcastle already have a full 25 man Premier League squad so if we had some places available it´s very likely that Steve would have joined Newcastle again and could have even started playing for the first team – based on his form in training.
The 40 year-old has vast experience in the Premier League and at Newcastle, and we may still sign him in January when we can change the PL squad.
This is what Steve has said today:
“I’m keeping myself fit but it is irrelevant sadly as they have a 25-man squad which they can’t add to, but I’ve had a load of phone calls over the summer.” “I played the last seven games of the season and I enjoyed last year. I kept four clean sheets in nine Premier League games, not bad for an old man.” “But we’ll see; I’ve had a million phone calls from all sorts of agents asking me about this, that and the other. It was Denmark last week and a couple of calls more recently.” “I’ll keep ticking over, obviously you can’t go on forever but if something does come up which ticks all the boxes then I’d certainly jump at the opportunity.”
Newcastle will be signing some outfield players in January to strengthen the squad and the goalkeeper situation will also have to be fixed.
But that depends on a number of things – how Rob Elliot plays – and whether Karl Darlow is fit again shortly and how he plays.
In the worst case Newcastle could bring in Steve Harper and in the very worst case we suppose we could also go after Victor Valdes of Manchester United – who seems desperate to play in the Premier League.
So there are two goalkeeper possibilities as a contingency plan in January depending on what happens between now and the end of the year with Elliot and Darlow.
Newcastle must start picking up points very soon and the sad awakening so far this season is that our squad doesn´t seem to be good enough for the Premier League.
Comments welcome.Decoding is a regular column about the games we love, and the tricks and traditions that make them tick.
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“Oh shit, I pressed the wrong button and killed that guy.”
It happens to the best of us. You could play It happens to the best of us. You could play Watch Dogs 2 official site ] for days without firing a gun, or causing a fatal traffic accident, or beating someone to death with a billiard ball. Lead character Marcus Holloway doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d leave bodies in his wake, and the ease with which he can become a killer is jarring. Like so many of our protagonists, he walks through life with the safety off and his finger on the trigger.
Open world games, particularly those of the urban variety, have a violence problem, and it’s mechanical rather than philosophical.
Killing a person isn’t a decision to be taken lightly, but it is often one of a character’s default actions. If not outright murder, you might accidentally punch someone in the face rather than emoting in their general direction if you press the wrong key at the wrong time. Drive through almost any open world city, or even sprint through one in Assassin’s Creed, and you might be kind to the crowds at first. I spent my first few hours in Watch Dogs 2 following the rules of the road, enjoying the way that the game generates little incidents of road rage and accident through its simulation, but eventually I resorted to using packed sidewalks as shortcuts. The people who were scattered like ragdolls weren’t real. They’d respawn with a new face, with a few basic threads of identity, and become part of the mass again.
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Death doesn’t matter, until a cutscene tells us that it matters. Ubisoft’s hack ‘n’ smash game isn’t alone in struggling to fit its characters and story into a free-wheeling chaotic sandbox, but by placing its focus on a different kind of criminal in a different kind of setting, the ease with which it can switch between calm and killing spree is even more tonally damaging than in a GTA or Red Dead Redemption. Even GTAs rogues gallery of antiheroes don’t glide through the carnage unblemished; I never bought early-game Nico Bellic as a casual killer of bystanders, and what character arc he has is torn to shreds if the player doesn’t care about the bodycount of innocents.
I often spend more time deliberating over my clothes and haircuts in these games than I do about mounting the pavement and obliterating a jogger. A haircut costs money and I have to live with it, at least for a while, but that jogger is barely a blip on the commute between one mission and the next. A speedbump at best.
There are ways to incorporate the absurdity of the easy kill into a game. The Saints Row series, at its best, recognises how ludicrous their genre can be. In the fourth game you’re sometimes killing evil aliens or simulated memories rather than actual people, and even when your actions result in civilian losses, hey, you’re a gangster president. It’s fine. You live in a very silly world.
Life and limb are cheaper in a silly world. It’s why the violence of Looney Tunes isn’t as upsetting as a single frame of Watership Down, and why we laugh at Laurel and Hardy, and Ash vs the Evil Dead, even when violence is the inevitable end of every situation. Most games have more in common with action films than with slapstick though, and no matter how many crime shows cast their influence into GTA, beyond its script, the actual moment-by-moment experience of the game fits with other genres and scenarios.
The much-maligned destruction of central Metropolis in Man of Steel is a game-like sequence. The disregard for the assumed inhabitants of the toppling buildings identifies them as NPC types, like so many of the doomed crowds in disaster films. Jurassic World has a sequence in which park visitors are being massacred while the lead couple take time out to have a romantic moment in their midst. The camera shows us horror but seems to hope we’ll forget about it as soon as the shot switches to the heroes, safe in the centre of the carnage. Those visitors at the park and the people working in Metropolis aren’t real – they’re background noise. Nobody will mourn them and they’ll respawn if they’re needed for another setpiece down the line.
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The ease with which the population of open world cities can be culled perhaps has more to do with the way the simulation of the city works than any higher level decision about character or setting. What easier way is there to trigger a police response than by firing a gun on a busy street, and what else is there to do on those busy streets other than car chases and shoot-outs? For all of their detail, these worlds are still places for pursuit and combat, giant, elaborate mazes and arenas. If you want to cause ripples, you have to throw a stone, and the life of the city can be a little lifeless until someone starts dealing death. If you want to see the wonderfully intricate emergent scenarios that can play out, you often have to nudge the pieces in play rather aggressively. You’re the kid, tapping on the glass and then shaking the antfarm to get a reaction.
RPGs have been exploring ways to make non-violent options interesting since the early days of the Ultima series, and the dialogue options of Pillars of Eternity and the like try to ensure that swordplay isn’t the default option. Credit should be given to Fallout 4 as well. I didn’t enjoy the implementation of the settlement building and management, but it is at least an attempt to allow for the creation of community rather than conflict, a way to imprint your own meaning on a world without a nuke or a gun.
It’s not just that I’d like alternatives to guns and fists though, it’s that I’d like the decision to take a life to have a little more weight. As long as the shoot button is next to the talk and jump buttons – and it often sits on the left mouse button which is as front and centre as a button can get – it’ll seem like second nature to pull that trigger. That makes sense if you’re running around a hostile post-war wasteland but if you’re an activist hacker it seems strange to be so eager for the kill, and even a hardened (or hardening) criminal would be daft to attract attention by leaving a trail of bodies on the way to the next heist.
What is a default button for if not to rattle the antfarm though? I remember being amused by Red Dead Redemption including a button for greeting people with a tip of the hat and Watch Dogs 2 lets you pet the dogs that you encounter in parks. Those are lovely little flourishes, character-building and pleasant, but they’re not a replacement for a more direct engagement with the world.
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In gunless games, particularly walking simulators like Gone Home and the like, the default action taken by the player character sometimes picks up items in the world, or functions like the ‘look’ command in an old point and click, providing extra detail. There’s rarely a method to change the world directly and these worlds often lack NPCs. From Dear Esther onward, walking simulators often involve isolation. Even where NPCs are present, as in Firewatch, interactions with them take place at a distance.
Last year, two excellent free games, something happen, and unlike many comedy games, it would be a scripted joke rather than some exaggerated clumsy physics. Last year, two excellent free games, North and Off-Peak, filled their weird environments with NPCs, and interactions led to snippets of dialogue. In both cases, you could use parts of the world and the people in it, but only to peel back layers of mystery or to find the punchlines buried beneath the collectibles in the case of Off-Peak. Playing through that – and you really should if you haven’t – I was reminded of Jazzpunk. There, the default action was always a gag. A whoopee cushion or a pratfall or something totally unexpected. Everywhere you travelled, you could be sure that clicking the left mouse button would makesomethinghappen, and unlike many comedy games, it would be a scripted joke rather than some exaggerated clumsy physics.
The central focus on the kill button increasingly feels like a throwback to a time when games were almost entirely based around violent conflict. As we move into genres beyond action and war, I find the ease with which a character kills stranger and stranger. Sometimes it feels like a crutch, a way to provide a sense of freedom and escapism without reinventing the wheel, and in a way that is so traditional it’s rarely questioned. Other times, it feels like a way to hold on to the attention of an audience – taking away their guns is a way of limiting their engagement with the world.
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Give me cameras, gestures, handshakes and conversation. Give me Whoopee cushions and pratfalls. I don’t want to purge violence from games, but I want a new default, where appropriate, or alternatives at the very least. Not every open world has to become Zack Snyder’s Metropolis. I want to play in a world where the lives of NPCs matter, even when they’re not starring in a cutscene.ANNAPOLIS PARTY POOPED OUT: Sun columnist Dan Rodricks hates to be a party pooper but, he writes: I declare myself underwhelmed by the “accomplishments” of the 2014 Maryland General Assembly — a minimum wage increase so gradual it will have no effect on the standard of living for the working poor, a $431 million tax break for the heirs of millionaires, marijuana “decriminalization” that is hardly that, a paltry $4.3 million for pre-kindergarten education, and a broken promise on fully funding public employee pensions.
THE ‘WILL LEAVE’ ARGUMENT: Opinionator Fraser Smith of WYPR lays out the single argument lobbyists use to push their agenda: It’s part of the playbook that always seems to work. Higher taxes on the wealthy means millionaires will leave. Less money for the movie industry means the movie industry will leave. A higher minimum wage for workers means employers will leave. Works every time. Lobbyists don’t need much more than a “will leave” sentence.
PART I: HEALTH EXCHANGE MESS, A CLOSER LOOK: In a two-part series today and Friday for MarylandReporter.com, retired auditor Charles Hayward delves into the problems that led to a disastrous launch of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange in fall 2013. For today’s article, Hayward writes that whenever ineffective planning, poor judgment and lousy communication intersect with really bad technology in a large-scale, high profile, IT development project, a “perfect storm” of catastrophic failure is the predictable result.
POT DECRIMINALIZATION BILL QUESTIONED: Frederick County State’s Attorney Charlie Smith said a marijuana decriminalization bill that was passed in the final hours of the Maryland General Assembly session Monday is fraught with difficulties for police and prosecutors, reports Danielle Gaines in the Frederick News Post.
AN EQUITABLE STORMWATER FEE: Frederick and Carroll counties have been exempted from the mandate to collect stormwater fees in the same manner as other jurisdictions. However Frederick County decides to raise funds to meet its requirement for the stormwater fee, opines the editorial board for the Frederick News Post, the amount a property owner must contribute should be as commensurate as practical with the stormwater runoff his property is generating. Any other method of raising these funds will not only be inequitable, but also will fail to adequately encourage property owners to reduce their stormwater runoff.
MOVE OVER LAW: Jane Bellmyer of the Cecil Whig reports that William Cain has had some close calls and so have his drivers. So it goes without saying that Cain is pretty happy with the expansion of Maryland’s “Move Over” law. “I’ve nearly been hit, my truck has nearly been hit,” said Cain, who owns Chesapeake Service Center on Nottingham Road in Elkton.
BUYING GUNS: Erin Cox is reporting for the Sun that more than 300 people banned from owning guns were able to buy them last year because the state police were overwhelmed with background check requests, police said Wednesday. People with histories of mental illness or convictions for violent misdemeanors, felons and fugitives were able to obtain and keep guns for three months or longer before state police reviewed the sales.
MINIMUM WAGE IMPACT: C.J. Lovelace of the Hagerstown Herald-Mail writes that opinions were mixed this week about the effects of Maryland’s approval of an incremental minimum-wage increase to $10.10 over the next few years, with some saying it will have little bearing on businesses, while others believe it may have a drastic impact. Several officials said on Wednesday that Washington County may fare differently than other counties in the state due to its proximity to Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where mandated minimums wages would remain lower.
FARM VEHICLE BILLS: Timothy Sandoval of the Carroll County Times writes that two bills passed by the Maryland General Assembly toward the end of this year’s legislative session would loosen vehicle restrictions for farmers and would give milk haulers time to upgrade their trucks in order to carry more weight on state roads.
ARUNDEL SNAGS $9.6M: Anne Arundel County snared $9.6 million during the 2014 General Assembly session,Tim Prudente reports for the Annapolis Capital. Some $3.5 million for turf fields at Annapolis and South River high schools, $250,000 for a new National Sailing Hall of Fame office in Annapolis, $75,000 to install running water at a Severn food bank — all were included in the $9.6 million county lawmakers grabbed for local projects.
Whatever happens on marquee state issues, legislators spend a lot of each annual gathering of the General Assembly tending to the needs of their districts and counties. The editorial board for the Annapolis Capital writes that it is obvious that from that point of view, Anne Arundel County didn’t do badly in the 2014 session.
THE ANNAPOLIS BRAWL: Krishana Davis of the Sun gives the details of the fight in the Lowe office building on the last night of the session that was between two brothers, one a legislative aide to state Del. Mary Dulany James, in which alcohol was involved.
UM COMPUTER PROBE: The FBI is investigating a former University of Maryland contract worker who said he took College Park administrators’ personal information from the campus network and posted online about the stunt to draw attention to major security flaws, reports Scott Dance for the Sun, who interviewed the contract worker.
HIGHER ED PLAN: The body overseeing higher education in Maryland unveiled a new four-year plan Wednesday intended to help serve the low-income, first-generation and nontraditional students that make up a growing segment of the academic population, reports Carrie Wells for the Sun.
CHANGING DELEGATION: When the Washington County state legislative delegation returns to Annapolis next year, some familiar lawmakers will not be part of the group, writes Kaustauv Basu for the Hagerstown Herald Mail. Del. LeRoy Myers is not seeking re-election to the House of Delegates, while Sen. Ron Young and Del. Michael Hough — or those elected from the seats they currently represent — will not be part of the group due to redistricting.
ANTI-SMOKING CAMPAIGN: A coalition of health advocacy and anti-smoking groups launched a campaign in Maryland on Wednesday to make support for a $1 per pack increase in the state’s tobacco tax a major election issue this year for legislative candidates, reports John Wagner in the Post.
HOW’D THE CANDIDATES PERFORM?: Laslo Boyd of Center Maryland writes that with the end of the General Assembly session, candidates for statewide office can now focus all their attention on campaigning, including fundraising. If one of the significant ways in which a candidate demonstrates readiness for higher office is by doing a good job in the office she or he currently holds, the session provides some relevant insights about the candidates running for governor and attorney general.
GANSLER PICKS UP ENDORSEMENT: Attorney General Doug Gansler on Wednesday announced support for his gubernatorial bid from the Business and Clergy Partnership, a new organization making its first political endorsement and claiming 300 members across the Washington region, writes John Wagner for the Post.
GANSLER ROCKS THE BOAT: Karen Hosler of WYPR offers an historical analysis of Doug Gansler’s boat-rocking career in Maryland politics. At 51, Gansler is ambitious, accomplished and sharp-tongued, yet affable, admirers say. But friends and foes see a man who can be rudely impatient and clueless about the sting of his remarks; a loose cannon who suffers self-inflicted wounds.
BROWN TOUTS ADOPTION, FOSTER CARE: Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Anthony Brown’s latest television ad highlights his relationship with his adopted son, along with Brown’s practice of promoting adoption and foster care during church visits, writes John Wagner for the Post.
While Brown himself does not address policy in the 30-second spot, the ad flashes statistical claims about the state’s progress on adoptions and foster care since Gov. Martin O’Malley and Brown took office in 2007, write Michael Dresser in the Sun.
PRAYER FOR CARROLL COMMISSIONERS: The editorial board for the Sun smacks the Carroll County Board of Commissioners over its stance on saying prayers to Jesus: It’s a shame Carroll County’s Board of Commissioners felt it had to hold a formal vote to prevent members from violating a federal court order against sectarian or denominational prayers at the opening of its meetings. Is it too much to ask for elected officials to act like grown-ups and not deliberately break the law? Apparently it is for some Carroll County board members, who seem unable to conduct the public’s business without going on about their religious convictions as if they were in a revival tent.Editor's note: Rudy Ruiz founded RedBrownandBlue.com, a site featuring multicultural political commentary, hosts a nationally syndicated Spanish-language radio show; and wrote a guide to success for immigrants ("¡Adelante!" published by Random House). He is co-founder and president of Interlex, an advocacy marketing agency based in San Antonio, Texas.
Rudy Ruiz says immigration reform can't wait for next year.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas (CNN) -- One of the greatest challenges for minorities in any democracy is that their priorities often differ with those of the majority.
Consequently, even if a minority group does not experience outright tyranny, it can suffer tragic neglect. That's the lingering problem with immigration reform.
Latino leaders have long called for comprehensive immigration reform. During the presidential campaign, it finally seemed destined for reality as candidates sought the crucial Latino vote.
But today, where's immigration reform on the list of priorities?
Apparently, it's plummeting faster than bank stocks were during the market's freefall. Maybe the president hoped we wouldn't notice. He mentioned it in passing while we were engrossed in the health care drama. And instead of telling us directly, in a meeting with the Latino leaders that supported his candidacy, he announced it while chatting with foreign heads of state.
What did he say? No immigration reform until 2010. But since he's expending massive political capital on health care, and 2010 is a midterm election year renowned for inaction on controversial matters, the postponement is as menacing as the promise is dubious.
"Experience and history have told us if it's postponed to the following year, then you're talking about 2011," Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, told the San Antonio Express-News.
But with health care and financial reforms, budget deficits, and tax hikes looming, what hurdles will we face by 2011? What realistic hopes remain for immigration reform?
Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas, said if a comprehensive bill isn't passed, "We'll try to do it piecemeal."
'Latino in America' The Latino population is set to nearly triple by 2050. This October, Soledad O'Brien journeys into the homes and hearts of a group destined to change the U.S. Witness the evolution of a country as Latinos change America and America changes Latinos.
Coming this October see full schedule »
"Piecemeal" is a favorite course for a Congress that finds bipartisan compromise unpalatable. But given the issue's persistent magnitude, such a response is tantamount to a negligent -- perhaps tyrannical -- master tossing a crumb from the table to a pack of ravenous, emaciated dogs.
Instead, why don't we step up as a nation and face the challenge with a level of honor and attention that is consistent with the best of our ideals? After all, the Statue of Liberty raised its torch to welcome immigrants, not to light the way for the insurance executives and Wall Street bankers prioritized by policymakers today.
I grew up on the border and I can honestly say, it pains me to watch us squander billions on a border fence when we've yet to see a man-made structure that can stop the forces of nature. What we call "immigration" -- in the case of Latinos -- is actually a pattern of migration, a natural movement of homo sapiens dying of thirst and hunger, seeking water and nourishment in more fertile grounds.
Comprehensive immigration reform should thus be viewed as an essential measure to protect human rights on our soil and continent. This is a time to think big, not small. This is about more than laws and lines drawn on a map.
It is about the origins of our humanity, not our nationality. Real people are suffering as raids continue, border deaths and hate crimes escalate, and families are destroyed.
"Without a solution, the problems will only worsen," I was told by Salvador Sanabria, executive director of El Rescate, a non-profit serving immigrants in Los Angeles, California, for 27 years. "Comprehensive reform will save lives, keep families together and give immigrants the opportunity to contribute fully to America's economy and security. It's a humanitarian issue, but it'll also benefit America to do it right."
On an issue prioritized by the nation's largest, fastest-growing minority group, why not |
Packers vs Cardinals
Kurt Warner outduels Aaron Rodgers in OT game.
LOS ANGELES RAMS (ST. LOUIS)
Super Bowl 34 -- Rams vs Titans
Warner MVP
Goal line tackle by Mike Jones on Kevin Dyson.
1985 NFC Divisional Playoff-- Rams vs Cowboys
Eric Dickerson rushes for 248 yards.
2001 NFC Championship Game -- Eagles vs Rams
Rams come from behind to beat Eagles and reach Super Bowl.
SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS
1981 NFC Championship Game -- Cowboys vs 49ers
"The Catch"
Super Bowl XXIII -- 49ers vs Bengals
Montana to Taylor
1998 NFC Wild Card -- Packers vs 49ers
Terrell Owens TD Catch
SEATTLE SEAHAWKS
Super Bowl 48 -- Seahawks vs Broncos
First Super Bowl win.
2013 NFC Championship Game -- 49ers vs Seahawks
Richard Sherman deflection for game saving INT.
2014 NFC Championship Game -- Seahawks vs Packers
Russell Wilson leads second-half comeback to defeat Packers and reach second straight Super Bowl.
RELEASE DATES FOR GAMES
YouTube playlist link
July 22
1998 Thanksgiving Day game - Vikings vs Cowboys
» Moss torches the Cowboys
2006 Week 6 - Bears vs Cardinals
» Bears great Monday Night comeback
Training Camp - 7/29
Super Bowl XLV - Steelers vs Packers
» Aaron Rodgers' first SB win
1999 AFC Wild Card Game - Bills vs Titans
» "Music City Miracle"
Super Bowl XI - Raiders vs Vikings
» Stabler topples "Purple People Eaters"
2001 NFC Championship - Eagles vs Rams
» Rams come from behind to beat Eagles, reach Super Bowl
HOF Weekend - 8/5
2003 Packers vs Raiders - Week 16
» Favre returns after father's passing, throws 4 TDs
Super Bowl XLI - Colts vs. Bears
» Manning/Dungy/Harrison win first Super Bowl
Super Bowl XXXI - Patriots vs Packers
» Favre wins Super Bowl
Pre Week 1 - 8/12
1985 NFC Divisional - Cowboys vs Rams
» Eric Dickerson rushes for 248 yards
2002 NFC Championship - Buccaneers vs Eagles
» Upset win in Philadelphia to reach Super Bowl
2012 AFC Division Playoffs - Ravens vs Broncos
» Mile High Miracle; Flacco to Jones TD ties game, win in 2OT
Preseason Week 2 - 8/19
Super Bowl VI - Cowboys vs Dolphins
» Cowboys' first Super Bowl win, 24-3
Super Bowl XXV - Bills vs Giants
» Scott Norwood "Wide right!"
Super Bowl XX - Bears vs Patriots
» Bears win first Super Bowl
Pre Week 3 - 8/26
2013 Patriots vs Panthers - Week 11 MNF
» Cam Newton to Tedd Ginn with :59 seconds left to win game vs Patriots
1998 NFC Wildcard - Packers vs 49ers
» Terrell Owens catches game-winning TD
2007 AFC Wild Card - Jaguars vs Steelers
»David Garrard leads upset win on the road
Pre Week 4 - 9/2
2002 Cowboys vs Texans - Week 1
» Texans' first win as an expansion franchise
Super Bowl XLII - Giants vs Patriots
» David Tyree catch, Giants over undefeated Patriots
2015 Buccaneers vs Redskins - Week 7
» "You like that?!" Kirk Cousins leads largest comeback win in Redskins history
Week 1 - 9/9
Super Bowl 50 - Broncos vs Panthers
» "This one's for Pat!" Broncos defense dominates, Manning wins his second SB ring
Super Bowl XLIX - Patriots vs Seahawks
» Malcolm Butler interception seals the win for Patriots, Katy Perry performs halftime
2006 AFC Championship - Patriots vs Colts
» Epic Peyton Manning-led Colts comeback over Patriots
Week 2 - 9/16
2015 AFC Wild Card - Chiefs vs Texans
» Chiefs shut out Texans in Houston
2012 Packers vs Vikings - Week 17
» Adrian Peterson breaks 2k rush yards for season, 9 short of all-time single season record
1992 Bills vs 49ers - Week 2
» Jim Kelly outduels Steve Young defeating 49ers 34-31. Game featured 1,000 total yards of offense. First time in NFL history there were no punts in an entire game
Week 3 - 9/23
Thanksgiving 1985 Bears vs Cowboys - Week 11
» '85 Bears pound Cowboys 44-0
2002 AFC Championship - Titans vs Raiders
» QB Rich Gannon leads Raiders air-attack that vanquishes Titans
2006 Falcons vs Saints - Week 3
» Saints return to the Superdome one year after Hurricane Katrina. Steve Gleason blocks punt
2000 Rams vs Buccaneers - Week 16
» Tampa Bay wins shootout, 38-35, over "Greatest Show on Turf" on MNF
Week 4 - 9/30
2006 Week 14 - Colts vs Jaguars
» Team rushes for 375 yards vs Colts, beating future Super Bowl champs, 44-17
1981 NFC Championship Game - Cowboys vs 49ers
» "The Catch"
Super Bowl VII - Dolphins vs Redskins
» 17-0 season for the Dolphins, only undefeated team in NFL history
Week 5 - 10/7
Super Bowl 48 - Seahawks vs Broncos
» Seahawks dominate Peyton Manning's Broncos en route to first SB win
2007 NFC Championship Game - Giants vs Packers
» Giants upset win in the frigid temperatures at Lambeau Field
2015 Week 5 - Seahawks vs Bengals
» Andy Dalton leads 4th quarter comeback against Legion of Boom
Week 6 - 10/14
2014 Titans vs Browns - Week 5
» Greatest comeback in Browns team history 29-28 victory
2006 Broncos vs Chargers - Week 14
» Tomlinson breaks single-season TD mark
2012 NFC Division Playoff Game - Seahawks vs Falcons
» Playoff win over the Seahawks
Week 7 - 10/21
Super Bowl 12 - Cowboys vs Broncos
» Cowboys 27-10 Super Bowl Win
1996 NFC Division Game - Cowboys vs Panthers
» First postseason win, reached NFC Championship game, winning 26-17
Super Bowl 27 - Cowboys vs Bills
» Cowboys' first Super Bowl win under new head coach Jimmy Johnson
Week 8 - 10/28
1986 AFC Division Playoff - Browns vs Jets
» Browns double OT win vs Jets to reach AFC Championship game
2013 AFC Wild Card- Chiefs vs Colts
» Andrew Luck leads great comeback to win 45-44
2002 NFC Wild Card - Falcons vs Packers
» Michael Vick upset win at Lambeau, first home loss at Lambeau for Packers (27-7)
Super Bowl 37 - Raiders vs Buccaneers
» Buccaneers win first Super Bowl
Week 9 - 11/4
1994 Week 13 - Dolphins vs Jets
» Marino Fake Spike
2008 AFC Championship Game - Ravens vs Steelers
» Steelers force 5 TOs en route to seventh SB appearance.
2010 Week 15 - Eagles vs Giants
» DeSean Jackson PR TD walk-off
2003 NFC Division Playoff - Panthers vs Rams
» Double OT, Steve Smith walk-off
Week 10 - 11/11
1981 AFC Division Playoff - Chargers vs Dolphins
» Chargers 41-38 OT win.
» "Kellen Winslow Game"
1991 NFC Division Playoff - Cowboys vs Lions
» Lions' big playoff win over Cowboys
Super Bowl XVIII - Redskins vs Raiders
» Raiders defeat Redskins
Week 11 - 11/18
1994 AFC Championship Game - Chargers vs Steelers
» Chargers upset win on the road in Pittsburgh to go to Super Bowl
1986 AFC Championship game - Broncos vs Browns
» "The Drive"
2003 Chiefs vs Bengals - Week 11
» Bengals defeat unbeaten Chiefs, 24-19
Super Bowl XLIV - Saints vs Colts
» Saints win first Super Bowl over Peyton Manning-led Colts
Week 12 - 11/25
1982 NFC Championship Game - Cowboys vs Redskins
» Redskins beat rival Cowboys, to reach Super Bowl
2005 AFC Division Playoff - Steelers vs Colts
» Bettis fumble, Big Ben tackle
1994 Week 7 - Chiefs vs Broncos
» Chiefs QB Joe Montana beats old nemesis John Elway
2003 NFC Division Playoff - Packers vs Eagles
» 4th and 26 Eagles convert to win 20-17 (Freddie Mitchell catch)
Week 13 - 12/2
1990 AFC Championship game - Raiders vs Bills
» Bills reach first Super Bowl 51-3 win
Super Bowl XXXVI - Rams vs Patriots
» Patriots upset win over Rams
Super Bowl III - Jets vs Colts
» Joe Namath leads upset win
1996 AFC Division Playoff - Jaguars vs Broncos
» Upset Jaguars win, 30-27, at Mile High
1985 Week 13 - Bears vs Dolphins
» Dolphins ruin Bears' unbeaten season on Monday Night
Week 14 - 12/9
2012 AFC Championship Game - Ravens vs Patriots
» Upset road win in New England to get to Super Bowl
2014 NFC Championship Game - Packers vs Seahawks
» Russell Wilson leads second half comeback to defeat Packers and reach second straight Super Bowl
1993 AFC Division Playoff - Chiefs vs Oilers
» Joe Montana and Marcus Allen lead big road upset win over Oilers
Week 15 - 12/16
1989 AFC Division Playoff - Bills vs Browns
» Browns goal-line stand to win 34-30
2012 Jaguars vs Texans - Week 11
» Texans defeat the Jaguars 43-37 in OT behind Matt Schaub's 527 passing yards, 2nd most in NFL history
2000 Dolphins vs Jets - Week 8 MNF
» Big Jets comeback: "Monday Night Miracle"
Week 16 - 12/23
2010 AFC Division Playoff - Jets vs Patriots
» Rex Ryan team upsets Bill Belichick's Patriots, 28-21
2011 AFC Wild Card - Bengals vs Texans
» Texans win first ever playoff game, beating Bengals 31-10
» J.J. Watt has INT return for TD
1999 AFC Championship Game - Titans vs Jaguars
» Titans beat Jaguars on the road to get to Super Bowl
2013 Cowboys vs Lions - Week 8
» Matthew Stafford and Calvin Johnson lead Lions to close win over Cowboys
Week 17 - 12/30
2013 NFC Championship Game - 49ers vs Seahawks
» Richard Sherman deflection for game-saving INT
1980 NFC Championship Game - Cowboys vs Eagles
» Eagles 20-7 win to go to Super Bowl
1997 Jets vs Lions - Week 17
» Barry Sanders rushes over 2,000 yards
Wild Card - 1/6/17
2009 NFC Wild Card - Packers vs Cardinals
» Kurt Warner outduels Aaron Rodgers in OT game
2003 AFC Wild Card - Ravens vs Titans
» Titans last-second FG to win, 20-17
1992 AFC Wild Card - Oilers vs Bills
» Biggest comeback in NFL history
Divisional - 1/13/17
2001 AFC Division Playoff - Raiders vs Patriots
» Tuck Rule Game
2015 NFC Division Playoff - Packers vs Cardinals
» Cardinals overcome Hail Mary TD to win.
» Larry Fitzgerald TD wins it in OT
1987 NFC Division Playoff - Vikings vs 49ers
» Vikings upset win on road against best team in NFL
Conference - 1/20/17
2008 NFC Championship Game - Eagles vs Cardinals
» Win gets Cardinals to Super Bowl
2009 NFC Championship Game - Vikings vs Saints
» Saints win to reach Super Bowl
1981 AFC Championship Game - Chargers vs Bengals
» Win, go to Super Bowl "Freezer Bowl"
1998 NFC Championship Game - Falcons vs Vikings
» Falcons pull off historic upset over record-setting Vikings
Pro Bowl - 1/27/17 {1 GAME PER DAY LEADING UP TO SUPER BOWL LI}
Super Bowl XLVII - Ravens vs 49ers
» Ravens win second Super Bowl, Ray Lewis' last game.
Super Bowl XLIII - Steelers vs Cardinals
» Santonio Holmes toe-tap TD catch
Super Bowl XXII - Redskins vs Broncos
» Doug Williams becomes first African-American QB to win Super Bowl
Super Bowl XXXIV - Rams vs Titans
» Warner MVP, goal-line tackle by Mike Jones on Kevin Dyson
Super Bowl XXXII - Packers vs Broncos
» Elway wins first Super Bowl
Super Bowl XXIII - Bengals vs 49ers
» Montana to Taylor with 34 seconds left in game, Jerry Rice MVP- 215 rec yds
Super Bowl -- 7/3 (Promotion of all Super Bowls on YouTube)Students vote against the adoption of the agenda at the UTSU annual general meeting. BERNARDA GOSPIC/THE VARSITY
UPDATE: A video of the event
Varsity News: UTSU Annual General Meeting Nov. 22. 2012 from The Varsity on Vimeo.
The University of Toronto Students’ Union’s annual general meeting ended abruptly Thursday night after members present at the meeting refused to approve the agenda.
Less than half an hour after the meeting was called to order, the agenda was brought to a routine vote. Following failed attempts first to amend it, and then to force the chair of the meeting to recuse himself, membership declined to approve the agenda with an unofficial tally of 999 votes against to 905 in favour. The failure to approve the agenda brought the meeting to a screeching halt.
More than 300 students, carrying nearly 2,000 proxy votes, were packed into the meeting room at the Medical Sciences building on the St. George campus. Many waited in line for hours to be admitted, after delays caused by the union’s restricted access to its membership list. The meeting, scheduled to begin at 6 pm, did not get underway until 8.19 pm. In the meantime, the capacity crowd was addressed by Trinity-Spadina City Councillor Adam Vaughan and Aboriginal elder Cat Criger.
At the meeting Thursday night, Engineering Society president Rishi Maharaj initially argued for hosting a separate general meeting in January to entertain reforms, but was overruled by the meeting’s chair. Maharaj saw the ultimate rejection of the agenda as a step forward. “It’s nice to know that democracy has a chance, even if it’s taken this long. It’s only the start, but against the odds we’ve faced, even the smallest victories have meaning,” said Maharaj following the meeting’s abrupt conclusion.
In an impassioned speech before the agenda vote, student head of Trinity College Samuel Greene urged members not to “rubber stamp” the union’s items and called for student-driven electoral reforms, which failed to make the agenda.
“If you believe that the union can only be effective if it is accountable, that it can only be strong if it is fair, then join with us in demanding reform,” said Greene.
“Our current system and our current union executive are stuck in the past. We need online voting, preferential voting, and greater accountability and transparency so that we can move past the old and divisive politics that this union has fostered year after year and focus instead on how to improve the student experience,” Greene added in a post-AGM interview with The Varsity.
The reform-minded opposition, who had previously failed to bring their proposals to a vote at the AGM, claimed a victory. Union executives and staff, for their part, expressed their disappointment.
According to AGM chair Ashkon Hashemi, this year marked “the highest attendance at any AGM in recent memory.” Both Greene and Maharaj attributed to the opposition’s success to the “swathes of students that voted against an agenda that didn’t adequately address student concerns.”
Student leaders from Trinity, Victoria, St. Michael’s, Innis, and University Colleges all congratulated those at the meeting — both in person and via proxies — on their actions in voting down the agenda.
University College Literary and Athletic Society president Benjamin Dionne believes that those present at the meeting rejected the agenda because it “failed to adequately represent student interests.” He felt that “if the agenda only reflected the issues that students held dear, there would have been more support for Shaun Shepherd and his union.”
Corey Scott, vice-president, internal for UTSU, said he was disappointed. “It’s privilege,” said Scott. “I think that’s what a lot of students showed.” Scott said organizing an AGM is a “massive undertaking” budgeted at $3,000, with students coming from as far away as Mississauga.
Criticism of Scott’s post-AGM comments came swiftly. “Only the UTSU exec could see people (from both sides) waiting in line for over two hours to have their voices heard and call it privilege. It’s not a privilege. Unions are supposed to protect their members, not dismiss, belittle, and disenfranchise them,” said Taylor Scollon, vice-president of communications for the University of Toronto Young Liberals.
Chris Thompson, president of the UTMSU, echoed Scott’s concerns. “It’s difficult for a lot of my members to get down here,” said Thompson. He added that the issues on the agenda were “really important” and he had wanted the chance to discuss them.
Had the agenda been approved, the assembly would have discussed approval of the union’s audit and reappointed the auditor, tinkered with union bylaws (including the redefinition of the term “campus publication”) and altered the job description of the vice-president, campus life. Also scheduled for the meeting were president Shaun Shepherd’s address and a question period. Because the agenda was not approved, all of these motions will most likely be deferred until the next AGM, when they will be introduced as “old business.”
“I’m just concerned the next AGM will be held in Mississauga in order to limit the opposition’s ability to attend. Hopefully transportation will be provided then too,” said Pierre Harfouche, vice-president, finance for the Engineering Society. Earlier in the meeting, Harfouche had moved to compel the chair of the meeting Ashkon Hashemi to recuse himself, a motion that Hashemi refused to allow.
UTSU executive director and former president Sandy Hudson suggested that the vote against the agenda might have resulted from “some misunderstandings.” Hudson said she was concerned about “some people who made comments smearing the union.”
Tensions at the meeting ran high as the personal blended with the political, creating a combustible situation rife with extreme rhetoric. In an emotional presidential address prefacing the meeting, Shaun Shepherd described his personal struggles with depression. “I personally had a break-down, because of attacks on my team, and people that work sixteen hours a day,” said Shepherd, his voice breaking. “I want to make this year a year that everyone can work together. Not a year of mud-slinging, or smearing. That can’t happen anymore.”
Greek Student’s Association president Dmitri Kyriakakis said at first he had come to the meeting to “support the UTSU and burn Trinity to the ground.” Asked in a follow-up interview about his comments, Kyriakakis clarified he was referring to “specific Trinity students” and not the entirety of the college. “The ones I was talking about are those who are trying to dissolve our student’s union,” said Kyriakakis.
“The rationale saying that students should vote against this, was a personal attack on the executive saying that all of our work was not in good faith,” said vice-president, equity Noor Baig. Baig had previously come under attack online in an episode the union describes as “cyber-bullying,” after a leaked Facebook message she sent in advance of the AGM described some students planning to attend the meeting as “randoms” who were “just going to make a mess.”
Greene rejects the notion that opposition groups personally attacked UTSU executives. “I simply do not understand how advocating for electoral reform and transparency at the UTSU constitutes a ‘personal attack.’ To label common sense proposals for reform as ‘personal attacks’ simply because you don’t want to accept them is ludicrous,” he said.
The agenda’s failure, and the meeting’s premature ending, meant that the union’s audit and a host of by-law changes were not voted on. As of press time, neither the chair of the meeting or the union’s lawyer, executive director, or president were able to clarify how the failure to approve the agenda would affect the union’s operations in the coming days and weeks, or what plans, if any, existed to call another meeting of members.Take the right steps with our essential guide: how to pick the pairs you need, and keep them looking shiny and new
Take care of your shoes: taps on the heels and toes, cedar shoe trees when you're not wearing them.
Your dress shoes should be as contoured as your suits. Say no to square toes.
Going sockless is a quick way to invigorate everything from a trim suit to short-cropped khakis. But there's a sensible way to pull it off. Do you really want to walk around all day not wearing socks with nice leather shoes? Thought so. Besides talcum powder, consider loafer socks—they're so low-cut they're essentially invisible. We like the ones from Bananarepublic.com. Buy a bunch and wear them all summer long.
"I used to think that keeping a bottle of talc around was like reaching for hair tonic or witch hazel—you know, old-guy stuff. But then this magazine—and pretty much every fashion designer and J.Crew mannequin—started telling us that we've got to go sockless (see right) in the summer months. Looks cool, feels cool. Except, that is, when your feet are a swampy, sweaty mess. So now, suddenly, I'm one of those guys who use talcum powder obsessively. I give my wingtips or boat shoes a dusting with it every morning before I head to the office. My feet slide right in, and they actually do feel cool. Of course, one dusting doesn't completely keep me from sweating on brutally hot and humid days; the stuff's not magic powder. That's why I keep a stopgap bottle in my desk drawer."—_Adam Rapoport, _GQ style editor
Socks this bold work one of two ways: Either they pop against a completely neutral outfit (white shirt, dark suit and tie), or they complement what's going on upstairs. Could be a red tie, could be a yellow oord.
You can tell a lot about a guy by glancing at his ankles. Is he a stick-to- the-rules type—the kind who dutifully matches his socks to his pants every morning? Or is he the type who understands that dressing well often means dressing with a rebel streak? We think you can pair a boldly patterned or colored dress sock with pretty much anything—a sharp suit, elegant pants, or, say, a pair of dark jeans. Just look for stripes or colors that complement your look up top (maybe matching your shirt or tie) while contrasting with your pants or shoes. And don't worry if you break a rule or two—that's the point.
When choosing dress socks, the basic rule is to consider the suit instead of the shoe—in other words, if you're wearing a navy suit with black or brown shoes, reach for navy socks.
If you're sitting at your desk reading this, stop for a second and cross your right leg over your left. When your pant leg rides up, exposing some dress sock, ask yourself this: Do you like what you see? You should. Your socks should have as much personality as—if not more than—the rest of your outfit. You've got two ways to go.
The question I'm asked most is "What color socks should I wear?" How boring. Wear a color you feel like wearing! A more interesting question is "What color shoes should I wear?" Dullsville is a place where they only wear black and brown shoes. White shoes light up the summer. Spectators and saddle shoes signal an adventurous spirit. Bucks are good not only in white but in tan, gray, and blue, too. Colorful shoes are not just for women. I've been wearing Belgian Shoes in colors for years. I have brown and black, natch, but also blue calf and green suede. They even come in wool tartans: My Black Watch pair matches my wallet. Scared? Nobody ever gave Charles Oakley lip for his purple alligator loafers. Designers like Paul Smith are getting hip and doing color for men. I see desert boots lately in all sorts of colors. Take a walk on the wild side.
This isn't a conventional nine- to-five look. So go with a slim suit (cropped relatively short) or a loose-and-easy one. Just not your basic business suit.
Unless you are Kanye West, stick with no-frills sneakers in muted colors—black, gray, white, etc. If worn correctly, they'll take off more years than Botox.
Pairing sneakers with a suit is a move we love and a smart way to reinvent a suit you already own. But you do need to tread carefully. Consider the following advice.
"The penny loafer's got a fusty reputation, but so many designers these days are doing it in this modern, streamlined shape; instead of making your feet look stubby,a loafer by Bass or Prada will actually make them look longer. And a black penny loafer takes on the character of any outfit—when you're in a business suit, it's formal; when you're in a polo and jeans, it's casual. Consider it the perfect in-between when you don't feel like putting on a pair of sneakers or dressy lace-ups."—Jim Moore, GQ_ creative director_
"Many Americans have this idea that if you put on a dress shoe, it has to be black. But Italians—and I myself, especially—very rarely wear black shoes, except for very formal occasions like weddings and funerals. I'm almost always in brown shoes, because they just work with everything. If you're in a pale gray sweater and khakis, you choose a light brown shoe; if you're in a navy blazer and dark gray pants, chocolate brown loafers. The one rule I have is that your shoes should match your accessories. Don't try to wear a deep brown watchband and a black belt and caramel-colored shoes. That won't work. But the beauty of brown shoes is that all the different shades let you communicate something about your personality—you tell the world you have a sense of play and character just by putting something on your feet."
The boot itself? Leather-soled military-style ones like these are ideal. They're like dress shoes, only a hell of a lot tougher.
It needs to be the right suit—slim and stylish, and preferably cut from a durable, wintry fabric.
Wearing boots with a suit achieves two things: It says you understand that uniforms look best when they're messed with, and that when it's raining or snowing, your Ferragamos should be left in the closet.
Yes, if you want your shoes to last, you need shoe trees. Ones made from cedar. They'll preserve the shape of your shoes, prevent them from developing deep creases, absorb moisture, and even make them smell better. They're a no-brainer.
**C. **Don't skimp on the brush—you want a wood handle and horsehair bristles. And for when you're running out the door and just don't have time for a full polish, keep an instant-wax sponge in your kit for a quick touch-up.
**B. **An old T-shirt or towel will do the trick for applying wax. But if you buff your shoes post-brushing, invest in a nice soft chamois.
**A. **One tin of black wax polish and one tin of neutral. The black for your black leather dress shoes (obviously). And the neutral for your brown—because you essentially want to moisturize the leather, not color it.
I have a closet full of nice shoes but wear the same ones practically every day—a size 13 cordovan (color and leather) plain-toe lace-up. With this particular shoe, I use a black cream every third or fourth polishing instead of cordovan paste. It makes them the same deep aubergine as a perfectly ripe eggplant. They go with everything I own, and they're as comfortable as a bare foot in sand. I've had them resoled twice already, and I'm told a well-made, well-cared-for cordovan will outlast its owner. I aim to find out—just not too soon, I hope.
I love the ritual: the careful laying out of newspaper, and the round tin of Kiwi polish with the built-in wing-nut-shaped turn-key opener—a damned near perfect piece of industrial design. After enough applications, the old T-shirt that I use becomes a work of art in its own right, a poor man's Matisse. And my dad's horsehair brush (with the Good Housekeeping Seal branded into its hardwood handle) is the very same one he taught me with. First, I brush the shoe well, cleaning it of any dust or dirt. With the rag wrapped tightly around my first two fingers, I apply the polish in small, tight swirls. By the time I'm through applying wax to the second shoe, the first will be dry and ready to brush, and that's all I do.
There was a shoeshine man who used to make the rounds at 745 Fifth Avenue, the building where I worked my first year in New York. He was fond of saying that a true gentleman didn't feel properly dressed unless his shoes were freshly shined every morning. I always liked the sound of that—even if it did feel more than a little self-serving—but after he borrowed $50 from me (and countless other soft touches throughout the building), never to be seen again, I decided that shining my own shoes once a week was gentleman enough.
You know how you buy a nice pair of shoes and they're laced straight across? You need to call b.s. on that. They're impossible to loosen and tighten; it's done purely for display. So take out the laces and start over. The most important step is the first, inserting the lace over (not under) the bottom eyelets. Like so.
Most shoes have shock-absorbing rubber rears to save your soles (and ankles). Have a cobbler replace them before they wear down to the leather soles themselves.
New heels every couple of years are a good bet, and the right cobbler can adjust them to fit how you walk.
Walking on warped soles can ruin a good pair of shoes and even cause back trouble. Start checking your soles after a year or so, and be sure new ones are sewn on, never glued.
Plastic is quieter, metal more durable. Either will prevent the soles (and heels—be sure you remember the heels) from grinding away. Taps typically wear out or fall off after about six months.
The most worn item in your wardrobe—that pair of quality leather-soled dress shoes you regularly wear to the office—requires the most attention. We asked Joe Rocco, third-generation cobbler and owner of Jim's Shoe Repair on East 59th Street in Manhattan, to talk parts and service.
"A year ago, I got a pair of Ralph Lauren wingtips for a whopping 800 bucks. I know—that's an insane amount of money for a pair of shoes. Except, in the past, I've paid at least that much (twice that, even) for suits, some of which I don't even wear anymore, because either they wore out or they were too trendy in the first place. These wingtips, though, they'll never go out of style. Bench-made in England, tobacco brown leather, the kind of hefty soles that would allow one to kick some serious ass if one had to. I put taps on them, I keep 'em in shape with cedar shoe trees, and I lather them up with a neutral polish every few weeks. Yes, I'm slightly obsessed with them. But here's the thing—if you invest in quality, it'll pay off. These shoes will last me a decade or longer. If I bought a pair of cheap rubber-soled lace-ups, they'd be in the trash in a year and I'd have to pony up another $150. I'm not a math guy, but that seems like a lot of cash over ten years. I'll stick with my $800 wingtips and bet that over the long run, I come out ahead."—_Adam Rapoport, _GQ style editor
Let's say you're insistent on extra padding for your lace-ups. The good news is that there are now plenty of stylish, wonderfully made dress shoes with full rubber soles, or at least rubber inlays. They're great for crappy weather and for comfort. But keep in mind that once full rubber soles wear down, that's it for them. Replacing the heels (or protecting them with taps) isn't a viable option as it is with leather-soled shoes.
Some guys think leather soles mean hard and uncomfortable. Not true. If the shoes are well- made, they'll mold to your feet and serve you just fine. True, they won't be as cushiony as a pair of New Balances, but if you want real dress shoes, you want leather soles. Period. Now you've got two choices: There are those slim, contoured kinds that exude elegance and go great with a luxurious custom suit. And then there are the heftier lace-ups with chunkier soles. They're what we show a ton of in the magazine these days. They go great with skinny jeans or trim-cut suits. And if you take care of them (see number 7), they'll last you a lifetime.
Shoes take a pounding. And nowhere more than in their soles. You need to think about that and make some decisions. Do you want everlasting soles or more bounce in your step?
The one shoe every man should own is a black lace-up. You can dress it up or dress it down; it'll work with everything from jeans to suits. And that's the thing—don't think of it as special-occasion footwear. Avoid frilly or ornate details and you'll be able to wear the shoes as easily to the office as to the club.
Seriously. your shoes should be as streamlined as the rest of your wardrobe. That means a slim contour (but not painfully skinny) and a rounded (but not sharp) toe. They'll look stylish, tasteful, and masculine. And that's all you can ask for.
Before we start talking about styles of shoes, let's talk shape. If you're still walking around in square-toe, rubber-soled lace-ups—the kind you buy on the cheap and that make you look like you've got platypus feet—grab them from your closet and toss them.
There are numerous styles of shoes out there, but what's great about being a man is that you can do perfectly well by sticking with just a few. You don't need to maintain some Carrie Bradshaw–esque obsession about the latest and coolest. If you invest in a handful of sensible (and stylish) pairs and take care of them, you'll be set for years. You just need to take that first step.
They reveal whether he takes pride in the little things. If he throws on a nice suit and pairs it with cheap, clunky lace-ups, he's not what you'd call a detail man. And if he leaves his pricey wingtips scuffed and unpolished, he may not be the closer you're looking for.
Photo: Nigel Cox 1. Don't Be So Damn Square Before we start talking about styles of shoes, let's talk shape. If you're still walking around in square-toe, rubber-soled lace-ups—the kind you buy on the cheap and that make you look like you've got platypus feet—grab them from your closet and toss them. Seriously. your shoes should be as streamlined as the rest of your wardrobe. That means a slim contour (but not painfully skinny) and a rounded (but not sharp) toe. They'll look stylish, tasteful, and masculine. And that's all you can ask for.
Photo: Dan Forbes 2. Some Basic Advice About the...Basics The one shoe every man should own is a black lace-up. You can dress it up or dress it down; it'll work with everything from jeans to suits. And that's the thing—don't think of it as special-occasion footwear. Avoid frilly or ornate details and you'll be able to wear the shoes as easily to the office as to the club.
Photo: David Rinella 3. Sure, No One Sees the Bottom of Your Feet... Shoes take a pounding. And nowhere more than in their soles. You need to think about that and make some decisions. Do you want everlasting soles or more bounce in your step? 4. Leather Soles? We Like 'Em Extra Chunky Some guys think leather soles mean hard and uncomfortable. Not true. If the shoes are well- made, they'll mold to your feet and serve you just fine. True, they won't be as cushiony as a pair of New Balances, but if you want real dress shoes, you want leather soles. Period. Now you've got two choices: There are those slim, contoured kinds that exude elegance and go great with a luxurious custom suit. And then there are the heftier lace-ups with chunkier soles. They're what we show a ton of in the magazine these days. They go great with skinny jeans or trim-cut suits. And if you take care of them (see number 7), they'll last you a lifetime.
Photo: Tom Schierlitz 5. Join the Rubber Revolution Let's say you're insistent on extra padding for your lace-ups. The good news is that there are now plenty of stylish, wonderfully made dress shoes with full rubber soles, or at least rubber inlays. They're great for crappy weather and for comfort. But keep in mind that once full rubber soles wear down, that's it for them. Replacing the heels (or protecting them with taps) isn't a viable option as it is with leather-soled shoes.
Photo: Peggy Sirota 6. Use Your Head: Preserve Your Feet "A year ago, I got a pair of Ralph Lauren wingtips for a whopping 800 bucks. I know—that's an insane amount of money for a pair of shoes. Except, in the past, I've paid at least that much (twice that, even) for suits, some of which I don't even wear anymore, because either they wore out or they were too trendy in the first place. These wingtips, though, they'll never go out of |
learning — typically called "active learning" methods — that lectures are not as efficient or not as successful in allowing students to accumulate knowledge in the same amount of time.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of UVM Larner College of Medicine Photography Courtesy of UVM Larner College of Medicine Photography
So is it because we don't show up or because we're sleeping through lectures?
There's a lot of that, yes. It turns out that the lectures are not really good at engaging the learners in doing something. And I think that's the most important part of learning. We're finding out a lot from the neuroscience of learning that the brain needs to accumulate the information, but then also organize it and make sense of it and create an internal story that makes the knowledge make sense.
When you just tell somebody something, the chances of them remembering it diminishes over time, but if you are required to use that information, chances are you'll remember it much better.
Give us an example of a topic taught in a traditional lecture versus an "active learning" setting.
A good example would be the teaching of what we would call pharmacokinetics — the science of drug delivery. So, how does a drug get to the target organ or targeted receptor?
A lot of the science of pharmacokinetics is simply mathematical equations. If you have a lecture, it's simply presenting those equations and maybe giving examples of how they work.
In an active learning setting, you expect the students to learn about the equations before they get there. And when you get into the classroom setting, the students work in groups solving pharmacokinetic problems. Cases are presented where the patient gets a drug in a certain dose at a certain time, and you're looking at the action of that over time and the concentration of the drug in the blood.
So, those are the types of things where you're expecting the student to know the knowledge in order to use the knowledge. And then they don't forget it.
Have you had pushback to this move?
Certainly, we've gotten some pushback, but what I tell the average clinical faculty member is: "OK, if you like doing appendectomies using an old method because you like it, and you're really good at it, but it's really not the best method for the patient, would you do it?" Of course, the answer is always no. And then you turn around and say, "Well this method of teaching is actually not as good as other methods. Would you do that?" When confronted with a question like that, medical faculty typically tend to understand and agree.
Will this be the norm at every medical school in 10 or 20 years?
I hope so. [The] University of Vermont is not the only medical school that's recognized the value of active learning methods. A number of my colleagues around the country are leading similar efforts because of the incontrovertible evidence that active learning methods are superior to lectures.“We have sought to strike an appropriate balance that helps protect consumers and root out illegal activity – without stifling beneficial innovation”
We should all be fortunate that the statement above was ‘never’ made by Ron Brown; the former chairman of the Department of Commerce, which oversees the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Those were the words of the Benjamin M. Lawsky on July 17, 2014 in a statement introducing the proposed BitLicense regulation. But what if 20 years earlier on July 17, 1994 a document known as the IntLicense was released to the world for a 45 day review period by the public?
Would the majority of Americans know how to reply? How different would our world look today? Would we still have companies like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Google and countless other forms of technology we now take for granted. 1994 was a very critical time for the Internet as the first browser was just about to make its official press release on October 13th and people were just starting to get the feel for the AOL Instant Messenger and this radical new technology called email.
Over the last month, the comparisons keep being made of how this could have been the Internet itself that is being stifled of innovation. It’s understandable that no one want’s to read another 35 pages, but just think about all the technology that you take for granted today and you should recognize that the BitLicense is as detrimental to growth as the theoretical IntLicense described here would have been to the Internet.
By simply changing a few definitions “Virtual Currencies” to “Virtual Communication”, “Anti-Money Laundering” to “Anti-Anonymous Communication”, “Compliance” to “Copyright”, and adding one more to distinguish “Virtual Communication” from “Virtual Commerce”, we start to the get the picture of what the world might have been!
What if every Blogger had to hire a “copyright” expert and every time you wanted to post a comment on-line, your identity had to be confirmed, where would we be today? Here are a few sections of the IntLicense proposal:
Section 200.3 License (a) License required. No Person shall, without a license obtained from the superintendent as provided in this Part, engage in any Virtual Currency [Communication] Business Activity.
(b) Unlicensed agents prohibited. Each Licensee is prohibited from conducting any Virtual Currency [Communication] Business Activity through an agent or agency arrangement when the agent is not a Licensee.
-----------------------
Section 200.15 Anti-money laundering [Anti-anonymous communication] program All values in United States dollars referenced herein must be calculated using the methodology to determine the value of Virtual Currency [Commerce] in Fiat [Government] Currency that was approved by the Department under this Part.
(a) Each Licensee shall conduct an initial risk assessment that will consider legal, compliance [copyright], financial, and reputational risks associated with the Licensee’s activities, services, customers, counterparties, and geographic location and shall establish, maintain, and enforce an anti-money laundering [anti-anonymous communication] program based thereon. The Licensee shall conduct additional assessments on an annual basis, or more frequently as risks change, and shall modify its anti-money laundering [anti-anonymous communication] program as appropriate to reflect any such changes. -------------------------- Section 200.19 Consumer protection (1) virtual currency [communication] is not legal tender [speech], is not backed [endorsed] by the government, and accounts and value balances [controversial statements] are not subject to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation [1st Amendment Protections] or Securities Investor Protection Corporation protections [4th Amendment Protections against diary and ‘private papers’ searches]; ---------------------------- Unlike Government agencies, which create inflation but clearly do not acknowledge its existence, this document does since $10,000 today sure isn’t what it was back in 1994: (2) Reports on transactions. When a Licensee is involved in a transaction or series of transactions for the receipt, exchange, conversion, purchase, sale, transfer, or transmission of Virtual Currency [Communication for commerce], in an aggregate amount exceeding the United States dollar value of $10,000 [$6,218] in one day, by one Person, the Licensee shall notify the Department, in a manner prescribed by the superintendent, within 24 hours.
It’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle as has recently been proven with the constant attempts to pass Internet control bills like PIPA, SOPA and CISPA, but we all know the Government will just keep on trying. It looks clear that this time around the mistakes of letting technology roam free are being corrected before the ball starts rolling. If the process isn’t slowed down by regulation and licensing, government agents won’t be able to form a discussion committee fast enough to keep up with the most recent wave of MIT and Harvard dropouts looking to be the next Zuckerberg or Jobs before him.
Here is the IntLicense in its entirety, hopefully it will be in the hands of all those that helped create it, and they see what they are trying to do within this new world of technological and financial freedom!
Donation Address: 1A2SReWAxEEZ5mFcvVNmqZM9zkx9cg1kWy
IntLicense 1994 (drafted from BitLicense 2014) by Tone Vays
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Help Cointelegraph tell the World Health Organization to accept bitcoin to fight Ebola! They have no reason not to take it!I started drawing at the age of three, but by the time I was convicted of murder at the age of 21 I had lost interest in art altogether. This indifference persisted for the first seven years of my time in prison.
Then my uncle sent me some art supplies. It took me a few months to take them out of the packet, but when I did something changed inside me and I began to draw a lot. Despite this, if you’d have told me that I’d end up drawing golf courses for 10 hours a day, I’d have said
you were out of your mind. I’ve never even been to a golf course and where I come from golf is not exactly something we speak about.
I first drew a golf course in February 2010, when Attica Prison’s superintendent asked me to draw the 12th at Augusta. I’ve now drawn hundreds of courses, but none compare with Augusta because of its landscaping and the flowers. It is so bright and pretty. I love it.
After seeing the drawing I did for the superintendent, several other inmates said it was really good and encouraged me to continue drawing golf courses. One even gave me a few golf magazines to copy from. I began doing just that and soon drawing golf courses became my passion and purpose in life.
When I do a golf course picture, I want it to come to life, so I like the grass to be really green. The shape of the sand dunes is also very important and so is the position of the trees. Good drawings should always have some trees off in the distance in the background.
I am due for parole in 2030, but, even though someone else has confessed to the murder I am supposed to have committed and six eyewitnesses have come forward to clear me, I don’t hold out much hope of being released. When you’ve spent 22 years in prison for a crime you didn’t commit, you pretty much lose all of your faith in the system.
That said, drawing golf courses gets me through the tough times and helps me to imagine a life outside the prison walls. If I ever get out of here, I’d love to visit a course and perhaps even play. That’s my dream and hopefully it will happen one day. Until then, I’ll just keep drawing.
For more information visit www.freevalentinodixon.comBertha-> Promised Land, Friend Of The Devil-> CC Rider, Ramble On Rose, Me & My Uncle-> Mexicali Blues, Althea-> Looks Like Rain, Big Railroad Blues-> Let It Grow Cold Rain & Snow-> Samson & Delilah, Ship of Fools, Playin' In The Band-> Eyes Of The World-> Drums-> Jam*-> The Other One-> Black Peter-> Sugar Magnolia-> Playin' In The Band-> Sunshine Daydream, E: Don't Ease Me In
SBD -> Cm -> PCM -> Dat(48k) via Charlie Miller
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Reviewer: jpolcek - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - November 24, 2018
Subject: First GD Show. Went to the show the show, still not sure I ever left. (sometimes) I remember 4-18-1982 well, No not like yesterday but close enough. We were seated in the nosebleed section of the Hartford Civic Center, we didn't care, we were in.
First time I ever heard Althea and Cold Rain & Snow.
Way too difficult to explain the sensory overload I was experiencing at the time. - November 24, 2018First GD Show. Went to the show the show, still not sure I ever left. (sometimes)
Reviewer: Nickolai Romanov - favorite favorite favorite favorite - November 11, 2017
Subject: Earthquake jam Opening notes - "San Francisco open your Golden Gate"! Musical genius, right up there with My Old Kentucky Home licks in BIODTL from Louisville 74. Great times in Hurtford - November 11, 2017Earthquake jam
Reviewer: miok23 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - December 12, 2016
Subject: got two reasons why... awesome FOTD. The solo at the end is that dreamy feel good kind that only one other guitar player has ever given me.... - December 12, 2016got two reasons why...
Reviewer: kbmill - - January 21, 2016
Subject: bread crumb I thought Playing in the Band > Eyes of the World was an unusual combination. Turns out I was (kind of) right. For as many times as those two songs were played, they were only played in the same set 37 times. Up to this show, this exact combination occured only twice, and they don't get played together in the same set again for another 5 years. At that point, and through the end, this combination occurs more frequently when the two songs are played. - January 21, 2016bread crumb
Reviewer: Jimbo4327@optonline.net - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - March 15, 2013
Subject: Amazing Hey guys, I was there for both of these shows and recorded both. My audience Masters are excellent sounding. Been listening back for the last 2 days and just visited Archive to see whats out there on these. 1982 was a great year. Big R X R Blues was outstanding...Phil Quake rocked the house. Too redundant?? - March 15, 2013Amazing
Reviewer: JurassicBlueberries - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - November 4, 2008
Subject: The 76th anniv. of the 1906 California Earthquake) This was the exact anniv. date of the 1906 SanFrancisco earthquake (except the real earthquake started at 5:12 am) - November 4, 2008The 76th anniv. of the 1906 California Earthquake)
Reviewer: PhilNfunky - favorite favorite favorite favorite - April 18, 2007
Subject: civic center earthquake yeah, a buddy of mine tells me that Chris Squire, from Yes, did the same thing at the Hartford Civic Center during his bass solo... its a certain note which has the frequency to totally shake that place..... - April 18, 2007civic center earthquake
Reviewer: gatheringwhatyouspill - favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 12, 2006
Subject: The Day the Earth Shook I was at this show, my memories of all these shows during this period is very sketchy due to too many drugs. But going through these dates and listening to these again does bring things back. I remember the 2 day Hartford gig, and the first day was the only time in my life that I DIDN'T get a miracle, and me and a couple hundred other poor saps spent the night with our ears up against the cracks of the doors while the cops came around in paddy wagons scooping up the ones who couldn't run away fast enough. Fortunately, I was fleet of foot and dodged the bastards all night.
The second night I was inside. Now that I listen to it, I remember the Bertha really did rip and the joint was jumping for sure. But the thing I remember most was the great Hartford Earthquake of 1982. I don't know what the hell they did, but they made the whole arena shake, twice, just like a quake. I think it was Phil who did it, but by the time anyone realized what was happening, it was done. It may have been that big ass drum they used to have during that period that made the building shake, but I don't think so, it felt different. You obviously can't hear the quake on the recording, but I think if you weren't there, you can get the idea when it happened. Everyone was looking around going what the hell was that, to which the response was something like "It's the eathquake man" to which the response was of course, "oh, right on"
I'll grant through listening to this show that it sounds like a good piece of work, but for whatever reason, except for the earthquake, it didn't stick with me like that 2nd day in philly two weeks earlier with the best shakedown ever, a lovely terrapin and a glorious dew. That was one helluva dead show right there bro.
As to the recording quality, whatever I'll let you techie types argue that. Sounds pretty good to me. - August 12, 2006The Day the Earth Shook
Reviewer: kctomato - favorite favorite favorite favorite - April 19, 2005
Subject: jewwwwwwwel to the ring of fire! This is an awesome show!
I particularly like the Ship of Fools.
Though the intracies of the Phil Earthquake can be heard better on this SBD I find the overall effect of the space jam to be fuller on the AUD - much better.
One of the few times I would have shouted "let Phil sing!"
The show gets a 5 but the recording gets a 3 so... - April 19, 2005jewwwwwwwel to the ring of fire!
Reviewer: kctomato - favorite favorite favorite favorite - April 19, 2005
Subject: jewwwwwwwel to the ring of fire! This is an awesome show!
I particularly like the Ship of Fools.
Though the intracies of the Phil Earthquake can be heard better on this SBD I find the overall effect of the space jam to be fuller on the AUD - much better.
One of the few times I would have shouted "let Phil sing!"
The show gets a 5 but the recording gets a 3 so... - April 19, 2005jewwwwwwwel to the ring of fire!
Reviewer: Joe Shlobotnick - favorite favorite favorite - February 24, 2005
Subject: Some competition There's a real nice AUD recording of this show up now... no reviews yet. I have been comparing the two, and the AUD is making this one sound like it was recorded under water.
Judge for yourself. - February 24, 2005Some competition
Reviewer: SESQA - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - January 14, 2005
Subject: Wow Jerry's guitar work at this show is amazing. Listen to his solo in "Let it Grow". I had to drop all I was doing to hear it again. Amazing. Get this show now. - January 14, 2005Wow
Reviewer: mudshark82 - favorite favorite favorite favorite - December 14, 2004
Subject: PHIL! Get this show for Phil's totally spaced out Space alone. Then you get the rare, killer combo of Sugar Mags>Playin>SSDD! Too bad they come back out for a Don't Cheese Me In encore... "Hey guys, didn't you play this encore last spring when you came to our city?" - December 14, 2004PHIL!
Reviewer: deadtothecore - favorite favorite favorite favorite - December 11, 2004
Subject: Get This Vintage 1982. Every song cooks. And what a song selection!
Combined with the night before and after, a pristine snapshot of what the Grateful Dead could do.
Good recording. - December 11, 2004Get This
Reviewer: flashy - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 21, 2004
Subject: I still have the ticket stubs for these shows... I was a senior at Simsbury High School in CT and had been going to Dead shows for two years when I plunked down my $11.50 per ticket and attended this show as well as the night before (check out that nighs 'Shakedown' and killer 'Baby Blue' encore). Yes that's right, $11.50 for reserved seating and 8 bucks for behind the stage...those were the days.... Ah, well, anyway.. YES! it was a blast. I've referred to it for years as the 'Earthquake" show. It might have been the shroomies, but it felt as if the whole place was shaking. I still have a worn-out audience version on cassette, but it's great to finaly get a soundboard CD. Aiko-Aiko! - October 21, 2004I still have the ticket stubs for these shows...
Reviewer: fireonshakedownstreet - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 19, 2004
Subject: If I Had My Way, I Would Tear This Whole Building DOOOWWN!! Wow folks. This show is presents the Grateful Dead as the powerhouse rock band they were. Theyre rocking from the get go. First set is grate. Everything is just right and rocking. Althea is sweet. Cowboy songs are grate. LLR Bobby!! Big RxR Blues is so much fun with Jerry ripping some grate solos and Brent ripping it up on the Hammond. An epic version of Let it Grow very nice. The real fireworks of course are in the Second Set. Ok Cold Rain and Snow, but Samson is amazing, they are all rocking. Bobby is in amazing form with the vocals and his rhythm and slide work should be studied by all rhythm guitarists. Of course Jerry is just ripping, Phil, Brent, the Rhythm Devils. An all time powerhouse version of Samson. Ship of Fools is one of Jerry's best songs and this is a good version. Playing in the Band is awesome, they get out there fast and it is a mindbender for under 10 min. Eyes is nice esp the jam into Drums. Phil is hysterical in Space. Post Space is sweet. It doesnt seem like this really happened. I was a year old when they played this show so I wasnt there. Mustve been a blast! A Must Have.
Peace - October 19, 2004If I Had My Way, I Would Tear This Whole Building DOOOWWN!!
Reviewer: fireonshakedownstreet - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - October 19, 2004
Subject: If I Had My Way, I Would Tear This Whole Building DOOOWWN!! Wow folks. This show is presents the Grateful Dead as the powerhouse rock band they were. Theyre rocking from the get go. First set is grate. Everything is just right and rocking. Althea is sweet. Cowboy songs are grate. LLR Bobby!! Big RxR Blues is so much fun with Jerry ripping some grate solos and Brent ripping it up on the Hammond. An epic version of Let it Grow very nice. The real fireworks of course are in the Second Set. Ok Cold Rain and Snow, but Samson is amazing, they are all rocking. Bobby is in amazing form with the vocals and his rhythm and slide work should be studied by all rhythm guitarists. Of course Jerry is just ripping, Phil, Brent, the Rhythm Devils. An all time powerhouse version of Samson. Ship of Fools is one of Jerry's best songs and this is a good version. Playing in the Band is awesome, they get out there fast and it is a mindbender for under 10 min. Eyes is nice esp the jam into Drums. Phil is hysterical in Space. Post Space is sweet. It doesnt seem like this really happened. I was a year old when they played this show so I wasnt there. Mustve been a blast! A Must Have.
Peace - October 19, 2004If I Had My Way, I Would Tear This Whole Building DOOOWWN!!
Reviewer: floydtrane - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - September 22, 2004
Subject: Believe the Hype This show is good, maybe even great...the Althea, Ramble On, and Ship of Fools are great versions. The meat of the 2nd set is worth the burn... - September 22, 2004Believe the Hype
Reviewer: Marcus T - favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 7, 2004
Subject: AWESOME Show! Pass this show up at your own peril! This is an oustanding show in any year. Everything sparkles. Garcia is in excellent voice and plays like a man possesed. This board sounds amazing (thanks Charlie!) and features and excellent well balanced mix. Better show and mix all around than Dicks Picks 32. - August 7, 2004AWESOME Show!
Reviewer: wolfman'sbrother - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 4, 2004
Subject: Web is a be-ootiful thing! i remember this show fondly and had lost the cherished cassette sometime in the summer of '88, which was probably one of my few boards at the time.
great recording and definitely great early 80's brent dead. wolfman'sbrother -- August 4, 2004Web is a be-ootiful thing!
Reviewer: TERRAPINCANE - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - June 23, 2004
Subject: grab this one maybe the best second set of the year--unstoppable!!!! I esp. love everything from Space on...
Let it Grow is great too - June 23, 2004grab this oneApproximately 1/2 of immigrant households (both legal and illegal) with kids access welfare services, primarily food and Medicaid. Many argue that immigration is a social issue, but it's a fiscal issue as well. Sign our petition urging Pres. Obama, Speaker of the House Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid to stop expanding our welfare system through high immigration numbers.
The immigrant population has grown by an average of 1.3 million per year since 2000, plus an additional 1 million new births in those households. That's 23 million new people every decade, and HALF of all immigrant families are using welfare, especially food and Medicaid welfare! This includes illegal AND legal immigrants. See Roy's blog to read the whole ugly story.
Pres. Obama has pledged to reduce our deficits, so isn't this a good time to send hundreds of thousands of petitions to him, Reid and Pelosi suggesting a suspension of most immigration that is driving those deficits up?
Sign our petition NOW and then send it to your friends and family. If your on Facebook or Twitter, please share the link to help get the message to Washington!Estonia's capital, Tallinn, has just 407,000 residents. Many of the country's citizens live in small rural communities Dan Burn-Forti
Since the vote to leave the European Union, there's been a "sharp" rise in people wanting to become a digital citizen of Estonia. The country's e-residency program, which launched in 2014 and has had more than 20,000 people apply, with more than 1,060 of these applications coming from the UK.
Concerned about Brexit? Why not become an e-resident of Estonia Long Reads Concerned about Brexit? Why not become an e-resident of Estonia
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One of the many benefits of the program is that e-residents can register bank accounts in Estonia, but to do so you have to visit the country in person first. Now, the officials behind the scheme have introduced 'borderless digital banking' meaning any of its digital residents can set-up an EU company without visiting the nation.
"Enabling Brits, and almost anyone, to set up a complete EU business online significantly lowers their barriers to entrepreneurship so they can test out new business ideas without breaking the online bank," e-residency program director Kaspar Korjus tells WIRED.
Read next Your next bank card will have a fingerprint scanner built-in Your next bank card will have a fingerprint scanner built-in
"A complete EU business with banking can be established online from anywhere and we believe a new era for location-independent entrepreneurs has begun" Kaspar Korjus
For those in the UK, the borderless company scheme will allow them "access to the EU business environment without having to leave". As well as the new account type, the Estonian initiative has launched a new website.
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In a Medium blog post, Korjus says that when e-residency was launched, it took four visits to Estonia to set-up a company and open an bank account.
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"We could offer them a location-independent business, but the process of establishing the business was far from location-independent," he writes. In total there are 3,000 companies being managed and run by Estonia's e-residents and Korjus hopes the introduction of a digital bank for businesses will mean more firms will be launched in the country.
Read next 'We're on our knees': Inside the totally avoidable TSB crisis 'We're on our knees': Inside the totally avoidable TSB crisis
E-residents are given a digital ID, can be a director of a company remotely, declare taxes online, sign documents online and send encrypted files.
Transferwise's Borderless bank account lets you save money in different currencies Fintech Transferwise's Borderless bank account lets you save money in different currencies
The new banking system allows "almost everyone" to create an e-residency business account (although currently not those in the US) and has been created with Finnish fintech firm Holvi. Setting up an account costs €35.00 (£30 per month) and applicants get a Mastercard as part of the deal.
Business accounts registered with the company additionally come with an EU international bank account number. Previously, Estonia's parliament changed the country's laws to allow bank accounts to be opened remotely but it took some time for the remote account creation to become a reality.
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"Now, a complete EU business with banking can be established online from anywhere and we believe a new era for location-independent entrepreneurs has begun," Korjus writes.
This isn't the first borderless bank account to be announced this week. On May 23, London-based fintech firm Transferwise announced it was creating a borderless account that works across countries and doesn't charge international transfer fees.
The account allows people in the UK and Europe to store money in 15 different currencies and have local account numbers. Like with the Estonia e-account, it's not possible to use Transferwise's account in the US yet. Transferwise says that as its account isn't "constrained by country or currencies" it allows businesses "more freedom and control" over their finances and spending.President Donald Trump stepped into Europe’s volatile nationalist politics on Friday, expressing support for the far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen—an immigration hard-liner who is aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Trump called Le Pen the “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”
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Trump told the AP he was not making a formal endorsement ahead of Sunday’s vote in France, expected to produce two finalists for a May 7 runoff vote to replace outgoing President Francois Hollande.
But the comments reignited alarms in Europe and the U.S. about Trump’s commitment to the continent’s key institutions—including the European Union and the NATO alliance—after several weeks of reassuring signals from Trump and his top officials.
They followed a Friday morning tweet in which Trump said that a Thursday shooting on Paris’s Champs Elysees, believed to be an act of terrorism, would "have a big effect” on the country's election.
“He can’t help himself,” said Thomas Wright, an expert on U.S.-European relations at the Brookings Institution. “It shows that he’s never going to normalize. He’s been told to behave, he’s gotten briefings and met [European] leaders. But now something’s happened”—in the form of a suspected terror attack—“and he can’t restrain himself.”
Many European officials and experts believe that Trump’s senior strategist Steve Bannon, who has applauded the continent’s nationalist movements, may be influencing Trump’s view.
“He has Bannon telling him that Le Pen’s not such a bad person,” Wright added.
But Trump had said little about the French campaign until Friday. At a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni just the day before, Trump he dodged a question about the French vote. And he answered a question about the European Union with a clear show of support.
“A strong Europe is very, very important to me,” Trump said.
Yet Le Pen is a leading skeptic of European integration. She has dubbed herself “Madame Frexit” and wants a referendum on whether France should follow Britain’s “Brexit” from the EU.
“If France is out of the EU, it's the end of the EU,” France's ambassador to Washington, Gerard Araud, recently told CNN.
Le Pen has also called for France to at least partially withdraw from NATO. And she has the support of Putin, who received her at the Kremlin last month. Western officials believe Russian intelligence has sought to influence France's election in Le Pen’s favor, and Le Pen’s party has taken nearly $10 million in loans from a Russian bank with Kremlin ties.
“It's now the world of Putin, the world of Donald Trump,” Le Pen declared after the meeting.
“The stakes for Europe are tremendous - this is a historic election,” said Jorge Benitez, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
A Le Pen victory, which many French analysts consider plausible though unlikely, could mean “the end of Europe as we've known it since World War II,” he added.
Le Pen is among four candidates running neck-and-neck ahead of Sunday vote’s. If no candidate wins a majority, as is expected, the top two vote getters will compete for France’s presidency on May 7.
In a sign of the French election’s perceived importance to the United States, former President Barack Obama fielded a call Thursday from one of Le Pen's two centrist rivals, Emmanuel Macron. A spokesman said Obama was not making an endorsement but added that he supports France’s role as “a leader on behalf of liberal values in Europe and around the world.”
Le Pen has made the terrorist threat— particularly from Muslim immigrants to France—a top campaign issue. But it is unclear whether Thursday’s Paris attack, in which a man with an AK-47 killed one police officer before he was shot dead, will influence Sunday’s vote.
Nor is it clear that words of support from Trump, who is deeply unpopular in France, will benefit Le Pen’s candidacy. Her rivals have criticized Trump’s positions on foreign policy, climate change and immigration.
Trump and Le Pen have channeled the same a western populist movement fueled by resentment over wealth in equality and the perceived cultural and economic effects of immigration.
As a candidate, Trump branded NATO as an “obsolete“ sinkhole for U.S. taxpayer dollars. He also described the EU as a bureaucratic drag on the Continent's economic growth and an unfair trading partner.
Bannon, a major Brexit cheerleader, was even more zealous in his criticism of the EU. The Trump adviser has said the 28-member union, with its shared currency and open internal borders, erodes the identity and sovereignty of its member states.
After Trump's election, the EU's top official publicly warned that the U.S., a supporter of European Unity for more than 70 years, now posed an outside "threat" to the union.
Those concerns were stoked when Le Pen paid a December visit to Trump Tower. Trump officials say she was only in the building’s public lobby and never met with Trump or Bannon. (“I don’t know her. I haven’t met her,” Trump told the Financial Times in early April.)
Since his inauguration, however, Trump and his top officials have repeatedly signaled their support for the EU and NATO. On a February trip to Brussels, Vice President Mike Pence offered “strong commitment... to continue cooperation and partnership with the European Union.”
And in a February 23 interview with the Financial Times, Trump called the EU “wonderful” and pronounced himself “totally in favor of it.”
Trump officials have similarly reassured NATO, and last week Trump declared that the alliance is “no longer obsolete.”
Bannon’s influence has diminished, meanwhile, comforting European officials who see him as an anti-EU bogeyman in the West Wing.
Trump’s foreign policy had defied expectations in recent weeks enough to make Le Pen criticize his shift to the center.
“Undeniably he is in contradiction with the commitments he had made” as a candidate she said after his endorsement of NATO last week, adding: “I am coherent, I don't change my mind in a few days.”
She also bashed his April 6 missile strike on Syria, complaining that Trump “had said he would not be the policeman of the world... but it seems today that he has changed his mind.”
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If Le Pen emerges from Sunday's runoff vote as a finalist, establishment European leaders will be alarmed but not panicked, so long as she faces the center-left Macron or the center-right Francois Fillon. Both are considered likely bets to defeat her.
But political and market panic could erupt if French voters are given a choice on May 7 between Le Pen against the left-wing Jean-Luc Melenchon.
Melenchon, who left France's socialist party complaining that it was too pro-business, is also an EU skeptic and wants to withdraw France from NATO. He also advocates much warmer ties with Moscow.
“It would be a disaster for the West if either one of them is elected,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia in the Obama administration now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
A Le Pen defeat would deflate a western populist movement already disappointed by the poor showing in March election of the Netherlands' right-wing Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, and which has seen its support in Germany wane ahead of summer elections there that will decide the fate of Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Some experts believe that the twin surprises of Trump's election and the Brexit vote have sparked a centrist backlash against Europe's populist movements.
Voters who one year ago may have cast what they thought was an anti-establishment protest vote may now act more cautiously - particularly given the disarray following both outcomes, Wright said.
“The various 'exit' and populist camps were damaged by Trump and Brexit because people saw that this could actually happen—and this is what it looks like,” Wright said.
Aidan Quigley contributed to this report.A week before space shuttle Endeavour begins its 12-mile crawl through Los Angeles, officials said the public will have limited access during the two-day trek to the California Science Center in Exposition Park.
They said access would be limited for safety reasons. The shuttle has been sitting in a hangar at Los Angeles International Airport since Sept. 21, when it arrived on the back of a modified Boeing 747.
Now positioned on specialized, computerized transporters, Endeavour is scheduled to roll out of the United Airlines hangar at midnight Friday and begin creeping toward its permanent home at the science center.
FULL COVERAGE: Ende |
schools?
In a letter to the editor published by the Freeman in March 1969 that would please proponents of home schooling, Sanders ranted:
One of the most heartening signs in recent years is the growing belief among people that the formal education process (i.e., schools) are not only “not good” but that they are positively destructive and harmful. People are becoming aware that the function of schools is not to educate children but, in fact, to do the very opposite—to PREVENT education.
Later in the letter he wrote:
It is quite clear that the basic function of the schools is to set up in children patterns of docility and conformity— patterns designed not to create independent and free adults, but adults who will obey orders, be “faithful” uncomplaining employees, and “good” citizens.
But Sanders was not a total downer. Yes, he was bummed out about the Vietnam War and many aspects of modern politics. In the opinion pages of the Freeman he railed against “napalm, bombings, torture of whole villages,” and “a United States congress composed of millionaires and state legislatures controlled by lobbyists.” But he ended on an upbeat note:
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The Revolution is coming, and it is a very beautiful revolution. It is beautiful because, in its deepest sense, it is quiet, gentle, and all pervasive. It KNOWS. What is most important in this revolution will require no guns, no commandants, no screaming “leaders,” and no vicious publications accusing everyone else of being counter-revolutionary. The revolution comes when two strangers smile at each other, when a father refuses to send his child to school because schools destroy children, when a commune is started and people begin to trust each other, when a young man refuses to go to war, and when a girl pushes aside all that her mother has “taught” her and accepts her boyfriend’s love. The revolution comes when young people throughout the world take control of their own lives and when people everywhere begin to look each other in the eyes and say hello, without fear. This is the revolution, this is the strength, and with this behind us no politician or general will ever stop us. We shall win!
Ultimately Sanders was unable to stay in Stannard. There was no money in writing. The town may have been too remote for him and his infant son. He might have soured on the communal lifestyle. Or his citified upbringing and college life might have made him crave more human interaction. For whatever reason, Sanders migrated to Burlington and had settled there by 1971. He and Levi moved into the back of a small brick duplex at 2951⁄2 Maple Street, not far from the campus of the University of Vermont.
According to friends at the time, Sanders struggled to keep food in the refrigerator and lights on in the house. He attempted to make money as a carpenter, with little success. He sold a few freelance articles to low-budget publications. “He was always poor,” says Sandy Baird, who knew Sanders at the time. He went on unemployment for a while in 1971. At one particularly destitute moment, according to a friend who lived around the corner, he couldn’t pay his electric bill and had to get his power by running an electric cord up from the basement.
Levi’s mother visited often to share in raising their son, who called his father “Bernard.”
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Excerpted from "Why Bernie Sanders Matters" by Harry Jaffe. Published by Regan Arts. Copyright 2015 by Harry Jaffe. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.State and local public health officials are offering few details about the mysterious tuberculosis (TB) death of a patient first diagnosed last month at a hospital in Fremont, Nebraska.
Fremont is a city of 26,000 about 40 miles northwest of Omaha that was at the center of a national controversy in 2010 when it passed an ordinance that prohibits landlords from renting to individuals who are not American citizens.
“Three Rivers Public Health Department said they received notification that a patient evaluated and treated at Fremont Health on October 29, 2017 tested positive for tuberculosis. That patient was transferred to Nebraska Medicine and later died at that facility,” WOWT reported.
“We’re actively investigating this case of TB and we’re interviewing family and community members to identify any setting where other individuals might have been exposed to this patient,” Terra Uhing, executive director of Three Rivers Public Health Department, which is responsible for public health in three rural counties–Dodge, Washington, and Saunders–with a combined population of about 77,000, said in a statement released on Monday.
“Safety is our number one priority and we’re taking all the necessary steps to make sure people identified at risk for exposure are evaluated,” Uhing added in that statement.
Deaths from active TB are rare in the United States, since highly effective and relatively inexpensive treatment regimens have been widely in effect for more than five decades. Virtually all patients who receive an early diagnosis and complete the treatment regimen survive. The patient who was diagnosed with TB in Fremont, Nebraska on October 29 died within days of that diagnosis, indicating the patient had been walking around with active TB for many months prior to death.
Either the patient died of active TB that was never diagnosed or treated for months–possibly even years– or the patient died of the even more dangerous multi-drug resistant strain of TB (MDR TB). MDR TB has a high morbidity rate of 39 percent, even if it is treated.
As Breitbart News reported, an outbreak of 17 cases of MDR TB has been reported recently in Minnesota.
Breitbart News spoke with Uhing over the phone late Wednesday asking more questions about the mysterious TB death.
Uhing confirmed that the patient who died was not a student or staff member at a local public or private school. Additional sources confirmed to Breitbart News that the patient was not a student or staff member at Fremont Public Schools, the largest public school in the three county area.
Uhing also said that “roughly 35 individuals have been tested” by Three Rivers Public Health Department for TB, but she refused to provide answers to any of these five additional questions:
1. Was the patient foreign-born? 2. If so, what was the country of origin? 3. If so, what was the patient’s immigration status upon entry? 4. Was the patient diagnosed with MDR TB? 5. How old was the patient?
Sixty-seven percent of the cases of TB diagnosed in the United States in 2016 were foreign-born.
Uhing told Breitbart News that she knows the answers to four of these five questions, and anticipated issuing another statement to the press on Thursday, at which point those questions might be answered.
Breitbart News asked the Nebraska Department of Public Health to comment, but did not receive a response.
The controversial housing ordinance passed by the city of Fremont in 2010 remains in effect, although it was challenged in federal court.
The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ordinance in 2013, and the Supreme Court did not choose to hear the subsequent appeal.
“The controversial housing ordinance targeting illegal immigrants in Fremont, Nebraska, has turned out to be toothless,” the Omaha World-Herald reported in 2015:
The federal government is not providing city officials with the immigration status of renters suspected of being in the country illegally. And without the information, no rental housing licenses have been yanked. Fremont’s mayor says a fix is in the works. During the year since the ordinance went into effect, nearly 1,300 people have paid $5 for occupancy licenses to move into rental housing. The application requires people to declare whether or not they are U.S. citizens. At least 35 renters indicated that they were not U.S. citizens, so the city asked federal officials to determine whether the renters are legally in the country. The government did not provide answers, saying it needed more information about the renters.
Fremont and Dodge County have seen a recent influx of immigrants, many of whom work for local meat processors.
The small town of Nickerson in Dodge County recently turned away a company that wanted to establish a chicken processing plant there, as the Associated Press reported in 2016:
More overtly, John Wiegert, from nearby Fremont where two meat processors employ many immigrants, questioned whether Nickerson’s plant would attract legal immigrants from Somalia — more than 1,000 of whom have moved to other Nebraska cities for similar jobs, along with people from Mexico, Central America and Southeast Asia.
In September, former CBS News Anchor Katie Couric stopped in Fremont while filming a documentary there for National Geographic:
Couric also visited the farm of retired Hormel worker Greg Soukop near Hooper, among other stops. National Geographic wouldn’t confirm the topic that brought Couric to Fremont. Soukop said the interview focused on his experiences as a lifelong area resident, as well as his experience at Hormel. “What they were looking for when they contacted me was someone who worked at Hormel back in the days before they lost production, when the wages were a lot higher,” Soukop said in a phone interview with the Tribune.
One thousand four hundred people work at a Hormel Foods food processing plant, the second largest employer in the Fremont area. An additional 286 people work at Fremont Beef, a meat processor.Lawmakers in Maryland and Virginia will consider a number of LGBT-specific issues during their respective legislative sessions that began on Wednesday.
Maryland legislators are likely to consider a bill that would ban anti-transgender discrimination in the workplace, housing and public accommodations. The Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Act died in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee last April because Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller (D-Prince George’s and Calvert Counties) reportedly blocked a vote on it.
Miller has publicly backed the proposed measure that gay state Sen. Rich Madaleno (D-Montgomery County) will formally sponsor. He and state Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery County) are expected to champion the bill in the chamber.
Gov. Martin O’Malley, who signed the state’s first anti-trans discrimination law in 2002 when he was the mayor of Baltimore, also backs the Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Act.
“We’re very optimistic this year because the world has changed,” Gender Rights Maryland Executive Director Dana Beyer told the Washington Blade. “The attitudes of not only the voters who proved on Nov. 6 that they’re supportive of progressive issues such as marriage equality and the Dream Act, but also the legislators have noticed that and are feeling a little bit emboldened.”
Equality Maryland Executive Director Carrie Evans shared Beyer’s optimism.
The Maryland Coalition for Trans Equality has grown to include CASA de Maryland, Progressive Maryland and 17 other organizations. Equality Maryland has posted a petition on its website in support of the Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Act
Evans said this group is “modeling ourselves off of the” campaign in support of the same-sex marriage referendum that passed last November by a 52-48 percent margin.
“We have an incredible window here in 2013 with the strength of the coalition, the good feelings everybody has about Equality Maryland,” she said. “We are going full surge ahead and hopefully passing this once and for all in 2013.”
A proposed assault weapons ban in the wake of the Dec. 14 massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school that left 20 students and six administrators dead and efforts to repeal the state’s death penalty are among the issues expected to dominate this year’s legislative agenda in Annapolis, but Evans highlighted other issues on which she and other advocates hope to work in the coming year.
These include working with Attorney General Doug Gansler and other officials to ensure the state’s same-sex marriage law that took effect on Jan. 1 is properly implemented. She pointed to insurance and tax-related issues for same-sex couples and making sure state agencies have provisions that include gender-neutral references are top priorities.
Evans said she expects most of these changes will take place through new regulations or administrative tweaks, but “they are working on answering the question of redoing all of the areas of state law and what needs to be done legislatively. Strengthening Maryland’s anti-bullying laws is another priority.
“The problem has always been making sure once the law is passed it is implemented at all levels,” Evans said.
Va. bill would ban anti-LGBT bias
Virginia lawmakers are expected to consider a measure during their legislative session that would ban anti-LGBT discrimination against state employees.
State Sens. A. Donald McEachin (D-Henrico) and Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) introduced Senate Bill 701 last October. The state Senate passed similar measures in 2010 and 2011, but they stalled in the House of Delegates.
Equality Virginia Executive Director James Parrish told the Blade last November that SB 701’s chances of passing in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates this year are “very slim.”
“While our biggest challenge is the House of Delegates, this will be an opportunity to get legislators on the record for pro-LGBT legislation and see if they are really supporting equality and their constituency this election year,” he said.
Ebbin told the Blade he expects the Senate General Law Committee could potentially hear SB 701 in the coming weeks.
“The bill has passed the Senate before, but failed in the General Laws and Technology Committee last session,” he said. “It’s a sometimes challenging environment because there’s Republican control of that committee, but we’re working hard and hope there will be a breakthrough this year.”
Del. legislators expected to debate marriage
Delaware lawmakers are expected to consider a same-sex marriage bill between now and the end of their current legislative session on June 30.
Gov. Jack Markell, who signed the state’s civil unions law in 2011, suggested to the Huffington Post last August that state lawmakers could debate a measure that would allow gays and lesbians to tie the knot this year.
Spokesperson Catherine Rossi reiterated that point to the Blade.
“The governor expects that a marriage equality bill will be worked this session,” she said.
House Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf (D-Rehoboth Beach) described efforts to place a same-sex marriage bill on the 2013 legislative agenda as a “no-brainer” during an interview with the News-Journal on Tuesday. House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst (D-Bear) added she expects Senate Majority Leader Patricia Blevins (D-Elsmere) and state Rep. Melanie George Smith (D-Bear) to introduce the measure.
Both legislators co-sponsored the civil unions bill.
Gays and lesbians can legally marry in neighboring Maryland and eight other states and D.C. Lawmakers in New Jersey, Illinois and Rhode Island are expected to consider similar measures in the coming weeks.Plans to introduce closed inquests with evidence heard in private have been dropped from the government's "secret justice" bill to be published on Tuesday following a dispute between David Cameron and Nick Clegg.
Government officials heralded the move as the main concession in one of the most controversial pieces of legislation contained in the Queen's speech. It follows a well-publicised row behind the scenes that delayed publication of the bill for almost a week.
Liberal Democrats are claiming credit for ensuring that inquests will not be subjected to so-called "closed material procedures", which would mean that any information held by the security and intelligence agencies could be heard only in secret.
The advantage of the concession for the prime minister is that his deputy and his Liberal Democrat colleagues in the coalition government will be able to argue they have scored a victory.
However, the main purpose of the bill will remain – evidence and claims made by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ would be presented to the court but would not be disclosed to individuals seeking damages or making complaints. As a result, they would not be challenge the agencies. Instead, their interests will be presented by vetted "special advocates".
Judges will decide whether to agree to a minister's request that evidence should be heard only in secret on grounds of national security.
The model for extending secret hearings into the civil courts will be based on the process already in use in the special immigration appeals commission (Siac), the body which has been hearing Abu Qatada's bail application this week.
Opponents of closed material procedures say evidence that cannot be tested properly in court – the claimant cannot hear accusations being made – is not reliable. Many of the special advocates themselves objected to the draft legislation.
The bill will allow ministers to claim secrecy is needed on national security grounds for swaths of information, not only material in the hands of the security and intelligence agencies, according to reports of its contents circulating on Monday.
It will, for example, forbid evidence being heard from witnesses from a foreign intelligence agency with relevant knowledge of the case but who are not party to it.
Whitehall officials said the phrase "public interest" used in the green paper had been removed and replaced in the bill by "national security". Officials say this is a much narrower test. However, they admit the term cannot easily be defined.
Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, told Liberty's annual general meeting on Saturday that the bill filled him with a "considerable amount of distaste" but it would apply only to a "very small number of cases".
At present, Grieve said, if someone brought a claim against the state, the claim had to be struck out to avoid intelligence material from being disclosed, or the government had to settle a case out of court when the claim was "completely undeserving".
Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, told the meeting that compromises needed to be made to protect citizens and said the government had yet to make out the case for "such fundamental changes".
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group Liberty, said on Monday: "So audacious were the original proposals, it's no surprise to see slight concessions designed to sweeten the bitter and unnecessary pill."
Cori Crider, the legal director of the charity Reprieve, said: "This bill will leave [justice secretary] Ken Clarke's reputation as a civil libertarian in tatters.
"Let's all remember that this bill is coming at the very time when the UK is to be hauled into court over the rendition-to-torture of Gaddafi opponents Sami al-Saadi, Abdelhakim Belhadj and their young families. If the law goes through as drafted, the majority of evidence in those cases will never see the light of day. Surely Ken Clarke – and all of us – owe an open explanation to Khadija al-Saadi, rendered age 12."
Clarke has said the powers are needed to reassure other countries, particularly the US, that they can continue to share intelligence without fear of it being exposed in British courts. Evidence that MI5 and MI6 knew of CIA abuse of detainees emerged during a high court hearing brought by lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident held in Guantánamo Bay.
The bill proposes that the chairman of the parliamentary intelligence security committee (ISC), currently Sir Malcolm Rifkind, should be elected by MPs, rather than being appointed by the prime minister, and that the committee can demand information from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, but the ISC will still meet in private.
Critics of the bill have pointed out that including inquests within the new regulations would have led to relatives of servicemen and women who died in action participating in hearings where sensitive material was clearly being excluded from public sessions.
The resultant public furore might have resulted in the whole initiative being defeated. None of the civil courts to which the secret hearings are being extended involve juries, so there will be no intrusive security vetting of jurors.Road rage... Parked cars smashed up in Miller Street, Epping. Credit:Matthew Ondarchie ‘‘He made a decision to go down and find out what was actually happening. At that stage, it was a dispute, he wasn’t aware there was the level of violence involved that unfolded,’’ Mr Fontana said. ‘‘He’s confronted by a woman that’s obviously been very emotive and agitated at the time and was armed with a weapon and she was approaching him. He had to defend himself.’’ The woman is believed to be from a regional area and aged in her 30s. She was allegedly walking towards the sergeant with a knife when she was shot. Mr Fontana said in the moments before the shooting, the woman dropped a bag, which the sergeant had believed contained knives. She then armed herself with a knife and when a man, believed to be from Preston and known to the woman, tried to take it from her, she slashed him across the face.
Paramedics were called to the scene at 12.40pm. Ambulance Victoria spokesman Paul Bentley said paramedics treated the woman for a gunshot wound, and she was taken to Royal Melbourne Hospital in a stable condition. The injured man was taken to the Northern Hospital in a stable condition. A witness named Rhett told radio 3AW the woman had deliberately slammed into a parked car with a man sitting inside before grabbing an axe to attack the other vehicle. She's put an axe through the window on the passenger side (of the other vehicle)...Then she's grabbed out a long knife and started swinging it at him.
"She's lined him up and drove right into him," the witness, named only as Rhett, told the radio station. "She's put an axe through the window on the passenger side [of the other vehicle]... Then she's grabbed out a long knife and started swinging it at him." When the man got out of the car, Rhett said the woman threatened him with the knife before police arrived. "The policeman came round and drew his gun and said 'Drop the knife, drop the knife.' He gave her plenty of time to drop the knife. ''I thought, 'Oh, this isn't going to end well.'"
Rhett said the woman was shot in the leg after cutting the man with the knife and was later taken away in an ambulance. "She tried to swing at police," Rhett said. "She [was] screaming when she went off [in the ambulance]" A Miller Street business owner told The Age police had blocked off Miller Street between Cooper and Rufus streets. She said there were a number of police cars at the scene.
The latest incident follows a police shooting in Shepparton on July 29, when a 23-year-old woman was shot. Mr Fontana said he was concerned about the large number of cases involving armed offenders and police, including two recent police shootings and the stabbing of a police officer on the weekend. ‘‘Unfortunately, we’re invariably confronted by these sorts of scenarios on a regular basis. On many occasions we manage to thwart them. It’s a real concern to us and often our members are left with no option but to use some sort of force to protect themselves or others,’’ he said. An internal police review of the shooting will determine if tasers or capsicum spray could have been used to subdue the woman. Biljana Stavreski, the owner of Northern Yoga and Therapy Centre on Miller Street, said she did not hear any gunshots even though her business was located near the shooting scene.
However, she said police had swarmed through the area and had blocked off Miller Street. She said traffic congestion had been a frustration for motorists, particularly at the corner of Miller and Cooper streets, in recent years due to the construction of new housing. "That intersection has gone from being a very quiet part of town to being excruciatingly painful to get through," she said. "People's patience is wearing thin around that area because they’ve built up thousands and thousands of houses and estates but they haven't changed the roads since the 1950s. People can’t get in and out of their homes. The road is chockers. It sometimes takes 20 minutes to get through that intersection." With Megan LevyThe Kremlin has launched a massive barrage of air and sea launched cruise missiles against Daesh targets in Syria in retaliation for the downing of a Russian airliner over Egypt last month.
Russia launched the missiles from Tupolev Tu-22M3 Backfire, Tu-95MS Bear and Tu-160 Blackjack strategic bombers, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Additionally, the Russian navy launched its own barrage of the cruise missiles against the self-styled Islamic State according to some reports.
“In accordance to the task assigned by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces concerning enhancing combat air operations in the Syrian Arab Republic, crews of Tu-160, Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 long-range aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces carried out strikes with air-based cruise missiles at the ISIS terrorist objects within the air operation,” reads a statement from the Russian defense ministry.
During the first wave of the Russian raids, a dozen Tu-22M3 bombers struck Daesh targets in Syria’s Raqqah and Deir-ez-Zor provinces. Later, a force of massive Mach 2.0-capable Tu-160 supersonic bombers and quad-turboprop Tu-95MS Bears launched a salvo of thirty-four air-launched cruise missiles against the terrorists in Aleppo and Idlib. “Today as a result of the first massive airstrike 14 terrorist facilities of special importance were destroyed with 34 cruise missiles,” reads the Russian government statement. It’s the first time Russian strategic bombers—particular the Blackjack—has conducted combat operations in recent memory.
There are no details available about the Russian naval cruise missile strikes against Syrian targets. But presumably, the Russians followed a similar game plan as their last series of sea-based cruise missile strikes that were launched from the Caspian Sea. Russia could have once again launched missiles from the Caspian Sea, but it could also have launched those weapons from the Mediterranean.
The Russian air attack consisted of twenty-five bombers backed by eight Su-34 Fullback strike aircraft and four Su-30SM multirole fighters. The Fullback strike aircraft hit a number of targets—including Daesh’s fuel supply. “Su-34 aircraft destroyed two columns of fuel bowsers and about 50 vehicles. As a result, taking into consideration previous airstrikes aimed at oil supply transports (410 fuellers in total) and several infrastructure elements, the illegal fuel export capabilities of the terrorists have been significantly cut,” the Russian defense ministry states.
In total, the Russian expeditionary force in Latakia flew a total of sixty-five combat sorties, according to the Russian defense ministry. The Russians planned to fly 127 combat sorties against 206 Daesh targets‑including the strategic bomber raids. The Russians also apparently provided advanced notice to the United States of their impending operation. “The Russian Defence Ministry had informed the US Air Force Command and other coalition countries’ Commands about the airstrikes in advance,” the Russian statement reads.
Pentagon officials confirmed that Russia had given them prior notice of the operation. “We are aware that over the past several hours Russia conducted a significant number of strikes in Raqqah, some of which may have included sea-launched cruise missiles and long-range bombers,” a senior U.S. defense official told Agency France Presse. “While we do not coordinate or collaborate in any way with Russia on its activities in Syria, I can confirm that the Russians did provide us notice prior to conducting these strikes, via the Coalition Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar, in accordance with the safety protocols agreed to in October.”
Meanwhile, Russian president Vladimir Putin has ordered the Slava-class missile cruiser Moskva—which is the Russian flagship in the Mediterranean—and her task force to cooperate with French forces in the region.
France has stepped up its operations in the region following a barbaric terrorist attack on Paris on Friday. The French carrier Charles de Gaulle is set to arrive in the region within days to start bombarding the Daesh forces. According to Putin, Moskva will “cooperate with them as with allies.” While Paris and Moscow are not currently coordinating, French president Francois Hollande is set to meet with Putin on Nov. 26.
Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar.
Image: Flickr/Creative Commons.JOHANNESBURG South Africa confirmed its first case of the mosquito-borne Zika virus in a Columbian man, health authorities said.
The virus, which is causing international alarm after spreading through much of the Americas, was detected in the man on his visit to Johannesburg, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said.
"The businessman presented with fever and a rash approximately four days after arrival in South Africa but is now fully recovered," he said.
The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global public health emergency on Feb. 1, noting its association with two neurological disorders - microcephaly in babies and Guillain-Barre syndrome that can cause paralysis.
(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
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In a handwritten note, President Barack Obama offered an apology to a professor who took offense at his jab at art history majors during a speech outside of Milwaukee last month.
After hearing his remark at a General Electric plant that “folks can make a lot more potentially with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree,” University of Texas at Austin Professor Ann Collins Johns sent a message to the president via the White House website stressing that art history students learn to think, read and write critically and the inclusiveness of the field, according to art blog Hyperallergic.
Story Continued Below
To Johns’s surprise, she received a letter from the White House with an apology scrawled in the president’s looping handwriting.
( Earlier on POLITICO: Obama orders review of job-training programs)
“Let me apologize for my off-the-cuff remarks. I was making a point about the jobs market, not the value of art history. As it so happens, art history was one of my favorite subjects in high school, and it has helped me take in a great deal of joy in my life that I might otherwise have missed,” Obama wrote, according to a copy of the letter published on the blog.
He added, “So please pass on my apology for the glib remark to the entire department, and understand that I was trying to encourage young people who may not be predisposed to a four year college experience to be open to technical training that can lead them to an honorable career.”
Johns sent the message despite the president’s immediate clarification that he thinks there is “nothing wrong with art history degree” and didn’t want to receive “a bunch of emails from everybody.”
“I love art history,” Obama said after making the comment about art history majors. “I don’t want to get a bunch of emails from everybody. I’m just saying, you can make a really good living and have a great career without getting a four-year college education, as long as you get the skills and training that you need.”Image copyright PA Image caption Transport for London laid on hundreds of extra buses to help keep London moving during the strike
London Underground drivers will stage a second 24-hour strike in a dispute over night Tube plans, the Aslef union has said.
The walkout, set to start at 21:30 BST on 5 August, follows a strike that closed the entire network last week.
Conciliation service Acas has invited both sides to hold talks on Tuesday in a bid to avert the fresh strike.
The Unite union said it would join the planned action, BBC London's transport correspondent Tom Edwards said.
Unions are unhappy about pay and shifts for the overnight service, which is due to start on 12 September.
An Acas spokesman said: "Acas has written to London Underground, Aslef, RMT, TSSA and Unite, inviting them to attend exploratory talks tomorrow morning."
London Underground (LU) said it would attend the Acas-chaired talks.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) and Unite union have yet to indicate their position on the talks or the August strike.
Members of the four trade unions were involved in the last strike, which began on Wednesday night.
BBC London transport correspondent Tom Edwards
"It isn't a massive surprise that Aslef has now named a new date for a Tube strike as this dispute has not been resolved.
The unions still have concerns over the introduction of the night Tube and extra night and weekend shifts and how it will erode the work/life balance of employees.
But the concerns aren't just about that, they also cover pay and the closure of ticket offices. And with four unions involved with varying issues it means finding a resolution will be harder.
Conciliation talks are due to start tomorrow and there are now three weeks to sort it out. The other unions - RMT, TSSA, Unite - could again go on strike on the same day.
Image copyright TfL
The row is over a 2% average pay rise offer for LU members and workers' terms and conditions linked to plans to introduce an all-night Tube service on the Jubilee and Victoria lines and and most of the Central, Northern and Piccadilly lines.
'Damage the economy'
LU's chief operating officer Steve Griffiths said earlier: "We will be at Acas tomorrow for further discussions to resolve this issue and trust the trade unions will be too."
John Allan, chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said the prospect of a second Tube strike in less than a month was "disappointing news" and "another blow for businesses."
"Many small companies proved their flexibility and resourcefulness last week, allowing their employees to work remotely, or hold meetings with clients online rather than in person.
"Nevertheless, there will be further damage to the economy and millions of pounds lost to businesses if this strike goes ahead," he said.
Last week's strike saw long delays and rush hour began earlier than normal as commuters tried to find alternative ways to get to and from work.
Millions of passengers walked, cycled, and took the bus and river services. Car booking firm Uber was criticised for its price surging practice as fares increased many times the normal price amid elevated demand.
London Mayor Boris Johnson condemned the strike as "unnecessary" and transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin urged workers to accept the offer made by London Underground.
The Tube strike was exacerbated by a 48-hour strike by First Great Western staff which affected some services between London, the West of England and Wales.Cloud skills are unquestionably one of the hot new areas for IT job seekers, with a bevy of career possibilities available. But which skills for what specific cloud architectures are most in demand? As you can imagine, it's Amazon followed -- now very closely -- by OpenStack.
An article at Opensource.com demonstrates how a search on Indeed.com, which indexes job openings from multiple services, shows how job listings that involve Amazon.com's EC2 (or just "EC2") far outstrip listings asking for experience with CloudStack and Eucalyptus. Some 2,100 job listings showed up for Amazon EC2 for mid-March 2014, with CloudStack and Eucalyptus trailing far behind (242 and 137, respectively).
But OpenStack job listings (1,643) have been climbing steadily since OpenStack itself started to become a hot item. Red Hat made OpenStack one of its core technologies late last year, and outfits like Mirantis and IBM have invested heavily in OpenStack development.
The OpenStack Foundation has also claimed engineers for OpenStack make more than those trained for other cloud technologies, although that seems more difficult to prove. The vast majority of jobs found on Indeed that have "OpenStack" in the title come with salary estimates ranging from $50,000 through $70,000, about on a par with EC2 jobs.
While Amazon's EC2 job figures have generally trended upward, the Indeed numbers show they may be plateauing, never rising any higher than around 0.075 percent of all job listings since January 2011. One possible implication of its flattening fortune, other than competition from other cloud technologies, is a commodification of Amazon EC2, where more inventive and demanding -- and therefore esoteric -- applications of EC2 become more valuable than basic knowledge.
An even bigger comparative boom can be seen with Hadoop (8,224 listings), where job listings demanding experience with Hadoop and its toolset have been steadily on the rise since 2009. Plus, the spread for Hadoop job pay is a little better, as more of the jobs listed command paychecks between $90,000 and $110,000 than do the ones for OpenStack or Amazon.
And "cloud" as a general buzzword returns some 40,000 jobs overall -- around 1 percent of all those listed, far outstripping every other technology mentioned here. The latter might be a reflection of how many other IT disciplines are now becoming more cloud-oriented in some form.
This story, "Look out, Amazon -- OpenStack jobs are on the rise," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.My favorite 3d modeling software has been upgraded! SketchUP 2014 hit the market today, and although the core SketchUP Pro features did not change that much, I like the fact Trimble keeps a steady update cycle with a great beta testing program. I just wish they focused on SketchUP just as much as Layout. 2013 was mainly a Layout upgrade, with 2014 they overhauled the 3d warehouse and more Layout upgrades… Trimble – Make 2015 a SketchUP Pro core upgrade only please! it is long overdue. I guess that bottom-line, the most valuable update in this release is the introduction of Ruby 2.0 for 3rd party developers.
3D Modeling & Performance
Considering almost any 3rd party plugin for SketchUP tops the added features in this release is just sad! Looking forward to see what Trimble is cooking behind the scenes (if not, then start cooking please).
Now you can draw arcs using any of three different methods: the default 2-Point Arc tool lets you pick two end points and then a third that defines the bulge. Or, pick the center point of your arc and then pick two points on the edge, defining your arc by its angle. The Pie Arc tool works the same way but produces a wedge-shaped face.
Faster Shadows in Large models Casting shadows is no longer something youll have to sacrifice when working on really big, complicated models. We dug deep into SketchUps shadow engine code (actual name: ShadowMaster) and found some optimization gems. Our tests on a dozen hulking, customer-derived models show an average speed improvement of 15x. Your results may vary.
Interoperability
In light of the above, it is great to see the upgrade to Ruby 2.0 allowing for better extensions to be made for SketchUP. Those of you interested in BIM capabilities will love the new classifier feature.
Ruby 2.0 The |
a contributor to Bungakukai and in the mid-nineties published a contemporary-Japanese translation of “Genji” that became a best-seller. She turned around in her chair to greet the audience: flowing purple robe, white-and-gold brocade kesa, shiny bald head. A government official in a neat suit stood up, and praised the novelists as modern-day Murasakis for their innovative use of 3G cell phones. “The intent of having developed this broadband is for people to use it to create culture, develop new business models, and integrate the provinces into the nation’s cultural production,” he said. “It’s the thousandth anniversary of ‘The Tale of Genji.’ There was a flowering of culture at that time, and we have hopes that in our new era in Japan we will have the same kind of cultural influence. The authors here are leaders of this new flowering of activity.” An announcer on a loudspeaker introduced the finalists, and each stood up and took a shallow bow. “There’s one more author, who does not wish to be seen,” the announcer added. “She’s in the room but doesn’t want to be known.” Kiki won the grand prize. When her name was called, she looked startled, and slowly turned her head to the left and to the right, remaining lumpen in her chair. Finally, she advanced to the stage, pulling up her stockings and combing her fingers through her hair. She accepted a huge bouquet from a popular Ping-Pong champion. At the microphone, she wept. She said that she had written the novel for her boyfriend, to commemorate their love. The award was two million yen (some twenty thousand dollars) and publication by Starts. After Kiki left the stage, laden with the flowers and a signed Ping-Pong paddle, Setouchi made an announcement. Since May, she said, she had been posting a novel on the Starts Web site, under the pen name Purple—the reference to Murasaki Shikibu likely sailed over her readers’ heads. Hers was a simple, though well-crafted, tale of a high-school girl, Yuri, who falls in love with a handsome, damaged boy called Hikaru, which is one of Genji’s names. Like Genji, Hikaru has an affair with his father’s wife and gets her pregnant. (Instead of emperor, Hikaru’s father is a corporate executive.) At first, Setouchi said, she had tried to write on her cell phone, but, finding it too difficult, she reverted to her customary medium—traditional Japanese writing paper and a fountain pen—and sent the manuscript to her publisher to convert. “I’m an author,” Setouchi told the audience. “When you finish a novel, to sell tens of thousands would be a tough thing for us, but I see you selling millions. I must confess that I was a bit jealous in the beginning.” Then she offered them a word of advice that was probably redundant. “I’m eighty-six years old now, and I don’t usually get surprised by things and I don’t get so excited, but as long as you’re alive you want to be excited, right? But how do you stay excited about life? Keep secrets.”Economic Globalization Inevitably Leads to Political Globalism
I’ve had my fair share of debates with so-called conservatives who, on the one hand, vociferously (and rightly) denounce political globalization, while at the same time they sing songs of unadulterated praise regarding (equally imperious) economic globalization.
They say that international organizations like the United Nations (UN) or European Union (EU)—and in some more extreme cases America’s federal government—erode the sovereignty of their composite states, and that this is inherently bad.
With this I agree, wholeheartedly.
The more nuanced of the bunch often go further, arguing that political globalization (that is, integration) poses an existential risk to humanity: it puts too many eggs in one basket. They point out that a powerful, large, single government is intrinsically more fragile than a collection of smaller entities—it’s slow and Byzantine in nature, while the contrary (Westphalian nationalism) is nimble and responsive, adaptive.
Again, I agree.
Yet these very same people almost inevitably support dismantling international trade barriers, and signing free trade deals. Unlike political globalization, which is bad, economic globalization is an unadulterated good, they argue, because it makes the economy more efficient, and gives us access to a broader range of (presumably cheaper) products.
This is a paradox—if you don’t see it, you need to keep reading.
Why? Because economic and political globalization are two sides of the same coin—one invariably leads to the other.
Why Political Globalization is Bad
To understand why people who abhor political globalization are hypocrites if they support (unrestricted) economic globalization, we first have to understand why they believe political globalization is bad.
There are many reasons, some compelling, some not, but only a few that matter:
1. Political Globalization Concentrates Power With Unaccountable (& Corrupt) Bureaucrats
Many people oppose political globalization because they fear that political power will become concentrated at the top—particularly in the hands of the shadowy figures that tend to populate the upper echelons of organizations like the UN or EU, or even the International Olympic Committee or FIFA.
Basically: absolute power corrupts absolutely. The assumption is that bigger governments are more corrupt.
And they’re right to fear: people like the former (and disgraced) FIFA President Sepp Blatter seem to be the norm in these circles, not the exception. They are universally hated and corrupt, often more-so than many Third-World dictators—I’m sure Robert Mugabe has more legitimate fans than does Sepp.
That’s a bit of a tongue-in-cheek example, but here’s a serious one: the EU recently admitted that it’s been lying to the European people since the start of the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Why? Who knows, but presumably because they wanted to push their own opaque agenda.
That’s corruption at the highest levels, and there’s no recourse.
This brings us to the lack of accountability: how do you hold an international bureaucrat accountable for their actions? They’re stateless actors. No one country can fire or impeach them. They aren’t worried about losing an election (because they are appointees). There really is no recourse for the average citizen.
This is epitomized by how the EU has handled the collapse of the Euro-zone (remember Greece?). Nigel Farage’s speech in the European Parliament sums it all up quite nicely:
2. Political Globalism Undermines National Sovereignty
The first point leads directly into the second: if power is concentrated in international governing bodies, then it’s necessarily no longer concentrated at the national level.
Basically, for an international governing system to work, nations must surrender their power to said system. There’s simply no way around it.
This is a bad thing if you happened to value your nation’s sovereignty.
To illustrate this point, we turn again to the relationship between the UK and the EU.
According to Nigel Farage and UKIP, some 75% of Great Britain’s laws and regulations are either outright dictates from the EU, or must conform to standardized EU regulations or codes. According to Parliamentary evidence submitted by Member of Parliament Boris Johnson, the number is at little lower, but still high, at 60%.
But let’s not quibble over the numbers. Why? Because it doesn’t really matter if it’s 75%, 60%, or 10%. It should be zero. For a nation to be sovereign, it must control its laws. The fact that so great a proportion of Britain’s law is imported from the EU is troubling.
And remember, there can be serious penalties (financial and political) for not complying with EU law (no matter how absurd, or contrary to your national interests said law may be). Just look at how the EU is facing off with Poland over their refusal to flood their country with migrants.
No matter how you feel about the Migrant Crisis, we should all be able to agree that sovereign entities should have ultimate control over their own borders—the question must be decided by Poland, not Eurocrats in Brussels or Berlin.
My point: nations in the EU are no longer independent, sovereign states.
3. Globalism Creates Fragility & Political Contagion
The third point that is (less often) used to criticize naive internationalism is one that stems from fragility, and the logic of non-linear risks.
I’ve written quite a bit on this topic, and it’s worth reading my articles on complex systems and systemic contagion (albeit in different contexts, but they make my point). In short:
Politics functions like an organic, not an artificial system—it has more in common with wildebeests than washing machines. Why? A washing machine is a simple mechanical system governed by first-order causality—we know how all the parts work together, and can say with certainty what causes what. If you remove a part, you know exactly the harm it will cause etc.
However, complex systems are governed by second-order causality (the first cause interacts with the system through a rippling web of secondary causes that are unknown). For example, just before World War I most experts thought if war did break out it would be over a scuffle in Africa, or along the Franco-German border—yet the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand spiraled out of control through a series of unfortunate (and improbable) events.
What does this have to do with political globalism? Two things.
First, adding layers of government and bureaucracy increases the system’s complexity, which makes it easier to conceal risks—and of course, more interaction means more friction, and therefore more conflict.
I ask you: which will have more crime (all else being equal), a city of 10 million people or ten cities of 1 million people? The answer is very clearly the city of 10 million people. There is a non-linear relationship between the size of a city and its crime rate. So too is there a non-linear relationship between integration and conflict.
Second, highly integrated and interconnected systems spread the good with the bad. Just consider how in the Franco-Prussian War France’s elaborate railroad system served both French and German supply trains equally well; whereas during the Second World War the USSR’s relatively poor infrastructure couldn’t be hijacked to serve Nazi supply chains, making the USSR robust.
My point here isn’t to say that integration is bad, it’s to say that integration is a double-edged sword, and we should be careful about when we “take advantage” of it. Sometimes redundancy is better than efficiency.
How Economic Globalization Leads to Political Globalism
You may buy the above arguments, you may not; either way, we can agree that if you buy them, then it follows that you should be against economic globalization as well. Why? Because economic globalization causes the same problems, and inevitably leads to political globalism.
Here’s how:
1. Economic Globalization Empowers Unaccountable Bureaucrats
Who negotiated NAFTA? Who negotiated KORUS? Who negotiated TPP?
You can’t say. That’s a problem.
The fact is that our “free trade agreements” are negotiated behind closed doors, and elected representatives have very little to do with them (aside from giving them the green light and the rubber stamp). Why? Because they’re so complex that our elected representatives simply don’t have the time or the expertise to negotiate them (or even read them, in most cases).
They’re created by bureaucrats and specialized (often third-party) lawyers.
We always knew this, but the knowledge became a little more widespread when Wikileaks posted documents from the (potentially) impending Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA).
This point is especially clear when it comes to the EU common market: economic regulations and standards are made by appointed bureaucrats, by people no one’s ever heard of, by people who aren’t accountable to anyone.
It’s a technocracy.
2. Economic Integration Usurps Sovereignty
For this, let’s take a good look at TiSA, a proposed trade agreement between much of the developed world, and a number of outliers like Pakistan and Turkey.
TiSA would do a lot to undermine national sovereignty. For example, TiSA would give multinationals the right to sell financial derivatives, including those not yet invented, in all participating countries—nations wouldn’t be able to restrict the type of financial products sold.
TiSA would likewise ban national restrictions on the transfer of electronic information by financial service suppliers (which includes companies like Facebook or Google), thereby voiding national provincial laws.
And of course, the experience of NAFTA and the EU likewise supports this claim.
Evidence aside, here’s how the logic works: in order to integrate markets, we need to harmonize our standards and regulations. This may force some countries to increase their standards, while other countries are forced to decrease theirs (to reciprocally open their market to inferior foreign goods). Either way, the nation is no longer its own master.
The more integration, the more harmonization, and the less control your country has over its economy.
3. Economic Globalism Increases the Risk of Contagion
This point is, perhaps, the most obvious of them all.
Pretend you have ten individual countries with completely isolated markets. There is a financial meltdown in the banking sector of one country—its economy completely implodes. What happens to the other nine? Nothing. They’re completely independent, and therefore aren’t affected by what goes on in the rest of the world.
Isolation and autarky are robust systems: you can only break one egg at a time.
Now let’s assume that all ten countries are extremely integrated: they share most of the same regulations, their markets are interdependent, and they even share a single currency. What happens if one country implodes? The whole system becomes infected with the contagion—no one is safe.
All the eggs break.
Remember, the economy is a complex system: we don’t know how things fit together (and we can’t know, there are inherent epistemic limits).
This is how problems in tiny Greece (10 million people) brought the Euro-zone (332 million people) to its knees—it’s called the Butterfly Effect, and it operates in all complex systems.
There’s a balance that must be struck: sometimes more integration (and more free trade) is bad. It turns benign cancers malignant.
Economic And Political Globalism Are Inseparable
Those who support economic, but not political globalization are not only hypocrites, but they’re naive. Why? One inevitably leads to another. Economic globalization leads to political globalization.
The analogy of a frog slowly boiling in a kettle is surprisingly apt in this case: most people don’t realize their sovereignty’s disappearing until it’s gone. Some never realize, a boilerplate is enough for them.
The perfect example is the European Union.
The EU’s foundations were laid with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, a trade agreement that harmonized supply chains of said critical resources. Not only would it be economically expedient, but it would “make war materially impossible” according to Robert Schuman in 1950.
From the beginning European technocrats realized that economic integration would inevitably lead to political integration.
And it did.
Trade agreement after agreement followed, each justified on economic grounds: “it will make us prosperous” the technocrats said. Perhaps they did. But more and more laws needed to be harmonized to ensure Europe’s economies could continue to integrate, meaning that sovereign states needed to surrender more and more power to Europe.
This same logic justified the EU parliament, currency, and constitution.
When will it stop? Who knows. But when it unravels, it’ll be ugly.
Political Independence Requires Economic Independence
We’ve long known that political independence is predicated upon economic independence. In fact, America was founded on this observation.
This is why the second bill George Washington signed after independence was the Tariff Act of 1789. It isolated America’s economy, forcing it to become independent.
Washington observed:
A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies…
Economic independence was America’s official policy until the 1970s, when everything was flipped on its head.
We can’t have our cake and eat it too, no matter what conservatives like Ben Shapiro say.
It’s time we embraced economic nationalism as much as we do political nationalism, otherwise we’ll continue to undo what we fight for.Former Secretary of State Colin Powell is supporting Hillary Clinton in November’s presidential election.
Powell, a retired four-star Army general and a Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration, reportedly made the announcement at a Tuesday event hosted by the Long Island Association, a business group focused on development in Long Island, New York.
Hacked emails that were published in September revealed that Powell had called Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, a “national disgrace” and a “international pariah” earlier this year. In a separate email, he decried what he called the “racist” conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama’s birthplace.
Powell joins scores of other Bush administration veterans who have crossed party lines to endorse Clinton, including former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Chairman Brent Scowcroft, former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
While Bush himself has kept silent about whom he plans to vote for in November, his father, President George H.W. Bush, is reportedly supporting Clinton.Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images
The duo also teamed up to perform Ed's 'Thinking Out Loud.'
Ed Sheeran’s buddy Taylor Swift may get all the props for her stellar, exhaustive lineup of celebrities who crash her 1989 Tour concerts on the regular. But the “Lay It All On Me” crooner gave Tay a run for her money on Friday night (Sept. 25) when he surprised the crowd at Boston’s Gillette Stadium with a very special guest: Chris Martin.
The Coldplay frontman joined Sheeran onstage for two duets, much to the sold-out crowd’s roaring approval. First up, the pair tackled Sheeran’s sweet serenade “Thinking Out Loud.”
Then, they launched into Coldplay’s lovey-dovey gem “Yellow” (you know, the song that reminds Jay Z of Beyoncé), seamlessly harmonizing for a truly magical performance.
Among the crowd of lucky concertgoers who got to witness the Brits’ duets were Martin’s ex Gwyneth Paltrow and their two children, Apple and Moses. Paltrow shared a sweet snap from the show, writing, “Baby daddy in a sweet duet with the immensely talented. #edsheeran #yellow.”
Sheeran later thanked his duet partner for joining him onstage, calling it as we all saw it: “Epic.”Fast-food chain Burger King is making a 180 degree shift in its marketing, with a decision to drop its "King" mascot and focus on – sit down before you read this! – product.
For years, Burger King had placed its bets on edgy commercials by creative powerhouse Crispin Porter + Bogusky, targeting men in their teens and 20s. Crispin's campaigns got a lot of attention, and plaudits from the advertising community. Unfortunately, however, advertising awards don't necessarily translate into sales, and Burger King has been badly lagging main rival McDonald's. According to consulting firm Technomic, Burger King's same-store sales declined 6% in the first quarter; compare that to a 3% rise for McDonald's.
This discrepancy in performance is not the result of McDonald's having more "creative" advertising or a hipper mascot (Ronald Mc Donald is many things – hip he's not). But while Burger King was trying to sell consumers an edgy brand image, McDonald's focused on something much more mundane: selling burgers, fries and coffee. The rest is marketing history.
Now, under new ownership, and with a new management and marketing team, Burger King is focusing on what matters: updating the stores, fixing its food and changing its image. As Alex Maccedo, SVP, marketing, put it to USA Today: "People want a reason to go back to Burger King… There are no plans to bring the King back anytime soon."
Along with new management, Burger King has also hired a new ad agency, McGarry Bowen. Mc Garry's ads are often derided in ad industry circles as conventional, formulaic and unhip. The criticism isn't entirely unjustified… but who cares? Last I heard, advertising is not about creating art house shorts; it's about selling stuff. Against that standard, McGarry's work tends to perform well. A new campaign by McGarry, launching this weekend, will introduce the California Whopper, made with guacamole.
Whether the new burger will catch on remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: the marketing campaign will give it a shot at success. The entire TV commercial will focus single-mindedly on sights and sounds of the burger's ingredients being washed and diced.
And amidst all this slicing and dicing, "the King" finds himself like Charles I and Louis XVI… a head shorter.
Follow me on Forbes and Twitter.The Premise: Byung-ho Park will be a very good, and potentially great, first baseman/DH as soon as this season.
The Format: A typical line of discourse between a Park believer – such as myself – and a Park-skeptic.
The First Argument: Park comes from a league with little track record of successful MLB transplants – after all, if Eric Thames can be a star, how good can the league be?
The Rebuttal: It is true that the Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) has sent very few players to the major leagues. However, consider these caveats before rendering judgement. Unlike in Japan, in which baseball has ruled supreme for decades, the sport has only really taken off in Korea in the last 20 years, spurred largely by the success of Chan-ho Park in Korea and then in the majors. Now, however, the country is baseball-crazy: their national team is among the best in the world and the KBO is by far the most popular professional sports league in Korea. This dramatic rise in interest has led to a correspondingly dramatic rise in baseball infrastructure as more talent is discovered and developed from an early age. The early success of Hyun-jin Ryu and Jung-ho Kang in the United States speaks to the ability of the Korean infrastructure to develop its top-tier talents. Korean national teams regularly beat Americans and others on the international stage. The notion that Korea is not on the same level as a baseball-playing nation as Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic et al. is a farce.
The Second Argument: Park strikes out too much to be an effective major league player.
The Rebuttal: There are two responses to this, one league-oriented and one player-oriented. Implicit in this argument is the notion that the KBO is sufficiently worse than the MLB that all numbers should be significantly adjusted to account for better pitchers in the MLB. While the average KBO pitcher is undeniably worse than the average MLB pitcher, it is worth noting that Cuban League pitching is also decidedly below-average (see this piece by BA’s very talented international correspondent Ben Badler), and Cuban hitters are being snatched up like airline tickets after a decimal point error.
Second, a look at Park’s past seasons reveals an interesting shift in approach. Park’s K% in 2012 and 2013 was 19.8% and 17.2%, respectively, and his slugging percentages were.561 and.602. In 2014, his slugging percentage jumped to.686, but his K% also climbed to 24.8%. Since strikeout rate is a stat which normalizes fairly quickly – 60 PAs, according to Fangraphs – and the overall KBO strikeout rate actually declined from 2013 to 2014 (from 17.3 percent to 16.7 percent), we have to assume that Park changed something in his approach. My conclusion, given what we know about power hitters striking out more in general, is that Park decided to trade contact for power, much like Mike Trout did before the 2014 season. This is indicative both of Park’s recognition of his strengths as a player, which speaks to his baseball intelligence and ability to learn, and also to his adaptiveness at the plate. If he is striking out too much, I am confident that he can reorient his approach and still be a highly valuable player.
The Caveats: There is, of course, no guarantee that Park will succeed in Minnesota. MLB competition is significantly better than any other league anywhere and there will be a learning curve for Park as he learns to hit MLB pitchers. The steeper hurdle in my mind, however, is culture: American culture is very different from the Korean culture with which he is comfortable. Kang Jung-ho, thanks to no small helping of self-confidence, a good team environment, and a penchant for the dramatic, has thrived in Pittsburgh, but there is no guarantee that Park will adjust as successfully or as quickly.
The Conclusion: These caveats aside, drafting (or signing) Byung-ho Park is a risk worth taking. He will be cheap and the upside is enormous. Acquire Park with confidence; there is a good chance that in the not-so-distant future, both you and the Twins will be the proud owners of one of the best power hitters, and best bargains, in baseball.
*KBO data pulled from baseball-reference.com
**Read Dan Farnsworth’s recently published Twins prospect list for further analysis of ParkPicture this: A heterosexual couple that is expecting a baby allow doctors to determine the sex of their unborn child. Instead of learning the sex in that moment (of course, it’s only one of two options), they pass the information to a baker, piñata maker, or other vendor who creates a special celebratory item or experience. Outwardly, the box or cake gives no indication of gender, but the inside contains one of two colors—blue and pink—that stand-in for “boy” or “girl.” The creation is then cut, bitten into, shot, smashed, unwrapped, opened, or otherwise taken apart in the presence of friends and family, and the excited parents learn their child’s sex—and then call it “gender.”
Gender-reveal parties are a widely known phenomenon—a modern tradition among some families. Recording these celebrations and posting them on the internet came into vogue in roughly 2008, when the first gender-reveal video was uploaded to YouTube featuring a couple simply opening an envelope with their ultrasound results among family, a fairly tame affair compared to their current iteration. Social media was nascent, but slowly becoming a way of documenting lived experiences for public consumption and social capital. It allowed people to curate their own lives across various platforms, and as is the case with gender reveals, offered accessibility. Suddenly, private life events gained something they’d never had before: an audience. Equal parts performative theater and stylized oral history, social media began to redefine life, recollection, and living memory, and the “gender reveal” persists as a memorable component of that wave.
Nowadays, gender-reveal parties are an event—almost a milestone—with their own dedicated cottage industry that has cropped up everywhere from Facebook to Twitter, to Pinterest, to Etsy.
Cakes with colored frosting inside are prevalent, but the milieu incorporates everything from colored silly string to colored tablets (to add to one’s champagne!) If the primary purpose of social media is to make the mundane appear more significant and special and less ordinary than it is, then this is the great magic trick that “gender reveals” seem to exploit: putting “creativity” into the most mundane and reductive medical information available about an unborn child. Gender-reveal parties are a race to create the most innovative, tacky, and downright regressive pink-or-blue-explosion possible. (Rifles or Ruffles? Stick or No Stick?) While baby showers seemingly give parents necessary tools disguised as gifts, the “gender reveal” is an extravaganza.
Much has been said about gender reveals—largely from a cis lens about the public spectacle of intimacy. “What was once a joyous moment shared between mother and father has become a spectacle for all to ogle at” goes the refrain, romanticizing a past that never was in the effort to pin all moral decay on androids and iPads. Expectant parents are not particularly known for being big on privacy or withholding details of their journeys. To zero in on the party itself as the cause of digital narcissism rather than a symptom of expanding communication is almost a fun-house mirror trick: Casting these parties as some kind of modern trend when they are anything but. Gender-reveal parties are a public version of the father in the waiting room handing out cigars—and that’s kinda the point.
Gender-reveal parties go further than that: They’re a reinforcement of binary gender. Despite the mainstream trans visibility and gay rights movements, gender reveals show that we are traditionalists who are eager to amplify dominant cultural narratives. It still belies an obsession with fitting people into one of two neat categories—Pistols or Pearls?—and imposes gendered traits and behaviors before a child has even left the womb. Celebrating that your baby is destined to either experience a lifetime of emotional suppression while being encouraged to be violent and self-serving or be treated as a second-class citizen with avenues of opportunity withheld, strikes me as a tad macabre—but maybe I’m just bad at getting into the spirit of these things.
Gender-reveal parties are baloney. One’s sex has little bearing on one’s gender, but cisnormative society at large is still uncomfortable acknowledging this. Cis parents, in general, are very uncomfortable acknowledging that there could be anything non-cis about their children at all—that pink or blue isn’t the be-all and end-all of gendered human experience and the very real harms that can come from pretending that this is the case. There’s almost a smell of vain hope about the whole matter—of trying to exert some control, some sense of familiarity and well-trodden ground in the miasma of chaos that is navigating pregnancy and parenthood. Some notion that by rehashing comfortable, well-worn cis lies, one’s own experience might be that too. That your child won’t turn out to be like that.
Catering to this hope, or rather fear, is profitable. Between the baked goods, party favors, and event planning that goes into these affairs, capitalism is supporting cisnormative narratives as usual while making money off the whole thing. It’s a nice, symbiotic relationship between data-mining social media, bakers with blue-and-pink frosting, and jittery cis parents wishing with all their hearts that their baby’s gender comes down to a simple coin flip that will remain unchallenged throughout the child’s life. Ultimately it boils down to just wanting the best for your baby, in a particularly trans-antagonistic way.
After all, what’s the alternative? Creating a society where people are not harshly punished, endlessly derided, and subjected to brutal violence for deviating from their rigid and pre-ordained gender roles? That sounds difficult. Unfortunate as it is, though, much of the gendered violence faced by people both cis and trans will not abate until those who are complicit in cultural gender narratives do the difficult work. Assumptions and biases must be examined and overturned, expectations related to narrow gender confines lifted, and stigmas against gender nonconformity abolished. Rather than reveal a child’s “gender” to the world and impose all the anguish that comes with that predestination, let’s reveal a world that is truly accepting and embracing children regardless of their performance of gender. That sounds like a much better party.After making the haggis and clapshot earlier this week, I just had to do it again and incorporate it into my haggis nachos, with some homemade guacamole and salsa, it turned out to be an epic treat that I will definitely have to make again.
I had to use extra black pepper as I had ran out of white and this worked perfectly well, I really should do a pantry stock check and top up my spice rack as I go through things pretty quick.
We ended up watching ‘This is 40’ and spent quite a nervous time trying to avoid the enormous spoilers for ‘Lost’. I’ve never reached for the mute button so quickly in my life! So if like us you are only on season 3 then remember to have your wits about you when you watch this film!
Just ordered my photo lighting kit, so hoping that arrives in the next week or two and I can get it out in the kitchen and start snapping away, it would seem every time I want to take a pic in my kitchen a cloud passes over the sun and makes everything dreary and if I have my kitchen light on it makes everything look orangey!
Haggis Nachos with Guacamole and Salsa
MyInspiration Feel The Difference Range
Serves 2 (quite a big meal)
For the Haggis
2 cups chopped button mushrooms
1 can brown lentils (or dry lentils soaked for 3 hours the cooked)
1 can kidney beans, chopped (or dry kidney beans soaked over-night then cooked)
1/4 cup of oats (toasted)
1 large carrot, grated
1 clove garlic, minced
1 white onion finely chopped
1 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 heaped tsp of garam masala
1 tsp black pepper
Method
1. Heat 2 tbsp of water in a deep pan and then saute the onion, garlic and mushrooms for 3 minutes before sprinkling over the garam masala, black pepper and soy sauce, stirring to mix everything together. Using a stick blender, quickly pulse the mixture until it starts to break down, don’t turn it to mush, you just want to get rid of big chunks of mushrooms and onion.
2. Add the lentils, chopped kidney beans and the carrot and stir through the mixture and allow to cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid tha haggis sticking.
3. Finally, add the toasted oats and mix this through
Guacamole
1 large ripe avocado
1/2 red onion finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
Method
1. Cut the avocado in half and remove the stone, then using a spoon, scoop out the avocado meat and pop in a bowl along with the red onion and garlic, then use a hand blender to pulse the mixture until it’s smooth.
Salsa
1 large tomato, diced
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1 hot green chili, finely chopped
1/2 a lime squeezed
Method
1. Combine all the above ingredients together squeeze over the lime juice and stir through, I popped my hand blender in there to break it down more so it wasn’t as chunky but that’s up to you.
Serve all together along with your favourite vegan tortilla chips and some jalapeno peppers.Marketers in the UK are now getting ads Facebook-approved regardless of the amount of text they’re using as Facebook lifts it’s text overlay 20% rule.
Facebook has long disapproved ads with excessive text exceeding 20 percent of the ad image space.
Facebook representative said “the shift will eliminate the text policy, and will no longer disapprove ads based on the amount of text included on images”.
Spirit of Facebook 20 percent Image policy still intact
“The spirit of the policy will still be in place,” added the representative.
Instead of disapproving an ad for containing too much text, Facebook will alert users that they will be getting less reach for the same budget.
Ads with text overlay around or above 20% will receive reduced to no delivery instead of being disapproved.
When will Facebook roll out the update globally?
Facebook SPOC said “We are still unaware of when it will be rolled out for the rest of the world”
Confusing News
The update was first reported by WRSM, without elaborating that it’s limited to the UK and Ireland.
We tested the update prior to Facebook’s emailed response, found no changes to the 20% text overlay rule in Egypt.
20% text overlay policy for image ads
Text overlay policy was introduced in Dec 2012 to protect the newsfeed from low quality creatives, and noisy details.
“Ads must not include added or excessive text that comprises more than 20% of the image,” Facebook says in its advertising guidelines.
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THE latest episode in Greece’s long-running economic drama is coming to a head. Since the victory of the radical-left Syriza party in the election of late January, Greece’s creditors and the new government headed by Alexis Tsipras have been exchanging threats. A resolution of some kind must occur in June, and sooner rather than later in the month.
It could still be a disastrous falling-out that leads to Greece defaulting on official loans, imposing capital controls, freezing deposits and tumbling out of the euro. But as time and money run out, the concentrating of minds on both sides seems likely to bring a deal.
Mr Tsipras is the one under most pressure. A recent payment to the IMF of €750m ($825m) was made only by drawing down a special account Greece held at the fund. Next month the government is due to pay the IMF double that amount, starting with €300m on June 5th. It may not be able to: a government minister said on May 24th that the money wasn’t there. Even if the first instalment can be rustled together, the government will be hard-pressed to find the €300m due on June 12th and the €600m due on the 16th; a further €300m is due on the 19th. Redemptions of €6.7 billion of bonds held by the European Central Bank (ECB) loom in July and August—an impossibility without more help from the country’s creditors.
The government has been able to pay the IMF, as well as wages and pensions, only through a series of increasingly desperate manoeuvres. Local authorities have been ordered to provide the central government with their reserves. Other public-sector organisations are being raided for whatever cash they hold. Arrears are piling up as firms that have provided services to the state go unpaid and exporters wait in vain for VAT refunds.
These tactics can be deployed for only a limited time. They are also counter-productive, since they harm the private sector and thus depress tax receipts. Greece has already fallen back into recession, aborting the recovery that got under way in the first nine months of 2014. The economy shrank by 0.4% in the final quarter of 2014 and a further 0.2 |
US elections on Tuesday when ballots are counted in a remote town run by members of a polygamist sect under the control of a so-called prophet from a prison cell.
For the first time in its troubled history, Hildale, a speck in the wilderness on the Utah-Arizona border, has candidates running for mayor and town council seats who are not associated with the local fundamentalist religious sect, currently run by convicted child rapist Warren Jeffs.
If mayoral candidate Donia Jessop and the three “outsiders” competing for council seats win their races against incumbents on Tuesday, non-sect members will effectively win control of the town.
“If we win we would take the majority of the council and that’s a big deal. Then we could start the process for the whole town changing,” Jessop told the Guardian.
Increasing numbers of people who previously fled the sect or were never part of it have been moving into Hildale. And greater numbers of Jeffs’ followers, who call themselves the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), have been leaving amid predictions that the sect is crumbling.
Is the end of days looming for fundamentalist sect in Utah? Read more
Hildale’s population is just under 3,000 and has only 365 registered voters, who will vote by mail. The council and police force were all chosen by church leaders, until increasing intervention by the conventional authorities in recent years, and now outsiders are running for office.
“There’s been a lot of sadness in the town. I hope more and more will come out from under the oppression of the FLDS,” Jessop said.
Traditionally, the FLDS has banned its followers from access to the internet, TV and outside reading material, though younger members have recently been lured away from the sect by sneaking on to forbidden social media sites. Jessop wants to install internet services for the whole town.
Jared Nicol, who was involved with the FLDS and is a mainstream Mormon, moved to Hildale two years ago and is running for city council. He believes the population has tipped in the last year to become majority non-FLDS.
“We are in a prime position for tourism and I want to try to push that. It’s exciting,” said Nicol.
Hildale sits amid spectacular red sandstone cliffs a few miles from the popular Zion national park, but has traditionally been hostile to visitors.
It was settled in the early 20th century by the FLDS, who disagreed with the mainstream Mormon church outlawing polygamy as a central tenet.
Despite polygamy being illegal, proponents in Utah largely skirt the law by registering just one marriage in each family with the authorities. The men then takes other women as unofficial “spiritual” wives.
Warren Jeffs had dozens of wives, and decreed child marriage acceptable within the FLDS. He has been serving a life sentence since 2011 on charges relating to raping girls aged 12 and 14, whom he had forced to become his spiritual wives. But he still runs the FLDS from behind bars, communicating via letters to subordinates in the church hierarchy.
“The control of Warren Jeffs within the FLDS is still 100% and you see his followers constantly listening to his teachings on their iPods,” said Jessop.
In a twist perhaps only the state of Utah could deliver in modern America, Jessop lives unofficially but openly as a polygamist. At least one of the three other non-fundamentalist candidates tolerates polygamy, while rejecting the strict theocracy imposed by the FLDS, which dictates that the word of Jeffs is divine law. Members must wear prairie dresses and pioneer-era hairstyles.
“I left five years ago. The leaders said my nine-year-old daughter could stay in the church but the rest of us were not worthy,” she said.
She and her husband were ordered to repent by living separately and shunning each other, and would be deprived of seeing some of their 10 children. So she left and tossed the prairie dress. But three years ago her husband took a second, unregistered, “wife”.
“I call her my soul sister. It’s not a religious thing, I’m supportive of any lifestyle as long as it’s adults and no one is getting hurt,” she said.
Jared Nicol said: “We have plenty of neighbors and friends who are part of plural families.” His son has a friend who lives with his father and “three mothers”, he said.
He believes he can be “a bridge” in Hildale between sect members and ex-members, whom the FLDS calls apostates and excommunicates even from their own family members.With the release of the September Update from GMT Games, a new Falling Sky Expansion was announced. This expansion would be a prequel to Volume VI of the COIN Series and would be titled Ariovistus! I immediately added this game to my growing P500 list and reached out to Volko Ruhnke to see if he was willing to share some insights into the game. He of course was more than gracious and took his weekend to answer my list of questions.
Grant: What was the driving force for an expansion of Falling Sky?
Volko: I had been playing solitaire with the Falling Sky Non-players (“bots”) on the published set and coming up with refinements. I pondered how to get these juiced up Non-players published sooner than some distant and hypothetical 2nd printing of the base game. I realized that we could develop, test, and package such “2.0” bots together with a Falling Sky expansion scenario that would portray the portion of the Gallic War that the original scenarios had by design left out—the first several years of Caesar’s time in Gaul.
I proposed this prequel scenario idea to Andrew as a design that we could produce together with the remainder of our last summer together before his departure for college, and he agreed. I go into more detail about why we thought such an expansion was warranted in an InsideGMT article here: http://www.insidegmt.com/?p=12842.
I gave Andrew a few parameters such as how many cards and pieces we might add. He re-read those of Caesar’s Commentaries concerned with the early war years and, with that in hand, completed the design of Ariovistus’s new Germanic Faction and the new Event cards to go with them in a few weeks. Meanwhile, I focused on a new game-run Arverni Faction needed to enable a fourth player to play Ariovistus instead of Vercingetorix.
Grant: Is adding content through expansions a new trend in the COIN Series? Is it here to stay?
Volko: COIN Series expansions make sense as a trend because they efficiently leverage the initial expense in acquiring the base game. We have Adam Zahm’s Cuba Libre expansion Invierno Cubano—$19 preorder—a sequel covering the post-Revolution 1959-1965 coming out early next year. Ariovistus ($25) is instead a prequel. And we have another sequel COIN expansion in the works that we are not ready to detail yet.
Grant: I feel that the COIN Series is a great value and by adding smaller, affordable expansions to the mix, will only increase their appeal and replayability. Who are the Suebi people featured in Ariovistus? What makes them so prominent in their time? Why did the Suebi lead their revolt against Caesar over other Germanic tribes?
Volko: Caesar wrote, “The Suebi are by far the greatest and most aggressive of all the German peoples. It is said that they possess a hundred villages, from each of which they take a thousand armed men every year for waging war outside their own territory.” [4.1; Hammond, Oxford, 1996]
The “Suebi” were probably a confederation of Germanic tribes, as the term would connote in later centuries, eventually providing the origin of the name “Swabia” (Schwaben). The Suebi’s sway was either quite extensive in north and south Germania, or they moved around a lot within it. Caesar lists six other tribes fighting with the Suebi at their great battle with the Romans in 58BC [1.51].
Whether or not Caesar was exaggerating the Suebi’s extent and warlike nature, it seems clear that they were the greatest force of the day pressing other tribes—Germanic and Celtic—out of Germania and into Gaul. For these reasons, we gave the Suebi alone in Falling Sky a pair of Tribe spaces [“Suebi (North) and “Suebi (South”)] and a special stacking rule that prohibits any non-Germanic Faction winning them as Allies, even if (probably temporarily) Subdued.
Grant: Who was Ariovistus and why does history remember him?
Volko: History remembers Ariovistus, naturally, because Caesar wrote about him. He was the main villain in Caesar’s first year in Gaul—the Vercingetorix of 58BC. Caesar’s communiques describe the Sueban king as arrogant and cruel, a reckless hothead imposing savage dictates on the Gauls that came under his sway, torturing their children and the like [1.31].
Caesar no doubt had to play up his foe as especially despicable, not only because Caesar’s story is that he is taking on the defense of all the Gauls against this savage, but also because Ariovistus had earlier been officially declared a Friend of the Roman Senate! But Ariovistus had thrashed a Gallic grouping at a major battle, Admagetobriga; and Caesar describes the difficulties that his own army had against that of Ariovistus in their climactic clash. So Ariovistus is likely at a minimum to have had some competence in military leadership.
Whether players in the Ariovistus expansion scenario will be reckless or not is up to them, of course. We depict Ariovistus as intent on pressing his Germanic Tribes into Gaul, as capable of intimidation of both Gauls and Romans unless the latter are well led, and as commanding effective cavalry—the Germanic horse that Caesar much later describes as so fierce he must have them for his own army.
Grant: It sounds like the new faction will fit my personal play style perfectly! What new forces are added to represent the Suebians? Are they the same color black as the Germanic tribes? Same embossed symbol?
Volko: Indeed, Ariovistus’s Available Forces add another 15 Germanic Warbands—black pieces with silver axes—to enable the Suebi to call a suitably impressive horde of Germans across the Rhenus. Of course we provide Ariovistus himself as a Leader piece: he provides the same effect on the attack as the shaded Germanic Horse Capability from the Falling Sky deck.
To that we add 6 Germanic Settlement pieces. Because Germanic migration was a key driver of conflict in Gaul in this earlier period, Andrew wanted additional pieces to show the Germans establishing new settlements west of the Rhenus. The Settlements function somewhat like Allies without Tribe spaces, render the space equivalent to Germania for Germanic Rally and Settle, and are key to Germanic victory; their survival also subtracts from Roman and (if the Germans are doing well) Aedui victory.
Grant: Tell us about the new Aedui leader Diviciacus. Why is he important and how will having a leader change the play of the Aedui? What is his ability?
Volko: Caesar’s druid friend Diviciacus is a key character throughout the Gallic War, but especially so in the early years. Together, they blocked anti-Roman machinations among the Aedui nobility and organized a joint Celto-Roman defense against Ariovistus in 58BC and against the resistance of the Belgic Nervii and Atrebates in 57BC.
In Falling Sky, we portray Diviciacus’s role through a Capability Event that enables Roman and Aedui forces to gather, move, and fight together. But that Event may or may not come into play. For Ariovistus, Andrew thought that Diviciacus’s appearance on the stage should be assured, and his location in Gaul matter explicitly.
The new Diviciacus Leader piece provides an Aedui-Roman coordination benefit like the Falling Sky Capability, but enhanced by affecting Special Abilities not just Commands, while limited to a range of 1 Region from Diviciacus’s person. Diviciacus is a mixed blessing for the Aedui in other ways: He counts as a piece for Control, while being very hard to catch in Battle (as he was not a battlefield commander like the other leaders in the game). But he also limits Aedui Special Abilities to within 1 Region of his location, just like other Leaders do for their Factions.
With the idea that Diviciacus is nevertheless a net plus for the Aedui player, we provide in the expansion set a replacement Diviciacus Event that places the Leader piece and brings the Ariovistus Diviciacus rules into effect instead of adding a Capability. So Falling Sky players will be able to add this new piece to the earlier scenarios, representing the possibility of Diviciacus again coming into prominence during Caesar’s later years in Gaul.
Grant: I understand you flirted with adding a 5th player to the game rather than turning to a bot. Why was this idea ultimately not implemented?
Volko: I’m not sure the idea even got as far as flirting. The 5th Faction in Ariovistus, the “Arverni and Other Celts”, represent largely or entirely uncoordinated actions at different times by the Arverni in the south, the Helvetii and Sequani north of Provincia, the Veneti in the northeast, the Seduni and others in the Alps, and so on. Moreover, the entire initiative structure would have to be reworked to accommodate five players, so the expansion could not leverage the existing Falling Sky deck.
Grant: Also how does the new Celtibot (Arverni) play in the game? What can we expect as their focus and role in the new structure? What events or circumstances trigger the Celtibot to go to war?
Volko: The game-run Arverni/Celts Faction pose a fresh challenge to players in Ariovistus—particularly to the Aedui and Romans, who will face Germans from the east, Belgae in the north, and Celtic uprisings in the east and in their midst!
The Arverni/Celts work somewhat like the Germanic Tribes in Falling Sky in how the game system guides their Commands. However, they are rather more aggressive whenever “At War”: provoked by enemies near their Allied Tribes or entering their “core” Regions—shown on this mini-map—essentially a triangle of territory from the Arverni homeland up to the Veneti and over to the Carnutes.
Rather than activating each Winter as the Germanic Tribes do in Falling Sky, the Arverni do so if “At War” whenever an Event card comes up bearing their trigger symbol (a carnyx at upper left—see Winter Uprising! and Abatis samples below). The trigger appears on many of the new Ariovistus playing cards, dictating the Arverni tempo but keeping the timing uncertain to the players.
In addition, a series of Uprising Events—most with the Germans first on initiative—trigger Arverni activations regardless of provocation. When activated, the Arverni and other Celts may simply defend their territory; but they may also strike out beyond it. So this game-run Faction can be quite dangerous for the players!
Grant: What changes have you made to existing game play in Falling Sky? Changes to Commands? Special Abilities?
Volko: The Germanic Tribes Faction adds two new Special Abilities to the previously familiar Ambush: Intimidate and Settle. Ariovistus through his storied Suebi brutality can Intimidate nearby Forces and Tribes to scare them off (remove them) and prevent them from Rallying or Recruiting anew—but only in the absence of a Leader such as Caesar or Diviciacus. He also can place Germanic Settlements—migrants from across the Rhenus—to add, in effect, one new Germanic Allied Tribe to each Region for Germanic victory and other benefits.
In addition, smaller adjustments mesh the other Factions’ actions with the new aspects presented by the player Germans. Belgic Enlist is more limited (see below). Roman Besiege is extended to Germanic Settlements. Battles account for the particular attributes of Ariovistus and Diviciacus, and so on. We summarize these smaller changes on playing-card reference aids for the Belgic, Aedui, and Roman players to keep handy.
Grant: How have you dealt with the Belgae’s Enlist Special Ability in relation to the Suebi in the expansion? How have you limited the ability without unbalancing the game?
Volko: Belgic Enlist in Ariovistus can still take Command of Germanic Forces or treat them temporarily as Belgae. But here we constrain that Special Ability so as not to enable the Belgic player to entirely undo a separate Germanic player’s position, nor to give Ariovistus’s entire army the ability to activate twice in a row against a common enemy.
We achieve this balancing simply by restricting each Enlist to a maximum of four black pieces, never Settlements or the Germanic Leader.
Grant: What changes were made to the existing Event cards? Why? Can you give us one example?
Volko: There were two reasons for updating certain Falling Sky Event cards in the Ariovistus expansion.
The first reason was the opportunity to improve a card here and there on the basis of experience since publishing the base game. In a few cases, an Event turned out to be not as potent as we had intended, or more so than intended, and Andrew and I wanted to tweak these to get as close as we can to balanced impact and attractiveness among all the Events in the Falling Sky deck. In other cases, we spotted a way to clarify the wording on the card to avoid confusion. All these adjustments concern a total of six Falling Sky cards, plus the updated Diviciacus card discussed above, which we provide with the suggestion that players substitute them for the originals in all Falling Sky scenarios.
The second reason for updating Events appearing in the base game was to integrate them smoothly into the merged deck used in the Ariovistus scenario. Slight rewording of five Events—Alpine Tribes, Arduenna, Gallia Togata, Rhenus Bridge, and Winter Campaign—align these Events with the new effects introduced by a player Germanic Faction, an already playable Cisalpina, and so on.
Grant: Also how many new Event cards are there in the expansion? Can you spoil one card for us and help us understand its affect in the game?
Volko: In addition to the reference aid and tweaked Falling Sky cards noted above, we add 34 brand new Events for the Ariovistus deck, inspired by Andrew’s re-reading of Caesar’s books on the first half of the war. Many of them, as you might guess, concern the Germanic Tribes; another set deal with the Nervii and other Belgae of Boduognatus’s day. But the Aedui and Romans also add interesting new characters and occurrences from the early 50’s BC, as do the Helvetii from their starring role on the stage in 58BC.
Here is an illustrative couplet of Germanic Capabilities that show something of the military threat that Ariovistus’s hordes may or may not become.
These Events both derive from Caesar’s description of his climactic battle with Ariovistus. Caesar states therein that the Germans “as was their custom, quickly formed a phalanx to sustain our attack” and that the legionaries along part of the line were able to overcome that by “leaping onto the massed enemy … and wounding them from above” and elsewhere by the quick reaction of Caesar’s cavalry commander to the shape of the infantry lines [1.52]. Caesar also notes that the Germans had surrounded their battle line with their wagons and “their women, who, with outstretched arms and weeping, begged the men setting out to battle not to hand them over into Roman slavery” [1.51].
As an aside, consider that the expansion pack includes an extended-length scenario covering the entire war: any such new Ariovistus Capabilities that come into play in the first half of “The Gallic War” scenario remain in effect. Caesar, Ambiorix, and the rest may have to deal with a more robust game-run Germanic Faction in the latter half of the war, depending on what the Germanic player or others chose to enact in the first half!
Grant: What is the new Winter Uprising phase and how does it differ from Winter in Falling Sky? What are these new abatis markers and how are these fortifications used by the Gauls?
Volko: Both of the new markers that you spotted relate to Events for which the Belgic Faction has the first option, though others also might get to deploy them. Ambiorix’s winter uprising of 54-53BC is already well known to Falling Sky players, but we wanted to add the possibility that something similar might well have confronted the Romans or other Factions earlier in the war. As for abatis, Caesar describes the Nervii’s favored reliance on such scratch fortifications to hinder the enemy along the wooded approaches to their positions [2.17].
Grant: I notice that Britannia appears to be out of play for the expansion. What prompted this choice? How does it affect the strategy and game play?
Volko: With the action in 58BC focused on the Helvetii emerging from the vicinity of Cisalpina to threaten the Aedui at Bibracte, Caesar making his first move north from the traditional Roman Province in Gaul, and Ariovistus pressing from the Rhenus toward Vesontio, we needed a bit more room for maneuver in the southeast area of the game map. So we start the Ariovistus scenario with Cisalpina automatically in play and add a new Tribe space there (the Nori).
With the shift of the center of action toward the southeast, we do not really need Britannia in play. During this earlier period, some defeated Belgic leaders did flee there, but Roman military expeditions to the island do not occur until shortly after the end of the new scenario, in 55 and 54BC.
With the Nori added and the British Catuvellauni out of play, the game board conveniently remains even at 30 Tribes total.
Grant: How can Rome best attempt to subdue Suebia?
Volko: Caesar in 58-56BC—before enjoying the luxury of the smaller threats and strategic pause of 55BC that allowed him to undertake his Germania and Britannia expeditions—is trying to contain and defeat Ariovistus and Belgae in Gaul. Subduing Suebia itself may not be necessary—but that opportunity may present itself, depending on how Ariovistus and the other Factions maneuver.
Grant: In contrast what must the Suebi do in order to prevail? What are their victory conditions?
Volko: Ariovistus seeks to maintain Suebi dominance of Germania (or, rather, that part of it along the east bank of the Rhenus) and to win and defend additional Germanic settlement into Gaul. So Germanic victory in Ariovistus depends on German Control of the two Suebi Tribes as Germanic Allies plus Control of Germanic Settlement pieces (which Ariovistus’s Settle Special Ability can place in Regions outside Germania). The Germans’ victory threshold is Control of more than six such Suebi + Settlements (the same threshold, by the way, marked for the Arverni—the Faction that the player Germans replace—along the edge track).
Grant: How does a more active Germanic presence affect the game? Does it significantly change the major dynamics between the other factions?
Volko: It sure does! With the shift in focus toward the southeast, the interplay of a Germanic player and that player’s Settlements and victory conditions with Aedui and Roman victory, a different potential ally or enemy for the Belgae, and the potentially quiet or quite aggressive game-run Celtic 5th Faction…well, the dynamics between any pair of players around the board must be considered anew.
How closely do Diviciacus and Caesar cooperate now? Do they deal with the Helvetic migration or let it be? Does one or both of them attempt to expand into the Celtic east? Should they seek to crush Ariovistus before moving north to contain Boduognatus’s Nervii, or the other way around? Do the Belgae work hand-in-glove with Ariovistus, or seek to exploit one another’s vulnerabilities?
I will be as eager as anyone during playtest and development to get smarter on these questions, as it is far too early to set any opinions on strategy within these new dynamics. And I am certainly looking forward to that exploration!
Thanks Grant for the questions and the interest in Ariovistus!
Another great look into the machinations of the design process for the COIN Series of games from the Godfather himself, Volko! Thank you for your time and thoroughness in sharing with us what we can expect from this great looking expansion. If you would like to order Ariovistus, follow this link to the P500 page: http://www.gmtgames.com/p-603-ariovistus-a-falling-sky-expansion.aspx
-GrantChetwoods Architects says it hopes to break ground on 1km-high Phoenix Towers project in Chinese city by end of year
A British architect has unveiled plans to build the world's tallest towers in the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan – two adjacent kilometre-high spires that could help purify the city's polluted air and water.
London-based Chetwoods Architects presented the Phoenix Towers plans to Wuhan's mayor about six months ago, said its chairman, Laurie Chetwood. Pending official approval, the practice hopes to break ground by the end of the year.
According to its website, the project will be "an iconic landmark within an ambitious environmental masterplan for Wuhan", a city of 10 million people on the Yangtze river. The project will span 47 hectares and cost an estimated £1.2bn.
Computer renderings published online show the steel and concrete towers glowing like hot pink, space-age Eiffel Towers, their buttresses spanning an island in the middle of a lake.
"This is a big iconic statement that says 'this is Wuhan, look at us, we're here,'" Chetwood said. "But it's an environmental statement as well. It would help to improve the area."
The towers have been designed to incorporate elements from traditional Chinese culture. Together, they represent the phoenix – "feng" and "huang", a pair of mythical Chinese birds. The feng, or "male" tower, will supply renewable energy to the huang, or "female" tower, a "softer" space with cafes, restaurants and a 100-storey vertical garden.
According to the website, the towers will power themselves with green energy technologies such as "lightweight photovoltaic cladding", "suspended air gardens" and "waste recycling via biomass boilers". The feng tower will be fitted with wind turbines, and it will use solar power to suck polluted lake water up through an advanced filtration system.
A commercial square at the towers' base will cater to China's growing demand for cultural tourism. "You'll have a French street, a Japanese street, a Turkish street and so forth … to allow people to see the world without necessarily having to leave China," Chetwood said.
He said the firm was working with two Chinese companies on the project – the Beijing-based HuaYan Group and the CITIC Group, a state-owned investment company.
"If you work in the UK, if you come up with anything that's off the wall or slightly out there, you sort of get kicked back," he said. "In China it goes the other way – they ask for a bit more. That's a stimulating experience for a designer."The American Dream
February 17, 2011
For a moment, imagine that you are awakened one night by a heavily-armed team of federal agents dressed in all black breaking into your home. As you confront them, they hand you a piece of paper that says that your son has been identified as a “terrorist” and that they are there to take him away. They pull your son out of bed, they throw him on the floor and the use a taser on him repeatedly. Then they handcuff him and haul him away without telling you a thing about where they are taking him. Your son suddenly has no rights because the Patriot Act supersedes the U.S. Constitution. That’s right – because your son has been identified as a “terrorist” because of something that he has said on the Internet he no longer has any constitutional rights. Your underage son is held indefinitely and is subjected to “enhanced interrogation” because he has been identified as a “threat”. You are not able to get your son back for years even though it turns out that he is completely and totally innocent. If you think that such a thing cannot happen to you then you are a fool, because this kind of thing is happening over and over across the United States and it is all legal because of the Patriot Act.
America is rapidly turning into a horrible Big Brother police state and most of our politicians are fully supporting this transformation. In fact, the U.S. House of Representatives gave us quite a Valentine’s Day gift the other day when it voted to once again extend provisions of the Patriot Act that allow for domestic surveillance of American citizens, wire tapping of American citizens and warrantless searches of the homes of American citizens.
What was perhaps most disappointing was that a large number of “Tea Party politicians” cast votes in favor of renewing the Patriot Act provisions.
The majority of Americans were absolutely disgusted when the Bush administration instituted the Patriot Act and many other police state measures and they voted for Barack Obama hoping for something different.
Well, it turns out that Barack Obama has been even worse.
Have you been to an airport lately? Yeah, those “naked body scanners” and “enhanced pat-downs” are a lot of fun, aren’t they?
Many Americans voted for Tea Party candidates during the last election hoping that they would be willing to stand up for liberty and freedom.
Well, it turns out that many of them caved when it came time to vote on the extension of Patriot Act provisions.
So is there anyone out there that we can vote for that will stand up for liberty and freedom?
The truth is that this is not a conservative issue and it is not a liberal issue.
This is an American issue.
But doesn’t the Patriot Act keep us safe from terrorism?
No.
Just the other day Dr. Vahid Majidi, the FBI’s assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, admitted that even with all of our “security measures” the chance that the U.S. will be hit a weapon of mass destruction is 100 percent….
“There’s a probability of 100 percent that a WMD event will happen.”
But even if the Patriot Act could keep us “safer”, is that any reason for us to live the rest of our lives as “cattle” in a Big Brother police state that is becoming more like George Orwell’s 1984 every single day?
Are we willing to forever renounce being “the land of the free and the home of the brave” just so that we can feel a bit more secure?
The truth is that the U.S. government is not really protecting us anyway. Our border with Mexico is wide open and millions of people have been pouring across it unchecked. It would be ridiculously easy for any potential “terrorists” to smuggle dangerous weapons into this country.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
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So please don’t try to tell me that the U.S. government is actually serious about national security. Until the U.S. government is willing to do something about the border they should not be asking the American people to give up a single ounce of liberty or freedom for the sake of “security”.
But instead of securing the border and doing other practical things that would actually keep this country safer, our government has become absolutely obsessed with watching us, tracking us, listening to us, “assessing” us and controlling us.
In the process, the America that we all once loved is rapidly being destroyed. Because of laws like the Patriot Act, our country now more closely resembles East Germany during the Cold War than the nation that our founding fathers originally established.
Government whistleblower Susan Lindauer, who has been arrested under the Patriot Act for protesting the Iraq war, recently authored an article in which she described why Americans should be much more frightened by the Patriot Act….
The American people are not nearly as frightened as they should be. Many Americans expect the Patriot Act to limit its surveillance to overseas communications. Yet while I was under indictment, Maryland State Police invoked the Patriot Act to wire tap activists tied to the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group dedicated to wind power, solar energy and recycling. The DC Anti-War Network was targeted as a “white supremacist group.” Amnesty International and anti-death penalty activists got targeted for alleged “civil rights violations.”
Lindauer is speaking from experience when she talks about the Patriot Act. Just hope and pray that you never have to go through what she had to go through because of the Patriot Act….
I cannot forget. I cannot forget how I was subjected to secret charges, secret evidence and secret grand jury testimony that denied my right to face my accusers or their accusations in open court, throughout five years of indictment. I cannot forget my imprisonment on a Texas military base for a year without a trial or evidentiary hearing. I cannot forget how the FBI, the US Attorneys Office, the Bureau of Prisons and the main Justice office in Washington — independently and collectively verified my story— then falsified testimony to Chief Justice Michael Mukasey, denying our 9/11 warnings and my long-time status as a U.S. intelligence Asset, though my witnesses had aggressively confronted them. Apparently the Patriot Act allows the Justice Department to withhold corroborating evidence and testimony from the Court, if it is deemed “classified.” I cannot forget threats of forcible drugging and indefinite detention up to 10 years, until I could be “cured” of believing what everybody wanted to deny— because it was damn inconvenient to politicians in Washington anxious to hold onto power.
At least there are a few members of Congress that attempted to oppose the renewal of the Patriot Act. For example, Senator Rand Paul recently explained why he opposes renewal of this freedom-killing law….
“The Senate yesterday proposed a three-year extension of the PATRIOT Act, a move that would not have allowed for any hearings, amendments, or debate. I objected to this deal. I realize that I might not have the votes to stop this bill, but we should at least discuss this in public as adults. “We should have the opportunity to explain why the Constitution is being violated. We should talk about how we do not have to give up who we are in order to fight terrorism. It is not acceptable to willfully ignore the most basic provisions of our Constitution—in this case—the Fourth and First Amendments—in the name of ‘security.’”
Unfortunately, most of our other politicians have stood by and have done nothing to stop the horrific abuses that are taking place under this law. A good friend of ours, Charlie McGrath, recently lamented this fact in a recent video….
What in the world is happening to this country?
One of the worst things about all of this is that Christians are actually some of the strongest supporters of the Patriot Act.
The mainstream media has brainwashed many of them into believing that the Patriot Act is “conservative” and that it is going to keep us safe from terrorism. Somehow Christians have been duped into believing that the more power Barack Obama and his minions have to control our lives the safer we all are going to be.
But the truth is that laws like the Patriot Act are transforming this nation into a totalitarian regime. We are becoming more like North Korea, Communist China, the USSR and Nazi Germany every single day.
As a Christian, I deeply oppose laws such as the Patriot Act. The Scriptures warn us of a time when a future world government will attempt to brutally dominate all the nations on the planet. Just read the book of Revelation some time.
Any law that takes our liberties and freedoms away is another step in the direction of totalitarianism. Every time another new law like the Patriot Act gets passed we get closer to the time when government completely dominates and controls every single aspect of our lives.
Christians should be loudly denouncing any attempt to strip our liberties and freedoms away. Christians should be loudly denouncing the destruction of our constitutional rights.
Transforming our government into a hardcore socialist police state and handing it all kinds of extreme “Big Brother” powers is not going to make us safer.
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We were sold a pack of lies by the Bush administration and now the Obama administration is trying to cram even more lies down our throats.
Many of us had hoped that Tea Party politicians would be different and would stand up for our liberties and freedoms, but now we can clearly see that many of them will not.
In the past, Americans would ready George Orwell’s 1984 and would think that nothing like that could ever happen in the United States of America.
Well, it is happening in the United States of America.
Are you going to stand up and say anything about it?Lagertha faces many challenges on "Vikings" season 5, but if the social media posts of actress Katheryn Winnick are any indication, it’s going to be tough for her enemies to take down the queen.
Lagertha faces many challenges on "Vikings" season 5, but if the social media posts of actress Katheryn Winnick are any indication, it’s going to be tough for her enemies to take down the queen. Katheryn Winnick/Facebook
It looks like Lagertha isn’t going away anytime soon. She is set to face many challenges on “Vikings” season 5, including a charging Harald (Peter Franzén) and the avenging sons of Aslaug (Alyssa Sutherland). But if the social media posts of actress Katheryn Winnick – who plays the queen on the History show – are any indication, it’s going to be tough taking down Lagertha.
Spoiler alert: This article contains plot details about “Vikings” season 5. An official announcement has yet to be made regarding the air date of the season premiere. Episodes from the series’ previous seasons are available for Australian viewers to watch on SBS.
Harald is expected to be one of the chief antagonists in the upcoming season of “Vikings.” The man is dying for some Lothbrok blood, and he’s also coming for the queen. Harald can even be seen in the season 5 sneak peek looking seemingly cheerful |
, saying “that the Corps of Engineers will at least temporarily halt authorization for construction of the pipeline around Lake Oahe, while it reviews its previous decisions regarding this large reservoir,” according to ABC.
That hasn’t stopped the protests or the clashes. Three days before that ruling, the North Dakota governor activated 100 National Guard troops on September 8 in advance of the expected ruling by the federal judge, said Reuters.There were reports of injuries on both sides — of people and dogs — as protesters and security clashed violently on September 3. The tribal chairman contended that burial grounds were destroyed and desecrated by bulldozers.
“In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground,” the tribal chairman said, according to The Chicago Tribune.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe is worried that the pipeline will negatively impact water quality on its reservation and imperil cultural heritage sites, reports The Dallas Morning News. Meanwhile, proponents of the project say it will boost the economy, creating thousands of construction jobs.
According to Energy Transfer Partners, the company whose subsidiary is developing the project, the 1,172-mile pipeline “will connect the rapidly expanding Bakken and Three Forks production areas in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois,” transporting some 470,000 barrels a day. “The pipeline will enable domestically produced light sweet crude oil from North Dakota to reach major refining markets in a more direct, cost-effective, safer and environmentally responsible manner.”
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Guards Previously Used Attack Dogs Against Protesters & Law Enforcement Used Military Vehicles in the Mass Arrest
In October, CNN said the protests at the Dakota Access Pipeline (also known as “DAPL”) were culminating into a possible “final showdown” between law enforcement and protesters. By the end of the day, 141 people were arrested after a violent clash in which a protester fired a gun, law enforcement fired beanbags, and barricades burned. The protesters were on horseback; the police in riot gear. Despite the arrests, the protesters insisted they won’t back down.
And they haven’t. The protests have continued throughout the month of November, culminating in protester’s severe arm injury. The protests have grown increasingly militarized, as police show up in armored vehicles and riot gear to combat what they say are aggressive intrusions onto private land; Veterans of the U.S. military are now organizing to join the DAPL protest in early December to stand between the police and protesters.
More than 130,000 people had checked in on Facebook in one several day period this fall at the Standing Rock reservation after reports that law enforcement was using Facebook check-ins and geotargeting to figure out who was protesting.
A temporary truce was negotiated by a tribal elder, Miles Allard, of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, who persuaded protesters to walk away from one clash so they wouldn’t get killed, said The Seattle Times, which added that he said the Standing Rock people would win the issue with prayer instead of violence. However, the clashes have grown in intensity since that time.
Social media filled with dramatic photos, videos and eyewitness accounts of dogs being used against protesters on September 3, including reports of injuries and pepper spray being allegedly directed at protesters.
The tribal spokesman said multiple protesters were pepper-sprayed and bitten in September, including a child. The company’s spokeswoman told Heavy that “unwarranted violence occurred on private property under easement to Dakota Access Pipeline, resulting in injury to multiple members of our security personnel and several dogs” on September 3.
On October 27, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department wrote on Facebook, “Authorities have repeatedly told protesters they are ‘free to go,’ asking them to move to the south camp. Protesters have set tires on Highway 1806 on fire. Law enforcement are telling protesters to move so they can put the fire out. A Long Range Acoustic device which sends a high-pitch warning tone. It is used to control and disperse the crowd of protesters.”
The scene grew more intense as militarized vehicles showed up at the scene and protesters lit a barricade on fire. The crowd shouted, “hands up don’t shoot.” NBC said the 141 arrests came by midnight after protesters set barricades on fire, threw rocks and “improvised fire bombs” at officers, and one woman fired shots from a revolver but didn’t injure anyone. Officers used pepper spray and fired beanbags at protesters, said NBC.
The elder, Allard, told the Seattle Times: “I am a common man, a man of prayer. We live our lives in peace and nonviolence.” The newspaper said he persuaded the protesters known as “Water Protectors” to put rocks back in the river and take down barricades. He told the newspaper the tribe would try to win the argument with prayer, not violence.
However, the Water Protectors have claimed they were subjected to human rights abuses, including being placed in what they felt were shelters similar to dog kennels.
Our sisters who got arrested were stripped, marked with numbers, and held in dog kennels. Sound familiar? #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/xKMFcnsUu1 — Linda Black Elk (@lindablackelk) October 28, 2016
Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called on the Obama administration to intervene to protect the protesters.
Protesters have said ta female protester’s arm <a href=”https://heavy.com/news/2016/11/sophia-wilanski-north-dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-protest-concussion-grenade-police-woman-lose-arm-bomb-photos/”>was blown off</a>. In the latter incident, the Standing Rock Medic and Healing Council <a href=”https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sU15VLnlJlEdVB4H6SmLaQ2gQ25mtSjpFpVu4daGVTE/preview” target=”_blank”>released a statement </a>that said in part, “The Morton County Sheriff’s Department has stated that she was injured by a purported propane explosion that the Sheriff’s Department claimed the unarmed people created. These statements are refuted by Sophia’s testimony, by several eye-witnesses who watched police intentionally throw concussion grenades at unarmed people, by the lack of charring of flesh at the wound site and by the grenade pieces that have been removed from her arm in surgery and will be saved for legal proceedings.”
The veterans’ site says, on November 20, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department’s “forces attacked water protectors with water cannons in freezing temperatures and launched concussion grenades into a peaceful crowd. Several had to be treated for hypothermia and one protester who was hit directly with a grenade has reportedly had her arm amputated as a result.”
The Sheriff’s Department has posted a response on Facebook.
The Wall Street Journal reports the protests against the $3.8 billion pipeline have united “groups of Native Americans, landowners and environmentalists.”
Activist Winona LaDuke wrote on EcoWatch that the pipeline struggle represents “the future of a people. All of us. If I ask the question ‘What would Sitting Bull do?’ — the answer is pretty clear. He would remind me what he said 150 years ago: ‘Let us put our minds together to see what kind of future we can make for our children.'”
BREAKING: 12:40CDT law enforcement has activated LRAD sonic weapon to attack water protectors at high intensity https://t.co/zcDC9sOoZx pic.twitter.com/RHMl7IHqjT — Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) October 27, 2016
The September confrontation led to dramatic images of snarling dogs being used against protesters at the scene.
“As demonstrators came to stop the tractors, they had encountered private security armed with pepper spray, attack dogs, and zip ties. Warriors on the front line were attacked for protecting the land and water,” wrote one man on Facebook. “Pregnant women were maced, young children and horses were attacked by dogs … the water provides life for the animals, the crops, the land, and millions of people.”
The clashes have grown in intensity.
According to the Daily Mail, quoting the Associated Press, the Morton County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Donnell Preskey said “four private security guards and two guard dogs were injured,” and the tribal spokesman said six protesters were bitten by dogs, including a child, and 30 people were pepper-sprayed.
Today private security hired by oil company attacked protestors w dogs & pepper spray – Tomas Alejo #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/Xf3RQVFveO — Shadi Rahimi (@shadirahimi) September 4, 2016
People posted dramatic eyewitness accounts from the scene.
Some protesters claimed people were bit by dogs:
Numerous posts on social media as well as photographers at the scene claimed the dogs were used by private security.
Helicopter Above, Security Used Tear Gas & Dogs 2 Move Standing Rock Land Protectors #NoDAPL https://t.co/E8tf68pi4r pic.twitter.com/fH8yHsORR4 — Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) September 4, 2016
Some protesters claimed one dog had blood on its mouth.
This dog has the blood of one of the peaceful protestors in its' mouth. #NoDAPL #IStandWithStandingRock pic.twitter.com/6tkMehvXWA — Lakota Child (@PMagouirk) September 4, 2016
One photo shows an injury:
Builders of Dakota Access Pipeline brought in private security + rabid dogs. 6 were attacked. Horrifying. #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/pTl60gsBLO — Winnie Wong (@WaywardWinifred) September 4, 2016
Heavy reached out to Energy Transfer’s spokeswoman, Vicki Granado, and asked whether it was true that private security hired by the company used dogs and mace against protesters, and, if so, why, and how many were injured. Granado provided this statement on September 3:
What has been represented over the past several weeks as a peaceful protest is simply not the case. We are greatly saddened and extremely bothered to confirm that today, unwarranted violence occurred on private property under easement to Dakota Access Pipeline, resulting in injury to multiple members of our security personnel and several dogs. It is unfortunate that what has been portrayed as a peaceful protest by the opponents of the pipeline has now turned to violence and intimidation by a group of criminals and activists. Assailants broke through a fence and attacked our workers. We are working with law enforcement to ensure that all offenders are arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We will not tolerate the assault and/or injury to our employees or contractors. The safety of all those associated with our project and those living in the area is our top priority. We are hopeful that state and federal law enforcement and the tribal leaders will do their part to maintain order and to ensure a peaceful protest.
People also posted videos of the scene on Facebook:
Videos were also posted on YouTube:
“The Morton County Sheriff’s Department says that their law enforcement officers did not use pepper spray or tear gas and did not have dogs,” said KFYR-TV. The Associated Press quoted the sheriff as saying, “individuals crossed onto private property and accosted private security officers with wooden posts and flag poles.”
It’s not the first intense clash at the site of the protest. On August 31, the Sheriff’s Department said eight protesters were arrested after protesters chained themselves to construction equipment.
You can see maps of the project route here.
2. The Native American Protesters Said They Are Prepared for a ‘Long Battle’ & Have Taken Their Case to Court
“We’re not leaving.” Native American protesters prepare for a long battle to stop a pipeline. #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/to0sjbfS8n — AJ+ (@ajplus) September 2, 2016
The Energy Transfer company says on its website that the company “is developing a new pipeline to provide crude oil transportation service from point(s) of origin in the Bakken/Three Forks play in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois.” The site contains additional details about the pipeline, including safety.
The tribe has made its stand in federal court as well as at the construction site. However, a federal judge disagreed with the tribe in a ruling on September 9. You can read that decision in full here:
The Wall Street Journal says the tribe has sued in federal court seeking to stop construction of the pipeline with a decision expected in early September. “The tribe has argued that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers improperly granted permits for the project,” says the newspaper.
You can read the lawsuit here.
The tribe filed an emergency motion on September 4 for a temporary restraining order “to prevent further destruction of the tribe’s sacred sites by Dakota Access Pipeline,” said KCCI, quoting the tribal chairman as saying, “On Saturday, Dakota Access Pipeline and Energy Transfer Partners brazenly used bulldozers to destroy our burial sites, prayer sites and culturally significant artifacts. They did this on a holiday weekend, one day after we filed court papers identifying these sacred sites.”
In a September 5 filing posted by Indianz.com, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wrote that it does not oppose the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s motion for a temporary restraining order as to any additional construction work on the pipeline within 20 miles on either side of Lake Oahu in North Dakota until the court rules on the suit. The Corps wrote that the “public interest would be served by preserving peace near Lake Oahu until the court can render” its decision.
On September 6, U.S. District Judge Boasberg had said “work will temporarily stop between North Dakota’s State Highway 1806 and 20 miles east of Lake Oahe, but will continue west of the highway because he believes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lacks jurisdiction on private land,” ABC News said, but he lifted that order on the 9th. Also, in court, the tribe said the partial ruling could imperil sacred sites, and alleged that bulldozed areas had human remains; the sheriff said some protesters possessed knives and hatchets, according to ABC.
The Justice Department, in stepping in, said nationwide reform should be considered to better contemplate tribal views on infrastructure projects, says ABC News. The government is asking the pipeline company to voluntary stop construction within 20 miles of Lake Oahe during the review, said ABC.
The Department of Justice, the Department of the Army and the Department of the Interior wrote in a joint press release after the judge’s decision that “important issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations and their members regarding the Dakota Access pipeline specifically, and pipeline-related decision-making generally, remain.”
The press release continued, “The Army will not authorize constructing the Dakota Access pipeline on Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe until it can determine whether it will need to reconsider any of its previous decisions regarding the Lake Oahe site under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) or other federal laws. Therefore, construction of the pipeline on Army Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe will not go forward at this time.”
The government said it will “invite tribes to formal, government-to-government consultations on two questions: (1) within the existing statutory framework, what should the federal government do to better ensure meaningful tribal input into infrastructure-related reviews and decisions and the protection of tribal lands, resources, and treaty rights; and (2) should new legislation be proposed to Congress to alter that statutory framework and promote those goals.”
The Standing Rock tribe lists many other Indian nations as well as other organizations and communities that have joined its cause. Read the list here.
The Bismarck Tribune says the company temporarily halted construction while the suit is pending.
North Dakota Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley has called the protests “unlawful” and an increasingly dangerous situation as the camps grew to as many as 4,000 people.
3. A Texas Billionaire Is Behind the Pipeline Project
Energy Transfer is owned by Kelcy Warren, a Texas entrepreneur worth $4 billion, according to Forbes Magazine.
In 2015, Bloomberg wrote in an extensive profile of Warren, “pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren is having fun in the oil bust.” The profile said Warren lives in a 23,000-square-foot home complete with “chip-and-putt green, a pole-vault pit, a four-lane bowling alley, and a 200-seat theater where the billionaire’s musician pals play private concerts.” Protests have also occurred outside the company’s Dallas building, reports The Dallas Morning News.
Native American protesters are living in camps on the Standing Rock reservation while they protest the pipeline’s construction, says BBC. A community has arisen as the tribe is joined by representatives of other Indian nations, environmentalists, and others who support the tribe’s cause.
The pipeline would be the first to “allow movement of crude oil from the Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast,” Reuters says.
The tribe has created a donation fund. You can access it here.
A petition against the pipeline on Change.org has more than 280,000 supporters.
Some believe the media are not giving enough coverage to the protests, which they see as a troubling repeat of the past, with protest movements and the Native American cause in general marginalized or stigmatized by the news media.
However, social media has allowed the Indian voices to be heard more widely than they would have been in, say, the 1960s.
Filming Cops, which describes itself as a movement for police accountability, wrote on Facebook, “MEDIA BLACKOUT: There are now HUNDREDS of tribes and THOUSANDS of Native American protesters and others TAKING A STAND against the Dakota Access pipeline! Help SPREAD THE WORD cause the #MainstreamMedia is REFUSING to cover this!”
The Standing Rock tribe, on its website, says, “The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is a 1,168-mile long crude oil pipeline that will transport nearly 570,000 barrels of oil each day from North Dakota to Illinois. The Army Corps of Engineers green-lighted several sections of the process without fully satisfying the National Historic Preservation Act, various environmental statutes, and its trust responsibility to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.”
However, the Sheriff’s Department has continued to insist that protesters are out of line. According to NPR, the Sheriff’s Department said of the September 3 protest, “Once protesters arrived at the construction area, they broke down a wire fence by stepping and jumping on it. According to numerous witnesses within five minutes the crowd of protesters, estimated to be a few hundred people became violent. They stampeded into the construction area with horses, dogs and vehicles.”
KCCI says the Sheriff’s Department also contends some private security members said knives were pulled on them.
4. Hollywood Celebrities Such as Susan Sarandon Have Joined the Protests, & Authorities Said Green Party Nominee Jill Stein Might Be Charged
Authorities said they “plan to pursue charges” of trespassing and vandalism against the Green Party’s nominee for president Jill Stein “for spray-painting construction equipment at a Dakota Access Pipeline protest,” according to ABC News. You can watch video of Stein spray painting here. Stein, in turn, shared a quote from Sitting Bull and questioned why others weren’t possibly facing charges.
Before the news that Stein could possibly face charges for spray painting a bulldozer blade, the presidential candidate tweeted her support for the protesters. Stein wrote on her campaign website that she believes the pipeline “would violate U.S. treaties by endangering the drinking water and sacred sites of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.” Around the same time the news broke on potential charges, she tweeted a quote from Sitting Bull:
Sitting Bull's words are more urgent than ever. We must leave our children a livable world. #ItsInOurHands #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/C5yR2d4bHm — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) September 7, 2016
Stein questioned why she is the only person who might face charges:
State of ND may charge me with vandalism. Will they charge the oil company that razed sacred burial grounds? #NoDAPL https://t.co/PAYmyN2FCm — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) September 6, 2016
Energy Transfer Partners declined comment on the Stein matter.
CNN says the pipeline’s proponents “tout its economic boost,” including millions of dollars in income and sales taxes and creation of thousands of jobs.
The project developer, Dakota Access, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Crude Oil, says the pipeline would help the United States become less dependent on foreign oil, and they claim the crude oil is moved in an environmentally responsible manner, says CNN.
Energy Transfer says on its website, “We need to close the gap between what we produce as a country and what we consume before we can be truly independent of foreign imports. While the U.S. produced 7.5 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2013, it still imported 7.7 million barrels per day in order to meet consumer demands.”
The company also says the project will create 8,000 to 12,000 local jobs during construction and adds that the pipeline “will translate into millions in state and local revenues during the construction phase and an estimated $129 million annually in property and income taxes.”
State utilities boards and commissions have granted approvals for the project, and the company has sought voluntary easement agreements from property owners, according to a press release on the company’s website.
You can read company fact sheets on each state affected here.
Others raise concern, among other things, about the possibility of leaks. The New York Times says the pipeline would carry 470,000 barrels of oil a day to Illinois.
KCCI says 30 environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, “have slammed the pipeline project, calling it ‘yet another example of an oil pipeline project being permitted without public engagement or sufficient environmental review.'”
The tribe wrote in its lawsuit that it is concerned “with impacts to the habitat of wildlife
species such as piping plovers, least tern, Dakota skipper, and pallid sturgeon, among others. The Tribe has a particular concern for bald eagles, which remain federally protected and play a significant role in the Tribe’s culture, and which would be adversely affected by the proposed pipeline. The Tribe is greatly concerned with the possibility of oil spills and leaks from the pipeline should it be constructed and operated, particularly into waters that are of considerable economic, religious, and cultural importance to the Tribe.”
Hollywood celebrities have joined the protests, including the actress Susan Sarandon. The New York Times says the protests have centered in the town of Cannon Ball, which is located in south central North Dakota.
Leonardo DiCaprio wrote on Facebook: “Stand with the Standing Rock Sioux in their opposition of the Dakota Access Pipeline which threatens our climate.”
The New York Times says 20 people were arrested as of August 26 as heated confrontations also occurred as protesters focus on a site where preparatory work is being done; in addition, the Times says that the company has sued some protesters, alleging they are threatening and intimidating contractors.
5. The Standing Rock Tribe Is Concerned About the Impact on Water Quality for Millions
According to the Bismarck Tribune, the tribe, located in North Dakota, fears the project “will disturb sacred sites and impact drinking water for thousands of tribal members on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and millions further downstream.”
Reuters says the pipeline would be built outside, but near, the land owned by the tribe. The tribe is arguing that the pipeline would affect its water, as well as sites of spiritual significance, and says the government took the land away by reneging on past treaties.
“Our cause is just,” the newspaper quoted the tribe’s chairman, Dave Archambault II, as saying, adding that the tribe was staging the fight on behalf of future generations.
On EcoWatch, Winona LaDuke wrote a passionate column opposing the pipeline. It started, “My destination is the homeland of the Hunkpapa Oceti, Standing Rock Reservation…If you close your eyes, you can remember the 50 million buffalo—the single largest migratory herd in the world. The pounding of their hooves would vibrate the Earth, make the grass grow.”
She said the struggle is a continuation of a historical one. “There were once 250 species of grass,” she wrote. “Today the buffalo are gone… Many of the fields are now in a single GMO crop, full of so many pesticides that the monarch butterflies are dying off. But in my memory, the old world remains.”
In a press release, Archambault said, “This demolition is devastating. These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings there cannot be replaced.” He said that “construction crews removed topsoil across an area about 150 feet wide stretching for two miles, northwest of the confluence of the Cannon Ball and Missouri Rivers.”
“I surveyed this land and we confirmed multiple graves and specific prayer sites,” said Tim Mentz, the Standing Rock Sioux’s former tribal historic preservation officer, in the tribal press release. “Portions, and possibly complete sites, have been taken out entirely.”
The local sheriff said construction of the pipeline was temporarily halted “for safety reasons,” said NPR. The Great Plains Tribal Chairman’s Association is asking U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Thursday to send federal monitors to the protest, “alleging racial profiling and other transgressions are happening,” said ABC News.
According to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, the tribe’s reservation is located in both North and South Dakota, and the people of Standing Rock are “members of the Dakota and Lakota nations,” terms that mean “friends” or “allies.”
“The people of these nations are often called ‘Sioux,'” a term that dates back to the seventeenth century “when the people were living in the Great Lakes area,” says the tribe.
According to the tribe’s website, “The Standing Rock Sioux Tribal members are descendants of the Teton and Yankton Bands of the Lakota/Dakota Nations. The Reservation is thirty-four miles south of Mandan, North Dakota. The Cannon Ball River runs along the north side of the reservation and Ceder Creek in the northwest side.” The tribe says cattle ranching and farming are the biggest economic drivers on the reservation.
The lawsuit says the reservation established in the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie “included extensive lands that would be crossed by the proposed pipeline. The Tribe has a strong historical and cultural connection to such land. Despite the promises made in the two Fort Laramie treaties, in 1877 and again in 1889, Congress betrayed the treaty parties by passing statutes that took major portions of this land away from the Sioux.”
The lawsuit continues, “In addition to specific archaeological sites that have been identified to date, there are numerous significant culturally important sites that have not been identified. The lands within the pipeline route are culturally and spiritually significant.”Rigs for Carp Fishing
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We will show you the different Carp Rigs (Papgooi Stroppe) that are available, how to correctly tie them and where and why you should use them, the different types of material you will be using and why they are used and we will also give you some hints and tips on improving the different rigs and where applicable alternative materials that can be used.
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In the mean time, if you require more Tips and Advice on Carp Fishing Rigs click this link or if you would like to buy Carp Fishing Rigs click here.COMMENTARY: With the Los Angeles Kings playing in the 2012 Stanley Cup Final, something Kings fans have only seen their team do once before in the franchise’s nearly 45-year history, it is astonishing to see media based in the Eastern Time Zone only now taking notice of the Kings, most notably, the exceptional talent of center Anze Kopitar. Why only now? Will the Kings ever get themselves out from that dark shadow known as obscurity?
LOS ANGELES — If it was not already crystal-clear well before the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs began, the Los Angeles Kings advancing to the Stanley Cup Final this season has vividly demonstrated how much the media in the East, and much of Canada, ignores teams in the West and Southwest, especially the Kings.
To be sure, many of the same reasons that the Kings were ignored for so many years after they entered the National Hockey League in 1967, the league’s first expansion from its Original Six teams, still exist today, most notably, that by the time the Kings hit the ice to start a home game at Staples Center, most of those who might watch in the Eastern Time Zone are either asleep, or about to go to bed.
Even with the World Wide Web making highlights and entire games available to watch at later times, there is also the interest factor. After all, once a game has been played, with highlights and scores so readily available at one’s fingertips, many either are not interested in watching recorded games, or do not feel the need to do so.
Especially during the first 15 years or so of the Kings existence, they played in almost total obscurity, with 15 games or less televised locally—no one outside of the Los Angeles area really got to see the Kings play back then.
Today, even with cable and satellite television, the Internet, smartphones and the like, with all technology available today, it seems that very little has changed since the early days, as it is quite obvious that fans and media alike across the United States and Canada have not seen much of the Kings, if at all.
All one has to do to realize that is to look at the attention that star center Anze Kopitar is getting now that the Kings are playing in the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals, and with him scoring the overtime game-winner on a gorgeous breakaway in Game 1 on May 30.
The next day, we saw one story after another from Eastern time zone hockey writers that raved and gushed about Kopitar, what a great player he is, and that he is making a name for himself as one of the top centers in the league.
Fact is, Kopitar has been doing that for the past two or three seasons. They’ve just ignored him.
Although one could reasonably argue that Kopitar’s inconsistency before Darryl Sutter took over the Kings head coaching duties has kept him under the radar, realistically speaking, that would not be the biggest factor.
Fact is, they just haven’t paid any attention to him. Only now are they seeing his skills, and that he is a player who can do the job at an elite level in all three zones.
Makes you wonder if Kopitar would have ever been noticed if the Kings had not made it to the Finals this season.
To be fair, not every member of the hockey media has the time or resources to be able to keep up with every team, and every player. Some do not cover hockey exclusively, and again, so many in the Eastern Time Zone are sound asleep, either by the time a West Coast game begins, or not too long after the opening face-off.
Nevertheless, it is absolutely ludicrous that so many hockey journalists are only now discovering Kopitar, who is in his sixth season in the NHL.
What rock have these people been hiding under?
After all that, what will be even more disheartening for Los Angeles area hockey fans is when they realize that even if the Kings win the 2012 Stanley Cup, it is not likely to be enough to make much of a dent in the whole obscurity problem, which has roots that are way too deep for the Kings to dig up with one Stanley Cup Championship.
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2012 Stanley Cup Final, Los Angeles Kings vs. New Jersey Devils Game 1 Highlights, May 30, 2012
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Tickets for the Kings’ upcoming home Stanley Cup Finals games against the New Jersey Devils – June 4, 5:00 PM PDT (Devils vs. Kings: Game 3); June 6, 5:00 PM (Devils vs. Kings: Game 4); June 11, 5:00 PM (Devils vs. Kings: Game 6 – if necessary )are available from Barry’s Tickets, an official partner of the Los Angeles Kings. Use the code, “Royalty010” to get a 10 percent discount on their “Best Value” tickets.
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Frozen Royalty’s Comment PoliciesWarren, who went on to team with Lady Gaga to co-write the Oscar-nominated song "Til It Happens to You" for the 2015 Weinstein-produced campus rape doc 'The Hunting Ground,' never reported the incident.
The disturbing trend of powerful Hollywood men masturbating in front of less powerful women isn't so new at all. Songwriter Diane Warren, 61, tells THR about an incident that happened during the mid-1970s.
"I was 18 or 19 years old, and I met with a producer," she says. "I was playing a song with my eyes closed, but when I opened them, he was jerking off. I just looked at him and said, 'I guess you really like the song.' " Warren, who went on to team with Lady Gaga to co-write the Oscar-nominated song "Til It Happens to You" for the 2015 Weinstein-produced campus rape doc The Hunting Ground, never reported the incident.
"I just left," she says. But she does think the recent scandals have been changing Hollywood attitudes. "You can't put the genie back in the bottle," she says. "Or the dick back in the pants."
On Tuesday, Warren celebrated some positive personal news: The legendary wordsmith landed a Grammy nomination for best song written for visual media for her track "Stand Up for Something," performed by Andra Day featuring Common, from the film Marshall.
A version of this story first appeared in the Nov. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.DJ AM and Travis Barker New Year's Eve Reunion
This is great news for the only two survivors of the horrific plane crash that claimed the lives of four others. Drummerandare reuniting to perform for the New Year's Nation's Los Angeles New Year's Eve party at The Lot in West Hollywood.
New Year's Eve parties nationwide will be able to broadcast the reunion, which will be streamed on the Internet. This will be the first performance for Travis and Adam since the crash. The duo last combined their talents at a free concert which hosted 10,000 fans in Columbia, South Carolina.
Travis posted a message on his blog over Thanksgiving weekend, saying:
"I wanted to say thanks...and share my gratitude for everything I've been blessed with. Family, friends, and continued support from everyone. Thank you for life, and all the little ups and downs that make it worth living. My best to everyone."
We send our best to Travis and DJ AM and look forward to hearing their performance. If you haven't seen photos of Travis during his hospital stay, you can check them out hereWelcome to PRO Landscape Lighting Installation
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a 12 year old PhD thesis. I wonder how confident they would be lecturing the public about the need for radical decarbonising economic climate polices, if they were aware that the ‘97% of active climate scientists’ quote/soundbite actually comes from a students MSc thesis, that the Doran EoS paper cites?
Here are but just a few of many responses from scientists that actually took part in the survey, taken from the appendi of the MSc thesis:
“..scientific issues cannot be decided by a vote of scientists. A consensus is not, at any given time, a good predictor of where the truth actually resides..”
“..The “hockey stick” graph that the IPCC so touted has, it is my understanding, been debunked as junk science..”
“..I’m not sure what you are trying to prove, but you will undoubtably be able to prove your pre-existing opinion with this survey! I’m sorry I even started it!..” (Doran/Zimmerman feedback)
I wonder just how many politicians or environmentalists (or scientists) that have used the phrase ‘97% of climate scientists, have actually read the original source of the cited survey.
“Climate is a very complex system with many variables including sun radiation cycles, ocean temperature, and possibly other factors that we are not even aware of. There are studies and data out there that are being overlooked by the IPCC. Ultimately, maybe we are the biggest cause or maybe we are not, but the current push of saying that human activity is the cause is interfering with an unbiased and scientific evaluation.” (Doran/Zimmerman feedback)
The Doran paper has been criticised by many sceptics in the past, where a survey of 10,256 with 3146 respondents was whittled down to 75 out of 77 “expert” ‘active climate researchers’ (ACR) to give the 97% figure, based on just two very simplistic (shallow) questions that even the majority of sceptics might agree with. Lawrence Soloman made one of many critiques of the Doran Paper here and offers a very good summary, some other reviews here, here and here
A closer look at ‘The Consensus on the Consensus’
Yet, I’m not aware of anyone having a detailed look at the actual reference for the ‘97%’ quotation cited in the Doran EoS paper – (link and press release), this was a students MSc thesis entitled “The Consensus on the Consensus” – M Zimmermann (download here for £1.25 / ~$2), who was Peter Doran’s graduate student (and the EoS paper’s co-author)
“..and I do not think that a consensus has anything to do with whether a hypothesis is correct. Check out the history of science…you will find that scientific discovery is generally made by ignoring the ‘consensus..’” (Doran/Zimmerman feedback)
As this MSc thesis was the original source of the oft cited Doran paper 97% quote, I tracked it down (sometime ago now) and discovered in the appendi that there was a great deal of email feedback and answers to write in questions from the scientists that actually participated in the survey, much of it critical and sceptical of the survey itself, the methodology and the questions asked. Additionally, amongst those environmental scientists that responded, were some very sceptical sounding scientists with respect to man made climate change being the dominant driver of climate change.
“..Science is based on scepticism and experimental proof. Whereas human GHG emissions certainly have a warming effect, the breakdown between natural and anthropogenic contributions to warming is poorly constrained. Remember that the warming since 1650 AD (not 1900) is part of a real ‘millennial cycle’ whose amplitude cannot yet be explained by any quantitative theory. Also, the computer climate models are both too complex to be readily understood and too simple to describe reality. Believing their results is an act of faith…” (Doran/Zimmerman survey participant – App F)
There are also a number of additional problems I think, with the methodology that comes to light, that the previous critiques of the Doran paper are not aware of and some other interesting facts.
97% of the world’s scientists?
One fact that is not obvious (ie missing) from the Doran EoS paper and that surprised me, is that over 96% of the scientist that responded were from North America (90% USA, 6.2% Canada), with 9% from California alone.
90% (2833) of respondents were from the United States, while the remaining 10% (313) came from 22 other countries (Figure 1). Respondents from Canada accounted for 62% of the international responses. (Zimmerman)
What is the opinion of the worlds scientists?
Are the public aware when they are lectured that ‘97% of scientists’ agree based on the Doran paper, by their media, lobbyists, activist scientists and their politicians justifying climate action, that the UK, Germany, Spain, France, Australia, New Zealand respondents made up less than 3% of the survey in total. China had 3 scientists respond (three not 3%), Russian and India zero.
Perhaps if I was a western politician trying to persuade the public West to decarbonise and to extend or go beyond the Kyoto agreement I might think carefully about telling the public about the 97% of ALL scientists agree, when pushing for radical climate policies? As those countries outside of Kyoto agreement (China, India, Russia, etc) made it very clear at Copenhagen that reduction in their own emissions is just not going to happen and at the recent Rio 20 plus conference I’m not even really aware that ‘climate change’ was mentioned that much at all.
What might I ask are those countries scientists telling their leaders about ‘climate change’ that may appear to many of them as a peculary western obsession (not many environmental lobby groups in China in the last 30 years). Perhaps those countries scientists are just not that concerned about a catastrophic interpretation of climate change,
I’ll just provide a ‘small’ anecdote to back up that hypothesis, just for fun, from China’s lead climate negotiator at Copenhagen (and Durban) no less.
Telegraph
“..China’s most senior climate change official surprised a summit in India when he questioned whether global warming is caused by carbon gas emissions and said Beijing is keeping an “open mind” Xie Zhenhua was speaking at a summit between the developing world’s most powerful countries, India, Brazil, South Africa and China, which is now the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the gas believed to be responsible for climate change. But Mr Xie, China’s vice-chairman of national development and reforms commission, later said although mainstream scientific opinion blames emissions from industrial development for climate change, China is not convinced. “There are disputes in the scientific community. We have to have an open attitude to the scientific research. There’s an alternative view that climate change is caused by cyclical trends in nature itself. We have to keep an open attitude,” he said…” (Telegraph)
Guardian
“..China’s most senior negotiator on climate change says more research needed to establish whether warming is man-made China’s most senior negotiator on climate change said today he was keeping an open mind on whether global warming was man-made or the result of natural cycles. Xie Zhenhua said there was no doubt that warming was taking place, but more and better scientific research was needed to establish the causes. Xie’s comments caused consternation at the end of the post-meeting press conference, with his host, the Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, attempting to play down any suggestions of dissent over the science of climate change…”(Guardian)
This only made the few column inches on the inside pages of the Guardian and the Telegraph, (by their Indian correspondents) perhaps an inadvertent unguarded comment by a senior diplomat let slip at a non-western conference expressing China’s real thinking perhaps?
Perhaps, unsurprisingly none of these newspapers UK environment journalists picked up on this ‘revelation’ on Chinese thinking, I wonder why, after all Xie was only China’s lead negotiator (he was also at Durban). For further thoughts on this topic, Jo Nova has a very interesting article on Chinese, Russian and Indian thinking on climate change. (here)
But perhaps we should get back on to the topic of ‘The Consensus of the Consensus’
The ‘expertise’ of the 97%
On occasion when challenged about the 97% figure depending on 75 scientists from a survey of 10,000, it is usually met with a response that these were the experts in the field of climate science and this is what maters not the number that took part. A closer look at the methodology perhaps raises some concerns about the ‘expertise’ and selection bias as this as his result depends on 2 additional questions in the survey that were used to identify expertise in climate research (not an unreasonable goal) within the respondents
Q5 Which percentage of your papers published in peer reviewed journals in the last 5 years have been on the subject of climate change? A: 1) less than 50% 2) 50% or more 3) not applicable Q9 Which category best describes your area of expertise? 1) Hydrology/Hydrogeology 2) Geochemistry 3) Geophysics 4) Paleontology 5) Economic Geology (coal/metals/oil and gas) 6) Soil Science 7) Oceanography/MarineGeology 8) Environmental Geology 9) Geology/Planetary Science 10) Climate Science 11) Geomorphology 12)General Geology 13) Structure/Tectonics* 14) Petrology* 15) Sedimentology/Stratigraphy 16 Atmospheric Science* 17) Quaternary Geology* 18) Meterology* 19) Geography/Archeaology/GI 20 Engineering (Envr/Geo/Chem)* 21 Ecology/Biogeochemistry* 22) Glacial Geology* 23) Mineralogy* 24) Volcanology* 25) Other (*write in description) (Zimmerman)
The survey used the answer to Q5 narrow down the expertise of the respondents, not unreasonably perhaps, and defined these as ‘active climate researchers’ (ACR), there was also criticism of the framing of this question in the feedback. This subset of respondents were then contacted to check the these claims and once verified, there were 244 respondents that met this criteria. This categorisation gave positive responses to Q1 – 95% and Q2 – 92%
The survey used the answer to Q9 to define those as identifying as in the category of climate science as having more expertise than the other listed categories. Question 9 resulted in 144 respondents self identifying in the category of climate science. This categorisation gave positive responses to Q1 – 95% and Q2 – 88.6%
Finally a category of experts was defined as those that responded as publishing more than 50% of papers AND self identifying in the survey as climate scientists, resulting in a group of 77
This categorisation gave positive responses to Q1 – 96.2% and Q2 – 97.4%
So is Zimmermann defining expertise or introducing a selection bias here? It has not gone unnoticed that perhaps those scientists that self identify as climate scientists, are perhaps those that are more activist minded for a consensus.
It is quite possible for example, in this survey for scientist or even colleagues with identical qualifications, to self identify differently. Thus in this survey respondents could even be co-authors of a paper, but this survey would categorise one as more expert than the other. Who knows if this happened or not, the fact that it is possible demonstrates the flaws in the thinking.
Additionally those that are in the 97% group are deemed to be more expert in climate science, keeping more abreast of the ‘whole’ field than the others.
“..The participants in this group are actively publishing climate scientists, and those most likely to be familiar with the theory and mechanisms of climate change, as well as have a thorough understanding of the current research and be actively contributing to the field..” (Zimmermann feedback)
This I think is a huge assumption, ‘climate science’ is a huge multidisciplinary field.
Is a geologist that identifies as a ‘climate scientist’ any more an expert on astrophysics, atmospheric physics, statistics, etc than those classified as have less expertise in the categories identified above.
Additionally the responses may merely capture (only the last 5 years publishing Q5) those junior more activist post docs, etc that self identify as climate scientist, where perhaps the older more published ‘expert’ colleagues describe themselves by the qualifications, not as climate scientists. And of course, by the very nature of the survey, (which was commented on in the feedback) surveys of this type are potentially self selecting by the probability that those that are most concerned are more willing to take part.
Finding a consensus
In the introduction of the Zimmerman thesis, it describes criticisms of many other papers that have attempted in the past to establish what is the ‘consensus’ amongst scientists on climate change and the survey’s purpose was to address these criticisms. However the introduction raised concerns for me that the author is not perhaps without there own biases (subconscious or otherwise). Perhaps judge this for yourself (here)
“..I did complete your survey. However, no matter how important, no matter how apparently obvious the combination of facts and theory, scientific issues cannot be decided by a vote of scientists. A consensus is not, at any given time, a good predictor of where the truth actually resides..” (Zimmerman feedback) “..Science is not based on votes or consensus. Irrelevant question. Besides, which scientists do you regard as relevant?..” (Zimmerman feedback)
“..Science is based on scepticism and experimental proof. Whereas human GHG emissions certainly have a warming effect, the breakdown between natural and anthropogenic contributions to warming is poorly constrained..” (Zimmerman feedback)
Why does this matter, don’t other survey give similar results?
In the introduction, the Zimmerman thesis describes the earlier papers attempting to establish what the consensus is in the field of climate science and the thesis describes the criticisms made of these papers. And that the Zimmermann thesis survey is intended to meet some of these criticisms.
All too often in an article or presentation the phrase/soundbite ‘97% of scientists say’ is used to justify or imply certain climate policies, or that there is a consensus amongst climate scientists that policy action must be taken, or agreement of dangerous climate change, or any other thing that need the weight of authority this statement gives to an argument.
The later ‘Anderegg survey’ is perhaps the next most often cited survey, often alongside the ‘Doran Survey’, as producing a 97% figure for a consensus of climate scientists. Anderegg has also receive criticism as it seemed to be little more than a black/white document count of papers giving a percentage of numbers on each side. This of course gives no consensus on any of the above issues either. But again is often used to give the weight of authority to an argument.
An example perhaps, of this ‘use’ was by Scott Denning recently at the Yale climate forum, with a very critical response from Paul Matthews (Reader of Mathematics, Nottingham University
Scott Denning: “Let’s be clear: there is in fact an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. No peer-reviewed science disputes the expectation that rising CO 2 levels will cause major climate change in the coming decades. Survey data have shown more than 97 percent agreement among professional climate scientists (Anderegg et al, 2010, PNAS), and every major professional society has issued supporting statements. (Yale – here)
I raised my own concerns about the nature of the Anderegg survey (here and here), but I think Professor Paul Matthews is more to the point and eloquent than I was.
Paul Matthews: “Scott Denning needs to be more careful if he and his fellow climate scientists are to be taken seriously by scientists from other fields such as myself. He loses credibility by referring to the ridiculous Anderegg et al study, in which the authors put scientists into two different pigeon-holes. Worse still, he misrepresents the claims of that paper (he implies the 97% believe CO2 will cause major climate change in the coming decades, while Anderegg et al say 97% agree that most of the warming of the 20th C was very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases – two very different statements). (Yale – here)
At the time, Joseph Romm at Think Progress gave his own interpretation of what the Anderegg survey showed us.
“..The issue is whether folks are actively spreading disinformation, especially disinformation that has been long debunked in the scientific literature. As I’ve said for many years now, it is time for the media to stop listening to, quoting, and enabling those who spread anti-science and anti-scientist disinformation. (Think Progress)
It is interesting to compare the Think Progress response to the Anderegg survey to that of scientists. Dr Roger Pielke junior was very critical of the Anderegg survey (link) referring to it as a blacklist, this brought about I think a very appropriate response from Real Climate’s Dr Eric Steig (quite a contrast to Climate Progress – Joe Romm)
“Wow. Roger, you know I disagree with you on many things, but not on this. What the heck where they thinking? Even if the analysis had some validity — and from a first glance, I’m definitely not convinced it does — it’s not helpful, to put it mildly. I’m totally appalled.” (Dr Eric Steig)
Keith Kloor also has a very good article with various responses to the PNAS Anderegg survey and the comments / discussion also make very interesting reading (Collide a Scape – The Climate Experts)
Concerns about ‘consensus surveys’
I am concerned that the conclusions made by Doran EoS paper and the Zimmerman MSc thesis seems to go beyond the results warranted by the survey and motivated by activism more than science.
“..the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.” The challenge now, they write, is how to effectively communicate this to policy makers and to a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists..” (Doran press release)
But, I would like to put aside any criticism of the methodology or conclusions the scientists behind the Doran, Anderegg or any other similar paper make and reserve my strongest criticism to others that misrepresent them, or go much further than the conclusions. My strongest criticism is not for those politicians, environmentalists, journalists or scientists, that use the soundbite of ‘97% of scientists’ in complete ignorance of its source, or do not check the citation for themselves in Zimmermann.
No, I reserve my strongest criticism for those activist scientist that know full well the source of the ‘97% of scientists’ soundbite and use it anyway, usually very carefully worded along the lines of 97% actively researching in their field, and then use it to imply that there is some consensus of future dangerous or catastrophic risk, or that certain policies that must be taken, because of this consensus.
In my mind this is misusing the authority and goodwill most of the public still hold for scientists, when attempts are made to justify claims of policy action with a soundbite, or to try to silence any dissenting voice as a denier or holding extreme questionable views (implying others not mainstream respectable scientists) It also raises the very real concern that other activists response to sceptics will assume motives of malign intent (greedy fossil fuel deniars, with the same morals of holocaust deniers, for example) if they seeing leading scientist making these strong claims.
As in the activists worldview, surely only those with questionable malign and/or greedy motives would disagree with ’97 of scientist agree’ that future climate change is a catastrophic danger.
An example being this extreme reaction by Steve Zwick at Forbes.
“..We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start keeping track of them now, and when the famines come, let’s make them pay. Let’s let their houses burn until the innocent are rescued*. Let’s swap their safe land for submerged islands. Let’s force them to bear the cost of rising food prices…” (Steve Zwick – Forbes)
And he cites the authority of a consensus of scientists which support in his mind, this statement of certainty about future climate.
“..If the shirkers and deniers actually believe their propaganda, they’ll go along with this – because they only have to pay if they’re wrong and 98% of all climate scientists are right. (And what are the odds of that happening – nudge nudge, wink wink?)..” (Steve Zwick – Forbes)
Another example being when a number of climate scientists (community leaders) responded in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, to the 16 scientist that signed an opinion piece entitled – No Need To Panic About Global Warming – in the Wall Street journal.
The climate scientists response (extract) “..Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused. It would be an act of recklessness for any political leader to disregard the weight of evidence and ignore the enormous risks that climate change clearly poses.” (Trenberth et al – WSJ)
The authors of the original Wall Street Journal opinion piece duly responded making the same complaint about the misuse of the ‘97% of scientists’ phrase as mine:
“.. The Trenberth letter states: “Research shows that more than 97% of scientists actively publishing in the field agree that climate change is real and human caused.” However, the claim of 97% support is deceptive. The surveys contained trivial polling questions that even we would agree with. Thus, these surveys find that large majorities agree that temperatures have increased since 1800 and that human activities have some impact. But what is being disputed is the size and nature of the human contribution to global warming. To claim, as the Trenberth letter apparently does, that disputing this constitutes “extreme views that are out of step with nearly every other climate expert” is peculiar indeed.” (Wall Steet Journal)
I did show a copy of ‘The Consensus on the Consensus’ to a well known writer on the environment,(over a very nice lunch at Brasenose College, Oxford University) who was very interested and whose first response was why are they all so sceptical! And to his credit admitted he was not aware of it, and had not looked at the primary source and he even suggested to me:
‘If I were a sceptical journalist I would make hay with it!”
To be very fair to him, Zimmerman only came online in September 2011, I’m sure I went looking for it before that and could not find it anywhere. Additionally when faced with a paper with multiple citation who of us, actually goes and reads all those citations to see if the conclusions are correctly used in the paper?
All this said and done, I’m a sceptical blogger, writing for a major sceptical blog, please don’t take my word for anything, download it yourself and form your own views. (here) there are at least 80 pages of responses, my selections are but a fraction of the whole.
Some further examples of feedback to the survey below:
Problems with questions 1 and 2 and the word ‘significant’
“Questions 1 asks if I think temperatures are warmer than the 1800s, but doesn’t indicate if I’m supposed to compare to today, the last 10 years, the last 50 years, or… Without telling me what I’m comparing to, I cannot answer the question. Q2 then asks if I think that humans are “a significant” contributor to warming temperatures, but I can only answer yes or no. I happen to think that we are one among many contributing factors, so I answered yes, but I couldn’t explain this. The third question then asks me why I think humans are a major contributor, but is phrased in such a way that it’s implicit that I’m now listing them as THE significant factor. They are not the primary cause, but I had to stop the survey at this point because it was forcing me to answer queries about why I think they are. As constructed, your responders will be unable to indicate that there are multiple causes to climate change, that climate change is the norm on Earth and has been going on throughout geologic time, and that there is strong evidence to indicate that climate change not only occurred before humans existed, but also was probably more extreme than the event we are living in today.”
And:
Your use of the word ‘significant‘. It seems clear that human activity has caused an increase in CO2 levels. That, in theory, might have caused an increase in global temperature. However, did it? If so, was it the only cause? If it was a cause, was it a significant cause?
And:
Not Fair: You changed the question from ‘significant’ to ‘contributing’ Significant= 25%. Contributing=75% “What defines significant? If 1-2 degrees F is considered significant then I would agree that human input is significant “what do you mean by significant? Statistically? A player in the total rise? sure we are! How much? I am not sure. What is meant by significant? A major contribution, yes, but what is human activity compared with increased solar activity. So far, it is lost in the statistical models. While it certainly seems likely that human activity is at least partly responsible, I am not aware of data conclusively proving this. It has been documented that natural earth temperature cycles occur with, or without, human-based effects. I entered an answer I did not intend. I think human activity is a significant component, but I do not know if it is 10%, 25%, 50% or more. (3c)
“I appologize, but as an objective scientist I do not communicate “opinions” or “attitudes”. These do not belong on the scientific agenda and certainly not in the classroom. Thus I decline to contribute to your survey.” (Zimmerman feedback)
Appendix G – Emails received (lots of interesting responses)
I found the very first email response to be quite amusing (ref ‘team’)
“I am on the team. Your survey is most appropriate and I am honoured to have been asked to participate.” (Zimmermann -App G)
The third response provides a counter:
“I’d be happy to participate. This is a great idea. We were talking about this just yesterday and I’m guessing you’ll find less consensus that the media tend to suggest.”(Zimmerman – App G)
Appendix F – Write in questions for 3c (reasons sceptical)
“I am not absolutely convinced, however, that carbon dioxide is the culprit. I think that remains to be proved. Carbon dioxide is complicated, and I believe that there could be other both human induced and natural causes for global warming.”
And:
“After thinking a while about the questions, I wish that I had not participated in the survey because of the way that the questions could be misconstrued.”
And:
“I study glaciers. Earth has had hundreds of continental scale glacier events during its history. Glaciers will continue to experience cycles where they expand and then contract, and then expand again, as they have done many times before, prior to humans evolving. They will also continue to do so long after our species is extinct.”
I’m glad I’m not a young scientist in the USA:
“I believe this global warming scare is a hoax designed to raise taxes and fill the pockets of the likes of Gore and those who do research in the topic, etc. I am not the only one who feels this way. One of our professors, XX, paleontologist, Antarctic specialist, agrees with me. He said he is treated like a pariah here at XX.”
I will finish on the following piece of feedback, as it highlights and sums up a concern of mine, that all scientists might want to consider with respect to the public trust in science.
“As I indicated in my survey responses, every scientist I work with is convinced that human activity is a factor influencing global warming, but it is also well known that the causes extend beyond human activity to include astronomical cycles which we had no part in creating and which we are powerless to stop. I have not found anyone who could tell me what percentage of the warming we’ve seen so far is attributable to natural vs. human causes, however. I feel that the scientific community has not been totally forthcoming in public statements about acknowledging the dual causes of global warming, and that someday people will realize that no matter what we do, we will never stop global warming entirely because a good fraction of the causes are natural and not anthropogenic. I’m afraid that at that point people will feel misled by scientists and politicians who have implied, essentially, that “we caused it, by cleaning up our act we can stop it.” I feel that this is a recipe for public disillusionment with the science community, and is a mistakeon our part. (Zimmerman feedback – App F)
It is my personal recommendation that if anyone should publically claim because ‘97% of scientists agree’ and are attempting to use this phrase as a soundbite to close down any criticism, going beyond the conclusions of these surveys.
My recommendation is to ask them politely if they are aware of the source of this phrase. And then quote to them an example of the feedback by scientists that took part in the survey itself, any then perhaps it will be possible to have a debate about any issue or claim being made.
References/Links:
MSc Thesis – The Consensus on the Consensus – M Zimmerman (download Cost £1.25)
Eos Abstract – EoS Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change Citation: Doran, P. T. and M. K. Zimmerman (2009), Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Eos Trans. AGU, 90(3), 22, doi:10.1029/2009EO030002.
EoS Paper – Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change -Doran/Kendall Zimmerman
UIC Press Release – Survey: Scientists Agree Human-Induced Global Warming is Real
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Called the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), the spacecraft will rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu in 2019, collect a sample and return the cache in a capsule to Earth in 2023 for detailed study. The robotic mission will spend more than two years at the 1,760-foot (500-meter)-wide asteroid and return a minimum of 2 ounces (60 grams) of its surface material.
Topics for submissions by the public should be about solar system exploration in 2014 and predictions for space exploration activities in 2023. The mission team will choose 50 tweets and 50 images to be placed in the capsule. Messages can be submitted Sept. 2 - 30. [image-51]
"Our progress in space exploration has been nothing short of amazing," says Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. "I look forward to the public taking their best guess at what the next 10 years holds and then comparing their predictions with actual missions in development in 2023."
This event is the second of NASA’s efforts to engage space enthusiasts around the world in the OSIRIS-REx mission, following the agency’s January invitation to participate in Messages to Bennu, which asked the public to submit their names to be etched on a microchip aboard the spacecraft.
"It is exciting to think that some people may formulate predictions then have the chance to help make their prediction a reality over the next decade," said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
When the sample return capsule returns to Earth in 2023 |
by his three sisters after the death of his mother in 1925, when he was 4 years old. I never knew my paternal grandfather, and even my father was not that familiar with his early life other than the fact that he was born in Scotland and became a carriage painter when he came to America. He and his parents and four siblings came to America in 1873, and settled in Fall River where the elder McDougall worked as a carpenter. My own research confirmed this information.
In 1892, James McDougall Jr. had found work as a carriage painter in New York City and was sending money home to help his mother pay the bills. Research revealed that there was some significant family strife that led to the separation of James McDougall Sr. and his wife Catherine. She subsequently took up separate residence with the children. The younger James’s disappointment with how the separation developed and was being played out led to a major confrontation between him and his father.
James McDougall, Jr. with his wife Marie Elisabeth Durand circa 1910
On January 29, 1892, James McDougall Jr. returned to Fall River from New York City to effect reconciliation between his parents. He met his father on the pier of the Fall River Line where they walked and discussed the family’s domestic strife. At one end of the pier the discussion grew heated and James Jr. drew a five-chambered Swift revolver and shot his father five times. The account from a local newspaper, The Fall River Daily Globe, gave a more graphic description of the shooting:
At the time of the shooting the men were not eight feet apart. One of the bullets went through the flesh, under the chin which was bearded. Another went through the left sleeve between the shoulder and elbow. The shirt was not torn but the arm was scarred. A third bullet went into the father’s left hand entering in the back below the wrist and lodging midway between the palm and back. A fourth plowed through the overcoat and undercoat just above the middle of the stomach, and the fifth most miraculously of all, tore through the overcoat, undercoat, jumper and undervest, and stopped only when it had made a small dent in a starched white shirt an inch below the heart.
What could have caused such a desperate act on the part of my grandfather? Newspapers of the day, including the news article from The Fall River Daily Globe cited below, reported many aspects of the assault and its aftermath. Two police officers on the pier had observed James Jr. smash a revolver against the wall of the building and learned from him that he had just shot his father. The officers immediately arrested him and transported him to the marshal’s office where Marshal Hilliard questioned him.
McDougall told a straightforward and in many ways a pitiful story to the city marshal, and it is not pleasant to say that the circumstances leading up to the shooting necessitates the unraveling of an unhappy yarn of domestic life.
According to the story told by his wife and his eldest son James, he has not lived happily with his wife for 18 years. He has always held the purse strings in the household economy and while his family may have been stinted, it is alleged that he has gone to his work with a wad in his pocket.
He has compelled his wife to provide for his family on a basis of $1.85 a head per week she says, and when the expenditures exceeded that amount he has cursed and swore and displayed an ungovernable temper. Four months ago or thereabouts his wife thought she had reached a point where she should not bear with his peculiarities any longer.
One Saturday night the father went home and found that the wife and daughter had repaired a kitchen carpet. The daughter had been kept from work while the bit of household economy was being accomplished. When the father learned of this he raved and stormed and ordered the mother to leave the house just as he had frequently done before.
The mother accepted an offer to leave the house and accept $3 a week. Monday morning she left, taking only a spring bed and the clothes she wore, and went to live in a stone cottage on Pleasant Street.
James McDougall Sr. was first taken to Dr. Leary’s residence where it was determined he was too weak to have an operation to remove the bullet from his hand. He was then taken to his home at 89 Third Street (bordering the backside of the Borden residence located at 92 Second Street). He remained in a weakened state not only from the shooting, but from an illness suffered at his work several months earlier. Newspapers reported that he had wanted to avoid prosecution of his son and was more worried about the disposition of the case than the result of his wounds.
Meanwhile, the younger James was arraigned in the district court the day after the shooting. He was charged with assault on his father with a dangerous weapon, to wit, a pistol loaded with powder and shot. He pled guilty, but, as reported by The Fall River Daily Globe, Marshal Hilliard addressed the court saying:
This was one of the unfortunate occurrences which came to the notice of the police. It grew out of family difficulties. McDougal, he said, had been employed as a painter in New York and did all he could toward the support of his mother who lived apart from the father.
If this boy’s story to me is true, Your Honor, I can readily see how he could be worked up into a state of mind during which he could shoot his father. I have great sympathy for him and have drawn this complaint so that this court can take jurisdiction. The father bears a good reputation at Tripp’s shop where he was employed, but his conduct there could differ very widely from his actions in the family circle.
Dr. Leary also testified and noted that the elder McDougall’s wounds were “peculiar” but not necessarily fatal unless complications arose which were not now apparent. The court adjudged the younger McDougall as probably guilty and held him on a $1,000 bond for the grand jury.
Shortly after this hearing James McDougall Jr. returned to court and was charged with assault with intent to kill. He was found guilty and sentenced to six years in the Massachusetts Reformatory where he was received on February 20, 1892. A report from the Office of the Commissioners on the Reformatory intake record noted: “This assault grew out of a family quarrel. Parents had separated, father refused to assist the mother and James, who worked in New York, gave her his earnings and she relied on him. He had threatened to kill James if he helped his mother anymore and James bought a revolver to use in self defense. His father was one of the meanest men that ever lived and that he caused his family to suffer. James has the sympathy of nearly all the people in Fall River.”
Meanwhile, efforts to locate the bullet in the senior McDougall’s hand were unsuccessful and he passed away on March 4, 1892. The official cause of death recorded on his death certificate was “fracture with necrosis of bones of hand and inflammation of tissue of same.”
On June 20, 1892, the younger McDougall was arraigned in Superior Court and charged with the murder of his father. On October 31, a plea agreement was reached whereby James pled guilty to manslaughter and he was sentenced to 10 years in the Massachusetts State Prison. James McDougall Jr. was released on parole on September 13, 1900, and returned to Fall River, Massachusetts. He married Marie Elisabeth Durand in 1910, and raised five children. James died of cardiac failure January 9, 1947, and is buried next to his father in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River.
How does this connect to the Lizzie Borden case? The first and most obvious similarity is the proximity of the Borden and McDougall residences. The Borden horse barn exited to Third Street and it very likely that the McDougall family would have had occasion to speak with the residents of the Borden household in spite of the differences in social status. James McDougall’s occupation as a carriage painter may have also inspired some interest in his part in the Borden family carriages. The elder McDougall was also known to have been a member of several fraternal or social organizations to which the Borden men also belonged. Some also believe that Lizzie may have been inspired to commit patricide by James McDougall Jr., a theory that could be furthered as the McDougall trial unfolded. Lizzie Borden could have been moved by the sentiment of sympathy for the younger James and the relatively light sentence he received. As noted earlier the connection to the Borden case is peripheral, but it makes one wonder!Minnesota's major football teams met the rivals from Wisconsin in a pair of games, starting Saturday afternoon and concluding Monday night.
The Gophers and the Vikings were outscored by a combined 87-20. Among other accomplishments, they forced eight incompletions in 49 pass attempts from the Badgers and the Packers.
Minnesotans took in these blowouts and were left to ponder: Which collection of our favored warriors will be the first to go from stumblebums to competitive?
The first requirement is to define "competitive." It's easy in the NFL: When the Vikings return to the playoffs, they will be in the top 38 percent of NFC teams, and that's competitive.
A bowl appearance does not in itself do that for the Gophers. In 2010, 47 of the 66 BCS programs played in a bowl game. Placing in the top 71 percent of teams does not qualify as competitive.
This season, 10 of the 12 Big Ten teams could wind up in bowl games. Placing in the top 83 percent of a conference doesn't count as competitive.
The Gophers open at UNLV in 2012, a horrendous program. This is followed by home games with New Hampshire, Western Michigan and subpar Syracuse.
Three or four nonconference victories, followed by the two or three Big Ten victories needed for bowl eligibility, doesn't do it. The Gophers won't be competitive until they manage to reach.500 in the Big Ten.
So, which team gets there first: the Vikings or the Gophers?
The history of the NFL salary-cap era (starting in 1994) tells us that turning a team around doesn't have to be a long process. Then again, the salary cap has reached a point in recent years where few teams are forced to surrender difference-makers.
The big cap seems to have made the quick turnaround more of a challenge than several years back. And to see so many flaws for the Vikings in this second consecutive disastrous season, it's tough to imagine it taking fewer than another three years to reach the top six of the NFC.
The offensive line is poor, and the best of the bunch, left guard Steve Hutchinson, is 34. The inside of the defense isn't as tough as in the recent past, and tackle Kevin Williams and middle linebacker E.J. Henderson are both 31.
The one quality player in the secondary, Antoine Winfield, is 34 and injured again. The best of the younger corners, Chris Cook, has a serious legal problem. And the team hasn't had a playmaker at safety since Darren Sharper in 2007.
The outside receivers are basically guys off the street. There are two great weapons in running back Adrian Peterson and slot receiver Percy Harvin. Soon, rookie tight end Kyle Rudolph could become a third.
Those three create hope for a future of big plays, since the Vikings appear to have filled the greatest void with the arrival of Christian Ponder as the starter at quarterback.
Ponder was flummoxed by what the Green Bay defense had for him Monday, but he's a rookie with a strong arm, reasonable accuracy, outstanding mobility and a big brain.
The Vikings should be able to fill enough holes with prime draft choices in the next couple of years for Ponder to lead them back to.500 in 2013, and back to being a competitive -- as in, a playoff team -- in 2014.
The Gophers have it tougher. The Big Ten schedule will remain at eight games over the next five years. The Gophers' annual opponents are Michigan, Michigan State, Nebraska, Iowa, Northwestern and designated rival Wisconsin.
Take an optimistic look at potential victories and you get this: One combined victory vs. Michigan and Nebraska, three combined vs. Wisconsin and Michigan State, five combined vs. Iowa and Northwestern. That's 9-21 over five years -- a deep hole on the way to.500 in the Big Ten.
What the Gophers will have going for them is the same thing as the Vikings: a talented new quarterback. Philip Nelson, the 6-3, 216-pound star at Mankato West, looks like the best Minnesota prep quarterback since Joe Mauer.
Jerry Kill could choose to have Nelson redshirt in 2012, as MarQueis Gray plays his senior season. If so, mark down 2015 -- Nelson's junior season -- when the Gophers reach 4-4 in the Big Ten and join the ranks of the competitive.
Patrick Reusse can be heard noon to 4 weekdays on 1500ESPN. • preusse@startribune.comWashington: US Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on legislation that allows new sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea, leading congressional Democrats said on Saturday, in a bill that would limit any potential effort by President Donald Trump to try to lift sanctions against Moscow.
The Countering Iran's Destabilising Activities Act, which was passed by the Senate a month ago, was held up in the House of Representatives after Republicans proposed including North Korea sanctions in the bill.
The House is set to vote on Tuesday on a package of bills on sanctions covering Russia, Iran and North Korea, according to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s office. The measure will "hold them accountable for their dangerous actions," McCarthy said in a statement Saturday.
Under the proposed bill, Trump must submit to Congress a report on proposed actions that would "significantly alter" US foreign policy in connection with Russia, including easing sanctions or returning diplomatic properties in Maryland and New York that former President Barack Obama ordered vacated in December.
Congress would have at least 30 days to hold hearings and then vote to uphold or reject Trump’s proposed changes.
Many lawmakers hope the bill will send a message to Trump to keep a strong line against Russia.
Trump, who met Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month and said it was an "honor" to meet him, has been criticised for seeking to reset US-Russian relations. His administration has been bogged down by ongoing investigations of possible ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia.
With the bill, Republicans and Democrats are seeking to punish Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea, a peninsula belong to Ukraine, and for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Putin has denied any meddling in the US democratic process last year. Trump has said that his campaign did not collude with Russia.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Russia's "outrageous and unacceptable" behavior in the 2016 US election and in Europe "demand that we have strong statutory sanctions enacted as soon as possible."
Even so, she expressed concerns that by including North Korea the legislation could face procedural delays in the Senate.
Senior Republican lawmakers did not immediately comment on the latest bill.
In Brussels, the European Union sounded an alarm about the US moves to step up sanctions on Russia, urging Washington to coordinate with its Group of 7 partners.
The European Commission, the EU's executive body, warned of possibly "wide and indiscriminate" "unintended consequences," notably on the EU's efforts to diversify energy sources away from Russia.
McCarthy and Ed Royce, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement the revised bill helps "bolster the energy security of our European allies by maintaining their access to key energy resources outside of Russia."
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said a strong sanctions bill "is essential," and said in a statement that he expects "the House and Senate will act on this legislation promptly, on a broad bipartisan basis."
Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the agreement was reached after "intense negotiations."
"A nearly united Congress is poised to send President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message," he said in a statement.
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.FLEMINGTON -- A local man who always writes his name in for open local seats on Democrat primary ballots got a surprise this year.
"This time I actually got a letter saying I won," Harry Gerdes told Politico.com.
According to the report, Gerdes' vote for himself qualified him for a Democratic county committee seat, and possibly a chance to be the Democratic nominee for a seat on the Flemington Borough Council. The low turnout in last year's primary means that Gerdes' lone vote was sufficient, Friedman reported.
The Republican primary was much more contested, and a recount is being held Wednesday morning in the race for Flemington Borough Council.
Recount sought in Flemington GOP primary
In voting on June 6, four Republicans vied for nomination to two three-year seats on Flemington Borough Council. John Gorman and Susan Peterson were declared the winners, with Gorman getting 163 votes and Peterson getting 161. Alan Brewer followed with 156 votes, and Abraham Seckler got 131. Kim Tilly wasn't challenged in her bid for GOP nomination to a separate one-year unexpired term.
Brewer, Gorman and Tilly ran under the Regular Republican Party line, and they filed a petition for recount in the election in Superior Court. The petition, filed June 13, said the trio "hereby contest the election of Susan Peterson, and the validity of the election." It sited ballot errors and questioned Peterson's residency.
Judge Yolanda Ciccone has ordered the recount to take place Wednesday at 10 a.m., and ordered the County Clerk or county Board of Elections to "investigate the issue of 'domicile' of Susan Peterson and provide a 'written' determination as to whether or not she is eligible to vote and run for local office."
Peterson has said that she's been living on Broad Street in Flemington since November, and has "complete confidence that our County Clerk managed the election properly."
Sallie Graziano may be reached at sgraziano@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SallieGraziano. Find NJ.com on Facebook.Fox Broadcasting is changing formations in the station group lineup with the aim of grabbing as many pigskin dollars as possible.
Fox is set to yank Tribune Media’s Fox affiliation KCPQ-TV (Fox 13) in Seattle, The Post has learned.
Seattle is the home of the Super Bowl champion Seahawks, which translates into big ratings in its hometown market.
Currently, Tribune’s Fox affiliation allows it to capitalize on the big NFL viewership numbers in negotiations with distributors such as cable companies. Tribune then kicks back a portion of those carriage fees to Fox.
Broadcasters, however, have been pressing their affiliates for larger kickbacks; if not, they risk having their lucrative network affiliations yanked, so the network can capture all of the revenue.
Just last month, LIN Media’s WISH-8 lost its CBS affiliation in Indianapolis after bosses there balked at paying an increasing portion of its carriage fees back to the network mother ship.
The loss of the CBS affiliation took down the valuation of the station by as much as $100 million, according to the Indianapolis Star. It also held up LIN Media’s $1.6 billion merger with Media General. Other stations soon fell into line.
Tribune Media, formerly Tribune Co., filed paperwork Monday in preparation to trade on a new stock exchange, as yet unnamed, following the spinoff of its newspaper division.
Tribune Media is run by former Fox Entertainment chairman Peter Liguori, who has been tasked with reviving its WGN superstation since taking over in January 2013.
The change in ownership of the Seattle station needs to be formally approved by the Federal Communications Commission, according to two sources, who confirmed the Seattle station switch.
Tribune won’t be left empty-handed, said one person familiar with conversations. Tribune will receive a MyNetwork affiliation in Chicago in exchange for its Seattle station.
However, one person advised that talks about the swap were continuing and that Tribune hadn’t completely signed off on the transaction. MyNetwork TV is owned by Fox, which in turn is owned by 21st Century Fox, run by Chase Carey.
Tribune also owns a “CW” affiliated station in the Chicago market.
Fox Television Stations, run by Jack Abernethy, houses 28 stations in 18 markets, which, according to Fox’s website, covers 37.28 percent of US TV households. They include six duopolies in the top 10 markets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Washington, DC, and Houston — as well as duopolies in Minneapolis, Phoenix and Orlando.
Reps for Fox and Tribune Media declined comment.
Fox paid the NFL $1.1 billion per year for rights through 2022 and has been working hard to make up that revenue via advertising and affiliate fees.The only bobblehead doll the Columbus Cottonmouths sell is of goalie Shannon Szabados, the two-time Canadian Olympic gold medallist. After all, she's the only woman playing in a North American men's professional hockey league.
Columbus Cottonmouths' goalie Shannon Szabados is the only woman playing in a men's hockey pro league in North America. (Sara Giles/Columbus Cottonmouths) After playing on the Canadian teams that won gold in Vancouver in 2010 and Sochi in 2014, the 28-year-old from Edmonton knows how to play with the whole world watching, her coach Jerome Bechard tells the CBC's Paul Hunter. SochiBechard
The Cottonmouths, based in Columbus, Georgia, look likely to make the Southern Professional Hockey League playoffs.
Szabados was the first star in her team's 4-1 victory against the Knoxville Ice Bears on Sunday. She stopped 31 of 32 shots.
Above are video excerpts from Hunter's interview with Szabados. And below, Hunter's report on CBC-TV's The National, Feb. 16.
* 30,000 people expected to seek shelter - U.S. officials
* Authorities rush to rescue marooned residents
* Flooding expected to peak Wednesday or Thursday in Houston
* Trump to visit Texas on Tuesday
By Marianna Parraga and Ernest Scheyder
HOUSTON, Aug 28 (Reuters) - Floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey are likely to rise as more torrential rain pounds the U.S. Gulf Coast, where at least eight people have already been killed in Texas and tens of thousands driven from their homes, officials said on Monday.
Thousands of National Guard troops, police officers, rescue workers and civilians raced in helicopters, boats and special high-water trucks to rescue the hundreds stranded in the catastrophic storm that has crippled Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city.
Harvey has already dumped more rain in the past few days than some affected areas normally see in a year.
The storm was the most powerful hurricane to strike Texas in more than 50 years when it hit land on Friday near Corpus Christi, 220 miles (354 km) southwest of Houston.
The worst is far from over because the slow-moving storm will continue to dump rain over the next few days in an area hit by "unprecedented" flooding, the National Weather Service said.
"Additional heavy rainfall overnight is expected to worsen the flood situation in southeastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana," the National Hurricane Center said.
Forecasts show that some spots in and around Houston could see an additional 12 inches (30 cm) of rain on Tuesday, bringing the total rainfall from Harvey to about 50 inches (127 cm) in parts of the city's metro area.
U.S. President Donald Trump plans to go to Texas on Tuesday to survey the damage and may also visit Louisiana, where the storm is now dumping rain.
Trump, facing the biggest U.S. natural disaster since he took office in January, has signed disaster proclamations for Texas and Louisiana, triggering federal relief efforts.
Among the most recent fatalities from the storm was a family that included two adults and four children who were believed to have drowned after the van they were in was swept away by floodwaters in Houston, authorities said on Monday.
In scenes evoking the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, police and Coast Guard teams have each rescued more than 3,000 people, plucking many from rooftops by helicopter, as they urged the hundreds more believed to be marooned in flooded houses to hang towels or sheets outside to alert rescuers.
Regina Costilla, 48, said she and her 16-year-old son had been rescued from their home by a good Samaritan with a boat. She worried until she was reunited with her husband and dog, who had been left behind because they did not fit into the boat.
"I'm not complaining, we're alive," she said.
Schools and office buildings were closed throughout the metropolitan area, home to 6.8 million people, as chest-high water filled some neighborhoods in the low-lying city.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency director Brock Long estimated that 30,000 people would eventually be housed temporarily in shelters.
"A DIFFERENT NORMAL"
Both of Houston's major airports were shut, along with most major highways, rail lines and a hospital, where patients were evacuated over the weekend. More than a quarter of a million customers in the region were without power by Monday evening, utilities said.
The Brazos River was forecast to crest at a record high in the next two days about 30 miles (50 kms) southwest of Houston, forcing the mandatory evacuation of about 50,000 people in Fort Bend County, where officials described the predicted deluge as the worst in at least eight centuries.
Rising river and reservoir levels also forced evacuations in the counties of Brazoria and Galveston, near Houston.
As stunned families surveyed destroyed homes and roads flooded or clogged with debris, Texas Governor Greg Abbott warned Houstonians to brace for a long recovery.
"We need to recognize this is going to be a new and different normal for this entire region," Abbott said.
Harvey's center was in the Gulf of Mexico about 105 miles (170 km) south of Houston and forecast to arc slowly toward the city through Wednesday, adding more rain to areas already inundated.
The storm was expected to linger over Texas' Gulf Coast for the next few days, dropping another 10 to 20 inches (25 to 50 cm) of rain, with threats of flooding extending into Louisiana.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said on Monday it was releasing water from the nearby Addicks and Barker reservoirs into Buffalo Bayou, Houston's primary body of water, to prevent dangerous buildups.
In Rockport, National Guard troops distributed water to residents as utility crews worked to restore power, amid reports of sporadic looting.
Resident Savannah White, 20, welcomed the president's visit because she said Houston needed help.
"I'm glad to see him coming down here because it's in such bad condition," White said. "Pretty much destroyed, there's nothing left standing."
Houston did not order an evacuation due to concerns about putting its 2.3 million residents on the street, causing chaos on the roads that could be more deadly than the storm, Mayor Sylvester Turner said.
Gasoline futures hit their highest in two years as Harvey knocked out about 13 percent of total U.S. refining capacity, based on company reports and Reuters estimates.
The United States' second-largest refinery, in Baytown, was shut down, and the largest refinery, in Port Arthur, was expected to make a final decision on shutdown on Tuesday.
The floods could destroy as much as $20 billion in insured property, making the storm one of the costliest in history for U.S. insurers, Wall Street analysts say.
(Additional reporting by Peter Henderson, Mica Rosenberg, Erwin Seba, Nick Oxford and Ruthy Munoz in Houston, Andy Sullivan in Rockport, Texas and Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by Scott Malone, Dan Whitcomb and Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Tom Brown, Clarence Fernandez and Paul Tait)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.by Mike Goldin
This article is the sequel to Just Enough Bitcoin For Ethereum. Check that out first if you haven’t already. All the background you need (and neither more nor less!) to begin understanding Ethereum is there.
Remember the first time you began using objects in a programming language? Or made your first attempt at functional programming? Remember how badly it spun your head around on a conceptual level before becoming intuitive? Developing blockchain orientation is much like developing object and functional orientations: initially disorienting, but eventually obvious. In part one of this series we learned how blockchains work in general by figuring out the Bitcoin blockchain. In this article we’ll begin reasoning about the Ethereum blockchain to start developing your blockchain orientation. Nurturing an intuition for how to structure blockchain interactions will pay dividends for a long time to come!
To get started, read the three sections in the Ethereum white paper on accounts, transactions and messages. Read the rest as well if you like, but if you read Just Enough Bitcoin For Ethereum then you already understand the basic technical underpinnings. Just like when you read the Bitcoin white paper, don’t sweat it if something doesn’t make sense on your first read-through. We’ll get there.By:
02/06/2014
We’re allowed to say what we want. The flip side of this most unalienable of rights is that we’re also entitled to get offended by anything we want. And, it just so happens that we exercise this entitlement often. Why? Because “words will never harm me” is the most horrible lie we’re all told as children. Words hurt—sometimes worse than gunshot wounds or the latest Hoya loss. Words jostle our fragile human sensibilities, leaving us with indelible scars from the verbal wars we wage with one another.
Society has long since acknowledged this awful truth. To counter it, without broaching the most holy protections of the first amendment, we as a whole have created a vast network of catch-all’s, circumlocutions, and euphemisms called political correctness, which lets us talk about the tricky things in life without offending those around us. Political correctness doesn’t, at least insofar as I understand it, extend to obscenities, slurs, and the like. There’s no sensitive alternative to, say, the n-word, because the word itself is only used for the express purpose to offend. (Unless, of course, you’re Lil Wayne and you can’t rhyme anything else.) What political correctness is meant to do, rather, is keep us away from the inadvertent offensiveness of some of the more indelicate expressions of the English language.
This endeavor, then, was born of noble intentions. But when taken too far, as it often is on this very campus, political correctness poses a grave intellectual danger. Libertarians and Leftists alike will tell you that political correctness is George Orwell’s newspeak realized—a successor to unadulterated language that limits individual expression for the ostensible reason of curbing discrimination. Frankly, comparing modern political correctness to 1984 is a little extreme, but the fact remains that our collective hypersensitivity to anything and everything that might be construed as offensive creates a culture of apprehension and awkwardness instead of empathy, as was intended.
Indeed, political correctness has morphed into an ungainly, burdensome beast. It’s left us with a knee-jerk assumption of malice or ignorance whenever someone opts for “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” This sorry state of affairs is not just unhealthy—it’s also not working.
A few months ago, I found myself in the cramped Voice office in the wee hours of the morning, nearly tearing my hair out as my editors and I sought to affix a headline to a mental health feature. Some of us wanted to explore an “unseen illness” motif, but others among us raised concerns that such a title would be ableist (read: discriminatory to the blind, er, visually impaired). So what did we settle on? “Not Crazy, A Little Unwell” – a Matchbox 20 reference, which, while awesome in it’s own right, represents a significant departure from what we were really trying to say: that the Georgetown community is blind to some of the realities of mental illness.
My experience with political correctness, mild as it may be, is a solitary drop in the bucket. A further instance of this hypersensitivity rearing its swollen head can be seen in a recent exchange between GU Fossil Free and the Black Student Alliance, in which the latter was offended by the former’s “cultural appropriation” of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” refrain.
What we have, then, is a trend, wherein a desire to make everybody happy inhibits expression and expediency. Your professor has to say “African-Americans” instead of “blacks” even though he or she wants to get at the racially-charged heart of identity politics. I’m obligated to write with pangender-inclusive pronouns, or even some Spivak creation like “xe” that’s totally not a real word and makes E. B. White turn over in his grave, when all I want to do is preserve the flow of my little paragraph.
The proponent of political correctness will rightfully respond that I seem to be privileging expression and expedience over an important linguistic endeavor to make the world a more just place. I guess I am. Does that make me an insensitive person? Nope.
Individual expression—sometimes coarse but always uncontained—is foundational to liberty and democracy. Language, in all its myriad forms, has an infinite capacity to offend. “Vertically challenged” will inevitably become the “dwarf” or “midget” of its day—the kind of thing that will make your grandchildren wince just like you do when Grandpa Joe the WWII vet tosses around words like “chink” and “jap.”
The road to complete equality or neutrality of language is paved with good intentions, but it’s destined never to be completed because words are more powerful and more deadly than any stick or stone ever was. We have to shoulder this admittedly scary burden, as it’s the only thing keeping our speech from going the way of unlimited breadsticks at Olive Garden.North Carolina's Senate on Wednesday voted against repeal of a law that restricts transgender restroom access and has put the state at the center of national debate over lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights.
The legislation to repeal the law, known as House Bill 2 (HB2), was defeated by a vote of 32-16, leaving the bathroom restrictions in place statewide.
The Republican-dominated state Senate then adjourned without voting on a second, related provision that would have temporarily banned cities from affirming transgender bathroom rights. The state's House of Representatives, also controlled by Republicans, voted earlier in the day to adjourn.
Legislators had called a special session to consider scrapping the law, which passed in March and made North Carolina the first state to bar transgender people from using public restrooms that match their gender identity. Supporters of the law cited traditional values and a need for public safety while opponents called it mean-spirited and unnecessary.
The national backlash was swift and fierce, leading to boycotts that have been blamed for millions of dollars in economic losses for the state, as events, such as the National Basketball Association's 2017 All-Star Game, were moved out of North Carolina.
The pushback was widely cited as the reason Republican Governor Pat McCrory lost his re-election bid in November to Democrat Roy Cooper, who called for the repeal of the law.
Cooper had said he reached a deal with state Republicans to repeal the law. But Republicans eventually proposed pairing the repeal with a months-long "cooling-off period," or moratorium, in which local jurisdictions would be banned from enacting their own ordinances regulating public bathrooms, showers or changing facilities.
The moratorium died without the Senate taking any action.
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HB 2 was enacted largely in response to a local measure in Charlotte that protected the rights of transgender people to use public bathrooms of their choice.
The Charlotte City Council on Monday repealed its ordinance as a prelude to the state repealing HB 2. (Writing by Letitia Stein and Daniel Trotta, additional reporting by David Ingram; editing by Bill Trott, Tom Brown and G Crosse)Status Update And Possible Sprint
August 23, 2010 at 2:47 am
BMesh is nearing completion. I’m currently doing another merge, and I’m aiming to do an intense testing sprint in the near future. My life is rather hectic at the moment, but hopefully I will get bmesh production-ready as soon as possible.
I’m currently in northern Utah for health tests. I’m planning to head back to northern California (Sacramento) in a few weeks. If anyone knows of competent blender modelers in travel distance of Sacramento, I’d appreciate very much if they could leaves comments or email me so I can start making contacts (don’t post email addresses though).
I’m not sure of an exact time frame for completion (some unpredictable things came up) but hopefully bmesh can be merged into trunk sooner rather then later.
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Entry filed under: Uncategorized.Jan 25, 2015; Orlando, FL, USA; Indiana Pacers forward Paul George (13) smiles from the bench against the Orlando Magic during the second half at Amway Center. Indiana Pacers defeated the Orlando Magic 106-99. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
If you were planning on getting emotional for Saturday’s game and the impending return of Paul George, you can save your feels for another day.
Paul George had originally set March 14th’s game against the Boston Celtics as the target date of for his return from his horrific leg injury, but according to Indiana Pacers coach Frank Vogel that is getting pushed back. Rumors had picked up that Paul George was going to return on Saturday as Indiana’s game with the Celtics was moved to NBA TV, but that may have more to do with the Pacers moving into the 7th seed of the Eastern Conference standings than anything else.
The Indy Star’s Candace Buckner said Vogel was short with reporters on specifics, only saying when it gets closer he’ll let the media know.
Vogel reaching ’13 level snippiness (when Granger was out): “There’s no timetable 4 Paul George. When he gets close we’ll let u guys kno. — Candace Buckner (@CandaceDBuckner) March 11, 2015
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Horizon oil spill starkly illustrates, controlling extraction from almost a mile below the sea surface is incredibly difficult and dangerous.
The era of "easy" oil is over. As Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, recommends for the world, "we should not cling to crude down to the last drop - we should leave oil before it leaves us."
Fortunately there are alternatives. Much of the U.S. oil consumption of nearly 20 million barrels a day goes to run vehicles, the same vehicles that get city commuters stuck in traffic for a cumulative 4.2 billion hours a year, costing society some $87 billion, according to the Texas Transportation Institute. To cut dependence on oil, transportation options can be expanded beyond single-passenger vehicles to bus rapid transit, light rail, high speed rail, and space for bicycles and pedestrians.
Even though the U.S automobile fleet shrank by 4 million vehicles last year, cars will not disappear completely any time soon. However, the fleet can be cleaned up by marrying the electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles now starting to come to market to renewably-produced electricity. The U.S. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimates that the current electrical infrastructure could power over 80 percent of the U.S. car fleet, relying largely on off-peak electricity as cars are charged at night. Upgrading to a stronger, smarter, and interconnected national grid that taps into the country's enormous wind, solar, and geothermal resources completes the transition.
While oil resources are limited, wind resources are abundant and inexhaustible. A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that the world's top carbon emitters have enough wind energy potential to meet their current electricity needs many times over. The United States' total wind potential is estimated at 22 times current electricity use. For China the wind resource potential is 15 times greater than the country's current electricity consumption, and for Russia, it is a staggering 170 times higher.
Looking at offshore wind resources alone, the U.S. potential is 4 times current electricity use. For Canada, offshore wind is a whopping 39 times greater. (See full data set.)
To date, almost all the offshore wind action has been in Europe, but that may soon be changing. China and Japan have just begun developing offshore wind. With the recent approval of the Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, along with proposals by Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and other states, the United States may join the game as well.
Unlike oil, wind is widely-distributed and clean; it does not spill or disrupt climate. It is also becoming increasingly cheap. With wind, we have a well that will not run dry.
This piece was written by my colleague Janet Larsen at the Earth Policy Institute. Data and additional resources available at www.earthpolicy.org
Read more about offshore wind:
Breaking: US Approves First Offshore Wind Farm
Offshore Wind Farms to Power 1/5th of Europe by 2030
New Report: Offshore Wind Could Power Entire U.S.Report reveals 2 of the 4 terrorists eliminated while placing explosive on border Sunday night are sons of terrorist from Majdal Shams.
Two of the four Arab terrorists who were eliminated by the IDF on Sunday night as they placed an explosive on the Golan Heights border with Syria are the sons of an Israeli Druze terrorist, according to a new report.
The Hebrew-language Channel 10 reports that it learned two of the terrorists were the sons of Walid Mahmoud from the Druze village of Majdal Shams, one of several Druze towns in the Golan that have retained loyalty to Syria.
Mahmoud was a security prisoner in Israel after having been jailed for terrorist activity.
Upon being released in the 1980s he fled to Syria, where he took up residence in the Syrian Druze village Hadar, located adjacent to the border with Israel.
The report indicated that a mourning tent will be set up in the Israeli Druze village of Majdal Shams for the two Arab terrorists, as the family still remaining in the town will mourn their deaths.
Regarding the attack which occurred last night around 9:30 p.m., a senior officer in the IDF said that it is still not clear if the four-man terror cell was affiliated with an official terrorist organization, and if so which group they belonged to.
The source added that it isn't clear either whether they launched the attack from Israeli territory to the east of the security barrier, or from a Syrian military post located adjacent to Majdal Shams on Syrian territory.
Highlighting the problematic nature of Majdal Shams's loyalty to Syria was an incident last month, in which a Druze resident of the town was arrested for spying against Israel for the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Unlike most other Israeli Druze, who are loyal to the State of Israel and largely serve in the IDF, many Druze residents of the Golan maintain loyalty to the Syrian regime.froyotech has decided to remove corsa from its starting roster with immediate effect, with Freestate taking his place, ninjanick from Team SoloUber joining the team to play medic, and former starter Decimate being released from the roster.
This is only the latest in a series of changes for the team since its surprising elimination at the end of the Season 20 playoffs, after which many of its players stepped down. For Season 21, the team picked up the remnants of former Invite team Strawberry Mangoes to compete in the highest division once again. The team also initially planned to play with veteran Decimate, but he soon stepped down due to schedule conflicts and was replaced by clockwork.
The season itself has also seen a lot of adjustments and role changes. Freestate, normally known for his scout play, has been playing medic with Decimate and then clockwork in the lineup. The team has also tried out b4nny swapped from pocket to scout, with corsa as roamer and paddie on pocket, finding early success in the season. However, the three switched back to their normal roles after a close loss to EVL Gaming in Week 3. The current lineup was not working well enough, however, leading to the latest changes.
ninjanick is joining froyotech from Team SoloUber (picture by Austen "tagg" Wade)
As part of this recent shift, Freestate will be moving back to his more familiar role of scout, a role which he has been noted for since his Invite debut in Season 18 as part of Nice Nice Nice. ninjanick, meanwhile, brings significant medic experience to the team, making his Invite debut in Season 13 as part of Vector Gaming. While he has played for team rival Team SoloUber since Season 17 (then known as Street Hoops eSports), he did notably play medic for froyotech during GXL 2015, helping them capture their last title before their elimination in the Season 20 playoffs by none other than Team SoloUber and subsequent breakup.
We have reached out to the team for comment and will update the article as we find out more.
With the recent slew of changes, froyotech's lineup has become:Over the last five years they have won over half their away series and have not been beaten at home. It is a stark contrast to what went before
A strong home record is not to be sniffed at Gareth Copley / © Getty Images
A last-gasp victory and after all the turbulence of ten days of Test cricket the result in the end has been somewhat predictable. For the sixth season in a row Pakistan will end up unbeaten in the desert. It has become such a state of affairs that even the local fan base has become used to it - almost taking it for granted. It bears repeating: there's nothing wrong with being a bully at home. Perhaps being dominant at home is worth being satisfied about, rather than being something worth denigrating as somehow unworthy, somehow Indian even.
One of the more fascinating things to come out of this series - against England, and so bound to be high-profile - is how the results affect so much and yet so little: you can change your form, your reputation, your performances, but the narrative? That takes more than mere competence.
In the weeks before the series started, most headlines inevitably revolved around Mohammad Amir (him of zero first-class matches in five years) not being back in the team immediately after his ban was lifted. The rest focused on Saeed Ajmal and Abdur Rehman - neither of whom had played a Test match in the year prior to the team selection for this series - being excluded from the squad. It almost seemed as if Pakistani cricket might as well have been in stasis during their time between the last home series against England and this one, rather than having gone through a downfall and a revival, as was actually the case. Pakistan went from a spin-led juggernaut to a team struggling without identity, which eventually rebounded thanks to domestic veterans and batsmen playing beyond their own expectations.
Of course, that is a better alternative to, say, the Australian perspective. For instance, the conversations at the start of the Australian season last year seemed to indicate there had been a memory wipe regarding Australia's tour to the Emirates. While it has become a cliché to lampoon what happens in the Channel Nine commentary box, it was still surprising that a discussion there on cricket's fastest centuries failed to mention Misbah-ul-Haq's effort barely a month prior, against their own lot. At least for England, what happens against them still counts as actual cricket, even if it takes place far from their shores.
Is it really the team's fault that their board has neither the clout nor the vision to give them the sort of opportunities their record deserves? Are they to blame for not touring any of the big three in this period, or is it the fault of their board, or of the condescending triopoly that rules cricket right now?
Pakistan exist as the pariah of the cricket world, and even when they enter the mainstream, they seem to do so temporarily. To be fair, it's not as if Pakistan and the builders of their narrative play a particularly positive role in changing this state of affairs.
That doesn't mean their achievements should be played down, particularly at home. Pakistan have gone through a quiet, televised revolution. The return of Younis Khan, the appointment of Misbah, and their relocation to the UAE came at perhaps the lowest point in modern Pakistan's Test history.
In the previous 47 months they played nine Test series and won none - the longest winless run in their history. No batsman but Younis Khan had averaged over 45, no bowler had averaged under 25. The glimmers of hope - a new-ball pair who could rule the world, a captain who could bring stability - had been removed, Eeyore might have been deemed too optimistic in Pakistan at the time.
Five years later they hold the longest unbeaten home run in Test cricket. That too has to be taken into context. Their fortunes till then had been rather different to those of their Asian brethren. At the start of this run by Pakistan, Sri Lanka had lost two of their previous 19 home series; India had lost two of their previous 34 series - one each to Australia and South Africa. Pakistan, meanwhile, had lost nearly as many Test series (nine) as they had won (eight) at home over the previous 15 years, losing to six different Test nations. If you had told Pakistani fans that five years from then they would all be complaining about being dominant at home, they'd have called you a madman - and then probably accepted the notion, since satisfaction has never been part of their dictionary; they only feel at home in elation or misery.
Yet Pakistan's away record is different from what popular perception might say it is too. They have won half (five) of their away series in this period, or as many as they had won in the 11 years prior to the start of this run.
This Pakistan team has made Test cricket interesting again for its fans © AFP
Is it really the team's fault that their board has neither the clout nor the vision to give them the sort of opportunities their record deserves? Are they to blame for not touring any of the big three in this period, or is it the fault of their board, or of the condescending triopoly that rules cricket right now? Is it their fault that every time the Test team starts to get into their groove, they have to face months on end without a single Test match?
Perhaps their greatest achievement, despite what the crowd attendance in the Emirates might argue, has been to do with interest in the longest format. Test cricket was slowly becoming an irrelevance in Pakistan - perhaps best illustrated by them going a calendar year, 2008, without playing a single Test. Five years of success later, the TV network broadcasting the Pakistan-England series can proudly call the ratings from the Test series record-breaking. It's amazing what a winning team can do.
But all good things must come to an end. In the most likely scenario of there being no Tests in the India series, which is in any case unlikely to take place, Pakistan will go at least seven months without a Test. Misbah might be gone by then; Younis' Indian summer will almost certainly be over. The players who are around will either be more in tune with the shorter formats, or (in the case of the Test specialists) out of tune with the international game. The Sharjah Test might be our last look at an under-heralded team.
So appreciate them while you can, because a decade from now, a bunch of hipster writers certainly will. After all, nothing pleases their narrative as much as a Pakistani team from days gone by.
Hassan Cheema is a sports journalist, writer and commentator, and co-hosts the online cricket show Pace is Pace Yaar. @mediagag
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.(photo by Brian Murphy)
Before the start of each season, I like to put my money where my mouth is and do my best to forecast what’s in store for the Washington Redskins. Sometimes I look like a genius (Albert Haynesworth equals disappointment). Other times … not so much. (Carlos Rogers setting a career high in interceptions? Wow. Let’s move on.)
But the point of this exercise is to take a few swings for the fences. You know, go big or go home. Or something. With that in mind, I present to you my 10 (semi-) bold predictions for the 2011 season.
1. Rex Grossman has exactly four games to show what he’s got.
The Redskins first four games are against the New York Giants (decimated by injuries), Arizona Cardinals (rebuilding for the 24th straight year), at the Dallas Cowboys (no offensive line and a defense in transition) and at the St. Louis Rams (dangerous, but still unproven).
Grossman needs to have Washington at least 2-2 heading into the bye week or he might find himself riding the bench as if his name was Donovan McNabb. That’s because the Redskins come out of the bye week against Philadelphia (never a fun game) and then play four games in a row against beatable opponents — Carolina, Buffalo, San Francisco and Miami.
Because their December schedule is so brutal, the Redskins need to win early and often this season if there’s any chance of … well … never mind.
Let’s just say Grossman needs to come out of the gate fast and furious or John Beck will be back in our lives in no time.
2. The Tim Hightower trade makes it all better.
For years, it was automatically assumed that if the Redskins made a trade, they got the short end of the stick. Even when the acquired legitimate talent, like, for example, running back Clinton Portis from Denver, it came at the expense of Pro Bowl cornerback Champ Bailey and a second-round draft pick.
Other times, they gave up high draft picks for players like McNabb, Brandon Lloyd, T.J. Duckett (and so on) and got nothing but a swift kick in the beanbag in return. But this offseason has been different.
It started with a trade that brought receiver Jabar Gaffney to Washington from Denver for seldom used Jeremy Jarmon, who was later cut by the Broncos.*
*Suck it Denver!
Then the Redskins somehow convinced Arizona to trade away Hightower for 35-year-old Vonnie Holiday, who is a nice guy, but wasn’t going to make the 53-man roster. The trade was so lopsided that my initial reaction was that Capitals general manager George McPhee was somehow involved.
If Hightower is half as good in the regular season as he’s been in the preseason, the ‘Skins fans will be smiling about this acquisition for a long, long time.
3. The line is no longer offensive.
The starting offensive line for Week 1 of the 2010 season was Trent Williams, Derrick Dockery, Casey Rabach, Artis Hicks and Jammal Brown.
In other words, two tackles and three duds.
Mercifully, the three interior linemen are someone else’s problem now and Shanahan has turned to 26-year-old Kory Lichtensteiger, 28-year-old Will Montgomery and 28-year-old Chris Chester.
Lichtensteiger, a former fourth-round draft pick by the Broncos, started 14 games last season, while Montgomery, the strongest Redskin on the roster, started six games in 2010. Both showed flashes of promise and if Chester can prove to be an upgrade over Hicks, who never really worked in Washington, the offensive line could very well be the best in the NFC East.
Of course, there’s absolutely no depth if anyone gets injured, but that’s a topic for another day.
4. The ground game is back in business.
Shanahan has 24 years of experience coaching in the NFL. In 17 of those seasons, his team’s have finished in the top 10 in the league in rushing.
Statistically speaking, the Redskins are basically a lock to make huge strides after ranking 30th in 2010 just because Shanahan is still running the show.
Add in Hightower (not to mention rookie Roy Helu and last year’s workhorse Ryan Torain) and the revamped offensive line and I feel comfortable predicting big things for the rushing attack in 2011.
5. LaRon Landry is the modern day Bo Jackson.
No, he’s not going to become a two-sport star by playing for the Kansas City Royals in the offseason. I see similarities between Jackson and Landry in a different way – and if I’m being honest, it’s not a good thing.
Jackson was so big and muscular, that there really was no such thing as a minor injury. And once he got nicked up, Jackson had trouble with nagging little injuries that prevented him from ever truly reaching his potential.
As often as Landry has been sidelined since he came to Washington … let’s just say I hope I’m wrong about this one.
6. Shayne Graham might be the team’s special team MVP.
Redskins kicker Graham Gano was the least accurate kicker in football in 2010. That’s what happens when you miss 11 of 35 attempts in a season.
In related news, the front office brought in Graham, the third most accurate kicker today, to push the 24-year-old this offseason. Well, it worked.
Gano converted all 10 of his attempts in the preseason and has everyone involved feeling much more confident. So even though Graham looked awful in his single outing in Washington, his signing could definitely have a lasting effect for the burgundy and gold.
7. Rocky McIntosh is the weak link on defense.
The stats would have you believe that McIntosh is a stud on the Redskins defense — with his 378 tackles over the last four seasons (which comes out to 94 tackles a season).
The problem is, games aren’t played on paper.
Too often, McIntosh rushes in for a would-be tackle, only to end up on his backside while the ball carrier picks up another five or 10 yards. The other Redskins defender opposing teams love to target was safety Kareem Moore, who was also known for sloppy form and taking bad angles.
Injuries and the addition of safety Oshiomogho Atogwe limits the damage Moore can do this season, so that leaves just McIntosh.
8. President Barack Obama will attend a Redskins game in 2011.
The Redskins already announced Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, will serve as an honorary captain for the season opener Sept. 11. Is it a stretch to believe that Obama, a notoriously diehard sports fan, will also make a cameo at FedEx Field Sunday?
Redskins owner Daniel Snyder has gotten everyone from Tom Cruise to LeBron James to take in a Redskins game, so I’m convinced he can find a way to somehow convince the leader of the free world to sneak away from his day job for a few hours to take in the burgundy and gold. Besides, the president can bypass the awful traffic gameday patrons suffer through simply by utilizing Andrews Air Force Base, which is right up the road from Raljon.
I mean, if The Danny can’t get Obama to attend a Redskins game on Sept. 11th in the name of patriotism, then there’s something wrong with this picture. I mean, the guy found time to take in a Mystics game. For that reason alone, I don’t think it should be a tough sell to get him to show up for the biggest ticket in town.
9. Vinny Cerrato ruined Kevin Barnes.
Okay, not really. But the fact that Cerrato has openly admitted he could have sent the third-round pick used on Barnes in 2009 to Kansas City for stud running back Jamaal Charles makes me incredibly sad. Even with the addition of Hightower, it’s tough for me to not hold it against Barnes that he’s here instead of a 24-year-old who rushed for more than 1,400 yards last year.
10. This year will be different. No really.
Each of the last two seasons the Redskins have had the oldest team in football. Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore. With an average age of 27, a youth movement has finally made its way to Redskins Park and ‘Skins fans finally have a reason for optimism.
Look at it this way — even if the Redskins go 6-10 for a second-straight season, they’ll do so with a much younger roster and with a roster comprised primarily of players Shanahan and friends specifically targeted for this system.
I would even argue that the Redskins have improved at every single position across the board over the last year. The only area even up for debate is quarterback, but McNabb was so pitiful last season that even a mediocre season by the Grossman/Beck combo would be an upgrade.
So sit back and enjoy the ride, ‘Skins fans. For the first time in recent history, the only storyline in Washington takes place on the field. That alone is enough to bring tears of joy to even the most pessimistic of fans.
And if all else fails, at least Ben’s Chili Bowl is now available at FedEx Field.Hyundai The 2013 Hyundai Accent is a low-price car that offers amenities once only found in luxury vehicles.
Pickup trucks are being sold with heated steering wheels and snakeskin leather accented interiors. Middle-of-the-road cars like the Ford Fusion come with sport-stitched leather-trimmed 10-way power seats. Even Kia, which has won awards for being the automaker brand with the lowest cost of ownership, has a line of “luxury” models in the works. All of which might make car shoppers wonder: What does “luxury” mean today?
A luxury vehicle was once fairly easy to define. Compared to the average ho-hum vehicle on the market, a luxury car generally offered far better performance on the road and a far fancier and more comfortable interior. It also came with a far more expensive price tag.
But at a time when pickup trucks—once considered the quintessential no-frills utility vehicle—can top $50,000, and when cars starting at under $20,000 can be equipped with bells and whistles normally only seen in the high-end market, it’s time to redefine what a “luxury” automobile is and is not.
(MORE: 7 As Seen on TV Productions That Actually Work)
Over the years, automakers have discovered that many consumers like and will pay good money for luxury touches, even when it comes to vehicles that seem to be the polar opposites of staid, classically luxurious cars from Mercedes, Cadillac, and Audi.
Last year, Hyundai, once considered a “cheap” brand in every sense of the word, basically stopped selling the bare-bones version of its lowest-price model, the Accent. It said that because the vast majority of drivers didn’t want the base model priced below $13,000, the cheapest MSRP for the Accent essential topped $14,000. According to USA Today, the 2013 Accent will start at over $15K and include several features that used to be options as standard, such as a USB port, heated side mirrors, and remoteless key entry.
Some of Hyundai’s success in the marketplace can be attributed to the risks it took in recent years, specifically the launch of two luxury sedans—with premium price tags to match—the Equus and Genesis. Now Kia, which has usually been considered the chintzier of the two major Korean automakers, is also expected to roll out a premium luxury sedan, the K9, later this year.
(MORE: Hyundai, the Automaker with a Problem Most Businesses Would Envy)
It’s not just sedans that are leaning toward luxury. While the number of light trucks sold has been shrinking slightly—owed, to some extent to the fact that pickups have such long lives—the Detroit News reports that automakers are producing pickups with more and more luxury features, including heated steering wheels, heated seats (front and rear), and, perhaps, 8-inch touchscreen infotainment hubs amid an interior overflowing with fancy leather and wood-grain accents.
The luxury pickup truck—which, not long ago would have been an oxymoron—is gaining in popularity among buyers. In 2010, 22% of heavy-duty Ram pickup trucks sold for $50,000 or more. Last year, that figure increased to 29%.
The auto insider publication WardsAuto, meanwhile, notes that the rise of luxury features in mid-level cars such as the Honda Accord, Hyundai Elantra, and Ford Fusion has caused certain automakers to go to new lengths to offer luxury and exclusivity—and to justify their high MSRPs. Sometimes, automaker efforts to set themselves apart can seem silly. No matter how pretty the appearance, do you really want to pay top dollar because the decorative wood inside the Fisker Karma is 300-year-old white oak retrieved from the bottom of Lake Michigan?
(MORE: Rocket Man: Elon Musk Is Getting Back in the Space Game)
Such a material doesn’t perform better than others. It doesn’t necessarily look better than others either. Then why would a consumer want it, and be willing to pay extra for it?
In the same way that automakers want to set themselves apart from the pack, a certain breed of consumers wants to do the same. Car features that at least give the appearance of being exclusive, one-of-a-kind, and handcrafted help accomplish that goal. Whether or not these features are actually superior doesn’t seem to matter. Pat Murray, of the brand consulting and product development firm Murray Design, did his best to explain why some consumers are so attracted to luxury, without making them seem foolish or shallow:
“Luxury is very self-centered. It’s hard to describe it that way because it sounds like a negative trait, but it’s a positive trait,” Murray says. “Luxury is all about me.”
I’m not sure if people see self-centeredness as a positive trait. But the makers of luxury automobiles probably do.
Brad Tuttle is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @bradrtuttle. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.
MORE: Once-Struggling Cars That Are Suddenly Hot SellersMattermost connectors for Tuleap Scrum reports and Git now available
Tuleap Agile & Libre Blocked Unblock Follow Following Feb 24, 2017
As you should know Mattermost is an instant messaging service, an Open source Slack-alternative. This software is useful to increase communication inside a company for all its members. This is why the number of company using instant messaging services is gradually increasing.
To facilitate discussions and effective collaborative work, developers must have all information needed within the same platform. To reach this goal, we developed a new set of plugins to link Mattermost with Tuleap.
Mattermost connector for Tuleap Git
Stay informed about new Git pushes in Tuleap from your Mattermost
This connector allows to notify some Mattermost channels when a push occurred in a Tuleap Git repository. The message contains a direct link from your Mattermost to the Git commit in Tuleap web interface.
In a Tuleap Git repository, you can choose one or more bots to notify users in Mattermost after someone pushes a commit in this repository.
All channels linked to these bots will receive a message containing:
The name of the Tuleap user who pushes the commit
The description of the action
The name of the git repository with the direct link to the commit in Tuleap web interface
The branch where the push occurs
Mattermost connector for Tuleap Scrum
Get Scrum summary reports from Tuleap into your Mattermost
With this connector you get the ability to send a Scrum stand-up summary of your current planning. Using the Tuleap Scrum template, the modifications done during the daily stand-up meeting -user stories and bugs updates- are sent in the selected Mattermost channels. This way, that’s even more easy to follow your projects progress. You get a direct access to the cardwall and the burndown chart.
You can choose in your Scrum plannings administration which bots will send a stand-up report into Mattermost. You can define the daily stand-up end time. Tuleap will check with its system check event (every 30 minutes) all the reports that need to be sent, according to the stand-up end time.
This message contains:
A title with the planning and project name
The sprint name
The quick access to the sprint cardwall
Sprint Informations
List of update user stories and bugs:
The ID
The title
The status
The last modification date
The burndown chart image if available
Installation — Configuration
In a few words, as a Tuleap global platform administrator, you can define a set of bots that will be used to notify users. These bots are linked with your Mattermost tool by an incoming webhook url.
You can also define the bot name and avatar. Optionally, you can specify all the channels that will be notified when this bot will send a message to Mattermost. If you don’t define channels, the notification will be send to the default channel used to generate the incoming webhook url.
If you have any issue when installing or using the connectors, remember you can create a new thread to ask your question to the Tuleap Community members.
Stumble upon a bug
If you’ve found a new bug, you can login it in the related issue tracker with the Bot Mattermost category
Coming soon
We get one additional user story to do, aiming at being able to choose in which channels notifications are sent
Get Started Join Online MeetingsHELENA, Mont. (AP) — A Montana legislative panel has rejected a bill that called for a statewide vote on whether to bar transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms that don't match their gender at birth.
The House Judiciary Committee voted 11-7 against the bill on Monday. It is likely dead, though it could be revived if enough votes flip in the committee or if a majority of representatives blast it to the House floor.
READ MORE: LGBT Discrimination Is Bad for Business ]
Legislators who opposed the bill warned it would lead to humiliation and increased safety risks for transgender people. They added it would harm the state's economy because entertainers and tourists would see Montana as unwelcoming.
Supporters of the measure say it aims to protect young people and that they believe the economic consequences are exaggerated.
The bill sought to put the issue before voters in 2018.Each Time Arvind Kejriwal got slapped, democracy smiled.
At one point in time, my biggest complaint against Kejriwal was that he looked too approachable to be a leader. I thought he looked like a middle class man whose wife would direct him to fill water in the cooler. A harmless face with rimless glasses and a wardrobe of oversized cotton shirts and ill-fitting trousers is not what formidable looks like. His sandals caught my attention and I hoped he doesn’t go out dining wearing them. And then, he was slapped publicly. ‘Wow, everyone’s just going to walk all over him‘, I thought.
Kejriwal has been attacked on several occasions. He has been splattered with ink, slapped by protesters and ridiculed by the media.
The first public attack was in 2013 during an AAP press conference. A man claiming to be the General Secretary of BJP’s Ahmednagar Unit threw black paint at Kejriwal, Sisodia and other AAP leaders. He insisted he was an Anna Hazare follower and was upset with the AAP leader for his differences with Hazare. Similar events took place in 2014 while AAP was campaigning in Varanasi for Lok Sabha elections. While campaigning for Delhi elections, he was punched and heckled during a rally in Dakshinpuri. Four days later, an auto wallah slapped him when the leader was meeting crowds in Sultanipur.
There are compilation videos with background music available on YouTube and the comments let you know how much pleasure everyone is deriving watching this man get slapped in public.
But here’s the catch: People have slapped and thrown ink at the leader of a political party and the Chief Minister of Delhi and gone on to live their lives peacefully, without harassment or fear. In a democratic nation, isn’t this the greatest freedom of all? NO, I don’t endorse an act of violence against anyone, but I do stand firmly by the right to dissent. This is exactly how I’d like my elected representative to be: Approachable.
This is a party that rose from nothing. Those who call AK an opportunist for getting into politics would have called him a whiny loser had he not. Many of his critics think him foolish for taking on Mukesh Ambani and Modi, far more powerful people than himself. But that is exactly why he ought to be our leader. Not one other leader has had the guts to call out the corporate overlords. Today the atmosphere is such that journalists are being killed for opining differing views. In this day and age, we have a leader who has faced the brunt of the disgruntled and accepted it.
On the other hand, in other places: twelve students from Lucknow University were ARRESTED for holding up black flags to protest against the spending on a function that was attended by CM Adityanath. Three days later, their bail was denied.
In Karnataka, an auto rickshaw driver was ARRESTED for being the admin of a group which had a PM’s pic with obscene content shared in it.
Given the current scenario, I go back to Kejriwal and realize that I was foolish to hold him up to unnecessary standards.
Arvind Kejriwal has emphasized the importance of civil liberties and democratic transparency. I repeat: Democratic transparency. The manner in which demonetisation was carried out is in striking contrast with all the aforementioned values. Frankly, Kejriwal is not a feared politician because he isn’t surrounded by irrational gundas. If such a politician is considered too weak to run the country, then we have already handed it over to the most powerful.
Our leaders today are untouchable and all too powerful. When they are no longer vulnerable, they are no longer accountable. They cease to be leaders and become rulers. Kejriwal is a leader, not a ruler.In late 2009, when aftereffects of the Great Recession were alive and well and Atlanta seemed stuck on pause, nightclub king Michael Gidewon was spending millions of dollars to build glimmering shrines to bottle service, hip-hop, and glamour on Peachtree Street. Neighbors and nearby developers fought the proposal, arguing it'd mar the marvelous Midtown they'd worked to build over the years.
But Gidewon, who along with his siblings has launched local nightclubs that became posh hip-hop hangouts and helped to define the city's nightlife, won. Vanquish and Reign opened in mid-2011. The revelers waited in long lines, celebrities kicked back in VIP sections, and high-priced drinks flowed.
Now the party is over. The adjacent clubs have sat empty since last September. Michael Gidewon has filed for bankruptcy. And the future of the property, which occupies a corner of one of the city's most prized parcels of real estate, hangs in limbo.
According to a statement from Gidewon’s lawyer, Tyler Henderson, and attributed to Gidewon, Vanquish and Reign’s abrupt end dates backto the bitter three-year — and approximately $400,000 — legal battle the club owners fought against Midtown neighbors who feared the hot spots would attract noise, crime, and litter.
Its former landlord, Dewberry Capital, also plays a role. Led by well-known commercial real-estate developer John Dewberry, the firm has developed a reputation for sitting — and sitting — on prime property in Midtown. Several key parcels around town are dotted with Dewberry's trademark signs advertising his firm's ownership of vacant land that could serve as, well, something.
According to Gidewon, he and his partners paid approximately $500,000 in rent to Dewberry during the years that the club sat empty and the owners' case wound its way through the legal system. When the lease term ended, Dewberry jacked up the rent 100 percent, Gidewon claims. Dewberry's "refusal to grant rental concessions ultimately made it impossible for the nightclubs to continue to operate."
"Dewberry Capital, LLC, in fact demanded additional rent increases in response to the owners' rental concession requests," Gidewon wrote in the emailed statement.
Kim Lavigne, Dewberry's vice president of real estate, disputes this claim, saying in a statement that the landlord "consistently" operated under the "clearly defined," agreed-upon lease terms. The two parties renegotiated the lease in July 2011, when Reign opened its doors, and again in December 2012. Lavigne says the club owners asked to "significantly alter" the lease around February 2014, but that "an agreement was unable to be reached."
Dewberry is one of several creditors listed in bankruptcy papers filed by Gidewon last December showing $7.5 million owed to creditors. He now works as a manager at the Gold Room, the nightclub housed in the same building near the Lindbergh MARTA station that was home to legendary |
en has been a very effective Major League reliever, and like Capps, he’s been able to sustain excellent velocity even while jumping towards the plate during his delivery. For his career, Walden’s posted an 82 ERA-/71 FIP-/84 xFIP- line, with an average fastball velocity of 96.6 mph during his career. However, Walden’s ability to miss bats has been offset by command problems, and as Eno Sarris wrote here a couple of years ago, there are reasons to think that the jump-step could be partially the cause of Walden’s inability to throw strikes consistently.
In his previous big league appearances, Capps’ walk rate was okay, and he threw 50.6% of his pitches in the strike zone, a few ticks higher than Walden’s career 47.7% mark. But he didn’t used to leap forward like this, and it’s possible that the trade-off for getting a release point closer to the plate will be some reduced ability to throw strikes.
But it’s probably worth trying out, especially if it helps solve his problems with left-handers. His arm-slot and his slider already makes him really tough on right-handers, but he’s been lit up by lefties in the big leagues, giving up a.404 wOBA to the 201 LHBs he’s faced in his career. To this point, Capps has essentially been a righty specialist; he doesn’t really need to the jump-step to dominate RHBs, since his repertoire already allowed him to do so.
But since he doesn’t really have a good out-pitch against lefties, his best bet against LHBs is probably to try and overpower them with fastballs. 97 from a low arm-angle hasn’t been good enough; 97 from a low-arm angle released at the very front of the mound might be. Walden actually has been better against LHBs than RHBs in his career, though he has started incorporating a change-up into his repertoire of late, so it might be more of a pitch quality issue than a release point benefit.
But it probably doesn’t hurt to try. Walden didn’t always throw many change-ups, and he was effective enough early in his career to close for the Angels with mostly just velocity and a jump-step. For Capps, this isn’t a bad role model to emulate, especially if mastering a pitch to equalize left-handers doesn’t seem to be in the cards for him.
If it works, and Capps turns into a quality reliever, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more fringy bullpen arms trying this kind of delivery out in the future. After all, reducing the distance in flight gives the batter less reaction time, and if pitchers can effectively throw from the end of the mound, they’ll have an even larger advantage than they do already.
Which is why I’d expect MLB to eventually change the rule if this becomes popular enough. The offensive decline of the last few years isn’t showing any signs of slowing down, and giving pitchers another way to get an edge over hitters is probably not in the game’s best long-term interest. But for Capps, it might be a way to convert himself from a right-handed specialist into a potential late-inning weapon.LONDON – At least 24 NFL players knelt and Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan stood with arms linked between two of his players in a sign of solidarity during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” here at Wembley Stadium Sunday.
All players stood for “God Save the Queen,” the national anthem of Great Britain where the Baltimore-Jacksonville game is being played.
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It was the largest such protest since former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began sitting and then kneeling during the anthem last year to protest violence by police officers against African Americans.
This was the first NFL game played since President Trump called for protesting players to be “fired” and urged fans to boycott the NFL. Trump was speaking at a rally Friday in Alabama. He has since taken to Twitter to escalate his rhetoric.
“If you see [a player protest], even if it’s one player, leave the stadium, Trump said Friday. “I guarantee things will stop. Just pick up and leave.”
Jaguars owner Shad Khan links arms with players during the national anthem before the game. (Reuters)
It did not appear any fans left the stadium. Likewise, neither Baltimore nor Jacksonville announced the firing of any players prior to kickoff.
The protest Sunday included at least 14 Jaguars, including star rookie running back Leonard Fournette. At least 10 Ravens also linked arms and knelt, including linebacker Terrell Suggs.
Trump’s comments have elicited widespread condemnation across the NFL, with players, coaches, commissioner Roger Goodell, union executive director DeMaurice Smith and even owners saying his comments were unnecessarily divisive and defending players’ right to protest.
That even included New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, a close friend of Trump’s who was one of eight NFL owners who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
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“I am deeply disappointed by the tone of the comments made by the President,” Kraft said in a statement.
Khan also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration but by standing with arms locked between Telvin Smith and Marcedes Lewis, his actions Sunday appeared to be a clear indication he supports his employees and their right to express themselves on the job.
“It was a privilege,” Khan said of his decision to show solidarity with his players. “I met with our team captains prior to the game to express my support for them, all NFL players and the league following the divisive and contentious remarks made by President Trump, and was honored to be arm in arm with them, their teammates and our coaches during our anthem.
“Our team and the National Football League reflects our nation, with diversity coming in many forms – race, faith, our views and our goals. We have a lot of work to do, and we can do it, but the comments by the President make it harder. That’s why it was important for us, and personally for me, to show the world that even if we may differ at times, we can and should be united in the effort to become better as people and a nation.”
The game is the first of the NFL’s annual international series that will feature four games here in London and one in Mexico City.Watson calls Deron the best point guard in the league. Says Derrick Rose won't be mad at him for saying that. — Colin Stephenson (@Ledger_Nets) July 24, 2012
Colin Stephenson, who covers the Brooklyn Nets for the Newark Star-Ledger, tweeted a comment from C.J. Watson's news conference on Tuesday that is sure to raise some eyebrows among Chicago Bulls fans.
Watson, who backed up Derrick Rose last season, said his new backcourt mate -- Deron Williams -- is the best point guard in the NBA. He also said Rose won't be mad at him.
Bulls fans, however, might be a little protective of their rehabilitating hometown star.
Watson may be upset the Bulls didn't pick up his $3.2 million option.
Stephenson later added the full quote: "I always thought Deron was the best point guard in the league, always playing against him, watching him,'' Watson said. "He’s always one of the toughest players... when everyone asks me who is the toughest point guard, I always say him. Between him and D-Rose, it’s pick-your-poison.''
Watson will join "Chicago's Gamenight" on ESPN 1000 at 7:30 p.m.Once a darling of the social networking boom, SF based Zynga has seen its stock price tank 70% since its IPO last December. But that didn’t seem to dissuade Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and his wife, Alison – who is a co-founder of home design site One Kings Lane, from buying a $16 million Pacific Heights mansion. Located on a “Gold Coast” block, the estate was built in 1907 and never exchanged hands until now, as highlighted by this SF Chronicle story on special homes you can only find in SF. The four level, 11,500 square feet home is a classic Dutch Colonial Revival and many of the original details, including intricate woodwork, appear to have been pristinely maintained for over a century.
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Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close Image 2 of 10 A view from the street to the rear of the house A view from the street to the rear of the house Image 3 of 10 Gorgeous wood detailing throughout the home Gorgeous wood detailing throughout the home Image 4 of 10 Cozy alcove sitting area by the fireplace Cozy alcove sitting area by the fireplace Image 5 of 10 Image 6 of 10 Panoramic bay views Panoramic bay views Image 7 of 10 Dining area with more views Dining area with more views Image 8 of 10 One of the seven bedrooms One of the seven bedrooms Image 9 of 10 The home has multiple entertaining/ living areas The home has multiple entertaining/ living areas Image 10 of 10 Zynga's CEO buys $16M Pac Heights mansion 1 / 10 Back to Gallery
The Pincus family have unloaded a couple other properties in the past year, which probably helped soften the blow of Zynga’s shrunken stock price. They sold a Cole Valley house for $1.97 million and a Presidio Heights property, which they never even moved into, for $8.2 million. Looks like this home was a better draw.
Good news for the city of SF is that with the sale of this Gold Coast home, it’ll bank a lot more in property taxes. Since 1907, the home has been in the Newhall family with philanthropist Jane Newhall having lived there until her recent passing at the age of 97. Redfin shows the 2011 property taxes paid were a mere $5,975. With a price tag of $16 million, property taxes will now be a minimum of $160,000 annually.“There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.” ~Mahatma Gandhi
We live in a world of ticker headlines, 24/7 news, and constantly updating Instagram and Facebook feeds. We are constantly making snap-decision judgment calls, categorizing what we see into “good,” “bad,” or “unimportant.”
In a second, we can see an image and believe we have all we need to form a fully realized opinion.
It’s in our biological wiring to judge everything we see—it’s how we have survived for generations upon generations. We are in a constant state of scanning our environment for threats and attempting to efficiently neutralize them when we do come across them.
And yet, ironically, we seem to have gotten to a point in our evolution where our judgments are doing us more harm than good, keeping us more unsafe than safe, and keeping us more in fear than in love.
When we get down to it, fear and love are the only two emotions we really have. They are our roots, the seeds of our souls, our most base and primal instincts.
All others are just off-shoots and iterations of the same.
We fear what we judge as bad; we love what we judge as good.
When we are in a state of fear, our bodies and minds do whatever they need to keep us safe. That may mean avoiding it, destroying it, or simply making it as different from us in our minds as possible. This is where the roots of racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other fear-based rationalizations are planted and nurtured.
I, like all other humans, have lived much of my life in this place of fear.
Only I didn’t call it fear.
I felt that I judged people fairly, that I saw in them things I would never be or do or feel in myself.
Though I have done deep work within myself to live in a place of love, forgiveness, and unconditional acceptance, I, like all people, still struggle with it from time to time.
It happened as recently as this morning.
I took my daughters to the grocery store for our weekly shopping trip and plunked them in a shopping cart shaped like a car. My eighteen month old daughter immediately ripped my list in half causing me to have to hold the two parts together every time I needed to check it.
I pushed the behemoth cart up and down the isles, cramming things in until I felt overwhelmed by both decision and physical fatigue.
My daughters were generally well-behaved but still did their part to act like kids: fighting over who got to hold the cereal, then both refusing to hold the cereal and throwing it on the floor in an attempt to throw it in the cart, pushing each other for more elbow room, asking to buy flowers and cookies and ice pops and a stuffed animal and tacos and pistachios and Finding Dora shaped Pirate’s Booty.
By the time I got to the register, I was ready for the trip to be done. It was still early in the morning, so only a few lines were open. I chose what appeared to be the shortest line and began unloading my stuff onto the belt.
That’s when I noticed that although I had chosen the shortest line, I had also chosen the one with the slowest cashier.
She and the woman in front of me were chatting and making small talk as if they were out on a coffee date, not in an increasingly crowded supermarket line with cranky kids and customers that were waiting to pay for their food and get on with their lives.
I did my best to surrender to the moment and keep it together. I reminded myself that I was waiting to pay for a cart full of healthy, nutritious food for my family—a position many women would do anything to be in. I smiled at my daughters and thought about how lucky I am to have them.
But still…
The clerk was really getting to me.
Finally, she started scanning my food and putting it into bags. And making small talk. And as she talked, she slowed down. Then she stopped and got out a roll of paper towels from under the register and started wiping down the belt where the frozen food had left a puddle of condensation.
I couldn’t help it: I rolled my eyes. I didn’t respond to her chatter. I refused to make eye contact.
Who the hell was this woman? She had a job to do and she was stubbornly refusing to do it in the efficient manner I know she had been trained to do it in.
I judged her. Harshly. And then I judged myself even more harshly for judging her.
As always, my judgments of her came from a place of fear:
That I was going to lose control of my kids who were getting bored and cranky.
That I might actually lose control of myself and say something I would later regret.
That I never have enough time.
That the situation could get worse and then it would feel even harder.
And then my frustration with her turned into frustration with myself and fear about myself:
I’m not patient enough.
I’m not kind enough.
I’m too much of an introvert.
I don’t appreciate what I have.
People who are in a state of fear can be vicious.
So what is the answer?
Love.
Love means unconditional acceptance of the light and the dark that we all have as humans and understanding that one cannot exist without the other.
Sure, it’s fair to say that the clerk should have been fully present and doing her job in a way that was efficient and respectful of the customers’ time. But I was making her responsible for my fear-based reaction.
The clerk was chatty and slow, just like I’ve been many times. Therefore, I really couldn’t condemn her without automatically condemning the same qualities in myself. This was probably why I was judging myself even more harshly than her!
In reality, there is nothing positive or negative that exists in someone else that doesn’t also exist in us because we are all human.
Perhaps instead of giving the clerk dagger eyes, I needed to see the experience she was giving me with gratitude. Maybe she was there to remind me that when we allow others to hurt us, we hurt ourselves. This was clearly illustrated by the fact that I quickly turned my anger toward her into anger toward myself.
Luckily because of my mindset work, I was able to move from seeing the clerk as an opponent and source of frustration to seeing her as a teacher for me and myself as a teacher for her, and also for my daughters who were a captive audience in the car cart.
Teaching is done mainly by example, and what we teach others we are also re-learning ourselves. What we share is strengthened in us, and so I had the choice to allow peace and love to happen in a moment that felt very un-peaceful by being peace and love.
Love is the remembering of who we all are at our core. Looking at a situation with love reminds us that our “flaws” are universal and therefore irrelevant.
Peace in that moment meant recognizing that I was having a vulnerable, overwhelmed moment, which put me squarely in the category of being human just like everyone else.
I took the lesson of having compassion for myself and for others that the clerk was teaching me and began to see things differently.
I gave myself a lot of grace and told myself that a moment of being annoyed and an exasperated eye roll didn’t make me a bad or ungrateful person. I reminded myself that both the clerk and I can do things imperfectly still be worthy of love anyway.
When you find yourself in a judgment/shame spiral, determine that you are willing to see things differently: with love.
Do this, and you will be guided by the most powerful force there is.
About Amy Beth Acker Amy Beth Acker, LCSW is a counselor, coach, and writer for perfectionists who are ready for their lives back. She teaches overwhelmed women to connect with themselves at a deeper level, find clarity, and change unhealthy thoughts and life patterns. For more of her writing, to learn more about her services, or to schedule a free consultation please visit amybethacker.com.Source: http://lol.duowan.com/1512/313406178658.html
At 4AM in the morning on December 6th, TBQ left the once familiar LGD house with his luggage. After dealing much criticism throughout Worlds and IEM, he, in the end, made the decision to leave the team.
While filled with regret and unwillingness, TBQ spoke to the interviewer PiJie, saying “It’s not that I want to retire. I still believe I can play. I’ll come back to the stage after I take time to adjust my mindset”.
In the interview, TBQ also expressed thankfulness and well wishes to his teammates he once fought alongside with. He said he’ll miss PYL the most since they’ve always had a strong bond with each other. Regarding GodV (PainEvil), he said “if he could change his bad habit of being impatient, he could be one of the top mid-laners in the world”.
Near the end of the interview, TBQ told us that “I wish LGD can continue on to win Worlds”.
Q: First of all I wanted to ask why you decided to make this declaration. Do you really want to retire?
TBQ: I don’t want to retire. I still refuse to accept this. I still believe I can play. I just want to take a break and adjust my mindset first. I hope to come back to the stage again in the future.
Q: What was the reason behind such a decision?
TBQ: After IEM, I made the decision to take a break. I started to have doubts about myself even before that. I don’t know if my skill level and my mindset are still suited for the professional scene, so I decided to take a break in order to adjust.
Q: If you wanted to “take a break”. Then why did you decide to take such a drastic route and leave the team? Why don’t you adjust while staying on the team or while being a substitute?
TBQ: I feel that I’m getting weaker. I don’t want this to affect my teammates….
Q: After you made your declaration to leave the team, PYL and the rest of your team all expressed their support and that they’ll miss you. Do you have anything you want to say to your past teammates?
TBQ: First of all, I want to say something to PYL. I’ve always been teammates with him and we played together all the way to Worlds. We’ve been through many things together, so there’s a really strong bond between us. I hope he can adjust his mindset in order to achieve even more in the future. As for GodV (PainEvil), I think he’s a really good person and he has a really deep understanding of the game. But he tends to be a little impatient. If he can overcome this, I trust that he would become one of the top mid-laners in the world. As for my Korean teammates, I also hope that they will become better and better. I also hope that they won’t blame their Chinese teammates, because we’ve all been trying really hard.
Q: Why did you decide to leave the house at 4 AM in the morning?
TBQ: Umm…. I didn’t exactly choose this particular time. I just feel that this time would be a little better. Plus, LGD is about to move too. I’m worried that I’m still here when they start moving. It’s probably because it’s also a little awkward, so I decided to leave by myself.
Q: LGD has had many things going on lately. You and Flame both decided to leave. What are your expectations for LGD next season?
TBQ: LGD has never had problems with their line up. I hope the team can integrate well and trust each other. I hope that they will react positively when there are problems to be solved. I hope GodV (PainEvil) can change his habit of being impatient. And I hope LGD can continue on to win Worlds.
Q: What are your plans after this?
TBQ: I’m already home. I plan to rest for a time period, then adjust my mindset and continue to practice hard. I hope I can quickly regain my old mindset so I can go back on stage.
Q: Lastly, can you say something to those who have supported you?
TBQ: I’ve always been thankful for my fans and for those who have supported me. I was only able to preserve until today because of your support. Although I’m taking a temporary break, I will definitely find my old mindset and come back. Thank you, everyone!This article contains NSFW illustrations of full-frontal nudity and is intended for mature readers.
Depending on where in the world you’re sitting as you read this, it may not be legally advisable to purchase Lost Girls, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s massive erotic upending of the leading ladies from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan. First published in its entirety by Top Shelf ten years ago this summer and set in 1913 during the tumultuous days leading up to the first World War (Archduke Franz Ferdinand meets his end while the protagonists fondle one another in the audience of a play), Lost Girls is undeniably pornography: in form, in potential function and in Moore’s own words.
It is very nearly every kind of pornography, too. A handsome man first seduces a young American girl (Dorothy, formerly of Kansas) who indulges his shoe fetish before anally penetrating the older, apparently heteroflexible husband of a repressed Wendy, terribly far from her teenage Neverland. A silver-haired Alice rediscovers Wonderland as she lays a sprightly young maid with the assistance of a porcelain dildo. In one of many asides from the primary plot, a family of four engages in every conceivable combination of incest, son and daughter clearly below the teenage threshold. Most of the book, in fact, challenges obscenity laws and definitions of child pornography. Preteen brothers explore their sexuality, a young street urchin turns tricks to survive and Alice falls prey to the manipulations of a predatory white rabbit. To remove any ambiguity in the minds of those who have yet to read the book, Gebbie draws every adolescent sex act in full detail, often in lush crayon. Lost Girls does not allude and suggest when it comes to its XXX-rated content.
The length of the story—over 300 pages—allows Moore and Gebbie to touch on budding sexuality in nearly every permutation. Alice, whose founding novel was frequently interpreted to represent emerging womanhood long before Moore and Gebbie serialized Lost Girls in the pages of Steve Bissette’s appropriately named Taboo anthology, suffers the most in transition from Lewis Carroll’s frabjous source material. Her awakening is a forced one, coerced into sex with an older man when she is only 14. Her Wonderland, the topsy-turvy, otherworldly dimension that has made untold millions for Disney throughout the decades, is her way of escaping reality during these repeated violations.
Lost Girls Interior Art by Melinda Gebbie
On the opposite end of the spectrum lies Dorothy Gale, corn-fed farmgirl from the Heartland. Dorothy’s first orgasm comes when a tornado ravages her homestead, and her journey through “Oz” is a succession of sexual encounters with willing farmhands. The Wizard’s revelation here is less Emerald City than Flowers in the Attic.
The grown protagonist of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, Wendy Darling is stuck somewhere in the middle of these extremes. The green-clad eternal boy of Wendy’s story sneaks into her window one evening and brings her to a life-changing climax while her two preteen brothers watch on, hands moving furiously under their nightgowns. What follows for Wendy is a period of free love quickly crushed by guilt and loss of innocence as a hook-handed man pursues the youths around the Darlings’ upscale home. Rather than cope with her rollercoaster feelings toward sex, Wendy marries an older man for whom she feels no sexual attraction. Their most passionate sex scene in the book takes place entirely without their involvement, as the pair performs mundane tasks that cast fireside shadows posed in carnal positions.
These three women, all of whom titillate each other multiple times throughout the course of the book, find comfort in relaying their tales to one another while sleeping under the same roof in a hotel. It’s not a stretch for readers to connect the dots between erotic encounters and source material, but each story culminates in a splash page that steps out of the tale’s reality to illustrate the allusions of the founding stories. On these pages, Gebbie becomes perhaps the first and only person in the world to draw a great pink vaginal alligator or a clitoral caterpillar awash in opium smoke.
Lost Girls Interior Art by Melinda Gebbie
Moore, the scribe behind such comic benchmarks as Watchmen and V for Vendetta, approaches the story as seriously as any of his now-canonized works. The structure is precise and unyielding, the themes multilayered and interconnected and the three primary protagonists as compelling and complicated as any he’s ever crafted. The complexity of the literary references within—yes, to the famous texts, but also to Victorian pornographers and obscure erotica artists of the era—rival anything in his more action-packed League of Extraordinary Gentleman. The seemingly disparate works are really kissing cousins: imagine League as Spider-Man and Lost Girls as a preteen Peter Parker screwing a giant symbolic spider and you have a good idea of how the books reflect each other.
Still, Lost Girls is Gebbie’s book. No stranger to controversy—her explicit small-press comic Fresca Zizis was banned in the United Kingdom during the Thatcher years—Gebbie brings colorful, sweaty, sticky life to Moore’s perversity. Her characters are not the chiseled Grecian gods of typical superhero beat-em-ups, but the soft, hairy, slippery renditions of all-too-real people. It falls on Gebbie’s able shoulders to frankly portray incest, pederasty and metaphorical bestiality in an arousing light. Sex is not incidental to Lost Girls; Lost Girls is sex, and Gebbie renders sex in all of its clunky glory.
It’s also been ten years since a well-meaning Borders employer tried to convince this writer’s father not to buy the slipcased tome for his 16-year-old son. In a starred review for Publishers Weekly, Moore’s literary peer Neil Gaiman states that, for all of Moore and Gebbie’s high-faluting ideas about elevating porn, Lost Girls is not a “one-handed read.” To a teenager, that’s a challenge easily met. But in a book so suffuse with sex, it’s easy to get lost in the onslaught of imagery. What you’re left with after the wash of bodies fade is compelling historical-fiction pornography that prompts the reader to question all assumptions about decency and depiction of sexuality.
Lost Girls Interior Art by Melinda Gebbie
Less clear is the lasting impact of Lost Girls on the wider comic scene. Independent and underground cartoonists like Phoebe Gloeckner explored uncomfortable sexual topics long before Moore and Gebbie portrayed Wendy manually stimulating the Lost Boys. Anime and manga—and the Japanese government—still frequently wrestle with the legality and morality of depicting underage characters in explicitly sexual situations. Moore has come under increased scrutiny for misogyny and sexual violence in his work, as books like Watchmen and The Killing Joke have resurged in popularity, but his place among the all-time greats of the medium has never been in jeopardy.
Tens of thousands of copies later, it’s difficult to draw a direct line from Lost Girls to any work of similar importance and visibility. Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga perhaps comes closest, repeatedly confronting the reader with frankly depicted sex scenes and nudity alongside its shocking violence and deeply affecting personal drama. The book touches on sexual exploitation of minors with the introduction of six-year-old Sophie on the pleasure planet, Sextillion, although there’s no question that she was being abused and her captors meet a swift and brutal end at the hands of bounty hunter, The Will. The war that serves as a backdrop for the series is highly fictional, not historical, but there’s a similar sense of blissful numbness to shock the fifth, tenth, fifteenth time Staples draws a scrotum, even if a few scenes got the book briefly banned from digital distributors.
Lost Girls Interior Art by Melinda Gebbie
The legacy of pan-queerness advocated by Lost Girls is also murky. There is little hesitation by most characters in the book to move fluidly from opposite-sex to same-sex encounters and back again. Indeed, it is Alice, abused by men at a young age, who sticks most ardently to female partners while nearly everyone else cavorts freely. Books like Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s The Wicked + The Divine promote similarly uncomplicated fluidity, and even all-ages smash hit Lumberjanes advances a world where neat categories and well-defined labels are largely unnecessary—although heaven help the journalist who draws anything but the faintest connection between Lost Girls and Lumberjanes.
It seems that Lost Girls largely succeeds as and in its intended category: pornography. Like late-night Xtube explorations, it’s not likely to come up in polite conversation even as thousands of eyes peruse and digest its curves and crevices. After a decade in print, Lost Girls is still “barely legal,” and its legacy, not unlike Moore’s work on more publicly lauded comics, remains largely untouched by probing hands.Rivers and Harbors Act, see For other versions of the, see Rivers and Harbors Act
The Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act of 1899 is the oldest federal environmental law in the United States.[1] The Act makes it a misdemeanor to discharge refuse matter of any kind into the navigable waters, or tributaries thereof, of the United States without a permit; this specific provision is known as the Refuse Act. The Rivers and Harbors Act also makes it a misdemeanor to excavate, fill, or alter the course, condition, or capacity of any port, harbor, channel, or other areas within the reach of the Act without a permit. The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 also made it illegal to dam navigable streams without a license (or permit) from Congress; this included for the purposes of hydroelectric generation, at a time when the electric utility industry was expanding rapidly.[2]
Section 10 states that "All waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide (tidal action) are navigable waters of the US". The Jacksonville Division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction over the waters of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.[3]
Although many activities covered by the Rivers and Harbors Act are regulated under the Clean Water Act, the 1899 Act retains independent vitality. The Rivers and Harbors Act is administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. However, authority to administer Section 9 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, applying to bridges and causeways, in/over/on navigable waters of the U.S. (superseded by the General Bridge Act of 1946, as amended), was removed from the Corps of Engineers and redelgated to the U.S. Coast Guard under the provisions of the Department of Transportation Act of 1966. The Corps owns and operates many bridges and may not regulate themselves due to conflict of interest.
See also [ edit ]The number of times families sit down to share the traditional midday meal is in steep decline. But there are reasons why it has been at the heart of domestic culture for centuries
Mothering Sunday marks the halfway point through the Lent fast and is also a traditional time for the family to sit down to a roast. But it is a tradition increasingly honoured in the breach. Each year, the trade journal The Grocer records a further slowdown in the number of times people gather round the dining table to tuck into a joint; another waymark is passed in the seemingly inexorable decline of old-style family meals, left behind by the fashionable appeal of quicker, more sustainable and, for some, more ethical alternatives – choices that do not involve rearing animals on environmentally costly grains and then killing them. This Sunday’s roast at the pub chain Wetherspoon will be the last it offers. After that, it’s off the menu. Roast dinner, good riddance? Be careful what you wish for.
It is true that there are plenty of reasons not to mourn the Sunday roast. A roast with all the trimmings can be, in the wrong hands, a bit of meat of uncertain consistency, viscous gravy and overcooked vegetables. British tastes have become more outward-looking and much more eclectic. We take foods from the Middle East and fuse them with the produce of northern Europe.
We rediscover ancient grains and the joys of shopping in exotic markets and we revive half-forgotten skills like breadmaking. We are open to new tastes, subtle spices, fresh herbs and novel food combinations in a way that would astonish our grandparents; and if declining sales of celebrity cookbooks appear to suggest a slide in our interest in cooking, it could just as well be a reflection of another phenomenon, the rise of the online recipe search. But you can celebrate the joy of the new and still worry about the loss of the old.
Assuming that you eat meat, the Sunday roast at its best is a tasty meal that is, in nutritional terms, mostly good news, and while it may be time-consuming to prepare, it is not difficult. It can’t be wolfed down, either, so families are required to talk to one another. Even more virtuous, it can turn into other meals as the week goes by, sandwiches and shepherd’s pie, a version of kofta and then ultimately soup. Claims that the Sunday roast is cheap may not quite stack up, but it is great value.
There is another reason why the roast is woven into traditional British (and Irish) cultural life: at its best, eating a roast is eating the landscape. It has been an integral part of food culture because it is composed of what flourishes in the British climate and soil. The patchwork of small, hedged fields that still persist in parts of these isles would not be there if there were no farmers rearing sheep and cattle that need protection from the elements and the convenience of enclosure. The vegetables that go with a roast tend to be eaten in season. It is much more likely that your leeks or carrots have come from round the corner than those glorious exotics like perilla leaves or Asian shallots required for a Vietnamese family recipe.
The BBC foodie series Back in Time for Dinner, where a 21st-century family was dropped back through the decades to experience, say, powdered eggs and a world before fridges, recognised how the food we eat and the way we eat it has shaped a whole layer of domestic culture. That is not a reason on its own for keeping alive the tradition of the Sunday roast. But it is worth more than its detractors admit. So if you possibly can, make time for it this weekend.FRANKFORT—Making good on his pledge to reinvest in K-12 education, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear’s biennial budget would restore public education funding to 2008 levels, with a pledge of $189 million in a budget greater than $20 billion.
But Beshear said his budget was was made possible in large part by a 5 percent cut across many state agencies.
“Two weeks ago,” Beshear began on Tuesday evening, “I stood here and signaled my intent in clear and decisive words: ‘I am determined to find money to reinvest in education,’ I said then, ‘Even if I have to make harmful cuts in other areas to do so.’ Well, that’s precisely what this two-year budget proposal does: It makes damaging cuts in many areas in order to keep Kentucky at the forefront of educational attainment in this nation.”
Beshear said restoring SEEK formula for primary and high school education funding was among his top priories in crafting the 2014-2016 budget, which will also seek to invest $100 million in broadband Internet access in Eastern Kentucky, and set aside bond revenue for construction projects for Kentucky Community and Technical College System schools.
The Cuts
Since taking office, Beshear has reduced state services by a cumulative 41 percent, for a total of $1.6 billion in cuts over the last six years. The additional cuts would likely have an effect on employee attrition, prompting layoffs, service delays and facility closures.
Most agencies would see their budgets slashed by five percent, for a total of $98.6 |
trade group.
Whether a well is permanently or temporarily abandoned, improperly applied or aging cement can crack or shrink, independent petroleum engineers say. “It ages, just like it does on buildings and highways,” said Roger Anderson, a Columbia University petroleum geophysicist who has conducted research on commercial wells.
Despite the likelihood of leaks large and small, though, abandoned wells are typically not inspected by industry or government.
Oil company representatives insist that the seal on a correctly plugged offshore well will last virtually forever.
“It’s in everybody’s interest to do it right,” said Bill Mintz, a spokesman for Apache Corp., which has at least 2,100 abandoned wells in the Gulf, according to government data.
Officials at the U.S. Interior Department, which oversees the agency that regulates federal leases in the Gulf and elsewhere, did not answer repeated questions regarding why there are no inspections of abandoned wells.
State officials estimate that tens of thousands are badly sealed, either because they predate strict regulation or because the operating companies violated rules. Texas alone has plugged more than 21,000 abandoned wells to control pollution, according to the state comptroller’s office.
Offshore, but in state waters, California has resealed scores of its abandoned wells since the 1980s.
In deeper federal waters, though  despite the similarities in how such wells are constructed and how sealing procedures can fail  the official policy is out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
The U.S. Minerals Management Service  the regulatory agency recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement  relies on rules that have few real teeth. Once an oil company says it will permanently abandon a well, it has one year to complete the job. MMS mandates that work plans be submitted and a report filed afterward.
Unlike California regulators, MMS doesn’t typically inspect the job, instead relying on the paperwork.
The fact there are so many wells that have been classified for decades as temporarily abandoned suggests that paperwork can be shuffled at MMS without any real change beneath the water.
With its weak system of enforcement, MMS imposed fines in a relative handful of cases: just $440,000 on seven companies from 2003-2007 for improper plug-and-abandonment work.
Companies permanently abandon wells when they are no longer useful. Afterward, no one looks methodically for leaks, which can’t easily be detected from the surface anyway. And no one in government or industry goes underwater to inspect, either.
Government regulators and industry officials say abandoned offshore wells are presumed to be properly plugged and are expected to last indefinitely without leaking. Only when pressed do these officials acknowledge the possibility of leaks.
Despite warnings of leaks, government and industry officials have never bothered to assess the extent of the problem, according to an extensive AP review of records and regulations.
That means no one really knows how many abandoned wells are leaking  and how badly.
The AP documented an extensive history of warnings about environmental dangers related to abandoned wells:
_ The General Accountability Office, which investigates for Congress, warned as early as 1994 that leaks from offshore abandoned wells could cause an “environmental disaster,” killing fish, shellfish, mammals and plants. In a lengthy report, GAO pressed for inspections of abandonment jobs, but nothing came of the recommendation.
_ A 2006 Environmental Protection Agency report took notice of the overall issue regarding wells on land: “Historically, well abandonment and plugging have generally not been properly planned, designed and executed.” State officials say many leaks come from wells abandoned in recent decades, when rules supposedly dictated plugging procedures. And repairs are so routine that terms have been coined to describe the work: “replugging” or the “re-abandonment.”
_ A GAO report in 1989 provided a foreboding prognosis about the health of the country’s inland oil and gas wells. The watchdog agency quoted EPA data estimating that up to 17 percent of the nation’s wells on land had been improperly plugged. If that percentage applies to offshore wells, there could be 4,600 badly plugged wells in the Gulf of Mexico alone.
_ According to a 2001 study commissioned by MMS, agency officials were “concerned that some abandoned oil wells in the Gulf may be leaking crude oil.” But nothing came of that warning either.
The study targeted a well 20 miles off Louisiana that had been reported leaking five years after it was plugged and abandoned. The researchers tried unsuccessfully to use satellite radar images to locate the leak.
But John Amos, the geologist who wrote the study, told AP that MMS withheld critical information that could have helped verify if he had pinpointed the problem. “I kind of suspected that this was a project almost designed to fail,” Amos said. He said the agency refused to tell him “how big and widespread a problem” they were dealing with in the Gulf.
Amos is now director of SkyTruth, a nonprofit group that uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems. He still believes that technology could work on abandoned wells.
MMS, though, hasn’t followed up on the work. And Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said agency inspectors would be present for permanent plugging jobs “only when something unusual is expected.” She also said inspectors would check later “only if there’s a noted leak.” But she did not respond to requests for examples.
Companies may be tempted to skimp on sealing jobs, which are expensive and slow offshore. It would cost the industry at least $3 billion to permanently plug the 10,500 now-active wells and the 3,500 temporarily abandoned ones in the Gulf, according to an AP analysis of MMS data.
The AP analysis indicates that more than half of the 50,000 wells ever drilled on federal leases beneath the Gulf have now been abandoned. Some 23,500 are permanently sealed. Another 12,500 wells are plugged on one branch while being allowed to remain active in a different branch.
Government records do not indicate how many temporarily abandoned wells have been returned to service over the years. Federal rules require only an annual review of plans to reuse or permanently seal the 3,500 temporarily abandoned wells, but companies are using this provision to keep the wells in limbo indefinitely.
Petroleum engineers say abandoned offshore wells can fail from faulty work, age and drilling-induced or natural changes below the seabed. Maurice Dusseault, a geologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, says U.S. regulators “assume that once a well is sealed, they’re safe  but that’s not always the case.”
Even fully depleted wells can flow again because of fluid or gas injections to stimulate nearby wells or from pressure exerted by underlying aquifers.
Permanently abandoned wells are corked with cement plugs typically 100-200 feet long. They are placed in targeted zones to block the flow of oil or gas. Heavy drilling fluid is added. Offshore, the piping is cut off 15 feet below the sea floor.
Wells are abandoned temporarily for a variety of reasons. The company may be re-evaluating a well’s potential or developing a plan to overcome a drilling problem or damage from a storm. Some owners temporarily abandon wells to await a rise in oil prices.
Since companies may put a temporarily abandoned well back into service, such holes typically will be sealed with fewer plugs, less testing and a metal cap to stop corrosion from sea water.
In the Deepwater Horizon blowout, investigators believe the cement may have failed, perhaps never correctly setting deep within the well. Sometimes gas bubbles form as cement hardens, providing an unwanted path for oil or gas to burst through the well and reach the surface.
The other key part of an abandoned wells  the steel pipe liner known as casing  can also rust through over time.
MMS personnel do sometimes spot smaller oily patches on the Gulf during flyovers. Operators are also supposed to report any oil sheens they encounter. Typically, though, MMS learns of a leak only when someone spots it by chance.
In the end, the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Laboratory handles little more than 200 cases of oil pollution each year.
And manager Wayne Gronlund says it’s often impossible to tell leaking wells from natural seeps, where untold thousands of barrels of oil and untold millions of cubic feet of gas escape annually through cracks that permeate the sea floor.'Do me a favour and call the game off': Former ref Gallagher lifts lid on Fergie's cheeky tactics with officials
Dermot Gallagher claims Sir Alex Ferguson asked him to call game off against Middlesbrough in 1997
Former ref says ex-United boss wanted fixture replayed to help with title bid
Former referee Dermot Gallagher has lifted the lid on Sir Alex Ferguson's intimidation tactics.
And, with figures showing 'Fergie Time' has been slashed since the Scot's departure, the official has revealed the pressure referees were under during Manchester United home matches.
Gallagher recalls one particular episode when United were chasing the title in 1997 - which they duly won - and welcomed Middlesbrough to a sodden Old Trafford.
Raging: Sir Alex Ferguson gained a reputation for leaning on referees during his Manchester United reign
Revealing: Dermot Gallgher (left) claims Ferguson (right) asked him to call a game off as a favour
'It was chucking it down with rain and Fergie pulled me aside and said “do me a favour, call the game off’," Gallagher told Sportlobster TV.
'I asked why and he said “there’s nowhere else to fit this game in and the Premier League will have to extend the season. We’ll have a better chance of winning the match and we’ll win the league at Old Trafford”.
'At half time United were losing 3-1 and the pitch was like a swimming pool. As we came off he said “I know we’re 3-1 down but please call it off, we could do with a hand here”.
'They managed to pull it back to 3-3 and in the last minute Dennis Irwin ran into the box and went down in front of the Stretford End and I only gave a goal kick.
'At full-time Fergie sprinted across the pitch and shouted at me furiously. My wife said, “Fergie had a right go at you about that penalty didn’t he”.
Call it off? Ferguson wanted the game to be postponed while United were 3-1 down against Boro in 1997
One up: Juninho (left) puts Middlesbrough in the lead but the North East side were unable to win
'I told her he hadn’t mentioned the penalty. She asked why he came tearing across the pitch at me then. The truth is he ran over and asked me if I was going out to dinner that night. I said “no” and he asked “why are we leaving so early then?”.'
Indeed, Ferguson's ability to squeeze every last second out of officials when his side were losing has since been highlighted.
With United trailing at Old Trafford under their former boss, an average of 79 seconds extra was played in added time.
Retired: But Gallagher has lifted the lid on Ferguson's hairdryer
Fury: Ferguson blasts Mike Dean during a clash with Newcastle on Boxing Day last season
However, this compares to just 40 seconds extra under his successor David Moyes.
Gallagher went on to reveal the anxiety caused by not awarding key decisions to United.
'Years and years ago one of the referees had a heart monitor on during a match at Old Trafford,' he explained.
'They were assessing it and suddenly it jumped and went through the roof. They looked at the DVD and he’d just turned down a penalty in front of the Stretford End. The pressure is immense.'by / KRBD
The Big Thorne Timber Sale lawsuit has been dismissed by a federal judge in Anchorage.
Alaska U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Beistline granted summary judgment Friday in favor of the defendants, and quite decidedly rejected every argument brought forward by the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit isn’t necessarily over, however. The plaintiffs could appeal the decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and seek an injunction pending the outcome.
The lawsuit was filed by conservation groups last summer shortly after the U.S. Forest Service made a final decision to move forward with the timber sale on Prince of Wales Island.
The proposed timber harvest would include about 6,000 acres of old-growth rainforest. Environmental organizations say that acreage is critical habitat for deer and wolf populations.
The Forest Service is moving away from old-growth logging, but the switch to second-growth will take time. Federal officials and pro-logging groups say that old-growth harvests will need to continue during that transition for mills to survive.
In his decision, Beistline ruled that the plaintiffs failed to show that the Forest Service didn’t follow proper procedure before making its final decision.
The co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Alaska Wilderness League, National Audubon Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Cascadia Wildlands, Center for Biological Diversity, the Greater Southeast Alaska Conservation Community, Greenpeace and The Boat Company.
The named defendants are the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Regional Forester Beth Pendleton and Tongass National Forester Forrest Cole. The State of Alaska, Alaska Forest Association, Cities of Craig and Ketchikan and Viking Lumber signed up as friends of the court, on the side of the defendants.Annexation plan key for smart growth
Activist Lucy Adame-Clark talks to the city planning commission regarding the annexation of land on the South Side. Activist Lucy Adame-Clark talks to the city planning commission regarding the annexation of land on the South Side. Photo: Tom Reel, San Antonio Express-News Photo: Tom Reel, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Annexation plan key for smart growth 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
SAN ANTONIO — Annexation is a bit like having a tooth pulled. It's usually not easy or painless, but on occasion, it is a necessary procedure.
There's usually a reason why people have chosen not to live in the city — lower taxes, fewer regulations, permitting. But as growth continues to explode beyond San Antonio's boundaries, it must be managed.
As the Express-News' Eva Ruth Moravec recently reported, the city of San Antonio is crafting a 10-year annexation program, which will outline growth goals and be updated every two years.
It's not binding. Just because a community is included in the program does not mean it will necessarily be annexed. Communities initially left out of the program, may eventually be included.
But this could serve as a roadmap for managed growth, outlining what must be done before the city annexes an area with 100 or more homes.
State law requires a three-year process for annexations to ensure a fair process and adequate services.
Many people are drawn to unincorporated Bexar County for its lower taxes, scenic beauty and rural lifestyle. Problems do arise, though, when too many people are drawn to unincorporated Bexar County.
The rural lifestyle very quickly morphs into a suburban slog with few services and crowded roads.
About 400,000 people live in unincorporated Bexar County, Moravec reported. More are on the way.
Of course, what really drives annexation is sales tax revenue. This is the crux of the dispute between the city and Sandy Oaks, which is attempting to incorporate.
Meanwhile in City South, which is also up for annexation, some residents have expressed concern about the impacts on business and increased taxes.
These are justified concerns, but growth must be managed, particularly in the fastest-growing outlying areas.
It's important to note: San Antonio Water System and CPS Energy provide service beyond city boundaries. Their revenues are crucial to the city budget. Put another way, residents in unincorporated Bexar County are supporting services they don't receive.
While residents of unincorporated Bexar County may dislike annexation, they can at least take solace knowing that they receive better services and full representation as city residents.Sunshine Village kicked off the ski season with its earliest opening in over 30 years, and many local mountains will soon follow suit.
By 10:30 a.m., an estimated 3,000 ski and snowboard enthusiasts had already passed through the Sunshine gondola gates — just 1.5 hours after the official opening.
"Conditions are beyond our wildest expectations for this early in the year," said Dave Riley, chief operating officer.
"We should probably rename ourselves Powder City or something. It's a snow magnet."
Snowboarder Ben Wall was on the first chair and said conditions were "amazing."
Sunshine Village marked its earliest opening in 30 years Thursday, and more than 3,000 people, including Ben Wall, showed up in the first two hours. (Evelyne Asselin/CBC)
The past couple of snow seasons have been disappointing, Wall said, but he's hoping for "as much snow as humanly possible" this time around.
Riley said an early opening is traditionally a good sign of good things to come.
"When you have a good November, you have a good season," he said.
Local hills to follow suit
A handful of other mountains are slated to open very soon, including:
Norquay and Winsport, otherwise known as Canada Olympic Park or COP, are expected to open in mid-November depending on the weather.DOZENS of TDs and senators make use of family members as parliamentary and secretarial assistants, recently released files reveal. Thirty per cent of Oireachtas members, including government ministers and MEPs, have family members working for them. This is despite Fine Gael’s pre-election pledge to end cronyism.
South Tipperary Independent TD Mattie McGrath had the most family members working for him of all TDs. He employed two daughters, and a niece who shared parliamentary and secretarial assistant jobs along with another staff member.
McGrath said they were all “very well qualified” he added”, they work extremely hard... and in addition, they go above and beyond the call of duty at all time.
Surly it should be illegal to create public-sector jobs funded by Government money taken from taxpayers when there is no advertisement or systemized form of interviews.
Parliamentary assistants enjoy a starting salary of €41,000 while secretarial assistants have an income of € 23,000.
Mattie own list of National policy priorities, ironically include, – Full accountability and transparency to underpin spending of taxes and money.
All one can say is nice one Mattie to float the family onboard the coat tails of the gravy train. Even so, then again, folks, bear in mind his background. The Man is former Fianna Fáil and well versed in the art of stroke pulling and double standards.
Was not his resignation from Fianna Fáil not just apiece of political cynicism to save his seat?
Hypocrisy and nepotism are alive, well, and thriving in the secure hands of Master McGrath a monolith of ignorance and bizarre rurality. He has delivered zero on his election promises, but he will plead from his bucolic mouth those from the establishment were out to do him down. He will conveniently forget to concede that his own feet continue to live and walk the well-trodden path of the elected system.
The stench of animal faeces surrounds the verbal the uttering’s of our Mr. McGrath but there again a Gombeen man is he.
AdvertisementsMadden Champ Sits on Own Balls,
Forfeits Tournament
By WALLY FINGERS
Jesse McMac's testicles before and after their tragic implosion.
He stood up to do a little end zone shuffle, recalls Ma. And when he sat back down... I'll never forget that sickening sound.
Witnesses described the sound as a squishy crunch followed by two distinct pops.
Reports indicate McMac had the presence of mind to hit the pause button before flopping to the floor in agony. Once his "time-out" minutes expired, he took three delay of game penalties before officially forfeiting. McMac was then carried out of the game arena on a stretcher.
His trainer was eager to deflect the blame. Jesse recently switched to boxers, revealed the balding coach. I told him he hangs too low for that, but Jesse insisted they were ventilating. And now that stupid kid just ventilated himself into early retirement.
Sources close to McMac claim the veteran gamer looks forward to competing next year, but some dont see that happening.
Madden Mashup's proposed safety-wear.
As a result of the incident, the Madden Mashup advisory board is now considering mandatory safety-wear for all male competitors.
If youre concerned about the risks of testicular trauma and other video game related injuries, please consult your local game store representative. ♠ LAS VEGAS, NV This years Madden Mashup took an unfortunate turn today when three-time champion, Jesse McMac, accidentally sat on his own balls, crushing them to a pulp and forcing him to withdraw from the prestigious competition.He stood up to do a little end zone shuffle, recalls Ma. And when he sat back down... I'll never forget that sickening sound.Witnesses described the sound as a squishy crunch followed by two distinct pops.Reports indicate McMac had the presence of mind to hit the pause button before flopping to the floor in agony. Once his "time-out" minutes expired, he took three delay of game penalties before officially forfeiting. McMac was then carried out of the game arena on a stretcher.His trainer was eager to deflect the blame. Jesse recently switched to boxers, revealed the balding coach. I told him he hangs too low for that, but Jesse insisted they were ventilating. And now that stupid kid just ventilated himself into early retirement.Sources close to McMac claim the veteran gamer looks forward to competing next year, but some dont see that happening.As a result of the incident, the Madden Mashup advisory board is now considering mandatory safety-wear for all male competitors.If youre concerned about the risks of testicular trauma and other video game related injuries, please consult your local game store representative. ♠Ontario ice cream maker Chapman's says it wants to buy a small town elementary school to prevent the province's Liberal government from shutting it down.
Chapman's Ice Cream is the primary employer in Markdale, a small town of about 1,200 people about a half hour's drive southeast of Owen Sound.
The town's only elementary school, Beavercrest Community School, is among the estimated 600 "underutilized" schools that the province says it can no longer afford. The province estimates it spends about $1 billion on schools that can potentially close, as it grapples with paring down a nearly $11 billion deficit.
Beavercrest Community School in Markdale, Ont., faces possible closing. Chapman's wants to rescue it. (Google)
This fall, the Bluewater District School Board announced that Beavercrest, which currently has about 200 students, could close by June 2017 because of cuts in provincial subsidies.
"It's going to have such a detriment to my business I can't even tell you," Ashley Chapman said of the planned closing. Beavercrest's students would have to travel by bus to the next community to attend classes.
[Trustees] want to be good custodians of our school, but they don't have the money. If money is the problem, we can certainly help with that. - Ashley Chapman, Chapman's Ice Cream
The vice-president of Chapman's Ice Cream believes that if Beavercrest were to close, it would not only be a blow to the community, it would also hamstring the future growth of his business.
Renovations are currently underway to add 100,000 square feet of production space to Chapman's manufacturing facility in Markdale with plans to expand his current workforce from 300 to 1,000 over the next five years.
"It's absolutely devastating," he said. "I'm having trouble today getting unskilled workers in my factory. How am I going to attract 400 workers in the area if [kids] don't even have an elementary school to go to?"
Chapman offering $1M
The ice cream maker is offering trustees $1 million to purchase the building, which the company plans to lease back to the school board over the long term.
Chapman said he has already made his pitch to local trustees, and they're open to the idea.
"They hate the position that they're in," he said. "They don't like it anymore than we do. They want to be good custodians of our school, but they don't have the money. If money is the problem, we can certainly help with that."
Chocolate ice cream rolls along the production line at the ice cream maker's manufacturing facility in Markdale, Ont., where the town's only school could close under a provincial consolidation plan. (Chapman's Ice Cream)
It's not the first time Chapman's Ice Cream has offered to use its spending power to help the community.
In 2009, when the ice cream maker's factory burned to the ground, Chapman's continued to pay its employees while the structure was rebuilt.
'Insulting'
Since then, business has rebounded, and the ranks of Chapman's workforce swells to 700 in summer, as appetite for ice cream rises with the temperature.
Chapman notes that the possible merger or closing of 600 schools across the province has angered not just people in his town, but communities across Ontario.
"It's insulting, and you know what? People in Ontario they will take a lot. They will not complain about a lot of the policies of this provincial government, but if they start messing with our children's future, oh boy, are they in for a surprise, because that is something we cannot allow."Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
Risk economist Didier Sornette makes bold claims on Wednesday morning at TEDGlobal 2013, during the session “Money Talks.” According to Sornette, we have been operating under a few detrimental illusions that have landed us in our current economic state: One, we have been living in an age of never-ending growth and prosperity. Well, $30 trillion losses in the global market from the Great Recession have already shattered this illusion. And two, that we couldn’t see this crash coming.
The 2007-2008 crash seemed to come out of nowhere, with no source or group to take responsibility, an unpredictable one-time anomaly — as Sornette calls it: “the wrath of God.” But as he says firmly: Despite what standard risk management tools show, these outliers operate under special mechanisms that make them predictable, perhaps even controllable. Sornette and his team at the Financial Crisis Observatory (FCO) call these special cases “dragon-kings.” Dragon-kings, in direct contrast with “black swans,” are at the core characterized by a slow maturation of instability, which move toward a bubble, until the bubble reaches a climax and bursts.
There are many early warning signs of dragon-kings, but one of the crucial ones is super-exponential growth. Super-exponential growth is trenchant and unsustainable and can be found in many areas of study to predict dragon-kings. Sornette has applied it to Ariane rockets, parturition problems, epilepsy, landslides, even blockbuster movies and YouTube virality.
Dragon-king theory can be applied to 30 years of financial bubble history, starting with the worldwide bubble that started in 1980 and popped in 1987, and ending in the most recent global over-valuation bubble that broke in 2007 and 2008. In December 2007 Sornette predicted the Chinese market bubble, to the disbelief of analysts. Three weeks after his presentation the markets lost 20 percent, and by the end of the year they had lost 70 percent.
Can the dragons be slain? In a way. Learn the art of planning and predicting, says Sornette. If we find pockets of predictability, advanced diagnostics of crises are possible. So that crises may never again take us by such surprise.
Didier Sornette’s talk is now available for viewing. Watch it here »AUTHOR of best-selling financial help book Rich Dad, Poor Dad has just filed for bankruptcy.
Financial guru Robert Kiyosaki filed for corporate bankruptcy after losing a court judgment to The Learning Annex, The New York Post reports.
Mr Kiyosaki's company Rich Global LLC was ordered to pay almost $US24 million to the Learning Annex and its founder and chairman, Bill Zanker.
A US District Judge ordered that Mr Kiyosaki must give Mr Zanker a percentage of the profits he made from speaking appearances which he’d organised through Learning Annex.
Mr Zanker told the The New York Post that he was responsible for making Rich Dad, Poor Dad into the global name it is today.
"I took Kiyosaki's brand and made it bigger. The deal was I would get a percentage and he reneged," Mr Zanker said.
"Oprah believed in him, and Will Smith believed in him, but he didn't keep his promise to us," he said.
Mr Kiyosaki first published “Rich Dad Poor Dad” in 1994, and has since written 11 other books.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad has sold more than 26 million copies and earned Mr Kiyosaki widespread fame.
Mike Sullivan, CEO of Mr Kiyosaki Rich Dad Co., told reporters that Mr Kiyosaki, was still doing well thanks to investments in other companies but that they thought the judgement was unfair.
“I can’t do anything about a $20 million judgment…We got hit for what we think is a completely outlandish figure,” he said.
Follow @sarah_ocarroll on Twitter.By Jocelyn Buhlman
At the end of Disney’s Academy Award®-winning animated film Big Hero 6, we left our favorite team of scientific prodigies as triumphant heroes, ready to defend their city as superhero team Big Hero 6. We were all left wondering: What’s next? How will 14-year-old tech genius Hiro handle starting school at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology? What kind of new, high-tech villains will the team have to face?
You don’t have to wait around long to find out! Big Hero 6 is a new animated series coming to Disney XD in 2017, picking up immediately following the riveting events of the feature film. To help tell this new story, a whole cast of familiar voices have returned to reprise their roles from the movie: Maya Rudolph as Aunt Cass; Jamie Chung as electromagnetics specialist Go Go; Scott Adsit as everyone’s favorite inflatable health assistant, Baymax; Alan Tudyk as tech guru Alistair Krei; Ryan Potter as robotics prodigy Hiro; Genesis Rodriguez as the bubbly chemist Honey Lemon; David Shaughnessy as the butler, Heathcliff; and Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee as Fred’s dad.
The super team is rounded out by newcomers Khary Payton (The Lion Guard) as laser specialist Wasabi and Brooks Wheelan (Saturday Night Live) as everyone’s favorite mascot by day—and also by night—Fred. Additional newcomers to the series include Jenifer Lewis (black-ish) as strict Professor Granville, Andrew Scott (Sherlock) as mysterious new villain Obake, comedian Andy Richter as Globby, Diedrich Bader (American Housewife) as Bluff Dunder, Susan Sullivan (Castle) as Fred’s mother, Sean Giambrone (The Goldbergs) as Richardson Mole, John Ross Bowie (Speechless) as Mel, and Haley Tju (Bella and the Bulldogs) as classmate Karmi.
Returning to the super hero storytelling arena are executive producers and Emmy® Award winners Mark McCorkle, Bob Schooley, and Nick Filippi, originally known for their global hit Disney Channel Series Kim Possible, another story about tech-powered super-teens saving the day. Filippi is also the supervising director of the series.
If you’re going to San Fransokyo, you’re gonna meet some super people there! So, if you’re in need of some care from Baymax, a support network of tech geniuses, or a day to save, be ready to tune into Disney XD in 2017 to catch the new series Big Hero 6!A German MP was hit in the face with a chocolate cake on Saturday, apparently in protest at her stance on refugees.
Sahra Wagenknecht was targeted at a congress of her far-left Die Linke Party in the city of Magdeburg.
She was sitting in the front row during the opening speech when a young man stopped in front of her and threw the chocolate cream cake in her face, before shouting what sounded like slogans. A self-styled ‘anti-fascist’ group said it was behind the attack.
Wagenknecht has said that Germany should put a limit on the number of refugees it takes in – a position not supported by others in her party.
She is the second German politician to be attacked with a dessert this year over her position on asylum-seekers. Beatrix von Storch of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party suffered a similar fate last month.Jamaican Government Steals Years Of Public Domain Works From Its People
from the jammin'-the-jammin' dept
Just under four years ago, Techdirt reported that Jamaica was planning something extremely foolish: a retroactive extension to its copyright term. As that article noted, when the European Union did something similar, the European Commission's own figures showed that the move would cost the EU public around one billion Euros, and it was inevitable that the Jamaican people would also lose out if the move went ahead.
The fact that we've heard nothing for four years might have nourished the hope that the Jamaican government had come to its senses, and thrown out any plans it had to short-change its own people in this way. No such luck, of course. Indeed, a depressing post from the EFF reveals that the recently-passed legislation is down there with the worst: The copyright term in Jamaica is now 95 years from the death of the author, or 95 years from publication for government and corporate works. This makes it the third-longest copyright term in the world, after Mexico and Côte d'Ivoire respectively with 100 and 99 years from the death of the author. But there's more: The extension was made retroactive to January 1962. Besides being the year when Jamaica attained independence, 1962 also just so happens to have been the year when Jamaican ska music (a popular genre in its own right, but also a precursor of the even more popular reggae) burst onto the international music scene. The parallels with the extension of the U.S. copyright term in the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" are quite eerie. But, worse than what happened into the U.S., the retrospective effect of the law means that works that have already passed into the public domain in Jamaica are now to be wrenched back out again. Under the new copyright law, foreign users of Jamaican copyrights are not bound by the extended copyright term, and yet Jamaicans are obliged to honor foreign copyrights for the full extended term. As the EFF notes: all that this measure has accomplished is that citizens of Jamaica, a developing country, will be paying more money into Hollywood's coffers, while Jamaica's own rich cultural heritage draws in not a penny more in return.
What's especially ridiculous here is that Jamaica's own ska and reggae success owed much to the lack of copyright protections at the time. It was that lack of copyright enforcement that allowed the music to spread and become a global phenomenon.
This law is so bad that you might hope a future Jamaican government would simply repeal it. After all, there is no rule that says copyright can only be extended, never shortened -- that it is subject to an irreversible ratchet. But imagine what would happen if this were proposed. Copyright companies and artists would be apoplectic, and doubtless start screaming that their rights and property were being being "stolen," because something they had would be taken away from them under the change.
But the same logic applies to situations where copyright is extended, and the passage of works into the public domain delayed, especially if works that are already in the public domain are actively removed from it. In this case, the public has inarguably had something taken away from it -- a right to use a huge number of works in any way without needing to obtain a license from somebody. And that, of course, is exactly what has happened in Jamaica, thanks to the introduction of this retroactive 45-year term extension. It's a perfect example of real copyright theft, not the fake kind claimed so often by fans of a greedy intellectual monopoly that always wants more.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
Filed Under: copyright, copyright term extension, copyright terms, jamaicaANALYSIS/OPINION:
A little over a month ago, five Senate colleagues and I sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry requesting information about the ongoing delay of the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. In recent days the State Department informed my office it has been unable to release the long-overdue annual report on Iran’s human rights abuses because of a scheduling conflict.
The State Department is required by law to release this report on February 25 of this year. On April 16, the department announced a further delay but gave no indication of when it might appear. Our letter requested the department release the report by May 15 or furnish a thorough explanation for the delay.
In a letter dated June 9, Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield responded that Secretary Kerry’s rigorous travel schedule caused the delay: “The Secretary’s participation in the rollout, even if it must be delayed by his travel, elevates the report. The Secretary has needed to travel abroad for extended periods, often on short notice, during the past three months to address a variety of pressing foreign policy concerns”—thus implying that the report is complete but that scheduling conflicts with more pressing matters have prevented its release.
With all due respect to Assistant Secretary Frifield and Secretary Kerry, this is unacceptable. The single greatest threat to the national security of the United States is a nuclear-armed Iran. If allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, there is a dangerously high chance that the Iranians would use them, or share them with their terrorist proxies who are currently on a violent rampage through the Middle East, from Gaza to Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Yemen.
As my colleagues and I noted in our letter, the issue of Iran’s abysmal human rights record is inextricably intertwined |
and should not be regarded as untouchables in a management plan," according to a CPW consultant’s summary of comments made at a public meeting.
Additionally, the environmental coalition provided evidence that humans, not natural predators, have contributed to the mule deer's decline. They pointed to disturbances such as oil and gas development and livestock grazing that have led to habitat destruction and food shortages.
CPW has not denied that any of these factors could be the cause of the increased deer deaths, arguing instead that they are simply testing a hypothesis to see if it works.
"We acknowledge that any and all those things can have an effect on mule deer," CPW's assistant director for research, policy and planning Jeff Ver Steeg said in a presentation to the commissioners. "We're in the business of learning. We have come up with a new hypothesis. We are proposing to act in the form of research. We haven't assumed it is predation. We haven't assumed it isn't."
The National Wildlife Federation straddles the fence, arguing on one hand that predators are not causing the decline, but sympathizing with the limited management strategies the CPW can afford to employ in this case.
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"We believe that habitat degradation from energy, and residential development, which has been confirmed by the CPW biologists for years, should be the primary focus of scientifically-based wildlife management," Brian Kurzel, director of the region's the National Wildlife Federation, told The Denver Post.
"But this requires that CPW has adequate resources, including diversified and increased funding. CPW can be better prepared to take on the huge issue of habitat loss through incremental fee increases and broader species conservation funding that sportsmen and other wildlife conservationists can get behind."A Mubarak supporter lifted up a photo of Mubarak, angering relatives of victims of the January uprising. Lawyers for plaintiffs also entered the fray, resulting in police stepping in to separate them and the judge calling a recess. There were also clashes outside the court between demonstrators and police.
Mubarak, 83, who has been admitted to hospital since April, was again wheeled into court on a gurney for what was the third session of his trial. The hearing itself was held off-camera, unlike the first two sessions.
Police office General Hussein Saeed Mohamed Mursi, 54, head of communication in the Egyptian state security service, yesterday told the court he overheard a conversation between top officers in the operations room on January 28, saying they did not have reinforcements to protect jails and the Interior Ministry. This prompted officers to release weapons and ammunition that were transferred to the Interior Ministry building in an ambulance, as police cars were being targeted.
"The orders were to deal with the protesters as the situation mandated and the freedom was left to them to deal with protesters in a manner that they saw fit," he said.
But he said he had not heard "of any incident where an order was given to use live ammunition against protesters".
Mubarak is accused of involvement in killing protesters and "inciting" officers to use live ammunition to fire at them. About 850 people died in the protests earlier this year, ending Mubarak's three decades in office on February 11.
The trial is investigating whether the orders to fire on the crowd were given solely by the interior ministry or if Mubarak was also implicated.
Habib al-Adli, the former interior minister, is being prosecuted along with Mubarak, both of whom have pleaded not guilty, for suppressing the popular uprising. Those found guilty for the deaths could face execution.THE Church in the UK is dominated by the middle class, who must eschew superior attitudes and empower working-class culture if the dearth of working-class people in their congregations is to be reversed.
This is the message of A Church for the Poor (David C. Cook), a new book whose authors, Martin Charlesworth and Natalie Williams, straddle the class divide.
“If the poor or working-class are uncomfortable in our churches, we don’t need to convert them to our middle-class ways,” the authors write. “We need to move out of our comfort zones and accept them as they are.”
With a warning against “an attitude of superiority”, they cite sermons that disparage Sun readers, and social-media postings by Christians who argued for an IQ test before people could vote in the EU referendum. Churches must “consciously empower the sub-culture of the incoming group”, they argue.
Both authors work for Jubilee+, a charity established to encourage the New Frontiers network of churches to become “champions of the poor”. Mr Charlesworth, who leads the charity, writes of his “secure middle-class background”. Ms Williams, its communications coordinator, grew up in a “very working-class family”, but writes that she is now “middle-class in almost every way”.
“In my case that is largely due to becoming a Christian, copying the behaviour of others in church life, and aspiring for different things in my life as a result,” she reflects.
Speaking last week, she said that she and her co-author had “really wrestled” with definitions of both poverty and class, and drawn on research and the labels people gave themselves. She had been challenged about why she described herself as middle-class. She said, however: “I know that if I said I am working-class, people would say ‘No you’re not’. But I feel I am working-class because of my upbringing... I identify with working-class values and habits much more, even though I have crossed over to a certain extent.”
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The book presents this trajectory as a problem. “If every working-class Christian becomes culturally middle-class, our churches become full of middle-class people, and there are no working-class Christians left in communities where other working-class people live.”
“It’s okay if people leave working-class culture if they want to,” Ms Williams said. “But sometimes, people come to church and there is this pressure, often unspoken, to conform to certain ways of behaving. It’s okay if they are biblical, but not okay if it’s just saying: ‘This is the way we do things, and if you don’t conform you won’t fit in.’”
She argues, for example, that working-class hospitality — having the neighbours drop in whenever — is more hospitable than middle-class dinner parties. Saving is praised by the middle class, and yet the Bible cautions against hoarding wealth.
As evidence that the “truly working-class are woefully under-represented in British churches”, the book refers to a 2014 YouGov survey which found that only 38 per cent of respondents who reported regular church attendance identified as working-class, and the Talking Jesus survey (News, 6 November 2015), which estimated that 81 per cent of practising Christians had a university degree. In the 2015 British Social Attitudes Survey, 60 per cent of people defined themselves as working-class.
Although the authors acknowledge that they are using generalisations, they venture to offer observations on differences of culture. A church leader from a working-class background explains in the book: “The working-class are straight-talking but the middle class see them as rude; whereas the middle class are polite, but the working-class see them as two-faced or dishonest.”
“People from working-class or poorer backgrounds often think and act differently to me,” Mr Charlesworth observes. “Over the years, I have learned to understand and appreciate such things as the power of storytelling, clothing styles that express personality rather than social aspiration, a lesser commitment to schedules and planning, a preference for cafés and pubs rather than coffee shops, a more direct style of talking, a higher tolerance of swearing and smoking, and a greater value put on people rather than possessions.”
The book acknowledges the “mass mobilisation” of churches to respond to the needs of the poor, including the provision of foodbanks; but it expresses concern that social activism has been divorced from personal evangelism. “This is the most unloving thing we can do.” Spiritual poverty is a “particularly acute problem for the poor”, they argue. “With so little else to fall back upon, a lack of spiritual values can lead to an even starker and bleaker life.”
“It is unethical to be manipulative,” they write. “However, we do need to provide sensitive and suitable ways of inviting the poor on a spiritual journey of discovery that will involve the possibility, in the right context, of explaining the full gospel message to them and inviting a response.”
The authors call for radical action to bridge class divides: “We need to be prepared to move into neighbourhoods that have bad reputations, to place our children in schools that may not achieve the best results... to listen to people who we may feel we cannot relate to at all.”
Other strategies considered include planting satellite churches, sending out “urban missionaries”, and “deconstructing” the culture of existing churches. Mr Charlesworth draws on the experience of church-planting in a poorer, working-class area where Alpha is run as a one-to-one programme rather than an evening event demanding group discussion. A regular bingo night is run, the coffee is instant, and, given the low levels of giving, the PA system is modest.
Among the barriers to change that are explored in the book are materialism, individualism, and cynicism.
“The more time I spend with people facing poverty, the more aware I am of my need to change more than theirs,” Ms Williams writes.
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The Bishop of Burnley, the Rt Revd Philip North
The C of E boasts of being a Christian presence in every community, and yet much of our common life bypasses poorer areas, and within five to ten years we will have all but lost the Church on our outer estates.
Every renewal movement in the Church’s history has started with the poor, and yet we are pumping resources into white, middle-class, graduate forms of church life. Our language, culture, resources, literature, and structures alienate many from poorer backgrounds.
A Church for the Poor lays bare these challenges, and yet it seems to me to do so in a way that does not go far enough. It implies that the onus is on middle-class people to be more astute and clever in sharing the gospel with the poor, as if we “have it” and “they” don’t.
Yet God is profoundly present in areas of poverty, and his face shines out in the faces of those who struggle. Matthew 25 demonstrates that it is the rich who need to be evangelised by the poor.
This means equipping churches in poorer areas to identify and draw out their own leaders and evangelists rather than ship them in from outside. It means taking massive risks with leadership styles that are counter to the Church’s accepted culture. And it means having the courage to allow the mainstream Church to allow its structures, its institutions, and, above all, the content of its proclamation to be moulded by these working-class voices. It’s not enough to be a Church for the poor. We must be a Church of the poor. Only then will the renewal we long for come.
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Captain Richard Cooke, Church Army Leader of the Edge Community, Selby,
I am looking forward to reading A Church for the Poor. It could be very timely for us, as we grow church from scratch in a community of working-class people or those who do not work.
An experienced vicar said recently: “Working-class people often do God but they don’t do church.” Yet I find people are drawn to genuine community. “I come here because it’s good to be with kind people,” Rachel, at our Messy Church BBQ on Sunday, said.
People on the estate are often part of a very vibrant, if hurting, community. Do they find that in church? And do they encounter Jesus in our actions and words?
As a middle-class person, I am challenged in my assumptions about people’s Christian knowledge, how they think and learn, and we too often hold on to the reins of our agenda rather than allow people to contribute and own church for themselves. And what of my desire to love people at a “safe distance”? I hope this book contributes to our ongoing journey to help others experience loving community with Christ at the centre.
Sister Lynne Bone, Church Army evangelist, Thanet Centre of Mission
I agree that more can always be done to ensure that our churches are welcoming to all, regardless of age, background, education, and culture.
I wonder, however, if the authors are attempting to fit a round peg in a square hole. In my experience of walking alongside people who are non-churched and would fit into their definition of working-class, church culture is very alien, and they thrive most when allowed to develop their own sense of what church can be for themselves, and to live it out in ways that are natural and real to them.
If the Established Church (in whatever form that may be) is the square hole that perfectly fits square pegs — i.e. middle-class people, according to this book — then work to create round holes for round pegs, i.e. working-class people, may be worth exploring.
There is a danger that the book suggests that the middle-class church needs to “round off” its edges to cater for the working-class folk. I wonder how helpful that would be to anyone? Both shapes, indeed all shapes, are “fearfully and wonderfully made”, and can co-exist side by side within the one body.
Listen to an interview with Natalie Williams on Episode 19 of the Church Times Podcast www.churchtimes.co.uk/podcastFrom The Atlantic:
What Trump and Cruz Should Learn From Belgium
In calling for policies that alienate Muslims, the Republican candidates are trying to make America more like Europe.
Right after the attacks in Brussels on Tuesday, Donald Trump did something bizarre. He spoke the truth. Appearing on Fox and Friends, the GOP presidential frontrunner declared that, “This all happened because frankly there is no assimilation.”
… Which is why the proposals that he and Ted Cruz offered in response to it are so idiotic. Soon after decrying Belgium’s lack of “assimilation,” Trump reiterated his call for temporarily banning Muslims from entering the United States. It’s hard to think of a proposal more likely to push America in Belgium’s direction. Today, American Muslims are far more integrated than Muslims in Europe. According to a 2011 Pew Research poll, only 20 percent of American Muslims surveyed would prefer to “be distinct” than to “adopt American customs.” … Compared to countries like Belgium, the degree of acceptance that American Muslims enjoy represents a form of American exceptionalism.
Banning Muslim immigration would almost certainly undermine this. A 2014 study found that Muslim immigrants in states that experienced more anti-Muslim hate crimes were less likely to intermarry with non-Muslims and learn English. Trump’s demonization of Muslims has already fostered more of these anti-Muslim attacks, and were he to try to implement his ban on Muslim immigration, Islamophobia would likely spike even higher, undermining the very integration of American Muslims that helps keep America safe.All four Boston Teamsters have been found not guilty on all charges in the "Top Chef" extortion trial, a federal jury decided this morning.
The Teamsters had been accused of terrorizing the set of the Bravo reality show "Top Chef" in 2014 with physical violence and threats of death and bomb scares in a failed attempt to extort the nonunion production into hiring them for truck driving jobs, according to prosecutors.
"We are disappointed in today’s verdict," acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb said in a statement. " The government believed, and continues to believe, that the conduct in this case crossed the line and constituted a violation of federal law. The defendants’ conduct was an affront to all of the hard-working and law-abiding members of organized labor. We will continue to aggressively prosecute extortion in all its forms to ensure that Boston remains a safe and welcoming place to do business. I would like to thank the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General for their work investigating this case."
Lawyers for defendants John Fidler, 52, Daniel Redmond, 48, Robert Cafarelli, 46, and Michael Ross, 62, did not put on a defense.
However, their legal teams successfully insisted through cross-examination of government witnesses and in closing arguments that their clients lawfully picketed to replace nonunion production assistants who for weeks had been performing the work the men were demanding.
A 44-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision forbids charging union members with anti-racketeering Hobbs Act extortion if their behavior, however abhorrent, is in the pursuit of a legitimate labor objective.
U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock said the exception to the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision, under which the Local 25 members were charged with attempted extortion and conspiracy to extort, is “narrow.”
He told the trial teams that jurors were facing “a very complex area of law” in their deliberations.
The charges stem from incidents that allegedly occurred between June 5 and 10, 2014, while “Top Chef’ was filming the seventh episode of its 12th season, which for the first time was based in Boston.
The case, with its mixed cast of Teamsters and Hollywood stars, turned a spotlight on the administration of Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who appeared on the episode of the show.
A network executive who oversees production of the show testified that a top lieutenant of the mayor pressured him to hire unwanted Teamsters to drive trucks, saying the famously pro-labor Democrat was in an “uncomfortable situation" for having guest-starred on the nonunion reality show.
“At one point he asked if I could take the mayor out of the show. I said that wasn't possible," David G. O'Connell, executive vice president of production management for NBC Universal, said of Kenneth Brissette, director of the Mayor's Office of Tourism, Sports and Entertainment.
“He kept reiterating that this would all go away if we just made a deal. “I kept saying, no, it's not going to happen," O'Connell said. “The Teamsters had been sniffing around and wanted to make a deal with us. It's a nonunion show and we were fully staffed at that point."
Brissett was identified by prosecutors as an “unindicted co-conspirator” for pressuring “Top Chef” producers to hire Teamsters while temporarily withholding their permits to film around the city. He is currently on paid leave from his post while awaiting a January trial for his alleged attempted extortion of the “Boston Calling” music festival in a separate labor dispute.
Walsh spokeswoman Laura Oggeri had declined to comment on O'Connell's claims. Two years ago, Walsh's office issued a statement that read, “Mayor Walsh was fully supportive of the ‘Top Chef' filming and was happy to participate in the show."
Jurors in the case heard compelling and emotional testimony from high-profile witnesses including “Top Chef” host Padma Lakshmi and show judge Gail Simmons.
Lakshmi said she was “petrified” Fidler was going to punch her in her “pretty face,” while Simmons broke down crying on the stand recalling how scared she was when Teamsters surrounded her vehicle.
Location manager Derek Cunningham testified he began sleeping with a knife under his bed. A man trying to deliver meat to the Steel & Rye restaurant in Milton, where the Teamsters were protesting a “Top Chef’ shoot on June 10, 2014, claimed one of them threatened to plant a bomb on his truck.
Others testified they were threatened with death and vicious beatdowns.
A crew member said 11 tires on nine rented production vans were slashed while the Teamsters were at the Steel & Rye.
Before sending them to their deliberations, Woodlock told jurors to remember the witnesses were “more exotic than your everyday fare, but they’re still people.”
The jury was out nearly 20 hours since Thursday after hearing six days of testimony from 18 witnesses called by prosecutors for the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The 12 deliberating jurors – nine women and three men — were culled from a pool of 92 originally summonsed from Cape Ann to Cape Cod.
If convicted, Fidler, Redmond, Cafarelli and Ross would have faced up to 20 years in federal prison.
Mark Harrington, Charlestown-based Local 25’s former business agent, pleaded guilty in December to attempted extortion and was sentenced by Woodlock to six months’ home confinement as part of two years’ probation.
The judge called that sentence “a fair price” to pay, even as he questioned whether it would serve as a deterrent to future union actions.
DEVELOPING…New research from an international team has revealed why the oldest water in the ocean in the North Pacific has remained trapped in a shadow zone around 2km below the sea surface for over 1000 years.
To put it in context, the last time this water encountered the atmosphere the Goths had just invaded the Western Roman Empire. The research suggests the time the ancient water spent below the surface is a consequence of the shape of the ocean floor and its impact on vertical circulation.
“Carbon-14 dating had already told us the most ancient water lied in the deep North Pacific. But until now we had struggled to understand why the very oldest waters huddle around the depth of 2km,” said lead author from the University of New South Wales, Dr Casimir de Lavergne. “What we have found is that at around 2km below the surface of the Indian and Pacific Oceans there is a ‘shadow zone’ with barely any vertical movement that suspends ocean water in an area for centuries.
The shadow zone is an area of almost stagnant water sitting between the rising currents caused by the rough topography and geothermal heat sources below 2.5km and the shallower wind driven currents closer to the surface. Before this research, models of deep ocean circulation did not accurately account for the constraint of the ocean floor on bottom waters. Once the researchers precisely factored it in they found the bottom water can not rise above 2.5km below the surface, leaving the region directly above isolated. While the researchers have unlocked one part of the puzzle their results also have the potential to tell us much more.
“When this isolated shadow zone traps millennia old ocean water it also traps nutrients and carbon which have a direct impact on the capacity of the ocean to modify climate over centennial time scales,” said fellow author from Stockholm University, Dr Fabien Roquet, researcher at the Department of Meteorology.
The article Abyssal ocean overturning shaped by seafloor distribution is published in the scientific journal Nature.Last week, a special court for the clergy began to consider whether Mr. Karroubi, 72, should face charges. His response, in a speech to a student group that was reported on a reformist Web site, was withering.
“I am not only unworried about this court,” he wrote. “I wholeheartedly welcome it since I will use it to express my concerns regarding the national and religious beliefs of the Iranian people and the ideas of Imam Khomeini, and clearly reveal those who are opposed to these concerns.”
Despite such provocations, Iran’s conservative leadership has so far not arrested him, apparently fearful of making a powerful symbol of a man so closely associated with the founding of the Islamic republic.
“His potential arrest is an acid test of the internal meltdown of the upper echelon of the regime and the final breakdown in its legitimacy facade,” said Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian studies at Columbia University. “We had heard that revolutions eat their own children, but his seems to be a case of revolutionary parricide.”
Mr. Karroubi works from a villa on a quiet street in Tehran that ends at a rundown palace once occupied by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. It is one of the many symbols of his standing among the revolutionary elite. He was jailed nine times by the shah and spent years in prison, where he grew close to inmates of widely different political persuasions: nationalist, socialist, Islamist, said Rasool Nafisi, an Iran expert based in Virginia.
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“These forced companionships, Karroubi wrote in his autobiography, made him aware of the pain of the others, and relieved him from sectarian behavior,” Mr. Nafisi said.
After the overthrow of the shah, Ayatollah Khomeini put Mr. Karroubi in charge of the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee and the Martyrs Foundation, two of the nation’s most important and wealthiest institutions. He also served twice as speaker of Parliament, where he earned a reputation as a conciliator; served on the powerful Expediency Council; and was appointed adviser to the subsequent supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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So it was hard for the leadership to brand him an enemy of the state when he posted on his Web site last month an impassioned, unyielding and damning letter to the nation, written in response to the judicial finding that his allegations of the rape of imprisoned protesters were unfounded.
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“The ugliness has reached the point that instead of the perpetrators and propagators and people behind this oppression, it is Mehdi Karroubi whom they want to put on trial,” he wrote. “I take refuge with you, oh God, from these catastrophes which some are causing and are not only a disgrace to the Islamic republic, but a disgrace to Iran.”
Mr. Karroubi’s disenchantment with the revolution he helped create began not with the elections in June, but with the balloting that brought Mr. Ahmadinejad to office four years ago. Mr. Karroubi was a candidate then, too, and late into the night after the polls closed, he was running second, behind Mr. Rafsanjani.
A few days later, he talked about election night during an interview in his villa, still angry and surprised at what had happened. He said he had gone to sleep and when he woke, he was in third place, behind Mr. Ahmadinejad and out of the race.
Mr. Ahmadinejad won a runoff, and Mr. Karroubi wrote an open letter of protest to the supreme leader charging vote fraud. There was no investigation, however, and Ayatollah Khamenei chastised Mr. Karroubi. He dropped his protest, but quit the Expediency Council and started his own political organization, the National Trust Party.
Of course, much the same thing happened again in June, when Mr. Ahmadinejad supposedly won with 63 percent of the votes cast — including 71 percent of the votes cast in Mr. Karroubi’s home province, Lorestan.
If Mr. Karroubi had restricted his complaints to the vote tally, he might have been ignored. But he has gone far beyond that with his accusations that state security officers raped, sodomized and tortured men and women who were arrested for taking part in the protests. The allegations have unnerved the leadership, threatening its legitimacy and religious standing far more than images of the police beating protesters in the streets.
After the government dismissed those allegations last month, Mr. Karroubi was summoned to appear before a three-judge panel investigating his actions. He welcomed the invitation. “It will be a good opportunity for me to talk again about crimes that would make the shah look good,” he said, according to the Green Freedom Wave Web site.
As calls for his arrest grow louder, he remains defiant.
“If only I were not alive and had not seen the day that in the Islamic republic, a citizen would come to me and complain that every variety of appalling and unnatural act would be done in unknown buildings and by less-known people: stripping people and making them face each other and subjecting them to vile insults and urinating in their faces,” he wrote in his letter to the nation. “I said to myself, ‘Where indeed have we arrived 30 years after the revolution?’ ”Danielle Meitiv and her daughter Dvora Meitiv, 6, walk home after being dropped off from school in Silver Spring, Maryland, Friday January 16, 2015. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv are being investigated by Child Protective Services for letting their children walk home alone from a playground. (Photo by Sammy Dallal for The Washington Post)
And so the incarceral state continues to bully its way into childhood, parenthood, and family life...
First up, another story about teenagers, sex, and the internet in which local law enforcement officials claim that the only way to save some kids from ruining their lives... is by ruining their lives.
Four suburban teenagers have been arrested on felony charges, for an explicit video they posted on Twitter. All four students attend Joliet Central High School, and are between the ages of 14 and 16. A 15-year-old girl and three of her classmates recorded consensual sex acts one week ago, and posted the video on Twitter. The girl’s mother found out about the video, and reported the Twitter post to police, who seized the original recording. The four teens were arrested Friday, and charged as juveniles with child pornography Joliet Police Chief Brian Benton said posting the video online made already risky behavior criminal. “It’s a criminal offense, first of all, to post that type of material online, especially for underage,” Benton said. Police want the charges against the four students to serve as a cautionary tale to other youths engaged in high-risk behavior. “The child pornography offense that was charged is in place for a reason, because we don’t want to accept that type of behavior as a society,” Benton said. “It’s making a strong statement, and I think it’s important to do so, to send a message to others that kids shouldn’t be involved in this type of behavior, and hopefully this will serve as a deterrent.” Benton said such behavior could seriously affect the teens’ lives “for years to come.” “It’s an incident you may not recover from,” he said.
How bold of Chief Benton to be willing to destroy these kids’ lives with child pornography charges for a series of mistakes they made that (a) only victimized themselves, (b) were made while they were minors, and (c) is only the digital age version of the same mistakes a significant percentage of teenagers have been making for as long as there have been teenagers. I wonder if Chief Benton ever made a mistake as a teenager.
Next up, Holiday, Florida officials want to ruin a kid for a dumb prank.
Eighth-grader Domanik Green, 14, of Paul R. Smith Middle School in Holiday, Florida, was recently arrested and charged with offense against a computer system and unauthorized access (which is a felony charge). He was released from Land O’Lakes Detention Center on Wednesday.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that the Pasco County sheriff’s department took action after Green used a teacher’s administrative password to log onto a school computer. While accessing the machine, he changed its desktop background to an image of two men kissing. The computer had state standardized testing questions on it, though they were encrypted and police say that Green didn’t access them. “I logged into a teacher’s computer who I didn’t like and tried putting inappropriate pictures onto his computer to annoy him,” Green told the Times.
Sheriff Chris Nocco said, “Even though some might say this is just a teenage prank, who knows what this teenager might have done.”
As far as I know, we don’t punish anyone in this country, let alone minors, for crimes they might have committed. Let’s be clear about something: It’s the adults who are failing in these stories, not the kids. Perhaps these children do have some problems above and beyond the normal growing pains of being a teenager. That’s a reason for adults to reach out to them, and offer them help. That requires some patience, some nuance, and some empathy. But the criminal justice system is a blunt instrument. There’s nothing nuanced about it. Using cops, courts, and jails to address problems once handled by schools, parents, religious leaders, and community institutions isn’t bold or difficult or brave. It’s just throwing the threat of violence at our problems. It’s easy. And it’s lazy.
Meanwhile, the Maryland couple harassed by Child Protective Services earlier this year for letting their kids walk home alone just had another frightening encounter with the agency.
Danielle and Sasha Meitiv’s children, ages 6 and 10, were picked up by police on Sunday at around 5 p.m., and taken to Child Protective Services. A neighbor apparently saw the children walking alone and called 911 to report it. FOX 5’s Marina Marraco reports the children were walking about a third of a mile from home at the time. Danielle Meitiv tells FOX 5 she had told her kids to be home by 6:30 p.m., and when they weren’t, she and her husband became frantic and started driving around looking for them. The Meitivs say CPS didn’t call them to let them know they had the kids until about 8 p.m. The Meitivs drove to CPS to pick up their kids, but say they were told to “take a seat” and initially weren’t given any information about their children, except that they were there. Just after 10:30 p.m., the Meitivs were reunited with their kids. They had to sign a temporary safety plan to take them home, which means they are not allowed to leave the children unattended at all. The Meitivs’ 10-year-old son told reporters they sat in the police car for about two hours before they were told they would be dropped off at home, but instead, they went to CPS in Rockville.
I don’t envy CPS employees. They have a difficult job. Make a mistake in one direction, and you could be endangering the life of a child. Make a mistake in the other, and you’re needlessly ripping a family apart.
But this just seems like vindictive harassment of the Metivs for making the agency a national laughingstock last January. And if that is what happened here, the implications are pretty frightening. Perhaps it’s time the Maryland legislature or Attorney General Brian Frosh take a look at what’s going on.Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr
The National Parks Service twitter account was caught spreading fake news and misleading information about President Trump’s administration, as a result, the government office has been banned from tweeting. An internal email obtained by Gizmodo states that the National Parks Service has faced the wrath after it was ordered by Washington to immediately cease the use of government twitter accounts until further notice.
NPS posted an offending retweet of a New York Times article based on selective photos to push the false narrative that the 2009 and 2013 inaugurations had more attendees that the 2017 event. This was a completely false and biased retweet. As if that’s not enough, NPS made a second tweet which pointed to an intentionally misleading article in Esquire, the article was titled ‘’Civil rights, climate change, and health care scrubbed clean from White House website. Not a trace.’’
Esquire failed to inform their readers that the new administrations always wipe the White House website clean and start again in a move aimed at pushing an obvious agenda. The NPS is a branch of the Department of the Interior, however, it finally deleted the retweets a few hours after they went live- but Trump had already caught them and banned them from tweeting.
The National Park employees received an email which stated that PWR parks that use Twitter as part of their crisis communications plans need to alter their contingency plans to accommodate this requirement. Please ensure that all scheduled posts are deleted and automated cross-platform social media connections to your twitter accounts are severed. The expectation is that there will be no posts to Twitter.
Other official government accounts issued their congratulations and notices that promoted the 45th President, in contrast the National Park Service account posted biased and fake content and as a result, NPS has gotten what it deserves. The NPS has issued an apology for the irresponsible behavior.High court to rule on eviction of London camp amid debate over next move and dwindling enthusiasm for global movement
During a heady few weeks late last year, camps were springing up around the UK, and Occupy was the country's fastest-growing political movement. A few months on – beset by obstacles including court cases, an influx of the long-term homeless and vulnerable and the sheer cold – the phenomenon, at least in its tent-based form, seems to be almost over.
On Monday, London protesters will hear whether their high court application to appeal against the decision to evict them has been successful – but many other camps have already melted away.
At the autumn peak, about two dozen Occupy camps existed, from Edinburgh to Plymouth, Norwich to Belfast. A handful lasted into winter, but even those are now packing up. The few activists remaining on Exeter's Cathedral Green left last week.
The camp on Bristol's College Green, at one stage numbering 60 tents, was cleared after the final, solitary protester gave in. Occupy Edinburgh finally finished last week, while Sheffield must quit on Monday after a court order.
That leaves just Nottingham, where campers are discussing an "exit plan"; Norwich, where campers have agreed to leave their city-centre site; and the slightly incongruous-sounding Occupy Thanet, which set up camp outside the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, Kent, just over a fortnight ago.
Then there is London, where the flagship outpost – the sizeable if slightly diminished encampment in the lee of St Paul's Cathedral – also faces a possible visit by bailiffs and police from Tuesday. Once that is cleared, all that will remain is a lower-profile offshoot on Finsbury Square, just north-east of St Paul's, and a squatted former court building.
It is a similar story worldwide.
The phenomenon began last year in the more forgiving climate of a Madrid May, when thousands packed into the city's Puerta del Sol square to express anger at the economic situation, expensive housing and a sense of political detachment.
Inspired by the people-led movements of the Arab spring, the indignados, or outraged, decided they should gather to plan a better future. While dozens of similar camps emerged around Spain, the movement seemingly fizzled out that summer.
It reignited in September when Occupy Wall Street – a major inspiration for London – took over New York's Zuccotti Park with its soon-ubiquitous "We are the 99%" slogan. Police broke up that camp two months later, and the remaining US outposts are reducing in number all the time. Over the past week or so police have moved into Miami, Austin and Washington, while Occupy Pittsburgh disbanded voluntarily after an eviction order.
For the UK movement the end of St Paul's, which seems inevitable despite Monday's hearing |
, with your melted oils and lecithin over a low heat.(I am using slightly more oil, knowing that with this much herb, a small but noticeable quantity of oil will be left behind):After adding the powdered herb:Cover tight with foil, using the foil to seal the thermometer in place, keep between 180-200 f, turning off the heat periodically as it rises. This is what it looks like after about ten or so hours:Allow to cool somewhat, so it’s only warm to the touch, and set up your cheesecloth.Now, you can begin straining.When using this much green for such a small amount of oil, I know there will be some potent material left within the herb that is worth keeping, so I save and freeze the green for a future run, and use only the oil.But knowing you’ll be using a smaller amount, and if it was initially ground finely enough, you can choose to add it all directly to the peanut butter.Now with one (or both ;) ) of these oils, you’re finally ready to make the peanut butter balls!On to the peanut butter balls:Once that is done you should have an oily peanut butter goo, and you’re ready to begin mixing in your powdered sugar, until it reaches a consistency that will hold shape, and not crumble.You’re now ready to make the peanut butter centers, using the ‘fuse’:Cover the base of a cookie sheet or baking pan with foil or wax paper.Take enough peanut butter filling, so that when rolled, it should create roughly a 1.25 - 1.50” diameter ball.Once it’s balled up, insert the ‘fuse’ about half-way through the ball, KNOT-END FIRST, then gently squeeze and reform, the ball making sure that it’s stable. If you’d like, you can place them down gently but firmly on the foil or wax paper, just enough to create a ‘flat’ on the very base, to keep them from rolling around.Having the fuse-knot in the center holds it in very snug, and prevents the fuse from slipping around and falling out, or crumbling the peanut butter, and you can carefully bend the fuse so it looks decorative, or more ‘cartoon-ish’.Pop the tray into the freezer, for no longer than 20 minutes (while you complete the following).This can be as simple or tedious as you like. If you’re not adept in the kitchen or familiar with tempering chocolate I recommend using all your hash/canna oil in the peanut butter ball portion, disregard the double boiler, and using one of the newer, more simple microwavable melting chocolates, which are designed for easy consistent use.Otherwise, you may be frustrated when the consistency fails and it’s more of a lumpy sauce, than a coating.What I do, using a double boiler pot, is grab a handful of semi-sweet, dark, and milk chocolate baking chips, concentrating on the dark and semi-sweet, and slowly melt them over the lowest heat possible using a double boiler.Once the chocolate is melted, I add my hash oil, blend, and then I begin shaving small amounts of paraffin into the chocolate. I’ll blend again, then drop a little on wax paper. Once it stays nice and solid, it’s ready. Remove from heat.If you choose to make your own chocolate coat, but without adding additional canna oil, there is no need for the paraffin: just temper as usual, and they will be much shinier this way. Remember the smaller and taller the pot, the easier it will be to use as a coat.Remove your peanut butter balls from the freezer (or the refrigerator, if you waited longer than 20 minutes) and grab them one at a time, by the fuse.Quickly dunk each ball in the cooling chocolate, and place on your wax paper.. a new sheet can be used, or you can carefully return each ball to the last.The cold temperature of the peanut butter ball will rapidly solidify the cooling chocolate, this is why it’s best to work fast and use the freezer rather than the fridge for the balls, the outer edge becomes colder than it can in the fridge, without allowing the center to become frozen (which can cause crumbling/cracking in the center around the fuse, when dunked into the warm chocolate).After dunking each ball, take a spoon and using the excess chocolate, place a small drop on the end of each fuse… now they’re litPop them in the freezer, and you’re done! You now have 18 – 20 of the most potent desert-edibles you can find... with folks eagerly awaiting a sample, you can see that three BOMBs had already gone 'MIA', before I even had a chance to finish dipping the full batch Big Grin If you're not using them right away, I recommend letting them sit for a few hours, as they are on the pan, while freezing.Then, like any stored edible, you can remove them and place them inside an oven bag within a tupperware container, or even a small safe, properly installed in your freezer… this is what I recommend to any parents, who need to keep meds out of the hands of curious minors.Storing them first in oven bags, helps to prevent freezer burn and outside odors or flavors from seeping in, retaining their flavor, so they don’t become spoiled by the environment outside the bag.The Fear Monger: Zombeavers! Killer Mimes! Martin Sheen In A Horror Movie! By Nick Venable Random Article Blend
While we have another faux six weeks of winter because the groundhog saw his shadow, I’d rather have six more weeks of amazing claymation from Trent Shy, who continues to take the artform by its throat and swing it around in glee. Here’s his reference-filled advert for the upcoming Crimson Screen Horror Film Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.
In other quick cut news, Blumhouse and Universal Home Entertainment will be dumping Captain America director Joe Johnston’s thriller Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll project, which he wrote the screenplay for, is finally in production, with Manson himself in the role of Carroll. And on that note, let’s move on to what will inevitably be less frightening news.
Self-Aware Horror Comedy Zombeavers Debuts Trailer and Poster Some horror comedies, like The Cabin in the Woods, need deep meta philosophy behind the story being told in order to achieve success. And then there are some movies, like Zombeavers, that need nothing more than a ridiculously simple and solid hook: beavers that come back from the dead to murder the shit out of a group of people looking for a good time…in a cabin. This first trailer, via
Zombeavers is the directorial debut from writer and stand-up comic Jordan Rubin, who has written for several MTV Movie Awards, Craig Kilborn, Crank Yankers and The Man Show. He co-wrote the script with musicians Al and Jon Kaplan, who composed the music for Piranhaconda!!! Also, it’s got production company BenderSpinks (The Ring, We’re the Millers) behind it. The film is being shopped around at the European Film Market, and somebody had better pick this thing up unless they want a "dam" fine way to lose a foot. Check out the new poster below and cross your front teeth that this pic gets snatched up and released soon.
Happy weekend, defacers of all things delicate. Am I the only one that wants to destroy things because there isn’t any football this weekend? If only the new horror flicks on VOD and streaming were as violent and filled with things named after animals.While we have another faux six weeks of winter because the groundhog saw his shadow, I’d rather have six more weeks of amazing claymation from Trent Shy, who continues to take the artform by its throat and swing it around in glee. Here’s his reference-filled advert for the upcoming Crimson Screen Horror Film Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.In other quick cut news, Blumhouse and Universal Home Entertainment will be dumpingdirector Joe Johnston’s thriller Not Safe For Work onto DVD on April 15, just in time to remind you about your taxes. As well, hard rocker Marilyn Manson went to Twitter to announce his long-gestatingproject, which he wrote the screenplay for, is finally in production, with Manson himself in the role of Carroll. And onnote, let’s move on to what will inevitably be less frightening news.Some horror comedies, like, need deep meta philosophy behind the story being told in order to achieve success. And then there are some movies, like, that need nothing more than a ridiculously simple and solid hook: beavers that come back from the dead to murder the shit out of a group of people looking for a good time…in a cabin. This first trailer, via BloodyDisgusting, is a rip-roaring good time simply because it seems to adhere to this goofy premise without leaving room for anything else. Plus, it’s got special effects shots like "beaver catches fire as it bites into an electrical socket" and "girl’s front teeth fall out as beaver teeth push out of her gums." Class. Ic.is the directorial debut from writer and stand-up comic Jordan Rubin, who has written for several MTV Movie Awards, Craig Kilborn,and. He co-wrote the script with musicians Al and Jon Kaplan, who composed the music for!!! Also, it’s got production company BenderSpinks () behind it. The film is being shopped around at the European Film Market, and somebody had better pick this thing up unless they want a "dam" fine way to lose a foot. Check out the new poster below and cross your front teeth that this pic gets snatched up and released soon. The Quiet Ones Puts Out Awesome Poster With Its U.K. Trailer In this world of increasingly Photoshopped posters, you can usually count on horror films to deliver artwork that steps outside the box for something different, and Hammer Films’
Jane is the subject of a paranormal experiment at Oxford University run by a professor (Jared Harris) who thinks he and a team of fearless students can induce a poltergeist spawning from the girl’s fractured psyche. What they don’t consider, of course, is that major damage can’t always be undone. And in this case, the damage includes a whole world of paranormal distress and misery. I can’t wait to see this one, as it looks to be a film that eschews fake-out scares for a barrage of constant WTF-ness. Plus, I can use it as a blueprint to figure out what to do with this quiet and subdued girl that appeared in my backyard a few days ago. Check out the new U.K. trailer below, which doesn’t really offer any new footage, but streamlines the stuff we’ve already seen.
In this world of increasingly Photoshopped posters, you can usually count on horror films to deliver artwork that steps outside the box for something different, and Hammer Films’ The Quiet Ones has done just that. Star Olivia Cooke, who plays the central mystery Jane, is seen with a bunch of…stuff coming off of her. Is it fire? Ghosts? Plants? Part of the fun is not knowing. I don’t know if it looks as unspeakable as the film’s tagline describes it, but it’s rather undescribable.Jane is the subject of a paranormal experiment at Oxford University run by a professor (Jared Harris) who thinks he and a team of fearless students can induce a poltergeist spawning from the girl’s fractured psyche. What they don’t consider, of course, is that major damage can’t always be undone. And in this case, the damage includes a whole world of paranormal distress and misery. I can’t wait to see this one, as it looks to be a film that eschews fake-out scares for a barrage of constant WTF-ness. Plus, I can use it as a blueprint to figure out what to do with this quiet and subdued girl that appeared in my backyard a few days ago. Check out the new U.K. trailer below, which doesn’t really offer any new footage, but streamlines the stuff we’ve already seen. Trollhunter Director Teams With Martin Sheen For The Autopsy of Jane Doe If you gave me a year of naming director/actor combinations for a spooky horror flick, I don’t think I would ever have arrived at André Øvredal and Martin Sheen. In the first place, Øvredal’s breakout film Trollhunter, while certainly a genre film, is more whimsically nontraditional, and Sheen definitely isn’t known for his scary chops. All that said, this could be a pretty amazing combination if the story from Ian B. Goldberg (Once Upon a Time) and newcomer Richard Naing is any good.
Coming from Goldcrest Films, 42 and Imposter Pictures, the titular Autopsy will be performed on a homicide victim who doesn’t appear to have any cause of death. Small town mortician Tommy (Sheen) and his son try to determine how she died as well as her identity, but a series of baffling clues reveal this Jane Doe has a few secrets that are better left undiscovered. The film is set to start production in London this summer, with more casting announcements coming soon. Dear God, if they cast Charlie Sheen to play his son, I will go and stand outside the theater a year before it comes out. If you gave me a year of naming director/actor combinations for a spooky horror flick, I don’t think I would ever have arrived at André Øvredal and Martin Sheen. In the first place, Øvredal’s breakout film, while certainly a genre film, is more whimsically nontraditional, and Sheen definitely isn’t known for his scary chops. All that said, this could be a pretty amazing combination if the story from Ian B. Goldberg () and newcomer Richard Naing is any good.Coming from Goldcrest Films, 42 and Imposter Pictures, the titularwill be performed on a homicide victim who doesn’t appear to have any cause of death. Small town mortician Tommy (Sheen) and his son try to determine how she died as well as her identity, but a series of baffling clues reveal this Jane Doe has a few secrets that are better left undiscovered. The film is set to start production in London this summer, with more casting announcements coming soon. Dear God, if they cast Charlie Sheen to play his son, I will go and stand outside the theater a year before it comes out. You Will Fear Paris With This Upcoming Anthology From All-Star Filmmakers Above you’ll find the stunningly produced concept trailer for the upcoming anthology horror Fear Paris, which will use the normally romantic city as the setting for some interconnected stories of debauchery and murder. This project was Paris, I’ll Kill You, which is the line that the newly-voiced mime speaks at the end of the clip. I really love this thing, as it could absolutely serve as a standalone short film, and it finally gives mimes an element of badassery. Fake axes and chainsaws will do that.
The somewhat revised list of directors, via Gremlins director Joe Dante, Hitman’s Xavier Gens and Iron Sky’s Timo Vuorensola on board, with two more directors to follow. (Not sure if the IMDb page for the film is current.) The visual effects will come from Moon’s production designer Tony Noble, Harry Potter make-up and prosthetics artist Kristyan Mallet, and Frankenstein’s Army director Richard Raaphorst will handle concept designs; and if you’ve seen the crazy awesome monsters he personally created for that film, you know why this is exciting. Plus, effects companies Pixomondo (Hugo) and Prime Focus (Gravity) are also in the line-up. Casting is now underway and filming is set to begin in the summer or fall. Above you’ll find the stunningly produced concept trailer for the upcoming anthology horror, which will use the normally romantic city as the setting for some interconnected stories of debauchery and murder. This project was first announced back in 2010 under the name, which is the line that the newly-voiced mime speaks at the end of the clip. I really love this thing, as it could absolutely serve as a standalone short film, and it finally gives mimes an element of badassery. Fake axes and chainsaws will do that.The somewhat revised list of directors, via THR, includesdirector Joe Dante,’s Xavier Gens and’s Timo Vuorensola on board, with two more directors to follow. (Not sure if the IMDb page for the film is current.) The visual effects will come from’s production designer Tony Noble,make-up and prosthetics artist Kristyan Mallet, anddirector Richard Raaphorst will handle concept designs; and if you’ve seen the crazy awesome monsters he personally created for that film, you know why this is exciting. Plus, effects companies Pixomondo () and Prime Focus () are also in the line-up. Casting is now underway and filming is set to begin in the summer or fall. Trailer For Skype-Based Horror The Den Actually Looks Interesting I hate to use a headline with a backhanded compliment like that, but Paranormal Activity 4 left an impenetrably terrible taste in my mouth for films taking a more limited approach to found-footage. The feature debut from director Zach Donahue, The Den centers on Elizabeth (Melanie Papelia), a student who attempts to study the users of a video-chat site for her graduate thesis, but things take a bloody turn when she stumbles across a brutal murder. It is of course initially blown off as a prank, but when the murderer comes after Elizabeth and her loved ones, it’s obvious that the threat is legit.
This kind of story was told really well in Michael Costanza’s virtually unreleased film 2002 thriller The Collingswood Story, and this looks like that film made with a slightly bigger budget. Plus, the actress reminds me of Ellie Kemper, which is superficial but it helps. But then it also looks like the abysmal killer thriller Smiley, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see where this one falls. Find it in three theaters and on VOD starting March 14. Check out a foreign poster for the film below.
I hate to use a headline with a backhanded compliment like that, butleft an impenetrably terrible taste in my mouth for films taking a more limited approach to found-footage. The feature debut from director Zach Donahue,centers on Elizabeth (Melanie Papelia), a student who attempts to study the users of a video-chat site for her graduate thesis, but things take a bloody turn when she stumbles across a brutal murder. It is of course initially blown off as a prank, but when the murderer comes after Elizabeth and her loved ones, it’s obvious that the threat is legit.This kind of story was told really well in Michael Costanza’s virtually unreleased film 2002 thriller, and this looks like that film made with a slightly bigger budget. Plus, the actress reminds me of Ellie Kemper, which is superficial but it helps. But then it also looks like the abysmal killer thriller, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see where this one falls. Find it in three theaters and on VOD starting March 14. Check out a foreign poster for the film below. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topArmed with a state ruling in her favor, a transgender woman in Minneapolis contends in a federal lawsuit that a plasma collection service discriminated against her when it barred her from donating.
“You people can’t give plasma,” Lisa A. Scott allegedly was told by a CSL Plasma nurse, according to her suit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.
The Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigated the CSL outlet on Washington Avenue SE. and found that the for-profit company discriminated against Scott because of her sexual orientation in 2008 when the nurse told her that she was disqualified.
CSL told state investigators that it has a policy forbidding transsexuals from donating plasma, even though “there are no federal laws prohibiting transsexuals from plasma donation,” the state agency’s findings noted.
For decades, sexual activity between men has been a disqualifier in the United States for donating blood or blood components because of the risk of transmitting the AIDS virus. But pressure is increasing to loosen that prohibition. Rallies were held last summer in 50 cities, including Minneapolis, calling for a change in the rules.
Discrimination involving transgender people attempting to donate plasma and blood “is happening throughout the country,” said attorney John Klassen, who is joined by Andrew Muller and the nonprofit Gender Justice law firm in representing Scott in this case.
The CSL location on Washington Avenue referred calls for reaction to a corporate spokesman who did not immediately return calls. CSL is based in Boca Raton, Fla., and has three locations in Minnesota.
Scott, who had gender reassignment surgery in 2006, seeks damages in excess of $75,000 and payment of legal fees, along with requiring the firm to no longer discriminate against transgender people.Victory for Crystal Palace meant they moved above Liverpool in the league
Jurgen Klopp suffered his first loss as Liverpool manager, seeing his side beaten by Crystal Palace at Anfield.
Defender Scott Dann nodded in the 82nd-minute winner, reacting quickest after Simon Mignolet parried his header.
The visitors took the lead in the first half through winger Yannick Bolasie, who swivelled inside the box to fire in after the Reds failed to clear.
Media playback is not supported on this device Liverpool 1-2 Crystal Palace: Jurgen Klopp bemoans 'unnecessary' defeat
Philippe Coutinho curled in Liverpool's leveller three minutes before half-time following Adam Lallana's flick.
But Liverpool-born Dann then inflicted a first defeat in 13 matches for the Reds, who were watched by former captain Steven Gerrard.
Palace moved above their hosts - and Liverpool's city rivals Everton - into eighth place in the Premier League, having ended a four-match winless run.
Liverpool's bogey team?
Palace are quickly becoming Liverpool's bogey team, inflicting damaging results on the Reds over the past three seasons.
Media playback is not supported on this device Liverpool 1-2 Crystal Palace: 'Terrific' Palace pleases Alan Pardew
In the the 2013-14 campaign, when the Reds were in the hunt for their first league title since 1990, Palace came back from 3-0 down by scoring three times in the last 11 minutes to dent their championship hopes.
Last season, the Eagles spoiled Liverpool legend Steven Gerrard's farewell appearance at Anfield, winning 3-1 as they completed a league double over their opponents.
This time, boss Klopp experienced his first defeat in seven games since taking over from Brendan Rodgers.
And, although Liverpool dominated possession and territory, Palace held firm defensively and posed a threat on the attack through the pace of Bolasie, Wilfried Zaha and Jason Puncheon.
Palace quick out of the traps
With Liverpool returning from a near 5,000-mile round-trip at Russian side Rubin Kazan in the Europa League on Thursday, Eagles boss Pardew spoke to his players about the importance of making a fast start at Anfield to take advantage of any lethargy in the limbs.
And it looked like the travelling had taken its toll on the home side in the early exchanges.
The Reds made a slow start to the game as Palace pressed high and attacked with speed. The Eagles had 63% possession in the opening 20 minutes, making it count as Bolasie drilled in a finish after some sloppy Reds defending.
Alan Pardew spoke of the need for Palace to start quickly, and the visitors dominated the first 20 minutes
Liverpool unable to make dominance count
Liverpool eventually picked up the tempo, equalising shortly before the interval through Coutinho.
The Brazilian ran onto Nathaniel Clyne's right-wing cross inside the Palace area, bending the ball past Wayne Hennessey for his third goal in two matches.
It was a deserved leveller based on the pattern of play following Bolasie's opener, but the Reds were unable to push on and force a second-half winner.
Reds striker Christian Benteke came close with a header and, moments after Dann's goal, Hennessey denied Coutinho from the edge of the area with a fingertip save.
But, in truth, Liverpool did not test the Wales keeper enough. The Reds had almost 65% possession over the 90 minutes, but only managed to hit the target with four of their 22 attempts.
Former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard, who is expected to train with the Reds again next year, watched from the Anfield stands
Man of the match - Wilfried Zaha
Palace winger Zaha may not have scored, but his all-round performance was described by Pardew as his "best performance" for the club as he covered almost 11km
Manager reaction
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp: "Today is a bad feeling - it was not necessary to lose this game. We were the better team but for the first 15 minutes we were not on the pitch. We got the goal, we were awake, we started creating chances.
"But after the break, we gave them chances to cause us problems. Then we woke up again but couldn't make a goal. It feels so bad because it was not necessary. This was not enough for us - we can do more. We have to learn from this."
Crystal Palace boss Alan Pardew: "We came here with ambition. The worst thing that happened to us was scoring, we then lost the ambition. Liverpool came on to us.
"We went toe-to-toe against Manchester United and got a draw, we went toe-toe toe with Liverpool and got the win.
"Sometimes it is about our own belief. We have been unlucky in the last few games. We have started really well this year. We need to make sure we capitalise on that."
Stats of the day
Alan Pardew played in Palace's first league win at Anfield in 1991 and has managed the side to their two other wins there in 2015
Philippe Coutinho has scored as many goals in his last two appearances under Jurgen Klopp as he did in his final 17 under Brendan Rodgers
Palace have won 10 away games in the Premier League in 2015, only Arsenal (11) have more
Liverpool had 13 first-half shots. Only Arsenal have recorded more in a Premier League game this season (14, also against Palace)
What's next?
The international break. But when Klopp's squad returns they must regroup for a trip to Premier League leaders Manchester City on Saturday, 21 November.
Palace return to action a couple of days later, hosting second-bottom Sunderland at Selhurst Park on Monday, 23 November.6 years ago
Updated at 11:48 a.m. ET on 8/25
Washington (CNN) – Two key members of congressional foreign affairs panels say they expect the United States to strike Syria following reports of chemical weapons attacks in that country last week, though other lawmakers interviewed Sunday cautioned that unilateral action would be misguided.
"I think we will respond in a surgical way and I hope the president, as soon as we get back to Washington, will ask for authorization from Congress to do something in a very surgical and proportional way. Something that gets their attention, that causes them to understand that we are not going to put up with that kind of activity," Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday."
But Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs panel, said President Barack Obama may not need to wait for congressional authorization.
"Congress needs to be involved but perhaps not initially," Engel said. "Perhaps the president could start and then Congress needs to resolve it and assent to it. We cannot sit still. We've got to move and we've got to move quickly."
Another Democrat, however, said the United States should only intervene militarily in Syria with the backing of an international coalition.
“This has to be an international operation, it can’t be a unilateral American approach,” Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“We can’t let ourselves get into a situation where this becomes a springboard for a general military operation in Syria to try and change the dynamic,” Reed said. “That dynamic is going to be long term, very difficult, and ultimately established by the Syrians, not by foreign powers.”
Rep. Mike McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on CBS he didn’t think Americans “have an appetite to put troops on the ground in Syria.”
The situation in Syria escalated dramatically last week after reports the government there used chemical weapons in civilian areas.
Opposition groups say over a thousand people died in the attack with thousands more affected by the gas.
CNN cannot independently verify the causality claims.
Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister said Sunday that the government will allow United Nations inspectors to visit the site of the alleged attack, but that may be too late.
"If the Syrian government had nothing to hide and wanted to prove to the world that it had not used chemical weapons in this incident, it would have ceased its attacks on the area and granted immediate access to the UN – five days ago. At this juncture, the belated decision by the regime to grant access to the UN team is too late to be credible," a senior Obama administration official said Sunday.
Over 100,000 people are estimated to have perished so far in Syria's civil war.
CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jill Dougherty contributed to this report.NEW DELHI: Russia tonight welcomed NDA government's decision to increase the number of nuclear power plants saying it is the only way to solve India's energy crisis."The Indian govt is talking about 22-24 nuclear power units, that is the roadmap, because India has no way out of its energy crisis. It has been calculated that if India by 2030 has all the oil produced in the world, it will not be enough for sustainable developement. Therefore, to solve the energy problem of India, nuclear energy is the only option, just as we did," Russian Ambassador to India Alexander M. Kadakin told reporters here.Kadakin said the two countries are on the same boat on the issue of maintaining stability in neighbouring Afghanistan post-withdrawal of US forces from there."We are on the same boat as you. On the Afghan situation post withdrawal, our vision is absolutely similar. We have a number of channels and mechanism with India where we have very close cordination and co-orporation between national security councils and foreign ministries, between our special agencies on how we can together with India oppose the threat to Afghanistan."If Afghanistan is not stable after the withdrawl, then it will have an effect on India and Russia in every possible way--religious extremisim, drug trafficking, murders and all that. Our vision is the same and we shall work jointly to lessen the possible effects of things which might come," he said.Taking a dig at the "hullabaloo" around ties between India and USA, the Russian Ambassador said "there is zero technology coming from US to India. India is producing the world's best nuclear power project with Russia in Koodankulam. US has not given even a nail to this nuclear site."He lauded the strategic partnership between India and Russia calling it a "strategic special priviledged partnership and friendship" based on "real facts".On the Sukhoi/HAL Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft FGFA ) or Perspective Multi-role Fighter (PMF), a fifth-generation fighter being developed by India and Russia, he said work is going on as per schedule and there are no complaints about the designing work."The work is going as per schedule and there are no complaints about the designing work carried out by the Indian and Russian scientists. There were some negotiations on the share of designing work. India has accumulated experience in designing aricraft that is why we were planning to do it 50-50. But this has to be specified and elaborated on paper," Kadakin said.Lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his keeneness to enhance strategic ties with Russia, Kadakin said "he (Modi) is a precise person, result-oriented. He is like Putin. They met in Fortaleza on the sidelines of BRICS summit and have got good chemistry working between them."The Russian Ambassador said diplomats and important persons from India would be visiting India next month to strengthen the strategic ties between the two nations.He said Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev would be visiting New Delhi on November 5.Kadakin, who is fluent in Hindi, encouraged Russian and Indian journalists alike present there to learn the languages to allow "positive" communication. He said the Embassy is making efforts to increase the presence of Russian press in India.He also expressed concern over "false" news reports causing "distress" between the two countries. The Ambassador mentioned a media report on fault in INS Vikramaditya and clarified the fault was not in the Russian aircraft carrier but the Indian refueler which could not fit in it.MONTREAL — Don’t look now, but the 13-1-1 Montreal Canadiens, who set a franchise record with their 10th consecutive home win to start a season Saturday, are just starting to play to their potential.
It began against the Los Angeles Kings Thursday, as the Canadiens limited the NHL’s best possession team to 24 shots on goal and just 48 attempts in a 4-1 win at the Bell Centre. That was after six straight games of allowing 38 shots or more.
Then on Saturday, against a Red Wings team playing the second half of a back-to-back, the Canadiens stormed out to a 5-0 lead before two periods were up and limited Detroit to just 15 shots on net at even strength by night’s end.
It was an exhibition of the depth this Montreal team possesses.
“We’ve got four lines that can play hockey,” said Canadiens third-liner Andrew Shaw, who was awarded the game’s first star for his goal and two assists. “We’ve got the potential to be an amazing team.”
It’s hard to argue against that notion when you consider that just eight of Montreal 51 goals on the season have come from perennial leaders Max Pacioretty, Tomas Plekanec and Brendan Gallagher — who eat up a combined $14.25 million in cap space.
The former broke a six-game drought for the team’s fifth goal against Detroit, and the latter hasn’t scored in nine — never mind Plekanec, who only has one.
Was Pacioretty relieved to hear his name called for a goal in this one?
“No,” said the Canadiens captain.
NHL.com’s Arpon Basu persisted: “Not at all?”
“Not at all,” said Pacioretty.
“Do you enjoy that at all?”
Pacioretty smirked and said, “I enjoy winning.”
Fair enough.
Pacioretty’s Canadiens lost 44 times last year if you include overtime and the shootout. It’s hard to accuse him of being insincere in his response to Basu. And he must be enjoying the way everyone is contributing to the success the Canadiens have enjoyed thus far.
Forwards Paul Byron and Phillip Danault, who take up $2.1 million in cap space between them, have combined for 10 goals. Fourth line centre Torrey Mitchell has five of his own.
And at the top end of the lineup, Alex Galchenyuk and Alexander Radulov have combined for 29 points.
At the opposite end of the rink, the Canadiens, backstopped by Carey Price (we’ll get to him in a minute), have the stingiest goals-against average in the NHL at 2.00.
This is the same team that allowed 10 goals to the Columbus Blue Jackets last Friday before allowing four to the Philadelphia Flyers a night later.
About that Philadelphia game: it’s the only one this season in which Price has allowed more than two goals to get by him.
The goaltender’s numbers are something out of a fantasy movie (or a horror film, if you look at it from the opposition’s perspective).
Ten starts for Price? Ten wins — two of them shutouts. And he has.957 a save percentage and an infinitesimal 1.40 goals-against average.
“The way that Carey’s playing gives us a lot of confidence as a team,” said Canadiens coach Michel Therrien.
Price’s play also afforded the Canadiens time to find their better selves — and the opportunity to do so without being under the gun of a losing streak.
It’s a clear sign the team is progressing from game to game when Price, who made more than a few spectacular saves against Detroit, is named the third star after pitching a shutout.
“We’ve been working and concentrating about a lot of details in our game lately,” said Therrien. “As a coach you always appreciate when guys are paying attention to the details and working on things that needed to be worked on to get results.”
Pacioretty sees a team that’s doing a better job of breaking out of its own zone; of supporting the puck; of generating scoring chances off the rush.
And those are his observations regarding the team’s play at even strength.
The Canadiens power play, which has finished in the NHL’s bottom tier and operated at roughly 16 per cent efficiency over the last three seasons, is humming along at over 21.7 per cent — which places them ninth overall in the category.
It’s been bolstered by the strategy new associate coach Kirk Muller has implemented, and it’s been undoubtedly strengthened by the presence of defenceman Shea Weber, who scored against Detroit and leads the Canadiens with five power-play goals.
The penalty kill, which was brilliant against the Red Wings, would be near the top of the league if not for those poor performances against the Blue Jackets and Flyers last week. It’ll take time to get back to 90 per cent efficiency — where it was for the first 10 games of the season — but it’s trending upwards.
“We can be better in every area,” said Pacioretty.
Take him at his word on that one.
The Canadiens are just starting to show what kind of team they can be.Share it now!
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I’ll mention Soderberg here anyway. Carl was on the ice for 2002 Corsi Events last season, more than any forward on this list, and wound up on the positive side of CF%, but -.52 Corsi Rel. He’s another in the series of Bergenheim, Fleischmann, but his 44 points make him an offensive juggernaut on this list compared to pretty much everyone but Tlusty. Soderberg also carries the benefit of being a center, which the Leafs would likely need if A) they trade Bozak B) don’t view Sam Carrick as an everyday option C) Want to give Babcock a lineup that isn’t completely terrible. Soderberg may cost a little more, but may be one of the free agents worth actively pursuing because he actually addresses a need.
Daniel Winnik
Remember when the Leafs did the thing with Daniel Winnik a few months ago? Remember how Winnik was the Leafs best player for a stretch? Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that again? Odds are Winnik isn’t looking to sign only to be flipped again, and would probably like more than a one year commitment after a solid year in Toronto. Like Soderberg, Winnik provides a bit more offence than the typical 3rd line player, and a year where Winnik had 48% Offensive Zone Starts, his 50.7 Corsi For % is impressive, even more when you consider time served on the Leafs. I don’t know what value Winnik would offer the Leafs if they aren’t going to flip him at some point, so it’s likely a wait and see game if he doesn’t get signed and that opportunity presents itself later on.
Cody Franson
For all the reasons and more that you bring back Winnik, you bring back Franson. While Franson may be eye test sadness for many, but that is likely due to the high number of events that occur when he’s on the ice, as he averaged 1.88 Corsi Events per minute, even after he took on a more sheltered role in Nashville. His age certainly makes him a target worth considering, and his right handed shot is a rarity in this limited free agent market.
Justin Fisher has looked at Franson’s return to the Leafs, and I agree with his conclusions that if it can be done for below market value I’m all for it, but if he pursues the same money that Petry, Green, and Sekera will be chasing, he’s probably not worth the trouble of bringing back.
David Schlemko
Schlemko is an excellent case and point for where the bar is currently set on Leafs roster acquisitions. Bringing in a 28 year old who bounced around the waiver wire last season seems perfectly reasonable. He had a very high Corsi event rate, averaging 1.92 per minute of ice time, but he was just under even, at 49.33 CF% which is passable when you played on the Coyotes, Stars, and Flames last season. Schlemko is another left handed shot which will earn him some detractors, but he’ll be a reasonably priced option that can keep Stuart Percy developing in the AHL until he’s 100% ready for a full time gig. Certainly you can make a case for Brennan over Schlemko, but if the organization isn’t interested in seeing if they can turn around Tim Erixon, Schlemko is a decent depth option that likely won’t require much commitment.
Thomas Greiss
I feel it’s necessary to include a goaltender on this list, since there is a strong possibility the Leafs choose to move a goaltender out and there’s no reason to believe that anyone in the organization will be stepping up to fill one of the NHL openings anytime soon. Greiss would have an opportunity for a greater number of starts in Toronto than with probably any other team, especially if Bernier is the goaltender cut loose. His adjusted save percentage 92.69 was better than either Leafs goaltender last season, albeit with a better team in front of him and with only 20 starts. He is likely the most under the radar option for a significant short term goaltending solution
With a month to go until Free Agency, it’s entirely possible that this list will be reduced to Cody Franson and Tomas Fleischmann and we’ll have to get even more creative in finding players that make sense. The bigger ticket options for the Leafs are likely Mike Reilly and Zach Hyman assuming that the NCAA prospects make it to Free Agency in August.
With the risk of higher than desired arbitration rewards becoming a reality (remember Mark Fraser) it is also entirely possible that a worthwhile crop of RFAs will become UFAs in July as well and could provide the Leafs with a better alternative for free agents and give them the opportunity to think longer term.City Council OKs 20-year solar energy contract
Houston will ramp up its use of green energy to keep the lights on and laptops humming at City Hall with the approval Tuesday of a 20-year, $80 million deal to purchase solar power from Nashville-based Hecate Energy.
Hecate, which operates 20 plants around the world, will supply the city with up to 30 megawatts of solar-generated power annually, beginning in December 2016,from a plant it plans to build near Alpine in West Texas.
The facility will produce about 7 percent of the city's annual electricity needs and will use the new solar power to replace the equivalent amount of electricity that today is purchased from coal-fired generators, said Houston sustainability director Laura Spanjian.
Hecate offered a two-decade fixed price of 4.8 cents per kilowatt hour, the lowest among eight valid bids, and met city conditions related to financial capability and experience with energy markets and renewable energy generation.
Houston today pays 4.2 cents under its conventional energy contract, but that rate has averaged 6.7 cents over the past five years. If conventional electricity costs are low during the 20-year solar deal, city officials estimate the contract will cost the city $763,000. If fossil fuel rates are high during the period, however, estimates show Houston could save more than $19 million.
"I think it's important to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to be a leader on climate change," Mayor Annise Parker said. "But what I've discovered is that, almost every time, doing the right thing environmentally is also the right thing to do financially. This was a great deal for the city of Houston."
The city's annual electric bill has averaged $114 million over the last five years; the average annual cost of the new solar power will be about $4 million.
Though the contract passed unanimously without discussion on Tuesday, several council members raised concerns when the contract first was discussed last week, calling attention to the 20-year term and the fact that the contract did not give the city the ability to cancel unilaterally, a clause that appears in most city contracts.
Some members also worried that the deal could fall through because the facility has not been built yet. Though Houston purchases renewable energy credits today, this will be the first time the city has worked with a plant built solely to serve it as a customer.
Parker sought to address those concerns, arguing that the contract does not hold a cancellation clause because Hecate needs a long-term commitment from the city to secure financing to build the plant.
Spanjian added that the timing is important because industry experts expect federal tax credits for solar production will not be renewed when they expire at the end of next year. If the plant is operational by Dec. 31, 2016, Spanjian said, it will enjoy rate subsidies throughout its life. If the plant misses that deadline, the contract allows Houston to collect $1 million with no further commitment.
"People are scrambling to get projects done now because it's going to take them a year to build it. This is the lowest it's ever going to get for us to do this. For us to get solar energy at under 5 cents, that's phenomenal."
Councilman Steve Costello, who chairs the city's budget committee, said he believes the deal will prove to be a prudent call.
"There's always a risk when you're looking at a 20-year program, but I think at the end of the day it will be a savings to the city," Costello said. "We should be looking at things like this. It's clean energy."
Houston will ramp up its use of green energy to keep the lights on and laptops humming at City Hall with the approval Tuesday of a 20-year, $80 million deal to purchase solar power from Nashville-based Hecate Energy.
Hecate, which operates 20 plants around the world, will supply the city with up to 30 megawatts of solar-generated power annually, beginning in December 2016,from a plant it plans to build near Alpine in West Texas.
The facility will produce about 7 percent of the city's annual electricity needs and will use the new solar power to replace the equivalent amount of electricity that today is purchased from coal-fired generators, said Houston sustainability director Laura Spanjian.
Hecate offered a two-decade fixed price of 4.8 cents per kilowatt hour, the lowest among eight valid bids, and met city conditions related to financial capability and experience with energy markets and renewable energy generation.
Houston today pays 4.2 cents under its conventional energy contract, but that rate has averaged 6.7 cents over the past five years. If conventional electricity costs are low during the 20-year solar deal, city officials estimate the contract will cost the city $763,000. If fossil fuel rates are high during the period, however, estimates show Houston could save more than $19 million.
"I think it's important to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to be a leader on climate change," Mayor Annise Parker said. "But what I've discovered is that, almost every time, doing the right thing environmentally is also the right thing to do financially. This was a great deal for the city of Houston."
The city's annual electric bill has averaged $114 million over the last five years; the average annual cost of the new solar power will be about $4 million.
Though the contract passed unanimously without discussion on Tuesday, several council members raised concerns when the contract first was discussed last week, calling attention to the 20-year term and the fact that the contract did not give the city the ability to cancel unilaterally, a clause that appears in most city contracts.
Some members also worried that the deal could fall through because the facility has not been built yet. Though Houston purchases renewable energy credits today, this will be the first time the city has worked with a plant built solely to serve it as a customer.
Parker sought to address those concerns, arguing that the contract does not hold a cancellation clause because Hecate needs a long-term commitment from the city to secure financing to build the plant.
Spanjian added that the timing is important because industry experts expect federal tax credits for solar production will not be renewed when they expire at the end of next year. If the plant is operational by Dec. 31, 2016, Spanjian said, it will enjoy rate subsidies throughout its life. If the plant misses that deadline, the contract allows Houston to collect $1 million with no further commitment.
"People are scrambling to get projects done now because it's going to take them a year to build it. This is the lowest it's ever going to get for us to do this. For us to get solar energy at under 5 cents, that's phenomenal."
Councilman Steve Costello, who chairs the city's budget committee, said he believes the deal will prove to be a prudent call.
"There's always a risk when you're looking at a 20-year program, but I think at the end of the day it will be a savings to the city," Costello said. "We should be looking at things like this. It's clean energy."There’s this thing that happens sometimes.
You’re chugging along, doing your thing — and in this case, I mean a creative thing. Maybe you’re a writer, a painter, a cheese-maker, a Brookyln-based hipster widget artisan, a techno-fuck-shaman — then suddenly comes this moment where you catch a glimpse of another human being doing that same creative thing you do. And they’re doing it at such a level, you experience a moment of awe that punctuates the moment before you tumble into darkness. You step onto this grease-slick slope, sliding down through the shadow of envy, doubt, uncertainty. You feel smaller and smaller as you fall farther and farther. You tumble face-first into the revelation of your own inadequacy, your grotesque and unconquerable imperfection, your worst failures —
And suddenly your doubt has the hunger and gravity of a collapsing star.
You feel like you want to go to sleep.
You don’t want to count sheep but instead, count your mistakes.
Again and again, over and over.
You’ll never operate at that level, you think.
You’ll never write with such elegance. Or tell such a glorious story. Or make people think and feel the same way this book has made you think and feel. You’ll never publish as many books. Or for the same amount of money. Or have the same number of readers or win the same awards or have as many fans or be anything at all, ever, ever, ever.
You’ll never compare.
You’re a mote of dust in a giant’s eye.
This feeling is a pit.
It is a slick-walled, vertical pit.
It is lightless and it is empty of anything and everyone but you.
I’m telling you this because I feel it, too, sometimes.
I’m telling you this because some of you have told me that I make you feel that way. Which makes me laugh because I don’t feel I could possibly deserve that, and the belly laughs keep on coming because I feel this all the time when comparing myself to other writers. I’m constantly teetering on the edge of that chasm.
But I try not to fall anymore.
Just as I want you to try not to fall, either.
You will never get anywhere comparing yourself to others.
It seems useful, at first — they represent a goal you can achieve, and that might work if other writers were a bullseye you could hit, or a percentage you could nail. They’re not. Their work is always outside yours. Their work will always be different, and it will always feel stronger than your own. Someone will always be doing better. Sometimes by millimeters, sometimes by miles. Getting published doesn’t fix that. Publishing ten books doesn’t fix it. Awards don’t fix it. They might pad you a little. They might buffer you — a bulwark against the buffeting winds of wild imperfection. But you will always find your way back to that pit. You will always look in the broken mirror of foul water and see a version of you that fails in comparison to others.
Stand against this feeling.
Remind yourself that you are you and they aren’t.
Be clear with your own traitorous mind: they feel it, too. We all feel it.
Step away from the pit by recognizing that while you aren’t perfect, you can always do better. We can commit to improvement. We can challenge ourselves. In this great big creative RPG we can level up in a character class of one — the character class only we belong to. (I am a BEARDED WENDIGO KNIGHT and you are not. Who are you? You’re someone I can never be. And that’s amazing.)
You’ll never be them.
You can only be you.
You can improve yourself in that direction only.
And that direction is opposite of the pit. It’s walking away from the sucking void.
It’s walking toward yourself and your own mighty efforts and endeavors.
I just wanted to say all this because we all go there. And we can all get through it. None of us are singular beings in this feeling. It hits some of us harder than others (and to those who manifest this as bonafide depression, I can only remind you again that you are genuinely not alone). But it’s something we all experience. Doubt. Frustration. Fear. The envy of others. It won’t do much for you. It’s a poison. Stop drinking it. Spit it out.
Step away from the pit.
Be you. Don’t be me.
And create the things that only you can create.If you plan to have sex anytime soon, let’s hope it’s not in Niger, Africa.
According to the nonprofit organization Save the Children, just 4 percent of couples in Niger have access to birth control. Although the situation in this West African country is extreme, more than 125 million couples worldwide — most of them in developing countries — cannot get contraceptives. Some of the children that have resulted from these couplings were wanted and some were not, but one thing is certain: Lack of access to birth control increases the burden on already strained parents and on the global ecosystem.
Sujoy Guha, professor of biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, believes he has the answer to this problem. Highly regarded in India for his work on everything from disability rights to drinking-water purification, Guha has spent the last 25 years perfecting his invention, Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance, better known (thankfully) as RISUG. RISUG, he says, has all the advantages of the perfect contraceptive — and, some would say, a surprising bonus: It’s made for men.
RISUG works by an injection into the vas, the vessel that serves as the exit ramp for sperm. The injection coats the vas with a clear polymer gel that has a negative and positive electric charge. Sperm cells also have a charge, so the differential charge from the gel ruptures the cell membrane as it passes through the vas, stopping the sperm in their tracks before they can even start their journey to the egg. RISUG doesn’t affect the surrounding tissues because they have no charge.
Compared to the other male contraceptive choices currently available — abstinence, withdrawal, condoms, and vasectomies — RISUG is a whole new ballgame. In fact, Guha and others believe, the contraceptive promises to be even better than the choices available to women. Guha enumerates six advantages of his invention:
First, neither sexual partner has to interrupt the throes of passion to use it — no more running to the bathroom and fumbling with various ointments and plastics.
Second, the process, once it is refined and approved, will be completely non-surgical. Whew, say a lot of men.
Third, it’s long-lasting. According to Guha, a single injection can be effective for at least 10 years.
Fourth, after testing RISUG on more than 250 volunteers, neither Guha nor other researchers in the field have found side effects more worrisome than a slight scrotal swelling in some men immediately following the injection. This swelling goes away after a few weeks. Compare that to the Pill, which even today can cause health problems ranging from severe migraines to blood clots.*
Fifth, it works. Of all the men who’ve had the RISUG injection (and 15 of the 250 had it more than 10 years ago), there has been only one unplanned pregnancy among their partners — and in that instance, the injection wasn’t administered properly.
Sixth, and best of all, the contraceptive appears to be reversible with another injection. To date, reversing the procedure has been tried only on non-human primates, but among them, it’s been reversed successfully multiple times.
If RISUG’s current stage of clinical testing goes well, it will be on the market in India by next year. Within a few more years, if all proceeds as planned, the injection to reverse it will also be on the market.
Just Shoot Me!
But would men in India — or anywhere else — use it? Every U.S. male authority I talked to in the field, including experts at the World Health Organization and the U.S. Agency for International Development, pooh-poohed the idea. “Men don’t like doctors to have anything to do with their testicles,” summarized Don Waller, a contraceptives expert and professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Maybe not — but one in six married men in the U.S. have had vasectomies, which definitely require medical personnel poking at the gonads. Moreover, surveys conducted by the University of Edinburgh, the Kaiser Foundation, and other entities have shown that in countries as diverse as Hong Kong, South Africa, and the U.S., the majority of men say they want more options for male contraceptives.
But even if men used RISUG, would women trust them? It’s doubtful that the whispered promise of having been RISUGed would fly during a one-night stand. However, in the context of a committed relationship, RISUG could shift some of the responsibility for family planning off the women who have borne (and born) too much of it for too long, at the expense of their health, time, finances, and emotions.
That shift is definitely possible, according to Ronald Weiss, a vasectomy specialist in Ottawa*, who says men’s attitudes toward contraception are changing. “In Canada, 10 years ago, it used to be tubal ligations [the more-invasive female equivalent of a vasectomy] to vasectomies were performed at a ratio of 2 to 1. Now that number is reversed.” Weiss believes a lot of men would prefer a procedure that wasn’t permanent. And, he says, RISUG is the most promising male contraceptive out there.
Still, there’s been a lot more media fervor over the possibility of a male version of the Pill — even though its potential side effects for men include everything from liver damage and prostate problems to what is referred to in the literature as gynecomastia. Translation: Men growing breasts.
Weiss thinks RISUG is preferable. “The only people who should be excited about the male Pill are pharmaceutical companies,” he said. He believes so much money has been poured into researching the Pill because pharmaceutical companies want something consumers will have to buy again and again — as opposed to an inexpensive, one-time injection. In the U.S., a decade of the female Pill costs about $3,600. RISUG would be dramatically less expensive, while pharmaceutical companies would have to pay $25 million to $40 million to bring it to market.
But from the consumers’ point of view, RISUG could be a godsend during the approximately 30 years the average person spends trying not to cause a pregnancy. It would mean fewer women getting cancer from the Pill or having their uteruses perforated by an errant IUD. It would mean fewer men having to choose between the risk of a burst condom or the permanence of a vasectomy.
And in the developing world, RISUG would mean much more.
This Little Injection Went to Market …
“Realize that overseas there just aren’t decent options,” said Elaine Lissner, director of the Male Contraception Information Project. “By the time condoms arrive there, they’re cracked by the heat. Poverty and lack of medical follow-up are a problem. You can’t use a diaphragm if you don’t have clean running water. You can’t use an IUD if no medical treatment exists if something goes wrong. You can’t use the Pill if it’s too expensive.”
In the developing world, RISUG’s price tag could be brought down to about $22, the price at which Guha and Indian Drugs & Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (the largest Indian drug company) are planning to market it in India. This makes RISUG potentially affordable by even the world’s poorest.
Studies have shown that when couples in the developing world start having fewer children, both the health and literacy of the children improve, and mothers are more likely to survive long enough to raise their kids. Moreover, families with fewer children have less impact on the natural world, because they are not as desperate for firewood, water, and bush meat.
This “less children/healthier environment” connection has become so clear that wildlife organizations have started to team up with family-planning groups in biodiversity-rich areas of the world. In the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, Conservation International is working with Mexfam to slow the clearing of the forests as well as to offer people there the option of reproductive health care.
Photo: USAID.
Inevitability, talk of providing contraceptives to people in developing countries raises allegations of racism — but there’s a huge difference between forced eugenics and offering people the choice to control their own fertility. According to Save the Children, 72 percent of Sweden’s population has access to contraceptives; why shouldn’t the same choices be available in Niger? With the world’s population growing by 77 million people per year, access to contraceptives is not something the industrialized world can continue to hog.
So far, what’s holding up the potential marketing of RISUG outside of India is safety testing. Although the Indian medical community maintains that its safety testing is better than that of the U.S., Jeff Spieler, chief of research at USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health, said, “The pre-clinical toxicology testing in India [on RISUG] was weak.”
Lissner agreed that some of the older studies should be redone, but given the near-perfect record of RISUG so far, she noted, “If I were a man, I’d feel safer having RISUG injected than eating non-organic fruit.”
RISUG will probably soon be marketed in India, but the U.S. will play a critical role in determining its use elsewhere in the developing world. Grants from U.S. agencies, corporations, and nonprofits spur on a significant portion of the world’s research. But, said Waller of the University of Illinois, “If funds from the U.S. are paying for another country’s research, then the research has to be already approved by the FDA. Otherwise it looks like we’re using the rest of the world as experimental subjects.” Thus, lack of interest in RISUG by the U.S. helps delay its use around the world.
Meanwhile the developing world waits.
As Lissner said, “Every month we delay means thousands more women dying in childbirth, more families in poverty from too many children, and more women dying in attempted abortions.”
*[Correction, 14 Aug 2003: This article originally stated that birth control pills can cause ovarian cancer. In fact, studies show that the Pill can protect women against ovarian cancer.]
*[Correction, 18 Aug 2003: This article originally stated Ronald Weiss is based in Toronto. He is based in Ottawa.]Google is planning to develop high-speed wireless networks in sub-Saharan Africa with the help of high-altitude balloons that can transmit signals across hundreds of square kilometres.
The web search company is already running high-speed fibre networks in Utah, Missouri and Texas. Now it wants to connect 1 billion more people to the internet in emerging markets such as Africa and south-east Asia, and is ready to team up with telecoms firms and equipment providers to build networks that will improve speeds in cities and bring the internet to rural areas.
Google is considering a mix of technologies, including broadcasting signals from masts, satellites and even remote-controlled balloons known as blimps, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
"There's not going to be one technology that will be the silver bullet," a source told the Journal. A Google spokesman declined to comment.
With smartphone penetration already higher than 50% in many western markets, mobile manufacturers are racing to connect customers in emerging markets. Google is highly focused on these new markets, and is developing low-cost Nexus smartphones and tablets.
Google has set up a trial wireless broadband network in Cape Town using three masts at Stellenbosch University's campus to transmit to 10 local schools. The trial, which began in March, uses unlicensed "white space" radio waves – unused channels in the broadcast TV spectrum.
The company has also worked with the University of California to send phones running Android software into near-space using high-altitude balloons, which can travel to over 100,000 feet from the earth. The balloons were equipped with still and video cameras and the images were retrieved when the balloons eventually popped and fell back to Earth.
• The photo caption was amended on 29 MayRain, thunderstorms, hail and weather warnings have dominated the weather story for July across central and southern Alberta, including Calgary.
This is a stark change after Calgary had one of the driest first few months on record.
READ MORE: Warm and dry winter worries Alberta farmers
Rain at this time of year is not unusual. July is typically the second wettest month in Calgary, averaging 65.5 mm of precipitation, but this July has been exceptional. As of July 15, Calgary had officially recorded 103.7 mm of rain at the Calgary International Airport, where weather statistics are kept. There have only been three days this month without any rain.
The timing of this bad weather hasn’t been ideal for the Calgary Stampede. It has rained every day but one for the first eight days of the annual 10-day event, with rain expected for the final two days as well. In total there has been 90 mm of rain since the Stampede started.
One annual Stampede concert was cancelled on Friday due to the weather. Don Henley was scheduled to play at the Oxford Stomp, and promoters cited safety concerns due to rain as the reason they had to shut down the show.
WATCH BELOW: Oxford Stomp cancelled due to weather
A rainfall warning was put in place for regions west and north of Calgary on Friday morning in anticipation of even more rain. A low pressure system had already brought between 30-50 mm of rain into the foothills since Thursday, with an additional 40-60 mm possible over the next 24 hours. As of 11:00 am Saturday that rainfall warning remains in place.
That extra precipitation is one of the main reasons a high streamflow advisory was issued for the regions surrounding Calgary including the Elbow river. According to the Alberta government release from Friday, no major flooding is anticipated at this point, but water levels are rapidly rising. People are being encouraged to stay off of the water and be safe around riverbanks.
READ MORE: High stream flow advisories issued for south central Alberta
More instability is expected for Calgary and area for the remainder of the weekend, however by Monday temperatures should get back to seasonal with sunshine forecasted for the rest of the week.
To get your weather on the go, download Global News’ Skytracker weather app for iPhone, iPad and Android.If you’re looking for a relaxing weekend, maybe you should try someplace quiet like Fisherman’s Wharf. Because San Jose — especially downtown — is going to be off the hook.
A perfect storm of events, from Silicon Valley Comic Con to a crucial Sharks playoff game, should flood downtown streets with tens of thousands of people during the city’s first spring-weather weekend of the year.
“People’s spirits are going to be sky high,” San Jose Downtown Association Executive Director Scott Knies said. “The weather’s beautiful, the city is vibrant and the streets are going to be alive with joy.”
One caveat, though: Some downtown streets will be closed for events, and parking will be at a premium (Check the map at parksj.org for garages and lots). Plan to arrive at events early or take VTA or Caltrain downtown.
Here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on:Midway through the first quarter on Saturday, Tanner Lee lunged back as if to hand-off to tailback Tre Bryant on a routine Inside Zone Weak play, before reversing out, setting up, and unfurling an aerial shot that must’ve been tracked through the air by 90,000 eyes with the same awe and admiration that Francis Scott Key regarded the rocket’s red glare.
By the time the aerial had completed its trajectory, it fell perfectly into the hands of Stanley Morgan Jr. This opening salvo of the Tanner Lee experience was a thing of beauty, a pass that if we’re being honest, eludes the memory of having been completed on Tom Osborne field by the team we’re all partial to.
This play is one of Nebraska’s favorite play-action passes, an Inside Zone play fake, paired with Nebraska’s favorite route concept, the Sail concept; a One Back Spread and Air Raid staple that confounds defenses and is apt to change on the fly as defenses try to adjust within the aerial chess match of the passing game.
The Sail concept is conceptually defined as a strongside flood concept that looks to occupy all three levels of defensive coverage, the deep 1/3, the out area along the sideline, and the flat. The actual routes can differ in the Sail concept, but route distributions will always look to occupy those three zones to further stress defensive coverage.
You’re probably curious why this concept is named as such. That’s because the route of the #2 receiver, which can be either a slot receiver or a tight end, looks like a ship’s sail with its potential route conversions depending on coverage.
From a trips formation the route distributions will typically look as such:
Nebraska has rarely, if ever, run this formation from trips, however. Instead, the Sail concept has been utilized out of 2x2 sets, with the tailback running the flat route after the play fake. In the 2016 Music City Bowl, Nebraska utilized the same exact Inside Zone play-action pass with the Sail concept, although this time out of the Pistol formation to Cethan Carter running the Sail as the #2 receiver.
With a single post safety on the play, Stanley Morgan runs converts the vertical to a skinny post to open up room underneath for the Sail route. Carter goes out an outside release in order to widen the coverage out before “stacking” him, playing over the top of the defender in man coverage. Devine Ozigbo runs the flat route to hold any underneath defenders after his initial play fake.
Now that we know what the Sail concept looks like, we’ll take a look at the Stan the Man’s touchdown from Saturday and once again marvel at the beauty of a pass that it was.
Arkansas State comes out in split field coverage which automatically calls for the #1 receiver, Stanley, to maintain his vertical go route. Underneath, tight end Tyler Hoppes runs the Sail, pulling the safety up to the Sail route as it appears that Weak Safety is responsible for #2, as the corner has #1 as his route is vertical.
The frontside linebacker (FSLB) expands with Tre Bryant after initially biting on the play fake, as he is also the curl/flat defender underneath, as he bends back to the curl/flat area to defend Bryant’s flat route.
With split field coverage, Arkansas State’s safeties operate independently of one another, leaving one-on-one match-ups on the Sail side, with Stanley Morgan Jr. exploiting his cover man downfield.
Away from the Sail, the backside receivers can run a multitude of tagged routes, most up to the preferences that differ on a coordinator to coordinator basis. In the Husker offense, Nebraska likes to run its #2 weak, the in-line TE, on a check release, staying in for pass pro before releasing on a delayed route. The #1 weak will typically run a post route, which will be a home run if defenses begin to aggressively defending the Sail concept or if the safety to that side triggers down hard on the run.
The Huskers like this call to the boundary due to the fact that most times defenses are rotating coverage back to the field because there are a greater multitude of routes, both vertical and horizontal to defend against to the field.
In the case of the clip from last season’s Music City Bowl, Tennessee aligns to the Husker formation with the strong safety aligned closer to the box, away from the Sail side. When zones ‘kick’ over to the field, openings, or holes, in the zone will appear for an open man. Against man coverage, there is no defined zone to settle into, hence why receivers need to keep running, to exploit a potential mismatch.
With Nebraska’s affinity for the Sail concept, I foresee many more big plays this season off of the Sail concept, perhaps maybe from some looks we haven’t seen yet.
GBR!A 23-year-old man who pleaded guilty to participating — as a 15-year-old — in the fatal 2009 shooting of a popular French Quarter bartender was killed late Monday in Gentilly, a law enforcement source said Tuesday.
Drey Lewis was gunned down in the 5100 block of Eastern Street about 11:30 p.m. Monday.
Lewis was leaving his car when he was attacked by three men, one toting a rifle and the other two holding handguns, according to the New Orleans Police Department. The gunmen fired several shots at Lewis, hitting him three times before fleeing on foot.
He was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators have not released any details about suspects or a potential motive for the slaying.
Lewis was out on parole following his pleading guilty to manslaughter in a botched robbery attempt that left Wendy Byrne dead in January 2009, state Department of Corrections records show.
On the night she was killed, Byrne was walking with a friend along Gov. Nicholls Street when they were approached by Lewis, Reggie Douglas and Ernest Cloud for a robbery attempt, authorities said.
Lewis and Douglas were 15 at the time. Cloud was 14.
Though neither she nor her companion resisted, Byrne was shot in the back and died. She was well known in the neighborhood as a bartender at Aunt Tiki's on Decatur Street.
Lewis, Douglas and Cloud fled without taking anything but were soon arrested.
Charged as an adult with second-degree murder, Lewis pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of manslaughter in 2012, receiving a 10-year sentence with credit for the time he had served since his arrest.
Douglas, the alleged triggerman, was found incompetent to stand trial and sent to a state mental health facility.
Cloud pleaded no contest in Orleans Parish Juvenile Court in 2011. He was ordered to juvenile detention and later released, but he is now facing adult charges of assault, criminal damage and robbery following an unrelated arrest late last year, records show.
Lewis' attorney couldn't immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.
Police asked anyone with information about Lewis' slaying to contact NOPD Homicide Detective Tanisha Sykes at (504) 658-5300 or Crimestoppers at (504) 822-1111.O’Reilly Accuser Speaks Out – Says He Called Her “Hot Chocolate” and She Felt “Plantational” …Seriously? (Video)
Bill O’Reilly accuser Perquita Burgess recounted her horrific experiences while working at a temporary job at FOX News back in 2008.
Burgess said Bill O’Reilly once walked past her and said, “hey, hot chocolate,” but was not looking at her when he said it(?)
She then went on to tell the ladies on “The View” that it made her feel “plantational.”
Via The Daily Mail:
‘He walks past and doesn’t look at me. When he said it, I didn’t respond. I was mortified because it not only was sexual, I took that as a very plantational remark. I’ve |
that handed a decisive victory to Narendra Modi, an avowed Hindu nationalist who derides India's accommodations of religious minorities as "pseudo secularism."
Tech Money Goes to the Temple
India has always been a deeply religious country where public displays of piety command an automatic moral high ground-precisely what the jewelry storeowner was counting on by having customers wait while he prayed.
Contrast that to America, the most pious Western country, where religion is something one generally leaves at home. Even wearing a small crucifix can come across as too in-your-face in some American situations. Not so in India where religion, like the stars and trees, is everywhere.
Women and men wear necklaces and bracelets adorned with Hindu religious symbols, without a trace of self consciousness. Figurines of gods adorn dashboards; posters of deities drape store walls; garlanded idols are prominently displayed in professional offices; and religious songs blare constantly into the air from places of worship and loud private ceremonies.
But market-led growth has minted a class of mostly Hindu nouveau riche-generated, ironically, from the high-tech boom-for whom religion is a consumer good, like ostentatious weddings or fancy cars.
Religious pilgrimages are at an all-time high. Annual visitation to Vaishno Devi, a mountain shrine near Kashmir, increased from 5 million in 2000 to 10 million in 2012. Private choppers now offer luxury trips to devotees who want to avoid the steep hike. Last year's eight-week Maha Kumbh Mela attracted a record 100 million Hindus from across India for a dip in the holy Ganges, twice more than when it was last held in 2001.
Donations to temples have exploded. The famous southern temple of Tirupati has now become the wealthiest and the most visited religious institution in the world, ahead even of the Vatican.
Swami Nikhilananda, the regional head of the Chinmaya Mission, one of the oldest and most cerebral Hindu orders, maintains that money is no longer a concern. For example, after the mission announced plans to build a major ashram in Pune about seven years ago, donations soon arrived like manna from heaven, and now there's a shiny new $120 million structure attracting devotees from around the country. Since 1993, the mission has almost doubled its ashrams from 200 to 350-as has the RamaÂkrishna Mission, another old order.For Alfonso Paredes Henriquez, it was the opportunity not only of a lifetime - but of a half-millennium. The Panamanian real estate developer, a descendant of Sephardic Jews kicked out of Spain five centuries ago, was elated when the country announced it would atone for the Inquisition by granting citizenship to people who can prove lineage from exiled Jews.
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Then came a long wait, as Spain's Sephardic Jew citizenship law took two years to wind its way through Parliament. One amendment after another were tacked on that made the application process tougher and delayed approval for a bill that faced virtually no opposition.
The Alfama district in Lisbon (Photo: Ziv Reinstein)
Frustrated, Paredes Henriquez turned instead to Portugal. The neighboring country had enacted its own law to grant citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews exiled during the Inquisition, which forced Jews to flee convert to Catholicism or be burned at the stake. He submitted his Portuguese citizenship application in late March.
"Spain came out saying they would make a law but Portugal did it first and it's easier in Portugal," said Paredes Henriquez. "Portugal just swooped in."
Spanish lawmakers are finally preparing this month to approve a law that potentially allows hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of Sephardic Jews around the world a shot at citizenship, though there are no reliable estimates of how many people might be eligible.
A Spanish passport means those who get it would be able to live or work anywhere in the 28-nation European Union, and apply for citizenship for immediate family members. While some European nations are experiencing a surge in anti-immigration sentiment, Spain and Portugal are not, and the laws have not generated opposition.
Many would-be applicants thought the Spanish law, announced in 2013, would carry few requirements beyond thorough vetting of ancestry. That's the case with the Portuguese law, which was proposed after Spain's but went into effect in March 1.
But Spanish lawmakers ended up adding amendments making the process for Sephardic Jews similar to that faced by permanent residents seeking citizenship. The hurdles are significant: Sephardic applicants must learn and be tested in basic Spanish if they don't speak one of several Jewish languages rooted in Spanish. They also must pass a current events and culture test about Spain. And they have to establish a modern-day link to Spain, which can be as simple as donating to a Spanish charity or as expensive as buying Spanish property.
Paredes Henriquez -- whose Spanish ancestors were driven into Portugal by the inquisition - predicted the extra steps would translate into more lost time, money and frustrating red tape. In Portugal, he only has to prove his family history and that he has never been convicted of a crime punishable by three or more years in prison.
"Portugal is being more friendly about the process," he said. Indeed, the country is currently examining its first round of applications with decisions expected in a few months. "There's more willingness to do it, and they're doing it right."
Spain's Jewish federation has received more than 5,000 requests for information about the Spanish law. For now, they are telling would-be applicants to start gathering family history as evidence, to consider learning some Spanish and to think about establishing a link to Spain, said federation president Isaac Querub Caro.
The federation is also warning people the law isn't expected to become open to applicants until October, in order to give enough time to create the Spanish language and citizenship tests and set up a digital application system.
Once the law is in effect, applicants will have a three-year window to seek citizenship. Querub said the amendments added to the Spanish law were unexpected, but declined to criticize them.
The law "has a series of conditions but they do not take away from the value of the law," he said. "And we appreciate this generosity of the Spaniards."
Spain's ruling Popular Party has brushed off criticism of the amendments. In a parliamentary debate last month, Gabriel Elorriaga, a senator, said that clearer rules were needed for granting Spanish citizenship to all seekers - not just Sephardic Jews.
But there is one sense that the rules for Sephardic Jews will be in a privileged class compared with many others seeking Spanish citizenship: The Sephardic Jews will be allowed to have dual nationality. Currently, Spain allows double citizenship for only for applicants from former Spanish colonies, plus Andorra and Portugal.
In Israel, reaction to the Spanish law entanglements is mixed - even among those who seem to easily meet the requirements.
Take Jose Caro, who can trace his roots to Joseph Ben Efraim Caro, a revered Jewish scholar believed to have fled the country in 1492 - the year Spain's monarchy issued decrees ordering Jews and Muslims in Spain to convert or leave. As a native of Chile, Caro speaks fluent Spanish and studied Spanish culture and history in Argentina, where he was raised.
But Caro, a 58-year-old insurance broker, has decided not to apply because he sees the conditions Spain has imposed as an affront to his family and its history of expulsion and persecution.
If only Spain's upcoming law were more like Portugal's he would seek citizenship and a passport "for the honor of my family."
Caro, who heads a group representing immigrants to Israel from Latin America, won't apply for Portuguese citizenship because he considers his ancestors' stay there "just a stop" in their exile from Spain, their ancestral land. Virtually all of Portugal's Jews fled to the country from Spain. The Jews who ended up in Portugal were only there five years until they, too, were ordered to convert or leave in 1497.
Haim Ashkenazi, a 22-year-old university student, said the possibility of getting a Spanish passport was tempting for historical reasons and for the opportunities it could bring. His ancestors left Spain for Turkey and moved to Israel three generations ago. He knows some Spanish.
But that enthusiasm fizzled when Ashkenazi began researching the conditions for citizenship on behalf of his family. He realized that proving his family's lineage was more difficult that he thought. He interviewed his grandmother, looked up archival documents and only got so far as his grandfather's grandfather. In the end, the expense of hiring a genealogist, coupled with the cost of trips to Spain for the citizenship process, proved prohibitive.
Leon Amiras, who heads a group representing Spanish-speaking immigrants to Israel, said his group unsuccessfully lobbied 30 Spanish members of parliament to soften some of the citizenship requirements.
"This is scandalous," said Amiras. "I am not naive and don't expect Spain to hand out passports without conditions but there is a limit." He said that beyond costs, the length of the process could deter elderly Sephardim from pursuing citizenship.
But 89-year-old Mordechai Ben Abir said he's not bothered by the extra steps he'll have to take.
He completed a doctoral degree at a Barcelona university at age 82, and discovered his family's historic links to Spain. Ben Abir's thesis went back in time through 25 generations to tie him to the Caballero family that fled Spain.
Despite his age, Ben Abir, who was born in Argentina and moved to Israel in 1955, said he is "going to get a passport no matter what."
"My goal is not to have a passport for the honor of having a European passport," he said. "I want to feel that we returned to Spain, so it would be clear that we won. That we still exist. That we live."As of last month, we're pretty certain there's an Earth-mass planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth. This raises a rather obvious question: can it support life? The planet, Proxima Centauri b, orbits within its star’s habitable zone, the distance at which water might exist in liquid form.
Whether there is any liquid present depends in part on whether the planet supports an atmosphere, and that is a hard question to answer. If Proxima Centauri b had formed near its present orbit, it might have seen its early atmosphere blown away during one of its host star’s more active phases. But researchers know frustratingly little about the evolution of red dwarf stars like Proxima Centauri. Furthermore, the planet might have formed farther out and migrated inward later, in which case the star's activity wouldn't matter.
Since we can't reason out whether there's an atmosphere, the alternative is to look for one. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Despite being the closest star, it’s still about 4.25 light-years away, far enough to be an observational challenge. According to a manuscript posted to the arXiv however, we’re set to launch the tool we'd need in 2018: the James Webb Space Telescope.
Observational challenges
Having a planet transit in front of its host star makes doing science on exoplanets easier. For Proxima b, it’s not yet known whether it transits, but there’s a less than 1-percent chance that it does.
So this team wanted to find an alternate method of observation. One possibility is simply imaging the planet directly. This would be extremely difficult, however, since the planet is so close to its star. To make out this separation would require at least a 30-meter telescope. For comparison, the James Webb will have a diameter of 6.5 meters. Next-generation, “extremely large” ground-based telescopes will be able to make this kind of observation, but those won’t be ready 'til the 2020s.
Another possibility is to measure variations in Proxima Centauri's light as it changes with the planet’s orbit. Since the planet is reflecting some of the star's light toward us, there should be changes in the star’s apparent output based on the location of the planet. When Proxima b is moving away, the reflected light will be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, then toward blue as it approaches us. High-resolution spectroscopy in conjunction with high-contrast imaging could reveal the planet’s albedo and angle of inclination. On current telescopes, this would take roughly a hundred hours of total observation time. (It would take just a single night on next-generation, extremely large telescopes.)
The method these researchers focus on, however, relies on the fact that Proxima b is likely tidally locked, which means that one side of it permanently faces its star. If the planet has an atmosphere, its winds would serve to distribute some of the heat to the cold side of the planet. Thus, it should be possible to measure how much the planet is radiating in the infra-red. As the planet goes through its orbit, we’ll see more or less of its cold side, depending on its orientation.
That way, if the planet lacks an atmosphere, the amount of heat it’s releasing in our direction should change pretty starkly during the course of its orbit. If it has an atmosphere, however, the heat would be more evenly distributed, so we’d observe less of a stark change in heat across its orbit. If we make these observations, in other words, it should become pretty obvious whether Proxima b has an atmosphere.
Simulations and caveats
The researchers ran simulations of what the James Webb might see. They concluded the Webb would give us a robust confirmation, either of an atmosphere or of a lack of one, with five-sigma confidence.
They also considered the possibility of detecting ozone in the planet’s atmosphere. If it were present, ozone would absorb some wavelengths of the IR light as it leaves the atmosphere, leaving distinctive gaps or lines in the spectrum. A hypothetical alien civilization looking at Earth would detect strong ozone lines in Earth’s spectrum, because we have an ozone layer. It’s an interesting gas to look for because oxygen could be a signature of life.
These conclusions are based on a few assumptions. First, we won't really know how precise the Webb's measurements will be until it's in space. The researchers recommend testing this as part of the James Webb Space Telescope Early Release Science program. Unsurprisingly, they suggest Proxima Centauri be used as a test target.
The researchers’ conclusions also depend on whether we can determine the planet’s inclination angle, as well as the ratio of its size to that of the star. Again, there’s good reason to think these can be measured: the inclination with ground-based measurements and the size ratio based on data from previous observations of the star. Furthermore, what we end up seeing depends in part on how much IR the planet’s surface rock is emitting. Different rocks emit more or less IR, and the researchers assume high emissivities.
Regardless, the observations would be a big deal. “Either way, these observations will provide a major advance in our understanding of terrestrial worlds beyond the Solar System,” the researchers write in their paper.
The Verdict
In general, the reaction of other researchers was positive.
“In principle, the observations are possible, which makes this a tantalizing system,” Kevin Stevenson of the Space Telescope Science Institute told Ars. (Stevenson was not involved in this study but has worked with the lead author in the past.) “However, the authors have made numerous assumptions, which they acknowledge, regarding JWST and the system. Given that we will never find a potentially habitable exoplanet closer than Proxima Centauri b, the risk is certainly worth the rewards.”
Sara Seager of MIT was a bit more cautious. “It looks fine,” she told Ars, though she went on to question “why [the authors] didn’t consider the case of an atmosphere that does not redistribute [heat around the planet]—we will have no way of knowing for sure if they see a signal that looks like a bare rock if it actually is.”
The paper’s lead author, Laura Kreidberg of the University of Chicago, didn't think this was an issue: “I suppose it would be possible to cook up a pathological scenario in which very little heat is transferred (perhaps if the atmosphere were extremely tenuous). But modeling work has shown that for a wide range of atmospheric compositions, the heat circulation is efficient.”
Seager also pointed out that searching for the ozone signal would require up to a hundred hours of observation time. Seager wondered “if it would really be possible to bin together data on that time scale robustly.”
Kreidberg, however, suggested it would be a valuable test of the hardware: “But the tremendous light-gathering power of Webb and the thermal and pointing stability of the telescope are exactly what we need to make these observations successful. But we will definitely want to get test observations of Proxima during the early commissioning phase of JWST to confirm that the detector works at the level of precision required.”
John Mather, the senior project scientist on the James Webb Space Telescope, was also optimistic. “I think the paper in question is pretty good; the authors know what they are talking about regarding the planet,” he told Ars. “We definitely did not design the telescope with this target in mind, considering that we started work 21 years ago. We won’t know whether the telescope has the needed stability and sensitivity until after launch. Needless to say we would all like to find out right away, but this is one of the most difficult targets, and it will take a while to learn how to use the equipment in the best possible way. I am certainly optimistic, since we don’t know of anything in the hardware that would prevent the observations.”
Mark Clampin, project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, was enthusiastic (we have more from him below) but shared concerns with Mather about the ozone part. “I think based on this paper alone, the first part of the observation, people would probably want to do. I think that trying to do the ozone observation is something that would probably have to wait until we understand the instruments better.”
And even if we detect ozone, that wouldn’t be a sure sign of life. “I think if you make that observation and you were able to get a positive result, it’s another piece of the puzzle. It’s not the sort of ‘hail Mary.’ I think scientists generally want to see a lot more evidence than just one line. These bio-signatures generally require you to see a number of different lines, different parts of the band.”
Still, Clampin went on to say that, if we did spot ozone, it would inform how we think about the next generation of exoplanet-observing hardware.
arXiv, 2016. Abstract number: arXiv:1608.07345v1 (About the arXiv).Get the skills and knowledge you need to reduce readmissions and improve the quality of life of patients with chronic pulmonary disease.
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Application for CME credit has been filed with the American Academy of Family Physicians. Determination of credit is pending.Two signs on the doors leading from the visitors' clubhouse at U.S. Cellular Field to the first-base dugout read, "NO BOTTLED WATER ON THE BENCH."
What's this? Athletes can't drink water? Even in the humid Chicago summers?
Here's the explanation I got:
Gatorade is Major League Baseball's "official sports drink." So instructions were sent that no player could be seen drinking anything but Gatorade in the dugout. Not even Aquafina, which is the "official water" of MLB. Not even bottles of water with the labels removed.
White Sox clubhouse personnel said if players take bottled water onto the bench, all the bottled water will be removed from the clubhouse as punishment.
So remember, the biggest threat to baseball isn't steroids or HGH or amphetamines or runaway ticket prices or four-hour games.
It's water.Does your lawn pass the footprint test? Perhaps not, given the drought.
If you leave a trail after walking across your grass, it’s time to water — wisely.
When grass blades look dull, roll and fold and don’t bounce back, water slowly and deeply to encourage roots to travel deeper, away from the quickly drying, hot soil surface. If we don’t get much-needed rain, repeat weekly to help get your turf through this extremely dry period.
“Contrary to popular belief, lawns do not need frequent waterings,” says Doug Welsh of the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.
St. Augustine and zoysia need ¾ to 1 inch a week to stay green. Bermuda requires ½ inch a week.
Apply an inch of water and you’ll wet our typical clay soil about 6 inches down, Texas A&M experts say. This is adequate for grass roots.
To measure how much your sprinkler waters in a set amount of time, place three to five empty short-sided cans in a line that starts near the sprinkler and continues to the edge of the sprinkler’s coverage. Run for 10 minutes, then measure the amount in the cans. Determine how much longer you’ll need to water to apply an inch.
If you need proof you’ve done the job, use a trowel to dig a 6-inch hole to check moisture at that depth.
Stretch each inch of water:
•Water early in the morning when it’s cooler and winds are calm to minimize evaporation and maximize efficiency. Skip the sprinkler on breezy days. Water by hand or use drip irrigation to get moisture directly to the soil surface and avoid waste.
•Avoid runoff. Don’t water the drive and street. If the soil is dry and hard, water runs off quickly. Let the sprinkler run until the water puddles, then turn it off for about a half-hour so the moisture can be absorbed. Repeat the process until an inch of water has been applied.
•Dethatch and aerate the lawn to encourage water penetration and reduce runoff.
•Mow at a higher height. Longer blades need less water, and they shade the soil, conserving moisture.
Mow St. Augustine grass at 3 inches, zoysia at 2 inches, Bermuda at 1 1/2 inch.
•Don’t apply nitrogen fertilizers that promote thirsty growth. Leave clippings on lawn to break down and replenish soil nutrients. An organically enriched soil better holds moisture.Andrea Smith—an associate professor at University of California, Riverside, the founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, and a leading Native American studies scholar and activist—may not, in fact, be a Cherokee woman, despite repeatedly presenting herself as such since at least 1991.
I first saw Andrea Smith in 2013 when she delivered a keynote at the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association (SEWSA) conference and, although her program bio did not explicitly mention that she was Cherokee, she was widely understood by conference goers to be a Native American speaker.
After all, she was the author of Conquest, a landmark text about state-sanctioned acts of violence against Native American women, she had been involved with the Chicago chapter of the organization Women of All Red Nations (WARN), and when she was denied tenure by the University of Michigan, students and faculty rallied around her, suggesting discrimination on the basis of her Native American descent.
She had a long history of speaking as a Native American woman on issues affecting Native Americans. Her tenure controversy, in particular, was legendary in academic circles. At the time, Inside Higher Ed referred to her as “[a] Cherokee,” adding that “she is among a very small group of Native American scholars who have won positions at top research universities.”
But that’s not so, as David Cornsilk—a research analyst who did genealogical work for the Cherokee Nation in the late 1980s and has operated his own practice, Cherokee Genealogy Services, since 1990—can attest. He confirmed to The Daily Beast that Smith reached out to him twice during the 1990s to research her own genealogy. There was no evidence of Cherokee heritage either time.
“Her ancestry through her mother was first and showed no connection to the Cherokee tribe,” Cornsilk told The Daily Beast. “Her second effort came in 1998 or around then with ‘new claims’ on her father’s lineage, which also did not pan out.”
At first, Cornsilk thought that she was “just another client, nothing out of the ordinary.” But when she came back the second time, Cornsilk told The Daily Beast, Smith “told [him] her employment depended on finding proof of Indian heritage.”
Smith allegedly continued to portray herself as Cherokee despite Cornsilk’s research. Her second attempt to establish her Cherokee descent came shortly before she established the renowned feminist of color activist organization INCITE! and about five years before her 2002 appointment as an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
Cornsilk told The Daily Beast that he was “compelled to inform members of her field that she had no Cherokee ancestry.”
Smith and I interacted on Twitter during SEWSA but we can’t anymore. As WordPress blogger tequilasovereign discovered, Smith deactivated her Twitter account shortly after Annita Lucchesi, a graduate student at Washington State University, posted a now-viral Tumblr post entitled “Andrea Smith is not Cherokee.”
“Andrea Smith is not Cherokee. omg. [T]his is not new information,” Lucchesi wrote.
Although Smith’s deception may have been something of an open secret among groups of Native American scholars and activists, the news comes as a shock to a broader academic community that has long hailed her as a Cherokee voice.
“Andrea Smith does not rep being Cherokee unless you ask her, she usually introduces herself as a ‘woman of color or Native.’ [S]he has no ties to any Cherokee community, no record of her ancestry, and no known family that identifies as Cherokee or acknowledges Cherokee ancestry,” Lucchesi added.
For the past week, an anonymous Tumblr has been posting evidence of Smith’s portrayal of herself as Cherokee alongside evidence debunking these claims. The emerging narrative is eerily similar to the case of Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP chapter president who portrayed herself as black for 10 years before being revealed to be white by her parents.
In 1991, Smith wrote an article for Ms. Magazine entitled “For All Those Who Were Indian in a Former Life,” (PDF) in which she chastises white feminists who want to appropriate aspects of Native American culture without experiencing any of the oppression:
“When white ‘feminists’ see how white people have historically oppressed others and how they are coming very close to destroying the earth, they often want to disassociate themselves from their whiteness. They do this by opting to ‘become Indian.’ … Of course, white ‘feminists’ want to become only partly Indian. They do not want to be a part of our struggles for survival against genocide…”
Her bio below the article refers to her as “a Cherokee woman” and “cofounder of Women of All Red Nations (WARN).” At the time, Smith, who was born in San Francisco, may not have had any proof of Native American descent. In other words, she may have been a white feminist trying to “become” Native American herself—a level of hypocrisy that recalls Dolezal’s own criticisms of cultural appropriation.
By the time Smith was denied tenure in 2008, she was serving as the director of Native American Studies at the University of Michigan. When students and faculty portrayed the denial as discrimination against a Native American faculty member, at least one Cherokee critic who was aware of Smith’s background decided to speak out.
Long before Rachel Dolezal was accused of “ethnic fraud,” Steve Russell, a columnist for Indian Country Today Media Network, called Smith an “ethnic fraud” for portraying herself as Cherokee in the buildup to the UMich incident:
“I am Cherokee, and Smith has in the past claimed that same tribal affiliation. Her e-mail handle, I have learned, is ‘Tsalagi’ [meaning Cherokee]. In my last column, I mentioned her 15 refereed articles, two books written, book chapters written and books edited. These are the currency of academia: what you have done rather than what you are born.”
In the column, Russell describes the damage Smith causes by allowing the university and the public to perceive her as Native American.
“If the University of Michigan wants a researcher and teacher, it would appear by objective criteria they have one. If they want a Cherokee, not,” he wrote. “Ethnic fraud is harmful to tribes and sometimes to individual real Indians if they are passed over for a fake in a job that really does call for a tribal person.”
The piece was not widely read, however, and academic bios for Smith continued to refer to her as “a Cherokee woman” until as recently as December 2014. In the meantime, Smith took a position at University of California, Riverside. And although accusations of ethnic fraud continued, they appear to have flown under the radar until Lucchesi’s post.
In 2013, Mark Edwin Miller’s book Claiming Tribal Identity: The Five Tribes and the Politics of Federal Acknowledgment described an alleged confrontation between Smith and Cherokee scholars Patti Jo King and Richard Allen that occurred midway through her career. According to Miller, Smith agreed to stop claiming Cherokee descent after they “confronted her” in a private meeting. Judging from the long list of bios in the 2010s in which she is referred to as “Cherokee” or “aboriginal,” Smith did not respect King and Allen’s wishes.At a conference in 2011, for example, Smith was introduced as “an anti-violence activist from the Cherokee nation” and speaks using the collective pronoun “we” when referring to indigenous people:
As for why Smith might have claimed to be Cherokee, David Cornsilk has his suspicions. He said that it’s “not unusual” for people to contact him on the basis that their employment depends on proving their descent.
“I just did a research project for a client [who] had some silly notion that by being certified he could do more for Indians than we could for ourselves,” Cornsilk told The Daily Beast. “It’s that kind of paternalistic arrogance that made me shut down my business for a few years.”
Like Rachel Dolezal and her work with the NAACP, Smith has a long history of advocating for and speaking on behalf of Native American women. But like Dolezal, her refusal to clarify her own background raises important and troubling questions about her role in that very work.
Andrea Smith could not be reached for comment. When asked for comment on Smith, INCITE! told The Daily Beast: “We support Andy Smith and the self-determination of all First Nations People. INCITE would rather place our collective resources into abolishing settler colonialism than in perpetuating this ideology by policing her racial and tribal identity.”
Update: Patti Jo King, a Cherokee historian, journalist and Interim Chair of American Indian Studies at Bacone College, confirmed to The Daily Beast via e-mail that she and her colleague Richard Allen confronted Andrea Smith about her claims of Cherokee descent at a conference in 2007. King wrote that Smith “admitted” to her and Allen that “she wasn’t sure about her connection to the Cherokee family,” that she “apologized profusely for making untrue statements as well as statements she said she was not sure about,” and that she “promised to set the record straight and never again claim to be Cherokee.” “She has allowed publishers, professors, conference organizers, publicists, and her many readers to continue to propagate the notion that she is indeed Cherokee, and by extension, speaks on our behalf,” King said.President Donald Trump’s tax plan fulfills a request the GOP establishment has long wanted: a significantly lowered corporate tax rate.
Under the joint GOP-Trump tax plan, the corporate tax rate will be lowered from 35 percent to 20 percent. Supporters of this measure argue that a low corporate tax rate is needed to make U.S. companies more competitive across the globe.
In speeches pitching his tax plan to the country, Trump claims the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, even though the truth is more complicated than that. He and other Republicans also argue that a lower corporate tax rate would create more jobs because corporations will use the money that is no longer tied up in taxes to create more jobs and higher wages. However, multiple studies have shown that this won’t be the case.
According to new analysis from Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the only group significantly benefiting from a lowered corporate tax rate are wealthy foreign investors.
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Analysis by Rosenthal finds that roughly 35 percent of U.S. corporate stock is owned by foreign investors. Slashing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent would translate to a tax cut for these investors worth $70 billion dollars, a cut three times the tax break that households in the middle income quintile would get under Trump’s tax plan.
Table showing the increase in foreign holdings of U.S. stock. (Credit: Tax Notes)
“U.S. tax reform may inevitably allow incidental benefits to foreigners. But the windfall to foreigners from lowering U.S. corporate income tax rates from 35 percent to 20 percent is exceptionally large,” Rosenthal wrote. “As estimated here, a lower corporate income tax rate would benefit foreign investors by $70 billion in the first year alone […] would benefit middle-income U.S. households by only $23 billion in the first year.”
Rosenthal’s analysis that wealthy individuals will get some of the biggest tax cuts from Trump’s “middle class” tax plan backs up preliminary analysis from the Tax Policy Center that estimates 80 percent of the tax cuts would go the top 1 percent.
The White House has attempted to discredit the Tax Policy Center’s study of the overall tax plan by claiming it is too early to make any estimates because the tax writing committees in Congress still have to fill in many key details. The administration, however, does not seem to believe it is too early to make sweeping claims about the tax plan without providing substantial measures or numbers to back them up.
Economists have long argued that shareholders bear the largest burden of corporate tax cuts — in other words, they receive the most benefits when these taxes are cut. The Trump administration, however, is estimating that these tax cuts will help contribute to what he calls the “biggest tax cut in history,” even going so far as to say that the average American household would see a $4,000 dollar boost in income. This estimate, however, assumes these corporations would put their newly freed up cash back into the hands of workers in the form of higher wages, rather than invest in automation or return that money back to investors in the form of stock dividends, which many economists argue will likely happen.This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
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representatives, speak with all the interested teams during the interview process, and all this could change before or shortly after the Vesey-go-free date of Aug. 15. This saga has taken many turns since he first told the Nashville Predators -- the team that drafted him -- that he wouldn't be signing with them.
Still, the Vesey situation is one of the few things keeping the NHL offseason fire burning during a time when most of the hockey world is vacationing prior to the open of training camps.Generally, when the Hall of Fame asks for a piece of your equipment, you done did something good. That's what happened with Jose Altuve Tuesday, as Cooperstown put in the order for Altuve's cleats.
Now, while this was technically because Altuve stole multiple bases for the fourth consecutive game (the first player to do so in 97 years), it could also be because the Hall just wants a piece of the magic that was Altuve's month of June. The Houston second baseman wasn't just good - he was ign'ant.
Oh, What a Month
In the month of June, Altuve had 39 hits. His teammate Chris Carter has 43 hits the entire season. Wut.
Overall in June, Altuve hit.411/.447/.495 with eight doubles. He managed to steal 17 bases without being caught a single time. Possibly the best part of all of this? Altuve struck out a total of four times the entire month. George Springer has had that many strikeouts in a single game four times this year. Only one of Altuve's strikeouts came after June 5th.
It wasn't just the stolen bases that Altuve piled on gobs at a time. In the month of June, the Astros played 24 games. He had multiple hits in exactly half of those, including two separate stretches where he had four consecutive multi-hit games. If that doesn't get you all hot and bothered, you should evaluate your life.
Among players with at least 50 plate appearances in June, Altuve was the only one with a batting average above.400. Mike Trout (of course) was the only player to eclipse Altuve's.447 on-base percentage at.471. And Altuve didn't just lead the league in stolen bases in June - he ran away with it. Only Seattle's James Jones was within 10 steals of Altuve, and he was still five behind. To put it quite simply, Altuve was one of the two best hitters in the entire league last month.
Altuve's Progression
Although Altuve's 2014 isn't exactly a mystical unicorn in a patch of donkey dung, it certainly is a surprise given his previous performance. Prior to this season, Altuve had never posted a WAR above 1.6; he's at 3.0 already this year.
One of the cool stats we use here at numberFire is nERD. In Altuve's case, it's the number of runs he would score more than a league-average player if Altuve were to record all of the plate appearances in a game. You can read more on nERD here.
This season, Altuve's nERD is a silly 3.30, the eighth highest total in the league. You could say this is a minor deviation from the nERD-iness he had exhibited in previous years.
Year nERD Plate Appearances 2011 -0.45 234 2012 0.56 630 2013 -0.60 672 2014 3.30 367
The question now becomes how is he doing this? numberFire's Evan Slavit talked about Altuve's plate discipline back at the end of May, and the numbers make a lot of sense. Basically, he's swinging less at bad pitches and making more contact on the occasions in which he does. That's a recipe for something particularly scrumptious.
This emphasis on avoiding bad pitches has helped Altuve get to where he is with his current strikeout totals. His first three seasons in the majors, he never had a strikeout percentage lower than 11.7. This year, it's at 6.3 after the disgusting June we already went over. The guy is taking a smarter approach at the plate, and it has catapulted him to the top of the food chain.
All-Star Game Injustices
As you all know, fans that vote for the All-Star Game have absolutely never, ever gotten it wrong. Any suggestion to the contrary is blasphemous and grounds for relegation to being a Mets fan.
That said, the voting at second base has been all kinds of jacked up this year. Below is a chart with the top five vote-getters in the American League at second base in order of the number of votes they had received when last updated Monday. Alongside that is their nERD (which solely tracks offensive capabilities) and WAR (which includes both offensive and defensive measurements). As you can see, somebody done messed this baby up.
Player Votes nERD WAR Robinson Cano 2,474,924 1.52 2.3 Ian Kinsler 1,603,085 2.05 3.6 Dustin Pedroia 1,477,800 0.33 2.3 Jose Altuve 1,312,805 3.30 3.0 Brian Dozier 994,447 1.58 2.8
Dustin Pedroia is barely above average in nERD-terms, and he has 165,000 more votes than Altuve. Cano's nERD isn't even half of Altuve's, and he has upwards of one million more votes than him. What's a brudduh gotta do to feel the love around here?
It's pretty clear that Altuve isn't yet receiving the love he deserves. He has become one of the top two offensive second basemen in the entire game, but the average fan may have no idea because they stick with the names they are used to. Obviously, he's going to make the All-Star team - John Farrell ain't no dummy, even if Pedroia is one of his guys. It's just a shame Altuve won't get the chance to start.
When you have a month like Altuve's June, people will take notice. When you have a month like Altuve's as a 24-year-old on a team with boatloads of young talent, you start to look at what this guy and this team can do moving forward. Thankfully, for Altuve and for lovers of baseball, it doesn't look like this man is stopping any time soon.MOSCOW — The prime ministers of Russia and Ukraine agreed Sunday to resolve their gas dispute, with an understanding that prices would be pegged to the price of oil, but with a discount for 2009 that means Ukraine could pay little more than it did last year.
The deal, expected to be signed Monday, came after a din of criticism from officials in Europe, where more than 20 countries have been affected since a Jan. 6 cutoff of natural gas and at least 12 people have frozen to death in a dispute that is ostensibly over prices and transit fees, but that is also deeply entwined in post-Soviet politics.
If the agreement holds — and previous deals have not — the gas dispute would essentially end where it started in terms of prices, in what would be a baffling result considering the hardship caused by the embargo. It was unclear after the announcement when gas would start flowing back to Europe.
Politically, Russia appeared to have made gains in influencing internal Ukrainian affairs ahead of an election scheduled there next year, but at the cost of alienating officials in European countries in a standoff that was as much geopolitical as commercial.
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Russia has sought to divide the pro-Western coalition in Ukraine that came to power after the Orange Revolution in 2004. It had striven to negotiate with and strengthen Ukraine’s prime minister, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who is seen as more conciliatory toward Russia than Ukraine’s president, Viktor A. Yushchenko.
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In this sense, the deal served at least one of the political goals analysts of post-Soviet politics had ascribed to Russia’s actions in the gas dispute. Russia had also, some analysts said, sought to intimidate new members of NATO, like Bulgaria, which are heavily dependent on Russia for energy. Within Ukraine, critics of Mr. Yushchenko said his pre-election posturing of taking a hard line against Russia exacerbated the dispute.The City of Surrey has long fought to fix the homelessness and drug addiction issues that have led to 135A Street's notorious reputation.
Now, shop owners near the Whalley strip say the problems are starting to affect business.
"Most of the time [homeless people] come and shoplift," said Gloria Baidoo, owner of an African-Caribbean market and beauty supply store.
"Sometimes they come around chuck needles and leave all kinds of dirty stuff, some come and hide and ease themselves on the floor, which you have to clean," the businesswoman added.
Cleaning up garbage around their shops is a daily routine for many business owners in the area and some said they've been forced to pack up and move.
"It just costs so much money to do business around here," said Eddie MacNaughton.
To date, Lookout Emergency Aid Society has taken 26 individuals off 'The Strip" and into temporary housing. But the number of tents has gone up slightly since January. (Cliff Shim/CBC )
MacNaughton owns Motorcycle World, a family business that's been in the same location since 1999. He said the constant cleaning coupled with security expenses means it's not worth his while to stay in the area.
"Nobody is going to be here pretty soon, it's going to be a dead zone." - Eddie MacNaughton
"We had about $8,000 worth of fence repairs last year and glass repairs from people constantly trying to break in," he said.
Nearly 10 other businesses have closed down or relocated from the area in the past year.
"Nobody is going to be here pretty soon. It's going to be a dead zone," MacNaughton said.
The Surrey Outreach Team has been patrolling the area 24-hours a day since January and said crime has been going down month by month.
There has been a 36 per cent decrease in cases of assault, a 40 per cent decrease in utter threats and no cases of sexual assault or interference so far in 2017, according to a report from the city's public safety committee.
Despite being in the same location since 1999, the owner of Motorcycle World said it has become too expensive to do business in the area. (Tina Lovgreen/CBC)
Despite those numbers, Paul Chen, the owner of an auto repair shop just opposite the strip, said he's been facing harassment.
"They don't treat me as a person because every time I talk to them, [I say] 'Hey, could you do this? [They say] F-off, F-this.'... I encountered couple of times racial slurs, really bad," he said.
"At the end of the day they tell me to 'go back.'... I've been here for 27 years. Go back to what? We're all Canadians," said Chen, who said he's reported the incidents to police.
The businessman has also invested thousands installing surveillance cameras and fences around his shop.
Still, Chen said he's looking to sell the building — property he bought just two years ago.
Paul Chen relocated his shop from Newtown two years ago. He said he plans on selling the building because of the homeless people living across the street from his shop are making it challenging to run a successful business. (Tina Lovgreen/CBC)
However, there is some optimism shining from one shop corner.
Mike Nielsen, owner of Sprite Multimedia Systems, is part of the Downtown Surrey Business Improvement Association.
He believes things are going to improve.
"The area is going through a transition stage. We are working really hard to help the challenged people in the neighbourhood to find some housing — to get some help with their drug addictions and such," said Nielsen, whose store has been in the same spot for 34 years.
"Give us another few years and this is going to be the new downtown key area."
Boarded up and closed shops line the areas near 135A Street and those that are open have heavy security measures in place. (Tina Lovgreen/CBC)
Nielsen, who doesn't plan on moving despite the challenges, said it will take hard work to improve the community.
But in his opinion, it'll be worth it.
"I believe in this neighbourhood. I really do," he said.Doug McCune has charted San Francisco's crime rate topographically. Crimes like prostitution and narcotics peak in certain areas (Shotwell Street and the Tenderloin, respectively). San Franciscans, do you live in Strumpet Heights or Teetotaler Valley?
Says McCune:
Many of the maps have peaks in the Tenderloin, which is that high area sort of in the north-east center area of the city. Some are extremely concentrated (narcotics) and some are far more spread out (vehicle theft). These maps were generated from real data, but please don't take them as being accurate. The data was aggregated geographically and artistically rendered. This is meant more as an art piece than an informative visualization. [Link added by io9.]
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While it's hard to get enthusiastic about crime, this chart has the potential to create some new and colorful real estate slang.
[Doug McCune via Laughing Squid]WITH ELECTIONS around the corner, 107 members of the BJP on Sunday defected to the All India Yuva League, the youth wing of Forward Bloc. They included BJP’s candidate for KMC polls from Ward 112, Deepa Chakraborty.
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Chakraborty claimed she had joined the BJP to oust the Trinamool Congress but now, it seems that BJP and the ruling party had joined hands.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have either joined hands or at least come to an agreement… While at the grassroots level, Trinamool cadres are beating us up, top BJP leaders like Babul Supriyo, Nitin Gadkari and Arun Jaitley are sharing dais and praising Trinamool. It is getting difficult to explain this to our workers,” she told mediapersons. Chakraborty joined Yuva League with 20 supporters from her ward.
This comes two days after central BJP leaders and Union ministers, including Jaitley and Gadkari, praised the state government for its achievements at the Bengal Global Business Summit. Much to the discomfiture of the state BJP unit, they had heaped praises on the Trinamool government, saying the state is moving towards the right path of development and growth.
Ali Imran, MLA and general secretary of the Yuva League, termed the defection as a fitting reply to former BJP state president Rahul Sinha.
“When some of our members had switched over to the BJP, Sinha, at a rally held near Sealdah, had said that Yuva League would cease to exist. Now those, who were attracted to the BJP hoping for a positive change, have realised that promises made by Modi are unachievable dreams. This is why they are returning to Forward Bloc,” Imran said.
“This is real ghar wapsi as opposed to the communal one, preached and practised by the BJP,” he added.
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When contacted, BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said over the phone that introspection would take place within the party. “I don’t know the exact reason why they shifted from BJP… After I return to Kolkata, I may speak to these members and find out what the bone of contention is. A probable reason is that most of those who had joined BJP from other parties after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, were not given important posts in the party on principle. Their works, however, have been given due credit and importance,” he added.Originally planned for an eight episode run, CBS has announced that the first half of Star Trek: Discovery‘s first season has been extended to nine episodes. Running through November 12, the first “chapter” of the debut season was initially scheduled to culminate on November 5.
CBS also noted, in a press release, that Discovery was responsible for record-breaking sign-ups for the CBS All Access service and that daily growth in subscribers is up more than 200 percent year-over-year.
“The build up to the show’s premiere led us to a record-setting month, week and ultimately day of sign-ups. The second week of the series has also exceeded our expectations and is a credit to the brilliant and dedicated work of the show’s entire creative team and cast. We can’t wait for fans to see what comes next for the U.S.S. Discovery and its crew.” said Marc DeBevoise, President and COO of CBS Interactive.
Press Release
“CBS ALL ACCESS” SETS ANOTHER RECORD HIGH FOR WEEKLY SUBSCRIBER SIGN-UPS The First Three Episodes of “Star Trek: Discovery” Push CBS All Access into Warp Speed, Surpassing the Record Set the Previous Week Leading into the Series Premiere NEW YORK – Oct. 3, 2017 – CBS All Access, the CBS Television Network’s digital subscription video on demand and live streaming service, today announced that its latest original series, STAR TREK: DISCOVERY, has pushed the service to a new record high for subscriber sign-ups in a single week. This builds on the momentum and previous record the series set around its Sept. 24 premiere which marked a record-breaking day, week and month for the service. “Consumer response to the launch of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY has been tremendous,” said Marc DeBevoise, President and COO, CBS Interactive. “The build up to the show’s premiere led us to a record-setting month, week and ultimately day of sign-ups. The second week of the series has also exceeded our expectations and is a credit to the brilliant and dedicated work of the show’s entire creative team and cast. We can’t wait for fans to see what comes next for the U.S.S. Discovery and its crew.” Following STAR TREK: DISCOVERY’s premiere on Sunday, Sept. 24, CBS All Access’ daily growth in subscribers is up more than 200 percent year-over-year. In addition, the launch of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY is the most streamed premiere of a CBS show across digital platforms on record, measured against all CBS programming – both in front of and behind the CBS All Access paywall. Episodes one, two and three of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY are currently available to stream on CBS All Access. All new episodes will be available on demand weekly after 8:30 PM, ET on Sundays exclusively for CBS All Access subscribers in the U.S. As previously announced, STAR TREK: DISCOVERY will air in two chapters. The eight-episode-long first chapter of the series will now be increased to nine episodes, with the final episode of chapter one debuting on Sunday, Nov. 12. The second chapter, featuring the remaining six episodes, will return in January 2018.
New episodes of Star Trek: Discovery air Sundays on CBS All Access in the U.S., Space Channel in Canada, and Netflix in other countries.
The cast of Star Trek: Discovery includes Sonequa Martin-Green (First Officer Michael Burnham), Michelle Yeoh (Captain Philippa Georgiou) Jason Isaacs (Captain Gabriel Lorca), Chris Obi (T’Kuvma), Doug Jones (Lt. Saru), Kenneth Mitchell (Kol), James Frain (Sarek), and Shazad Latif (Kol), Anthony Rapp (Lt. Stamets), Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber), Sam Vartholomeos (Ensign Connor), Mary Wiseman (Cadet Tilly), Mary Chieffo (L’Rell) and Rainn Wilson (Harry Mudd).
TrekNews.net is your dedicated source for all the latest news on Star Trek: Discovery. Follow @TrekNewsnet on Twitter, TrekNews on Facebook, @TrekNews on Instagram and TrekNewsnet on YouTube.
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Interested in signing up for CBS All Access to check out Star Trek: Discovery for yourself? Click here to receive one-week free.The topic of children’s books in China recently made international headlines following a reported crackdown on foreign storybooks in the PRC. What’s on Weibo explores the status quo after the ‘Taobao ban’: has Peppa Pig really left the building? What is the current top 5 of popular children’s books in China?
Recently the children’s books market in China made international headlines when the South China Morning Post reported that an order from Beijing will drastically limit the number of foreign children’s picture books published in mainland China this year.
According to The Guardian and other sources, Chinese publishers received orders that foreign children book titles must be lowered or even halted to prevent an “ideology inflow” and to protect and promote children’s books written by Chinese authors. In the New York Times, Hannah Beech also called the crackdown an “ideological crusade.”
On March 3rd, days before the South China Morning Post reported the news, China’s largest e-commerce platform Taobao issued an official statement that, as of March 10th, it was halting resales of all books published overseas to “create a safe and secure online shopping environment.”
STATE MEDIA: ALL ABOUT CULTURE
“The Ministry of Culture hopes that Chinese children will be more in touch with cultural products that reflect Chinese values.”
Chinese media responded to the international news reports in mid-March, saying that they were “fabrications” by foreign media to make China look bad. On Wednesday, state tabloid Global Times published an article written by a Global Times commentator Shan Renping, writing:
“Recently a number of Western mainstream media have started a hype about China controlling the import of foreign children’s books, suggesting this is China’s way of reducing the influence of the outside world on China, and ridiculing that our “boycott of foreign forces starts with small children.”
According to the column, the imposed limit on foreign children’s books is not necessarily related to “ideology” or other political matters – as children’s books are allegedly “not much of an ideological field” – but that the reason is cultural.
In the past, the author writes, the ratio of imported children’s books versus Chinese ones was 9:1 in 2000. While this gap between foreign and Chinese children’s books has already decreased from 6:4 (2011), officials hope to further develop the local children’s books market.
As the article says: “The Ministry of Culture (..) [also] hopes that Chinese children, throughout the course of growing up, will be more in touch with cultural products that reflect Chinese values.”
But besides the cultural motives for limiting foreign publications in China, the Global Times column also hints that there might be economic motives involved, as it mentions the growing market of children’s books in China, and that storybooks play a leading role in the publishing industry.
In the Chinese Book Market 2016 report by the German Book Office Beijing, 21.9% of China’s online book trade is listed in the category of children’s books: a booming and growing market.
WEIBO RESPONSES
“When I think about the garbage we had to read when we were little, I really cannot even imagine that books like these will be banned.”
On Weibo, some netizens responded to the crackdown on foreign children’s books with great disappointment. Before March 10, some people also said they would quickly buy foreign books for their kids before the Taobao ban would be implemented.
It is probable that some comments about the ban have been censored; one Weibo user also indicates that a previous post about the limitations “has been deleted.”
Microblogger (@大耳朵猫妹) writes:
“When you look at how kids read children’s books, what I find most surprising is how these foreign children’s books do not seem to have any meaning but just really fit in with children’s minds. I used to read a book to my children about a crocodile family; a daddy, mommy and little crocodile that eat bananas every day. One day, the little crocodile stopped and said he did not want to eat any more bananas, so his parents asked him what he wanted to eat. When he said he wanted to eat humans, his parents laughed. He then angrily left the house and on the street, he met a small child, and said: “I want to eat you.””
“The child just laughed out loud and together with his little friends took out some bananas and threw them at the small crocodile, and then laughingly ran away. Later, the little crocodile took the pile of bananas home, and ate them with his parents while wiping away his tears. What does this story explain and teach us? Nothing. But it corresponds with children’s desire to explore the outside world and try new things. My kids really liked it. (..) I really love these cute and fresh children’s books, and when I think about the garbage we had to read when we were little, I really cannot even imagine that books like these will be banned.”
The question is: will these books really be banned? Let’s first take a look at the current top-ranked lists of children’s picture books.
MOST POPULAR CHARTS
“The reported restrictions seem to be more symbolical than substantive.”
What children’s books rank highest in the popular book charts on Weibo after news of the PRC crackdown has come out?
#1. ‘Chinese Year’ Original Picture Book Series (中国年原创图画书系列)
The top ranking children’s book at the time of writing is a book series called Chinese Year, which is written by author Cao Cong (alias Wuke Lili), a Renmin University graduate specialized in children’s psychology.
The books contents and illustrations are focused on Chinese family life and traditions. This particular story is about Chinese New Year and how it is celebrated.
2. Guess Who I Am? (猜猜我是谁)
This book is aimed at the youngest children (2-4 years old) as a little ‘hide and seek’ game with holes in it, allowing children to look through them and see different things. The book is published by the Chinese People’s Publishing House.
3. Fantastic Book (奇妙的书)
This is another made-in-China children’s book, published by Guangxi Normal University.
It is themed around many different animals. From alligators to penguins, they all look at life in a different way.
4. Paw Patrol (汪汪队立大功)
Who has not heard of Paw Patrol? This children’s book about a boy named Ryder who leads a pack of rescue dogs known as the PAW Patrol is derived from a Canadian animated television series, and is thus a foreign children’s book with no Chinese themes. The book is popular on Weibo, where it is rated 9.1 out of 10 stars.
5. The Princess Kite (公主的风筝)
Although the authors of this book are not all Chinese, the story does focus on ancient China and has a Chinese kite as its central subject – making it a truly Chinese story, published by the Chinese Yellow River Publishing & Media Group.
The top 5 of Weibo’s most popular children’s book of this moment seems representative of the ‘popular’ or ‘recommended’ lists of China’s biggest online bookstores such as Taobao or Dangdang, where there are still many foreign children’s books for sale, but where the originally Chinese children’s books seem to dominate the main lists of book suggestions.
Searching for ‘foreign children’s books’ was possible on all sites – including on Dangdang, Kongfz, JD.com, and also on Taobao – after March 10. There is a wide selection of foreign books available from these sites, from Little Rabbit Couldn’t Sleep to Peppa Pig.
Also in the category for older children (8-12), translations of books like Pippi Longstocking (长袜子皮皮) or Harry Potter (哈利·波特) are still freely available on Taobao.
Seeing that the announced Taobao ban has not really gone into effect, there is a probability that the ‘ban’ on foreign children’s books and the reported restrictions for publishing firms to publish any foreign picture books for children this year are more symbolical than substantive.
TONING DOWN THE HYPE
“Chinese children can enjoy Paw Patrol or Pippi Longstocking, along with those books themed around Chinese New Year or Chinese folklore.”
On Thursday, Global Times published another article that seemed to want to tone down the hype, quoting the deputy dean of Cultural Studies at Peking University Chen Shaofeng: “Unless the foreign media can name particular children’s books that are banned from being imported, their accusations should be seen as groundless.”
The article also mentioned a Beijing-based publisher nicknamed ‘Coco’, who reassured worried parents that books that have already received approval to be published would continue to be available, regardless of whether or not import limits (not bans) are introduced in future.
The way things stand now, it seems that it is business as usual for children’s books in China. It is likely that foreign children’s books will not be completely banned from China in the near future. Instead, we can expect a heightened focus on Chinese books for children (especially those themed around Chinese stories and traditions), making it easier for publishers to get approval for those titles.
To make final conclusions about the eventual effects of the announced regulations, however, we will have to wait another year. In the meantime, Chinese children can enjoy Paw Patrol or Pippi Longstocking, along with those books themed around Chinese New Year or Chinese folklore. Perhaps to the disappointment of some parents, Peppa Pig has not left the building (yet).
– By Manya Koetse
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©2017 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.If your computer permits you to view these pictures in full-screen mode, we recommend it.
One might think these majestic images of massive icebergs were the work of a master landscape photographer.
They are not.
They’re the work of an insightful portraitist who is able to capture the distinct nuances of the individual personalities that she sees in what others might consider inanimate monoliths.
“They are like humans in that each one reacts to its environment and its circumstances in its own way,” Camille Seaman, 42, said. “I’ve come across icebergs that were very stalwart and just refused to dissolve or break up. And there were others — massive, massive icebergs — that were like ‘I can’t take it anymore’ and in front of my eyes would just dissolve into the sea. There’s so many unique personalities. There’s a sadness to them.”
Over eight years, Ms. Seaman has encountered, and photographed, each of them as sentient beings. Her passion for icebergs was ignited the moment she first saw one in the Weddell Sea off the Antarctic coast.
“I remember shaking, seeing this massive thing that was probably, half the size of Manhattan,” Ms. Seaman said. “I had to think that this was one snowflake on top of another snowflake, year after year, for many thousands or millions of years before here it is standing before me.”
Camille Seaman
The project started long before she saw her first iceberg. When she was a young child, in Suffolk County on Long Island, N.Y., her grandfather, Lester Redfield Seaman, tutored her in how her people, the Shinnecock tribe, saw the natural world around them.
He would take Ms. Seaman and her younger brother, Shane, into the woods and “teach us how to not just see a tree, but to recognize the tree as an individual.”
“To really see its face, its shape in the bark, how its branches go, so that you knew that tree, almost like you know your face, and so that you would never be lost because you would recognize them as sort of your relatives,” she said.
He also taught her how to observe. Every day, from when she was 5 until his death when she was 13, he would make Ms. Seaman and her brother sit outside without moving, for one hour. After an hour, he would call them into the house and ask what they had seen. If they saw clouds that looked like the underside of a fish, it meant rain within 24 hours. A spider crawling across the ground meant there would be no rain that day.
The iceberg project came about purely by accident. Ms. Seaman was to fly on an Alaska Airline flight within California. However, because it was overbooked, she received a free round-trip ticket to anywhere the carrier flew. Although she had no previous desire to go to Alaska, she decided to fly to Kotzebue, on the Bering Strait, where a land bridge is thought to have enabled the first human migration from Asia to the Americas more than 12,000 years ago.
Camille Seaman
“As I was walking across the ice, I had an experience in which I understood that I was on my planet, that I was made of its material, and that in the scheme of things I meant nothing,” she said, “but the fact that I could even stand there and think about it was a miracle.”
That experience on the ice was confirmation of “everything my grandfather had tried to teach me,” she said.
It also set her on a quest to see more of the Earth’s colder climes and eventually brought her to her project, which she has photographed for eight years. She has, on occasion, observed the same iceberg over several years. In 2005, she saw one that was over 1,100 square miles. Years later and 7,000 miles away, she came across it again; at this point, it was roughly 250 square miles.
As the polar regions have warmed, the glaciers that carry ice to the sea have sped up, causing more icebergs to break off into the ocean. Like ice cubes added to a glass of water, the icebergs raise sea level. Many scientists say the speed-up is one of the consequences of an increase in greenhouse gases caused by human activity.
“I think in a more healthy ecosystem there’s a natural rhythm to this process, but what scientists are seeing is an incredibly accelerated rate of this process,” she said.
Ms. Seaman has connected to her past in a profound way, traveling the world to photograph the icebergs — which she sees as sentient beings — as they die.
“For a long time, I tried to deny that my family had any effect on who I was, or on my identity, or how I perceived the world, but that was naïve and just being very stubborn,” she said.
After completing her project “The Last Iceberg,” she is now involved on another nature-based adventure: photographing super cell storm clouds. We’ll look in on this project later this week.
Camille Seaman
Follow @CamilleSeaman, @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.Renu and Khushbu, 12 and 10, also work in an illegal mica mine. Credit:Ben Doherty Mica is a mineral coveted for centuries for its unique lustre and its myriad uses in modern products now make it a valuable commodity. It is mica that gives make-up like eye shadow, nail polish, lipstick and concealer their shimmer. Mica gives automotive paints their shine and is used in building materials and as an insulator in electronic chips. It is used in lasers and radar. This impoverished district in eastern India has the largest known mica deposits in the world. The mineral here is easily accessible, high quality and in demand from around the world, but the industry here is little better than a black market, depending on an unskilled workforce, forced into working for lower and lower prices. Profits are made off the backs of children. Salim, 12, has been mining for a year, he says, helping out his father who is further down the hill.
Mica, which is also mined legally, gives sparkle to items such as make-up. Credit:Wolter Peeters He insists he goes to school every day and only mines when he comes home. We found him soon after 1pm and, when we asked him what his teacher's name was, he didn't know. Others in the village say that he in enrolled in school, but doesn't go. He mines every day. ''I don't like this,'' he says, as he hacks at the rock. The cracked plastic tray he fills with mica flakes can hold a kilogram. He will fill it 10 times today. Each kilogram earns him 5 rupees (about 8¢). Depending on its quality, mica on the international market can fetch anywhere from several dollars a kilogram to more than $1000, but the 50 rupees (83¢) Salim earns each day is a vital adjunct to his parents' income.
It is like a mafia. There is a blackmarket for this. Kailash Satyarthi, founder of child rights organisation BBA They need him to work he says, ''to help earn money''. The work is hard and dangerous. Children working risk snake and scorpion bites, and the hollowed-out caves they mine in collapse often. They also suffer cuts and skin infections, as well as respiratory illnesses, such as bronchitis, silicosis and asthma. But however difficult and dangerous, Salim's work, officially at least, doesn't exist. India officially produces about 15,000 tonnes of crude and scrap mica a year, according to the government's Bureau of Mines. It has a few hundred tonnes stockpiled. Yet it exported more than 130,000 tonnes - more than eight times the official figure - in 2011-12, more than half of it to China. ''At present, the majority of mica mining and trade is illegal,'' India's industry secretary, A.P. Singh, drily noted of the massive discrepancy.
Most of India's exports of high-quality mica flakes come from illegal mines such as this one and much of it from the work of child miners like Salim. But where the truckloads of mica are going and for what purpose are kept hidden by the suppliers, who are at the start of a complex and clandestine supply chain. In Australia and around the world, mica remains one of key ingredients in the make-up and nail polish women put on their faces and fingers every day. It's an ingredient used not only to add shine to the make-up, but to absorb excess oils and give it a consistent texture. The mineral can also be called Glimmer, Kaliglimmer, Muskovit, or may be named only by the code CI 77019. Australian cosmetics brand Napoleon Perdis lists mica as a primary ingredient on its packages in |
appeared. I kept wondering, “How was this footage going to look at 48? Better? Worse?”
The screenings in late April polarized the media, and left the rest of us to speculate on things not yet seen.
My interest turned to impatience, and I began to explore the possibility of post-converting the trailer into a higher frame rate. Several methods of accomplishing this task presented themselves, each with with their own distinct strenths and weaknesses.
Just as a stereoscopic post-conversion will never truly match up to a film shot natively in the format with two cameras, the techniques that I’ll outline in the following paragraphs will never recreate the effect gained by shooting natively at that frame rate.
As far I know, the following article is the first public repository of information on this topic. If you know of any others, or have any further knowledge related to this concept, please drop me a line – what I have written here just scratches the surface of what it could become.
Without any further ado, let’s get going.
Initial Conversion
Those familiar with post-production are no doubt aware of plug-ins such as Twixtor and Kronos that allow users to turn their regular speed video footage into super slow-motion extravaganzas. Essentially, these programs examine each frame of footage you provide and figure out what happens between each pair of adjoining frames. It can then use this data to create entirely new frames that are placed between the originals.
When used at its default settings, Kronos will take a piece of source footage and reduce it’s speed by 50% – a process that doubles the amount of frames present, meaning each second of original footage would have it’s 24 original frames converted to 48 new frames.
Now it’s just a simple matter of repurposing the frames’ metadata so that they increase the frame rate of the footage instead of slowing it down.
To best accomplish conversion via Kronos or Twixtor, the user must first separate their original footage into individual shots, then apply this effect onto each of them one at a time, taking time to tweak the plug-in’s settings for optimal quality.
After the shots have been rendered, they can be recombined into a new sequence, re-synched to the original soundtrack and exported into a rudimentary form of 48 fps.
Distortion
While the footage may play back at the correct speed, it may not look anywhere near correct. Software packages such as Kronos usually create some form of distortion on clips that contain significant motion.
This can be seen throughout my post-conversion of the trailer: watch closely as the dwarves toss plates over Bilbo’s table, and also as Bilbo hops the Hobbiton fence in the following shot.
Kronos provides several tools within the plug-in for dealing with many kinds of distortion. Most of these techniques require some time to execute, and may or may not work within the paramaters of the particular shot you’re working on. Like a difficult color key, trial and error may serve to be the only plan of attack.
Brute Force
Some shots have so much motion between frames that nothing can be done within the plug-in itself to achieve a clean result. It’s at this point that a brute force technique must be implemented to generate new frames. Working by hand is incredibly slow, but it produces high quality results on tough shots.
My technique of choice was the use of SplineWarp nodes in Nuke which allow the user to “warp” between two master frames, thus allowing the creation of additional frames in between.
To convert one second of regular footage, 24 new frames need to be generated. On average, it took me 15 minutes to do one frame. That’s 12 hours to convert just two seconds of footage. Needless to say, this technique is best saved as a last resort.
Saving Time
In situations where you don’t have much time (i.e. always), it may be necessary to cut corners by eliminating time consuming steps. If one was attempting to quickly convert a sizable sequence that didn’t contain notable quantities of fast movement or require a significant amount of brute-force conversion, it might be worth while to run the entire sequence through Kronos or Twixtor in one go instead of separating it into individual shots before conversion.
This can be a bit of a gamble, but if your settings are good you can convert a significant amount of footage right off the bat. You would then have to sort through the resulting render and hand pick sections that need more attention.
Minor distortions could be fixed by painting them out frame by frame. This technique is quite forgiving as each frame is seen for only a fraction of a second, and the eye doesn’t have much time to discern minor changes in sharpness or tonality.
Converting a multi-shot sequence all at once creates a unique form of distortion whenever the footage cuts from one shot to the next. Essentially, the plug-in will attempt to create two new frames in the space between the two shots, resulting in a highly deformed transition.
Considering the quantity of individual cuts present in an average three minute sequence (the trailer contained over 75) a method must be created by the VFX house to automate the process of fixing the transitional distortion; otherwise the time saved by converting the entire sequence at once will be greatly reduced.
I eventually settled on a series of Nuke nodes that replaced the distorted frames with a duplicate of the nearest clean frame. This results in the last clean frame of the previous shot and the first clean frame of the following shot appearing on screen for 1/24th of a second instead of 1/48th. A cheat of sorts, but it does work: our eyes are too distracted by the change in image to notice the longer frames.
Several Python expressions were written to automate the process, driven by a user-submitted frame value that highlighted the last clean frame before a transition. This value is checked against the current frame of the composition to determine the values for the fades & mixes.
Placing the nodes into a group and saving them as a Nuke ToolSet significantly sped up the process, allowing me to clean a single transition in only 10-15 seconds.
Exporting
When the desired result has been attained and all frames have been rendered, it’s time to re-synch the audio and attain a quality export. Nuke doesn’t have a proper timeline to do the sound synching, and Final Cut 7 doesn’t work well with image sequences (I haven’t used FCX, so I’m not sure of that). Adobe Premiere & Media Encoder CS5.5 don’t work natively with 48fps material (though they do work with 60fps).
After exhausting those options, I settled on performing these tasks in After Effects, which handled the job decently. As there aren’t a whole lot of compression options directly in AE, I opted to export a lossless Quicktime file that I could bring into MPEG Streamclip for the heavy lifting.
I discovered that (as always) it’s very important to test your 48fps exports on different computer systems so that you know whether or not they’ll play smoothly. Highly compressed footage, though smaller in size, can choke up an average computer system. This is why my “Medium Quality” clip is 100 mb larger than the “High Quality” clip.
In Conclusion
If the 48fps format is as successful as it’s proponents believe it will be, then it won’t take long for Hollywood to realize that converting older films into 48fps will generate more income for the studios and provide more jobs for the VFX industry.
Now is the time for companies such as The Foundry and The Pixel Farm to develop new technologies that assist in the process, making it a smoother experience for everyone else down the road.
Sir Jackson: You’ve got my full support on this endeavor, and I can’t wait to see The Hobbit in it’s full glory on the big screen. What a glorious day that shall be.
–
Luke LetellierAs Werner Leonard of Johannesburg discovered when he went to the JHB Mail HUB of the South African Post Office ‘service’ to go look for a parcel he’s been waiting for for 2 months.
He took this photo after he found no staff in attendance and nobody stopped him from walking into the Hub to go look for his parcel.
And have a look, click on the images above to enlarge, NOBODY is processing the mail! Where are the staff members that works around the clock to sort and dispatch mail and packages?
He writes on his FB page: “this is what I saw when I walked in!!!!!! No wonder no one gets anything! Some people have been waiting since 8AM till 15:00 when I arrived without service. The staff is swearing one another and giving the clients grief telling them they are not going to go look for their parcel! It is absolute mayhem!!!!! I think I might wait another 6 months before getting my parcel… IF YOU ARE THINKING OF USING SA MAIL, STOP AND THINK AGAIN!!!”
Thank you for sharing this with us Werner. People need to see what is going on.As if he didn’t already have all the money poker has to offer, the founder and former owner of online beast PokerStars went ahead and scooped a little more by winning the UKIPT Isle of Man High Roller Tournament this weekend.
Most epic story of #UKIPT IoM just wrapped up: Isai Scheinberg takes down high-roller event, @PokerStars employees photo-bomb winner photo.— Lee Jones (@leehjones) October 05, 2014
That’s right, Isai Scheinberg, still currently wanted by the US Dept. of Justice, actually played a little poker this weekend and ended up taking down the biggest event on the Isle of Man schedule, the £2000+£200 High Roller.
I’ve witnessed many great poker moments. Isai Scheinberg winning the #UKIPTIoM HR in front of scores of @PokerStars staff ranks pretty high.— James Hartigan (@J_Hartigan) October 04, 2014
While it’s not the high-rollingest of high rollers and, according to The Hendon Mob, there were only 15 total runners, having the well-liked mastermind behind the world’s biggest online poker site win a PokerStars tournament in front of his former employees is still a pretty cool story.
For his efforts Isai pocketed some loose change in the form of £13,850 ($22,253) to go along with the nearly $5Billion dollars that Amaya recent paid for PokerStars.The central bank in India is called the Reserve Bank of India. The INR is a managed float, allowing the market to determine the exchange rate. As such, intervention is used only to maintain low volatility in exchange rates.
Early Coinage of India
India was one of the first issuers of coins, circa 6th Century BC, with the first documented coins being called 'punch-marked' coins because of the way they were manufactured. India's coinage designs frequently changed over the next few centuries as various empires rose and fell. By the 12th century a new currency referred to as Tanka was introduced. During the Mughal period, a unified monetary system was established and the silver Rupayya or Rupee was introduced. The states of pre-colonial India minted their coins with a similar design to the silver Rupee with variations depending on their region of origin.
Currency in British India
In 1825, British India adopted a silver standard system based on the Rupee and was used until the late 20th century. Although India was a colony of Britain, it never adopted the Pound Sterling. In 1866, financial establishments collapsed and control of paper money was shifted to the British government, with the presidency banks being dismantled a year later. That same year, the Victoria Portrait series of notes was issued in honor of Queen Victoria, and remained in use for approximately 50 years.
The Modern Day Indian Rupee
After gaining its independence in 1947 and becoming a republic in 1950, India's modern Rupee (INR) was changed back to the design of the signature coin. The Indian Rupee was adopted as the country's sole currency, and the use of other domestic coinage was removed from circulation. India adopted a decimalization system in 1957.
In 2016, the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 ceased to be legal tender in India. The removal of the denominations is an attempt to stop corruption and illegal cash holdings. In November of the same year, the Reserve Bank of India began issuing ₹ 2000 denomination banknotes in the Mahatma Gandhi (New) Series.Mattis to Make Stops in Middle East, Africa
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will embark April 17 on his fourth trip since becoming secretary. He will reaffirm key U.S. military alliances, engage with strategic partners in the Middle East and Africa, and discuss cooperative efforts to counter destabilizing activities and defeat extremist terror organizations, according to a Defense Department news release.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt
Mattis will begin his trip April 18 with a stop in Saudi Arabia, where he will have a series of meetings with key international counterparts to strengthen commitments to the U.S.-Saudi security partnership.
On April 20, the secretary travels to Egypt to discuss regional security issues and participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Unknown Soldier Memorial in honor of fallen Egyptian soldiers.
Israel, Qatar, Djibouti
On April 21, Mattis arrives in Israel to meet with President Reuben Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Additionally, the secretary will participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
On April 22, the secretary arrives in Qatar to meet with key international leadership and continue efforts to strengthen regional security architectures.
On April 23, Mattis will travel to Djibouti to meet with President Ismail Omar Guelleh to further the U.S-Djibouti commitment to promoting regional stability.You probably heard of the term Vertical Rhythm if you researched a little about typography on the web. It’s one of the most important practices when working with typography. I’ve used Vertical Rhythm on all my sites ever since I read about it.
One day, it struck me that I haven’t had a clue why vertical rhythm was important. Two more questions quickly arose following that thought: “How does Vertical Rhythm improve the design of the site? What lessons can I draw from Vertical Rhythm so I can improve my design?”
I decided to find out why. Here are my thoughts.
Let’s begin the article with some context so we’re on the same page.
What is Vertical Rhythm?
Vertical Rhythm is a concept that originated from print typography (I think). In Vertical Rhythm, we try to keep vertical spaces between elements on a page consistent with each other.
This is often done with the help of a baseline – A common denominator used to create the consistent spaces.
In practice, we often visualize the baseline in print design by overlaying our page with a baseline grid as shown below:
Baseline grid in Print design
Baseline grids on the web are slightly different because of the way the line-height property works. We often see a baseline grid that looks like this instead:
Baseline grid for the web
Don’t worry about the nuances between print and web baseline grids. Although they look slightly different, the principle behind Vertical Rhythm still remain.
At this point, we know that Vertical Rhythm requires a baseline and a baseline grid. The next question, then, is "how do we determine the baseline?"
The baseline is determined by the line-height property of the body text. Let’s say your body text has a computed line-height value of 24px. Your baseline is then 24px.
Implementing Vertical Rhythm from this point on is simple. There are two rules:
Set the vertical white space between elements to a multiple of 24px. Set the line-height of all text elements to a multiple of 24px.
A simple implementation of these two rules may look like this:
h1 { line-height: 48px; margin: 24px 0; } p { line-height: 24px; margin: 24px 0; }
Just following these simple rules has the effect of producing results like this:
Before and after implementing Vertical Rhythm
Which design feels better? By better, it could mean things like feeling:
More calm
More orderly
Easier to read
More professional
(etc)…
But why? What makes these two rules so powerful that it immediately changes your perception of the two (albeit simple) designs?
Let’s take a look at the two rules again:
Set the vertical white space between elements to a multiple of 24px. Set the line-height of all text elements to a multiple of 24px.
Did you notice a commonality between these two statements? Yep, it’s a multiple of 24px.
These two rules tie-in with a principle of design called Repetition.
The Principle of Repetition
Repetition is simply repeating the number of occurrences of one or more aspects of the design. Anything can be repeated. Some examples are:
a typeface
a font weight
a font size
a color
a line
a shape (like circle, square or triangle)
(etc) …
You can even repeat spatial relationships as well. In the case of Vertical Rhythm, we’re repeating a space of 24px throughout the page.
So, what does repetition do?
Repetition breeds familiarity. It has the ability to make things feel as if they belong together. It gives the feeling that someone has thought it all out, like it’s part of the plan.
Take for instance, a lonely circle in the middle of nowhere.
Lonely, I'm Mr.Lonely, I have nobody ~~~ ♪
What is the circle doing there? What is it supposed to mean? What is the designer trying to say?
Your mind begins to race. It tries to search for coherent answers to your questions. Unfortunately, you won’t find any. You’re left hanging. You feel unsettled.
Watch what happens if you add more circles to the group
More circles
The circle doesn’t seem so out of place anymore does it? Don’t you feel more comfortable now?
Watch what happens if you add even more circles to the group
Moar moar moar circles!!!
Ah. Many circles. You begin to see a pattern now.
Now, how do you feel when you look at this image now? How does it compare with the previous two images?
It feels almost the same as when you tried comparing the before / after Vertical Rhythm example, isn’t it?
Wow! Why?
Because your mind has subconsciously settled on an answer by now. You see that these circles are all part of a plan. Someone has orchestrated this carefully. It’s all there for a reason. You may not necessarily know the reason, but you know it’s there. You feel safer now. That’s why.
Vertical Rhythm work for the same reason. We’re simply repeating the baseline throughout the entire page.
But there’s a trick with Vertical Rhythm. The trick lies in determining the baseline. Think about it. Why, of all numbers, did we choose 24px as our baseline?
There’s only one reason: it’s the value that gets repeated the most on the page.
Take a look at the baseline grid again. Notice what you see now:
See how the baseline of 24px is repeated multiple times?
Mind-blowingly simple, isn’t it.
Now that we know the principle of repetition, how can we apply it to the rest of our design?
Repeat more. You can also vary the repetitions.
Varying Repetitions
We can’t possibly separate everything by 24px. It’ll be boring. We need to throw in some variations somewhere. But how?
The answer can be found within the two rules for Vertical Rhythm:
Set the vertical white space between elements to a multiple of 24px. Set the line-height of all text elements to a multiple of 24px.
Yep, the keyword is multiple.
You can multiply 24px with whatever ratio you want. The key is to remain consistent. Since we already have a strong base at 24px, the next strongest variation we can have is to multiple or divide 24px by 2. Here, we get either 12px or 48px.
Carry on with this process of multiplication and you’ll eventually end up with a scale:
12px, 24px, 36px, 48px, 60px, 72px …
Try using any of these numbers as a margin or padding to any element and they’ll automatically feel as if they’re part of the design.
Second heading element has margin-top of 72px instead of 24px
Of course, remember to keep repeating the number you choose to use!
Repeating 24px Elsewhere
So far, we’re focused on repeating the flow of 24px from top to bottom. Don’t you think you can repeat 24px horizontally on the left and right as well?
Try it on the left and right padding of components:
.component { padding-left: 24px; padding-right: 24px; }
Try using it as the gutter of your grid items:
.grid { display: flex; justify-content: space-between margin-left: -12px; margin-right: -12px; overflow: hidden; }.grid-item { margin: 24px; }
Try it as the padding (or margin) between your text and the edge of the screen (especially on a mobile device)
article { margin-left: 24px; margin-right: 24px; } @media (min-width: 600px) { article { margin-left: 0; margin-right: 0; } }
Wrapping Up
So, in summary, Vertical Rhythm is important because it follows one of the principles of design – repetition.
Repetition has the ability to make things feel that they belong together. It gives the feeling that someone has thought it all out, like it’s part of the plan.
After discovering the link between Vertical Rhythm and Repetition, we went on and figured out several ways we could replicate 24px to bring some variations to the design.
Finally, after getting tired of repeating 24px vertically, we tried repeating 24px horizontally as well.
That’s it! What have you learned about Vertical Rhythm? How would this knowledge shape your design or code from this point on? Let me know in the comments below!
Thanks for reading. Did this article help you out? If it did, I hope you consider sharing it. You might help someone else out. Thanks so much!Get the biggest Arsenal FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Wojciech Szczesny claims Arsenal are relishing the prospect of their looming nightmare run of fixtures.
Over the next 16 days, Arsene Wenger's title-chasers face Liverpool in both the Premier League and FA Cup, and also entertain Manchester United in the league and then Bayern Munich in the first leg of a Champions League last-16 tie.
That daunting list of matches will go a long way to defining the Gunners’ season, but their keeper Szczesny insists they are not frightened by the task ahead.
Szczesny said: “We’re looking at it as a chance to create an even bigger gap between us and the teams behind us. We’re looking forward to it and I hope we can show people what we’re made of.
“We’ve got hard games, but every single game in the Premier League is difficult at the moment - there are no weaker teams.
"We’ve got a difficult run but we’re looking forward to it. It’s good to be around the top but right now what we care about right now is being top at the end of May. It really doesn’t matter to us now.
“I’m looking forward to the big games, every player looks forward to games against big opponents and world class players. We’re looking forward to it.”
Szczesny added that Arsenal are not worried about the Premier League’s hottest strike force Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge as they prepare to go head to head with Liverpool at Anfield in Saturday's lunchtime match.
“They have been fantastic - their goal-scoring record speaks for itself. They’re great players," he said. "We managed to keep a clean sheet against them at home [Arsenal won 2-0 in November] and we’ll try to do exactly the same thing away from home and hope for a result.
“I’ve never felt scared facing anyone, so we’re looking forward to it because we’re always excited to play against fantastic players.”
Szczesny has helped Arsenal establish one of the best defensive records in the Premier League.
The back four has been resilient, with Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny forming a strong double act while Thomas Vermaelen has been out - the Belgian is likely to be missing for another fortnight after another injury setback.
Szczesny admits Arsenal’s solidity at the back can be the key to success and added: “Our defensive record, especially at home, has been fantastic.
“We know if we keep clean sheets we have got every chance of winning the game so that’s been the case. I think it is 11 games at home we have kept 10 clean sheets. You can see it’s massive for us.
“It’s hard to tell why it’s better. We have been together for much longer, we understand each other’s game now and we have had a more settled back four.
“I think over the last couple of seasons we had a little bit less luck with injuries - I never played with the same back for more than two or three games. Now we play with the same back four. Sometimes we rotate the full-backs, but in general we stay with the same defence. We understand each other’s games, we read the game of each other, it’s a very good understanding we have.
“We realise if you want to win the championship then you have to be solid defensively and that is the most important thing. We know that clean sheets gives you the best platform to go and win games. If we can keep a few more until the end of the season then we can get our rewards.
“We keep winning games at home, that is the best reward we can possibly get. Whether you need a striking force like Man City or a defence like we have had recently, I think you have to mix the both together to find a perfect team but we will see at the end of the season which one pays off.”Judged even on the terms of sports entertainment, 1985’s WrestleMania 1 was much more a spectacle than a competition. The main event featured the team of Hulk Hogan and Mr. T — whose story line friendship dated to their respective work in Rocky III — against the heel duo of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff. But the combatants weren’t the entire extravaganza: Recently fired and soon-to-be-rehired Yankees manager Billy Martin was the guest ring announcer, Liberace (accompanied to the ring by the Rockettes) was the guest timekeeper, and the special guest referee was none other than Muhammad Ali, who had retired from boxing four years prior.
During a particularly calamitous moment in the match, Ali intervened and socked Piper in an effort to bring the chaos under control. It’s one of the iconic scenes in WWE history, but it was also a symbolic convergence. Ali — who died on Friday at 74 — had already pulled pro wrestling into the boxing ring many years before, and now wrestling was returning the favor.
Ali, then Cassius Clay, was 19 when he first set eyes — and ears — on Gorgeous George. Both of them were at a Las Vegas radio station to promote upcoming fights — Clay against Duke Sabedong and George against Freddie Blassie, who would later become Ali’s manager in Japan. While Clay waited to do a spot for his fight, he listened to George cut a full-on heel promo on Blassie. As George biographer John Capouya put it in Sports Illustrated:
Since every legendary figure worth his salt has at least two creation myths, here’s what Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith wrote in their book Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X:
Less than three years later, Ali was taunting Sonny Liston into a lather with startlingly familiar guff: "If Sonny Liston whups me, I’ll kiss his feet in the ring, crawl out of the ring on my knees, tell him he’s the greatest, and catch the next jet out of the country."
On Saturday, June 26, 1976, Ali, the reigning WBC/WBA heavyweight champion, stood in the ring in the Nippon Bidokan arena in Tokyo. Normally reverent, this particular crowd wasn’t happy. They threw trash into the ring and chanted, "Money back! Money back!" at two of international sport’s greatest icons: Ali and Antonio Inoki, the founder and star of New Japan Pro Wrestling. Despite the star power, it was a scene out of a modern American indie wrestling show. The crowd had just seen a match that was realer than anyone expected — especially Ali.
The story goes that Ali had met Ichiro Hatta, president of the Japanese Amateur Wrestling Association, and flirted in his usual way: "Isn’t there any Oriental fighter who will challenge me? I’ll give him one million dollars if he wins." The Japanese press ate it up, and Inoki’s backers put up a $6.1 million purse for Ali to make "the Martial Arts World Championship Fight" happen. (Ali’s previous fight, against Richard Dunn, had nearly been derailed over a $225,000 shortfall in Ali’s purse.) For Inoki, the bout was part of a campaign to establish the legitimacy of wrestling; for Ali, the monetary motivation wasn’t just in the fine print. As a broadcaster put it at the time, "It’s money that induces Muhammad Ali to fight a Japanese wrestler."
When he agreed to the fight, Ali thought it was going to be a "worked" match — a fake, pro-wrestling-style show. As to why it became real, the stories conflict: Some say Ali was upset that he was booked to lose the fake match and decided to fight for real instead, while Inoki’s confidantes say that he had planned on a real fight all along. Whatever the case, when the match finally began, it was a real fight, but the rules were so heavy-handed that little fighting could be done. Inoki couldn’t throw or grapple, and he was allowed to kick only from a kneeling position. Meanwhile, Ali was in light boxing gloves, powerless to bring Inoki to his feet. He made use of the ropes to break up bad situations, but those were rare. The majority of the 15 rounds consisted of Ali circling a prone Inoki, who steadily threw kicks at Ali’s legs. It looked ridiculous:
Of course, what really mattered was the hype. When they had a lunch together at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan before the fight, Ali walked in alongside his "manager," Blassie. Ali credited Blassie with his exuberant personality, but his role on this trip was more than just ceremonial. Blassie had wrestled extensively in Japan and was well versed in the sport’s internal politics and the country’s customs.
As they entered the prefight press conference, Ali yelled, "No monster is going to beat the greatest fighter of all time!" In response, Inoki presented Ali with a crutch that he would presumably need to use to get back to the locker room after the fight.
Related How Muhammad Ali Woke Up Sportswriters
When a reporter asked Ali if all of the spectacle surrounding the match was demeaning to the heavyweight champion, he said: "I’m so far in my own class that I have to look for other things. This is what I’m involved in — publicity, controversy, acting just to accumulate, draw crowds. Why am I me? Because I do things that are ridiculous. Why is Evel Knievel what he is? Because he does things that are ridiculous."
Back in the states, Vincent J. McMahon, founder of the World Wide Wrestling Federation and father of WWE’s Vincent K., showed the card on closed-circuit TV at Shea Stadium. He also provided a live opening act: Andre the Giant vs. Chuck Wepner, who had lost to Ali the year before.
The connective tissue is plentiful: Wepner’s bout with Ali had inspired Rocky, which would come out just over five months after the Ali-Inoki fight. And Andre-Wepner would inspire a sequence in Rocky III, when Hulk Hogan — playing "Thunderlips" — went toe-to-toe with the champ. (To bring it full circle: Inoki would fight Wepner in another boxer-wrestler exhibition in October 1977.) Hogan’s role in Rocky III famously got him expelled from the WWF, as Vince Sr. thought that wrestlers playing wrestlers on the big screen would put the farce of the sport on blast.
Two years after Rocky III was filmed, Vince Jr. had taken over. He saw the potential for using Hogan’s Rocky appearance to grow crowds, and he made bringing Hogan back priority no. 1.
Much has been made about McMahon taking a legitimate-seeming, territorial wrestling business and transforming it into something more and something less at the same time: an internationally successful but admittedly fake enterprise.
However, Ali deserves some credit, too. His self-promotional abilities, all of which were learned from pro-wrestling figures, then opened the door for pro wrestling to enter the mainstream. In fact, you can see the era changing when Ali throws his first whiff of a jab at Piper, who recoils out of the ring. The man who swallowed pro wrestling up into real sports was then swallowed up into the farce of pro wrestling.
By the time the inaugural WrestleMania rolled around, wrestling was being covered by the Arts section of The New York Times. Yet serious sports journalists had already decried the Inoki fight as the low point of Ali’s career. In the Times, Dave Anderson wrote a column headlined "The ‘Farcial’ Arts" that quotes "Cinderella Man" James J. Braddock on Ali’s integrity: "He’s good, but he don’t have the dignity a champion should have."
Considering all the deserved laurels that Ali’s passing received, it’s funny to consider questions about his dignity today. In retrospect, the fussing said less about Ali than it did about his contemporaries’ inability to understand the transformative power of showmanship. Ali knew what bluster and self-promotion could accomplish as soon as he saw Gorgeous George at that Las Vegas radio station.
Related Remembering Muhammad Ali
It was the art of hype, the art of the work. Sports matter because we don’t know how the game or the match will end, and the introduction of the wrestling promo into the world of real sports just underscored the marketability of uncertainty.
"What’s going to happen if Ali gets his arm twisted? What will happen if he throws Ali on his back?" a self-referencing Ali mused in the lead-up to the Inoki fight. "What will happen if he kicks Ali? Man wants to understand what he cannot understand."About three days ago, I was invited to write, in simple terms, a reason why I'd vote in favour of president Chavez; currently candidate, and the object of this write-up. A very good friend girl, of those friends you think of as having known your whole life, even if you've just met, suggested the idea and I accepted with excitement.I straight away began to think about the precise words, the commas, the full stops, the accents, and the dramatic moments of those primitive ideas, and right there, only seconds after beginning to ponder the task at hand, an immediate problem sprang up. What single reason could I choose from the thousands I could muster? What profile should it have? What qualities did it need, in order to be placed above all the other possible reasons?But this morning, on waking up, a phrase by Eduardo Galeano came to my mind, which transported me to that conference where, with his particular measured and intelligent voice, he spoke about that very strange and peculiar "dictator" that Chavez is for the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and for world elites. A poor Venezuelan who was interviewed at some point in our recent times, said simply: "And what a great phrase that is, not just because of its social weight and power, nor because of its enormous emotional content, but because, to all practical and real effects, in this modern society of people made invisible, it takes on an incalculable philosophical dimension. Probably that man (the one who said the phrase), wasn't thinking about philosophical questions, or currents of world thought, nor was he trying to sound clever, in terms of a well rehearsed answer to a question. He was talking straight from his heart, and he summed up one of the most important reasons that could ever have existed for any Revolutionary on this side of the planet. How many of us, and for how long, were simply a statistic? How many were just a piece of paper in a cardboard box, which used to perpetuate the white [Acción Democrática] or green [COPEI] party in power? How many of us were only heard of when they did a demographic census? Who could, in times gone by, make opinions, or dare to make opinions about politics or about Government, without fearing or suffering repression, persecution, or even assassination or being made to disappear? How many voices silenced during those awful times when the Right badly governed?Every four years somebody different, or not so different, came to power, to promise, in Alí Primera, "our right to our little right".I don't want Chavez to go either, because nowadays we are no longer invisible. We can finally have an opinion, and opinions certainly have been expressed in Venezuela over the past 13 years; we have made firm and giant steps forward in the mass access to culture, and socio-cultural events, mostly free-entry, are organized in communities every weekend, the Librerías del Sur [Southern Book Shops] network, where thousands of books are sold at fair prices; radio and TV programmes that are directed, created and produced by and for the most disadvantaged; where Empowerment takes on its highest expression through communal councils, which receive funds to carry out works for the improvement of their communities; free health for the poorest communities and/or those most distant from state capitals; food at fair and supportive prices; free quality education. Those of us from below are, without doubt, no longer invisible.The world clearly changed. The peoples' drive and their just struggles, in the quest for their own sovereignties and liberties, was reborn 13 years ago, when our president told the empires: "Venezuela now and forever belongs, firstly, to Venezuelans". From that moment onwards, Latin America, and South America in particular, began to be recognised throughout the world. We are no longer just as a backyard, playground, or a big mine to extract resources from; we are a brotherhood of |
authenticity of the software update, it cannot be installed. This code signing mechanism ensures that only Microsoft can deliver updates for Word, only Apple can distribute updates for iOS, and only Google can deliver updates for its Chrome browser.
Earlier this month, the American public learned that the Department of Justice had sought and obtained a court order forcing Apple to help it hack into the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. The court ordered Apple to create a new, special version of Apple’s iOS operating system that bypasses several security features built into the company’s operating system. The court also ordered Apple to sign the custom version of the software. Without this digital signature certifying the software’s authenticity, the iPhone would refuse to run it.
Experts fear that the precedent that the government is seeking in this case - to be able to force Apple to sign code for the government - could allow the government to force other technology companies to sign surveillance software and then push it to individual users’ devices, using the automatic update mechanisms that regularly look for and download new software.
If consumers fear that the software updates they receive from technology companies might secretly contain surveillance software from the FBI, many of them are likely to disable those automatic updates. And even if you aren’t worried about the FBI spying on you, if enough other people are, you will will still face increased threats from hackers, identity thieves and foreign governments.
There are a lot of parallels between computer security and public health, and in many ways, software updates are like immunizations for our computers. Just as we want parents to get their children immunized, we want computers to receive regular software updates. Indeed, just as the decision by some parents to not vaccinate their children puts their entire community at risk, so too the decision to turn off automatic updates not only impacts the individual, but other users and organizations, as those vulnerable, infected users’ computers will be used by hackers to target others.
The trust that Americans have placed in software companies is far too important to risk destroying to make it easier for the government to spy. And the precedent the government is seeking in this case will not just apply to Apple, but, in an age of Internet of Things, to the TVs, thermostats and other smart-devices with cameras and microphones we are inviting into our homes.Russian journalist Vasily Maximov (AFP) revealed some interesting details about a conversation with an alleged Russian VDV (paratrooper) conscript, who he had met at a bar in Moscow, and who was sent with other active duty Russian army troops to Ukraine’s Lugansk region, in August 2014. The alleged paratrooper revealed details of a Russian army location in Lugansk, as well as information on Russian army casualties, that resulted from Ukrainian artillery fire. He stated that his official mission was to accompany a Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations convoy into Lugansk, but the scope of the mission changed in Lugansk. Maximov states that the soldier provides details that seem to confirm his story.
@vasilymaximov: Is there anyone from Lugansk who can tell me what “Proletarka” means, in terms of the city?
А есть в ленте луганчане, кто может сказать, что значит "Пролетарка" применительно к городу? — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
@vasilymaximov: Non-locals could have renamed it to their own liking. Is this it?
Неместные могли переделать название на собственный лад. Вот это? https://t.co/mzJqJFrHxo — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 30, 2017
@Wellstep1987: Yes, and there’s a base there at the intersection. The military vehicles are still there.
Да, и база там на перекрестке есть, техника стоит до сих пор — Well (@Wellstep1987) August 30, 2017
@vasilymaximov: In a bar, I got into conversation with a guy who claims that he was a conscript [in Lugansk], and Ukrainian artillery killed 19 people from the battalion. 1 officer and 18 soldiers
В баре разговорился с парнем, который утверждает, что срочником там был, и арта UA выкосила 19 человек у них из бата. 1 офицера и 18 солдат https://t.co/6K0b1QkmkF — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
@vasilymaximov: No, specifically in Lugansk.
Нет. Именно о Луганске — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
@vasilymaximov: Maybe a suburb. Although I’ve already been shown the approximate area:
Возможно пригород. Хотя мне уже указали примерный район: https://t.co/mzJqJFrHxo — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 30, 2017
@vasilymaximov: The guy told me that they had set up a tent camp there. And they had started to set up communications, but they were covered [by artillery bombardment].
Ну мне парень сказал, что там у них был развернут палаточный лагерь. И они начали разверывать узел связи, но их накрыло. — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
@vasilymaximov: Astonishing dude – VDV conscript, who was in Lugansk in 2014. Won’t speak on camera or on tape. Didn’t shoot – he’s 50% Ukrainian.
Потрясающий чувак — срочник ВДВ, побывавший в Луганске в 2014. На камеру и под диктофон говорить не будет. Не стрелял — он украинец на 50% — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
@Ukr_An73: Of course he didn’t shoot. He was giving out candy there
конечно не стрелял, он там конфеты разносил — Ан73 (@Ukr_An73) August 30, 2017
@vasilymaximov: In his words, he refused, in principle, was called out, and thundered at the Rostov lip.
По его словам, он отказался принципиально, был отозван и загремел на ростовскую губу. — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 30, 2017
@vasilymaximov: He explained the reason why he went. The official mission was to accompany the “white” convoy of the [Ministry of the Russian Federation for Affairs for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters]. But then, something changed [in Lugansk].
Как раз почему ехал, он объяснил. Официальная задача была – сопровождение "белого" конвоя МЧС. А потом что-то изменилось, уже там. — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 30, 2017
@askai707: Probably for the 234th or 104th assault regiment.
Наверное, из 234-го или 104-го ДШП. — Askai (@askai707) August 29, 2017
@vasilymaximov: Can’t shed light on that. Going to be speaking with him again.
Не могу светить, с ним еще общаться. ВДВ — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
@vasilymaximov: I want to get away from the war, but stepping into a Moscow bar at night – and there’s a veteran of combat action. And it’s easy to talk – we were there.
Хочется уйти от войны, но вечером заходишь в москве в бар выпить пива – а тут опять ветеран боевых действий. И говорить легко – мы там были — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
@vasilymaximov: In a word- today, I made the acquaintance of a guy, who, in August 2014, served in the in the VDV RF, and was sent to Lugansk. AS A CONSCRIPT
Одним словом – сегодня я познакомился с парнем, который в августе 2014 года служил в ВДВ РФ и был отправлен в Луганск.
СРОЧНИКОМ — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
@myrevolutionrus: You don’t find this funny? I can tell all kinds of stories as well.
Ну самим не смешно? Я наговорить тоже всякого могу. — Сводки Новороссии (@myrevolutionrus) August 31, 2017
@vasilymaximov: Not a question, if you know details, which are not too widely known by those who aren’t in the know. This is the fourth eyewitness account of a concrete episode.
Не вопрос, если знаете детали, которые не слишком широко известны тем, кто не в теме. Это уже четвертое свидетельство о конкретном эпизоде — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 31, 2017
@vasilymaximov: And yes – many from his division had already refused, and his words: “they turned out to be the smarter ones.”
И да – многие из его части уже тогда отказались, и его слова: "они оказались умнее". https://t.co/rwndx1S5aL — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
@vasilymaximov: He’s not particularly foolish, really. Because he regrets his mistake. And he emphasizes, that he fundamentally refused to shoot.
Он не особо дурак, на самом деле. Потому что жалеет об ошибке. И он подчеркивает, что принципиально отказался стрелять — VASILY MAXIMOV (@vasilymaximov) August 29, 2017
AdvertisementsWhat if the Rapture - or something very like it - happened, and life carried on afterwards? Imagine if a significant but not world-destroying number of unconnected people simply vanished one day, leaving the rest of us behind. Clueless and abandoned, the subjects of an aloof universe, how would we live on underneath the weight of that mystery?
Or this: you hear a noise in the kitchen and discover the beloved daughter you lost in a fatal accident years ago making herself a sandwich complacently unaware that she ever left. Or your fiancé, whose death shattered you to pieces a decade earlier, turns up at your door as young and handsome as the day he died and begs you to run away with him.
What about learning that the teenage son whose suicide pulled your family inside out is coming back to live with you? He’s partially deceased now, paler than before and in need of a daily injection to stop him turning into a monster, but he’s still your boy and he’s coming home.
Aside from being the premises for excellent (or in the case of forthcoming adaptation, The Leftovers, potentially excellent) TV dramas, what the above share is a common fascination. Using the supernatural, each one explores a wholly natural event in our lives: our deaths and those of the people we love.
Yes, between ratings-grabbing soaps, murder mysteries and violent fantasies from Game Of Thrones to The Walking Dead, people have been dying on the small screen for years. Shows from Six Feet Under to Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me and more have used death as the jumping-off point for family and investigative drama. But this current crop isn’t interested in using death simply as a dramatic engine or gory shock tactic; they’re fascinated by the thing itself. The fantastical stories they tell don’t just portray characters attempting to cope with the abrupt blank space left behind by death, they’re attempts to cope with and understand it in their own right.
Take HBO’s The Leftovers, which comes adapted from the 2011 Tom Perrotta novel of the same name and premieres in the US this June. It presupposes that three years ago, two percent of the world’s population disappeared, all at the same time, all without warning. Taking the inhabitants of a small New York state town as its focus, The Leftovers concerns itself with the titular people left behind and their varying responses to the loss. Some lose faith, others gain it. Some pull away from their remaining family, others draw closer. Extravagant belief structures are erected in the post-event world, some groups decrying humankind’s sin and others preaching hedonism. However insistent the dogma though, nobody has the answer. Whatever they believe, nobody knows where the disappeared went, or why.
As well as making some insightful points about religious rhetoric, Perrotta’s premise performs a simple but powerful narrative trick by expressing the bewilderment of a single bereavement on a global scale. By expanding the personal shock of an abrupt death from one to millions, his novel explores the myriad ways grief disarms you. Whenever someone we know and love dies, we’re the leftovers, mystified, answerless and struggling to continue in a disinterested universe. If the HBO series captures even some of the novel’s clarity on grief, it'll be well worth the investment of our time.
Similarly worth the investment is stylish French series The Returned, a drama that could trade on its dreamily constructed atmosphere alone were its characters and plots not every bit as captivating.
Once again focusing on the inhabitants of a small town, The Returned imagines how we would react were our dead loved ones sent back to us unharmed and with no knowledge of where they’d been. Through its increasingly complex supernatural mystery it stages simple human truths. The difficulties, for instance, of parents raising one child after losing another; the necessity of leaving our past - handsome ex-fiancés and all - behind us; the cruel and difficult-to-swallow truth that sometimes we’re better off without the family members who’ve died… The Returned’s fantastical stories of Camille, Adèle and Serge respectively explore the real-world emotional tangles to which death gives rise.
As does In The Flesh, which arrived on BBC Three last year twenty times better than it had any right to be and continued to improve through its recently concluded second season. Underneath the first series’ clear function as an allegory on prejudice and intolerance was a personal and heart-felt anti-suicide message. By allowing its undead teen lead, Kieren, to come back home after his suicide and see the aftermath of his actions (“you didn’t even leave a note” he's berated by his younger sister), In The Flesh was a dramatic rehearsal of what might be if that permanent solution to a temporary problem wasn’t permanent after all.
Series two of In The Flesh dealt with more needless deaths, a boy racer’s car crash, an addict’s overdose… and waved the supernatural magic wand to give the died-too-young a second chance at life. Unlike superb recent BBC crime drama Happy Valley, the plot of which was driven by a need for revenge against the man who caused a teen suicide, In The Flesh tackles the injustice of premature deaths by reversing them and seeing what follows. Of course, in the grand tradition of fiction's The Monkey Paw, what follows is rarely the wish the bereaved asked to be granted.
The Returned and In The Flesh form the vanguard of a new wave of moribund TV drama. (It’s more a flood than a wave - in addition to their second series, there’s a US remake of The Returned debuting on A&E later this year, alongside a second season of Resurrected and a first of the NBC’s revived Babylon Fields and iZombie, all of which share the same revenants-come-back-as-people-not-monsters premise. Add to those Proof, the TNT series about a man and woman fixated on what happens after we die). They signify a break with The Walking Dead’s macho zombie drama, which, despite featuring the undead, has always been less about death than it has about how far people will go for self and family preservation.
What’s behind TV’s sudden interest in seeing a softer side to those who've come back from the dead? A certain amount of bandwagon-jumping wherein commissioners see sympathetic zombies as the new sparkly vampires and green-light projects they may not have otherwise, is one answer.
There are other possibilities, one of which is to do with the ongoing evolution of TV drama as an art form. Just as the passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century saw novels move away from social realism and turn inwards towards complex psyches and existential doubt, so perhaps is television now shrugging off the big, social stories and zooming in on the individual psyche (and, naturally, its preoccupation with death).
After the achievements of The Wire, Our Friends In the North, The West Wing and their ilk, perhaps TV drama has reached the apogee of political, state-of-the-nation drama and is now turning inwards, towards the personal. We’ve seen gritty realism and masculinity in crisis done on TV in a dozen brilliant different ways. We’ve told the big stories, so now we’re telling the intimate ones, a move that, ironically, has created a nascent obsession with the biggest human story there is.
Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.WASHINGTON — The White House said Tuesday that it was opposed to a move by the House of Representatives to increase funding for Israeli missile defense procurement by an additional $455 million above the administration’s budget request for the 2017 fiscal year.
The announcement was greeted with disappointment by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which emphasized the importance of the additional funding.
In a long letter sent to Congress on Tuesday, the Obama administration listed its numerous objections to the House’s version of the defense appropriations bill for the coming fiscal year.
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The administration has criticized the bill for budgetary sleight of hand, complaining that it redirects funds from the overseas operations war chest toward other purposes in an effort to meet spending targets. In the letter, the administration complained that the legislation “fails to provide our troops with the resources needed to keep our nation safe.”
“At a time when ISIL continues to threaten the homeland and our allies, the bill does not fully fund wartime operations,” the letter continued. “Instead the bill would redirect $16 billion of Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funds toward base budget programs that the Department of Defense (DOD) did not request, shortchanging funding for ongoing wartime operations midway through the year. Not only is this approach dangerous but it is also wasteful. The bill would buy excess force structure without the money to sustain it, effectively creating a hollow force structure that would undermine DOD’s efforts to restore readiness.”
The objection to increased aid to Israel came at the same time that the administration criticized “the reduction of $324 million from the FY 2017 Budget request for US ballistic missile defense programs.”
“These programs are required to improve the reliability of missile defense system and ensure the United States stays ahead of the future ballistic missile threat,” administration officials wrote in the missive sent to Congress.
Without explicitly drawing parallels, the next sentence of the letter noted that “furthermore, the Administration opposes the addition of $455 million above the FY 2017 Budget request for Israeli missile defense procurement and cooperative development programs.” The administration had initially requested $103.835 million for Israeli cooperative programs.
AIPAC responded to the letter, issuing a statement that it was “deeply disappointed” that the statement of administration policy “criticized Congress for funding US-Israel missile defense cooperation.”
“On a bipartisan basis, Congress has increased funding above administration requests this year, as it has done for well over a decade,” the pro-Israel lobby noted. “These cooperative programs—including the Arrow, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome—are critical for Israel’s defense against a growing array of missile threats and make an important contribution to US missile defense programs.”
Former ambassador to Washington, and current Kulanu MK, Michael Oren seemed to criticize the administration’s stance and urge Israel to become more deeply enmeshed in the growing fight between Congress and the president over the defense budget.
“Congress reflects the American people’s will and transcends administrations,” Oren wrote in a cryptic tweet Wednesday morning. “Israel should not concede Congress’s ability to aid us.”
The Senate version of the House appropriations bill would more than quadruple the administration’s requested funding for Israeli missile defense, recommending just under $601 million.
“We applaud Congress for consistently supporting these key programs, and urge their full funding in both the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization and Appropriations Acts,” the AIPAC response concluded.
The Senate passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act on Tuesday. Unlike the House version, the Senate version, which enjoyed broad enough Democratic support to defeat a presidential veto, did not subsidize additional spending through the Overseas Contingency Operations war account.
Speaking on the Senate floor last week during the debate over the National Defense Authorization Act, Senator Ted Cruz criticized the administration’s low levels of requested funding for missile defense.
“This has been an ongoing partnership between Israel and the United States of America, and yet, unfortunately, the Obama administration in its request submitted to Congress zeroed out procurement for David’s Sling and Arrow 2 and 3, vital elements of Israeli missile defense,” Cruz complained. “This is at a time when the threats are growing; the administration decided zero was the appropriate level.”
In the parallel National Defense Authorization Bill passed by the House, representatives authorized a total of $600.8 million in anti-missile defense programs for Israel. AIPAC applauded that move, which included $268.8 million in research and development funding for US-Israel cooperative missile and rocket defense programs; $62 million for procurement of the Iron Dome rocket defense system; $150 million for procurement of the David’s Sling missile defense system; and $120 million for procurement of the Arrow-3 missile defense system.
At the time, AIPAC “urge[d] inclusion of these vital funds in the final versions of the Fiscal Year 2017 defense authorization and appropriations bills.”
The House and Senate will now take their different versions of the defense spending measures to conference, where they will hammer out a final compromise version of each bill. The process this year is expected to be time-consuming given the gaps in the way that the House and Senate versions propose to fund defense spending.NMDA receptors (NMDAR) are important in the development and maintenance of central sensitization. Our objective was to investigate the role of spinal neurons and NMDAR in the maintenance of chronic visceral pain. Neonatal rats were injected with acidic saline adjusted to pH 4.0 in the gastrocnemius muscle every other day for 12 days. In adult rats, NR1 and NR2B subunits were examined in the lumbo-sacral (LS) spinal cord. A baseline, visceromotor response (VMR) to graded colorectal distension (CRD) was recorded before and after administration of the NMDA antagonist, CGS-19755. Extracellular recordings were performed from CRD-sensitive LS spinal neurons and pelvic nerve afferents (PNA) before and after CGS-19755. Rats that received pH 4.0 saline injections demonstrated a significant increase in the expression NR2B subunits and VMR response to CRD>20 mmHg. CGS-19755 (i.v. or i.t.) had no effect in naïve rats, but significantly decreased the response to CRD in pH 4.0 saline injected rats. CGS-19755 had no effect on the spontaneous firing of SL-A, but decreased that of SL-S. Similarly, CGS-19755 attenuates the responses of SL-S neurons to CRD, but had no effect on SL-A neurons or on the response characteristics of PNA fibers. Neonatal noxious somatic stimulation results in chronic visceral hyperalgesia and sensitizes a specific subpopulation of CRD-sensitive spinal neurons. The sensitization of these SL-S spinal neurons is attenuated by the NMDAR antagonist. The results of this study suggest that spinal NMDARs play an important role in the development of hyperalgesia early in life.
Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.A hint that quantum fluctuations in the fabric of the universe slow the speed of light has not been borne out in observations by NASA’s Fermi telescope. The measurements contradict a 2005 result that supported the idea that space and time are not smooth.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity says that all electromagnetic radiation travels through a vacuum at the speed of light. This speed is predicted to be constant, regardless of the energy of the radiation.
Yet in 2005, the MAGIC gamma-ray telescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands suggested the speed of light might not be constant after all. The telescope, which measured the light released by a galaxy around 500 million light years away, found that higher energy photons arrived four minutes behind their lower energy counterparts.
Grainy universe
The discovery hinted that the speed of light may change depending on its energy. This effect could be a consequence of some theories of quantum gravity, which attempt to unify Einstein’s theory of gravity with the laws of quantum mechanics. These models postulate that space and time are not smooth. Instead space-time is inherently grainy, fluctuating rapidly over distances of about 10-35 metres, a length called the Planck scale.
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If space-time is grainy, higher-energy photons would move more slowly than their lower-energy counterparts. That’s because higher-energy photons have smaller wavelengths, which makes them more sensitive to tiny fluctuations in space-time.
However, the MAGIC lag was apparently too large to be easily explained by graininess on the quantum scale. If the delay were caused by fluctuations in space-time, they would have to occur on scales more than 10 times larger than the Planck scale.
“This intriguing evidence has been wandering around in the quantum gravity community for more than a year now, with hope on the progressive side, and stomach aches on the conservative side,” says physicist Giovanni Amelino-Camelia of Sapienza University of Rome in Italy.
Now new observations suggest quantum gravity cannot be responsible for the time delay observed by MAGIC. The light from a powerful, 7-billion year old gamma-ray burst detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope shows no evidence of a lag between photons of a range of energies.
“We have fewer stomach aches now,” says Amelino-Camelia. “The Fermi data has pushed the limit where it’s now proven the MAGIC data cannot be interpreted in that way.”
Light artefact
Fermi’s measurement is the most stringent direct limit on how much the speed of light might vary with energy, says Jonathan Granot of the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, who led the analysis of the burst. “For the first time, we can put the limit [down to] the energy scale in which quantum effects would alter the geometry of space time.”
The MAGIC time delay may be down to an astrophysical process where particles are accelerated to enormous energies within the hearts of galaxies. Follow-up calculations after MAGIC’s 2005 result showed that is possible to produce flares that release lower-energy radiation before higher-energy radiation, according to MAGIC collaborator Robert Wagner of the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Munich, Germany. “I think what we can say for the time being is quantum gravity effects cannot be the dominant effect,” he says.
Knockout blow?
The result does not necessarily strike a blow to quantum gravity. Only a subset of models predict the effect, and “while it seems reasonable to expect that the variation of the speed of light with energy is a sign of quantum space-time, there is no well developed theory of quantum space-time that cleanly makes this prediction,” says Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.
What’s more, it will require even more precise measurements to completely exclude the possibility that light may change its speed depending on its energy. “If there is an effect, the experiment is now at the threshold of scales where the effect is expected, and there is the exciting prospect that it could be discovered over the…next few years,” Smolin says.
Journal reference: Nature (doi:10.1038/nature08574)Major TV networks are streaming mad.
At the Cable Show in Los Angeles last week, TV Executives from various networks, including Nickelodeon, FX, Showtime and AMC, appeared on a panel and collectively complained about Netflix. But they weren't mad about the buffering speed, limited selection, or any of that important stuff. The main complaint was the lack of network branding, according to Gigaom.
FX Networks EVP of Research Julie Piepenkotter even went on to say that due to lack of branding, "'Breaking Bad' did a whole lot more for Netflix than Netflix did for 'Breaking Bad.'" (Jeez, sounds like someone just received her new Netflix bill.)
Execs complained that Netflix's streaming programs don't have an intro identifying the network on which they originally aired. Hulu and Amazon have this feature, and execs say that is why they have better relationships with those services and why HBO licensed its content to Amazon.
Another major grievance was that Netflix should have branded pages for each network, better reflecting Hulu's model.
It should be noted that though Netflix does lack network specific pages, users are able to search by TV network to find content associated with it.TRENTON -- The state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a landmark 2011 law freezing cost-of-living adjustments for retired government workers, a decision that will slowly erode the value of pensions paid to 800,000 current and former public employees.
The 6-1 ruling is a major legal victory for Gov. Chris Christie's administration, which warned that restoring the annual increases would hurl a pension system already underfunded by $59 billion closer to insolvency.
"State taxpayers have won another huge victory," Christie said. "One that spares them from the burden of unaffordable benefit increases for public employee unions."
The lawsuit filed by a group of retired prosecutors hinged on whether the legal promise not to reduce workers' pensions includes cost-of-living adjustments. Christie and state lawmakers suspended the regular increases in 2011 as part of a sweeping overhaul of employee benefits that also raised the retirement age and required workers to pay more for their pensions and health care.
Public workers sued, arguing before the court in March that their cost-of-living adjustments have the same protections as the pensions themselves and cannot be reduced, while a lawyer for the state said COLAs fall outside that "non-forfeitable," or absolute, right.
Assistant Deputy Attorney General Jean P. Reilly agued if there's any ambiguity in the language of the 1997 law, which granted a non-forfeitable right to the "benefits program," it should be interpreted narrowly and in the state's favor.
Writing for the majority, Justice Jaynee LaVecchia agreed, finding "In this instance, proof of unequivocal intent to create a non-forfeitable right to yet-unreceived COLAs is lacking. Although both plaintiff retirees and the state advance plausible arguments on that question, the lack of such unmistakable legislative intent dooms the plaintiffs' position."
The COLA suspension was part of a broader law requiring public employees and the state to pay more into the pension system. The overhaul was undertaken to reduce the state's massive pension debt by $140 billion over 30 years and preserve the fund. Freezing cost-of-living adjustments was projected to save more than $70 billion of that total.
An N.J. guide to A guide to pension legal battles
With this ruling, it could be decades before many public workers' COLAs can be restored. Under the law, they won't receive increases until the individual pension plans that make up the pension fund are much healthier, which the statute defines as at least 80 percent funded.
In his dissent, Justice Barry Albin, wrote that in drafting the law the Legislature could have, but didn't explicitly exclude COLAs from the contractual right. Public workers made life decisions based on what seemed a plainly-written promise that they would receive regular adjustments, he added.
"Many public employees may not have retired or may have deferred their retirement had COLAs not been guaranteed as part of their pension benefits program," Albin said. "Although the Legislature had the right to suspend COLAs for those public employees whose pension benefits had not vested and who had yet to retire, it did not have the right to do so for those public employees who retired expecting that the state would keep its word."
Wendell Steinhauer, president of the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest public union, called the freeze "theft, plain and simple."
"I am outraged that the court has condoned the actions of Governor Christie and the New Jersey Legislature taking away the COLAs that our members have earned over the course of their careers," he said.
A ruling overturning the freeze could have forced the state to reimburse retirees for their losses since 2011 and to reinstate COLAs, swamping the state with billions of dollars in new liabilities and intensifying the pension fund's financial distress. The bigger checks to retirees would have moved up the timeline for insolvency, which for one fund could be as soon as 2024.
Moody's Investors Service has warned the $59 billion in unfunded liabilities could rise by a third if the state and local governments are forced to restore retirees' cost-of-living increases.
The full contribution recommended by actuaries -- well above what the state actually pays -- for this year would immediately jump from $4.4 billion to $5.7 billion. And for the governor to stick to his current payment schedule next year he would need to kick in $400 million more than planned and $1 billion more than the state is to pay in this year.
Moody's lead analyst for New Jersey, Baye Larsen, weighed in Thursday, saying the decision "eliminates a major threat to the state's fiscal stability, which is already challenged by narrow reserves and large, rapidly growing pension costs."
Thursday's ruling marked the second major state Supreme Court decision on the 2011 pension reform law and victory for the Christie administration in as many years. In June 2015, the high court ruled a piece of the law requiring Christie to gradually increase annual payments into the system couldn't be enforced.
In both cases, the court invalidated what public workers believed to be contractual obligations binding the state to make annual contributions or pay out COLAs.
"Based on this decision, all public employees should be gravely concerned that their remaining pension benefits have any legal protections left," said Charles Ouslander, a retired prosecutor and plaintiff in the case. "In addition, given the court's past decision... that upheld underfunding of the pension system, despite another contractual obligation, pensioners are now only left with the obligation to pay increased contributions with nothing in return."
Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @samanthamarcus. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.A Wonderful love story and an Alien
I had great expectations for Eric Browns magnus opus The Kings of Eternity. The style of the book brought me back towards the classic adventure stories of Verne & Wells that usually starts at a club for gentlemen. This one doesn’t but the mysterious summon novelist Daniel Langham and his friends receive from Editor Jasper Carnegie and the strange followings in Hopton Wood are pure golden age including the recurring alien gateway and the strange creatures they discover there.
There are two timelines the first starts in 1935 and the other one starts in 1999 on Crete and centers on the reclusive and very private novelist Jonathan Langham whose life turns upside down when he unexpectedly meets artist Caroline Platt and falls in love. The setting is an idyllic village populated by people who respects privacy but also with a mysterious menacing foreigner.
Daniel’s love affair with an actress is at roads end and that contrasts well with the budding love in the other timeline. The two timelines converge as the story develops and layer after layer is revealed.
It is remarkable how ordinary everyday all the story seems but that has always been a strength of Eric Brown. He is a master of the everyday backdrop to great events. I liked it in the Bengali Station series and I like it here.
I love the characters they feel so at home in their time period and yet well-integrated in the overall drama. And the love stories are also very captivating and the ending is wonderful (I cried). The bromance is not as prominent but as the title it forms a band of brothers of a sort.
I had a hard time putting the book down. It keeps you guessing and the revelations hits fast in the end.
I am so happy Eric Brown has done it again. The Kings of Eternity is big science fiction at an everyday backdrop, great characters and a wonderful love story. This is a strong contender for book of the year; it is clearly the best book I have read so far.
Book information
The Kings of Eternity by Eric Brown – Solaris (2011) – Bought from Amazon UK | USThe "Gameover" malware that the FBI warned users about earlier this month is a preview of the next version of the even-more-notorious Zeus money-stealing Trojan, a security researcher said today.
"Gameover represents the latest and greatest source code package from the Zeus author," said Don Jackson, senior security researcher with Dell SecureWorks' counter-threat unit. "[New features] in Gameover will be rolled into the final Zeus version 3, which is in beta and will wrap up soon if it hasn't already."
Two weeks ago, the FBI warned of increased action by Gameover, including rounds of spam that tried to dupe recipients into infecting their PCs with the malware, which like Zeus, is designed to pillage individuals' and companies' bank accounts.
Jackson, who has been tracking the Zeus malware and its developer for years, said that Gameover posed a new and more dangerous threat because it had been created by the maker of Zeus specifically at the behest of one of his biggest clients.
"The crew using Gameover has requested a lot of changes in the Zeus functionality," said Jackson, adding that the hacker crew using Gameover has direct |
the Blackhawks were losing, or when frugal owner Bill Wirtz refused to put the team's home games on local television. When it comes to the Blackhawks, I've been there for the best, but I admittedly was not there for the worst.
Maybe that experience makes me slightly less appreciative, maybe the greatest victories can only be experienced in the wake of agonizing defeat. Older Blackhawks fans certainly know all about that. What my experience doesn't make me, however, is a lesser fan of any sort. Fandom is defined by passion and loyalty, not timing and knowledge, and I, like many Blackhawks fans, have that in abundance.
A shared interest in hockey, no matter the source or reasoning behind it, should bring fans together, and most of the time, it does. Go into a Chicago bar wearing a Blackhawks sweater, and you'll undoubtedly have that moment where you catch eyes with another Hawks-clad person and nod in acknowledgement that, yeah, we're on the same team here. Not everyone welcomes the fan in a brand-new Patrick Kane sweater with open arms, though.
Fandom is defined by passion and loyalty, not timing and knowledge
This doesn't apply solely to the Blackhawks, or even hockey, but fan shaming has been prevalent ever since the team went from also-ran to national commodity. Chicago gets the national broadcasts, the All-Star Game votes, the top-selling jerseys and crowds that show up that arenas across the continent. There's a bit of "chicken or egg" there with the proliferation of the team's brand, but I don't think anyone is throwing their hands in the air wondering, "Where did all these Blackhawks fans come from?!?" The result is a ballooning fan base full of every type, from the hardcore to casuals who literally don't watch any other sports.
The Hawks fans were always there, however, waiting for a team that finally offered fans respect and winning hockey on the ice. Since ownership changed in the middle of the previous decade and a couple high draft picks hit big, the bandwagon has basically become a band-aircraft carrier. Naturally, not everyone in that group is going to be on the same page, but at the very least, you'd think a love of hockey would be the thing we all agree on.
When someone tells you that they just got into Game of Thrones four seasons in, you don't start lambasting them for having the audacity not to sign up for HBO in 2011. You talk about all the amazing moments they're going to experience going forward and OH MY GOD THE BLOOD. ALL THE BLOOD.
What you don't do is shame someone for realizing they had interest in and passion for something on a different timetable from other people. I just starting liking seafood a few years ago -- I probably wouldn't have if everyone was telling me, "Dude, you're 20, if you don't like seafood by now, what's even the point?!?"
And I don't think hockey fans should be doing that to their less experienced, knowledgeable peers in a time when hockey is clearly a niche sport. The NFL and NBA's television contracts dwarf the NHL's. TV ratings for the Blackhawks are often strong but that doesn't apply to most teams. We should want every passionate fan the sport can get, and the idea that some are being discouraged by the tone of discourse is frustrating. That's why we should open our arms to all kinds of fans, even if they're just getting in the door with a winner. Not all of them will stick around once this era ends -- life is a busy, complicated thing -- but a great community makes it that much harder to shake the passion. Maybe I wouldn't have stuck around if old-timers were telling me I didn't know anything and couldn't appreciate things the same ways.
With the Blackhawks, we have an awesome group of fans coming together. Even if you're just getting on board this year -- or this series -- welcome. Ask questions, learn about this fantastic sport we all pour so much time and emotion into. In return, other fans should be encouraging that passion, because hey, everyone needs to start somewhere. It's a fun ride and let's enjoy the memories while we can. It won't be like this forever, after all.
(Note: Thank you to Jen LC and everyone on Twitter for the discussion that helped spur this post. You guys are awesome.)The Indian-born writer's reputation is being reassessed, both in the UK and India
By Andrew Walker
Today programme
Plans for a museum in Rudyard Kipling's Mumbai home commemorating the writer have been shelved following concerns that a memorial to the renowned imperialist and chronicler of the British Raj would be politically unpalatable. But is it time for Indians to reappraise him? Nearly 75 years after his death, the poet and author Rudyard Kipling remains as celebrated and controversial as ever. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. The man who created the popular image - or myth - of the British Raj, has gone through somewhat of a renaissance in modern Britain. His poem If - for so long virtually ignored by poetry experts and anthologies alike - topped a BBC poll as the greatest poem of all in 1995. And in 2002, when his works came out of copyright, a flurry of cheap editions of Kipling's poetry and novels proved a popular attraction. But, for Indians, the man praised by George Orwell as "a good bad poet" remains a divisive figure. And now, plans to turn the house in Mumbai where he was born in 1865 into a museum have been abandoned in the face of a huge political row. Kipling's birthplace is instead set to showcase paintings by local artists. Mukund Gorashkar, who is leading the renovation project for the JSW Foundation, says "if we tried to convert it into a Kipling museum simply because Kipling was born there, that would ruffle quite a few feathers. "In the political storm, you may find that the conservation effort would be set aside." Kipling's works were celebrated by the Royal Mail in 2002 Kipling was born in the Dean's bungalow which nestles in the grounds of the JJ School of Art, one of the many jewels of what was then Victorian Bombay. And his childhood experiences in the city inspired one of Kipling's best-known and loved characters, the boy spy Kim. Mr Gorashkar said that municipal government officials with whom he had spoken had strongly discouraged him from referring to the building as "Kipling's House", insisting that it should be called by its original name, "Dean's House". Some of Kipling's work, including lines like "And a woman is only a woman; but a good cigar is a Smoke'', jar with critics today. But the debate surrounding their actual meaning remains active and vigorous. For instance, one of his most famous poems, which begins: "Take up the White Man's Burden/ Send forth the best ye breed" does not refer to British Imperialism at all but celebrates the US occupation of Cuba and the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War. 'Wellspring' It may well be that, as the columnist Geoffrey Wheatcroft once put it: "to his detractors, Kipling's real sin isn't that he is politically incorrect so much as that he is so readable". Even so, it is hard to put any sort of revisionist spin on aphorisms like "a man should, whatever happens, keep to his own caste, race, and breed." Andrew Lycett, Kipling's biographer and whose latest work, Kipling Abroad, has just hit the bookshops, believes that India has a love-hate relationship with the writer. "It was the wellspring of his imagination. But I can well understand why Indians look askance at him in this day and age. He was an imperialist. He was not a supporter of Indian nationalism. "On the other hand, he was the first great Indian writer in the English language. He was of English stock. "The British are still trying to make up their mind about Kipling." Aravind Adiga: 'Deep ambivalence to Kipling's work in India' The Indian-born novelist Aravind Adiga, whose debut work The White Tiger garnered a Man Booker prize, is a long-time Kipling devotee. Indeed, he researched him while studying at Oxford. He believes that "it's odd how little of his work is known in India. "There has been such an explosion of Indian writing in English that Kipling is not read very much any more," he says, adding that Indian readers today prefer writers like Jeffrey Archer. "People who study Indian literature at universities whether in India or abroad are very political," he added. "But the people who actually buy books and read them in India don't really care. "There has always been a deep ambivalence to Kipling because of his dislike of Indians who read and speak in English. His deep antipathy towards people in Calcutta who are university-educated means that he's in trouble because it's those people who now read in English in India." But Mr Adiga said that Kipling had a "deep love" of India's forests and that his jungle tales presented a picture of "a part of India that is now quickly vanishing". As Orwell pointed out in an oft-quoted essay, Kipling was not just a writer but someone who added phrases to the English language. But could it be that, for the man who wrote "what do they know of England who only England know?"; "the female of the species is more deadly than the male" and "you'll be a man, my son", a more lasting theme may be "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet"?
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It has been a while since the Canucks have had a consistent trio of players on the fourth forward unit. Max Lapierre, for the most part, has played the role as fourth line center since coming over at the 2011 trade deadline, but to say that he has seen a revolving door of wingers would be a significant understatement.
Just because a fourth line is the fourth most important forward unit, that doesn’t mean that it should be overlooked.
There aren’t many NHL teams with a consistent fourth line nowadays, though. As depth players mature and improve, their salary demands increase. And because of this, teams continue to have to find more cost-effective options to place on the fourth line. This can be done through the draft or through smart open-market signings.
Over the next week, the past, present, and future of Vancouver’s fourth unit will be analyzed. Today, we look at the left winger(s).
The past
All line combinations have been pulled from DobberHockey’s Frozen Pool Fantasy Tools. Let’s start with 2008-09, shall we? The first season of the Mike Gillis tenure saw a fourth line of tough guys Darcy Hordichuk and Rick Rypien centered by shot blocker Ryan Johnson.
Hordichuk was signed by the Canucks on July 1st, 2008, and he played in 73 regular season games in 2008-09 (four goals and an assist). He obviously wasn’t brought in for his hockey playing abilities – Hordichuk was regarded as one of the tougher guys in the league, he didn’t take bad penalties, and he was a great teammate, too. He was highly regarded at the time of the signing, as evidenced by the fact that the Hurricanes gave up a draft pick to secure his rights from Nashville before free agency actually began. That kind of trade doesn’t happen often with enforcers.
Unsurprisingly, Hordichuk’s possession numbers were awful:
He saw fluff minutes (against opposing fourth lines and third defensive pairings), and he struggled to get the puck out of the defensive zone (this was particularly apparent against Chicago in the second round of the playoffs, where Johnson, Hordichuk, and Rypien were completely over their head).
Their postseason numbers were u-g-l-y:
SEASON NAME Corsi Relative 2008-2009 Playoffs RICKRYPIEN -19.7 2008-2009 Playoffs DARCYHORDICHUK -33 2008-2009 Playoffs RYANJOHNSON -41.1
That fourth line, however, gave us one of the most surprising goals in Canucks history:
Hordichuk originally had signed a two-year contract, but he played in only 53 games in 2009-10. His possession numbers that season were nearly identical to the one previous. Wingers Tanner Glass and Matt Pettinger also saw time on the fourth line – Glass played over on the right side a bit, too. Glass turned out to be a good find by the pro scouting department – he wasn’t as tough as Hordichuk in terms of fighting, but he was better at everything else related to the game of hockey. Pettinger was brought over in the Matt Cooke trade and his tenure was a forgettable one.
Hordichuk didn’t play in any of the 12 postseason games that season (against Los Angeles and Chicago). The fourth line left wingers consisted of Michael Grabner, Tanner Glass, and Matt Pettinger. Grabner’s possession numbers (in a sheltered role) were pretty good that spring.
Hordichuk wasn’t re-signed for 2010-11. The Canucks were the best team in hockey that year, but their fourth line was still very much a mixed bag. Peter Schaefer, Tanner Glass, Sergei Shirokov, Jeff Tambellini, and Aaron Volpatti all saw time on the left side during the regular season. Glass established himself as the fourth line left winger during the postseason, although Tambellini still found his way into the lineup thanks to his skill and versatility. There was no set combination, though – Glass played only 6% of his shifts with his most common linemates:
Frequency Strength Line Combination 6.62% EV 49 BOLDUC,ALEXANDRE – 15 GLASS,TANNER – 54 VOLPATTI,AARON 5.91% EV 49 BOLDUC,ALEXANDRE – 15 GLASS,TANNER – 36 HANSEN,JANNIK 4.41% EV 15 GLASS,TANNER – 40 LAPIERRE,MAXIM – 10 TAMBELLINI,JEFF 4.20% EV 34 DESBIENS,GUILLAUME – 15 GLASS,TANNER – 18 SCHAEFER,PETER
And it was more of the same in the postseason that year:
Frequency Strength Line Combination 13.48% EV 15 GLASS,TANNER – 40 LAPIERRE,MAXIM – 38 ORESKOVICH,VICTOR 9.39% EV 15 GLASS,TANNER – 27 MALHOTRA,MANNY – 38 ORESKOVICH,VICTOR 9.24% EV 15 GLASS,TANNER – 38 ORESKOVICH,VICTOR – 13 TORRES,RAFFI
And compare that to Boston’s fourth line during the same Cup run:
Frequency Strength Line Combination 35.09% EV 11 CAMPBELL,GREGORY – 20 PAILLE,DANIEL – 22 THORNTON,SHAWN 10.29% EV 11 CAMPBELL,GREGORY – 20 PAILLE,DANIEL – 49 PEVERLEY,RICH
The Canucks didn’t re-sign Glass (which has turned out to be a mistake), and he headed to Winnipeg on a two-year deal to play for the Jets. Glass wasn’t a great player, but he was very serviceable in the role, and Vancouver has struggled to replace his consistency. In fact, they tried to re-sign him last summer, but he chose to go with the Penguins instead (the offers were reportedly identical).
2011-12 brought more of the same – an uncertain fourth line. Volpatti was back. Mike Duco was supposed to challenge for a spot, but he proved in short order to be nothing more than an AHL energy guy. Manny Malhotra shifted over to the left wing (although he still took faceoffs), as he wasn’t as effective a two-way center after the brutal eye injury. There was a bit more stability that season on the fourth unit after Dale Weise was claimed on waivers from the Rangers. Lapierre centering Malhotra and Weise was the most common unit:
Frequency Strength Line Combination 15.90% EV 40 LAPIERRE,MAXIM – 27 MALHOTRA,MANNY – 32 WEISE,DALE
And that brings us to 2013. To be frank, the fourth line was a mess this season. Volpatti was lost on waivers. Tom Sestito came over to replace him. Sestito is a big guy and a good skater, but he isn’t very good at hockey. His re-signing was a bit of a curious one. As a 13th or 14th forward, Sestito is fine to have around. But he isn’t an everyday fourth line left winger on a good hockey club. Steve Pinizzotto failed to deliver much of anything – like Duco, he was brought in with a lot of hype from management, and didn’t really accomplish a whole lot. Another miss by the pro scouts.
The present
Why have the Canucks been unable – or unwilling – to find a long-term fit for the fourth line? They made a mistake letting Glass walk. Duco and Pinizzotto were both misses (not Tommi Santala bad, mind you). Sestito isn’t the answer. Billy Sweatt has completely stagnated in the AHL, too. When he was signed, many expected him to develop into a Todd Marchant-like speedster on a checking line, but he isn’t an NHL prospect at this point. Is Sweatt, a former 2nd round draft pick, simply bad development, or is it just a case of a player not taking the next step?
Having a good fourth line isn’t vital to the success of a team in the regular season, but it is in the playoffs. Look at the four remaining clubs as an example. Boston’s fourth line is the best in hockey, and it isn’t close. Pittsburgh doesn’t have a consistent fourth unit, but whatever trio they ice is always quality – imagine having Brandon Sutter on Vancouver’s fourth line? That is called depth, by the way. Chicago and Detroit have done a great job developing late round draft picks like Marcus Kruger and Joakim Andersson, respectively, and both organizations have also done a great job with pro scouting in filling out their bottom six spots (Viktor Stalberg, Bryan Bickell, Andrew Shaw, Brandon Saad, Michal Frolik, Drew Miller, and Patrick Eaves, among others).
The Kings have drafted really well – even picks that have failed to develop into scoring players have found homes in the NHL – this includes Trevor Lewis, who has quietly developed into a really good hockey player. Dwight King and Brad Richardson are two others.
Darryl Sutter has had a hand in LA’s much-improved fourth unit:
When Sutter took over the Kings, the previous head coach, Terry Murray, was regularly dressing fighter Kevin Westgarth in his lineup. That stopped almost instantly when Sutter took over and the Kings fourth line was then made up of guys like Brad Richardson, Jordan Nolan, Colin Fraser and Kyle Clifford. Those guys all have toughness, but they also have enough skill to consistently outplay other teams’ fourth-line tough guys and fighters. And that was a huge advantage for the Kings last season.
The future
Internal options
Sestito is under contract for two more years at $750,000 per. The team must have seen something in him, or have plans to use him as an extra forward. He is young and it appears that they are worried about not having any toughness on the roster. No real other explanation for the signing. There are zero other left wing options in the organization. Literally. None.
Weise is a right winger. Kassian is a right winger who has struggled on the left side (especially with outlet plays in the defensive zone). Sweatt and Pinizzotto won’t be back. The rest of the depth chart is a sad state of affairs, quite frankly.
External Options
This is really the only option for the Canucks (again, unless they want to use Sestito as an everyday player).
Bickell is a UFA (as is Stalberg), but he is looking more and more like a top nine forward with his strong play this season. And he will very likely receive a contract with more zeros in it than one typically given to a fourth line winger. Matt Cooke is also a UFA, and he’s the last really good fourth line winger the Canucks have had (he eventually worked his way up to the top line in Todd Bertuzzi’s absence). But Cooke’s reputation will follow him everywhere, and he is in his mid 30’s. Other intriguing options include Raffi Torres (another player with a reputation), Ruslan Fedotenko (well past his prime as an effective NHL player), Blake Comeau, Eric Nystrom, and Matt Hendricks.
Of all of the options listed above, Comeau is the most intriguing. He’s only 27 (young for a UFA), he has 361 games of NHL experience, and he is a pretty decent depth player, too. He isn’t a fighter or a banger, but he can skate, make plays, pitch in offensively and not cost your team while playing 8-10 minutes a night. Comeau has a 24-goal season in the NHL to his credit – how many potential fourth line options can say that? He played his junior hockey in Kelowna and makes his summer home there, too. That being said, if all Kelowna residents wanted to play here, the Canucks would be a perennial all-star team.
Comeau was traded at the deadline from Calgary to Columbus for a 5th round draft pick. It was a very “meh” move at the time, although Comeau did have a nice finish to the season for the Jackets (five points in nine games – the same number of points Hordichuk had in 73 games back in 2008-09).
The Canucks need to rebuild their fourth line. Finding a center is the most important part of that, but they shouldn’t neglect the wing position, either. As Gillis has found out, it isn’t easy to find – or keep – quality depth forwards in the NHL.
My suggestion – sign Blake Comeau (or find the next Tanner Glass in the AHL or elsewhere). It is time to find some stability for the bottom six.(written from a Production point of view Real World article
Nicole de Boer (born 20 December 1970; age 48) is the Canadian actress who portrayed Ezri Dax during the seventh and final season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Contents show]
Early career Edit
De Boer was born in Toronto, Canada. She performed in commercials and theater throughout her childhood and made her television debut in a Red Skelton TV special called Freddy the Freeloader's Christmas Dinner at age 11.
When de Boer was seventeen, she landed a regular role on the Canadian drama series 9B, which aired briefly in 1988. She was then given a recurring role on the popular Canadian sketch comedy series Kids in the Hall, on which Star Trek: Voyager guest star Scott Thompson was a regular performer. On this series, de Boer usually played Laura, the girlfriend of the angst-filled teenager Bob, played by Bruce McCulloch.
In 1990, de Boer was seen in the American TV movie The Kissing Place, which starred Star Trek: The Next Generation guest actor David Ogden Stiers. She also starred in the short-lived Canadian series First Resort during this year.
In 1991, de Boer appeared in an episode of the science fiction series Beyond Reality in which she was directed by Allan Kroeker, who later directed her in three episodes of Deep Space Nine. After this initial appearance, de Boer won a recurring role on Beyond Reality as Celia Powell and again worked with Allan Kroeker in at least one other episode. She was also directed by Kroeker in the first two episodes of the horror-mystery series Forever Knight in 1992.
She made her film debut with the lead role in the 1992 horror sequel Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil. That same year, she became a regular on the Canadian series Catwalk, during which time she again worked with Allan Kroeker. Paul Popowich was also a regular on this series, which aired through 1994.
In 1995, de Boer made an appearance on William Shatner's TekWar series. She also appeared in the 1995 science fiction film Jungleground. This was followed by the 1995 comedy National Lampoon's Senior Trip, in which she worked alongside Matt Frewer. The main antagonist of this film was a mad hardcore Star Trek fan. She then reunited with the Kids in the Hall group for the 1996 film Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, in which she appeared as a groupie for the Dr. Cooper character played by Kevin McDonald.
De Boer was again directed by Allan Kroeker on an episode of PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal in 1996. She then appeared in an episode of Poltergeist: The Legacy with Brian George. Some of the other television series on which de Boer appeared early in her career are Street Legal, C.B.C.'s Magic Hour, E.N.G., and The Outer Limits.
In 1997, de Boer starred in the cult, low-budget Canadian science fiction/horror/thriller film Cube, directed by Vincenzo Natali. That same year, she starred as Yuna in the short-lived science fiction series Deepwater Black.
The following year, de Boer appeared in an episode of The Outer Limits directed by Allan Eastman. She then had a supporting role in the 1999 TV movie Family of Cops III: Under Suspicion. She then began starring in the Canadian television series Dooley Gardens. It was while working on this series that de Boer got the call to audition for the role of Ezri Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Deep Space Nine Edit
In 1998, actress Terry Farrell departed the cast of Deep Space Nine and her character, Jadzia Dax, was killed off. The producers decided to create a new female character who would inherit the Dax symbiont. When it was decided that the new character would be someone who was unprepared to be joined with a symbiont, the producers began looking for a young actress who could convey vulnerability.
It was writer and supervising producer Hans Beimler who asked de Boer to audition for the part. Beimler had worked with de Boer on Beyond Reality and TekWar; Beimler was a producer on both shows. According to de Boer, Beimler (who previously worked on Star Trek: The Next Generation) told her he would one day get her on Star Trek, although she "thought he was just being nice." In 1998, however, Beimler made good on his promise. He asked de Boer to send in a videotaped audition, which led to a live audition for the showrunners in Los Angeles.
Just prior to the audition, de Boer endured some minor embarrassment. Before she started, she was offered a drink of water, which she accepted. She took a gulp of the water just as she was about to meet Rick Berman and Ira Steven Behr, at which time the water went down the wrong pipe and she began coughing and gasping. As she caught her breath and her composure, she thought she had blown the audition. Nonetheless, she was ultimately cast in the role of Ezri Dax. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)
De Boer appeared in all 25 episodes of Deep Space Nine's seventh season, from "Image in the Sand" to the series finale, "What You Leave Behind".
After Deep Space Nine came to an end in 1999, de Boer starred in the Showtime movie Rated X, a biography of pornography pioneers Jim and Artie Mitchell (Charlie Sheen). She played Karen, Artie Mitchell's second wife; Terry O'Quinn portrayed J.R. Mitchell, father of the Mitchell brothers and Karen's one-time father-in-law.
From 2002 through 2007, de Boer starred as Sarah Bannerman on the USA Network series The Dead Zone, created by Michael Piller (who also co-created DS9 and Voyager) and Shawn Piller. David Ogden Stiers, a fellow Trek alum who de Boer previously worked with on the TV movie The Kissing Place, made frequent appearances on this series as Reverend Purdy.
She later appeared in the Stargate Atlantis episode, "Whispers", portraying Dr. Alison Porter, in which she worked alongside Paul McGillion. Robert Picardo was a regular on this series at the time, but he did not appear in de Boer's episode.
She appeared in the 2010 film Suck, with Malcolm McDowell and Iggy Pop.
Since 2016, she has had a recurring role on the Canadian series, Private Eyes. William Shatner was a guest star in an episode although de Boer did not appear in that episode.
Personal life Edit
De Boer married musician John Kastner in 1999 but they have since divorced. They have a daughter named Summer.(Reuters) – Bernie Sanders’ Democratic presidential campaign has sued Ohio’s secretary of state in federal court over what it calls an unconstitutional attempt to prevent young people from voting in the state’s March 15 primary election.
“It is an outrage that the secretary of state in Ohio is going out of his way to keep young people – significantly African-American young people, Latino young people – from participating,” the U.S. senator from Vermont said in a statement released on Tuesday.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Columbus and joined by six Ohio 17-year-olds, alleged that a directive by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted would “arbitrarily discriminate” against young voters.
Citing U.S. Census figures, it said such voters were more likely to be black or Latino than older groups of voters.
Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the Nov. 8 election, has attracted support from young voters but has lagged behind rival Hillary Clinton in winning votes among minorities.
Ohio is one of more than 20 states where 17-year-olds who will be 18 by the time of the general election are allowed to vote in primaries, the campaign statement said.
Husted ruled last December that those voters would not be allowed to participate in the presidential primary.
He denied there had been any changes to voting rules.
“We are following the same rules Ohio has operated under in past primaries, under both Democrat and Republican administrations. There is nothing new here,” Husted said on Twitter. “If you are going to be 18 by the November election, you can vote, just not on every issue.”
He said that 17-year-olds were “not permitted to elect candidates, which is what voters are doing in a primary when they elect delegates to represent them at their political party’s national convention.”GREEN BAY, Wis. -- James Jones had the same feeling most Green Bay Packers fans did when the NFC Championship Game ended.
"I was sick to my stomach," Jones said.
Jones was still on the Oakland Raiders' roster at the time -- he would be cut four months later -- but his heart remained in Green Bay. Or on that day, it was in Seattle, where his former (and now current again) team blew a Super Bowl berth in spectacular fashion.
He wanted to be there with them, yet in some ways, he was glad he wasn't.
"That was a tough one to watch," Jones said. "I couldn't imagine being a part of that one."
James Jones (89) is glad to be back catching passes from Aaron Rodgers. AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
Part of him felt like he was because so many of his close friends -- from his longtime quarterback Aaron Rodgers to fellow receivers Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb -- were forced to live it.
"I was here with these guys -- with Jordy for seven years, Randall for [three] years, Aaron seven years -- and we became family beyond just on the field, but off the field," Jones said. "Whenever you see somebody that you call your family or your brother, knowing that they had an opportunity to go win that thing, to get a Super Bowl, and to lose like that, I was sick for them."
Little did Jones know at the time that he would return to Green Bay and find himself in the middle of one of the most intriguing games early this season, when the Seahawks come to Lambeau Field for Sunday night’s showdown.
Less than four months after that championship game, the Raiders cut Jones, who then signed with the New York Giants, only to be released again at the end of training camp. It set up his return to the Packers, who desperately needed a veteran receiver after Nelson's season-ending knee injury.
After catching two touchdown passes in Sunday's season-opening win over the Bears, Jones is in position to help the Packers make amends with Seattle.
"I'm not saying just because I'm here, we're going to win," Jones said. "I'm going to do my job, make the most of my opportunity when I can. I'm just here to play my role. I'm not saying if you would've had me last year, we'd have won. No, it's not like that. I'm just here to do my job and go out there and help them get a win."
As Jones conducted this interview, Cobb sat in the locker next to him, and it was almost as if Jones was talking to his teammate rather than his inquisitor.
"Those guys are my dogs," Jones said, looking at Cobb. "I didn't want to see them lose like that. I'd rather them lose 50-0 than to see them lose like that. It hurt. I don't want to say anything bad in the media right now, but Seattle, man, I ain't going to say nothing. My mama said if you ain't got nothing good to say, then don't say nothing at all. But we need to get this one. I wasn't here last year, and I know they don't want to talk about that, but we've got to get this one done."The New Zealand government will not intervene following a riot at the Christmas Island detention centre in Australia, Prime Minister John Key says.
Photo: AAP
Trouble broke out at the centre, which houses both asylum seekers and New Zealanders awaiting deportation, in the early hours of this morning, after the death of an asylum seeker who had escaped.
Officials from Australia's Department of Immigration and Border Protection said a report on the death was being prepared for the coroner.
Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
They denied there was a large-scale riot, but said the facility remained tense and there were a number of small fires.
A group of detainees continued to agitate and cause damage to the centre and staff had been withdrawn for their own safety, they said.
Officials believed medical, educational and sports facilities had been damaged but said there were no reports of any injuries to detainees or staff.
The perimeter of the centre remained secure and patrols were being carried out, they said.
Mr Key said his office had received a briefing on the riot and he understood a small number of New Zealanders might have been involved.
However, any incidents at the detention centre were a matter for the Australian government, he said.
"If there was a problem at Paremoremo [Prison, in Auckland], I don't think the Australian Prime Minister would fly over or the Australian officials would fly over to Paremoremo," he said.
"[Christmas Island] is an Australian Corrections facility."
The New Zealand detainees were free to leave Christmas Island and return to New Zealand whenever they pleased, he said.
Detainees describe damage
Detainees on the island have described chaos and destruction inside the detention centre.
New Zealand detainee Tuk Whakatutu told Checkpoint there were rumours that the army was going to be brought in to try and restore order.
Not all the detainees were involved but about 100 were, he said.
"All the segro boys, they went up and broke out three units of segro boys, that are separated from us [in segregation], so all them in punishment, and everything snowballed from there.
"They started lighting fires, broke into a canteen, broke into the medical units and stole all the drugs.
"Broke into the property department there and destroyed that, lit it on fire. Lit all the rubbish bins. All the units are trashed. Yeah, they've just destroyed it."
'They're coming for us'
Some of the asylum-seekers in the centre said they feared for their safety from the convicted criminals who had been rioting.
Matej Cuperka, a 25-year-old asylum-seeker from Slovakia, said the guards left the detention facility after fighting with the deportees started.
He and his associates had barricaded themselves into their compound because they had a long history of intimidation from the deportees, he said.
"We've been previously abused and we've feared for our lives. Now that they've robbed the canteen and the medical centre, they have nothing else to do, so they're coming for us."
There were no guards at the site and there was no protection, he said.
A separate unnamed detainee said he and about 25 other people had barricaded themselves into a compound to protect themselves from others who were rioting.
They had been left to their own devices, as the guards had abandoned the camp, and he had no idea what would happen next, he said.
A group opposed to the Christmas Island detention centre, meanwhile, said it had been a powder-keg situation at the camp for several months.
Sydney-based Refugee Action Coalition spokesperson Ian Rintoul said the feeling amongst detainees at the camp had been tense for a while, because of the way the detention centre was used as a punishment island.
Australia's Department of Immigration and Border Protection said it was working with the centre's operator, Serco, and federal police on the island to resolve the situation.So now that G-CHB-02 WE ARE!!! Trinity Dragon is less than a week away from its Japanese release date, I figure that it’s time to fully analyse the new Oracle Think Tank cards. At first glance, most of the new cards from the set are… underwhelming, but as a conglomerate, OTT shines best as a full team, so I will be taking card interactions into account.
[Stride]-Stride Step-[Choose one or more cards with the sum of their grades being 3 or |
the event.[5] Sudhir Kumar stopped the practice of scaling fences to reach the team to celebrate a win, only after Tendulkar advised against such practice.[14] After this incident, the BCCI has sponsored Sudhir Kumar for every match.[citation needed]
Personal life [ edit ]
Sudhir Choudhary was born in a very poor family in a semi-rural place of Muzaffarpur, Bihar. He became obsessed with Indian cricket and a fan of Sachin Tendulkar at the age of 6. He left his studies at the age of 14 when he was in his secondary school. He is unemployed, having previously worked for a milk company and trained as a teacher.[20] He postponed his marriage so that he could watch all the matches played by the Indian cricket team,[11] and wants to follow the team all over the world, wherever it plays.[11] This style of living followed by Sudhir Kumar has made his parents unhappy,[11] and he once threatened self-immolation if he was not assured of watching all cricket matches played by the Indian cricket team.[4] He declared that his life is dedicated to watching Indian cricket matches and he lives his life on public support.[4]
Sudhir Kumar is one of three principal roles of a documentary film Beyond All Boundaries which tells the stories of three different personalities of Indian Cricket and he is shown as a super fan of the sport.[21][22] Made by film maker Sushrut Jain, the film shows details about the personal life of Sudhir Kumar.
After the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar, Sudhir keeps cheering for the Indian Cricket Team sporting Miss-U Tendulkar on his body.Image copyright AP Image caption The scene of the recent gun battle in Grozny
Fears are growing that violence could be returning to the turbulent Russian republic of Chechnya after a period of relative calm and stability.
On the night of 4 December, police in the capital Grozny reportedly tried to stop a car or cars carrying alleged armed militants.
After a shootout, the militants took refuge in a publishing house building while others took over School no 20, also in Grozny.
In the ensuing battle, 11 militants were killed and up to 40 policemen were either killed or wounded.
Among the casualties was Umar Kadyrov, a close relative of the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov.
According to the Chechen authorities, the attack was organised by Akhmad Umarov, brother of the late leader of the militant Jihadist organisation, the so-called Caucasus Emirate, Doku Umarov.
Most of the militants were apparently young men from Urus-Martan, south of Grozny, which in the past was a hotspot of jihadist resistance.
An unverified video on the Kavkaz Center website claims that the operation was under the command of Aslan Byutukayev, known as Emir Khamzat, who is under an oath of allegiance to the new head of the Caucasus Emirate, Emir Abu Muhammad.
Ramzan Kadyrov said that Chechnya would demand Umarov's extradition from Turkey and announced on 5 December that family members of the militants would be expelled from Chechnya and their houses demolished.
Reports suggest that this policy has already been put into effect.
The attack occurred on the eve of Vladimir Putin's annual state of the nation address to the people of the Russian Federation, and was presumably intended to be a direct challenge to his and Kadyrov's policies of tough suppression of jihadist militancy in Chechnya.
Security measures
After a period of relative calm in recent years, this was the third major attack in Chechnya in 2014.
In April an infantry vehicle was blown up, killing several of the troops inside.
Image copyright AP Image caption The shootout caused extensive damage
On 5 October, the Day of Grozny (and Ramzan Kadyrov's birthday), a suicide bomber blew himself up up in a concert hall where celebrations were under way, reportedly killing five police officers and wounding 13 other people.
The attacks belie Ramzan Kadyrov's claim that his heavy-handed security measures have put paid to Islamist militancy in the Chechen Republic, and raise the question of whether we are seeing the beginning of a new wave of jihadist militancy.
Seen through Western eyes, it might look as if we are. The threat seems familiar.
Disaffected youths are being recruited as jihadists, Chechen fighters are returning from the Middle East ready to internationalise jihad and make Chechnya and the Caucasus generally part of a larger Islamic Caliphate.
There are certainly links between the Caucasus Emirate and jihadist groupings fighting in Iraq and Syria.
There is also no doubt that Chechens - estimates of the number are as high as 2,000 - have been fighting for IS in Syria, as well as being a major presence in the al-Nusra Front.
An ethnic Chechen from Georgia, Abu Omar al-Shishani, is one of IS's most prominent commanders.
And a video released in August from a captured Syrian air base shows Russian-speaking fighters vowing to attack Russia and liberate Chechnya and the Caucasus.
Widespread corruption
But while the threat of jihadists returning to Chechnya and the Russian Federation more generally is a real one, which both Grozny and Moscow are very much aware of, there are significant differences between the situation in the Russian Federation and that of the UK and other Western nations.
Image copyright AP Image caption Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov lost a relative in December's gun battle
For one thing, the large majority of the Chechens now fighting in Syria and Iraq did not actually come from Chechnya itself.
Some are from the long-established Chechen enclave of Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, some are descendants of the Chechen diaspora which took refuge from the 19th century Russian conquest of the North Caucasus in Turkey and other countries of the former Ottoman Empire, while the majority are first-generation children of refugees from the second Chechen war (1999-2001) who settled in various European countries, notably Austria and France.
If they were to return whence they came to pursue jihad, it would most likely be these countries, rather than the Chechen Republic, that would be most at risk.
For another thing, notwithstanding widespread corruption and his regime's appalling human rights record, Ramzan Kadyrov has been notably successful in achieving stability and reconciliation in Chechnya since the second Russo-Chechen war.
He has done so in large part by carrying through an extensive official programme of supporting Islam, involving, for instance, state-funded building of mosques and madrassas, integration of Sharia into the existing legal system and promotion of Islamic dress code (especially for women) and dietary norms in the public sphere.
In other words, he is in some respects building an Islamic state within the secular Russian Federation.
A third and crucial consideration, in sharp contrast to the problems faced by the liberal democracies of the West, is that Kadyrov, with Moscow's blessing, has used and will continue to use brutal methods of control and repression to eliminate the jihadist threat within his republic.
Symbolic occasions
This has included his tactic of incorporating former Islamist opponents into his personal and much-feared guards - the Kadyrovtsy.
Taken together, these factors suggest that, however much Chechen jihadists want to "liberate" their homeland and make it part of a real - as opposed to the currently entirely virtual - Caucasus Emirate, there are much softer targets for them elsewhere.
We can expect, then, to see more attacks on Chechen territory in the future, but these are likely to be still limited in number, and generally attempted mainly on symbolic occasions, like the last two major incidents. (There is nothing new about this preoccupation with symbolic dates - Ramzan's father, Akhmad, the former president of Chechnya, was assassinated on 9 May, Russia's Victory Day).
Within Chechnya itself, what jihadists there still are there have been ideologically and physically marginalised to the extent that they are struggling to survive at all, let alone mount any concerted assault on the status quo.
And while it is truly alarming to imagine a large cohort of combat-hardened Chechen zealots looking for new arenas of jihad should their business in Syria and Iraq be finished - not currently an immediate prospect - Ramzan Kadyrov's Chechnya is likely to be a target that even they will find very difficult to hit strongly and often.December 9, 2010
Avant-Garde Music Offers A Gateway to Artificial Intelligence
NSF Grant Supports Novel Cognitive Science Exploration at Rensselaer
Stretching their boundaries, artificial intelligence researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have teamed up with musicians on an unlikely project: a digital conductor of improvised avant-garde performances.
A conductor that could guide such performances must be capable of “high level reasoning,” said Professor Selmer Bringsjord, co-principal investigator, director of the Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Laboratory, and head of the department of cognitive science at Rensselaer.
The problem is an excellent candidate for artificial intelligence because a conductor of the unpredictable musical style would need to employ interconnecting elements of cognition — perception/action, reasoning, decision-making, planning, memory — to understand and respond appropriately to the music.
“Is there a way to render in formal logic and reasoning what Leonard Bernstein does?” said Bringsjord. “We will need to capture what the musicians are doing in a musical calculus. Then the system reasons over the calculus.”
The “Creative Artificially-Intuitive and Reasoning Agent” project is supported by a three-year $650,000 NSF grant, and joins Bringsjord with musicians and researchers Jonas Braasch — an acoustician, assistant professor of architecture, and principal investigator, Pauline Oliveros — a virtual accordionist and clinical professor of music, and Doug Van Nort — an electronic musician and music technology researcher. The latter three form the musical trio Triple Point, which acts as a “performance laboratory” for the project.
The challenge of creating a digital conductor is greater given the trio’s musical style than it would be with music that fits a set genre or convention, said Oliveros, co-principal investigator and founder of the Deep Listening movement. Deep listening is a philosophy and practice of that distinguishes between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary selective nature of listening.
“Most people understand music in terms of pitch, rhythm and volume. We’re concerned with texture and density and timbre, as well,” Oliveros said. “These parameters are more complicated for the system recognizer and more exciting for us.”
The CAIRA project builds on a two-year pilot project in which the trio built a software accompanist to their music. Their pioneering work on that project led to software that analyzes and classifies qualities related to density, texture and timbre, said Van Nort.
“It’s about understanding the musical structure at the level of the sound signal. It is far from trivial to say in real-time – ‘oh, this is somehow the ‘same’ as something that happened before’ – with reference to density, texture, and timbre, as well as pitch, rhythm and volume,” Van Nort said.
Oliveros said the pilot project was “mostly about getting the software to respond to what we’re playing.”
“The software listens, extracts and parses what we’re playing and may feed it back to us in a different form or a replica,” Oliveros said. “It makes decisions about what it thinks is working in improvisation as it’s happening.”
In more technical terms, Braasch explained the project as “combining algorithms that simulate human hearing through a process called auditory scene analysis and then using the extracted acoustic information to make musical decisions based on the simulation of human cognition.”
Bringsjord said his team will attempt to represent music, or aspects of music, in logic equations — essentially queries that can be proven true or false.
“So, if one performer were dominating the performance and you asked it ‘how would you balance the performance?’ the system may be able to infer that you must prod some of the others performers, or maybe subdue the dominant performer,” Bringsjord said.
His research in cognitive science — the study of how the brain represents and transforms information — indicates that the most probable route to success lies in limiting the function of the program to that of conductor or teacher.
“My prior work says human literary creativity cannot be rendered into formal logic. Maybe only parts of what they’re doing can be described that way. If we want to do this independent of music genre, I and my team view this as building a machine conductor and teacher,” Bringsjord said.
The conductor will eventually work with Oliveros on accordion, Braasch on saxophone, Van Nort as he creates electronic music on his laptop, as well as with the digital accompanist they have created.
“We want to create this software so that we plug in different ways of working. So, if we want to have logic interacting with intuition, we have those modules interactive together. Or we could have logic interacting with emotion,” Oliveros said.
Each module will be a self-sustained part of the software so that they can be interchanged to achieve various effects.
Contact: Mary L. Martialay
Phone: (518) 276-2146
E-mail: martim12@rpi.eduFF15’s new multiplayer mode is more impressive than I expected, but it’s got some load time problems.
The launch of Final Fantasy 15: Comrades feels like a strange old thing. Sure, Square Enix has put out trailers and the odd news blast, but it still feels all rather unceremonious. After a slight delay in release it’s now in the hands of the public, slipped under the Downloadable Content option in the main menu alongside one-hour slices of additional story. It feels like it deserves more.
There’s a few reasons for that. For one, FF15: Comrades is actually rather impressive, taking the world and core design of FF15 to create a fairly successful non-MMO Final Fantasy online multiplayer experience. It feels like a lot of time, money and effort went into its development, and for that the developers deserve kudos. It also feels incredibly relevant for the future: much here feels like a test for the future, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Final Fantasy 16 end up being at least little like a Destiny, Division or Borderlands affair with an epic story set to the backdrop of drop-in, drop-out multiplayer.
“FF15’s combat seems to fit a player-versus-enemy online setting particularly well.”
The influence of things like Destiny and Monster Hunter runs deep in Comrades. The basic structure consists of a hub area and a variety of missions with various objectives. Some are monster hunts where you’ll typically kill a number of smaller creatures to draw out a larger boss, while others will see you defending a particular spot or escorting a vulnerable NPC. Any given mission supports up to four players, and if you can’t find real people online through matchmaking to join with you can hire AI companions instead.
Each quest you complete nets you experience points, cash, loot and crucially electricity, Comrades’ main currency of progression. When a mission is complete you get bumped back to the hub, and there you can buy and upgrade weapons, pick up new clothes, chat to NPCs and spend that electricity to spread power into FF15’s now less-open world, opening up new missions and even additional hubs that you can visit.
This is what separates this multiplayer from what’s been attempted by the likes of Mass Effect and Dragon Age and pushes it more to Destiny territory – there’s a story, proper progression and a real sense of belonging in the world of FF15 for your custom character. The variety of weapons means you can essentially take on very different roles in combat, while the purely cosmetic clothes let you pick up a signature look. You quickly want to progress in order to improve your character.
To jump into minor FF15 spoiler territory for a moment, all of this takes place during a gap in FF15’s main storyline. Hero Noctis goes missing in action and the world falls into chaos for years, with monsters everywhere. You and your friends play characters of your own design trying to survive in that nightmare world while major NPCs from FF15 show up to help advance the narrative and offer a bit more colour to proceedings.
It all works quite nicely, with the loop of going from preparation in the hub to a mission to spending your upgrades and then back again satisfying and engaging. FF15’s combat was good to begin with as well, but its ‘relaxed action’ nature where it’s real time combat but without the twitch reactions seems to fit a player-versus-enemy online setting particularly well.
The pace of combat means that you have time to breathe and thus to strategise, working with your allies to smash body parts off monsters to make them more vulnerable or exploit elemental weaknesses. In this sense, Comrades feels like FF15 in general was built with it in mind.
In other senses, however, it feels cobbled together and rough. Loading is the main issue. FF15 proper is an open-world game with GTA-style loading. It has one large load at the start and then unless you fast travel or complete a chapter everything naturally streams. Comrades takes place in a conquered version of the same world – right down to its open nature.
When you’re in the hub of Lestallum, for instance, beyond the gates the world appears to be fully loaded in – you just can’t leave. This means that despite Lestallum being a modest-sized area, the load to get back there is enormous. When you warp to a mission you’re first sent to a camp site – one of the real ones Noctis and company can use in the main game – where you can prepare and gather your party. You can see the world off in the distance and even see objective markers pointing to Lestallum or other hubs, kilometers away. It’s strange.
The issue is that every time Comrades wants to send you to a missison, it’s essentially fast-travelling around FF15’s fairly sizable open world – and it does this way too often. When you take a mission, you’re sent to a nearby camp site, incurring a load time. Once your party gathers there, the game has to load again when it warps you to the actual mission location. When your objective is complete it warps you back to the camp site again for a debrief and then finally back to the hub. These load times together stretch into the minutes, even on the Xbox One X, the fastest of the three systems (Xbox One X, PS4 Pro, PS4) I tested Comrades on.
It doesn’t make for a smooth or snappy multiplayer experience – frankly, getting into a match becomes a chore. One great sign of a strong multiplayer experience is being bitten by the “just one more match” bug, but that’s difficult in Comrades – committing to another quest means committing to all those load times, and it’s off-putting.
In other places the adapation to multiplayer stumbles, like with clunky solo story-advancing missions, the warning that you should complete the main game before even trying the online and even the method of delivery – as part of the season pass or £16 alone, FF15 Comrades is an expensive proposition, and it feels like it’d be smarter to reel people in with this as a freebie and then charge for some add-ons.
The final perplexing thing is how difficult it is to get into a game with friends – the easiest thing to do is to Quick Match with a bunch of strangers, which is always less than ideal. In this area it all feels like it could use improvement, but it also seems that like the original FF15 for better and for worse this is still a work in progress – areas are referenced that you can’t yet visit, suggesting more is to come.
At its heart, Comrades definitely has the right ideas. It has problems that appear to largely stem from being built as an afterthought atop a single-player focused game, but many of the ideas it has for a multiplayer Final Fantasy experience are pretty strong, and there’s a particularly impressive effort to tell a proper FF story in a multiplayer setting that pans out remarkably well. Oh, and it has a lovely new theme tune by Nobuo Uematsu. If this is indeed a test for the future, it’s a solid proof of concept – if not exactly a must-play at this point in time.
Tested on primarily on Xbox One X, but with several hours additionally spent on the PS4 Pro and PS4 versions.A former DeVry University official has reportedly been picked to head the Department of Education's enforcement unit.
Julian Schmoke — who serves as the executive director of campus relations for West Georgia Technical College — has been hired for the job, Politico reported.
Schmoke formerly worked as an associate program dean for DeVry's college of engineering and information sciences.
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The Student Aid Enforcement Unit was created last year to "respond more quickly and efficiently to allegations of illegal actions by higher education institutions."
DeVry University last year agreed to a $100 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over charges that the for-profit college ran deceptive advertisements.
The FTC had charged the school with running false ads claiming 90 percent of DeVry graduates seeking full-time jobs were employed in their field of study within six months of getting their degrees.
Another series of false ads claimed that students with DeVry degrees were paid 15 percent more on average than other graduates.Family flee home in Syrian city of Homs after eldest son is shot amid government crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators
Syrian exiles tell of life under Assad: 'They shoot us as if they're hunting'
Fireworks marking the end of Ramadan crackle in Cairo's night sky, but on a veranda in a quiet corner of the Egyptian capital Akram and Helen Abdul Dayem flinch at what to them sounds like gunfire.
The Syrian-British couple and their three children were this week forced to flee their home in the Syrian city of Homs after their eldest son was shot amid a brutal government crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.
Fearing that the bullet wound would mark him out as an opposition activist, the family packed a few bags and left the only country the children have known.
Lifting his T-shirt to show two dressed wounds where the bullet passed through him, Danny, 22, explains how he was wounded.
It was Saturday night and Danny was standing in the street talking to a friend about getting food and medication into Hama – another city that has become a focus of dissent against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
A car drew up alongside the two men, and a passenger – believed to be a pro-government militiaman – opened fire.
"I thought: am I dying? Will my legs still work? And then it hurt, and bled, like hell," said Danny.
Until six months ago, Danny, a business management student, paid little thought to politics. That changed when a group of children, inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, were arrested after writing anti-government graffiti in the southern city of Deraa.
Hundreds of people in Homs turned out to protest and as the movement grew, Danny became a leading activist and organised deliveries of food and medication to needy neighbourhoods.
In response, the government unleashed troops, police and pro-regime militiamen against unarmed protesters. Over the months, Homs has been transformed from a cosmopolitan hub into a dissident city under occupation.
Gunfire rings out every day. When there is silence the city's inhabitants grew nervous, waiting for more house-to-house raids.
"There are identity checks across the city, neighbours leaving or [staying] inside with the shutters down," says Akram. Rumours abound of mass graves and bodies shoved in binbags.
The first death Danny witnessed was that of a 13-year-old boy shot in the head next to him. Since then, he says, 14 of his friends have been killed. Last month, one of the family's relatives, Adnan Abdul Dayem, 27, was shot dead.
"For months I have been prepared for the fact it could be me, but I will not let my friends die for nothing," Danny says.
He affects an air of nonchalance, but his worldly air falters when asked if he has become used to seeing death. Dragging on a cigarette, he pauses, then says: "No. No. I just try not to think about it."
Danny spent his time gathering food, money and medication for fellow protesters. In one video posted on YouTube he can be seen dragging a wounded man to shelter when security forces opened fire after protesters tried to speak to a UN humanitarian delegation.
His father Akram described sitting up until 4 or 5am every morning, a fog of cigarette smoke around him, waiting for his son to come home safely.
At first protesters were merely calling for reforms. But the brutality of the regime's response has caused them to harden their line: in some areas, people have started to retaliate, taking up weapons and returning fire on the security forces.
"We watch security forces shoot at our children as if they are hunting; as if our sons' lives mean nothing," says Helen.
Packing up and leaving home was no easy decision. Syria has been home since the 1990s when Helen, originally from Cambridge, moved there after converting to Islam and marrying Akram.
But six months of violence has caused almost intolerable stress for the family.
"I watched Danny transform from a boisterous fun-loving boy to a quiet, withdrawn man," says Helen.
Sammy, 14, says he "put on loud music and pretended it was quiet outside" so he could study for exams. Jannah, 19, hid in her room with books or took refuge in the bathroom. Helen rose at 5am, cigarette and Nescafé at hand, logging her fears in a diary.
For the family, Danny's shooting was the last straw: wounded protesters have been dragged from their beds and arrested, so after a quick scan and five stitches on each wound, he discharged himself from hospital. Meanwhile, the rest of the family packed up their house. Jannah grabbed her laptop, Sammy took some colognes given to him by friends.
All of the family are adamant they will – one day – return to a democratic Syria. "People are not going to stop," Akram says. "We know that soon the country will be freed."Danny Wilson led Hearts to the title and promotion
Rangers have secured the signature of Wigan Athletic's Rob Kiernan, hours after Danny Wilson became Mark Warburton's first signing as manager.
Wigan had already agreed a fee for 24-year-old Kiernan, who has signed a two-year contract, while fellow defender Wilson had decided to leave Hearts.
The 23-year-old, who was Hearts' captain, signed a three-year deal.
Wilson, who had also been linked with Celtic, began his career at Ibrox but was sold to Liverpool for £2m in 2010.
He failed to become a regular at Anfield but shone at Hearts following a move to Tynecastle.
Warburton said on Monday the former Scotland Under-21 international was one of the players attracting his interest and he is to be presented to the media in Glasgow on Tuesday.
Veteran midfielder John Eustace is also a target for Rangers after being released by Derby County.
"We are making progress," Warburton said. "We hopefully have a positive few days ahead.
Rob Kiernan was at Rangers' Murray Park training ground on Monday
"There are a number of targets and, as you can imagine, we have to be discreet."
However, Warburton stressed that, while he was looking for a couple of experienced leaders, he was mainly targeting young, "hungry" players with potential and who "passionately" want to play for Rangers.
"I think marquee signings are dangerous," he said. "The biggest mistake we could make is to panic and get the wrong players at the wrong time.
"The club we have just come from, Brentford, the average age was 23 and a half I believe, and we had a 33-year-old and 34-year-old in that."
Eustace, who had a spell on loan to Dundee United from Coventry City before time with Middlesbrough, Stoke City, Hereford United and Watford, has been earmarked as a potential captain.
"People like John Eustace are few and far between," said Warburton of the 35-year-old. "People like John are ultra-professional on and off the pitch. They are great role models.
"They are playing the game at a very high level at 33, 34, 35 because they look after themselves, they train well, they eat well, they conduct themselves well.
"If you look at his record and the win ratio when John's playing, it's really important. He had a big role to play at Derby over the last few years."
Meanwhile, Warburton said Hibernian midfielder Scott Allan was only "one of a hundred" players Rangers were considering and expressed no knowledge of being linked with Aarhus central defender Jens Jonsson.Canadian environmental organizations could pose a potential threat to national security and are attempting to make the fossil fuel industry look bad.
Such was the assessment of what the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) referred to as the "anti-petroleum movement" in a document dated Jan. 24, 2014, and titled Critical Infrastructure Intelligence Assessment.
The existence of the document, obtained by Greenpeace, was revealed by the Globe and Mail on Tuesday and by French language newspaper LaPresse last week. Common Dreams saw a copy of the document Tuesday.
"There is a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels," the document states.
It cites fracking protests that took place in New Brunswick in 2013 as "the most violent anti-petroleum actions" the country has seen and "indicative of the growing international opposition to" fossil fuel projects underway or planned, and therefore a sign of what law enforcement "must be prepared to confront."
The revelation comes less than three weeks after the government's tabling of controversial Bill C-51, the Anti-terrorism Act 2015, and has added to concerns that the new legislation will be used to cast a wider net over those who can be surveiled. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association described the legislation as being able to "dramatically expand the powers of Canada’s national security agencies and violate the rights of Canadians without making us demonstrably safer."
The RCMP document says there is a "small but violent-prone faction" of environmental groups, and that criminal actions that target the nation's fossil fuel industry, including the tar sands industry, "represent a credible threat to the health and safety of the workers, the general public, the activists, the natural environment and the facility's operations."
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As Keith Stewart, climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Canada, writes at his organization's blog, "the RCMP document treats climate change as a hoax perpetrated by environmentalists." From the document:
Non-governmental environmental groups such as; Greenpeace, Tides Canada and Sierra Club Canada, to name a few, assert climate change is now the most serious global threat, and that climate change is a direct consequence of elevated anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions which, they believe, are directly linked to the continued use of fossil fuels…. Research and analysis done in support of ongoing RCMP criminal investigations shows that those involved in the anti-Canadian petroleum movement have an interest in drawing public attention to, and building recognition of, the perceived environmental threat from the continued use of fossil fuels. The publicizing of these concerns has led to significant, and often negative, media coverage surrounding the Canadian petroleum industry. The use of social media, including the use of live-streaming, provides the anti-petroleum movement the ability to by-pass the traditional news networks, to control and craft its message, and to promote a one-sided version of the actual events, leading to broadly based anti-petroleum opposition.
The Globe and Mail described the document as using "highly charged language that reflects the government’s hostility toward environmental activists."
Steven Guilbeault, co-founder and senior director of the Montreal-based environmental and justice group Équiterre, told LaPresse there was already a "veritable witch hunt" going on for environmentalists and that "by giving security forces expanded powers [with Bill C-51], you open the door to other abuses."
Stewart adds, "What is genuinely alarming about the RCMP document is that, when combined with the proposed terrorism bill, it lays the groundwork for all kinds of state-sanctioned surveillance and 'dirty tricks.'"Two people were hospitalized with serious injuries after a helicopter accidentally fired on bystanders at the Zapad 2017 military exercises, the online news portal 66.ru cited a source as saying on Tuesday. The week-long drills in Western Russia and neighboring Belarus kicked off last week, with around 13,000 troops, hundreds of tanks, aircraft, warships and other military hardware participating. The incident reportedly took place at the Luzhsky range near St. Petersburg either on Monday or Sunday. President Vladimir Putin visited the range on Monday.
The unnamed source told 66.ru that there appeared to have been a technical glitch on board “and the missiles blasted off on their own.” “At least two cars burned down, two people were seriously injured, they are now hospitalized,” the source said. “The victims were most likely journalists.” The Russian Defense Ministry said two attack helicopters simulated aerial reconnaissance and close air support missions on Monday as part of Zapad 2017.
Video footage accompanying the news report appears to show one of the helicopters misfiring in the direction of camera crews. The Defense Ministry’s press service denied that the incident took place on Monday, saying “all social media messages about ‘rounds on a crowd of journalists,’ ‘a large number of seriously wounded’ are either a deliberate provocation or someone’s personal stupidity.”Why is Turkey shelling northern Syria? These days a lot of people, both in Turkey and the world, are asking: “Is Turkey really going to war in Syria this time?” The Turkish military has begun doing something it has never done before since the beginning of the Syrian civil war: Shelling strategic positions deep within Syrian territory.
The target in this operation is clear: The Syrian Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG), or the troops of the PYD, which Ankara sees as a mere extension of its main enemy at home, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Apparently, it is not an ineffective operation: On Feb. 14, the semi-official Anadolu Agency noted that “Turkish shelling has killed at least 29 terrorists belonging to the PYD.” More importantly, Turkish shelling seems to have halted the PYD advance north of Aleppo.
This is crucial, because if the north of Aleppo falls to the PYD and its allies, (Russia and the Bashar al-Assad regime), then Aleppo could easily fall too. That is the last thing Turkey wants to see, because then Turkey’s south will be sealed by the PYD-Russia-Assad coalition, in addition to ISIS.
Such tactical details are complicated, and they are constantly evolving, so let me stress the strategic issue here - or the strategic gap between Turkey and its Western allies such as the United States. For the latter, the most important matter in Syria now is the destruction of ISIS. Any actor that serves this cause is either enthusiastically supported (as in the case of the PYD), or they are tolerated (as in the case of Russia and the al-Assad regime.)
For Turkey, however, things are more complicated. First of all, Turkey agrees with the West (and basically everybody else) that ISIS should be destroyed. In other words, the common propaganda about an alleged ISIS-Ankara alliance is just nonsense. But — and it is a big but — Turkey has other priorities as well. One of them is to not allow the al-Assad regime to take back the Sunni-majority areas of Syria, which may easily lead to gross atrocities against Sunnis, who may try to escape to Turkey, creating a much a bigger refugee crisis.
The second priority for Turkey is to not allow the PYD to dominate northern Syria. This is not because Ankara is obsessively anti-Kurdish, as some people seem to think, assuming that the PYD stands for “Kurds.” Ankara’s good relations, if not alliance, with the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) disproves that narrative. The problem is that the PYD is not just any Kurdish party – it is an extension of the PKK, which has been Turkey’s bête noir since the early 1980s.
Of course it would be much nicer if Turkey’s “peace process” with the PKK had worked. In that case, Ankara could have emerged as a patron of the PYD, rather than its enemy. But for complicated reasons, the peace process did not work. So, it is normal for Ankara today to see the emergence of a “PKK-istan” in northern Syria as a threat to itself. Western capitals may not share the same threat perception but they need to understand it.
Finally, Ankara is trying to keep the “Syrian opposition” alive, despite Washington’s pusillanimity in supporting it. This opposition neither includes nor equals ISIS, as the pro-Assad pro-Russian narrative suggests. It of course includes various Islamist brigades, who are not your ideal liberal democrats but who are still legitimate rebels against the bloody tyranny of al-Assad (and important bulwarks against ISIS).
So, will Turkey go to war, in terms of a ground operation, to support these rebels against the PYD-Russia-Assad alliance? It would not be an unjustified thing to do, but it would be a very dangerous, probably even disastrous, adventure. And I bet Ankara knows that.Sovereignty ‘at risk’ from EU-US trade deal: UK in danger of surrendering judicial independence to multinational corporations, warn activists BelfastTelegraph.co.uk The UK's freedom to tackle climate change, protect consumers or guarantee a publicly run NHS could be jeopardised by a trade deal being negotiated between Europe and the US, MPs and pressure groups have warned. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/sovereignty-at-risk-from-euus-trade-deal-uk-in-danger-of-surrendering-judicial-independence-to-multinational-corporations-warn-activists-29913334.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article29841655.ece/cfd2c/AUTOCROP/h342/PANews%20BT_97b78e2f-9102-481c-a7fc-383cf73761b9_I1.jpg
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The UK's freedom to tackle climate change, protect consumers or guarantee a publicly run NHS could be jeopardised by a trade deal being negotiated between Europe and the US, MPs and pressure groups have warned.
Under a draft plan supported by the European Commission, multinational firms |
-gen game among all the launch titles.
We’ll keep an eye out for any comment or confirmation by Ubisoft on the release date for Watch Dogs in the coming days. I wouldn’t be too surprised if March 21st is the actual date of release since it’s the first concrete date listed. All other retailers are currently listing the release as June 30th, which is a placeholder date for the game.
Watch Dogs has been in development at Ubisoft Montreal for more than five years, with assistance coming from four other internal studios. It is, without doubt, one of the largest and most ambitious new IPs of recent times. It is set in a near-future Chicago and seems to draw inspiration from such sources as 1984 in respect to its core theme of universal surveillance. It will be available on the PC, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360 and Xbox OneA new iteration of Section 20 will Strike Back in February, it was announced by Cinemax on Monday.
Season 5 of the action-drama — which now stars Warren Brown (Luther), Daniel MacPherson (The Shannara Chronicles), Roxanne McKee (Dominion) and Alin Sumarwata (Neighbours) — will premiere Friday, Feb. 2.
Rellik, an original six-part thriller starring Richard Dormer (Game Of Thrones) as an obsessive and disfigured UK police detective and Jodi Balfour (Quarry) as his intense partner, is set to arrive on Friday, April 13.
Cinemax also set a June timetable for the premieres of C.B. Strike, which is based on the best-selling crime novels written by Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith and stars Tom Burke (The Musketeers) as war veteran turned private detective, while Season 2 of Outcast, which continues the suspenseful mystery of what lies behind the town of Rome’s supernatural manifestations, is due in July.
Want scoop on any of the above shows? Email InsideLine@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line.A man has photographed a number of UFOs, spotted in the sky above Welling in the last week.
The unidentified objects were first seen by Stephen Archer from his home in Budleigh Crescent at around 6pm last Saturday (May 16).
The 40-year-old was about to retire for the evening after a day watching the skies when eight curious objects came into view.
He told News Shopper: "I had been out all day sky-watching. I hadn't seen anything for quite a while.
"I was about to go indoors when I looked in the sky and there they were.
"I observed eight silver spheres sitting stationary in the eastern sky.
"They appeared from nowhere and were visible for four to five minutes and then suddenly disappeared.
"Two of the spheres were brighter than the others and seemed to, at one point, move closer together.
"I observed similar objects over the next few days. "
He added: "I am used to seeing all sorts of things out there - comets and birds.
"I thought they might be drones, but unless there was some kind of drone convention up there I don't see how they could be.
"They weren't balloons or Chinese lanterns - this was something different."
TOP STORIES:The Maryland General Assembly passed a law on Tuesday to make it illegal for employers to ask employees for Facebook passwords, and now other states are considering similar legislation, including California, [Michigan](http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(ycrfwceq3yisyk55ylvmg3jb))/mileg.aspx?page=BillStatus&objectname=2012-HB-5523%0A), Minnesota and Illinois.
In California, State Bill 1349 would prevent schools and employers from demanding access to social media accounts. The bill is backed by Sen. Leland Yee, a Democrat from San Francisco.
Yee says that trying to snoop through someone's Facebook account is just plain wrong. "This is no different than an employer asking an employee for a date," says Yee. "My general sense is that the business community is going to continually want personal information and we've got to be vigilant."
The topic has gained a lot of attention following recent reports of hiring managers or employers demanding Facebook passwords. But it's not actually clear how widespread the practice really is. Most of the publicly reported cases have involved government and law enforcement jobs.
A spokesman for Sen. Yee's office admits that the California bill is "preventative," rather than a response to a barrage of constituent complaints. Melissa Goeman, the legislative director at the ACLU's Maryland chapter, says that other than two cases with the Maryland department of corrections, they haven't had any other direct reports of employers or government agencies asking for the information. "I think it's hard for people to come forward because those who are affected really need the job so they're not willing to make waves," she says.
The Maryland bill had some opposition. The Maryland Chamber of Commerce was against it, saying, "legitimate business-related interests outweigh what would be an unrealistic expectation of a 'zone of privacy' in social media information." In addition, Goeman said that the Maryland Retailers Association and investment house T. Rowe Price, whose headquarters are in Baltimore, had also joined the fight against the bill, saying that such information was needed since they manage such high-value securities.
One of the challenges that these laws will face is the fuzzy line between "personal" and "work" accounts. For instance, an employee may use a personal Twitter account to tweet as a subject matter expert who works for a well-reputed consultancy. Whether that consultant is tweeting from a work or personal account could be challenged in a court.
"One thing we have made clear: If you're on a company computer and doing something personal, you're fair game," says Sen. Ronald Young, a Democrat from Frederick, Maryland, who co-sponsored his state's bill, noting it doesn't place any restrictions on employers who want to install monitoring or filtering tools on an employee's computer.
The Maryland bill was actually introduced last year, after Young read reports of a man being asked for his Facebook login credentials while re-applying for his job with the Maryland department of corrections. Then last month Erin Egan, Facebook chief privacy officer, wrote a lengthy blog post condemning the practice which injected new life in the discussion and the bill passed the Legislature. It now awaits governor Martin O'Malley's signature to become law.Notorious torrent-sharing site The Pirate Bay is 10 years old today, and they got you a little something. They launched PirateBrowser, a custom Firefox browser that skirts Internet censorship and lets you access the Pirate Bay from anywhere. We should at least send them a card or something.
PirateBrowser is meant to focus more on unrestricted access to the Internet than it is on being able to download new episode of Breaking Bad without paying for them, but one tends to be a function of the other. There are countries that limit citizen access to certain sites, and yes, The Pirate Bay is frequently one of those sites, but so are Wikipedia and YouTube. PirateBrowser has customized proxy settings that let users get around those blocks.
What it does not do is let you surf the web anonymously. For that, you need a browser like Tor. Thankfully, Tor comes bundled with PirateBrowser.
If you’re into dodging Internet censorship, head over to the new PirateBrowser site. If that’s not your thing, maybe go play the pirate ship level of Super Mario Bros. 3 because if you’re like me, all you’ve been doing during this story is thinking about the phrase “Pirate Bowser” and giggling.
(PirateBrowser via Business Insider, image via svennevenn)
Meanwhile in related linksHello Rikku from Stop Right There Monster! (SRTM) I play medic and Val for my team and we placed 2nd last ESL major. ^ ^
I just want to share some thoughts on both Val and Caira, and try to give you my point of view. and I hope you will find this informative and like what I have to say. also I want to say to my defense that YES! I know that this is a VERY situational game so it is not possible to write about every single situation.
I am also aware of the patch coming out, and that perks might be allowed in competative play. this is just the current state of the game.
info about this whole block of text:
I will start off by going over Caira really quick, and then Val more indepth.
And when I go over the part with the monster inside the dome, I know this depends on the dome, every hunterteams wet dream is a level 1 dome, with no loop or places for the monster to hide, but this does not happen every time.
—CAIRA— The allround good pick and the pub star.
in skirmish matches with perks on, Caira clearly outshines Val when it comes to healing becuase she can either get 6 nuggets from capacity increase or just have faster reloadspeed on her heals allowing her to spam her teammates even harder. picking up Caira means the team has a reliable heal all game long, even against stage 3 monsters. her heal is still legit without any perk making her a great choice in competitive play.
Getting into the game:
Starting off a match is the same for all healers, first you gotta find the monster. Caira players usually use their Speed boost to give their trapper better positioning making it easier to trap the monster. but I dont want to go in depth of this. lets head over to the dome! ^ ^
this is VERY BASIC how caira works inside the dome against any monster (stage 1, 2 and 3):
offensive start:
she starts by shooting the monster with napalm nades for as long as she can get away with. she will always do this if all players on the team are topped.
transition over to heal:
after a while the monster is able to start dealing damage to someone, then she switches over to her heal and empties her magazine, swaps over to napalm and shoots one nade while pocketreloading her heal, takes out her heal nades. thump thump thump… repeat until dome is over. AOE burst can be used to clutch heal in critical moments.
Defensive:
if the monster starts to focus Caira she will start kiting the monster while shooting in the ground. a decent trapper will harpoon the monster in the back while it is chasing her and a decent support will be able to cloak the medic if it goes even worse. she can also pop the AOE heal.
Caira works good against any monster at any stage of the game don’t you think?
—VAL— The earlygame advantage
In public play, Val has no perk that synergize with her heal, I usually pick up HPregeneration or jetpack recharge when im tryharding. the HP regen is just good to have after being cloaked inside the dome, or after sucessfully kiting the monster for a while. jetpack recharge is a good way to get in some extra tranqs.
In competitive play Val is different, picking up Val and playing with Val on the team is different depending on your monsters level, and what monster you are playing against. but knowing Val drops off compared to caira in lategame, means the gameplan has changed, it is desirable to end the game before stage 3, latest point being when the monster goes for stage 3. Vals tranqs and double damage markers are DANGEROUS and a real pain for the monster in early stage. When Val sees the monster it should be a guaranteed tranq, just remember to scope and it will always hit the dot. (with 3 bullets in the mag I rarely miss a mag myself.)
in the game:
Starting off the game Val strives to land as many tranqs on the monster as she possibly can, because the tranqs does no damage the monster wont gain more traversal from it and it gives the trapper alot easier job when it comes to getting in a good position that will lead to a domed monster. What I like to say: Tranq and spank ^ ^
So the monster gets domed, what happens?
Tranq and mark:
Val will always start by tranqing and marking the monster. Val should always want to place nice marks on the monster, like one in the face, one on the middle of its back. and then get in a good position, know that Vals heal beam is 60meters. the rest of the team must understand that they must position in places where they wont cut Vals beam and be careful not to be punched in directions that cut the beam.
transitioning over to healing:
First off I got to say a team running Val has to compensate for her bad healrate.
The monsters main damage output is their abilities, and you can early on notice if a goliath has picked up flame or not. if its a level 2 leapslam or a level 3 rock (lololol)
So how to compensate for the slow healrate? The team must know how to dodge abilities and know what abilities they should save jetpack for. Knowing that the monster only has 3/6 points at level 1/2 and figuring out what abilities he has, level 1 AND 2 domes should be no problem. knowing that Val can keep up with a level 1 firebreath there is no reason to spam jetpack to get out, just shoot the monster instead.
The Val player also needs to be able to notice if the monster is commiting to a certain hunter, and if the hunter has trouble dodgeing the damage. Prioritizing who you are going to heal is the same for both healers, the one being focused hard. you can use the AOE heal to offload your primary heal source. But remember that its not only the medics job to save lives, the trapper has harpoons or slow, and markov has mines. also everyone must watch their postitioning, you dont want to take unneccesary damage with Val on the team.
The more people are able to avvoid getting hit, the more marks and tranqs go in.
again, YES, I know there are situations and setups the monster has to land the guaranteed vortex or leapslam, but, the longrange predictable ones should not connect and are undesirable when you have a Val on the team.
Defensive/ When the monster focuses you:
If it is stage one, make him suffer for it, notice that he is shifting focus to you, stop healing, tranq him and mark him. Start kiting him and run to safety early. Be aware of where markov mines are or harpoon guns. and ASK FOR CLOAK by the support. if all fails, this is where good use of jumping and jetpack is curcial for your survival. Know what abilities are least favorable to get hit by. You want to avvoid being comoboed against a wall. If this happens make sure to headshot him inbetween the punches before you go down. if the monster gets you up against a wall at stage 3 with empty jetpack its over.
new meta shit for survival: most of the monsters have abilities that gives you a nice knockback, if you see the wraith is initiating you with a warpblast, sometimes its better to not jetpack away, stand close and jump as it detonates, this way you will surft on the knockback and put some valuable distance between you and him. but watch out, if you get knocked into a wall you will enter some sort of stun animation.
FINAL WORDS
A team picking caira will get a strong reliable healer all game against any monster.
A team picking Val has a stronger earlygame. allowing for shut-down of monsters that are not careful enough. But right now I feel that Val is stronger against Kraken and Wraith players compared to goliath players.
(can’t seem to handle the top goliath players with the Val, Cabot, Griffin and Markov lineup.)
My team is going to head into the lab to test out new lineups after the patch and I will come with more posts like this after the new patch aswell!
hope you enjoyed the read atleast! ^ ^i'm feeding on a steady diet of leftover chinese, fortune cookies, and celery sticks doused in peanut butter. eating celery is supposed to help you burn calories as opposed to putting them on when you eat it but i am sure that by dipping it in a jar of crunchy jif reduces or eliminates any nutritional value it carries. the last time i checked, i was still married, still in a band, still an alcoholic, and nicole richie would like me to come to her house and knock her windows out. i am not sure if there is supposed to be innuendo behind that or not. does anyone know if there is a limit on how many days you should leave crab rangoon and vegetable fried rice in your refridgerator before it becomes disgusting? i have only had it in there since last night. i threw a super bowl party which basically means that i drank a case of corona and half a bottle of vodka and laid in my bed until three am, convinced that someone was walking around my house trying to kill me. i woke up at 8 am and i was still wasted so i had more vodka and smoked a bowl and listened to half of the new eisley album which is really amazing when you are stoned. then again, the only thing that isn't incredible when you are stoned is the real world. everyone just looks like a bigger tool. poor philadelphia, they got dealt the worst cast out of any cast i have ever seen. and i thought hawaii was awful. they should have let that poor alcoholic drink in peace.
i do not believe that i said happy birthday to my wife in the appropriate fashion. so hello shakira happy birthday. thank you for being wonderful enough to make it through a year of marriage with me without divorcing me regardless of the fact that we have probably slept with other people more than we have slept with each other. but that's alright because the only point in getting married is having someone give you direction in life and you direct me constantly. by that i mean that i am pretty much willing to do anything that you ask me to but i guess i also mean it in a positive way. valentine's day is this weekend, i will try to make up for all my shortcomings as a significant other somehow.
in other news, someone tried to overcharge me for newports at a liquor store and i threw a tip jar in their face. it's 9 pm that means it's a perfectly decent time to polish off a bottle of smirnoff.(Reuters) - The U.S. state of Texas declared Feb. 2 “Chris Kyle Day” on Monday, honoring the late Navy Seal marksman portrayed in the film “American Sniper,” two years after his death.
The movie, starring Bradley Cooper as Kyle who was killed by a disgruntled U.S. veteran on a Texas gun range on Feb. 2, 2013, has been a box office hit and stirred debate between liberals and conservatives.
“Today, we commemorate (Kyle’s) passing, and we honor his service and the service of his comrades in arms who have joined him to defend our great nation,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, said in his proclamation.
The film has been nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture, and has grossed $250 million. It tells the story of Kyle, whose 160 kills in Iraq is considered the highest count ever in U.S. military history
Critics contend however that the film glorifies war and sanitizes Kyle, who called Muslims “savages” in his memoir. Some have also drawn issue with Eastwood’s interpretation of the history leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said the movie has led to “violent threats” against its members, and asked Cooper and director Clint Eastwood to denounce the hateful language.
Oscar-winning Eastwood, who is a staunch supporter of veterans, has said “American Sniper” has nothing to do with party politics.
Cooper, who earned a best actor Oscar nomination for his performance, said on Monday that he did not foresee how the Iraq war biopic could become a charged political conversation.
Cooper, who is also a producer on the film, added that he wants the spotlight to be on soldiers.
Jury selection in Kyle’s murder trial is set to begin on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported.Hampstead and Kilburn Lib Dem candidate gets death threats after tweeting cartoon of Prophet Muhammad
The Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn has been forced to call in police after receiving multiple death threats when he tweeted a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
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Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist who now runs a leading anti-extremist organisation based in the UK, posted the picture on Friday in an attempt to demonstrate that not all Muslims were offended by “bland” depictions of the Prophet.
The image was of two audience members from the LSE Atheism Society who appeared on a BBC show on Sunday last week wearing T-shirts showing two cartoon figures under the title “Jesus and Mo”.
Re-posting the picture, Mr Nawaz wrote: “This is not offensive and I’m sure God is greater than to feel threatened by it.”
The Tweet prompted multiple death threats against the Lib Dem candidate - including threats to have him beheaded - forcing him to contact the police.
Hundreds of messages of support have since been sent by free-speech advocates and anti-extremist campaigners to Mr Nawaz.
But some members of the UK Muslim community have already written to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg to demand that he be removed from the party.
A petition calling for him to be sacked as the parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn - claiming he had been “disrespectful and offensive” to the Muslim community - has so far received more than 2,000 signatures.
George Galloway, MP for Bradford West, also called for him to be sacked, saying: “No Muslim will ever vote for the Liberal Democrats anywhere ever unless they ditch the provocateur Maajid Nawaz.”
Pleading for calm in response to the furore, Mr Nawaz wrote: “I posted that image here to explain how, as a Muslim, I didn’t find this particular image offensive and think God is greater than to find offence at such a bland cartoon.
“If you do think this is offensive, then you can simply not look at my profile.
“I do not find it offensive, so the whole debate should be about the meaning of offence, and not about whether it’s right or wrong to insult prophets, when I don’t think this is insulting.”
Mr Nawaz, a former member of the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir, who now runs the anti-extremist Quilliam Foundation, added: “Some are angry I didn’t find the cartoon featured on BBC offensive and repeated my view.
“Others are angry I am being silenced. Please let’s all calm down.”Looking for news you can trust?
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Update Saturday, Nov. 5: The Supreme Court stayed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision, so the ballot-collection ban will be effect during the election.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked Arizona’s law against so-called “ballot harvesting” on Friday, clearing the way for community activists to go door to door collecting completed ballots as part of their get-out-the-vote efforts. The state of Arizona has asked US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy to issue an immediate stay on the ruling.
The law, Arizona House Bill 2023, made it a felony for people to submit ballots that weren’t theirs. (Election officials, family members, and caregivers were exempt.) State Republicans fought for three years to enact the law, arguing that the practice created an opportunity for people to destroy others’ ballots or tamper with them in some way. Arizona Democrats and community activists said ballot collection was common in the state’s minority areas and that the law was designed to decrease minority voting. In September, a federal judge denied a Democratic challenge to the law, finding that it didn’t disproportionately affect minority voters.
Friday’s ruling opens the door for community activists to collect ballots and turn them in, a factor that could be key in a state with a number of close races, including Democrats’ quest to oust controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The presidential race has recently become competitive in Arizona, a state that hasn’t voted for the Democratic presidential nominee since 1996. Clinton spoke to a crowd of more than 10,000 supporters at Arizona State University on Wednesday.
The ruling doesn’t eliminate the law entirely; it just puts it on hold for Tuesday’s election. A full hearing will take place in January, according to the Associated Press.
This story has been updated.The runaway slave ad placed by Andrew Jackson ran in the “Tennessee Gazette,” on Oct. 3, 1804. The ad was published on Page 3, column 4. (Library of Congress/Tennessee Gazette)
This story has been updated to reflect President Trump’s speculation that Andrew Jackson could have prevented the Civil War.
“Stop the Runaway,” Andrew Jackson urged in an ad placed in the Tennessee Gazette in October 1804. The future president gave a detailed description: A “Mulatto Man Slave, about thirty years old, six feet and an inch high, stout made and active, talks sensible, stoops in his walk, and has a remarkable large foot, broad across the root of the toes — will pass for a free man.…”
Jackson, who would become the country’s seventh commander in chief in 1829, promised anyone who captured this “Mulatto Man Slave” a reward of $50, plus “reasonable” expenses paid.
Jackson added a line that some historians find particularly cruel.
It offered “ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred.”
The ad was signed, “ANDREW JACKSON, Near Nashville, State of Tennessee.”
[Trump called Andrew Jackson ‘a swashbuckler.’ The Cherokees called him ‘Indian killer.’]
Jackson, whose face is on the $20 bill and to whom President Trump paid homage in March, owned about 150 enslaved people at The Hermitage, his estate near Nashville, when he died in 1845, according to records. On Monday, President Trump created a furor when he suggested in an interview with the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito that Jackson could have prevented the Civil War.
.@realDonaldTrump tells @SalenaZito Andrew Jackson was "really angry" about the Civil War. Jackson died in 1845. pic.twitter.com/Z2XO5FWIsE — Mark Elliott (@markmobility) May 1, 2017
Jackson’s slave ad is one of thousands being catalogued by the history department at Cornell University, which launched “The Freedom on the Move” project to digitize and preserve runaway slave ads and make them more accessible to the public.
“Our goal is to ultimately collect all the runaway ads that have survived,” said Edward E. Baptist, a Cornell history professor who is collaborating on the project with Joshua D. Rothman, at the University of Alabama, and Molly Mitchell, at the University of New Orleans.
Baptist said the ads provide rich insights into history.
“They are these little windows,” Baptist said. “I call them the tweets of the master class. The purpose is to alert the surveillance system that was the entire body of white people in the South to help this individual recover this human property.”
An ad seeking Isaac, which ran in the New Orleans Daily Picayune on Jan. 15, 1851. (New Orleans Daily Picayune/Freedom on the Move)
The ads often describe in detail the runaways: their skills, missing teeth, height, weight. They give insight into how enslaved people lived and carried themselves. The ads also provide a sense of resistance and defiance, along with harsh punishments. They describe recent beatings, scars and fingers cut off. In an ad dated June 5, 1788, that ran in the Virginia Herald and Fredericksburg Advertiser, a woman named Patty, who was about 18 years old and 5 feet tall, is described this way: “Her back appears to have been used to the whip.”
Some ads included languages spoken beyond English: Dutch, French or African languages. Others offered evidence that escaped slaves were literate and able to write passes.
Teaching slaves to read and write was prohibited, especially after Nat Turner’s revolt in Southampton County, Va., in 1831, Baptist said. “There was a wave of anti-literacy laws. Slave owners knew if some men and women were literate, they could write passes to freedom.”
An ad seeking Jane, which ran in the New Orleans Daily Picayune on March 2, 1844 (New Orleans Daily Picayune/Freedom on the Move)
Some ads included the ironic clause “ran away without cause.”
“Ran away without cause,” Baptist said, “that means ‘I’m a good slaver owner; I didn’t treat her with unusual cruelty.’ It’s hard not to make connections with the history of race relations in the United States. The whites need to define themselves as the virtuous ones.”
In many ads, the runaways were described as “mulatto,” or carrying with them “mulatto” children.
Sometimes they were described as cunning, insolent or “pleasant when spoken to.”
Runaway slave ads from the New Orleans Daily Picayune. Tom: March 13, 1849. (New Orleans Daily Picayune/Freedom on the Move)
The skin colors ranged from light to copper colored to “perfectly black.” An ad seeking Thomas, who was about 30 years old when he ran away, described him as “5 feet five inches high, a light bacon color, stoutly made, full face, bushy hair, has a very slight stoppage in his speech, and has been badly whipped.”
Sometimes the ads gave hints of their hopes and aspirations — that they may have been headed for cities or nearby plantations where they had a mother or a father or a wife or husband or child.
An ad seeking a woman named Mary. (Library of Congress)
A newspaper ad that appeared in July 1826, tells the story of Mary, who escaped with her baby on her back. By the time the ad appeared, four months had passed and the reward for her return was $20.
“RANAWAY, about four months ago; the negra woman named MARY, aged about 26 to 36 years; ordinary size; having lost almost all her front teeth; her under lip is thick and hangs down,” the ad said. Mary spoke French and English with “the same facility.”
In a few lines, the reader learns this about Mary: She had a baby, a small child 6 months old, “which she commonly carries with her.”
Most likely Mary was looking for her husband. “Said negra woman is very intimate with a negro named William, belonging to Mde Gaudin; and both of them have had for a long time relations with the negro fisherman at the Bayou.”
The ad was signed E. FORSTALL.
Seven years before penning the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson placed an ad in the Virginia Gazette on Sept. 14, 1769, seeking “a Mulatto slave called Sandy.” Sandy, who was about 35 years old, was described by the future president as “inclining to corpulence.” His complexion was “light.” He was a shoemaker by trade and left-handed. He was also skilled at carpentry and “is something of a horse jockey.” The ad explained that Sandy was “greatly addicted to drink, and when drunk is insolent and disorderly, in his conversation he swears much, and in his behavior is artful and knavish.” Sandy apparently escaped with a white horse. He also took his shoemaking tools “and will probably endeavor to get employment that way,” the ad warned. The reward for Sandy was listed at $40.
An ad for Brazile, which ran in the New Orleans Daily Picayune on Jan. 2, 1849. (New Orleans Daily Picayune/Freedom on the Move)
A man named Antoine, who used the alias William, ran away Jan. 29, 1851. Antoine was described as a “journeyman baker,” about 40 years old, 5 feet 7 or 8 inches tall, “with yellowish complexion, strong constitution, large head, big nose, thick lips, large, flat feet.” The ad alluded to the pain of Antoine’s life in captivity. He had “a large burnt scar on the chest, a piece of one ear bitten off.” He spoke both English and French. Antoine was said to have a wife in New Orleans or Lafayette. The ad promised a reward of $35 for “anyone who will bring back slave to his master.”
Read more on Retropolis:
Hitler refused to use sarin gas during WWII. The mystery is why.
The fake news that haunted George Washington
Dead presidents are mouthing off on Twitter. Nixon won’t shut up.
The U.S. joined the Great War 100 years ago. America and warfare were never the same.Buffalo, NY (WGR 550) - I have had many fans talk to me about how disappointing Sam Reinhart is, considering he was picked second overall in the 2014 NHL Draft.
Over an 82-game span, Reinhart has averaged 20 goals and 25 assists for 45 points. Since the 1997 draft, only one forward taken second overall is worse. In 1998, Nashville selected former Buffalo Sabres forward David Legwand. He averaged 16 goals and 28 assists for 44 points over an 82-game span.
In his rookie season, Reinhart showed that he was the smart player that general manager Tim Murray said he was when Buffalo drafted him. The rookie was a regular at the Ryan O’Reilly practices, which often lasted 45 minutes after most of the players left the ice.
His work paid off as he was Buffalo’s best player in front of the net with screens and tips. In his second season, Reinhart participated in very few of the extra workouts and his attitude changed too. He acted like he had made it and became pretty arrogant in his demeanor and in interviews. Only after he had to sit out a game for being late to a team meeting did he become a regular after practice again. He had three tipped goals all season, and wasn't a force in front of the net until late in the season.
The lack of extra work showed as his goals went from 23 to 17. He did increase his assist total from 19 to 30, and overall had five extra points.
The new Sabres coach will have to really make sure he has Reinhart on board if he remains on the team.
Here are the average numbers on all the forwards taken second overall since the 1997 NHL Draft over an 82-game span.
2004 - Evgeni Malkin - Pittsburgh Penguins - 38 goals, 59 assists, 97 points
2001 - Jason Spezza - Ottawa Senators - 28 goals, 49 assists, 77 points
2000 - Dany Heatley - Atlanta Thrashers - 35 goals, 40 assists, 75 points
2016 - Patrik Laine - Winnipeg Jets - 40 goals, 31 assists, 71 points
2010 - Tyler Seguin - Boston Bruins - 31 goals, 38 assists, 69 points
2003 - Eric Staal - Carolina Hurricanes - 29 goals, 40 assists, 69 points
2015 - Jack Eichel - Buffalo Sabres - 28 goals, 38 assists, 66 points
1999 - Daniel Sedin - Vancouver Canucks - 25 goals, 41 assists, 66 points
1997 - Patrick Marleau - San Jose Sharks - 28 goals, 31 assists, 59 points
2005 - Bobby Ryan - Anaheim Ducks - 27 goals, 31 assists, 58 points
2013 - Aleksander Barkov - Florida Panthers - 24 goals, 32 assists, 56 points
2011 - Gabriel Landeskog - Colorado Avalanche - 23 goals, 31 assists, 54 points
2007 - James van Riemsdyk - Philadelphia Flyers - 26 goals, 27 assists, 53 points
2006 - Jordan Staal - Pittsburgh Penguins - 20 goals, 27 assists, 47 points
2014 - Sam Reinhart - Buffalo Sabres - 20 goals, 25 assists, 45 points
1998 - David Legwand - Nashville Predators - 16 goals, 28 assists, 44 points
The other second overall picks during that time were goalie Kari Lehtonen (Atlanta - 2002), and defensemen Drew Doughty (Los Angeles Kings - 2008), Victor Hedman (Tampa Bay Lightning - 2009), and Ryan Murray (Columbus Blue Jackets - 2012).
I think Reinhart will grow into a pretty decent player. My guess is he'll learn from the 2016-17 season and grow from it.
Now if you think by saying that I think he's untouchable, you'd be wrong. If Reinhart could land a young, top-three defenseman, I would trade him in a second. It's the old cliche that to get something good, you have to give up something good in return.Stackage update and plans for LTS Haskell 4
This is an update on Stackage and LTS Haskell since Jens’ post earlier this week.
We have already updated nightly to use GHC 7.10.3 and we are hoping to release LTS Haskell 4 after new years. This means maintainers have about two weeks to add new packages and patch excluded ones for re-entry.
We have been aggressive in closing old issues during the week in order to upgrade packages. This has the side effect that some packages that haven’t been updated in time had to be excluded.
We encourage you package maintainers to check whether you are affected by this. The easiest way might be to look at the build-constraints file or compare the difference of snapshots for this week. In build-constraints.yaml you can check that packages under your name are not commented out. Comments for a disabled package might say aeson < 0.10 which means it has not been updated to be used with aeson-0.10 yet.
You may also want to make sure your packages are not mentioned in the skipped-tests, expected-test-failures, expected-haddock-failures, and skipped-benchmark sections. This doesn’t mean they’ll be excluded from nightly or LTS, but it might be nice for stackage to test these components as well!
As usual, please send a pull request to update build-constraints.yaml to (re-)add packages.
If something about |
’Grady also called for an end to public sector pay restrictions after warnings earlier this week from hospital bosses that NHS staff are quitting to stack shelves in supermarkets instead of caring for patients because they are so demoralised by years of getting pay rises of only 1% or nothing. The Royal College of Nursing has highlighted the number of nurses turning to food banks because they cannot survive on their NHS pay.
“Britain badly needs a pay rise – and all the political parties must explain in their manifestos how they will boost living standards across the UK,” said O’Grady.
“A good start would be to scrap the unfair pay restrictions on public servants. It is disgraceful in the world’s sixth richest economy that nurses are having to use food banks to get by.”Hydroponic Growing Mediums – Grow Hydroponic Cannabis
Hydroponic Gardening Mediums
When it comes to hydroponic gardening mediums there are several excellent options to pick from. It really is a matter of preference and budget when it comes to growing hydroponic cannabis.
With that being said the most common hydroponic gardening mediums are oasis cubes, rockwool, expanded clay pebbles, coco fiber / chips, perlite, rock and vermiculite.
RockWool Hydroponic Growing Mediums
Rockwool is one of the best known hydroponic growing mediums as it has been around for a long time. Ideal for both cannabis seeds and marijuana clones.
However it is important to note these will need to be pre-soaked in PH balanced water. Great for air flow however not great to inhale or for the environment which is why I go with oasis cubes which I mention below.
GRODAN A OK Rockwool Stonewool Hydroponic Grow Grodan Rockwool – hydro growth medium Grodan Rockwool Plant Plugs, Macro, 50-Pack Grodan Rockwool – 4x4x2.5in. Cubes, 6 pack w/holes Grodan Rockwool Cubes (1 inch) 100 Cubes Grodan Delta 10 Wrapped Gro-Blocks 4
Oasis Cubes – Hydroponic Growing Mediums
Many cannabis growers swear by oasis cubes as one of the best hydroponic growing mediums. Understandably so as oasis cubes are excellent for both growing cannabis from seeds and growing cannabis from clones. Similar to rockwool it can be used for germination however unlike rockwool, oasis cubes do not have to be soaked prior to using.
Additionally cannabis growers will appreciate the neutral PH and great water retention making it the perfect choice to use with many hydroponic gardening systems.
Oasis Rootcube 162 Cell Single – hydroponic growing mediums Oasis Horticubes 2 Pack – hydroponic gardening Grodan – oasis growth cubes – hydroponic gardening OASIS ROOTCUBES, 1.25 Grodan A-OK 36/40 1.5 Inch Starter Plugs, Sheet of 98 Oasis Root Riot Starter Cubes-X 100
Expanded Clay Pebbles – Cannabis Hydro Mediums
Hydroton or expanded clay pebbles is another wonderful hydroponic growing medium especially for cannabis cultivation. Like the oasis cubes they have a neutral PH however they are more expensive. Although with expanded clay pebbles you can re-use them making it more of an investment so it ultimately depends on preference and budget. Moreover your cannabis plants will enjoy the support this type of hydroponic growing media provides.
With that being said the only real drawback to using expanded clay pebbles is being careful not to breathe in the dust. Overall this is a great hydroponic medium for cannabis cultivation and available at any hydroponics store or even home depot these days.
ORGANIC Hydroton Leca Expanded Clay Pebbles Grow GROW!T GMC10L Clay Pebbles 10 Liter Bag, 4mm-16mm Hydrofarm Grow it Hydroponic Clay Pebbles Grow Media 5 lbs Expanded Clay Aggregate Pebbles Rocks Growing Media 2 lbs xGarden LECA Expanded Clay Pebbles – Horticultural Grade 10L GIANT HYDROTON Clay Pebbles Hydroponic 10 Liters of
Coco Chips / Fiber – Grow Cannabis Hydroponically
Coco chips which come from coco husks are an well known hydroponic cannabis growing medium that is becoming increasingly popular among cannabis growers. Not only is coco chips organic but it holds in moister unbelievably well while providing amazing airflow for roots.
Growers can either get coco chips which resemble wood chips or opt for coco fiber which is stringy. Either way using something like this would be great for both experienced and those new to growing cannabis.
General Hydroponics CocoTek Bale Coco Growing Media, 5kg Flora Hydroponics Organic Coco Plug Tray 72ct Mr Stacky Blocks 5KGB Coco Coir Peat Block Coco Choir Block (1, 11 Pound Block) Prococo Chips-N-Fiber Premium Coconut Husk Coconut Husk Roots Organics Compressed Coco Fiber Fertilizer, 5 kg
Perlite – Marijuana Hydroponic Mediums
Although not recommended for new growers perlite can be used to grow cannabis. As this is generally a soil additive used to enrich soil. Great for drainage and air flow but very temperamental to work with at it is a type of volcanic glass that pops like popcorn when heated.
Due to the fact it does not retain water it floats which means it is not suitable for most hydroponic grow systems. This is why many savvy growers will mix this with vermiculite and get some outstanding results.
8 Quarts Horticultural Grade Premium Perlite Espoma PR8 8-Quart Organic Perlite Hoffman 16504 Horticultural Perlite, 18 Quarts Viagrow 4 cu. Ft. Perlite – hydroponic growing media GROW!T #2 Perlite, Super Course, 2 Cu Ft Hydroponic Perlite 10L Liters / 2.5 Gallon OF Course Perlite #3 Great For Seed Starting,
Rock – Hydroponic Growing Mediums
Inexpensive, widely available, rock makes for another organic hydroponic growing medium. Many growers absolutely swear by river rock, lava rock and pea gravel. It all depends on what is available in your area but luckily most of these can be easily found at your local home and garden store. Obviously this type of growing medium would be great for those who are going to grow a bunch of plants.
Garden Bloom Authentic Mexican Beach Pebbles 1/4 Inch – Perfect American Fireglass Small Black Lava Rock Mighty 109 Grey Pea Gravel /Bulk Qty Supply Guru River Rocks, Pebbles, Outdoor Decorative Hoffman 14452 Volcanic Lava Rock, FloraCraft, Rocks with 5-Pound Square Reuseable Jar, Multiple
Vermiculite – Hydroponics Growth Mediums
Finally vermiculite is another commonly known hydro growing medium used by cannabis growers all over the world. Vermiculite is a mined rock and it is very important to get vermiculite that is compatible with hydroponic grow systems. Great for moister retention however best when used with perlite as this will allow for good moisture and perlite will ensure phenomenal oxygen flow to the roots.
In conclusion not matter which hydroponic grow medium use it all comes down to growers choice and experimenting until you find what works for you.
8QT Professional Grade Vermiculite by Plantation Products Hoffman Soils and Ammendments Horticultural Vermiculite Eve’s Premium Grade Horticultural Vermiculite for Bonsai and all Midwest Hearth Vermiculite Granules for Gas Logs – 12 oz bag Josh’s Frogs Vermiculite (10 quarts) ORGANIC Vermiculite Coarse Grow Media – Orchids
Check out these other cool resources by Hydro AC
Hydroponic Gardening Mediums
When it comes to hydroponic gardening mediums there are several excellent options to pick from. It really is a matter of preference and budget when it comes to growing hydroponic cannabis.
With that being said the most common hydroponic gardening mediums are oasis cubes, rockwool, expanded clay pebbles, coco fiber / chips, […]No new assets to show off this week, but we do have a couple of updates to show you guys. Specifically, a few of our older models are now sporting some beautiful textures!
First up, the submarine exterior has been kitted out with a beautiful battered copper material. We’re still working on perfecting the details, but it is already up and running in Unreal 4. Unreal’s new physically-based material engine is absolutely perfect for surfaces like this, and we’re taking full advantage of it.
Secondly, the awesome wahrk skulls that we posted last time are now made of bone, instead of the shiny gray default material. We think they look much better like this.
As we get closer to Mysterium, we’ll be working hard on fine-tuning our demo. Expect more updates like this in the next few weeks!A leader of the Abu Sayyaf group who was directly involved in the kidnapping and beheading of Canadian and German nationals was among the bandits killed by security forces in a clash in Bohol province on Tuesday, the military chief said on Wednesday.
Muammar Askali, who used the nom de guerre Abu Rami, was one of six Abu Sayyaf bandits killed by soldiers and policemen in a daylong gun battle in Napo village, Inabanga town, Bohol, on Tuesday, according to Gen. Eduardo Año, chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
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Three soldiers and a policeman were killed in the fighting.
The military has recovered the body of Rami, a former spokesperson for the Abu Sayyaf, a brutal bandit group notorious for bombing attacks, extortion, kidnappings for ransom and beheadings of foreign hostages in Mindanao.
Año said troops took the picture of Rami after his death and that captured Abu Sayyaf bandits identified Rami.
Government in control
The killing of Rami provided confirmation that the intruders in Inabanga were Abu Sayyaf bandits and indicated that the brutal group was now operating far from its lairs in Basilan and Sulu provinces.
Malacañang on Wednesday called for calm, following reports of Abu Sayyaf presence in Bohol in Central Visayas.
Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella said the military and the police were on top of the situation.
“The public should have no cause for alarm, as the situation is contained and our security forces are in control. The government is exerting all efforts to maintain peace and order,” Abella said.
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Notorious
Speaking in a news briefing at the military headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City, Año described Rami as “a very notorious Abu Sayyaf leader” responsible for several atrocities.
Rami’s group beheaded Canadian John Ridsdel on April 25, 2016, and Canadian Robert Hall on June 13, 2016, and elderly German national Jürgen Gustav Kantner on Feb. 26 after the bandits failed to get millions of dollars in ransom.
All the killings took place in the southern province of Sulu, stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, some of whose leaders have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group of jihadists in Iraq and Syria.
Año said Rami had been seen as one of future leaders of an Abu Sayyaf group that could be affiliated with IS.
“He was trying to make a name for himself, trying to arrange a career that could replace (Abu Sayyaf leader Radullan) Sahiron,” Año said.
The military in Sulu confirmed that Rami was one of the Abu Sayyaf bandits killed by government forces in Bohol.
Brig. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, commander of the military’s Joint Task Group Sulu, told the Inquirer on Wednesday that Rami and his group were monitored leaving Sulu on Thursday last week.
‘Left for safer place’
“He and his followers left Sulu for a safer place, but it appears that there’s no safe place for the Abu Sayyaf anymore,” Sobejana said.
An Inquirer source said military intelligence had noted the absence of Rami and Alhabshi Misaya, another Abu Sayyaf leader, from Sulu following clashes between government forces and the bandits in recent weeks.
Intelligence reports indicated that Rami’s group moved to Bohol to link up with Alden Yusup, an Abu Sayyaf leader operating on the Central Visayan island, the source said.
The source said Rami’s group left Sulu from Tongkil town on Mamanok Island.
“They went to Bohol using two fishing pump boats and pretended to be fishermen,” the source said.
Targeting foreign tourists
Rami’s group, the source said, planned to kidnap foreign tourists in Loboc, a town in Bohol popular for lunch cruises on a river and sightings of the tarsier, the world’s smallest primate, and in Panglao, a dive site off the main Bohol island popular among Western divers.
Año said Rami’s group planned to strike during the Lenten season, during which tourists flocked to Bohol.
Chief Supt. Noli Taliño, Central Visayas police director, said authorities were not sure how many men were in Rami’s group when it entered Napo.
According to accounts of villagers, however, there were at least 10 gunmen who came in three pump boats.
The group entered Inabanga on Monday night, sailing up the Inabanga River to Napo, where residents, alarmed at the unusual make of the boats, alerted the authorities.
Government forces attacked the gunmen early Tuesday. The gunmen took cover in three houses as they traded gunfire with the soldiers and policemen.
The security forces seized control of two of the houses, driving the gunmen to the third house or to the bushes, where Philippine Air Force gunships hit them with bombs in the afternoon.
Six of the gunmen, including Rami, were killed in the fighting and airstrikes.
Military reinforcements arrived on Wednesday to finish the operation, going after the fleeing remnants of Rami’s group.
On the run
Año said the five remaining gunmen had fled an overnight seige.
“They are on the run. They have left their belongings [behind],” Año said.
“We already have leads on the direction of their escape. They cannot fight as a potent force like before. They are all running for their lives,” he said.
‘Back to normal’
Año said the situation in Bohol, far from the Abu Sayyaf’s island strongholds in the south, was now “back to normal,” even as the military mourned the loss of three soldiers.
He identified the slain soldiers, 2nd Lt. Estelito Saldua, Sgt. John Dexter Duero and Cpl. Miljune Cajaban, all from the 47th Infantry Battalion.
Año said another soldier was wounded in the fighting, but was out of danger.
The identity of the slain police officer was not immediately available.
Año also announced the surrender of 11 Abu Sayyaf bandits, including two subleaders, in Sangasanga, Tawi-Tawi, on Tuesday.
The bandits, who identified Rami after his death, surrendered to Joint Task Force Tawi-Tawi, under the command of Brig. Gen. Custodio Parcon, a Medal of Valor awardee. —WITH REPORTS FROM LEILA B. SALAVERRIA, LEO UDTOHAN, NESTLE SEMILLA, ADOR MAYOL, THE WIRES
Read Next
LATEST STORIES
MOST READTrump would date his daughter!
Trump's son likes hunting!
Trump says he could shoot a man and still win!
We're sick of seeing Trump in our Facebook feeds.
Thankfully, we aren't alone: Louis Wittig, a copywriter at Grey, is in fact so sick of it that he's decided to launch his own attack campaign in the hope of turning a few Republicans around in one of the places where it counts: New Hampshire.
Wittig is raising money on Go Fund Me to run an anti-Trump ad in The Concord Monitor—which has a circulation of about 22,000—two days before the New Hampshire primary.
The strategy is also worth some props. Instead of calling Trump names or drawing attention to stupid things he says, Wittig is going for the jugular. "The people who might vote for Trump already know about his irreponsible statements, and that's kind of why they like him: He says things no one else will say, so he must not be a regular, wishy-washy Republican. So, calling him a bigot only plays to his strength as an outsider," Wittig says.
"But what will get a conservative voter to think twice is the fact that Trump is aaaanything but conservative: He really likes Democrats, Hillary Clinton and government handouts. So, the ads go after that."
Check the delightfully catty creative out below, along with our interview with Wittig. And if you've got five bucks hanging around that Starbucks hasn't siphoned up yet, now you have somewhere to put it—on the Go Fund Me page. (But also check out Wittig's website, People With Five Bucks Against Trump, for the hilarity and passive pinch of jealousy. Because while he was building that, what did you do today?)
AdFreak: How many times a day do you see Trump in your newsfeed?
Louis Wittig: It's been getting worse every day. It was about one or two a day a few weeks ago, but now it's like five or six. I've been trying to avoid Facebook as a result. But it seems like the harder I try to ignore Donald Trump, the more I see him.
What Trump story was the last straw?
It was the quote a couple days ago, I think, where he said something like, "I could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and I still wouldn't lose supporters." And what bothered me about that is that he was kinda right. Nothing seems to puncture this ever growing, ego-driven inflation of the Trump bubble. I was starting to lose sleep. So I had to do something, however ridiculous.
Which inanimate object or small animal would make a better president? Please defend your choice.
Oh wow. So many to choose from. I think a breath mint would definitely make a better president than Donald Trump. I've met five or six breath mints that have more coherent economic plans than Donald Trump.
What makes Trump so scary to you?
What's most annoying to me about Trump—I'm not so much scared of him as annoyed—is that he is so transparently manipulative. Everyone knows that he's going to say some completely insane thing to get attention. Everyone knows that's exactly what he's going to do. It's exactly what he's always done. Donald Trump saying ridiculous things is like the sun coming up in the east. And yet, every time, when he does it, we all act like he's done something that he's never done before.
Please explain your attack strategy, and what other angles you plan to tackle.
My strategy, such as it is, is just to tell people what Donald Trump has said and done in the past. The craziest thing about Trump running for the Republican nomination is that he's anything, anything but conservative. The man is the epitome of bad advertising: He'll say anything to get your attention, and assumes that his audience is stupid. I think most people know this. And I think if we remind them that The Donald stands for nothing, they'll listen.
Why would Republicans or conservatives listen?Staffel 2017 • Episode 66 • 08.03.2017 • 19:05
© ProSieben
Zu Besuch in der Bitcoin-Mine: Hier fließt die virtuelle Währung in Millionenhöhe.
In dieser Bitcoin-Mine werden Millionen verdient
Kryptowährungen wie Bitcoins sind derzeit in aller Munde und scheinen ein riesiges Potential zu bieten, um mit ihrer Hilfe schnell und einfach Geld zu verdienen. Wir haben eine sogenannte Bitcoin-Mine in Island besucht und erklären im Video, wie sich mit einer solchen Mine Millionenbeträge verdienen lassen. Das Beste daran: Mit dem richtigen Knowhow und dem Mut zum Risiko kann praktisch jeder eine Bitcoin-Mine eröffnen und so zum Millionär werden.
Bitcoins – Kryptowährungen sind auf dem Vormarsch
Unter dem Begriff Kryptowährung oder auch Kryptogeld wird ein digitales Zahlungsmittel verstanden. Bitcoin war die erste dieser Kryptowährungen und wurde im Jahr 2009 zum ersten Mal offiziell vorgestellt. Es handelt sich entsprechend um Geld, mit dem man lediglich online bezahlen kann. Anstelle von Geldscheinen und Münzen bestehen Bitcoins aus Datencodes. Das Geld einer Kryptowährung entsteht nicht hinter den verschlossenen Türen von Finanzministerien und Banken, sondern wird privat geschöpft. Das geschieht in sogenannten Bitcoin-Minen, wie wir sie im Video vorstellen. Bitcoin Mining meint dementsprechend übersetzt so viel wie "Bitcoins schöpfen" und ist prinzipiell für jedermann geeignet, der Lust darauf hat und über das nötige technische Equipment verfügt. Eine Garantie, um mit dem Bitcoin Mining zum Bitcoin Millionär zu werden, gibt es allerdings nicht.
Bitcoins aktuell – Gefahren und Potenzial liegen nah beieinander
Wenn von Kryptowährungen wie Bitcoins die Rede ist, dann wird nicht selten von einer sogenannten Spekulationsblase gesprochen. Das liegt daran, dass die Kurse, anhand derer Bitcoins in reales Geld getauscht werden können, sehr stark schwanken und sich nur schlecht vorhersagen lassen. Viele verstehen den Sinn hinter Kryptowährungen nicht und können sich unter einem Zahlungsmittel, das für sich genommen keinen intrinsischen Wert hat, nicht viel vorstellen. Doch auch unsere Geldscheine und Münzen sind rein objektiv betrachtet eigentlich nicht viel wert. Der Wert entsteht lediglich aus der Zuschreibung. In unserem Video erklären wir die Funktionsweise von Bitcoins ganz genau und auch die Art und Weise, wie sich über Bitcoin Mining Geld verdienen lässt. Fakt ist jedoch, dass die Entwicklungen rund um Bitcoins und andere Kryptowährungen derzeit nur sehr schwer vorherzusehen sind. Da immer mehr Menschen glauben, dass sie mit Bitcoins und Bitcoin Mining ans schnelle Geld gelangen, steigt das Risiko, dass die Spekulationsblase platzt und sehr viele Menschen später auf sehr hohen Verlusten sitzenbleiben. Eine solche Spekulationsblase hat es schon einmal gegeben. Der Bitcoin selbst konnte sich davon erholen, viele Betroffene allerdings nicht.
Bezahlen im Netz – Bitcoin Mining ist einzigartig
Das Internet hat unser Verständnis von Bezahltechniken und -methoden gewaltig revolutioniert. Dienste wie PayPal und Co. weiten ihre Möglichkeiten immer stärker aus und finden so den Weg vom Internet ins reale Leben. Selbst das Auftauchen einer Sicherheitslücke bei PayPal kann Nutzer nicht davon abhalten, über das sogenannte E-Wallet im Netz einzukaufen. Ähnlich verhält es sich beim Bitcoin Mining. Wie unser Video zeigt, ist das Bitcoin Mining aber vor allem in Deutschland alles andere als lukrativ. Das liegt insbesondere an den hohen Stromkosten, die für das Bitcoin Mining in Kauf genommen werden müssen. Andere Länder wie etwa Island bieten für eine eigene Bitcoin-Mine deutlich bessere Aussichten, weil die Stromkosten dort weitaus niedriger sind. Das hohe Risiko bleibt allerdings dasselbe: Platzt die Bitcoin-Blase und fallen die Kurse, werden all diejenigen, die im großen Stil in das Bitcoin Mining investiert haben, schnell auf diesen Kosten sitzenbleiben.About
Fabusco.com is an international online fashion lookbook and resource to inspire and find new ways of wearing the same clothes. If you are in LA and need to go to London, click through to London on Fabusco and find the latest trends.
Do you have a white shirt and want to wear it more than once? What do you pair it with? Fabusco gives you some ideas of how women from around the world would rock that look.
The website is for people that want to set trends as well as people that need help getting dressed! We strive to capture the looks that make cities around the world unique.
How do we achieve this?
We capture real people in real situations wearing and inspiring amazing styles. This ranges from walking around during the day, to fun parties at night, and local events during weekends!!! From there, we put the pictures onto www.fabusco.com and people who seek inspiration can search by specific item or location.
Do you have a Trench Coat and want to see how people in London, NYC, Berlin etc. wear this item? Then come to Fabusco.com to harness the global fashion world to inspire your look.
Why we need your support:
We need to produce an APP so that everyone can capture amazing styles to share. We do not want to miss out on cool trends because our StyleFinders cannot be everywhere at once! This APP will provide more opportunities to capture the looks that make your area special. Everyone has a distinct style so come share that with the rest of the world. This APP will allow the upload and share process to be much easier.
The Fabusco APP
Home Button
Hompage - The welcome page where filters for location (london, paris etc), or product (blouse, jeans, etc.) are developed so users can browse the latest looks.
Search
User Search - Search area for other fashionistas to see what styles they are sharing
Camera
Camera - We will provide some soft filters to capture the best pictures.
Shop
Shop - Eventually we will link up with the hottest new designers so they can sell their products by tagging their products to the images that users and StyleFinders upload.
User Profile
User Profile - Your own style heaven where you can edit, upload, and manage your accounts.
Before we go meet the FabTeam:
True to our belief that fashion comes from global inspiration. Our core team and Stylefinders span the globe. From Singapore to London, LA to Paris our goal is to work with a diverse group of people from all over the world.
The Core Team and why we believe in Fabusco:
StyleFinders and why they love photography:
We have photographers:
Europe:
Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich and other smaller cities
Americas:
Los Angles, NYC, Chicago, Mexico City, Santiago, Rio, and other cities.
Asia:
Hong Kong, Shanghai (Sept 2015)
Australia:
Sydney (Aug 2015)
Fabusco Stylists: Please email stylists@fabusco.com for the Fabusco Stylist Book. Below is a selection of our stylists.
Fabusco Events:
Past event locations:
230 Fifth, House of weekend, Armani Store Opening, Alta Roma - Rome Fashion Week After Party, London Fashion, Berlin Fashion Week, Record Launch Event
Please email us for events in the next two months events@fabusco.comA top Senate Democrat lent credibility to conservative efforts to block President Obama’s pending administrative amnesty, explaining that Congress has the authority to withhold funding for presidential initiatives.
“It happens all the time,” retiring Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) told National Review Online while walking through the Capitol.
Levin emphasized the distinction between shutting down the government, as happened last year, and refusing to appropriate money for something.
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“That’s not uncommon that there’s amendments saying ‘none of the funds in this appropriation bill may be spent for’ — fill in the blank,” Levin said.
Republican lawmakers are debating whether to pass legislation funding government for the whole year or for a shorter term. Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) and other immigration hawks oppose a long-term funding measure because it would provide Obama with the money he needs to implement his executive orders. Instead, they want to pass a short-term bill and then withhold funding for the Department of Homeland Security offices tasked with carrying out the orders.
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Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, criticized that tactic as “an effort to shut down the government.”
Levin disagrees. He described withholding funds for the executive orders on immigration as a standard congressional procedure that should not be confused with shutting down the government.
“That’s not slash-and-burn,” he told NRO. “That’s not bringing down the government. That’s a fairly traditional, targeted approach to make a policy point.”
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Levin’s days in Congress are numbered. He is being replaced next year by Democratic Senator-elect Gary Peters.The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) expresses shock and deep concern over the discovery of mass graves in Balochistan; it is suspected that these graves are of Baloch missing persons who were arrested and subsequently extrajudicially killed. A large number of family members gathered around the places of Tootak village, district Khuzdar to inquire about their loved ones who have been missing for many years. However, the police and other security forces refused them permission to try and identify the bodies and baton charged the people to disperse them.
On January 25, three mass graves were found after one of them was discovered by a shepherd who saw pieces of human bodies and bones. He informed the Levies, a private armed force organised by tribal leaders, and according to Assistant Commissioner, district Khuzdar, Mr. Afzal Supra, Balochistan, the grave was excavated and 15 bodies were found.
As the news of the mass grave spread throughout the district people gathered there and started digging in the nearby area where they found two more mass graves. In total 103 bodies were recovered from the graves. The bodies were too decomposed to be identified. From the three mass graves 17, 8 and 78 bodies were found but the local people say that a total of 169 bodies have been found. People have witnessed more than 100 human bodies in Tootak while they were digging the area. However, Pakistani military forces stopped the local people from unearthing the mass graves and took control of the area. Now, no one is allowed access to the location except military personnel.
According to the media, a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity said so far they have found around 56 unidentified graves and that there are many more. It is claimed that these bodies are those of Baloch missing persons.
The confirmation by government officials that over one dozen bullet-riddled bodies have been dumped in unmarked graves — many of them considered to be mass graves — in Balochistan has exposed the gross human rights abuses perpetrated by the security forces over the years in a bid to suppress a popular uprising against the government.
It is feared that more mass graves will be found in the coming days. However, the Pakistan Army, in order to hide its crimes, is not allowing any civilian or media outlets to visit the area. Anyone trying to gain access to the area comes under live fire by the Army. It is believed that the genocide of Balochis is one of the biggest mass killings of the 21st century.
Nasrullah Baloch, the vice chairman of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), fears that their relatives who disappeared following arrest by the security services in the restive province might be buried in those graves. Baloch says that his cousin and the son of Mama Qadeer, who is leading the historical long march for the recovery of missing persons, Jalil Reki and another, Sana Sangat were brought to Khuzdar after arrest and killed after some days. He believes that their bodies must be here with others.
These mass graves were found very close to the residence of Mr. Shafique Mengal, who is a well known man of the security agencies and who is heading a militant organisation with the name of Nifaz-e-Amn. The organisation claims itself to be affiliated to the Pakistan security forces, working for the implementation of Islam and against Anti State elements. He has been provided with 30 armed vehicles. Whenever the security forces fail to conduct actions in tribal and mountainous areas they ask for Mengal’s help. The Frontier Corp (FC) own this organisation as the true one working body for the protection of Balochistan. The FC and other forces, as claimed by Baloch nationalist groups, have helped him to make private jails and torture centers in Tootak where the missing persons are brought and tortured before being extrajudicially killed. There is no power supply in the area but interestingly, electricity lines were provided to his private jails and his ‘fort’ which is guarded by the law enforcement agencies.
Human rights violations could soon escalate as the Pakistani government recently passed a new controversial law, the ‘Pakistani Protection Ordinance’- PPO, which has legalised enforced disappearances. The government has made an amendment in the PPO, though it has yet to be approved by the parliament. In an effort to provide protection for the crimes of the security forces the government has given legal cover for enforced disappearances and allows the security agencies to keep any suspect for up to three months without presenting them before a court and in cases of suspected terrorism the person can be kept for six months in their custody.
The crimes of the security agencies in Balochistan and the mass-scale disappearances and extrajudicial killings have now been exposed by the discoveries of these mass graves.
The non-investigation of the enforced disappearance of thousands of persons in Balochistan can be likened to the concentration camps of the Nazi’s who operated without any control or oversight; in a similar fashion as the armed forces and security agencies in Pakistan who answer to no one.
The AHRC urges the government of Pakistan to immediately form a transparent high judicial inquiry to probe the cases of the mass graves and provide information relating to the possible identities of the deceased persons. It is a prime responsibility of the government to inform the nation of each and every development in the progress of the investigation. Otherwise it will be difficult to control the volatile situation in Balochistan which may well spread like wildfire throughout the entire country.
The Supreme Court of Pakistan must take Sou Moto action on the discovery of the mass graves.
The AHRC urges the United Nations to send a high powered fact finding mission to probe the presence of mass graves in Balochistan province, particularly in Khuzdar district. It must be pointed out that the people of Pakistan do not expect any proper and transparent investigation from their government and the security agencies as they themselves are involved in the killings and enforced disappearances and the concealment of such crimes, therefore, the importance of a UN report cannot be over emphasised.In the video of the incident, published on March 3, three attackers are seen throwing Dos Santos in a wheelbarrow and bashing her head with a large rock. According to the authorities, she was later taken to a nearby street, shot twice in the face, and beaten, though the killing is not shown in the video.
Brazil has the highest rates of trans-related murders in the world – about 16.4 percent higher than any other country – and according to Grupo Gay da Bahia, Brazil’s oldest association for the defense of the human rights of LGBTQ persons, nearly 1,600 Brazilians were killed in hate-motivated attacks over the past five years. The group says that by its calculations, a gay or transgender person is killed almost every day in the country of 200 million.
Dandara’s harrowing death is hardly an exception in Brazil. Last year a record 144 transgender people were murdered there. For context, the next-highest trans-related murder rate was in Mexico, where 52 transgender people were killed in 2016, followed by the United States, where 23 people were killed. Fourteen people were killed in both Colombia and Venezuela, according to Transrespect.org.
The victim, 42-year-old Dandara dos Santos, was beaten, tortured, and shot to death in Fortaleza, the coastal capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará, on Feb. 15. The video of her torture was uploaded to YouTube on March 3 and quickly spread on social media throughout the country.
A video showing the gruesome torture and beating of a transgender woman last month inspired outrage throughout Brazil and returned the world’s attention to the country’s struggle to stem anti-LGBT violence, specifically the rampant killing of transgender people.
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A video showing the gruesome torture and beating of a transgender woman last month inspired outrage throughout Brazil and returned the world’s attention to the country’s struggle to stem anti-LGBT violence, specifically the rampant killing of transgender people.
The victim, 42-year-old Dandara dos Santos, was beaten, tortured, and shot to death in Fortaleza, the coastal capital of the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará, on Feb. 15. The video of her torture was uploaded to YouTube on March 3 and quickly spread on social media throughout the country.
Dandara’s harrowing death is hardly an exception in Brazil. Last year a record 144 transgender people were murdered there. For context, the next-highest trans-related murder rate was in Mexico, where 52 transgender people were killed in 2016, followed by the United States, where 23 people were killed. Fourteen people were killed in both Colombia and Venezuela, according to Transrespect.org.
Brazil has the highest rates of trans-related murders in the world – about 16.4 percent higher than any other country – and according to Grupo Gay da Bahia, Brazil’s oldest association for the defense of the human rights of LGBTQ persons, nearly 1,600 Brazilians were killed in hate-motivated attacks over the past five years. The group says that by its calculations, a gay or transgender person is killed almost every day in the country of 200 million.
In the video of the incident, published on March 3, three attackers are seen throwing Dos Santos in a wheelbarrow and bashing her head with a large rock. According to the authorities, she was later taken to a nearby street, shot twice in the face, and beaten, though the killing is not shown in the video.
The police in Brazil have arrested three teenagers and two men in the connection with the attack. Officers said that the video helped them identify the suspects, but noted they were still looking for others.
This fatal event highlights the ongoing struggle for transgender people in South America’s most populous nation, where courts have taken a more progressive tack towards LGBTQ issues in recent years, including legalizing same-sex marriage in 2013, but where anti-LGBTQ-related violence remains on the rise.
As the country’s politics swing harshly back to the right after 14 |
་མི་མང་ཁག་ཅིག”).
Fake photograph of the meeting of “400 khampas”.
I quickly called an acquaintance connected to the main Chushigandruk organization, and asked about this news-report. He told me that it was a complete fake, and that 400 Khampas had not contacted the organization asking it to change its goal of Rangzen.
According to Tibet Times on Monday April 22 in the Hunsur resettlement camp in South India, a meeting was held at Gyurme monastery by monks and some people of Khampa background, just over 300 (“༣༠༠ ལྷག་”) in all.
Fours resolutions were passed at the meeting:
The 1st praised the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) branches in five South India settlements who had earlier called on the Tibetan Youth Congress to change its stand from independence to the Middle Way”. The 2nd called on the Chushigandruk organization to change its stand on Tibetan independence to that of the Middle way. The 3rd stated that the previous year (2012) a number of Khampa members of parliament had regrettably participated in a conference at Dharamshala organized by a Rangzen organization (The Tibetan National Congress). As the TYC was organizing a Rangzen Meeting this year. Khampa MPs were called on to not attend this meeting otherwise they would not be acknowledged as MPs in the future. The 4th declared full agreement and full support of the gathering for the Middle Way policy.
The strange thing about this document is that it was not signed by the “over 300 people” reported in the Tibet Times, nor any of their representatives. There was also no photograph in this report or anywhere else of the real meeting.
There are only five signatories at the end of the resolutions, four of whom signed as monastic officials of Gyurme monastery, and one as a former TYC Centrex member. None of the signatories also signed in any capacity as representing the Chushigandruk or any Khampa organization or as a representative of the gathering. This was clearly a meeting that had been organized by the Gyurme monastery or by at least by its leading monastic officials. The Tibet Times report provides two facsimile pages of the resolutions and the signatures.
2nd page of resolution of Hunsur meeting
Another very strange thing with the document is that copies do not appear to have been sent to the Tibetan Youth Congress or the Chushigandruk organization to whom the meeting was calling on to give up their mission goal.
Instead at the bottom of the second page there is a short list of organizations to whom copies were sent. The first copy was sent the Dalai Lama’s Gaden Phodrang Trust, the second to the Kashag, the third to the Standing Committee of the Parliament, and the fourth to various monasteries.
Why is the first copy of such a contentious and divisive political document being sent to the Dalai Lama’s Gaden Phodrang Trust? It was my understanding that after His retirement the Dalai Lama was going to use this “Trust” or “Foundation” for intellectual, philanthropic or religious purposes but certainly not for political purposes.
On the basis of this strange connection it could perhaps be postulated that someone in the Gaden Phodrang Trust instructed the Gyurme monastery to hold the so called “khampa” meeting on the 22nd of April, and the dutiful Gyurme monastic officials after faithfully doing what they were told, sent the first copy of their resolution back to the Gaden Phodrang Trust, to demonstrate that they had loyally carried out the instructions they had received.
Professor Samdong Rinpoche, likely director of Gaden Phodrang Trust
Going one step further one might argue the direction for the spate of recent attacks on Rangzen advocates may have originated from the alleged director of the Gaden Phodrang Trust, Samdong Rimpoche, who has a history of hostility to Tibetan activists and intellectuals. I was given to understand by a Dharamshala informant that Samdong Rinpoche sent Thomtok Trulku around to Tibetan communities in the USA to instruct them not to celebrate the centenary of the Great Thirteenth’s declaration of independence.
Thomtok Rinpoche, abbot of Namgyal Monastery
In the matter of the TYC chapters in South India demanding that the Tibetan Youth Congress give up its fundamental goal and cancel the planned International Rangzen Conference (of 23- 25 May) we do not, of course, have as direct a link to Samdong Rinpoche as the Gyurme monastery letter to the Ganden Phodang Trust.
But one could perhaps ask why, of the TYC’s 87 chapters, only four in Tibetan settlements in South India took this perverted stand. Could it be that they happen to exist in proximity to and under the influence of all the great Gelukpa monasteries of Drepung, Ganden, Sera, Gyurme, etc., etc., who are in turn controlled or at least influenced by the Gaden Phodrang Trust, and its alleged director? But that, I will admit, is conjecture. More investigation and more hard information is needed to fully expose this sordid conspiracy that is turning His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s retirement undertaking into a hotbed of intrigue, conflict and even collaboration.
What is not conjecture is that the demand for the Tibetan Youth Congress to give up its core principle, or for the Chushigangdruk to give up its fundamental goal of fighting for Tibetan independence and to accept China’s tyranny, is as ridiculous and brazen as a demand for the monks of the aforementioned monasteries to give up Buddhism and convert to Islam. Ask yourself this simple question. If you belong to, let us say, the International Vegetarian Union (IVU) and you decide one day you want to eat meat. What would you do? Would you demand that this august vegetarian organization give up its raison d’être, its whole reason for existence, just to suit your convenience? No, of course not. You would simply resign and find yourself a nice steak-house or a Momo place, and get started on your new diet.
Those people calling themselves khampas or TYC members (and their instigators) making these shameless demands are, as far as I am concerned, “fake” khampas, “fake” shonus (TYC members) and ultimately “fake” Tibetan participating in an exercise in criminal deception in much the same way as those Chinese in Khampa disguises did in 1958. These people are clearly operating under false pretenses, and should be, at the bare minimum, kicked out, tout de suite, from the TYC and Chushigandruk.
The leaders of these historic freedom fighting organizations being attacked by those using the Dalai Lama remarks at Ladakh or Salugara, should not be discouraged or deterred from their noble mission. When the Chushigandruk started its military campaign against the Chinese, the Tibetan government and even the Dalai Lama himself issued condemnations of the resistance force. In his biography His Holiness writes that on his flight he met some leaders of the Khampas and talked to them frankly and apologized to them. “I asked them not to be annoyed at the government proclamations which had described them as reactionaries and bandits, and told them exactly how the Chinese had dictated these and why we had felt compelled to issue them.”
In My Land and My People the Dalai Lama’s also explains, categorically and at length, that his efforts to cooperate with Beijing and make Tibet an autonomous region within the PRC (which might be called His Middle Way prequel) was a complete failure and that the only way forward for Tibet was as an independent nation. Right now the current Middle Way policy is proving to be even more of a failure than its ’50 to ’59 prequel. Chinese population transfer to Tibet is increasing exponentially, and the crushing weight of China’s monstrous security apparatus in Tibet is forcing Tibetans, particularly Lhasa citizens, to flee to the (relative) freedom of Chinese cities. The Dalai Lama himself makes a passing reference to this in his Salugara talk (official CTA translation) as evidence of the “immense freedom” in China. Hundreds of thousands of Tibetan nomads are being driven out of their grasslands into walled settlements resembling Stalinist concentration camps and into desperate lives of penury and alcoholism. China’s large-scale and forcible seizure of farms and grasslands, and the large-scale and extensive mining operations throughout Tibet, are driving the population to chronic unemployment, poverty, and extreme political, cultural and economic marginalization. Few Tibetans are getting even such low-level, dangerous jobs as miners, as the casulty figures from the Metrogongar mining disaster reveal. There can be no doubt that Tibetans as a race are being driven inexorably into what can only be described as virtual extinction.
The 117 heroic self-immolators have through their actions “to protest Chinese rule” – a phrase now used near consistently by the international media (just Google the phrase) and which is the near equivalent of saying they want independence – have demonstrated to the world that they are calling for His Holiness’s return to a Tibet free of Chinese rule – an independent Tibet. Not a single self-immolator or single street protester in Tibet has ever expressed support for the Middle Way Policy. Those advocating the Rangzen cause should stand firm, secure in the knowledge that the courage of their comrades inside Tibet has begun to expose China’s sinister treachery behind the Middle Way Policy, and that the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government will soon call on them, the very people they are now condemning, to save the day, just as they did back in 1959.
Before signing off, a return where to where we started. The Chushigangdruk in 1958 were able to capture some of the fake Khampas whom they executed, from what I gather. They also caught a few actual bandits who had posed as resistance fighters. They shot two and gave another a hundred lashes on his butt and let him go. This last character is dead and it probably serves no purpose to release his name, but it might be mentioned that he escaped to Kathmandu where he later became a big-time ku-tsong gyap-ngen, or a trafficker in sacred objects. What the Catholic church would call a simonist.
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* Claire Harris, The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics and the Representation of Tibet. The University of Chicago Press. 2012.Voting booths in Kansas in the 1996 presidential election. (Cliff Schiappa/Associated Press)
A member of President Trump's voter fraud commission, former Arkansas state representative David Dunn, has died from complications during surgery, his office said.
Dunn, 52, was among five Democrats on the 12-member Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, a panel launched by Trump in the wake of his unsubstantiated assertion that fraudulently cast ballots cost him the popular vote last year against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Dunn, who ran a government relations firm, was undergoing surgery Monday to repair an aortic aneurysm.
[Trump voter fraud commission researcher arrested on child pornography charges]
He was recommended for the voting commission by the Republican secretary of state of Arkansas, who has a working relationship with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), the vice chairman of the commission.
“I think they were looking for a Southern Democrat to serve on the commission for some diversity,” Dunn said in an interview in July, before the panel’s first meeting.
Dunn said he was skeptical of Trump’s claim about losing the popular vote because of illegal voting and of claims of widespread voter fraud more broadly. But, he added, “I’m certainly open to considering what makes people feel that way.”
Sad to hear fellow #voterfraud Comm. David Dunn has passed. He was courageous to serve, courteous in his manners, and kind to everyone. — J. Christian Adams (@ElectionLawCtr) October 17, 2017
On Tuesday, fellow commissioner J. Christian Adams, a Republican, said on Twitter that he was saddened by Dunn’s passing.
“He was courageous to serve, courteous in his manners, and kind to everyone,” Adams said.Seoul - A Thai law student arrested for sharing a critical article about his country's new king that was posted on Facebook is 2017's winner of South Korea's most prestigious human rights award.
Organisers for the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights said the parents of Jatupat "Pai Dao Din" Boonpattararaksa will receive the award on his behalf on Thursday at a ceremony in Gwangju city.
Police in Thailand arrested Jatupat in December for sharing a profile about King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun that was posted on Facebook by the Thai-language service of the BBC.
The article included mentions of the king's personal life when he was crown prince, including details of three marriages that ended in divorce and other material Thai news media are prohibited from publishing.
Under Thai law, insulting the monarchy is a crime that carries a prison term of three to 15 years. Critics say the country uses the law to silence political dissidents.
Busadee Santipitaks, spokesperson for the Thai foreign ministry, said it had "no particular reaction" to the award ceremony.
Jatupat, who was indicted in February and has been denied bail several times, is the only person to be charged over posting the BBC article, although it was shared nearly 3 000 times.
He is a prominent member of Dao Din, a small student organisation that has protested against Thailand's military government.
Jatupat had been put under close watch by Thai authorities since November 2014, when he and several other Dao Din members held up a three-fingered salute, a resistance gesture borrowed from "The Hunger Games" movies, during a speech by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, chief of a military junta that took power in a coup six months earlier.
Jatupat was also among about a dozen students arrested in June 2015 for participating in anti-government protests, before a military court released the students 12 days later, according to the award's organisers.
The May 18 Memorial Foundation, which organises the Gwangju Prize, said in a statement that Jatupat's "strength, courage and indomitable struggle" showed he is "willing to sacrifice his safety and future to protect democracy and the rights and freedom of his people".
The prize, which rewards contributions in human rights and democracy, was created in 2000 to honour a democratic uprising in Gwangju in May 1980 that South Korea's then-military dictatorship violently suppressed, leaving hundreds dead.
An official from the May 18 Foundation said it requested that Thailand release Jatupat so he could receive the award personally, but the Thai government sent a refusal through its embassy in South Korea earlier this month, saying that the country was handling Jatupat properly based on its laws. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing office rules.The prevailing theory around Game of Thrones Season 6 is that this is the year book readers won’t be able to predict what’s going to happen. But is that actually true? Trailers have confirmed that in certain plotlines, the HBO series is actually going backwards to revisit old, abandoned plots from A Dance with Dragons, A Feast for Crows, and even further back than those books. Add to that revealing interviews and contextual clues from trailers and preview clips, and it’s actually quite possible to predict some of the big twists and turns that are in store for the residents of Westeros and Essos this year. Here are our best guesses at the big moments in store this year. It’s all speculation, but the spoiler-averse should read at their own risk.
Are they gone? Good.
Daenerys Gets a New Dothraki Horde
In most of the Daenerys footage and images we’ve seen from Season 6, the former khaleesi is captive and submissive to the Dothraki. But book readers don’t expect she’ll stay that way for long. In George R.R. Martin’s original outline for the A Song of Ice and Fire series, Dany doesn’t spend several novels (or seasons) wandering Essos freeing the slave cities. When Khal Drogo dies, she uses her dragons to get an all-new khalasar. And if baby dragons could win her a loyal Dothraki army in the books (and, to a certain, depleted extent, in Season 1), then imagine what the full force of Drogon will get her. Daenerys’s biggest dragon may not have been by her side when the Dothraki nabbed her at the end of Season 5, but he’s napping right around the corner. When he wakes up to find the mother of dragons gone, what will he do to get her back? And if his rescue involves an impressive display of fire, doesn’t that seem like effective recruitment material for Daenerys? Odds are she gets her army of horse lords (and some rumors from the set bear this out) and is finally back on track to hook up with the main Game of Thrones plot.
The Siege of Meereen
Another reason to think that Daenerys is done with her failed experiment as the great white savior of Slaver’s Bay is the Siege of Meereen. In the books, this attack on Daenerys’s old home comes from outside the walls, but footage in the trailers leads many to believe that it’s the good ol’ Sons of the Harpy that make life impossible for Tyrion, Varys, and the rest. Dany was holding on to the city with a dragon’s wing and a prayer; with her gone, even an accomplished statesman like Tyrion may not be able to hold back the rising tide of discontent. We do know there will be a new Red Priestess or two in town and rumor has it they are stumping for Dany (who they, rightly, see as a reasonable Stannis replacement as the messiah they were promised). But as Stannis proved last season, even an endorsement from R’hllor doesn’t guarantee victory.
Daenerys Arrives in Westeros
So was all that Slaver’s Bay nonsense a waste of time? Maybe not. I’m hopeful Daenerys learned a thing or two about ruling. (Like don’t have your lover Daario execute someone in front of an angry mob for you.) Daenerys is going to need all the political savvy she can muster because many suspect that before this season ends she’ll be headed into the viper’s nest that is Westeros. Specifically, that she might be headed to Dorne, which would be a natural first landing spot on a ship or dragon’s journey from Meereen.
Rumor places both Conleth Hill (Varys) and Diana Rigg (Lady Olenna) in Dorne, and they’d be very powerful allies for Daenerys, Tyrion, and that freshly recruited Dothraki horde. Varys, we know, is pro–Targeryen Restoration, and after the way Margaery and Loras were treated last year, Lady Olenna has every reason to work against the interests of the Lannisters. Daenerys may not have time to do much of anything in Westeros this season, but odds are that soon a dragon will fly over King’s Landing just as it did in Bran’s Season 4 vision. Seeing Daenerys finally set foot (or at least dragon talon) on Westerosi shores would be a huge moment.
We Close the Door on Essos
In fact, with maybe only 13 episodes to go after this season ends, most people expect Arya, too, will head back to Westeros by the end of Season 6. There’s no concrete evidence for this—she’s still in Essos in the books—but there are a few hints. We know conditions between Arya and fellow trainee, the Waif, are not improving. We see the pair fighting (and not in a fun, training-montage way) throughout the trailers. We also see Arya out of her trainee sack, back in her street clothes, and possibly on the run. Tom Wlaschiha has hinted that his character, Jaqen H’ghar, has a long-term plan for Arya, and most expect that plan doesn’t involve her getting the stuffing beaten out of her in badly lit rooms for two more seasons.
There’s one more reason to believe Arya might be headed home this year. In the books, blind Arya finds herself communing with her direwolf Nymeria who we last saw way back in Season 1. Book readers know that Nymeria has been busy since amassing a fearsome pack of wolves. So when rumors of wolf-pack scenes surfaced from the Season 6 set, book fans got excited that maybe Nymeria could be back and sending thoughts of home to Arya. (The psychic link between the Starks and their wolves has been underplayed in the HBO series.) Will Arya Stark respond to the call of her pack? Those bored with her House of Black and White internship hope she will.
The Starks Re-unite
Because if Arya manages to get herself back to Westeros by the end of the season, that means she’s primed to join what many hope will be a massive Stark family reunion. The Starks have been mostly scattered since Season 1, with a few near misses (Jon and Bran at Craster’s Keep, Arya and Sansa at the Eyrie) to keep hope of their eventual reunion alive. But things are looking very good for some Stark reunions this year, with Sansa heading north from Winterfell with the knowledge that her brothers Bran and Rickon are alive and (mostly) well. Rickon and the wildling Osha were headed to Last Hearth, the House Umber home that’s conveniently smack in the middle between Sansa and the Wall. If Sansa manages to run into Brienne in those snowy woods around Winterfell, she might find out that her sister, Arya, is also alive. With Sansa taking a leadership position in the House Stark cause (you saw that direwolf on her new dress, right?), a clear goal will probably be to re-unite her family.
Bran is also likely headed Sansa’s way. It appears the Night’s King and his icy cohorts will attack the cave where Bran, Hodor, Meera, Jojen, and the Three-Eyed Raven [Max von Sydow] have been chilling for a season. Things look bad for the Three-Eyed Raven (Von Sydow may be making a habit of dying to protect franchise heroes), but very hopeful for the Starks to all converge near either Winterfell or the Wall. So audiences will probably see a couple of Starks embrace for the first time since Rickon left Bran in Season 3.
Jon Snow Returns
And while his last name may be Snow, we’ll count Jon in on that family reunion. The Lord Commander is almost certainly coming back to life, and while that might not come as a huge shock to viewers plugged into Internet speculation, there’s still plenty of room for big Jon Snow drama. Not even book readers know how Jon Snow will come back but we know, thanks to trailer footage of juicy flashbacks, that show watchers and fans of the novel alike will probably (finally) know for certain who Jon Snow’s real parents are. And if he were to leave the Night’s Watch (I think mutiny is a good enough excuse for him to abandon his oath) and join forces with Sansa in rallying the North against the Boltons, then we’ll see Jon as a true heir to Ned Stark—even if he’s not Ned’s actual son.
The Battle of the Bastards
Season 6 trailers have revealed that there will be a huge battle—probably around Episode 9 as per tradition—between the Boltons, the Wildlings, and some various Northern houses. According to the trailers, Ser Davos, Sansa, Tormund, Wun Wun the giant, Ramsay Bolton, and probably Jon Snow are all there to do battle for Winterfell. (Michael McElhatton, a.k.a. Roose Bolton, said as much in a recent interview.) Producer Bryan Cogman has said that the new season will feature the biggest battle Game of Thrones has ever attempted, and given the battle for Castle Black and Blackwater, that’s saying a lot. The Battle of the Bastards (so nicknamed by fans because it’s Ramsay vs. Jon) is sure to be a show-stopper with plenty of significant deaths to keep audiences on the edge of their seats.
The Siege of Riverrun
But the Battle of the Bastards isn’t the only big fight we’ll see in Season 6. Trailer shots of Jaime riding around a Lannister camp in the Riverlands confirm that the Siege of Riverrun—which is actually from the books—is happening in Season 6. The Freys want Riverrun, the old Tully family home, and Catelyn’s uncle Brynden “Blackfish” Tully is disinclined to give it to them. Jaime has to go out there to try to broker a deal. The Lannisters are obviously allies with the Freys (“The Lannisters send their regards,” you remember), but the conflict is complicated by the fact that Brienne, loyal to the Starks, is definitely going to Riverrun and will likely offer her services to Sansa’s great-uncle Brynden. So that puts Brienne and Jaime back in the same place together (yay!) but at odds (boo!). We know this showdown won’t happen until the end of the season because a) Brienne and Pod have to make their way down from the North, and b) Jaime has a lot of business to conduct in King’s Landing first. There’s a daughter to bury, a sister to bone, and a daughter-in-law (Margaery, remember her?) to rescue from the hands of the Sparrows. We see Jaime in the trailers riding up to the stairs of the sept with the full force of the Tyrell army behind him. So it’s a big year for Jaime heading up armies is what I’m saying. Well, anything’s better than Dorne.
A Greyjoy Blows a Dragon Horn
I know you won’t believe me when I tell you exciting things are going to go down in Theon’s home of the Iron Islands, but it’s (potentially) true. In the books, Theon Greyjoy’s terrible father, Balon, died a long time ago, but from the trailer it looks like he’s finally about to go this season. That means the Greyjoys need a new leader and their laws of succession are a little funky. They hold something called a Kingsmoot, which is probably as close as we get to a democratic election in Westeros. Theon’s tough sister, Yara, is one candidate. But Theon’s dashing uncle Euron (newcomer Pilou Asbaek) is also on the scene to throw his hat into the ring. I’m not always right about which new characters will be fan favorites (I correctly called Pedro Pascal’s Oberyn, but was dead wrong about the Sand Snakes), but if I had to guess based on Asbaek’s natural charisma and the allure of the character on the page, I’d say Euron has a shot at delighting audiences this season.
But a fun new character does not a great big Game of Thrones moment make. And the Iron Islands have never exactly been a treat to visit. But in the books, Euron handily wins the Kingsmoot by blowing Dragonbinder, a horn he rescued from the ruins of Valyria that allegedly has the power to control dragons. He also says he knows where he can get his hands on a dragon or three. So Yara may be headed to Meereen (will she get there before the city falls?) to try to join forces with Daenerys and Tyrion. And what’s clear from all of this is that with only a few more episodes to go, all the plot threads (yes, even the boring Greyjoy ones) are starting to knit together.
And Much, Much More
Those are all the twists and turns book readers and close-trailer-watchers can reasonably expect from Season 6, but there’s potential for much, much more. For a complete rundown of the craziest book theories and discarded book plots (including Lady Stoneheart, Coldhands, Cleganebowl, and more) that stand a solid chance of making it into the show this year, you can go here.
Get Vanity Fair’s HWD Newsletter Sign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood. E-mail Address SubscribeThe 2017 U.S. Championship is an elite national championship event, featuring 12 of the strongest chess players in America. Over the course of eleven rounds, these competitors will battle for $194,000 in prize money, qualification into the World Championship cycle, and the coveted title of 2017 U.S. Champion. At A Glance Dates March 27 - April 10, 2017 Location Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis Format 12-Player Round Robin Prize Fund $194,000 Commentators Learn about our live broadcast and audience commentators. Spectators Click here to purchase tickets.
Date Time* Event Monday, March 27 Player Arrival Tuesday, March 28 6:30 PM Opening Ceremony
Wednesday, March 29 1:00 PM Round 1 Thursday, March 30 1:00 PM Round 2 Friday, March 31 1:00 PM Round 3 Saturday, April 1 1:00 PM Round 4 Sunday, April 2 1:00 PM Round 5 Monday, April 3
Rest Day Tuesday, April 4 1:00 PM Round 6 Wednesday, April 5 1:00 PM Round 7 Thursday, April 6 1:00 PM Round 8 Friday, April 7 1:00 PM Round 9 Saturday, April 8 1:00 PM Round 10 Sunday, April 9 1:00 PM Round 11 Monday, April 10 1:00 PM Playoff (if necessary)
6:30 PM Closing Ceremony * All times listed are CDT (GMT-5).
U.S. Championships Prize Fund PLACE PRIZE PLACE PRIZE 1st $50,000 7th $9,000 2nd $35,000 8th $8,000 3rd $25,000 9th $7,000 4th $20,000 10th $6,000 5th $15,000 11th $5,000 6th $10,000 12th $4,000 Total Prize Fund $194,000
In addition, the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis will sponsor the “$64,000 Fischer Bonus Prize”. Any player that finishes the U.S. Championships field with a perfect 11-0 score shall be awarded an additional $64,000.
The 2017 U.S. Championship is the FIDE zonal championship for the United States.
Live Spectator Accommodations
The Club has special hotel rates with the following establishments. Please make sure to ask for the "chess rate" when making reservations. To purchase tickets, please visit the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis website.
U.S. Chess Championship Sponsors
County Executive Steve Stenger
Mayor Francis Slay- Confrontation mode will return when it is rebalanced
- acting on XVM win prediction is “self-deception” according to Evilly – even 45-46 winrate players can carry a game
- troll platoons will be fixed
- apparently, developers were planning a system, where you get notified, when someone you reported gets banned. This function however is tied to the “new chat” system, which is not developed yet.
- regarding the question above, Storm states that the developers are working on a chat system, unified for all three games, the server side is ready and it’s already partially in use in WoT
- Storm states that PvP historical battles with “simulator” motion mechanics (as in, very historical tank motion) would be played by too few people (points out that War Thunder tanks are played by very few people)
- new regular vehicles will come next year
- apparently, an improved tutorial (along with extended tank info, such as armor inspector) are planned for next year
- in the future, team battles will have a mode for tier 10′s
- Battlefield series have different target audience than WoT according to Storm
- Evilly states that the problem with leavers in Garage Battle mode is perhaps the most important one – if they are banned from leaving, they will actively undermine their own team. It’s possible that the leaver punishment for garage battles will have to be stricter than it is now in WoT
- Storm confirms: FV4005 Stage 2 will be tier 10 TD
- the option to flip tanks on their roof will come with new motion physics
- Q: “When will we have a good sound engine, capable of “bending sound” around obstacles like in BF4?” A: “As soon as we can afford to have 10 Gb of sound content”
- for Wargaming, client size is a very, very important parameter
- there are plans to transfer WoT to new version of Bigworld – again.
- IS-7 lowres HD model will not be fixed in 9.4DAVIE — The words were barely out of the questioner’s mouth and Ryan Tannehill began to answer.
“Who are a few players who made the most growth and progress this spring?” I asked.
“DeVante,” Tannehill said. “Definitely DeVante.”
DeVante as in Parker. And Tannehill had lots to say about DeVante, as in Parker, Miami’s former first-round draft choice.
Is there anyone whose opinion on the subject matters more than #17, the man throwing Parker the ball?
Nope.
Not even coach Adam Gase. Obviously not you or I, and I witnessed Parker make exciting catch after catch this spring.
“I think coming into OTA’s, DeVante was a guy that had been on our radar,” Tannehill said over the weekend. “He came back healthy. He’s been struggling with his foot and hamstring his first two years. And he finally got healthy over the offseason. And starting in March, I got to see his explosiveness. Straight-line speed. In and out of his breaks. Unbelievable. Obviously he’s always had the range, the hands, now he’s been fine-tuning his route running. It’s been really fun for me to sit back and say you know this guy is really improving and could take a big step this year. If we can keep him healthy.”
Health is always the caveat.
But Gase even noted that Parker is coming a bit out of his shy shell in meetings and around teammates.
Parker hasn’t said much since his arrival. He’s a soft-spoken guy.
But he can be an absolute thoroughbred on the football field.
Parker has shown he can make all the catches — long bombs, medium-range sideline grabs, yards-after-catch screens.
And guess what Parker has earned in the past few months?
Tannehill’s trust.
RELATED STORY: [7 Miami Dolphins with extremely enormous upside]
I mentioned to Tannehill that not many may realize that Parker had more catches (56) and receiving yards (744) than Kenny Stills (42 and 726), who earned a mega-deal in the offseason.
And Parker played in 15 games, starting 8, while Stills started and played all 16.
This is not a knock on Stills, who led the team with nine receiving touchdowns.
It’s to show that biggest reason some wonder if Parker will be a bust is his inability to stay healthy, not his inability as a football player.
As for Parker’s numbers? They’re going to grow.
Take note millions of American fantasy football players.
They’re going to grow. Like Parker.
My source? Tannehill.
“I think you’re going to see that continue to grow,” he said. “We got to see (Parker) start to build that confidence last year, going up to make a few plays. I think of the play in San Diego, when I scrambled an threw it up and he goes up and gets it. One at home against Arizona or San Francisco, ended up being incomplete because he stepped on the line. But he makes big plays. You got to see some of his play-making ability. As his confidence grows he’s only going to continue to make more of those.”
There were a few others who showed growth for the Miami Dolphins’ offense this spring.
Leonte Carroo looks much, much faster and committed.
Jay Ajayi seems to be improved as a receiver.
But when I asked Tannehill to name a few guys who showed the most growth and progress this spring, he named one.
DeVante Parker.
Take note.
Miami Dolphins: Ryan Tannehill explains taking more risks, testing windows
Miami Dolphins: Ryan Tannehill opens up about how fatherhood has changed him
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Miami Dolphins: Thursday’s minicamp practice report
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Miami Dolphins want Ryan Tannehill not to overthink; let it rip
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Get Dolphins stories right to your Facebook by liking this pageFeb 7, 2017 | By Benedict
Desktop Metal, a 3D printing startup based in Burlington, Massachusetts, has raised $45 million in a Series C investment round from investors including Google, BMW, and Lowe’s. Desktop Metal will use the money to prepare for the launch of its first 3D printer later this year.
As Desktop Metal gets closer and closer to launching a compact 3D printer that can print with metals, people (and super-rich corporations) are starting to get very excited about the Burlington-based startup. So much so, in fact, that the company has just raised another $45 million from investors, taking its total investment up to $97 million since its founding in October 2015. Desktop Metal will use the money to continue preparing for the launch of its first 3D printer later this year.
And it’s not just faceless VCs pouring money into the exciting 3D printing startup either; it’s big names, companies who know more than a thing or two about revolutionary technology. GV (formerly Google Ventures) led the Series C round, and investors included BMW i Ventures and Lowe’s Ventures |
“‘s” from the preceding possessive noun? Or am I just being fanciful? — Steve Giannelli, Athens, OH. Hi there, Athens, Ohio, which is generally considered to be the Athens of Ohio. Hey, it beats being the Akron of Ohio. Just kidding. Athens is a lovely town, and bears the twin distinctions of being home to Ohio University and, not entirely coincidentally, the only place where I have actually been ordered to leave town by the local police. Something about “aggravated mopery and inciting to skepticism,” as I recall. But that was many years ago, and I shan’t hold it against your fair city. It’s true that I often write about the roots of slang, primarily because slang terms tend to be both more fun and more mysterious in origin than “standard” English words and phrases. My readers also tend to ask about slang terms more often, which is not surprising since one of the characteristics of slang is that it tends to be the distinctive vocabulary of an “in” group (even if that group is quite large, such as teenagers) and designed to be unintelligible to those not in the group (such as adults). Oddly enough, linguists have been arguing for more than a century about precisely how to define “slang.” In a 1978 article in the journal American Speech, linguists Bethany Dumas and Jonathan Lighter suggested four criteria, meeting any two of which would qualify a term as “slang”: (1) use of the term lowers “the dignity of formal or serious speech or writing,” (2) its use implies familiarity with the thing itself or a with group familiar with the thing (e.g., calling motorcycles “choppers”), (3) its use would be forbidden or avoided in conversation with persons of greater social status (e.g., you wouldn’t say “groovy” when your boss asks how lunch with a client went), and (4) it replaces a conventional synonym that the user wishes to avoid for various reasons (e.g., saying a relative “croaked” rather than “died”). Given that slang has proven so hard to define, it’s not surprising that the origins of the word “slang” itself, which first appeared in the mid-18th century, have proven equally elusive. Your theory tying “slang” to the “lang” in “language” is actually one of the two most commonly proposed explanations of “slang.” The possessive “s” in such phrases as “thieves’ language” or “gypsies’ language” could indeed have been blended into “slang.” The other leading theory of “slang” traces it to Scandinavian roots, in particular the Old Norse “slyngva,” meaning “to sling,” found in the Norwegian “slengenamn” (“nickname”) and “slengja kjeften,” meaning “to verbally abuse” (literally “to sling the jaw”). Personally, I find this the more plausible of the two theories, but the Oxford English Dictionary and other reputable etymological sources don’t find either theory convincing and still label “slang” as “origin unknown.” Tweet Pin It Hangover Home Flack, Flak »“Buddha was asked, ‘What have you gained from meditation?’ He replied, ‘Nothing.’ ‘However,’ Buddha said, ‘let me tell you what I lost: anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity, fear of old age, and death.’”
“I never get stressed.”
I used to say and think this all the time when I saw someone freaking out about an upcoming test, a bad grade, relationship problems, or a boss or coworker.
I had a false sense of being “carefree” because I wouldn’t get stressed over the trivial things that most people did.
I was a “battle hardened” soldier recently back from a deployment in Afghanistan. When I saw people worry about those inconsequential things, I would think to myself, “Please, you have no idea what it means to be stressed.”
As it turns out, my understanding of stress was wrong. It’s also wrong for a lot of people who believe they aren’t stressed.
It wasn’t until I started meditating three years after my deployment that I started to realize that I was stressed—just in a different way and from different things than most people.
After meditating every day for a couple months, my “ah-ha” moment finally hit me.
I was sitting in traffic, late for an appointment (I hate being late), watching all the people around me freaking out. For once, I was calm and collected sitting in that traffic, thinking, “Why freak out about something I can’t change?”
That was when I really started to see the benefits and began reflecting on my past.
I realized that since returning from my deployment, I had become very irritable, not a great people person, and had very little patience.
The reaction time between something happening and my response was almost immediate.
If my girlfriend confronted me about a problem, I would immediately either get defensive and blame her or just shut down and ignore her.
Literally all of this started to change, just from consistently meditating for eight minutes a day!
My life has been drastically different since then. I am much more calm and collected. I don’t get upset over little things, especially if they’re out of my control.
My response time to a stimulus has greatly increased so I can choose the type of reaction I have and think about what to say.
My relationship with my wife (the same girlfriend from before) is incredible, and we know how to communicate like mature adults by allowing time to see the reality of a situation and choose how we respond to it.
I’ve brought about an awareness that allows me to continually grow as a person and manage the hidden stressors that often go by unnoticed.
This is just part of a long list of benefits from meditation, and I could go on and on… like how nice it is to be able to travel in third world countries without constantly keeping an eye out for ambushes or looking for my next piece of cover (a habit I had from deployment).
Although it’s great to talk about meditation and its benefits, what I really want people to understand is that there may be a lot more stress in your life than you realize, and when you meditate you become aware of that stress and are able to shift how you respond to it.
When it comes to this type of stress, the older you are, the worse it gets.
If you have ten, twenty, thirty-plus years of having negative experiences without intentionally prioritizing positive ones, you are much more likely to easily become stressed and have a negative view of the world.
The more hidden stress you experience, the more efficient your body gets at activating your physiological stress response, commonly known as “fight or flight” mode.
Ask yourself this: Were you, or someone you know, once “carefree” but are now afraid of heights, flying, and think natural disasters and shootings are about to happen whenever you leave home?
Well, you can thank your body’s efficient adaptability for that. The more stressful situations you have (and yes, watching all the negative things on the news is stressful), the more your body thinks it needs to switch into the fight or flight response to keep you safe.
That means your brain becomes more efficient at recognizing even the smallest of stressors, and less efficient at calming down or noticing positive things.
For me, it was a condensed time period that required a lot of worst-case scenario thinking. When you are constantly exposed to driving on roads with IEDs (improvised explosive devices), that stress response will condition your physiology to tell you that roads are a very dangerous place.
The same thing happens if you only watch the news; you’ll have a very misconstrued perception of the world, and you’ll be constantly feeding the bias your brain has for negative experiences.
Evolutionarily, your brain has needed to remember negative experiences to protect you much more than it needed to remember positive experiences. It takes time to undo this wiring of neural pathways that your brain has put in place. But it can be done, and meditation is a great way to build new “positive pathways” in your brain.
There’s an enormous amount of ways to meditate so I’ll share what I’ve personally done and am still doing, in the hopes that it will help you as well.
1. Basic mindfulness meditation
I started my practice with a book called 8 Minute Meditation. It takes you through a series of different styles, most of which I liked. But from this I continued to do a simple meditation every morning of focusing on my breath. Just doing this lead me to the “ah-ha moment” I mentioned earlier.
2. Meditation apps
I also use a couple different apps now that I like to use mid-day or at night. In particular, I like the “loving kindness” options, also known as “focus on positive”. This is perfect for trying to counteract the negativity bias and rebuild positive neural pathways. There are a lot of options out there, including Calm, which is free.
3. Reading
This may not be thought of as meditation, but if meditation can be doing one task effortlessly with focused concentration on that one particular task, then reading is a type of meditation for me.
I easily enter what’s called “flow state” when I read. Not only that, I’m reading positive things which helps shape the way I think. The other end of this could also be “not watching the news”, just like I don’t like putting junk in my body by eating it, I don’t like putting junk in my body by watching/hearing it.
If reading isn’t quite your thing, then try listening to podcasts. Preferably podcasts that lift you up and feed your brain with positivity and learning. These can be easily listened to on your way to work, at the gym, cooking, walking, or you can just sit down and listen.
4. Walking
Walking is such an undervalued way to de-stress. I love walking for a lot of reasons, pretty much any major life decision my wife and I have made in the past few years has been made while walking.
In terms of meditation, walking meditation is an awesome practice. It’s a great way to bring about your awareness while getting the benefits of moving your body. Odds are, you walk at some point in your day. So if you’re strapped for time, use walking from the car to work as time to practice mindfulness.
After hating being late to the point of stressing out, I now tell myself, “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. In the here, in the now.” This has helped me drastically. Check out Thich Naht Hahn’s How to Walk for more.
There are a number of other ways to help you de-stress and become a more relaxed, positive person. These are just some ways to get started and feel less anxious, worried, and negative.
Start to use some of these strategies and it’ll feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders that you didn’t even know was there.
Meditation vector image via ShutterstockWHAT doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, it is a phrase that could well have been coined for Nathon Burns.
The Blackburn-born judo ace has had enough heartache, knock backs, near misses and bad times to make a lesser man walk away.
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Burns himself admits he has thought about packing it all in and getting a ‘normal’ job – after all, there is only so much one man can take.
But missing out on the London Olympics in 2012 (he went as a training partner) and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow back in August (he was first reserve) just serve to spur him on.
“I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about giving it all up and getting myself a job. A proper job,” said the 24-year-old. “But I know it will never happen because I won’t stop until I have succeeded and achieve everything I have set out to achieve.”
Burns knows the sport doesn’t owe him. That would be too simple. His aim is to achieve his goals and get to the Olympic Games in Rio in two years – but do so on his own terms.
“I went to London 2012 as a training partner and it was hard,” he said. “To be honest, I didn’t want to go. After missing out, it was probably the last place I wanted to be.
“But I am glad I went and I was there for my team-mates.
“I have had my knock backs, near misses and rough times. And some of it has been pretty depressing.
“But we all have had in one way or another and it’s how we use these downfalls in sport and in life that actually makes a difference.”
Burns is now busy trying to make a difference. The hard slog of qualifying for Brazil in two years time has already begun.
It is a quest that has taken him to the far flung corners of the globe.
He is currently in the United Arab Emirates taking part in the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam then he is off to the Mauritius Continental Open and then Grand Prix events in China and South Korea – frantically searching for those all-important Olympic Games qualifying points.
Burns’ prospects haven’t been helped by the fact he goes into those qualifiers having just recovered from a serious ankle injury. But he hopes a recent three-week training camp in Japan will give him the edge over his rivals.
“I have just got back from a solo three-week intense training block in Japan to give me a strong edge and preparation for the start of my Olympic qualifying,” said the former Our Lady and St John High School pupil.
“Abu Dhabi is a very tough event as the world’s best will be there so it will be difficult as it is my first competition since the injury. But I am confident I can do well.
“I expect to win gold at the Mauritius Continental Open and the aim is to medal on the Chinese and Korean Grand Prix events.”
Burns, who competes at under 66kg, is a member of the highly-acclaimed Camberley Judo Club – a club he has been a member of since the age of 16 when he left school and left Blackburn.
Olympians Craig Fallon, Ashley McKenzie and Karina Bryant – who won bronze at London 2012 – are all members. McKenzie, Danny Williams and Owen Livesey all won gold at the Commonwealth Games.
Burns has had to lurk in the shadows while his club-mates have enjoyed their moment in the spotlight.
“I was gutted missing out and seeing them living their dreams,” said Burns who won the British Open in 2011. “I would be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous but I just use it in the best way I can. It just makes me even more determined because I know my time will come.”
As well as having to compete against the best in the world, possibly Burns’ biggest opponent is funding – or lack of it.
He relies heavily on support from his parents, his club and MakeAChamp – a scheme that helps unfunded sportsmen and woman realise their dream.
“Saying I’m grateful is an understatement,” he said. “I am very lucky that my parents help me and my club is also a massive help and does what it can to support me.
“It is not nice to have to accept handouts but I am unfunded and that is unfortunately what I have to do. That is why I have signed up to MakeAChamp.
“It is a fund-raising platform for athletes. It is a way for us to reach out and explain what we do and what we are trying to do. It is also a way of asking generous people to donate small amounts instead of asking very few people for large donations.”
Burns comes from judo stock having been brought up on the mats at Beach and Shadsworth Judo Club run by his dad Joe Senior.
It goes without saying that dad is his biggest inspiration and the reason why he continues to chase his dream not matter what obstacles and challenges are thrown up.
“To be able to call this man my father is an incredible feeling,” added Burns. “He is my greatest role model and my inspiration.
“I wouldn’t be the judo player or the man I am without him. He is my mate and my mentor.”
Burns believes the hard work and sacrifices he has made since leaving his home town will pay off with a trip to Rio in 2016.
“I seriously believe Rio is my destiny,” he said. “If I get there is will be a massive achievement.
“Ever since I have been in judo, I have made sacrifices. From not going out with my mates to play because I was training when I was kid from leaving Blackburn when I was just 16.
“Even now, I only get back occasionally and that is the hardest thing because I miss my family.
“It does get me down at times and they are issues I have deal with.
“But I will never give up. These are the sort of situations that when you finally achieve your goals you appreciate them more.
“It is hard but if it was easy then it wouldn’t be worth doing it, would it.”Now that a national organization on reproductive medicine has formally allowed unmarried women to do so, women are increasingly becoming interested in freezing and preserving their eggs for future pregnancies.
Since November last year, women have been allowed to freeze their eggs without any medical reasons attached.
The Japan Society for Reproductive Medicine adopted guidelines allowing women to preserve their eggs cryogenically if they are concerned about a decline in reproductive function due to age or other reasons, while discouraging those aged 40 or older from preserving eggs and the use of frozen eggs in women aged 45 or older.
“I want to prioritize my career right now, so egg freezing is like taking out insurance for the future,” a woman in her 30s said.
Previously in Japan, cryogenic preservation of ova was generally restricted to women who ran the risk of losing the functions of their ovaries because of radiation therapy for cancer and other diseases.
The society adopted the new guidelines because more people are getting married later in life, making it harder for many women to become pregnant after marriage.
Repro Self Bank, a Tokyo-based private institution, launched an egg-freezing program in May 2013 and has since received inquiries from more than 500 people. So far, about 70 women with an average age of 37 have had their eggs frozen.
It costs about ¥700,000 to preserve 10 frozen eggs for one year, including the cost of collecting the eggs for cryopreservation at an affiliated hospital. An additional fee of around ¥10,000 per egg is required to extend cryopreservation by one year.
At a seminar held by the institute in mid-July in Tokyo, women in their 20s and 30s listened closely as its head, Noriko Kagawa, 37, explained the low fertility rate for late births.
A 32-year-old married businesswoman who attended the seminar said she has prioritized her career over raising a family as she thought “getting pregnant would be a handicap” at her male-dominated company.
But since her husband wants a baby, she thought about preserving her eggs “as insurance in case I can’t get pregnant naturally in the future.”
Participants in such seminars also include unmarried women and those concerned about growing old.
At Kyono Art Clinic facilities in Sendai and Tokyo, more than 10 healthy women have preserved their eggs cryogenically since last fall.
“Many women have a sense of urgency, wanting to freeze their eggs right away,” said Koichi Kyono, the clinic’s head.
Suggesting that many women do not have sufficient knowledge of the decline in egg quality and fertility rates that accompany aging, Kyono said, “Considering the physical strength needed to give birth and raise a child, it is better to become pregnant by natural means before around 34 years of age.”
Experts also warn that cryogenic preservation can lead women to procrastinate over giving birth and point out that the risks associated with becoming pregnant increase with age.
“Women may feel relieved by freezing their eggs, but they need to be aware that not only eggs but also the womb and veins get old,” said Ran Kawai, 54, a journalist well-versed in childbearing issues. “I want them to have a clear understanding of the risks involved in having their baby later in life.”Looking for news you can trust?
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Near the outset of his rant on Piers Morgan Tonight on Monday, conspiracy peddler Alex Jones warned that the Second Amendment is all that stands between democracy and dictatorship. “Hitler took the guns, Stalin took the guns, Mao took the guns, Fidel Castro took the guns, Hugo Chávez took the guns, and I’m here to tell you, 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!” he screamed.
Two days later, the Drudge Report published this visual echo of Jones’ claim:
Meanwhile, Google searches for “Hitler gun control” are spiking.
Of course, attempts to equate gun control with fascism are bogus. But the “Hitler took the guns” argument has long had a prominent and fairly effective role in America’s gun control debate despite its obvious reductionism.
Its origins can be traced back to at least the early 1980s, when opponents of a Chicago proposal to ban handguns invoked it in the largely Jewish suburb of Skokie by “reminding village residents that the Nazis disarmed the Jews as a preliminary to sending them to the gas chambers,” the Chicago Tribune reported. In 1989, a new pro-gun group called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership began arguing that the 1968 federal gun control bill once favored by the NRA’s old guard “was lifted, almost in its entirety, from Nazi legislation.” (That false claim is still being repeated.)
In 1994, JPFO founder Aaron Zelman implored the NRA’s board to seize on the alleged Nazi connection:
Some of you may even have figured out that unless the NRA changes its strategy, the law abiding firearm owner in America will go the way of the Jews in Nazi occupied Europe: extermination…The choice is yours; you can turn your back on a failed strategy—one of compromise with evil-doers—and attack the concept of “gun control” by exposing the Nazi roots of “gun-control” in America. Or, you can persist in a failed strategy, and accept your own extinction.
Whether or not the NRA was influenced by his advice, that same year its CEO, Wayne LaPierre, published Guns, Crime, and Freedom, in which he claimed, “In Germany, firearm registration helped lead to the holocaust,” leaving citizens “defenseless against tyranny and the wanton slaughter of a whole segment of its population.” The following year, President George H.W. Bush famously resigned from the NRA after LaPierre attacked federal law enforcement officials as “jack-booted government thugs” who wore “Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms.” More recently, Stephen Halbrook, a lawyer who has represented the NRA, argued (PDF) that “if the Nazi experience teaches anything, it teaches that totalitarian governments will attempt to disarm their subjects so as to extinguish any ability to resist crimes against humanity.”
So did Hitler and the Nazis really take away Germans’ guns, making the Holocaust unavoidable? This argument is superficially true at best, as University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt explained in a 2004 paper (PDF) on Nazi Germany’s impact on the American culture wars. As World War I drew to a close, the new Weimar Republic government banned nearly all private gun ownership to comply with the Treaty of Versailles and mandated that all guns and ammunition “be surrendered immediately.” The law was loosened in 1928, and gun permits were granted to citizens “of undoubted reliability” (in the law’s words) but not “persons who are itinerant like Gypsies.” In 1938, under Nazi rule, gun laws became significantly more relaxed. Rifle and shotgun possession were deregulated, and gun access for hunters, Nazi Party members, and government officials was expanded. The legal age to own a gun was lowered. Jews, however, were prohibited from owning firearms and other dangerous weapons.
“But guns didn’t play a particularly important part in any event,” says Robert Spitzer, who chairs SUNY-Cortland’s political science department and has extensively researched gun control politics. Gun ownership in Germany after World War I, even among Nazi Party members, was never widespread enough for a serious civilian resistance to the Nazis to have been anything more than a Tarantino revenge fantasy. If Jews had been better armed, Spitzer says, it would only have hastened their demise. Gun policy “wasn’t the defining moment that marked the beginning of the end for Jewish people in Germany. It was because they were persecuted, were deprived of all of their rights, and they were a minority group.”
Gun enthusiasts often mention that the Soviet Union restricted access to guns in 1929 after Joseph Stalin rose to power. But to suggest that a better armed Russian populace would have overthrown the Bolsheviks is also too simplistic, says Spitzer. “To answer the question of the relationship between guns and the revolutions in those nations is to study the comparative politics and comparative history of those nations,” he explains. “It takes some analysis to break this down and explain it, and that’s often not amenable to a sound bite or a headline.”
(Ironically, pro-gun white nationalists have tried to stand the “Hitler took the guns” idea on its head by arguing that he was in fact a staunch supporter of the right to bear arms—for Aryans. William Pierce, author of the race war fantasy The Turner Diaries, made this claim in his book Gun Control in Germany, 1928-1945. So who’s behind the effort to paint Hitler as anti-gun? The Jews, of course.)
Even if President Obama suddenly unleashes his inner totalitarian, there’s no chance he could successfully round up all of America’s 300 million-plus firearms. Such an idea is practically and politically impossible. A tough assault weapons ban like one Democrats are currently proposing would affect just a fraction of the total privately owned firearms in the country. Yet by invoking the historical threat of disarmament, Spitzer says, “the gun lobby has worked to throw a scare into gun owners in order to rally them to the side of the NRA.”Lib Dem leader attacks police funding cuts made by Theresa May, but warns that terror attacks should not lead to more censorship or invasions of privacy
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, said police and security services were suffering from a lack of resources, rather than a lack of powers, during a BBC Question Time programme in which he was challenged over his party’s plans to roll back surveillance.
Farron said he firmly believed that terror attacks, such as those in London and Manchester over the past weeks, should not motivate an increase in censorship or invasions of privacy.
Under-fire Theresa May hits back over police cuts Read more
“What do the [terrorists] want us to do?” he said. “To give up on our freedoms and our liberties – those are the things we must not sacrifice otherwise the terrorists will have won.”
The Lib Dem leader was the first to take the stage in Edinburgh at the second of the Question Time leaders’ specials. It was originally scheduled for Sunday night but postponed after the London Bridge attack. David Dimbleby, the programme’s regular presenter, was unable to host the event because of preparations for Thursday’s general election programme, so Nick Robinson hosted the programme, which also featured Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader.
Farron said the programme had been “rightly postponed... to pay tribute to those who passed away, to stand in solidarity with their loved ones and the injured”.
He said that he had felt angry that the “utter wickedness” of the attacks could happen both in London and Manchester. “Was it because of a lack of surveillance or a lack of resources?” he said. “It seems to me that we have the powers to follow and track criminals... what we don’t have is sufficient pairs of eyes and pairs of hands in our security services and our police forces in order to pursue them and catch them.
“We are much safer if we invest in our police and our security services. The cuts that Theresa May has made in her years as home secretary and then prime minister have not made us safer.”
Farron was challenged over his party manifesto which pledged to “roll back” state surveillance, starting with the so-called “snoopers’ charter” on data retention which the Lib Dems opposed in coalition.
“What we have at the moment is an ever-widening haystack and we are looking for a needle and the answer is not to put more hay into the haystack, it’s to put more magnets around the haystacks so we can find the needles,” he said.
“Our security services need the ability to catch and trace people, but the evidence is not there to support the widening of powers,” he went on, citing the single use of temporary exclusion orders to prevent suspected terrorists from re-entering the country. “It was used once,” he said. “It’s not that we don’t have the powers.”
Why I've changed my mind about carrying a gun | Anonymous police officer Read more
Farron said that he was not in favour of routinely arming police, but said more investment was needed in training and recruiting armed officers. “We are the party that want to back our police. It’s easy and tempting for politicians to come up with a knee-jerk response. People are seeking answers and want to see action,” he said.
Khuram Butt, one of the three attackers who drove a van into pedestrians near London’s Borough Market and then attacked members of the public with knives, was apparently reported to anti-terror police by acquaintances, who have claimed that their concerns were ignored. Another of the London attackers, Rachid Redouane, was not known to the police or MI5, the police said.
Farron said it was essential the police retained the trust of the Muslim community. “The community out there are desperate to tackle terrorism and the police do not have the resources to enable them to do it,” he said. “That’s where the priority must be.”
Farron, who is a practising Christian, saw his early campaign dogged by questions over his attitude towards gay sex and abortion. Asked if he was conflicted between his faith and his politics, Farron said being a liberal and being religious were both parts of his identity.
“All these things make up who I am and you are all the blend of different identities... in a society like this which is so diverse and so balanced,” he said. The Lib Dem leader denied he believed homosexuality was a sin.
“I’m not somebody who wants to go round talking about my faith all the time … I’m not running to be the pope. I’m a political leader, not a religious one.”
Nicola Sturgeon appeared to take a firmer stance on whether the SNP would agree to anti-Tory pact with Labour if Jeremy Corbyn won the election on Thursday, telling one questioner she would be interested in her MPs joining “a progressive alliance” at Westminster.
The Tories have accused Sturgeon of planning to “prop up” a minority Labour government and claimed Corbyn wanted to do a deal with the SNP – claims that Sturgeon and Corbyn have rejected.
Pressed during the election campaign on whether she would support a minority Labour government, the SNP leader insisted last week she would not back a coalition but would back Labour issue by issue “to put forward progressive policies and see a progressive agenda”.
But in an apparent change of stance, Sturgeon told the Question Time audience: “I certainly would want to be part of an alliance, a more progressive alliance, if the arithmetic allowed it, that would keep the Tories out of power.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nicola Sturgeon on the BBC Question Time programme in Edinburgh, presented by Nick Robinson. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA
She said would never drop her demands for a new independence referendum immediately after Brexit to make it easier to strike a longterm deal with Labour.
Like Farron, Sturgeon expressed reservations about greater state surveillance and and anti-terrorism powers. She refused to commit the SNP to supporting Theresa May’s call for tougher powers, having previously voted against the so-called “snoopers charter”.
She told the audience that “knee-jerk responses were often the wrong ones,” and the security forces already had wide-ranging powers. However, Sturgeon said the SNP would study very carefully any proposals that might come forward.Carrie Mathison appears to be enlisting a high-powered ally in Washington for “Homeland’s” sixth season: a Commander-in-Chief who happens to be a woman.
“Homeland” star Claire Danes said Tuesday during a Q&A with exec producer/director Lesli Linka Glatter that the upcoming season will focus on a female president-elect navigating the transitional period between Election Day and the inauguration.
“Homeland’s” new president will not be a thinly veiled Hillary Clinton figure but rather “a composite of all the different candidates,” Danes said.
The character is a politician who “challenges the norms (and) is a little scary for that reason,” Danes said. And she added: “She gets along with Carrie Mathison pretty well,” a hint that suggests that Mathison may be back in a governmental position when season six begins in January.
Danes and Glatter discussed the intricacies of “Homeland’s” fifth season in a Q&A with Vanity Fair scribe James Wolcott, hosted by the New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center. The gabfest followed a screening of the Glatter-helmed second episode of season five, “The Tradition of Hospitality” (the one where Carrie and Otto During visit the refugee camp in Beirut).
Related Showtime Boss David Nevins on HBO, ‘Homeland’s’ Future & ‘Twin Peaks’
Wolcott praised the expansive, cinematic look and feel of the episode. Glatter noted that it was shot as the production team was still getting their bearings in Berlin, the locale for season five. And Glatter was quick to advise: “We actually don’t have a lot of money. We are very clever in how we use our production dollars.”
The conversation was punctuated with several other clips from season five, including the touching final moments of the season with Carrie at the hospital bed of Rupert Friend’s Quinn. Danes, who saw the sequence for the first time on Tuesday, noted that it was Friend who wrote the letter to Carrie that is read in voice-over.
“That was Rupert,” Danes said, noting that “Homeland” showrunner Alex Gansa asked the actor what he thought his character would want to convey to Carrie. “It’s so true of Quinn,” she said. Glatter admitted the first time she heard Friend’s narration of the letter she burst into tears. “The guy who never says anything says everything in such a poetic way,” she said.
Danes and Glatter gave no hints about what the future holds for Quinn but they did point out that they were unsure of his fate at the time the finale was shot. (Gansa has since confirmed that Quinn will be back in some form.) “We shot a couple of different versions just in case,” Danes said.
Among other highlights from the conversation:
Quinn’s powerful speech about the U.S. strategy in Syria in the season opener of season five — “You tell me what the strategy is and I’ll tell you if it’s working” — was lifted nearly verbatim from the briefings that the “Homeland” team does every year with members of the D.C. intelligence community. Those meetings are a big part of the reason why the show has been so prescient about real-world events. “We take the temperature” of the people they are depicting in the show, Danes said, which provides a “pretty accurate forecast of what’s to come.”
The finale of season five, in which Carrie averts a gas attack on a Berlin train station, was shot the day after the world was jolted by the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris. “That was really hard,” Danes said. “It was just a little too close.” Filming in the train station was also unpredictable because they had “no control over anything,” Glatter said. Danes was running around amid actual commuters. “It was really nutty — like a student film,” Danes said.
For Danes, playing off-the-meds Carrie is “a bit of a slalom.” She surfs the web for videos made by bipolar and OCD people who have created their own online communities. “It can be really exciting and exhilarating to play as a performer,” she said. But but the end of each season, Danes said she is “really schnockered” and “depleted,” both physically and emotionally. “It takes me a while to exfoliate,” she said.
Despite the numerous action sequences she has filmed behind the wheel, Danes is a terrible driver. “The crew is terrified whenever I have to take the wheel,” she said, which Glatter confirmed. But Danes enjoys doing action sequences especially when Glatter is directing. Glatter’s background as a choreographer is evident, Danes said. “She choreographs those action sequences as she would her dancers.”
Showtime’s decision to push the premiere of season six to January rather than stick with the show’s customary October debut means that Danes has more time to spend with her 3 1/2 year old son. “I get to have a summer,” she said, noting that filming in New York City won’t begin until August.
Danes revealed herself to be fan of HBO’s “The Wire,” which she hailed as “the best show ever.” “Homeland” has borrowed the structural idea from “Wire” of rebooting itself with a new storyline each year. “We consider different facets of this world every season,” she said. Glatter added: “We don’t go back to the same old hospital set.”
(Pictured: James Wolcott, Claire Danes, Lesli Linka Glatter)Josh Barnett had an answer on Monday for Jared Rosholt, the UFC heavyweight fighter who recently called Barnett out over Twitter.
"It's unusual for someone to actually call me out for once," the former UFC heavyweight champion said on Monday's edition of The MMA Hour. "But I mean, I guess if there was a possibility to make that fight, I would show the world exactly why I'm not the one call out."
Just don't expect Barnett to rearrange his schedule to make the fight happen. Barnett hasn't been seen in the Octagon since his first-round loss to Travis Browne at UFC 168, but he's been a busy man.
His activities, of course, include his most recent headline-making event, in which Barnett became the first person to submit Dean Lister in 16 years and won the Metamoris heavyweight title on Aug. 9 in Los Angeles.
Barnett went in to the submission grappling event representing the art of catch wrestling, which traces back to the earliest days of professional wrestling, with legitimate competitors who could take care of themselves in any situation, even if the wrestling business itself was something less than on the level.
"I just thought, |
Tony Richardson director.
Her stage work also included Edward Bond's Early Morning at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in which she played a lesbian Florence Nightingale, The Collector at St Martin's Theatre in the West End opposite Simon Williams, Mad Dog at Hampstead Theatre opposite Denholm Elliott, A Patriot for Me by John Osborne, at the Palace Theatre, Watford and the role of Lizzie Curry in N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker, which toured the UK and in which Faithfull's co-star was Peter Gilmore. Other film roles in the 1970s included Sophy Kwykwer in Stephen Weeks's Ghost Story (AKA Madhouse Mansion), released on a newly mastered DVD in the UK in 2009, and Helen Rochefort in Assault on Agathon.
Her television acting in the late 1960s and early 1970s included The Door of Opportunity (1970) with Ian Ogilvy,[49] adapted from W. Somerset Maugham's story, followed by August Strindberg's The Stronger (1971) with Britt Ekland,[50] and Terrible Jim Fitch (1971) by James Leo Herlihy, which once more paired Faithfull with Nicol Williamson.[51]
In 1993, she played the role of Pirate Jenny in The Threepenny Opera at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Later she performed Kurt Weill's "The Seven Deadly Sins" with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, a CD of which was released in 1998.
She has played both God and the Devil. She appeared as God in two guest appearances in the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous opposite friend Jennifer Saunders, with another close friend, Anita Pallenberg, playing the Devil. In 2004 and 2005, she played the Devil in William Burroughs' and Tom Waits' musical, The Black Rider, directed by Robert Wilson, which opened at London's Barbican Theatre, toured to San Francisco, but from which she was forced to withdraw prior to performances at the Sydney Festival, owing to exhaustion.
In 2001 Faithfull appeared with Lucy Russell and Lambert Wilson in C.S. Leigh's Far From China. She has also appeared in Patrice Chéreau's Intimacy (2001) and, in 2004, in Jose Hayot's Nord-Plage. Faithfull appeared as Empress Maria Theresa in Sofia Coppola's 2006 biopic, Marie Antoinette. She starred in the film Irina Palm, released at the Berlinale film festival in 2007. Faithfull plays the central role of Maggie, a 60-year-old widow who becomes a sex worker to pay for medical treatment for her ill grandson.[52]
Faithfull lent her voice to the 2008 film Evil Calls: The Raven, although this was recorded several years earlier when the project was still titled Alone in the Dark. She has appeared in the 2008 feature documentary by Nik Sheehan on Brion Gysin and the dreamachine, entitled FLicKeR.[53]
In 2008, Faithfull toured readings of Shakespeare's sonnets, drawing on the "Dark Lady" sequence. Her accompanist was the cellist Vincent Ségal.[45]
In 2011 and 2012 Faithfull had supporting roles in the films Faces in the Crowd and Belle du Seigneur.
Faithfull starred in a production of Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins at Landestheater Linz, Austria. The production ran from October 2012 to January 2013.[citation needed]
On 18 September 2013, Faithfull was featured in the genealogy documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing her family's roots, in particular her mother's side of the family in pre World War II Austria.
TV and filmography [ edit ]
Stage work [ edit ]
Work as an author [ edit ]
Faithfull: An Autobiography, Marianne Faithfull (1994), Cooper Square Press [54]
, Marianne Faithfull (1994), Cooper Square Press Memories, Dreams & Reflections, Marianne Faithfull (7 July 2008), Harper Perennial [55]
, Marianne Faithfull (7 July 2008), Harper Perennial Marianne Faithfull: A Life on Record, Edited by Marianne Faithfull and Francois Ravard, Contribution by Will Self and Terry Southern, Introduction by Salman Rushdie (2014), Rizzoli[56]
References [ edit ]Russia is sending troops to Crimea.” These are not just words for the whole world to see, but these are actions taken on behalf of my country, actions taken on behalf of the Russian Federation.
Troops are marching through the streets of Crimea today, on Shrove Tuesday, as the patriarch declares “I hope Ukraine will not resist.” Police forces stand on Manezhnaya Square in downtown Moscow, ready to grab and arrest those who have declared no to war. Detention units are taking out Bolotnaya prisoners for their daily hour-long walk in the prison yard: These people are locked up for having taken to the streets two years ago to demand fair elections. Troops, police, prison guards—they are all following the command, the command to crush resistance. The old prison tactic to set citizens against other citizens, giving one group a mandate to use physical and legal force against the other: This is also the tactic of Vladimir Putin.
There won’t be a record of our resistance in the history books because we will be arrested before we even reach the square to voice our opinions. There won’t be a record of the fact that the decision to send troops was made by Putin, who has seized power and is now speaking on behalf of my country. History will only see the words “Russia,” “troops,” “indignation from the international community.”
The principle “divide and rule,” which has been preventively implemented in Russia, cannot be justified, just as the stance of people who are actively or passively supporting this principle cannot be justified. Last night, frantic calls were made to those who receive salaries from the state, such as teachers, to order them to take to the streets in a rally supporting the sending of troops. They were paid to go. They went to rally for war. In the afternoon we saw them in the streets and on the squares. And we weren’t even surprised, just like we weren’t surprised at arrests on Red Square of people who were singing the national anthem.
“Citizens, don’t block the way for other citizens.” These are the words we hear emanating from loudspeakers during the last demonstrations against arrests and war. These words most clearly embody the quiet creeping civil divide in Russia, a divide possibly more frightening than civil war. This is an artificial yet effectively constructed divide of citizens into those who have opinions but have no right to walk along the streets, and those who walk along the streets with empty heads and without a desire to have a say in government.
The habit of standing on the sidelines has become a pillar of life in Russia. Political involvement and a lack of indifference are mocked. Reflection and analysis of current events are simply dismissed as superfluous and unnecessary. Submission is welcomed, and so the state trudges on. (“…Into a bright future,” one might add here.) But this allusion to a Soviet belief in a better tomorrow is no longer a real conviction in contemporary Russian society, where a tired sigh at the end of the day is filled with the weary thought “at least there’s no war.”
For now.
This “today,” survived senselessly, blindly, always proves fatal. Those who have accepted the verdict to live their lives in passive oblivion will repeat history and its mistakes. In this way, standing at the brink of war under banners of a struggle for peace, Russia is repeating 1968.
Those who seek power know how to admit mistakes of the past and the present, to reflect upon them as their own, to take personal responsibility for them. Those who seek to gain power for their own immediate profit never admit to mistakes and do everything they can to make the people forget about their blunders. In Russia, a man has come to power who has chosen a third way: to be proud of mistakes and to erect memorials in their honor.
In Russian penal colony #28 in Perm, all the women prisoners know the number one rule: “Form, norm, and regimen.” They live according to this rule for years. Isn’t this also the rule which all of Russia has followed year in, year out? Isn’t this what our fellow citizens have built with their own hands? The difference between Russia and a penal colony is that in a penal colony your sentence is decided upon by the state, but in Russia we should decide how long we will live like this. Otherwise, the world will watch as the Kremlin will increasingly resembles a prison watch tower, which, on behalf of the Russian Federation, will issue commands, commands to send in the troops.
Maria Alyokhina is a member of the Russian punk collective Pussy Riot. In August 2012, she, along with two bandmates, was sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism motivated by religious hatred. She was amnestied in December 2013.
Translated by Olga Zeveleva.What is myoclonus?
Myoclonus describes a symptom and not a diagnosis of a disease. It refers to sudden, involuntary jerking of a muscle or group of muscles. Myoclonic twitches or jerks usually are caused by sudden muscle contractions, called positive myoclonus, or by muscle relaxation, called negative myoclonus. Myoclonic jerks may occur alone or in sequence, in a pattern or without pattern. They may occur infrequently or many times each minute. Myoclonus sometimes occurs in response to an external event or when a person attempts to make a movement. The twitching cannot be controlled by the person experiencing it.
In its simplest form, myoclonus consists of a muscle twitch followed by relaxation. A hiccup is an example of this type of myoclonus. Other familiar examples of myoclonus are the jerks or "sleep starts" that some people experience while drifting off to sleep. These simple forms of myoclonus occur in normal, healthy persons and cause no difficulties. When more widespread, myoclonus may involve persistent, shock-like contractions in a group of muscles. In some cases, myoclonus begins in one region of the body and spreads to muscles in other areas. More severe cases of myoclonus can distort movement and severely limit a person's ability to eat, talk, or walk. These types of myoclonus may indicate an underlying disorder in the brain or nerves.
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What are the causes of myoclonus?
Myoclonus may develop in response to infection, head or spinal cord injury, stroke, brain tumors, kidney or liver failure, lipid storage disease, chemical or drug poisoning, or other disorders. Prolonged oxygen deprivation to the brain, called hypoxia, may result in posthypoxic myoclonus. Myoclonus can occur by itself, but most often it is one of several symptoms associated with a wide variety of nervous system disorders. For example, myoclonic jerking may develop in patients with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Myoclonic jerks commonly occur in persons with epilepsy, a disorder in which the electrical activity in the brain becomes disordered leading to seizures.
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What are the types of myoclonus?
Classifying the many different forms of myoclonus is difficult because the causes, effects, and responses to therapy vary widely. Listed below are the types most commonly described.
Action myoclonus is characterized by muscular jerking triggered or intensified by voluntary movement or even the intention to move. It may be made worse by attempts at precise, coordinated movements. Action myoclonus is the most disabling form of myoclonus and can affect the arms, legs, face, and even the voice. This type of myoclonus often is caused by brain damage that results from a lack of oxygen and blood flow to the brain when breathing or heartbeat is temporarily stopped.
is characterized by muscular jerking triggered or intensified by voluntary movement or even the intention to move. It may be made worse by attempts at precise, coordinated movements. Action myoclonus is the most disabling form of myoclonus and can affect the arms, legs, face, and even the voice. This type of myoclonus often is caused by brain damage that results from a lack of oxygen and blood flow to the brain when breathing or heartbeat is temporarily stopped. Cortical reflex myoclonus is thought to be a type of epilepsy that originates in the cerebral cortex - the outer layer, or "gray matter," of the brain, responsible for much of the information processing that takes place in the brain. In this type of myoclonus, jerks usually involve only a few muscles in one part of the body, but jerks involving many muscles also may occur. Cortical reflex myoclonus can be intensified when individuals attempt to move in a certain way (action myoclonus) or perceive a particular sensation.
is thought to be a type of epilepsy that originates in the cerebral cortex - the outer layer, or "gray matter," of the brain, responsible for much of the information processing that takes place in the brain. In this type of myoclonus, jerks usually involve only a few muscles in one part of the body, but jerks involving many muscles also may occur. Cortical reflex myoclonus can be intensified when individuals attempt to move in a certain way (action myoclonus) or perceive a particular sensation. Essential myoclonus occurs in the absence of epilepsy or other apparent abnormalities in the brain or nerves. It can occur randomly in people with no family history, but it also can appear among members of the same family, indicating that it sometimes may be an inherited disorder. Essential myoclonus tends to be stable without increasing in severity over time. In some families, there is an association of essential myoclonus, essential tremor, and even a form of dystonia, called myoclonus dystonia. Another form of essential myoclonus may be a type of epilepsy with no known cause.
occurs in the absence of epilepsy or other apparent abnormalities in the brain or nerves. It can occur randomly in people with no family history, but it also can appear among members of the same family, indicating that it sometimes may be an inherited disorder. Essential myoclonus tends to be stable without increasing in severity over time. In some families, there is an association of essential myoclonus, essential tremor, and even a form of dystonia, called myoclonus dystonia. Another form of essential myoclonus may be a type of epilepsy with no known cause. Palatal myoclonus is a regular, rhythmic contraction of one or both sides of the rear of the roof of the mouth, called the soft palate. These contractions may be accompanied by myoclonus in other muscles, including those in the face, tongue, throat, and diaphragm. The contractions are very rapid, occurring as often as 150 times a minute, and may persist during sleep. The condition usually appears in adults and can last indefinitely. Some people with palatal myoclonus regard it as a minor problem, although some occasionally complain of a "clicking" sound in the ear, a noise made as the muscles in the soft palate contract. The disorder can cause discomfort and severe pain in some individuals.
is a regular, rhythmic contraction of one or both sides of the rear of the roof of the mouth, called the soft palate. These contractions may be accompanied by myoclonus in other muscles, including those in the face, tongue, throat, and diaphragm. The contractions are very rapid, occurring as often as 150 times a minute, and may persist during sleep. The condition usually appears in adults and can last indefinitely. Some people with palatal myoclonus regard it as a minor problem, although some occasionally complain of a "clicking" sound in the ear, a noise made as the muscles in the soft palate contract. The disorder can cause discomfort and severe pain in some individuals. Progressive myoclonus epilepsy (PME) is a group of diseases characterized by myoclonus, epileptic seizures, and other serious symptoms such as trouble walking or speaking. These rare disorders often get worse over time and sometimes are fatal. Studies have identified many forms of PME. Lafora body disease is inherited as an autosomal recessive disorder, meaning that the disease occurs only when a child inherits two copies of a defective gene, one from each parent. Lafora body disease is characterized by myoclonus, epileptic seizures, and dementia (progressive loss of memory and other intellectual functions). A second group of PME diseases belonging to the class of cerebral storage diseases usually involves myoclonus, visual problems, dementia, and dystonia (sustained muscle contractions that cause twisting movements or abnormal postures). Another group of PME disorders in the class of system degenerations often is accompanied by action myoclonus, seizures, and problems with balance and walking. Many of these PME diseases begin in childhood or adolescence.
(PME) is a group of diseases characterized by myoclonus, epileptic seizures, and other serious symptoms such as trouble walking or speaking. These rare disorders often get worse over time and sometimes are fatal. Studies have identified many forms of PME. is inherited as an autosomal recessive disorder, meaning that the disease occurs only when a child inherits two copies of a defective gene, one from each parent. Lafora body disease is characterized by myoclonus, epileptic seizures, and dementia (progressive loss of memory and other intellectual functions). A second group of PME diseases belonging to the class of usually involves myoclonus, visual problems, dementia, and dystonia (sustained muscle contractions that cause twisting movements or abnormal postures). Another group of PME disorders in the class of often is accompanied by action myoclonus, seizures, and problems with balance and walking. Many of these PME diseases begin in childhood or adolescence. Reticular reflex myoclonus is thought to be a type of generalized epilepsy that originates in the brain stem, the part of the brain that connects to the spinal cord and controls vital functions such as breathing and heartbeat. Myoclonic jerks usually affect the whole body, with muscles on both sides of the body affected simultaneously. In some people, myoclonic jerks occur in only a part of the body, such as the legs, with all the muscles in that part being involved in each jerk. Reticular reflex myoclonus can be triggered by either a voluntary movement or an external stimulus.
is thought to be a type of generalized epilepsy that originates in the brain stem, the part of the brain that connects to the spinal cord and controls vital functions such as breathing and heartbeat. Myoclonic jerks usually affect the whole body, with muscles on both sides of the body affected simultaneously. In some people, myoclonic jerks occur in only a part of the body, such as the legs, with all the muscles in that part being involved in each jerk. Reticular reflex myoclonus can be triggered by either a voluntary movement or an external stimulus. Stimulus-sensitive myoclonus is triggered by a variety of external events, including noise, movement, and light. Surprise may increase the sensitivity of the individual.
is triggered by a variety of external events, including noise, movement, and light. Surprise may increase the sensitivity of the individual. Sleep myoclonus occurs during the initial phases of sleep, especially at the moment of dropping off to sleep. Some forms appear to be stimulus-sensitive. Some persons with sleep myoclonus are rarely troubled by, or need treatment for, the condition. However, myoclonus may be a symptom in more complex and disturbing sleep disorders, such as restless legs syndrome, and may require treatment by a doctor.
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What do scientists know about myoclonus?
Although rare cases of myoclonus are caused by an injury to the peripheral nerves (defined as the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, or the central nervous system), most myoclonus is caused by a disturbance of the central nervous system. Studies suggest that several locations in the brain are involved in myoclonus. One such location, for example, is in the brain stem close to structures that are responsible for the startle response, an automatic reaction to an unexpected stimulus involving rapid muscle contraction.
The specific mechanisms underlying myoclonus are not yet fully understood. Scientists believe that some types of stimulus-sensitive myoclonus may involve overexcitability of the parts of the brain that control movement. These parts are interconnected in a series of feedback loops called motor pathways. These pathways facilitate and modulate communication between the brain and muscles. Key elements of this communication are chemicals known as neurotransmitters, which carry messages from one nerve cell, or neuron, to another. Neurotransmitters are released by neurons and attach themselves to receptors on parts of neighboring cells. Some neurotransmitters may make the receiving cell more sensitive, while others tend to make the receiving cell less sensitive. Laboratory studies suggest that an imbalance between these chemicals may underlie myoclonus.
Some researchers speculate that abnormalities or deficiencies in the receptors for certain neurotransmitters may contribute to some forms of myoclonus. Receptors that appear to be related to myoclonus include those for two important inhibitory neurotransmitters: serotonin and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Other receptors with links to myoclonus include those for opiates and glycine, the latter an inhibitory neurotransmitter that is important for the control of motor and sensory functions in the spinal cord. More research is needed to determine how these receptor abnormalities cause or contribute to myoclonus.
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How is myoclonus treated?
Treatment of myoclonus focuses on medications that may help reduce symptoms. The drug of first choice to treat myoclonus, especially certain types of action myoclonus, is clonazepam, a type of tranquilizer. Dosages of clonazepam usually are increased gradually until the individual improves or side effects become harmful. Drowsiness and loss of coordination are common side effects. The beneficial effects of clonazepam may diminish over time if the individual develops a tolerance for the drug.
Many of the drugs used for myoclonus, such as barbiturates, levetiracetam,phenytoin, and primidone, are also used to treat epilepsy. Barbiturates slow down the central nervous system and cause tranquilizing or antiseizure effects. Phenytoin, levetiracetam, and primidone are effective antiepileptic drugs, although phenytoin can cause liver failure or have other harmful long-term effects in individuals with PME. Sodium valproate is an alternative therapy for myoclonus and can be used either alone or in combination with clonazepam. Although clonazepam and/or sodium valproate are effective in the majority of people with myoclonus, some people have adverse reactions to these drugs.
Some studies have shown that doses of 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP), a building block of serotonin, leads to improvement in people with some types of action myoclonus and PME. However, other studies indicate that 5-HTP therapy is not effective in all people with myoclonus, and, in fact, may worsen the condition in some individuals. These differences in the effect of 5-HTP on individuals with myoclonus have not yet been explained, but they may offer important clues to underlying abnormalities in serotonin receptors.
The complex origins of myoclonus may require the use of multiple drugs for effective treatment. Although some drugs have a limited effect when used individually, they may have a greater effect when used with drugs that act on different pathways or mechanisms in the brain. By combining several of these drugs, scientists hope to achieve greater control of myoclonic symptoms. Some drugs currently being studied in different combinations include clonazepam, sodium valproate, levetiracetam, and primidone. Hormonal therapy also may improve responses to antimyoclonic drugs in some people.
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What research is being done?
Within the Federal government, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has primary responsibility for research on the brain and nervous system. As part of its mission, the NINDS supports research on myoclonus at its laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland, and through grants to universities and major medical institutions across the country.
Scientists are seeking to understand the underlying biochemical basis of involuntary movements and to find the most effective treatment for myoclonus and other movement disorders.
Investigators are evaluating the role of neurotransmitters and receptors in myoclonus. If abnormalities in neurotransmitters or receptors are found to play a causative role in myoclonus, future research can focus on determining the extent to which genetic alterations are responsible for these abnormalities and on identifying the nature of those alterations. Scientists also may be able to develop drug treatments that target specific changes in the receptors to reverse abnormalities, such as the loss of inhibition, and to enhance mechanisms that compensate for these abnormalities. Identifying receptor abnormalities also may help researchers develop diagnostic tests for myoclonus. NINDS-supported scientists at research institutions throughout the country are studying various aspects of PME, including the basic mechanisms and genes involved in this group of diseases.
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Where can I get more information?
For more information on neurological disorders or research programs funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, contact the Institute's Brain Resources and Information Network (BRAIN) at:
BRAIN
P.O. Box 5801
Bethesda, MD 20824
800-352-9424
http://www.ninds.nih.gov
Information also is available from the following organizations:
National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD)
55 Kenosia Avenue
Danbury, CT 06810
orphan@rarediseases.org
https://rarediseases.org/
Tel: 203-744-0100; Voice Mail: 800-999-NORD (6673)
Fax: 203-798-2291
"Myoclonus Fact Sheet", NINDS, Publication date July 2012.
NIH Publication No. 12-4793
Back to: Myoclonus Information Page
See a list of all NINDS disorders
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Los Mioclonos
Prepared by:
Office of Communications and Public Liaison
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD 20892
NINDS health-related material is provided for information purposes only and does not necessarily represent endorsement by or an official position of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke or any other Federal agency. Advice on the treatment or care of an individual patient should be obtained through consultation with a physician who has examined that patient or is familiar with that patient's medical history.
All NINDS-prepared information is in the public domain and may be freely copied. Credit to the NINDS or the NIH is appreciated.Places Where Americans Were Shot This Past Weekend: A Prom, A Church, A Campaign Stop By the numbers, it was a typical three days for gun violence in the U.S.
The dramatic shootings came one after another this weekend, as steady and cruel as a spring downpour. People were killed outside high school dances, before morning services, amid the good times of a cookout, within earshot of a political candidate. But the bigger story, as always, lay beneath the headline-making details.
According to data from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), at least 324 people were shot in America between April 22 and April 24. Of those victims, 107 people were killed, and the other 217 injured. What’s most remarkable about that carnage is how ordinary it is. The GVA archives, which date back to January 2014, show from Friday through Sunday, the typical weekend in the U.S. results in more than 300 people shot.
Here, a look at some of the cherished places and putatively safe spaces where victims were hit by bullets this weekend.
01
At an elementary school Cook County, Illinois Tiara Parks, the 23-year-old daughter of a Cook County, Illinois, sheriff’s court deputy, was fatally shot in the head while getting out of a car in front of a Chicago elementary school on Saturday night. Two men were wounded. About 20 people had been assembled at the school; it appears Parks and her friends were targeted. She leaves behind a two-year-old son, Jordyn.
02
At a Walmart Chandler, Arizona Early Saturday morning, two police officers were shot multiple times at a Walmart in Chandler, Arizona. The officers had been responding to reports of a trespasser when the suspect, a 24-year-old ex-convict named Mitchell Oakley, opened fire on them. One of the officers shot and killed Oakley.
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Outside a high school prom Antigo, Wisconsin Eighteen-year-old Jakob Wagner was armed with a high-powered rifle and a high-capacity ammunition clip when he opened fire outside the prom at his former Wisconsin high school late Saturday night, wounding a male student and his date. Wagner was shot and killed by police. An administrator at the school said Wagner chose his victims randomly. An ex-classmate told a local paper that Wagner had been bullied by other students. He did not graduate with his class last June and had just endured a breakup with a student at the school.
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Near the body of a slain family member Norfolk, Virginia On Friday night, Maurice Raynor’s brother, Deandre, had just been fatally shot after a fistfight in Norfolk, Virginia. Maurice, holding a gun, ran to his dying brother’s side. Police then shot Maurice, wounding him.
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Near a campaign stop Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Alex Cherry, 21, was shot in the head at a campaign stop for Democratic House candidate Chris Rabb in Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon. The gunman walked away but returned to shoot Cherry two more times before finally fleeing. Cherry was described by a campaign spokesman as “a nice young man who works the polls on election day.” He died with a campaign pamphlet in his hand. Four hours later, possibly in retaliation for Cherry’s killing, 18-year-old Elijah Frazier was fatally shot and a 17-year-old boy was wounded a block away from where the young campaign worker died.
06
During Sunday worship North Wales, Pennsylvania Robert Braxton, 27, was shot and killed during an argument at an evangelical church in North Wales, Pennsylvania. The gunman, who has not been identified, was questioned by police and released without charges. Breeana Somers, a 24-year-old churchgoer, told a local news outlet that the gunfire sounded like “a champagne bottle opening three times.” She added, “It’s really frightening that anything like this could happen here.”
07
During a barbeque at a city park St. Louis, Missouri On Sunday evening, a 36-year-old convicted felon whipped out a.45-caliber semi-automatic pistol with a defaced serial number and shot a man in the stomach during an argument at a barbecue in a St. Louis park. The gunman attempted to flee, but his car was stopped by a park ranger. The suspect got out and fired at the ranger but missed; the ranger then shot the gunman, critically injuring him. A 40-year-old woman sitting on a nearby bench was grazed in the ankle.
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In a car Philadelphia, Pennsylvania A man dressed as a Philadelphia Water Department worker shot and killed a 36-year-old man sitting in a car in north Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon. That night in Flint, Michigan, three people were wounded in their cars when an unidentified gunman fired on them. Early Sunday morning, Lucas McPherson began firing off rounds from his car in Duxbury, Massachusetts, wounding a man in a passing vehicle. A man letting his dog out in front of his home was also wounded before McPherson, 25, was subdued by police.1.1k SHARES Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit
Today at the Steam Dev Days conference in Seattle, Valve is showing off brand new prototypes of its Steam VR controllers.
While the original VR controllers that ship with the HTC Vive are undoubtedly functional, it’s widely agreed that Oculus’ forthcoming ‘Touch’ controllers are a big step forward in ergonomics. That gap may soon be a thing of the past, as Valve is showcasing new VR controller prototypes at Steam Dev Days which offer a much different take on the design.
The new SteamVR controller prototypes have a much smaller footprint handprint than what’s in the hands of HTC Vive users today. The prototypes are not so much held as they are (optionally) gripped; a band hooking over the side of the user’s palm connects the core of the controller to a sort of backhand gripper which appears to keep the controller attached to the hand even while it isn’t being held.
The controllers can be seen dotted in uncovered SteamVR Tracking sensors, just like prototypes of the original controller. One source from the event says that each controller has 21 sensors.
Important thing here- you can close your hand halfway. #SteamDevDays pic.twitter.com/5z64vTvf6j — Fox B @SteamDevDays (@FoxBuchele) October 12, 2016
Developers at the conference today who have tried the controller say that users can ‘let go’ of the controller while in use, and it stays attached to the hand. This allows virtual objects to be thrown with the aid of the natural muscle-memory of opening one’s hand as they throw, an instinct that must be subdued with other controllers to save from throwing the controller clear across the room (always to hit a TV, somehow). Always wear your wrist straps, folks.
"Being actually able to throw things and let go…it's huge" @saniul on the new #Vive controllers #SteamDevDays — Eva @ SteamDevDays (@downtohoerth) October 12, 2016
It appears that the controller may also support variable states between ‘open hand’ and ‘gripped hand’, reflecting a more natural connection between the user’s real and virtual hand positions.
The Valve VR controller prototypes appear to be 3D printed and feature a trigger and trackpad with three face buttons surrounding it. Some photos appear to show an array of LEDs across the front of the controller though the component’s function remains unknown.
With Valve not inviting any press to Steam Dev Days, further details surrounding the controller are thin; it’s not currently known what the company’s plans are for the controller going forward, but we’ll keep you in the know as we learn more.1st & 10 at TROY 12 (12:50 - 1st) Levi Brown pass complete to Jerrel Jernigan for 9 yards to the Troy 21.
2nd & 1 at TROY 21 (12:34 - 1st) Levi Brown pass incomplete to Cornelius Williams.
3rd & 1 at TROY 21 (12:15 - 1st) Levi Brown pass complete to Jerrel Jernigan for 4 yards to the Troy 25 for a 1ST down.
1st & 10 at TROY 25 (12:04 - 1st) Levi Brown pass complete to Gerald Tate for 12 yards to the Troy 37 for a 1ST down.
1st & 10 at TROY 37 (11:50 - 1st) Levi Brown pass incomplete.
2nd & 10 at TROY 37 (11:44 - 1st) Levi Brown pass complete to Patrick Cherry for 12 yards to the Troy 49 for a 1ST down.
1st & 10 at TROY 49 (11:25 - 1st) Levi Brown pass incomplete.
2nd & 10 at TROY 49 (11:17 - 1st) Levi Brown pass complete to Jerrel Jernigan for 9 yards to the LSU 42.
3rd & 1 at LSU 42 (10:56 - 1st) Levi Brown pass complete to Gerald Tate for 5 yards to the LSU 37 for a 1ST down.
1st & 10 at LSU 37 (10:29 - 1st) Levi Brown pass incomplete to Gerald Tate.
2nd & 10 at LSU 37 (10:29 - 1st) Troy penalty 5 yard false start accepted.
2nd & 15 at LSU 42 (10:22 - 1st) DuJuan Harris rush for 13 yards to the LSU 29.
3rd & 2 at LSU 29 (10:07 - 1st) Levi Brown pass complete to Andrew Davis for 12 yards to the LSU 17 for a 1ST down.
1st & 10 at LSU 17 (9:59 - 1st) Levi Brown pass incomplete to Travis Boyd.
2nd & 10 at LSU 17 (9:53 - 1st) Levi Brown pass incomplete to Kennard Burton.
3rd & 10 at LSU 17 (9:53 - 1st) Timeout TROY, clock 09:53.
3rd & 10 at LSU 17 (9:43 - 1st) Levi Brown pass complete to Jerrel Jernigan for 10 yards to the LSU 7 for a 1ST down.
1st & Goal at LSU 7 (9:18 - 1st) Levi Brown pass complete to Patrick Cherry for 7 yards for a TOUCHDOWN.
(9:18 - 1st) Sam Glusman extra point GOOD.Jenys, 19 (4/2/96), collected 45 points (15-30=45) and 45 penalty minutes (PIM) in 63 games during his first season of hockey in North America with the Sudbury Wolves of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) in 2014-15. The 6-foot-3, 190-pound native of Brno, Czech Republic, led Sudbury in scoring, ranked T-1st in assists and T-2nd in goals. He signed an Amateur Tryout Agreement (ATO) with the Iowa Wild of the American Hockey League (AHL) on March 24 and recorded three assists in eight games with Iowa. Jenys tallied two goals in 29 games for Brno Kometa in the Czech Republic League and 19 points (13-6=19) in 26 contests in the Czech Republic Junior League in 2013-14.
He was selected by Minnesota in the seventh round (199th overall) of the 2014 NHL Entry Draft.When we set out to do a “small update” after Gen Con, I never thought we’d end up with something quite so big |
40 three weeks ago and won’t want another 12 energy-sapping rounds. He’ll be looking to do what many of us expected from him first time round and clobber the Gypsy giant early on.
His brother Vitali, who was long-serving WBC champ and is now mayor of home-town Kiev, says Wladimir knows he was out-thought by trainer Peter Fury’s brilliant game plan and out-fought in ring by the dancing, jabbing, taunting Brit. He is still smarting from that and won’t let it happen again.
Says Vitali:” I spoke to him honestly and I told him – ‘you know brother, you have proved everything to everyone. You have two options: the first – to say that you were the strongest, achieved what no one was able to achieve in the sport, and thank everyone.
“Or the second option – I’m not going to leave; I will come back and show everyone that it was a pure accident.’
“Wladimir chose the second way. He has a very good chance, and I am confident that he will make good use of this opportunity and win the return in Manchester.”
Quite a few decent judges in the business think the same. Not that this will faze Fury for as we witnessed last week he is as mouthy and bullish as ever, risking a further reprimand from the Board of Control with his intemperate language, which included a stupid reference to ‘bitches’ and calling Wladimir a p***k.
When the fancy takes him Fury can be articulate, amusing, even charming. But when will he get it that the reason he lacks the popularity of Anthony Joshua has nothing to do with ‘racism’ but that far too frequently he behaves irrationally and says stupid things.
It is also why he is rarely invited on to chat shows where the bleep button isn’t always handy.
It is time Uncle Peter, who is a pretty shrewd operator, had a remonstrative word in his nephew’s shell-like before he really does become a pugilistic pariah.
Obviously winning the titles has escalated Fury’s already massive belief in his own ability but he certainly should not start taking Klitschko for granted.
He’ll need to be at least in the same shape as he was in Dusseldorf but he complains of being hampered now by a severe back injury and reckons he is seven stones over his fighting weight after ‘being out drinking and partying.’
Perhaps we can take this with the proverbial pinch of salt but if he is not as nimble his feet and as sharp in his head as he was in Dussledorf, I believe Fury could come a cropper in Manchester.
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To Russia with glove
It would not surprise me to see another unbeaten heavyweight champion dethroned next month.
American Deontay Wilder is massive a huge risk by defending his WBC title in Moscow against Alexander Povetkin.
The Russian challenger, like Klitschko and Joshua, posseses an Olympic super-heavyweight gold medal. He has the talent and pedigree to outbox Wilder, especially with home advantage.
BoxNation have this humdinger, too, as they do Amir Khan’s astonishingly brave bid to bridge two divisions and wrest away Canelo Alvarez’s WBC and Ring Magazine linear middleweight titles.
Khan vows to ‘shock the world ‘in Las Vegas on May 7.
If he does, and Klitschko gains revenge over Fury with Povetkin unseating Wilder, that would be some treble. Any takers?
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FIGHTING TALK
When was the last time in heavyweight boxing we had a role model young children want to be like? If your son said, ‘I want to be like Anthony Joshua’, you’d be pleased with that. If he said, ‘I want to be like Tyson Fury’, what would you say?
Eddie Hearn waxes lyrical about the new IBF heavyweight champ.
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Eddie Hearn so u be happy if your kid turned out like AJ? Lol if he did u better have a word with the missus!
Tyson Fury is quick to tweet a typical counter-punch.
Just want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has been there for me.It’s been the toughest fight of my life and you made it that bit easier.
Nick Blackwell thanks the multitude of well-wishers who shared his family’s relief after he emerged from his coma.
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I’m here to knock people out. That’s what people want to see. People come to see blood and I’ve got no problem drawing blood for people. I enjoy it.
No more Mr Nice Guy? Anthony Joshua makes his intentions plain.
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The securing of the UK television rights (for Fury-Klitschko 2) comes as another major coup for BoxNation boss Frank Warren within days of out-bidding Sky for the screening of Amir Khan’s super-fight in Las Vegas against Mexican star Canelo Alvarez on May 7….Sky are now facing intensifying competition from BoxNation.
How Daily Mail boxing correspondent Jeff Powell views TV’s small screen big fight.
Tomorrow: Exclusive in the Big Interview – Hughie Fury on cousin Tyson. ‘He is like Mr Bean – I am Al Pacino! ‘I, like much of the country, watched #Lemonade this weekend. Beyoncé’s visual album is some next-level “take your pain and turn it into art” shit. I love how deep she goes, not only into her own pain, but how it connects to previous generations of women in her family, and to the pain of all Southern black women. It’s amazing. A thought occurred to me as I watched it that had more to do with the wider music industry, and the way in which women are received and talked about in it.
After the deaths of David Bowie and Prince, many have questioned whether there is anyone out there who would be their like again. Now, of course, each of these musicians was unique, and made indelible contributions to music, changing the face of it forever. But the word GENIUS is thrown about, and we act as though “music is dead.”
I think of women like Madonna, and I wonder how she’ll be hailed when she inevitably passes away. She’s arguably had as huge and as lasting an impact on music as either Bowie or Prince, and yet I wonder if they’ll be throwing the word GENIUS around. They’ll chalk her impact up to “good marketing,” or say she was a “savvy businesswoman” the way they do with all women who manage to succeed, never attributing it to anything like talent. Or, as if the only talent women are allowed to have is self-promotion (when we’re not criticizing them for seeking attention).
When Prince or Bowie played with gender or were sexually charged, they were pioneers. They were challenging. Prince could be a “Sexy MF,” while Madonna was expected to constantly apologize for being sexual. Now that she’s older, she doesn’t have to apologize, but she is expected to cover up and stop it already. I wonder if Madonna will be talked about the same way as Prince, or as Michael Jackson was. Will things like her artistic vision, her songwriting, her producing, her creativity, how she inspired and continues to inspire — will any of that matter?
I think of women like Beyoncé, and Lady Gaga, who have continually pushed boundaries, reinvented themselves, and made substantive statements through their art from a fiercely feminist perspective. Who yes, were heavily influenced by the likes of Bowie and Prince, as so many others were, because of the unchangeable fact that they happened to be born after these two giants. The way that Bowie and Prince were themselves inspired by those before them. They nonetheless made their statements their own, and bring substance to popular music in a way that others don’t.
I think of women like Taylor Swift, who has always written her own songs, plays multiple instruments, writes and produces for other artists, and owns her own independent record label because she, like Prince, will not be the music industry’s slave.
The word GENIUS is used arbitrarily, even with regard to men, and art is subjective. What means GENIUS to one person might not be GENIUS to someone else. Yet it seems to be more readily accepted as fact when it’s applied to a man. Fusion has a great article about how, in the social media discussion of Lemonade, as well as of Beyoncé’s previous Grammy wins, the “criteria” for GENIUS seems to be “doing it all yourself.” As if any of the men we label GENIUSES did anything completely on their own.
So, to many people, Beyoncé isn’t a GENIUS, because she collaborated with other songwriters on Lemonade, whereas Prince is credited as having written most of his songs himself. Leaving aside the fact that the people credited with writing a song has more to do with agents, lawyers, perception, clout and who gets paid royalties than it does with actual contributions, Prince collaborated plenty, and that didn’t reduce his GENIUS. As Kelsey McKinney writes at Fusion:
In other words, sole authorship is the hallmark of a true genius. This argument may sound familiar. American mythology is littered with the names of men who acted alone. Paul Revere singlehandedly blazed a trail for the future of the country. We love the myth that Steve Jobs, unassisted, built a technology empire in his dorm room. But myths are exactly what these reductive stories are. Throughout the history of art, innovation has rarely come about in a vacuum. Imagine the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as a work in progress. What do you see in your mind’s eye? Is it Michelangelo lying on a raised platform, toiling long and lonely hours into the night? Because that’s wrong. That masterpiece of Western art was completed by Michelangelo and his 13 assistants. Was he the mastermind, the visionary? Absolutely. But he didn’t work alone. […] Collaboration breeds creativity, and no one can claim that Lemonade isn’t a creative album. Unlike so many pop songs by so many artists that sound so similar to one another, Lemonade is filled with songs that no one else could have made, from the country twang of “Daddy Issues” to the synthed-up “Sorry.”
We know that the music industry doesn’t take kindly to young, beautiful women who dare to be talented. Is it possible that even someone at Beyoncé’s level, or Madonna’s, is fought harder with regard to things like credit on a song, whereas a male artist might be seen more as the creative force, or the “architect” of an album and have that position more readily respected? It’s not an unreasonable question.
When people ask about the future of music, or about “who we’ll remember” the way we remember Bowie, or Prince, or Jackson; when people lament the fact that there aren’t any “real stars” anymore, that there aren’t any GENIUSES out there, I wonder if they and I are living in the same universe.
Because in my universe, I know that Gaga has been playing piano since she was four, got accepted to Julliard when she was eleven, left NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts when she got a songwriting deal with Interscope, and spent years writing for other artists before she started making a name for herself. I know that Beyoncé has been performing since she was eight, has the voice of an angel, a creative mind, and has grown into a thoughtful, political artist who strives to use her enormous platform to improve the lives of black women. I know that Taylor Swift convinced her parents to move her from Pennsylvania to Nashville to pursue a country music career at fourteen, and she’s become an independent producer big enough to be able to turn tides in the music industry by writing letters to Apple, all on the strength of her songwriting.
I know women like Rhianna. Like Janelle Monae. Like Tori Amos. Like Amanda Palmer….
And I wonder…is music made by women taken as seriously? When we say there’s “no one” out now that we predict will have this kind of impact, do we really mean “no male artists?” Because I’ll be damned if Beyoncé and Lady Gaga don’t come close as far as musical talent, creativity, or impact on a generation. Female artists across all disciplines are just…talked about differently. They’re not “successful,” they’re “good at marketing.” They’re not “talented,” they’re “popular,” as if the two are mutually exclusive. They certainly weren’t exclusive for Prince. Or for Bowie.
Are they taken less seriously especially when they choose a more pop music sound? Does genre make them inherently “less-than?” Is it because women are expected to talk about their feelings all the time? So…it’s not seen as GENIUS, because that’s just what women do? Go on and on about their feelings? And the things they write songs about just aren’t “as important?” Them writing through the prism of their own experience is trivial?
There are so many parallels between the careers of men like Bowie, Prince, and Jackson, and women like Madonna, Beyoncé, and Gaga: precocious, versatile young musicians (multi-hyphenates, really) who experiment with a number of genres and grow up to change their industry, as well as the wider culture. Yet, it seems as though whenever men do things like challenge gender roles and norms, express their deepest emotions, or are even simply just amazing musicians, they’re applauded in a way that women just…aren’t. Whereas when women talk about gender through the prism of their own experience, play multiple instruments, write their own songs, run their own careers…*crickets*
Not *crickets* exactly. Obviously Madonna and Beyoncé and Lady Gaga are all super-famous. Guaranteed, when Madonna dies, it’ll be all over the news. But I have the nagging feeling that the way she’ll be talked about will be different, because she’s female. And I genuinely don’t understand why.
And it isn’t just about “who’s coming next.” It’s about who’s already been. Think about the past, oh I don’t know, 50 years of music. Think about the artists to whom you’d apply the word GENIUS. How many of them are women? How many of them are men? What criteria are you going by, and why do you think that is?
I wish the word GENIUS weren’t gendered. It isn’t, theoretically. In practice? That’s another story.
And incidentally, Kesha got a 1500 (out of 1600) on her SATs and reportedly has a 140 I.Q. So, you could call her a GENIUS, and it would not be wrong, or subjective.
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google+.SALT LAKE CITY — Outdoor Retailer officials announced Thursday that after a teleconference meeting with Gov. Gary Herbert and different companies that it will not include Utah in future request for proposals for future show locations.
“We are doing the work necessary to procure an alternative location for Outdoor Retailer,” said Marisa Nicholson, show director for Outdoor Retailer in a prepared statement. “Though we may wish it different, this is far from a snap of the fingers thing to make happen. Convention centers and hotels are not sitting idle. In every instance at every potential venue, there are hurdles that have to be cleared and that simply cannot be done overnight.
“Salt Lake City has been hospitable to Outdoor Retailer and our industry for the past 20 years, but we are in lockstep with the outdoor community and are working on finding our new home.”
In a statement Thursday night, Paul Edwards, the governor's deputy chief of staff, said Outdoor Retailer's decision "perpetuates a false narrative" about Utah's value of public lands, arguing that Utah invests millions of dollars into public lands protection and access.
"The decision by the Outdoor Industry Association to prevent Salt Lake City from bidding for the Outdoor Retailer Summer and Winter Market is offensive," Edwards said in the statement. "It reflects a gross ingratitude to a community that has embraced the Outdoor Retailer show, subsidizing its success and expansion through direct investment — let alone extraordinary hospitality.
"... It shows how a political agenda, rather than reason or merit, seems to have captured the decision-making at the Outdoor Industry Association. The outdoor retail show may move away for a season, but Utah’s remarkable hospitality, our Mighty Five national parks, our nine national forests, our wilderness areas, our wildlife management areas, our wild and scenic rivers and our 43 state parks are here to stay."
Earlier Thursday, Edwards said talks with the Outdoor Industry Association ended with a "curt finish."
"We felt that we were being presented with an ultimatum," Edwards told reporters after a conference call with the Outdoor Industry Association, the sponsor of the biannual trade show.
Amy Roberts, executive director of the Outdoor Industry Association, said Thursday prior to the Outdoor Retailer decision that the two sides — the state and a mixture of the trade show's officials and executives from outdoor companies — had a "wide-ranging" conversation during the teleconference. She said the conversation centered around concerns over public lands and Utah legislature's push against recent national monuments designated in Utah.
Roberts said the retailers urged Herbert to take a stand against that movement.
"We sort of reached a crossroads in terms of needing leadership from the state around these issues or it's not the place for us to be in any longer," she said, in an interview with KSL.
"We were hoping we would be able to convince the governor as leader of the Republican party in the state and just the leader of the state to use that office to talk to members of the congressional delegation and Utah legislature around what we see is a positive opportunity that they have to really seize and embrace outdoor recreation as the economy of the future in their state. And really support public lands and public land access, and it just seemed that we did not agree on those issues."
Companies like Patagonia previously announced it would boycott the twice-a-year event that has been staged in Salt Lake City since 1996. Last month, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper made a push to move the shows to Colorado.
In a statement Thursday after the decision was made by Outdoor Retailer, Conservation Colorado executive director Pete Maysmith said he hoped that the move will be a step closer to bringing the trade show to Colorado.
"Colorado has a long and proud history of protecting our public lands, and Coloradans know just how important these remarkable places are to our economy and Western way of life," he said. "If the outdoor industry is looking for show locations that reflect its values of stewardship and a passion for outdoor recreation, it should look no further than the Centennial State."
The shows draw close to 30,000 attendees and generate an annual economic impact of $45 million.
The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that companies, including REI, Patagonia and The North Face, ramped up a threat to get the outdoor trade show to leave Utah unless the governor and other elected officials backed off from policies the retailers said threaten public lands.
The AP reported that leaders of about 30 outdoor companies sent a letter to Gov. Gary Herbert that said Utah leaders are threatening the outdoor industry by pushing back against federal land control and management.
"We see all of these actions as an existential threat to the vibrancy of Utah and America's outdoor industry, as well as Utah's high quality of life," the letter said.
Outdoor Retailer wasn't the only trade show announce it planned on breaking off from Utah.
Darrell Denny, executive vice president of Emerald Expositions, also said Thursday that Utah will also not be considered for future sites of the Interbike trade show, which is the largest bicycle trade show in North America. This year's Interbike trade show is slated to be held in Las Vegas in September.
“Emerald Expositions will also not extend the request for proposal to Utah for relocating the Interbike trade show," Denny said in the statement.
Contributing: Lisa Riley Roche, Amy Joi O'Donoghue, Ryan Morgan, Ladd Egan and Dave CawleyBEIRUT -- A shaky cease-fire in Syria brokered by Moscow and Washington has survived its first week, outlasting skeptics' expectations and providing some hope that a diplomatic solution to the five-year-old war might be possible.
With daily incidents of artillery shelling, airstrikes and clashes, it would be easy to dismiss the "cessation of hostilities" as a charade.
U.S.-backed rebels keep battling ISIS under truce
But the partial truce, which came into effect Feb. 27, has dramatically reduced overall violence across the devastated country -- a remarkable accomplishment in a war that has killed a quarter million people, displaced half the population and decimated towns and villages.
And because the cease-fire excludes areas held by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al Qaeda's Syria affiliate, the Nusra Front, some of the continuing violence is not technically a breach.
Much now depends on whether peace talks actually resume next week and make progress -- and on the determination of the Russians and Americans to prevent a full-scale resumption of fighting.
Here are some takeaways from the past week:
Violations and casualties
The first few hours saw a dramatic drop in military operations, with residents reported an eerie quiet not experienced in years. Russia grounded its warplanes and skies were clear of the feared government helicopters that drop barrel bombs on opposition-held areas. But complaints of violations have mounted in the past few days, including reports of Russian and Syrian government strikes that have hit rebel targets well away from areas controlled by ISIS or Nusra.
Syrian cease-fire faces troubles on day two
The Russian government reported Thursday 66 cease-fire violations by opposition forces since the truce went into effect Feb. 28 - either shelling of residential areas of government positions. The Syrian opposition, in turn, reports more than 170 breaches, all of them in rebel-held areas. The reasons are rarely clear; some cases appear to be local initiatives, or specific battlefield dynamics that could not be centrally controlled.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group that closely monitors the conflict using activists on the ground, says the overall violence has decreased by 90 percent. It documented the death of 118 people in areas included in the cease-fire agreement in its first five days - a sharp drop from the daily toll before the truce.
On Friday, it reported 12 people had been killed in Syria on Thursday -- the lowest daily toll in 13 months. The group's director, Rami Abdurrahman, says the violations are like "small waves that rock the boat but are not strong enough to capsize it."
Aid deliveries
So far, the cease-fire has failed to achieve one of its most important objectives: to facilitate the free flow of desperately needed aid supplies to besieged areas in Syria.
Fragile Syria truce brings hope, for some
"Fewer Syrians may be dying in bomb attacks but they are still facing starvation," said Henrietta McMicking of The Syria Campaign, an opposition advocacy group. The U.N. said Monday it planned to deliver assistance to about 154,000 people over the following five days in Syria, but only a trickle of that aid has been delivered so far.
Jan Egeland, humanitarian aid adviser to the U.N.'s Syria envoy, warned that in recent days, aid shipments have been beset by "logistical" problems. U.N. officials have cited a shortage of available trucks as well as difficulties in gaining approvals from Syrian government officials, who have at times removed medical supplies from convoys. Egeland said U.N. officials had received "indications" that the system for gaining permissions will be "much simplified," including a monthly schedule.
Refugee crisis
The international community is hoping that if the cease-fire continues to hold, it will ease the refugee flow toward neighboring countries and Europe. But the truce would have to be sustained for weeks, if not months, to discourage people from fleeing and for refugees to contemplate returning.
This week, there were reports that some of the tens of thousands of people who had fled February's government offensive in Aleppo and were trapped near the Turkish border have returned home. But aid organizations say thousands are still sleeping in makeshift shelters, cars or open fields.
Political solution
The implementation of the cease-fire has demonstrated the dependence of players on the ground on their international sponsors. The Obama administration has made the centerpiece of its policy a U.N. Security Council endorsed road-map outlining an 18-month political transition for Syria. It is working with and counting on Russia to help eventually convince Syrian President Bashar Assad to step aside.
With the U.S. and Russia having engineered the cease-fire and cooperating on making it work, it seems the sides on the ground have little choice but to comply, at least in the beginning. That creates hope for serious political negotiations between the government and the opposition. U.N.-brokered proxy talks are scheduled to resume in Geneva on March 9.
If it lasts, the cease-fire could also focus and intensify the fight against ISIS, which controls large swaths of territory in the country's east.
Prospects
Aleppo residents desperate and depleted
The sides agreed to an initial cease-fire of two weeks with the aim of extending it if it works, and there is no clear day-after scenario for what happens if no formal extension occurs. Breaches and the lack of aid deliveries complicate things, as do claims that Russia and the government are continuing air operations against mainstream rebels under the pretext of fighting the Nusra Front and ISIS. Another problem is the absence of neutral and credible observers on the ground to monitor and identify violations, and no clarity on the actions that would be taken in case of violations.
It would be awkward for the sides to simply resume the previous level of attacks. But if the violations ramp up and the talks go nowhere, the effort could unravel in stages. Saudi Arabia and Turkey could then stoke the fire further by deciding to arm rebels with more efficient weapons to carry on fighting. And the Syrian government will probably be eager to complete its effort to encircle rebel-held parts of Aleppo and make additional advances in the north and around Damascus.Every year, Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) memorializes those we have lost from violence against the trans* community. Throughout the world on November 20 th, there will be vigils to honor and remember those who were lost. The official website of TDOR has a list of those murdered throughout the year in violent attacks on the trans* community as well as a list of vigils happening throughout the world.
Violence is a sad reality. The trans* community faces this every day. We think often about the potential when doing such seemingly small things as going to the restroom. It is important to remember those we have lost as we work to try to reduce the violence, to bring education and understanding to the forefront. Please take a look at all of these resources. Read the names, see the pictures of your brothers and sisters and remember this November 20th.This week’s Monday Meme is brought to you by Ms. Kara Trapdoor. She messaged me with the suggestion quite a while back and I didn’t get a chance to do it till now. Since I haven’t been able to login to SL for a few days and probably won’t till tomorrow, this idea came in handy today.
Meme Instructions: Share one or more practical jokes that either you have played on others or others have played on you inworld. If you have pictures or videos to share of it, even better. Don’t forget to leave a link to your post in the comments.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the sharpest stick in the bunch and I’m also very naive and trusting at times. I wouldn’t have realized all this about myself if my lovely friends didn’t continuously remind me by tricking me on a regular basis.
Some days it seems as if my whole plurk timeline is against me, by always finding a way to pick on me. They are kind of evil like that. But I believe the two people that have tricked me multiple times are none other than my best friends, Zaara Kohime and Winter Jefferson.
I’m going to share some practical jokes along with some other things these two brats do to torture me:
Practical Jokes & other bratty activites by Zaara:
I’m sure you all know that I work for Zaara as the manager of her store. Well, did you guys know how she pays me my salary? She pays me in increments of L$69 over and over and over and over again. YES! Not even joking. You can imagine what my transaction history looks like.
Back in 2008 some time, she put some sex doll she got on marketplace on my platform. When I rezzed there, I saw it sitting on one of the chairs I had out and when I came near it, it somehow jumped on top of me and started humping me and making weird noises. IT TOTALLY FREAKED ME OUT!
I think back in 2009 or 2010, I actually had a little skybox out and a bed and some furniture for a little while for fun. One day when I logged in, I saw some people on my bed. I walked closer to them and they started cybering in chat. Turns out, Ms. Kohime had put sculpty people on my bed and had even gone and scripted them so when I came close to them they would start cybering in chat.
There was a period of time for a couple of months that I always looked ruthed to her, I have no idea why, but she took about 100 pictures around that time and then plurked a lot of them one day so everyone else can see the ruthed me!
Back in 2008 I was demoing this skin which looked downright HORRID on me, like I can’t even tell you how scary I looked in it. She took pics of it and keeps threatening me with it till this day.
These are just a few of the things she has done. I’ve lost count with the amount of times I’ve gone AFK and came back to being trapped in an invisible box or pushed into the water. I am telling you, this woman is pure evil. 😛
Practical Jokes & other bratty activities by Winter Jefferson:
And these ladies and gentlemen are my best friends. I’m really wondering why now. There is a lot more that Mr. Jefferson has done over the years, I just can’t remember it all but I would say both him and Zaara are equally evil, but I still love them both for some reason. I know they do it out of love and also find it entertaining when I become a total drama queen about it. Now that I look back at all of these things, I laugh my ass off but I still hate them for it. 😛
So I hope you guys have some practical jokes you are willing to share. If you don’t have any for SL, you can share some RL ones if you like.
Please remember that you can participate in any of the memes/challenges at any time. You’ll find them all under my Blog Challenges category along with other memes and challenges I’ve done over the years. If you have any pictures of your practical jokes, please share them in the Blog Memes Flickr group.
Have a great week! <3
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Like this: Like Loading...Both the teams had a number of chances to open the scoring, but neither of them could actually take the lead in the first half due to poor finishing. Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard broke the deadlock by scoring a free kick. A late long-range shot from Phil Jagielka brought Everton on level with Liverpool.
Liverpool, injury stricken and after a tiring win over Middlesborough, started with a 4-2-3-1 formation. Jordan Henderson and Steven Gerrard held the midfield positions. Everton deployed 4-3-3 system, similar to the one that was used against Arsenal, with Steven Naismith playing as centre forward.
Everton’s defensive minded midfielders
Roberto Martinez would not have decided to go with a midfield trio consisting of 3 defensive minded players. But injury to Seamus Coleman meant backup was needed to support Tony Hibbert.
Everton maintained rigidity in their defence to keep the Liverpool forwards at bay. The defensive midfield set up by Martinez closely marked Liverpool’s attacking midfield trio – Raheem Sterling was up against James McCarthy, Adam Lallana vs Gareth Barry and Lazar Markovic vs Muhamed Besic. McCarthy, playing to Barry’s right, negated Sterling’s threats. Sterling was drifting inside the box from the left. This kept McCarthy pinned outside the box to the right. Markovic, unable to find space in the final third, dropped into the midfield region. This allowed Besic to move higher up the pitch.
Liverpool target Tony Hibbert
In the absence of injured Coleman, Hibbert was given the start. Coleman always threatens the opposition and offers Everton the width on the right side by making attacking runs from the deep. Hibbert is more of a defensive minded player. Lacking the pace and not being a regular starter made Hibbert the weak link of Everton.
First of all, Hibbert’s defensive role meant Liverpool’s left back Alberto Moreno had the freedom to overlap Sterling, who was drifting inside, and provide incisive crosses to Balotelli and Co. playing through the centre.
McCarthy aided Hibbert as Sterling and Moreno were overlapping Everton’s right back position.
It is clear from the picture shown above that Liverpool targeted Everton’s weak link. Only the chances created from set plays came from Liverpool’s right.
Henderson does well as a box to box midfielder – Everton dearly miss a connector
Markovic’s withdrawn position allowed Adam Lallana to drift to the right forcing Barry to follow him. Space was created as a result of this and Henderson covered the space, created a few chances and had two shots on target. He carried out his defensive duties as well. His role as a box to box midfielder was impressive.
The main difference between Everton and Liverpool was – Everton did not have a shuttler while Liverpool had one. Henderson covered for Gerrard, when the Liverpool captain was caught out of possession higher up the pitch, and also filled the gap.
Everton had a tough time in connecting the deep-lying midfielders and forwards. The absence of a shuttler was felt by Martinez’s side. Everton’s forwards had to work hard and needed to run with the ball from deep positions. Everton’s forwards depended on long balls to attack Liverpool.
Naismith drops deep
Kevin Mirallas and Stevan Naismith flanked Steven Naismith. Against Arsenal, Naismith dropped deep and troubled Mathieu Flamini. Yesterday he targeted Steven Gerrard.
But Naismith could not do much to create openings for Everton’s wide forwards. This is because Liverpool had two midfielders, Gerrard and Henderson, in deep role. Whenever Gerrard was under pressure from Naismith, Henderson adjust his position to provide his captain with a passing option. This was not the case against Arsenal. Flamini was the lone holding midfielder and Naismith also had support from Leon Osman.
Everton’s forward line and 4-4-2 diamond
Lukaku, who likes to play centrally, was once again forced to play on the right side of the pitch by Martinez. The forward line of Everton was very deep and this allowed Liverpool’s defensive line to push higher and pressurize from the back.
Sometimes it looked as if Everton were playing a 4-4-2 diamond formation. Naismith in a deep role, two wide forwards, Barry’s role as the pivot and runs from Besic and McCarthy transformed the starting 4-3-3 to 4-4-2 diamond.
Conclusion
Roberto Martinez’s 4-3-3 with Naismith a false-9 works very well against teams playing with only one defensive midfielder. When facing teams that adopt 4-2-3-1 (most common formation with 2 holding midfielders), he needs to field more players in the midfield region. A 4-2-3-1 ( Lukaku – Mirallas – Naismith – Aiden McGeady – Barry – McCarthy) would have posed a greater challenge to Liverpool. Everton also need a player like Henderson, a box to box midfielder.
On the other hand John Stones was very impressive. Even though he made a few errors, he made amends by putting up a good performance.
Liverpool missed a number of chances yesterday – took 24 shots, had 8 shots on target but managed to score only one goal, that too coming from a set piece. Liverpool players constantly broke down in the final third. Mario Balotelli hit the woodwork once and came close to scoring a couple of times. Daniel Sturridge’s absence was felt by Liverpool.
Liverpool are yet to find a correct formation. Liverpool’s defending was good yesterday. Everton were forced to take shots from outside the box.Greetings on yet another Wanted Wednesday from LA!
We've been continuing with filming for our E! show and starting to get more used to having a camera lurking around while we get up to our usual antics.
Speaking of usual antics, it doesn't matter we go Max will always find the time to satisfy the craving for a lil ear rubbing..
We've been doing a fair bit of press while over here in the US and dropped by to see our friends at @AmpRadio, who we're doing a show with on April 12th. Ever the professionals, just before going live on air we furiously practice 'the dummy's guide to being a boyband' mantras. Yes, we acknowledge we probably do need to study more.
The sun is still blazing out here and so to combat the heat and harsh rays of the sun Jay has been properly sporting the 'Dad Hat'. Those of you that watched us on Celebrity Juice last will remember the 'Farmer Jay' reference. I suppose if you hear something long enough...just saying.
This Sunday we got in to the spirit (quite literally) by painting parts of our anatomy green and getting rowdy. No not those parts and we weren't trying out for the remake of Hulk (as let's be honest would be a bit of an epic fail on the physiques right?), we were in fact celebrating St Paddy's Day and got to bartend at one of our favourite pubs in LA - Rock & Reilly's.
We were doing this for charity to help raise money for Pencils of Promise, an amazing foundation that helps raise money to build schools in under developed countries. We had an awesome day, which resulted in slightly sore heads the following morning.
On Monday, a few of us got to attend a small, intimate gathering for Justin Timberlake's album release party (no honestly he is in that photo somewhere). That guy is a top performer (he would have definitely done his boyband mantras from the 'N Sync days). The show was at the El Rey, for |
periods for VA health care, with some dying in the process. The VA has acknowledged 23 deaths nationwide due to delayed care.
In Phoenix, CNN reported in April that the VA used fraudulent record-keeping -- including an alleged secret list -- that covered up the waiting periods.
That didn't stop the head of the Phoenix VA medical center, Sharon Helman, from getting an $8,500 bonus last year.
Helman's bonus got rescinded earlier this year after the VA controversy made headlines. She was placed on administrative leave but continues to receive her salary, said Gina Farrisee, the VA assistant secretary for human resources and administration, at a House Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing.
Questionable bonuses
Panel chairman Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican, cited numerous examples of what he characterized as unwarranted bonuses to VA officials overseeing a department with such problems in recent years:
• The medical center director in Dayton, Ohio, receiving a bonus exceeding $10,000 despite an investigation of veterans getting exposed to hepatitis B and C at the facility;
• The former director of the VA regional office in Waco, Texas, getting more than $53,000 in bonuses when the average processing time for disability claims increased to what Miller called "inexcusable levels."
• The director of the Pittsburgh health care system getting a top performance review and a regional director getting a $63,000 bonus despite a legionella outbreak in the Pittsburgh VA health care system that led to six patient deaths.
"To the average American, $63,000 is considered to be a competitive annual salary, not a bonus," Miller said.
Farrisee offered administrative explanations about the bonus system that did little to satisfy committee members. In particular, the Helman case in Phoenix got a lot of attention, with legislators from both parties asking how it could happen.
She explained how the bonus should never have been given because Helman was being investigated in connection with the problems at the Phoenix VA facility, and therefore the extra money was eligible to be rescinded.
Can't go back
However, Farrisee said in almost all other cases, a performance rating and resulting bonus can't be rescinded later on.
"If we knew what we knew today at that time, it is unlikely that their performance would have reflected what it reflected at the time the reports were written," she said when asked by Miller about going back to change the performance review results.
However, "you cannot go back and change a rating once it has been issued to an employee as the final rating," Farrisee said, adding that was the law rather than a government rule.
An exasperated Miller called it a law that needed to change as part of an overhaul of a culture throughout the VA motivated more by performance bonuses than serving veterans.
"We can't keep doing it the way it's been being done," he said, to which Farrisee responded: "I concur, Mr. Chairman."
The controversy, with multiple investigations and increasing revelations of problems with newly returned veterans getting care on a timely basis, caused retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki to resign on May 30 as Veterans Affairs secretary.
His successor, interim Secretary Sloan Gibson, has ruled out any bonuses for senior managers in 2014 as part of initial steps intended to get more immediate care for hundreds of thousands of waiting veterans.
Updated figures
Earlier this week, an updated audit revealed about 177,000 veterans were still waiting at least two months for an appointment at VA medical centers.
Gibson said some of the delays on the audit update appeared worse than previously reported because hospital administrators were beginning to use proper scheduling procedures that accurately reflected the number of veterans waiting.
For example, the update showed more than 43,000 veterans waiting longer than 120 days for an appointment, compared to 13,000 listed earlier this month.
According to Gibson, more appointments have been added, but some VA hospitals lack the capacity to see patients quickly, which also contributed to a spike in the figures.
The VA has reached out to 70,000 veterans waiting for appointments in order to get them into clinics, he said.
At this point, the VA's Office of Inspector General is investigating 69 facilities for allegations that administrators altered appointment data or used secret waiting lists to make patient wait times appear shorter in order to earn financial bonuses.
Farrisee said Friday that schedulers sought to meet their performance goal -- and therefore qualify for bonuses -- by showing veterans got appointments within 14 days.
An internal audit by the VA called that 14-day goal implemented under Shinseki's leadership unattainable and reported 13% of schedulers were instructed to manipulate data in some form.
Gibson has eliminated the 14-day target for the Veterans Health Administration, which has more than 1,700 facilities that serve almost 9 million veterans each year.You can open a folder into a new window (or tab) by holding down the Command key when you double-click on the folder to open it within the Finder of Mac OS X.
A new window will open if new windows are set to open in folders rather than tabs, where as a Mac Finder configured to open new folders into new tabs will open a tab instead with the Command modifier. Make sense? If not, just give it a try in the Finder by going to a location with folders, hold down the Command key as you open them, and you’ll quickly understand how it works in just a moment or two.
This is a really useful tip if you’re trying to copy files from inside one folder to another, just open the directories side by side and copy away! So, remember the Command+Double Click trick, it’s great for the Mac Finder.Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
New York’s top prosecutor plans to sue two mortgage titans, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, over claims that they breached the terms of a multibillion-dollar settlement intended to end foreclosure abuses.
On Monday, Eric T. Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general and top prosecutor, said that the lenders violated the terms of the National Mortgage Settlement, a sweeping $26 billion pact brokered last year between five of the nation’s biggest banks and 49 state attorneys general. The agreement came during a national outcry over potentially widespread foreclosure abuses like shoddy paperwork, erroneous fees and wrongful evictions.
Mr. Schneiderman says that Bank of America and Wells Fargo did not follow guidelines dictating how the banks field and process requests from homeowners trying to modify their mortgages.
Under the terms of the settlement, banks have to abide by 304 servicing standards, like notifying homeowners of missing documents within five days of receiving a loan modification and providing borrowers with a single point of contact.
“Wells Fargo and Bank of America have flagrantly violated those obligations, putting hundreds of homeowners across New York at greater risk of foreclosure,” Mr. Schneiderman said. Since October 2012, Mr. Schneiderman’s office has documented 210 separate violations involving Wells Fargo and 129 involving Bank of America.
The move by Mr. Schneiderman is the first time that an attorney general has readied a lawsuit against one of the five participating banks on charges related to the settlement, which was aimed at halting the housing market’s downward slump and doling out relief to homeowners in foreclosure.
More attorneys general could follow Mr. Schneiderman’s lead. Last week, Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts attorney general, also sent a letter to Joseph A. Smith, the settlement monitor, outlining “recurring issues” with mortgage servicers, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by The New York Times. Among the problems she cited were “erroneous communications,” and servicing requirements that were “often ignored.” Ms. Coakley could pursue a lawsuit but hopes that the monitor will intervene to correct the problems, according to her office.
The settlement emerged from an investigation into mortgage servicing by all 50 state attorneys general that began in 2010 after revelations emerged that banks had churned through foreclosures using robosigned documents, legal paperwork that was seldom reviewed for accuracy.
After the deal was reached in February 2012, Mr. Schneiderman’s office began receiving a deluge of complaints from housing counselors across the state. The counselors, Mr. Schneiderman’s office said, reported that homeowners were still wading through a bureaucratic quagmire.
Mr. Schneiderman set the potential penalty in motion on Friday when he sent a letter to the settlement monitoring committee, outlining his plans to penalize the banks. “I am writing to inform you about a persistent pattern of noncompliance,” Mr. Schneiderman wrote, according to the letter. The committee has 21 days to decide whether to initiate a lawsuit, or whether Mr. Schneiderman will pursue the action alone.
Bank of America and Wells Fargo said on Monday that they would take steps to handle the issues raised.
“Through March we have provided relief for more than 10,000 New York homeowners through the National Mortgage Settlement, totaling more than $1 billion,” said Richard G. Simon, a spokesman for Bank of America. He noted that “Attorney General Schneiderman has referenced 129 customer servicing problems which we take seriously and will work quickly to address.”
Wells Fargo, which has helped 70,000 homeowners through the settlement, is “committed to full compliance with the National Mortgage Settlement and its associated standards,” according to Vickee J. Adams, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman. She added that “it is unfortunate that the New York attorney general has chosen this route rather than engage in a constructive dialogue through the established dispute resolution process.”
Michael Farnsworth, who fell behind on his mortgage after a spinal injury prevented him from working, is among the New York residents claiming that their mortgage paperwork was not handled properly. After submitting a loan modification application to Wells Fargo on Feb. 22, Mr. Farnsworth said he returned home on March 6 to find a note affixed to his farmhouse in Corfu, N.Y.
The note was ominous, he said: Mr. Farnsworth had 48 hours to resubmit many documents, including tax returns, or his loan modification would be scuttled. Under the mortgage settlement, though, Wells Fargo was required to notify Mr. Farnsworth about missing documents five days after he submitted a loan application and to then give him 30 days to submit any missing documentation.
Wells Fargo declined to comment on Mr. Farnsworth’s case, citing customer privacy, but said that the bank “is doing everything we can to assist customers so that they can stay in their homes if possible.”
The servicing standards were intended in part to address delays that can torpedo efforts to save a home. Before the settlement, housing counselors said that homeowners were ensnared in a bureaucratic maze when seeking foreclosure relief. Some borrowers were asked for the same document multiple times, while others were shuttled from one representative to another. As their applications for relief languished, housing counselors said, borrowers accrued fresh costs, like late fees and property taxes, that aggravated their distress.
“The price of this paperwork delay can be thousands of dollars for homeowners,” Vera Cedano, a foreclosure defense lawyer with Western New York Law Center. “It can mean the difference between saving a losing a home.”
Deonarine Nareen, a 52-year-old restaurant employee in Queens, had fallen behind on his mortgage as he petitioned Wells Fargo for a loan modification, according to court records. Since Wells Fargo began foreclosure proceedings against him in 2010, Mr. Nareen said he had tried to win a reduced monthly mortgage payment, but had been asked for documents numerous times.
In the latest chapter, Mr. Nareen said he applied for a loan modification on Feb. 19, so he was surprised when he received a brand new application for a loan modification from Wells Fargo in March.I was in a coffee shop looking through the want ads when I read, "Macy's Herald Square, the largest store in the world, has big opportunities for outgoing, fun-loving people of all shapes and sizes who want more than just a holiday job! Working as an elf in Macy's SantaLand means being at the center of the excitement..."
I circled the ad and then I laughed out loud at the thought of it. The man next to me turned on his stool, checking to see if I was a lunatic.
The woman at Macy's asked, "Are you interested in full-time elf or evening and weekend elf?"
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I said, "Full-time elf."
I have an appointment next Wednesday at noon. I am a 33-year-old man applying for a job as an elf.
I often see people on the streets dressed as objects and handing out leaflets. I tend to avoid leaflets but it breaks my heart to see a grown man dressed as a taco. So, if there is a costume involved, I tend not only to accept the leaflet, but to accept it graciously, saying, "Thank you so much," and thinking, "You poor, pathetic son of a bitch. I don't know what you have but I hope I never catch it." This afternoon on Lexington Avenue I accepted a leaflet from a man dressed as a camcorder. Hot dogs, peanuts, tacos, video cameras, these things make me sad because they don't fit in on the streets. In a parade, maybe, but not on the streets. I figure that at least as an elf I will have a place; I'll be in Santa's Village with all the other elves. We will reside in a fluffy wonderland surrounded by candy canes and gingerbread shacks. It won't be quite as sad as standing on some street corner dressed as a French fry.
This afternoon I sat in the eighth-floor SantaLand office and was told, "Congratulations, Mr Sedaris. You are an elf."
In order to become an elf I filled out ten pages' worth of forms, took a multiple choice personality test, underwent two interviews, and submitted urine for a drug test. The first interview was general, designed to eliminate the obvious sociopaths. During the second interview, we were asked why we wanted to be elves. This is always a problem question. I listened as the woman ahead of me, a former waitress, answered the question, saying, "I really want to be an elf? Because I think it's about acting? And before this I worked in a restaurant? Which was run by this really wonderful woman who had a dream to open a restaurant? And it made me realise that it's really really... important to have a... dream?"
Everything this woman said, every phrase and sentence, was punctuated with a question mark and the interviewer never raised an eyebrow.
When it was my turn I explained that I wanted to be an elf because it was one of the most frightening career opportunities I had ever come across. The interviewer raised her face from my application and said, "And...?"
I'm certain that I failed my drug test. My urine had cockroaches and stems floating in it, but still they hired me because I am short, five feet five inches. Almost everyone they hired is short. One is a dwarf. After the second interview, I was brought to the manager's office, where I was shown a floor plan. On a busy day 22,000 people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf's lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind.
I spent my eight-hour day with 50 elves and one perky, well-meaning instructor in an enormous Macy's classroom, the walls of which were lined with NCR 2152s. A 2152, I now understand, is a cash register. The class was broken up into study groups and given assignments. My group included several returning elves and a few experienced cashiers who tried helping me by saying things like, "Don't you even know your personal ID code? Jesus, I had mine memorised by ten o'clock."
Leaving the building tonight, I couldn't shake the mental picture of myself being stoned to death by restless, angry customers, their nerve shattered by my complete lack of skill. I tell myself that I will simply pry open my register and accept anything they want to give me - beads, cash, watches, whatever. I'll negotiate and swap. I'll stomp their credit cards through the masher, write "Nice Knowing You!" along the bottom of the slip and leave it at that.
All we sell in SantaLand are photos. People sit on Santa's lap and pose for a picture. The Photo Elf hands them a slip of paper with a number printed along the top. The form is filled out by another elf and the picture arrives by post weeks later. So really, all we sell is the idea of a picture. One idea costs nine dollars, three ideas cost 18.
My worst nightmare involves 22,000 people a day standing before my register. I won't always be a cashier, just once in a while. The worst part is that after I have accumulated $300 I have to remove $200, fill out half-a-dozen forms, and run the envelope of cash to the drop in the China Department or to the vault on the balcony above the first floor. I am not allowed to change my clothes beforehand. I have to go dressed as an elf. An elf in SantaLand is one thing, an elf in Sportswear is something else altogether.
This afternoon we were given presentations in a windowless conference room crowded with desks and plastic chairs. We were told that during the second week of December, SantaLand is host to "Operation Special Children", at which time poor children receive free gifts donated by the store. There is another morning set aside for terribly sick and deformed children. On that day it is an elf's job to greet the child at the Magic Tree and jog back to the house to brace our Santa.
"The next one is missing a nose," or "Crystal has third-degree burns over 90 per cent of her body."
Missing a nose. With these children Santa has to be careful not to ask, "And what would you like for Christmas?"
We were given a lecture by the chief of security, who told us that Macy's Herald Square suffers millions of dollars' worth of employee theft per year. As a result the store treats its employees the way one might treat a felon with a long criminal record. Cash rewards are offered for turning people in and our bags are searched every time we leave the store. We were shown videotapes in which supposed former employees hang their heads and rue the day they ever thought to steal that leather jacket. The actors faced the camera to explain how their arrests had ruined their friendships, family life, and, ultimately, their future.
One fellow stared at his hands and sighed, "There's no way I'm going to be admitted into law school. Not now. Not after what I've done." He paused and shook his head at the unpleasant memory. "Oh man, not after this. No way."
Macy's has two jail cells on the balcony floor and it apprehends 3,000 shoplifters a year. We were told to keep an eye out for pickpockets in SantaLand.
This morning, we were lectured by the SantaLand managers and presented with a Xeroxed booklet of regulations titled The Elfin Guide. Most of the managers are former elves who have worked their way up the candy-cane ladder but retain vivid memories of their days in uniform. They closed the meeting saying, "I want you to remember that even if you are assigned Photo Elf on a busy weekend, YOU ARE NOT SANTA'S SLAVE."
In the afternoon, we were given a tour of SantaLand, which really is something. It's beautiful, a real wonderland, with 10,000 sparkling lights, false snow, train sets, bridges, decorated trees, mechanical penguins and bears, and really tall candy canes. One enters and travels through a maze, a path which takes you from one festive environment to another. The path ends at the Magic Tree. The Tree is supposed to resemble a complex system of roots, but looks instead like a scale model of the human intestinal tract. Once you pass the Magic Tree, the light dims and an elf guides you to Santa's house. The houses are cosy and intimate, laden with toys. You exit Santa's house and are met with a line of cash registers.
We travelled the path a second time and were given the code names for various posts, such as "The Vomit Corner", a mirrored wall near the Magic Tree, where nauseous children tend to surrender the contents of their stomachs. When someone vomits, the nearest elf is supposed to yell "vamoose", which is the name of the janitorial product used by the store. We were taken to the "Oh, My God, Corner", a position near the escalator. People arriving see the long queue and say "Oh, my God!" and it is an elf's job to calm them down and explain that it will take no longer than an hour to see Santa.
On any given day you can be an Entrance Elf, a Water Cooler Elf, a Bridge Elf, Train Elf, Maze Elf, Island Elf, Magic Window Elf, Emergency Exit Elf, Counter Elf, Magic Tree Elf, Pointer Elf, Santa Elf, Photo Elf, Usher Elf, Cash Register Elf, Runner Elf, or Exit Elf. We were given a demonstration of the various positions in action, performed by returning elves who were so animated and relentlessly cheerful that it embarrassed me to walk past them. I don't know if I could look someone in the eye and exclaim, "Oh, my goodness, I think I see Santa!" or "Can you close your eyes and make a very special Christmas wish!" Everything these elves said had an exclamation point at the end of it!!! It makes one's mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment. I feel cornered when someone talks to me this way. Doesn't everyone? I prefer being frank with children. I'm more likely to say, "You must be exhausted", or "I know people who would kill for that little waistline of yours."
I am afraid I won't be able to provide the grinding enthusiasm Santa is asking for. I think I'll be a low-key sort of an elf.
My costume is green. I wear green velvet knickers, a yellow turtleneck, a forest-green velvet smock, and a perky stocking cap decorated with spangles. This is my work uniform. My elf name is Crumpet. We were allowed to choose our own names and given permission to change them according to our outlook on the snowy world.
Today was the official opening day of SantaLand and I worked as a Magic Window Elf, a Santa Elf and an Usher Elf. The Magic Window is located in the adult "Quick Peep" queue. My job was to say, "Step on the Magic Star and look through the window, and you can see Santa!" I was at the Magic Window for 15 minutes before a man approached me and said, "You look so fucking stupid."
I have to admit that he had a point. But still, I wanted to say that at least I get paid to look stupid, that he gives it away for free. But I can't say things like that because I'm supposed to be merry.
So instead I said, "Thank you!"
Again this morning I got stuck at the Magic Window, which is really boring. I'm supposed to say, "Step on the Magic Star and you can see Santa!" I said that for a while and then I started saying, "Step on the Magic Star and you can see Cher!"
And people got excited. So I said, "Step on the Magic Star and you can see Mike Tyson!"
Some people in the other queue, the queue to sit on Santa's lap, got excited and cut through the gates so that they could stand on my Magic Star. Then they got angry when they looked through the Magic Window and saw Santa rather than Cher or Mike Tyson. What did they honestly expect? Is Cher so hard up for money that she'd agree to stand behind a two-way mirror at Macy's?
The angry people must have said something to management because I was taken off the Magic Star and sent to Elf Island, which is really boring as all you do is stand around and act merry.
At least a third of Santa's visitors are adults: couples, and a surprising number of men and women alone. Most of the single people don't want to sit on Santa's lap; they just stop by to shake his hand and wish him luck. Often the single adults are foreigners who just happened to be shopping at Macy's and got bullied into the Maze by the Entrance Elf, whose job it is to hustle people in. One moment the foreigner is looking at china, and the next thing he knows he is standing at the Magic Tree, where an elf holding a palm-sized counter is asking how many in his party are here to see Santa.
"How many in your party?"
The foreigner answers, "Yes."
"How many in your party is not a yes or no question."
"Yes"
Then a Santa Elf leads the way to a house where the confused and exhausted visitor addresses a bearded man in a red suit, and says, "Yes, OK. Today I am good." He shakes Santa's hand and runs, shaken, for the back door.
I spent a few hours in the Maze with Puff, a young elf from Brooklyn. We were standing near the Lollipop Forest when we realised that "Santa" is an anagram of "Satan". Father Christmas or the Devil - so close but yet so far. We imagined a SatanLand where visitors would wade through steaming pools of human blood and faeces before arriving at the Gates of Hell, where a hideous imp in a singed velvet costume would take them by the hand and lead them toward Satan. Once we thought of it we couldn't get it out of our minds. Overhearing the customers we would substitute the word Satan for the word Santa.
"What do you think, Michael? Do you think Macy's has the real Satan?"
"Don't forget to thank Satan for the Baby Alive he gave you last year."
"I love Satan."
"Who doesn't? Everyone loves Satan."
This afternoon, I worked as an Exit Elf, telling people in a loud voice, "THIS WAY OUT OF SANTALAND." A woman was standing at one of the cash registers paying for her idea of a picture, while her son lay beneath her kicking and heaving, having a tantrum.
The woman said, "Riley, if you don't start behaving yourself, Santa's not going to bring you any of those toys you asked for."
The child said, "He is too going to bring me toys, liar, he already told me."
The woman grabbed my arm and said, "You there, Elf, tell Riley here that if he doesn't start behaving immediately, then Santa's going to change his mind and bring him coal for Christmas."
I said that Santa no longer traffics in coal. Instead, if you're bad he comes to your house and steals things. I told Riley that if he didn't behave himself, Santa was going to take away his television and all his electrical appliances and leave him in the dark. "All your appliances, including the refrigerator. Your food is going to spoil and smell bad. It's going to be cold and dark where you are. Man, Riley, are you ever going to suffer. You're going to wish you never heard the name Santa."
The woman got a worried look on her face and said, "All right, that's enough."
I said, 'He's going to take your car and your furniture and all the towels and blankets and leave you with nothing."
The mother said, "No that's enough, really."
I Photo Elfed all day for a variety of Santas and it struck me that many of the parents don't allow their children to speak at all. A child sits upon Santa's lap and the parents say, "All right now, Amber, tell Santa what you want. Tell him you want a Baby Alive and My Pretty Ballerina and that winter coat you saw in the catalogue."
The parents name the gifts they have already bought. They don't want to hear the word "pony", or "television set", so they talk through the entire visit, placing words in the child's mouth. When the child hops off the lap, the parents address their children, each and every time, with, "What do you say to Santa?"
The child says, "Thank you, Santa."
Some of these children, they get nervous before going in to visit Santa. They pace and wring their hands and stare at the floor. They act like they're going in for a job interview. I say, "Don't worry, Santa's not going to judge you. He's very relaxed about that sort of thing. He used to be judgmental but people gave him a hard time about it so he stopped. You have nothing to worry about."
'SantaLand Diaries' is taken from 'Barrel Fever' by David Sedaris, first published by Little, Brown in AmericaWhat an amazing experience this was....
At 51 years old I am a bit past the years of hoping for a present on Christmas morning, I am even past the joy of giving toys to my little children and watching them happily tear into the ribbons and paper. I am also at a time in my life where I am minimizing all of my possessions and don't really want to add more stuff to my pile of stuff.
So when I joined Secret Santa I was mostly interested in giving something to somebody else. Even seeing all the cool and creative stuff people give to each other on here, I really couldn't think of anything I would want. The only thing I ever ask for on birthdays etc. is coffee or things like that I can eat or drink.
A rattle of the letterbox outside my door let me know the mailman had arrived, I looked out and saw a package waiting for me. I brought it inside, opened it and saw a HUGE box of wonderful chocolates, (which of course for a guy like me is the ultimate and perfect gift) and a small card.
On the card was written...
"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost"
For those of you unfamiliar, that is a quote from The Lord of the Rings... which just happens to be the nearest and dearest book to my heart of all time. It was the first epic scale story that I read in my life, and a series that I read and re-read every couple years. I have a old set given to me by my big brother when I was a boy that are so worn out that I have them held together with duct tape.
The most amazing thing was how that small note touched my heart and instantly took me back to my childhood... listening to my mother read me from "The Hobbit" or going over and over characters and battles in the Lord of the Rings with my brother. For me these are truly blessed memories.
Thank you Santa from the bottom of my heart. You could not have done a better job if you had the lifespan of Tom Bombadil to plan it :)
EDIT: Part 2 of my gift has arrived! An awesome JRR Tolkien tshirt to wear while my chocolates melt in my mouth.
Happy Christmas (and the rest of the year) to my awesome Santa and to all a good nightIDA: What's new in 5.5
Highlights
Finally! Finally we drop the MDI user interface and switch to dockable windows. They are simpler to use, more flexible, waste less screen space. Well, you know it yourself. The new interface also includes the improved hex viewer and stack view. The new hex view is much easier to use, can display the data in various formats, allows editing in-place. There is a lot to discover, some screenshots can be checked in the gallery.
Probably the fastest thing to do is to visit the comparison page for more detail about processor modules. In the endless pursuit to improve the disassembly output, we continue to add new methods, tricks, and heuristic rules to IDA. This time the biggest changes are in the ARM and PC modules. The ARM module handles the stack frame, type information, call/jump instructions better than before. The PC module knows about more code patterns, like switch and position-independent code idioms, detects more exception handlers, etc.
Naturally, after adding Windbg support in v5.4, we had to add support for crash dumps. Just specify a crash dump file as the input file and IDA will create a database from it. The debugger can be 'launched' to enter the familiar debugger environment with module, thread, and stack windows, where information can be retrieved the usual way. The only thing you can not do is to resume the execution, that would be an overkill ;)
The previous addition required a big, hopefully invisible, change in the kernel, because the existing storage method could not handle huge gigabyte segments. Previous versions of IDA had a hard limit on the addressing space of the program: max 256MBytes in the default configuration. Modern programs routinely allocate much bigger memories, so we had to find a solution. Now, if a crash dump segment is bigger than a certain size, IDA automatically chooses the sparse storage method. Instead of storing information about every single byte of the program, IDA remebers only useful information. Thus, a 25MB uninitialized array requires just a few bytes of storage to describe it, not 100MB as before.
We would also explicitly mention and say 'thank you' to the users who contributed to this release of IDA. Bernhard Mueller from SEC Consult GmbH was very kind to investigate why the Symbian debugger was failing on new devices and contributed an improvement. Robert Krkic generously shared his IDS files for Symbian systems with all IDA users. Thank you guys, your contributions make IDA better and easier to use!
Do you remember that you can add emulated API functions to the Bochs debugger? Just provide an implementation in IDC/Python/C++ and your function is called. For example, you could provide an implementation of the socket() function that would open a socket on the host system or do something else. While this possibility is very useful and remains in place, we added more predefined functions. Now the Visual Studio and Borland C/C++ startup code can be executed without generating exceptions and you can focus on the'real' code.
In addition, we also added the 'Bochs rc file loader'. It really helps if you already have a bochsrc file and want to debug it with IDA. Just specify it as the input file and IDA will create a nice database for you. No need to create a dummy database, populate it with the code from the boot sector, etc.
Other, probably less visible, improvements include the PDB plugin, the type system, more SDK functions (check out the exec_request_t if you develop multithreaded plugins), etc. The full list is below:
Changelist
Processor Modules
PC: added detection of CException destructor; this helps to detect exception handlers and ignore them during function epilog analysis
PC: added support for another variation of PIC code by GCC
PC: more switches recognized in unoptimized MSVC code
ARM: added support for SUB Rx, R11, #fpoff stack variable references
ARM: added support for switches implemented using TBB/TBH instruction
ARM: better detection of R7-based frames
frames ARM: LDMED can be used for return too
ARM: type info and argument names are propagated for local variables passed by reference
ARM: other unspecified improvements (we removed them to keep the list short and more readable)
ARM: LSL Rx, Ry, #0 and ADD Rx, Ry, #0 are simplified to MOV Rx, Ry
I51: i/o port names are accepted for all segments (before only FSR definitions were handled)
MIPS: much improved analysis
SuperH: simplified display of pc-relative literal loads
File Formats
BOCHRC file loader: it is now possible to start IDA with a bochsrc file as the input file
file as the input file CRASH DMP file loader: it is now possible to start IDA with an MS Windows Crash dump file
COFF: segment permissions are imported for MS object files
ELF: accept PPC64 ELF files
ELF: handle dynamic symbols in MIPS files
ELF: some new SuperH relocations are supported
ELF: added support for ARM TLS relocations
EPOC: added support for multiple imports with the same ordinal
EPOC: user contribution: ids files for epoc6/9 from Robert Krkic
EPOC: since AppTRK does not report thread creation/deletion, IDA forcibly refreshes the thread list if an unknown thread id is encountered
PDB: added the possibility to manually load a specific PDB file; to load only types from the PDB
PDB: added support for anonymous unions. types with bitfields are handled more correctly: we replace them with a corresponding POD type; ida kernel can not handle bitfields yet
PDB: added support for undefined enum types
PDB: better handling of C++ static methods and functions returning complex types.
PDB: better handling of string literals ([email protected])
PDB: information about function argument names is applied, if available in the.pdb file
PDB: symbols can be loaded using EXE headers in the database, either from the module list during debugging or via File menu by specifying a valid base address
PE: added an option in pe.cfg to force loading of all PE file sections (usually.reloc and similar sections are skipped)
PE: if import and/or export tables lie outside.idata segment, they are parsed and formatted
Kernel
Added some common C++ ABI functions to noret.cfg
Added support for __usercall functions with variable number of arguments (...)
functions with variable number of arguments (...) Added functions to handle floating point instructions for the decompiler
Improved the browsing speed for big databases when autoanalysis is busy: moving around in huge databases is much better
Demangler: added support for the latest gcc4
Updated WinCE ARM ids files to Windows Mobile 6.0
Scripts & SDK
IDC: added MoveSegm() and RebaseProgram() functions
IDC: added OpFloat() function
IDC: renamed segment modification functions to start with a verb. Old names continue to be available.
SDK: added append_buf() and unpack_buf(), append_obj() and unpack_obj()
SDK: added build_anon_type_name()
SDK: added build_func_type() to facilitate building of type strings that represent functions
SDK: added callbacks to AskUsingForm so that the dialog can be modified on the fly
SDK: added change_storage_type() to change the storage method of arbitrary address range. please note that the sparse storage method works well only with uninitialized areas with huge objects
SDK: added floating point conversion functions for 64bit values
SDK: added functions for working with imports (enum_import_names and others, see nalt.hpp)
SDK: added get_zero_areas() to retrieve info about huge zero inited ranges
SDK: |
he has it under control, I'll have to broaden my horizons and maybe take on Rwanda, Papua New Guinea or Nepal," she said.
Topics: health, eyes, charities-and-community-organisations, perth-6000, darwin-0800, east-timor
First postedELTP Season 6.5 - Pre-season predictions
Conference A
Sam-’s The Krusty Grabs
O Sam- (C) O Sherrattinho (50) D Wilson (17) D jjpoole (13) Sub OEOEOEOEOE (14)
It’s no surprise to see real-life friends Sam- and Sherrattinho on a team together, however for the first time since Season 3 Sherra will be playing offence. The ball-of-fame defensive star isn’t exactly known for his offensive talent, but with Sam- back at home playing on the internet that saw him win ELTP in Season 5, Sherra might just need to be there to help Sam- get out of base and keep the regrab train alive.
On the other side of the map we have a defensive duo with nearly 4000 minutes of LTP to their names - Wilson returns following a one season break and has been playing at a superb level in scrims, possibly making him the best valued player of the draft. Supporting him will likely either be jjpoole (Sam- and Sherra’s MLTP captain) or OEOEOEOEOE, a quickly improving player who excelled at both positions in Season 6 Silvers. Whilst OE might have more scope to improve as well as better mechanical skill on European servers than jj, Wilson’s aggressive playstyle may be better covered by jjpoole’s experience. Either way, The Krusty Grabs look to have a very well-rounded team.
Offence: 8.25/10
Defence: 8.5/10
Overall: 8.5/10
Predicted: 1st in Conference
Hyponome’s Hypo and the Gnomes 2: Hypo’s Gnome Children
O imperious (59) O 420assman (21) D Hyponome (C) D Hawka (0) Sub Welbz (6)
Hyponome returns to captain in ELTP for the 6th time and has drafted a team of close friends who will probably spend 90% of their practices playing CSGO, aka The Dong Squad. Speaking of returns - following two mediocre seasons on offence, Hyponome heads back to his more familiar side of the map - the ex all-star and ELTP winner has been dominating every PUG he’s played in lately, and will no doubt perform brilliantly again in his natural defensive position. However partnering him is Hawka - and though he was once a borderline majors/minors talent a few seasons ago, question marks hang over his ability - will he be washed up or will Hypo be able to put him through the drier?
On offence, HG2 have imperious and 420assman. Both returning to majors after one season out (even if 420’s break was just because no one wanted to draft him for majors), Hypo has potentially formed a capable offensive duo. That said, although imperious was a top offender in Season 5 it’s unclear if he’s yet back at the ability he needs to be to justify his 59 euroll price tag - especially as he’ll be missing the first week. Alongside him is 420 who, following a stellar season in silvers, will be hoping to solidify his spot in majors for Season 7. Assman was probably a little unlucky to not be drafted into Majors last season and compared to the prices of other offenders in the auction it looks like he went quite cheaply. If 420 can step up and imperious can get back to his old level, HG2 could have a very dangerous team.
Offence: 8/10
Defence: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Predicted: 2nd in Conference
Nube’s Salt City
O Nube (C) O The Juker (21) D Green (62) D Kera (3) Sub weisbrot (10)
Though every one of their starting four players finished inside the bottom three of the league last season, Salt City have been predicted by many to be the strongest team in Season 6.5. Captaining the NaCl-Clan is Nube - after a disappointing Season 6 where he found himself on a collapsing team,many people might have forgotten just how good he is. Though his team didn’t make the playoffs last season, Nube still managed to get just 3 caps off the number one spot despite his team having the flag in base the 2nd least of any team. Partnering him is The Juker - hyped up heavily going into last season, Jimmy flopped a little and ended up second last in the league with a 2.91 GASP. Has the potential to be much better than he is, but for whatever reason he has as of yet failed to live up to his own potential.
At the helm of their defence is Green - arguably no longer at the peak that saw him reach the final in Season 5 and perhaps going for a little more than his worth in the auction, however he is still a talented, communicative defender who will probably form a solid defensive partnership with a mix of Kera and weisbrot. All in all their defence, though missing a star player, is probably one of the better defences in the league and will certainly do the job against the teams in their conference.
Though this team appears to be a solid all-round side, their major pitfall will likely be their O/D. Whilst both Nube and The Juker will probably rack up a lot of hold and bring in lots of caps, Nube’s famously light ball and Jimmy’s flaccid grabs are going to cost their team a lot of caps and perhaps as a result end up missing out on important results.
Offence: 7.75/10
Defence: 7.25/10
Overall: 7.5/10
Prediction: 3rd in Conference
Ruud’s Daruud and the Sandstorms
O Poukie (27) O thenewguy. (6) D Ruud (C) D Booya Ball (67) Sub jj’s pool (0)
One of the borderline majors/minors captains coming into the mini-season, Ruud has limited majors experience and a few fairly average seasons in minors to his name. Knowing this, Ruud went big on his defence partner - too big. Booya Ball is a solid player, but 67 on him might have been a slight overpay. This has the potential to be a successful defensive pairing so long as Ruud is able to adjust his play-style to cover for Booya’s aggressive swipes, however with Ruud himself having similar downfalls (notably his infamous backwards snipes) this defensive pairing could go either way.
With limited Eurolls to spend on his offence, Ruud struggled to pick up an offensive star. Both Poukie and thenewguy. are capable of playing Majors if led by a top-tier player, however their lack of top-level experience could render them ineffective against the strong defences throughout their conference. As things stand I would probably rank this as the worst offence in the league, and suspect that after a week or two of DRS struggling to get results Ruud will look to rotate in jj’s pool - the East Coast beast has racked up 59 caps in MLTP Season 9 so far and performed well last season in his first season of ELTP.
Offence: 4/10
Defence: 7.5/10
Overall: 6/10
Prediction: 4th in ConferenceA native of Auxvasse, Missouri, I spent my working life writing advertising and direct mail in New York and suburban Connecticut.
From 1999 to 2007, I also wrote a weekly column, Doubting Thomas, for my local Connecticut newspaper. I enjoyed that more than my day job and even won awards for it.
I now get my creative jollies writing this blog.
As a columnist, I had to stay away from politics, religion and other controversial topics. Couldn’t risk offending the paper’s readers or advertisers.
But on tomdryden.com, I am free to say whatever I damn well please. And I will.
So, welcome to my blog. I can’t promise a new post every day, but I’ll work hard to keep this site fresh, and to keep you coming back for more. Subscribe (above) and you’ll be notified whenever a new post appears.When a Wikipedia page gets vandalized, it’s hardly news. But when the vandals strike using British government computers to spread anti-Islamic slurs and remove negative information about a former prime minister’s wife, that is news.
The BBC has uncovered hundreds of inappropriate Wikipedia edits, deletions, and other acts of vandalism made by computers accessing the online encyclopedia through the two known IP addresses used by government machines. The edits have provoked strong condemnation from both the British government and the non-profit organization behind Wikipedia.
“The amendments made to Wikipedia are sickening,” the U.K. Cabinet Office told the BBC in an email. “The behaviour is in complete contravention of the Civil Service Code. It is entirely unacceptable.”
One of the most incendiary acts of vandalism was made in October 2006, to the Wikipedia entry for “veil.” An unknown person wrote that, “It should be noted that the word Veil, when the letters rearraged [sic], spells evil.”
The vandal added, “Since the Veil is mostly worn by Muslims, and all Muslims are terrorists (with the argument for this being that all terrorist have been Muslim), this fact should be dually [sic] noted by all.”
The offensive comments were removed by another Wikipedia editor six minutes later and remained forgotten about until the BBC’s investigation.
Nasima Begum, a spokeswoman for the Muslim Council of Britain, told the BBC that the edits reflect the “types of attitudes that create an unnecessary climate of fear and hostility.”
The same IP addresses were also connected to changes made on the Wikipedia entry for Cherie Blair, the wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. In 2005, an editor deleted information involving a scandal in which the prime minister’s wife made a pair of discounted real estate investments with the help of a convicted fraudster. The BBC gave no indication that the prime minister or his wife were involved in the edits.
Other edits connected to Whitehall (the administrative center of British government in London), include the addition of homophobic slurs to the entries for celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and newspaper columnist Richard Littlejohn. Whitehall computers also reportedly made changes to the page for the 7/7 mass transit bombings in London, by inserting links to conspiracy theory sites.
All the edits originate from the same two IP address—195.92.40.49 and 62.25.106.209—which are connected to the Government Secure Intranet. It is possible to mimic an IP address, but as British news site the Independent notes, most of the controversial edits were made prior the government’s decision to publicly disclose its IP addresses in 2008.
Wikipedia vandalism is nothing new. The basic premise of Wikipedia is to create a massive online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. This open door policy means the site will never be free of pranksters and vandals, according to Stevie Benton of Wikimedia U.K.
“Wikipedia is the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit,” Benton told the BBC. “This openness has led to an enormous reference work of great value. While vandalism does occasionally happen we are grateful to the many thousands of volunteers who write, edit and organise the content.”
The British Cabinet Office has promised a thorough investigation of the matter.
Photo by Berit Watkin/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)Sometimes, you just can’t bring yourself to do it.
You want to start writing, but don’t think you’re good enough
You want to talk to that girl or guy, but feel you won’t know what to say
girl or guy, but feel you won’t know what to say You want more success, but believe achievement is only for others, not you
Part of the problem? You probably need more confidence.
If you were confident in your ability to write, you’d probably start
If you were confident in your social skills, you’d talk to him or her now
If you were confident in your ability to accomplish goals, you’d begin that new project
And really, building confidence in any area of life is simple.
Now notice…I said simple, NOT easy.
I think where many people mess up building confidence is they get that backwards. I know I did. I once believed building confidence was complicated and mysterious, but that once I learned the “secret” process to get it, self-assurance would come quickly and easily.
That’s not how it works. And there is no secret process for instant confidence, at least not in my experience. Not for the kind of confidence that lasts, anyway.
But I’ve found there is a simple formula for building confidence over time. It’s this:
Confidence = Courage + (Proper Knowledge + Proper Thinking)
Let’s look into each of these in more detail.
Confidence = Knowing You Can Do Something
That’s it; that’s all.
And “knowing” you can do something is NOT about visualizing it or willing it to be so. It’s simply about practicing something until you’ve proven to yourself you can do it.
Once you’ve written several blog posts or stories, received feedback, adjusted and improved, THEN you’ll trust your writing ability
Once you’ve talked to more strangers and experienced most people as receptive, THEN you’ll feel confident in your social skills
Once you’ve begun to reach for your goals and make progress, THEN you’ll believe in your ability to succeed
If you take one thing from these examples, I hope it’s this:
Building confidence takes time.
That’s why you can’t just chant in the moment, “I’m confident, I’m confident” hoping a warm feeling of strength, ability and charm will somehow possess your body like at a cocktail party in Beetlejuice.
You can’t conjure confidence; you have to earn it.
+ Courage to Take Action
To earn confidence you must take action, no matter your current level of ability in the area you lack confidence.
But taking action in an area where you lack confidence is a Catch 22. You fear doing the thing because you need confidence, yet you have to do it to gain confidence.
That’s where courage comes in.
Courage helps you write that first story and submit it, knowing it might be rejected
Courage helps you approach that cute girl, knowing she may be put off by your nervousness
Courage helps you tick off steps to your goal, knowing you’ll makes mistakes along the way
It takes guts to face your weaknesses in anything, because you’re likely to fail and make mistakes.
But by having bravery to slug through, you’ll gain real-life experience and feedback that will allow you to improve. And improvement leads to confidence.
Bonus Tip: Just remember, having courage is easier when you start small and take baby steps.
+ Proper Knowledge to Save Time
Taking action is essential to building confidence, but having an idea what you’re doing helps too.
Think about it:
If you have horrible grammar, it’ll take longer to get your writing accepted
If you don’t know basic conversation skills, you’ll fumble for words a lot more
If you’re clueless about setting goals, you’re more likely to set yourself up to fail
That’s why having a road-map and proven methods can help you avoid a lot of failure and crippling self-doubt. Both of which can quickly sap your confidence and make you want to give up.
So be sure to seek the advice of someone who’s been where you’re headed. It’ll save you valuable time by pointing you in a direction more likely to end in success.
+ Proper Thinking to Stay Positive
Sometimes, even when you begin to see success in the area you lack confidence, your mind plays tricks on you.
You write a popular blog post but think, “ Ah, I just got lucky.”
You hit it off with someone new but say to yourself, “That was just a fluke.”
You complete a small task that’s part of a bigger goal but moan, “I’ll never get there.”
So you filter out the good and only see the negative. You discount your progress because a limiting belief inside you says, “you’ll always fail in the end.”
Or maybe you don’t see success as quickly as you’d like, and your inner critic starts chanting, “Everyone else can do it; why can’t I? Something must be wrong with me.”
As human beings, we ALL tend to filter and think in black or white terms like this and it’s almost always damaging to our confidence. It can cause you to give up before you’ve given yourself a chance to gain any momentum.
So try to be aware of the negative and irrational thoughts that tear you down from the inside out. By acknowledging your achievements, no matter how small, and by thinking more rationally, you keep yourself positive and motivated.
Building Confidence is Not Magic, It’s Simple Addition
So remember, it IS possible to feel more confident in any area of your life. But please don’t think of it as a magic or mysterious process.
Think of it as math.
You gain confidence in any area by:
ADDING informative experience through being courageous
ADDING time-saving leverage by gaining more knowledge
ADDING positive perspective by thinking rationally
———-
But one way to build an overall confidence in your life is to become more comfortable around people in general. In fact, Dean J is a once-shy guy who now teaches people simple tips on how to improve conversation skills and self-confidence. Click here to watch his free videos on how to be more confident and have more to say in conversations. You can also find Dean on Google+.John Brennan Crutchley (October 1, 1946 – March 30, 2002) was an American convicted kidnapper and rapist who was suspected of murdering up to 30 women, but was never tried nor convicted of those crimes. He was called the "Vampire Rapist" because he drained the blood of his victim almost to the point of death while he repeatedly raped her.
Early life and career [ edit ]
Born to a well-to-do family in Pittsburgh, John Crutchley was a friendless child, preferring to spend most of his time tinkering with electronic gadgets in the basement of his home. This penchant for electronics paid off early when he earned a good amount of money repairing and rebuilding complex radio and stereo systems even before he graduated from high school. Eventually, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics at Defiance College in Ohio in 1970, and earned a master's degree in engineering administration at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He married his first wife in 1969.[1]
Crutchley's first marriage showed strains by the time he graduated from college, and it had all but ended by the time he moved to Kokomo, Indiana, to work at Delco Electronics Corporation. Crutchley had been working at General Motors' Central Foundry Division in Defiance, Ohio, where he was responsible for the installation of a new plant security system. He applied for a transfer to Delco Electronics in Kokomo, where the systems were designed and built, and worked there for several years as an electrical systems engineer.[2]
His departure from Kokomo came after an investigation was made by plant security into missing materials. He later moved to Fairfax County, Virginia, in the mid-1970s and remarried. He worked for several high-tech firms in the Washington, D.C. area, including TRW, ICA and Logicon Process Systems. At about this time, several teenaged girls disappeared in and around that area. He later moved to Florida and began working in 1983 at Harris Corporation in Palm Bay, Florida.
Disappearances [ edit ]
In 1977, a 25-year-old Fairfax, Virginia, secretary, Debbora Fitzjohn, disappeared. Crutchley was placed under close scrutiny because he was Fitzjohn's boyfriend and she was last seen alive at the trailer park where Crutchley lived. As a result, he was questioned several times for his possible involvement in her disappearance. However, nothing came of it due to lack of evidence, even after her skeletal remains were found by a hunter in October the following year.
The "Vampire Rapist" [ edit ]
According to FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler, Crutchley fit the profile of a serial killer, even though he was convicted of only a single non-fatal kidnapping and sexual assault.[3]
In late November 1985, in Malabar, Brevard County, Florida, a nude teenaged woman, handcuffed at both feet and ankles, was found crawling along the side of the road. She had been passed by several trucks before someone stopped to help her. She begged the driver to not take her back "to that house,"; when he asked where, she told him to remember a certain house. He noted the location, took her home, and called for police and an ambulance.[3]
The hospital determined she was missing between 40 and 45 percent of her blood and had ligature marks on her neck. She'd been hitchhiking the day before and the man who gave her a ride was willing to take her where she needed to go, but said he had to stop off at home first. He invited her in and she refused, and he got into the back seat of the car and choked her unconscious.
The hitchhiker awoke to find that she was tied to a kitchen countertop, arms and legs immobilized. A video camera had been set up, along with lights. The man raped her and videotaped the action. Then he inserted needles into her arm and wrist and carefully extracted blood and began to drink it, telling her that he was a vampire. After that, he handcuffed her and put her in the bathtub, returning later for another round of sexual assault and blood extraction. The next morning, after a third round, the man handcuffed the hitchhiker and left her in the bathroom, saying that he would be back later for further assaults, and that if she tried to escape in the interim, his brother would come and kill her. It was after the attacker had left the house that she was able to push out of the bathroom window and crawl to the road. Had she not escaped then, doctors believed, she might well have died from a further round of blood extraction.[3]
A search warrant was served for John Brennan Crutchley, whose wife and child were away for the Thanksgiving holiday. The videotape in the camera was partially erased, which according to the victim would otherwise have contained footage of her rape and the extraction of her blood. Crutchley was arrested during the search, which took place at 2:30 a.m. Photographs of the house taken at the time of this first search showed, among other things, a stack of credit cards several inches thick. A second, later, search did not turn up these credit cards, nor a collection of women's necklaces concealed in a closet which had been noted, but not confiscated, by the police during the first search.[3]
After being contacted by local authorities for his input, Ressler was convinced that Crutchley had almost certainly killed before, identified him as a "serial killer of the organized type." Ressler instigated a second search, which was of much wider scope and detail than the first. Ressler noted that there had been four female bodies found in Brevard County in the previous year, and that unexplained bodies had been found and missing women reported in Pennsylvania while he lived there. No evidence was found to link these deaths to Crutchley, however.[3]
In addition to suspecting Crutchley of murders in Florida and Pennsylvania, Ressler also suspected Crutchley for murder in the 1977 disappearance of Debbora Fitzjohn, the secretary whom he met in Fairfax, Virginia. She had been in his mobile home and police identified Crutchley as the last person to see her alive.[3]
What was found during the second search in the Brevard County teen case included a stack of 72 3x5 cards on which Crutchley had recorded women's names and described their sexual performances. When contacted, some of the partners indicated that Crutchley had crossed the line from "kinky" consensual acts into sexual assaults involving restraint. His wife had apparently cooperated in similar acts, and spoke to the press about him. Among other remarks, she commented on his attack on the handcuffed teen — which took place while she was away with their own daughter for Thanksgiving — calling it "a gentle rape, devoid of any overt brutality."[3]
In June 1986, Crutchley pleaded guilty on kidnapping and rape charges in exchange for prosecutors dropping the "grievous bodily harm" charge for extracting the victim's blood and for drug possession. During the sentencing phase, the blood issue came up nonetheless and Crutchley claimed to have been introduced to blood drinking by a nurse in roughly 1970 as part of a sexual ritual. He said it should not be considered in his sentencing because in this case, he had not drunk the blood; he claimed that it had coagulated before he could drink it, "and he couldn't get it down." His wife did not take the stand but told reporters that her husband wasn't guilty, but was just "a kinky sort of guy."[3]
Based on testimony from Ressler at the sentencing hearing, the judge chose to exceed state guidelines and sentenced Crutchley to 25 years to life in prison with 50 years of subsequent parole.[3]
Release and re-arrest [ edit ]
Writing in 1992 about the 1986 conviction, Ressler predicted that Crutchley's "25 to life" sentence would result in release as soon as 1998.[3] In fact, Crutchley was released two years earlier than that.
After serving 11 years of his sentence, Crutchley was released on August 8, 1996, from Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida, for the Brevard County Jail for good behavior. Officials in Bridgeport, West Virginia, where his mother lived, did not want him, nor did the people in Malabar and Melbourne. Therefore, he was transferred to the Orlando Probation and Restitution Center, a half-way house where he would undergo counseling and pay restitution even while serving his 50 years of parole.
Less than a day later, he was arrested again for violating his parole after being tested positive for marijuana. Even though he denied smoking marijuana (saying that inmates blew marijuana smoke in his face), prosecutors in the subsequent trial showed Crutchley confessing to a corrections inspector that he smoked the substance because he was nervous about his impending release and he was aware of the relaxing effects of cannabis.[4] This violation of his parole resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment to be imposed on Crutchley on January 31, 1997, under the "three strikes law." This was his third conviction; the first two were for the kidnapping and the rape of the Brevard teen.
Death [ edit ]
On March 30, 2002, Crutchley died in prison. Corrections officials reported on April 2, 2002, that he had been found dead in his cell at the Hardee Correctional Institute with a plastic bag over his head. The cause of death reported was asphyxiation.[5] Subsequent reporting around August 1, 2003, from the Florida Department of Corrections declared that Crutchley died of autoerotic asphyxiation.[5]
Classified information [ edit ]
At the time of his arrest, Crutchley was found to be in possession of a great deal of highly classified information regarding naval weaponry and communications. Unnamed federal agencies other than the FBI considered opening an espionage case against him.[3] Crutchley's employer, Harris Corporation, was highly involved with not only the NASA research and launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, but also with other Naval contractors and subcontractors.
Media coverage [ edit ]
On October 30, 2010, the cable channel Investigation Discovery broadcast a 20-minute summary of the Brevard County incident which led to Crutchley's incarceration. This episode of American Occult includes interviews with "vampirism sociologist" Katherine Ramsland, PhD, as well as law enforcement officers from Brevard County, Florida, Robert Leatherow and Jake Miller, and also identifies the victim as one Laura Murphy.
This episode also includes archival video imaging of Crutchley, including his declaration that the attribution of vampirism is pointless, declaring that "it's all about the label of the 'big V', the 'big V' is empty, that's not me". Several archival photographs included in this program show the young Mr. Crutchley looking very typical of the times and places of his youth. Professor Ramsland notes of Mr. Crutchley that there was nothing at all about him which would send danger signals to potential victims, indeed, she states that there was "nothing about him that would indicate he was anything but an engineer".[6]Despite Legal Intimidation and Police Infiltration
Cross-posted from The Guardian UK, by Susanna Rustin
Last November members of the newly formed direct action group No Dash For Gas were feeling pretty good. They had just completed a week-long occupation of West Burton power station in Nottinghamshire, forced French owners EDF to switch the power off and prevented the emission of 19,117 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
In a cafe in London where she met me after work a couple of days after climbing down the 91m concrete chimney where activists had camped for a week, Ewa Jasiewicz said the group felt “really stoked and happy, and excited about a resurgent climate justice, commons-focused movement”.
The No Dash for Gas activist and author Danny Chivers, who I interviewed over the phone, said: “We need to stop new gas power stations and that was the main aim. The secondary aim was to show that the climate movement is still there. It’s reached the point where climate change is so scary that you can’t sit back and watch this anymore, you have to do something.”
Jasiewicz says staff at Newark police station told her and Hannah Lewis, the last two activists to hand themselves in: “You’re tough ladies, we couldn’t have done that.” I couldn’t interview Jasiewicz and Lewis together, or meet any of the other 19 activists in the same place. All had been arrested – 16 who occupied the two chimneys and 5 who stayed on the ground – and had police bail conditions forbidding them to associate with each other as well as a 7pm-9am curfew and a ban on going within 50m of any power station.
But despite modest media coverage (almost nothing in the tabloids, the Times or the BBC’s Today programme), and the prospect of a drawn-out legal process and criminal records, they spoke of the protest with pride – partly because West Burton was the first occupation of a power station since the revelation in the Guardian that undercover police officers including Mark Kennedy had slept with activists and infiltrated the climate movement over several years.
Police spying was a blow to the movement and made people more wary, especially about large groups, he said. West Burton was a regrouping exercise, intended to boost morale among activists – at a time when eight women are suing the police on the grounds that sexual relationships with undercover officers harmed them. Activists needed to show themselves as well as the public that they could still do it.
Last year the group feared they might be charged with conspiracy to commit trespass. As of Tuesday, a day after the last activist answered police bail, the most serious charge they face is aggravated trespass, with a maximum sentence of six months. No one has ever been sent to prison for trespassing during a power station occupation. Activists convicted following previous actions have been conditionally discharged, fined or ordered to do community service.
But police actions in the past three months suggest the approach to such protests may have hardened. Bail conditions imposed by Nottinghamshire police were unusually harsh, with several activists having to argue in court – after the force failed to respond to a solicitor’s letter – that by forcing them to report to the police station every day, police were preventing them from working.
Chivers says this was “quite upsetting. They are the kind of conditions you impose if you fear someone is going to flee the country. We did exactly what we said we would and handed ourselves in when we came down. It’s purely a way of harassing people and trying to deter them.”
Three months on, several of the activists have not had their bail conditions relaxed. “It seems completely arbitrary, they haven’t given any reasonable reasons why and the police simply refused to engage,” says Chivers. Danielle Paffard, another activist who received a conditional discharge after pleading guilty to aggravated trespass at Didcot power station in 2009, agrees it “feels like there is an escalating attempt to intimidate protesters”.
On 29 December Jasiewicz was visited at home by officers from the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command – proof, she says, of an expansion of the definition of terrorism to include non-violent crimes against property. She cites the chancellor George Osborne’s reported use of the expression “environmental Taliban” – after which the heads of several green NGOs wrote to him to complain – as an example of this kind of thinking.
“The fact that our protest is being considered a form of ‘terrorism’ is yet another example of political policing and police-corporate collusion aimed at deterring the civil disobedience that we need in this country if we are stop this government’s dash for gas.”
“We felt we’d won the battle against coal,” says Jasiewicz. “The government is not going in that direction. This is the start of a new and concerted campaign against gas being brought into our energy mix. We oppose this government’s dash for gas and the implications of being locked into a dirty and volatile fossil fuel for the next 30 years.”
How successful that campaign will be remains to be seen. The argument about Britain’s energy future continues to rage. As the first of up to 40 new gas-fired power stations envisaged by the government, West Burton is symbolically important to both sides.
When the activists enter a plea on 20 February they can count on some public support. But environmental activism has dipped in the UK following the anti-climax of the 2009 Copenhagen summit and the coalition’s austerity programme. Media coverage has fallen off as well, with studies showing the number of climate-change stories going down. Lawyer Mike Schwarz, who is acting for the group, believes this changing public mood may have influenced juries in previous cases.
At the top of their towers, buffeted by gales, the activists practiced abseiling and managed to suspend a rope between two chimneys after several attempts involving a remote-control helicopter and a kite. A physicist brought along solar cells that powered a laptop and phones until they ran out.
“I’m quite scared of heights so that was a real struggle,” says Danielle Paffard, “and being in such an alien situation – shitting in a bag at a great height in high winds.”
“It got extremely exhausting, at all times we could see the drop,” says Jasiewicz. “But you feel every day that you’re doing something really useful by stopping the CO2 emissions. We felt that we were in a position of power, being able to look down and be untouchable in a way, which is a really rare experience in direct actions.”
AdvertisementsGREEN BAY, Wis. – It’s been two seasons since Randall Cobb’s breakout year. In NFL years, that’s a lifetime ago.
The Green Bay Packers receiver might be the ultimate what-have-you-done-for-me-lately case.
A well-respected player around Lambeau Field and the league, Cobb hasn’t come close to his 2014 production – 91 catches, 1,287 yards and 12 touchdowns – that led to the four-year, $40 million contract he signed in March 2015. Halfway through that contract, the Packers have to be wondering whether this will be a bounce-back year for the 26-year-old.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a bounce-back year,” Packers receivers coach Luke Getsy said. “He played really well for us when he was full-go.”
Getsy is right in that regard; injuries have slowed Cobb in the last two seasons. A preseason shoulder injury hampered him in 2015. Even though he never missed a game, the shoulder bothered him all season. His production dropped: 71 catches, 829 yards and six touchdowns.
Last year, an early season hamstring injury cost him one game and an ankle injury that kept him out of the final two regular-season games. In 13 games, he caught just 60 passes for 610 yards and four touchdowns – his lowest totals since 2013, when he missed 10 games with a broken bone in his leg.
Still, he showed a glimpse of what he once was in the wild-card playoff win over the New York Giants with five catches for 116 yards and three touchdowns.
“Shoot, that first playoff game, he wasn’t even healthy for that one,” Getsy said. “And he played his butt off.”
The Packers have been talking this offseason about finding more ways to get Cobb the ball. That’s no easy task given how many options Aaron Rodgers has – from Jordy Nelson to Davante Adams to Ty Montgomery to new tight ends Martellus Bennett and Lance Kendricks.
“It’s important to make sure you create opportunities for all these guys,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy said earlier this offseason. “And how can you get Randall the ball a couple more times a game? Those are the things I think about at night – just making sure that our system has something for everybody, because you need everybody. You need to make sure the right guys are touching the ball as much as possible.”
Clearly, McCarthy and his staff think the Packers’ offense is better when Cobb has the ball in his hands.
They value Cobb’s versatility – he even lines up in the backfield and gets a few carries (10 last season, 50 for his career) – but they still have to remember he’s a 5-foot-10 slot receiver with limitations when he lines up outside. Most of Cobb's production has come from the slot, where he has lined up on 80.1 percent of his career receptions and all but two of his career touchdown catches, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
“When you have a guy like him that’s so dynamic with the football in his hands, I think that’s where coach was going with it is you’ve got to get him the football,” Getsy said. “And it’s different when you have a 6-7 tight end or a 6-4 receiver outside, there’s probably a little bit easier direct line to get the guy the ball. But I don’t think anybody on this football team is as dynamic as that guy is with the football. So yeah, |
from the cost of government.
The Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank, estimated this week that 45 percent of U.S. households paid not a single dollar in federal income tax for 2010. And The Fiscal Times reported this week that "for the first time since the Great Depression, households are receiving more income from the government than they are paying the government in taxes." This, in Obamaland, is called job creation. But does anyone believe the trajectory is healthy? No doubt, these events allow Obama to spread the wealth around to those who deserve it -- clean energy outfits, teachers unions, czars, etc. -- but they also create a growing number of voters with little stake in stopping out-of-control growth.
Many conservatives argued that lowering the tax burden would free up capital and induce job creation. "Washington would likely see increased revenues as prosperity grows," they claimed. This must be a fact, as economists I choose to believe say it is. It's unfortunate, though, that most Republicans won't go further and argue that everyone, even the rich -- even the super-filthy rich! -- deserves to be treated equally by the government.
It is also too bad that these politicians won't admit that revenue, whether we have more of it or less, is basically irrelevant. After all, doesn't the federal government have enough money? We need spending caps and entitlement reform, not ways to generate more revenue -- as if Washington's expenditures ever match revenue anyway. The real size of government can only be measured by what D.C. spends, not by what it takes in.
If, as the enlightened voices on the left contend, the American people deeply love their federal services, their dependency programs, their regulations, their industrious public education department, let's all pay. Why shouldn't we take on a proportionally fair share in the joy? Even income tax-paying Americans don't really feel the cost of government because of how we collect taxes. But let's create better consumers. Consumers pay and demand results. Dependents, on the other hand, just demand. They have no reason not to.Hillary Clinton. CNN Hillary Clinton said she would gift previous campaign contributions from disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein to charity. Clinton made the announcement in response to a question on the matter in a CNN interview on Tuesday.
"Of course I will do that. I give 10% of my income to charity every year. This will be part of that. There's no doubt about it," Clinton said.
Clinton, who was twice a Democratic presidential candidate — once in 2008 and again in 2016 — also served as a senator in New York in the early 2000s and as secretary of state during President Barack Obama's first term. Over the course of her political career, her campaigns have received about $26,000 in donations from Weinstein according to the Federal Election Commission.
Weinstein is one of a handful of Hollywood power players who regularly fundraise for and donate to Democratic candidates, several of whom have said they would also give Weinstein-linked contributions to charity in light of the sexual harassment scandal engulfing him and his media empire. Clinton on Tuesday said she was "shocked and appalled" by the allegations against Weinstein, and said such behavior "cannot be tolerated."
The former film executive has all but become a persona non grata in the days since the harassment accusations were revealed. He was fired from his own film company on Sunday and has been almost universally condemned inside and outside the entertainment world.
Watch Hillary Clinton's comments on Weinstein below:Raffi Torres SIGNS in Vancouver August 25, 2010, 12:55 AM ET [ Comments] Peter Tessier
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As breaking everywhere on Twitter from Vancouver to God knows where else, but led by our own Dan Murphy, Torres has signed in Vancouver.
Torres had a 36 point season with Columbus and Buffalo last year. Torres has played a decent gritty style of hockey that has seen him eclipse 20 goals twice in the NHL and 19 once all while only playing almost 3 full seasons in game at 80, 82 and 82 all with Edmonton. Since 2006-07 Torres has only amassed a high of 74 games played and that was last season.
Since his 'glory days' in Edmonton injuries have been a bit of an issue but I'm sure Gillis is betting on some experience and grit from the 29 year old to help his bottom six. It's not sexy but it's smart and hey he's a former 20 goal scorer ask Daryll Sutter how important they are.
With the recent Sekeres Globe and Mail article claiming Burrows could be out until December perhaps Gillis is trying to find a 'Burrows' type player to be a utility man and has some hands. There's no telling what a former 20 goal scorer can do if you suddenly find Henrik and Daniel and line mates. I'm getting ahead of myself but clearly Torres fits the Gillis mold of player who is smart a bit gritty and useful in more than one situation.
Something to talk about the perhaps even heighten the Bieksa watch for some. I think we have Kevin until at least the trade deadline and the signing of Torres almost guarantees that Bieksa stays and Willie is moving on.
Until Wednesday...The number of people sleeping rough in Dublin has increased by a third (33 per cent) since April, the latest official figures show, reaching a record high of 184.
In addition there were 50 adults in the Merchants Quay night cafe, bringing the total number of adults unable to access an emergency bed on the night of the 7th/8th November to 234.
This compares with 138 rough sleepers counted in the “spring rough sleeper count” on April 4th, and 57 in the night cafe (195 in total) and the 142 rough sleepers counted in November 2016.
The figures have been published by the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE).
Of the 184 found sleeping rough, 102 had previously accessed homeless services while 11 people had not been in touch with homeless services before. Of the remaining 71, there was not enough information to be sure about whether they had been homeless before. Some 80 were Irish nationals, 53 were non-Irish nationals, and the nationality of 51 individuals could not be identified on the night.
In addition to the 234 adults unable to get an emergency bed on the night there were 3,385 adults and 2,335 children in emergency accommodation beds, giving a total homeless population in the capital of 5,954.
The figures come as the DRHE announces details of its 2017 cold weather initiative. An extra 200 “permanent emergency beds” are to open and 50 extra temporary emergency beds for the winter.
“The 250 ‘bed spaces’ are distributed across seven new emergency accommodation facilities which will be operated by our partner agencies in the charity sector,” a DRHE spokeswoman said.
“Each of the service providers has extensive experience in the delivery of services to persons who are homeless and have staff with the required skills and competencies. Each is established under a Service Level Agreement with the DRHE.”
Charities working in the sector described the 30 per cent increase in seven months as “extremely worrying”.
Kerry Anthony, chief executive of the de Paul Trust said: “This time last year, Depaul had 102 emergency beds in its services across Dublin. Today, the organisation has 198 beds as well as two emergency family rooms, every one of these beds is filled each night, demand is constant and increasing.”
Pat Doyle CEO of Peter McVerry Trust said: “The figure of 184 is very disappointing and it’s clearly not acceptable. There has been a huge increase in the number of beds spaces in emergency accommodation and the Housing First project has housed 76 people in the last year.
“It is imperative that each local authority begins to provide social housing through direct build for single people and couples and that it is adequately represented in all new build housing schemes be they private or public housing.”Thomas Struth, Blowout Preventer, Mountrail County, North Dakota, 2010.
Chromogenic Print, 169.5 x 204.7 cm. © Thomas Struth 2010.Chromogenic Print, 169.5 x 204.7 cm. © Thomas Struth
It was five o’clock in the morning one day this past spring when Dave, a former Department of Defense contractor, eased his 1996 Isuzu pickup into Williston, North Dakota. Downtown, the remnants of Williston’s former days—the mid-century-modern J.C. Penney Co. building, the family-owned pharmacy—were dark. But the roads of this once-prairie outpost were already bustling. Tankers and eighteen-wheelers were rolling to and from the drilling and frack sites that have transformed North Dakota into America’s second-largest oil-producing state, behind Texas.
Dave, a wiry man with a Carolina twang, was recently returned from the Pakistan desert province of Balochistan, where he was working for the giant military contractor DynCorp International. It was his most recent in a thirty-year string of assignments, first as an Army Special Forces medic and then as a military contractor, that took him from the coca fields of Colombia to the airspace over Afghanistan. He has asked to be identified by only his first name, as the State Department is “a little sensitive about the particulars.” When the Pakistan gig went south, he decided to deploy himself and his expertise closer to home.
“I was looking at the computer. And of course, as you know, the story is out there: the oilfields are booming,” he said. “So here I am.”
That morning, when the job service center in Williston opened at 8 a.m., Dave was the first in line. Inside, his story is a common one. Over the last few years, Williston has experienced what some veterans call a “surge” of ex-military personnel in search of well-paying jobs and a manageable transition to civilian life. The exact percentage of vets is impossible to pin down, said Grant Carns, Veterans Affairs officer for the county, but it is higher than among the general US population. This concentration of former service members owes partly to the fact that military training makes many uniquely suited for work in the domestic oil and gas industry. That, at least, has been Dave’s experience. The job center referred him to a fellow military man who runs a local nonprofit for veterans. When this man learned Dave’s skills, he immediately escorted him to B&G Roustabout Services, a growing oilfield service company, which hired Dave on the spot to work as a pipeline mapper.
Meanwhile, DynCorp International, Dave’s former employer, is also attracted by Williston. The military contractor specialized in providing logistical support to the armed forces during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and may soon join the ranks of defense companies that have found ways to segue their expertise into oil and gas.
Perhaps nowhere is this energy revolution more striking than in the dusty North Dakota boomtowns that have earned the nickname “Kuwait on the Prairie.”
“They and other defense logistics providers are very attracted by this sense that there’s all of this exploration activity and a lot less infrastructure to make it all possible,” said Kathryn Seitz of Avascent, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm that focuses on the aerospace and defense industries. The press office of DynCorp stated that the company is not currently engaged in any oil and gas projects, and that it doesn’t discuss internal strategic plans.
“Their [DynCorp’s] differentiator is working in remote, harsh environments and getting large pieces of equipment and people from point A to point B,” Seitz said, “and that is exactly what oil and gas needs to do here.”
A little over a decade ago, at the onset of the Iraq War, Washington was rife with predictions of global oil shortages and pessimism about the decline in US production, which was almost as low as it had been since World War II. But today the nation is once again an oil empire. Fueled by advancements in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, the United States has surged past Russia and Saudi Arabia to become the number one oil- and gas-producing country in the world. And perhaps nowhere is this energy revolution more striking than in the dusty North Dakota boomtowns that have earned the nickname “Kuwait on the Prairie.”
In 2008, the United States Geological Survey announced that North Dakota and Montana held a combined three to four billion barrels of recoverable oil, an amount twenty-five times greater than the agency had estimated in 1995. Thousands of companies and entrepreneurs—from giant oilfield service corporations to adventure-seeking strip-club owners—flooded the state’s blood-red badlands and lush, cattail-filled marshes. The prize: the light, explosive oil locked in an underground shelf of layered rock known as the Bakken Formation. Over the next five years, oil companies drilled thousands of new wells, blasting the shale with TNT and immense amounts of water mixed with sand and chemicals to extract the oil, which was quickly loaded onto railroad cars and shipped to refineries nationwide. The pace of expansion was dizzying. Tens of thousands of workers poured in from across the country, many camping out in their cars and in parking lots for lack of available housing. Companies burnt off billions of dollars’ worth of usable natural gas because they couldn’t build pipelines fast enough to capture the output. North Dakota’s GDP ballooned at a rate of 10 percent in 2013. Finally, in the spring of 2014, the state announced that it was producing more than one million barrels of oil a day—and predicted that companies would drill as many as forty thousand more wells before the boom was over.
Viewed from one angle, this domestic boom signals a pivot away from the foreign dependency—and resulting oil wars—that have shaped US foreign policy for decades. But viewed from another, the new wealth of the Bakken has brought the US defense and energy industries even closer together. Of course, the US military has frequently intervened in world and domestic affairs to ensure that oil flows freely on the global market—and into the tanks of the armed forces’ own Humvees and F-16s. The US Department of Defense is, after all, the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world. But what’s unique today is how the rise of massive military contracting alongside the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan has created an oil boom that’s built, powered, and protected to an unprecedented degree by former service members and current defense companies—all on US soil.
Explosives are only one of the hazards that have catapulted North Dakota’s workplace fatality rate to five times that of the national average.
Williston is not a war zone—at least not according to the federal government. But nor is it a corner of the United States that feels fully civilian. A few days before I arrived in Williston, a factory that produces chemicals used in fracking exploded in the middle of downtown, sending fireballs hundreds of feet into the air and raining a thin layer of soot onto the nearby tributaries of the Missouri River. The state’s National Guard rushed to evacuate a half-mile radius around the site. But by the time I pulled into town, the event had largely faded from local interest. After all, something is always exploding in the oilfields. Lightning strikes the superconductive fiberglass tanks that store wastewater waiting to be re-injected into underground aquifers. Volatile oil leaks out of the holding sites and sends the whole unit up in flames. The amount of TNT detonated to fracture the shale below each well would be capable of leveling everything above ground within a five-mile radius. In satellite images, the thousands of gas flares dotting the landscape like toxic tiki torches light up the Bakken as brightly as Chicago.
Explosives are only one of the hazards that have catapulted North Dakota’s workplace fatality rate to five times that of the national average. In the winter, frostbite clutches at fingers and noses, as rig hands battle forty-below temperatures and snow that falls like wet concrete. Icy conditions send tankers rolling off the road or barreling headlong into other vehicles; one owner of a small trucking company who worked for years as a driver in Alaska’s oilfields said he’s never seen this many crashes in his life. Sand-processing machines amputate upper arms. Falling steel cables whip through the air fast enough to slice through femurs. Fatal, sour-smelling hydrogen sulfide can surge out of the bowels of the earth at any moment.
Brualio de Jesus, a former Marine who now works as a rig hand, has witnessed the dangers of the oilfields up close. “If you have your hand positioned in the wrong place, you’re losing your finger, you’re losing some skin, you’re breaking something,” said de Jesus. Recently, he sustained internal bleeding when a bolt he was tightening came loose and the momentum threw him back onto a pile of valves. “Every second is an opportunity to get hurt.”
And then there are less visible challenges: the isolation from family and friends; cramped living quarters in steel shipping containers called “man camps”; the profound loneliness and lack of intimacy in a company town dominated by men. The latter, in turn, has spilled over into violence against women. Nearby reservations have witnessed a sharp rise in sexual assaults, rapes, and human trafficking, overwhelmingly perpetrated by non-native oilfield workers—one of the reasons that many indigenous people and climate-justice activists view the extraction frenzy as a form of warfare.
Military training helps many thrive, or at least survive, in this environment—a reality that both employers and the armed forces recognize. ShaleNET, a Department of Labor-funded platform that helps place people in oilfield jobs, provides military occupational classifications alongside all of its career listings. “The skills developed during their time in the military frequently translates into these hands-on careers,” the 2013 ShaleNET career guide explains. Advisors for the Army Career and Alumni Program (ACAP), which is meant to help soldiers transition back to civilian life, also recommend that ex-military people head to Bakken. Arkansas native Joshua Lumbley, who now works as a roustabout outside Williston, recalled discharging from the Army in 2013: “You have to do your ACAP, it’s like green to civilian, they call it,” he said. “And every teacher that came in for that said, ‘If you want a job, go to North Dakota.’”
One of the thousands of veterans who opted for this route is former Marine Sergeant Dan Barton. Twenty-nine years old, he carries his family’s strong German features, with sharp cheekbones and sand-blond hair. His childhood was shaped by his father’s alcoholism and the lack of opportunities in his small hometown in Tennessee. Enlisting was the best option out. He signed up in 2002, right out of high school. The next year, he was monitoring thermal cameras at Guantánamo Bay. By 2005, he was serving his second tour in Iraq as a squad leader attached to a sniper unit in Haditha, near one of the country’s largest hydroelectric dams.
While there, Barton dodged bullets and rocket-propelled grenades. He watched a friend burn to death while trapped inside a Humvee. He rose to the rank of sergeant, only to return home to find that the skills he’d learned—namely, combat—didn’t generally apply to the civilian world. But his military training has proven valuable in the oilfields, where he now works as a pipeline operator earning more than $200,000 a year.
His role as a sergeant helps him manage his team, while his combat days render the hazards of the oilfields unimpressive. When an oil holding tank caught fire at his worksite earlier this year, Barton was unfazed by the blaze that burned for more than twenty-four hours. “Having been shot at and [seen] IEDs, it’s less dangerous to me,” he said. “I’m not scared to die, if you will.”
As for the six-figure salary, Barton, whose mother has health problems, said, “When I got this job, I cried like a baby.”
He also sees the underlying—or in this case, underground—motive linking his former employer, the US military, and his current one. “The same reason I wanted to go to Iraq to make good money,” he said, “is the same reason I’m here making money working for the same cause: oil. And it’s the same thing. But what are you going to do?”
Barton’s not the only one who sees the connection. On the southeast side of Williston, just beyond the banks of the Muddy River, sit the Halliburton Hills—the local nickname for the corporation’s massive base of operations. Stretching for nearly a mile down Route 1804 and another half-mile along Route 9, the complex boasts a 158-bed living facility made from shipping containers, a handful of temporary office buildings, and a sprawling, key-card-access-only yard filled with hundreds of Halliburton-red semis, oilfield cement trucks, water tankers, buses, company-issued Ford Super Duty pick-ups, and chemical storage vats. Many of the tankers sport the obligatory diamond-shaped label with the numbers 1268 to warn other drivers that the vehicle is hauling flammable oil. Nearly all the equipment is emblazoned with the trademark Halliburton logo.
As the Iraq War wound down in the second half of the decade, the defense industry began to search for “adjacent markets.”
In 2011, Halliburton announced that it was hiring eleven thousand new workers in North America—and that the majority would be based in the Bakken. Since then, the oilfield service giant has ramped up its North Dakota operations, far surpassing any competitor in the region. As one current rig worker, who previously served eight years in the Army, explained, “They come in with fourteen or fifteen trucks and all the gear we need…. They’re like the National Guard, they’re so huge.”
Halliburton is currently the second-largest oilfield service company in the world, but over the last decade it has become more famous for its battlefield activities. During the 2000s, Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR ballooned into the largest Iraq War contractor, receiving just shy of $40 billion in funds from Washington. Outsourcing elements of war had been on the rise since the early 1990s, but the privatization of the Iraq conflict—and the resulting upturn in the defense industry—was unprecedented. As author and policy expert P. W. Singer explained in Foreign Affairs, the number of private contractors employed in the Iraq conflict in 2005 roughly equaled the total number of troops provided by all of the United States’s coalition partners. Singer wrote, “President George W. Bush’s ‘coalition of the willing’ might thus be more aptly described as the ‘coalition of the billing.’”
But as the Iraq War wound down in the second half of the decade, the defense industry began to search for “adjacent markets” where it could transfer the skills and technology of the battlefield into profit in the civilian world. And at the top of these growth opportunities are the oilfields. In 2008, defense contractor Raytheon—which has 63,000 employees worldwide and made $23.7 billion in revenue last year—announced an “important milestone” in its quest to “unlock new potential in adjacent markets.” It had sold new technology for extracting oil from shale like the Bakken to Schlumberger, the world’s leading oilfield service company. The technology, which is still in development, entails heating the underground shale rock with radio frequency waves to ease extraction. (Besides its military work, Raytheon’s accidental claim to fame is inventing the microwave in the 1940s, after an engineer discovered that waves from an active magnetron had melted his candy bar.) The value of Raytheon’s sale was not disclosed, but Schlumberger’s vice president told the East Valley Tribune that, in addition to the initial purchasing price, the royalties could last for “multiple decades.”
This sale was one of the first in a flurry of acquisitions, deals, and technological investments by defense contractors. In 2012, military contractor SAIC opened a new office in Dickinson “dedicated solely to supporting oil and gas companies”; in 2013, military contractor Harris CapRock began providing satellite and communication services for drilling companies working in North Dakota; and in 2014, Lockheed Martin bought Industrial Defender, which provides cybersecurity to oil companies. Booz Allen Hamilton—which was most recently in the spotlight as the former employer of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden—partnered with lobby group the American Petroleum Institute to develop the Oil and Natural Gas Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Among the services it provides is guaranteed secure communication between industry members that is protected against Freedom of Information Act requests.
“This is an enormous market,” said Seitz of Avascent. “The government is big, but oil and gas takes it to a whole new level.”
On the eastern edge of North Dakota, retired Air Force General Al Palmer is focused on transferring one particularly powerful battlefield technology to the home front: unmanned aircraft systems, better known as drones. Palmer is the director of the University of North Dakota Center for UAS Research, Education, and Training—the leading non-military drone research facility in the world. In describing the center’s preeminence, Palmer explained that there are only twenty-nine Predator Mission Aircrew Training Systems—the most sophisticated simulation available—in the world. The US Air Force has twenty-eight. His center in Grand Forks, North Dakota, has number twenty-nine.
To Palmer, drones have broad civilian applications—including aiding the state’s oil and gas boom. “We’re limited only by our imagination,” he said. In fact, just that morning, he explained, he’d been on a conference call about an unmanned helicopter that was deployed in Afghanistan and may now be used to move heavy equipment in the energy industry.
Both military contractors and the Department of Defense agree with Palmer’s sky’s-the-limit assessment. Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other military contractors have all established partnerships with the University of North Dakota’s research center. So has the Defense Department, which has provided the “lion’s share” of the facility’s funding, according to Palmer. Meanwhile, the state’s new drone test site, one of the first in the nation, has already received applications from oil companies to launch joint programs. UND is also in talks with the start-up company Energy Intelligence, which is developing sensors-carrying drones designed to monitor the twenty thousand miles of pipelines that crisscross the state. “We’re hoping to revolutionize the way pipelines are flown,” said company president Zach Lamppa.
The most literal meaning of revolution, however, is not forward motion, but a full cycle, another turn of the proverbial screw. And to some, the increasingly cozy relationship between the military world and the oil and gas industry appears to be just that: the next phase of a global campaign to drill and fight for oil—in order to, in no small part, power the effort to drill and fight for more oil.
“What they sell to the American public is: ‘We don’t want dependency on foreign oil,’” said former Marine Sergeant Barton. “It’s like: ‘We don’t need to be dependent on foreign oil, look what happened in Iraq. So let’s drill here.’ But they’re not [saying] that it’s the same companies, or it’s the same pockets, or the same politicians, or lobbyists. That’s the conversation no one’s having.Richard Lipski/Associated Press
Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder has spent much of his offseason defending his team's controversial nickname and claiming it will never change. One thing Snyder is willing to change, however? His stadium—and possibly its location as well.
Snyder sat down with CSN Washington on Wednesday and unveiled the Redskins are in the planning stages for building a new stadium.
“We are going to push forward," Snyder said. "We've started meeting with architectural firms. We are in the process of developing because it is a long term that you do it.”
While noncommittal about the new stadium's location, Snyder did indicate a move back to Washington D.C. is possible if the terms are amenable. The Redskins' current facility, FedEx Field, is located in Landover, Maryland. Snyder indicated D.C., Maryland and Virginia are all potential locations.
Moving back to the city would hearken nostalgia for the team's glory days. Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, located downtown, was the team's home for 36 seasons, including each of its five Super Bowl appearances. One of Snyder's main priorities with his new stadium will be creating a nostalgic feel—with RFK serving as his blueprint.
Greg Gibson/Associated Press
“We've already seen some preliminary drawings and I'm going to be very retro with it,” Snyder said. “It's gonna feel like RFK. It's gonna move like RFK. I love that, I actually asked architectural firms to do it and they said that they can do it. I said that I think the lower bowl sections are going to want to rock the stadium like the old days.”
The Redskins have not had nearly the same amount of success at FedEx Field, a 17-year period which has coincided with Snyder's ownership. The team has won only two division championships in the building while making four total playoff appearances.
RFK, meanwhile, was the host of the proudest 10-year span in franchise history. From 1982 to 1991, the Redskins won three Super Bowls, appeared in four and made the playoff seven times. Washington has not won 11 games in a season since its Super Bowl run in 1991 and has not made back-to-back playoff runs since moving to Landover.
While that seems much more due to rampant franchise mismanagement than a stadium problem, Snyder said he was determined to get started "sooner than later." FedEx Field is still relatively young, but the arms race with NFL owners to land new stadiums is only growing larger.
Susan Walsh/Associated Press
The 49ers' Levi's Stadium will be the fifth new facility to open since 2008. The Vikings and Falcons have also come to agreements on new stadiums expected to be open within the next couple years. While FedEx Field is the fourth-largest stadium in the NFL, Snyder undoubtedly sees the massive revenue streams that are opening with their new buildings.
Santa Clara and Minneapolis have both been awarded Super Bowls before their stadiums opened. The Cowboys, Colts, Giants/Jets and Cardinals have also been recently rewarded for their state-of-the-art complexes by hosting the country's biggest sporting event.Maybe It's Time To Swap Burgers For Bugs, Says U.N.
Enlarge this image toggle caption NARONG SANGNAK/EPA /Landov NARONG SANGNAK/EPA /Landov
Yes, we talk a lot about eating bugs here at The Salt. We know, because some of you have complained about it.
But insect cuisine isn't just a crazy fad for Bay Area and Dutch foodies, or for Israelis plagued by locusts: In a report out this week, the U.N.'s agricultural arm makes the case for why insects should be an option for dinner.
The Food and Agriculture Organization has been pondering bugs as a protein source since 2003, but in the new report, the agency argues that insects might be essential to feeding a planet of 7 billion people. Why? They're nutritious, better for the environment than other protein sources and can generate jobs, according to the FAO.
"Insects are pretty much untapped for their potential for food, and especially for feed," Eva Muller, director of FAO's Forest Economics, Policy and Products Division, said in a statement.
Of course, 2 billion people worldwide already enjoy insects with gusto — in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Australia. As The Salt previously reported, some efforts have focused on "grow-your-own-insect" kits as a form of emergency food aid for African refugees. Among the most popular of the 1,900 species consumed are beetles, caterpillars, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. But rich nations have turned up their noses at them, and the FAO says it's high time for that to change.
There are some signs that investors are warming to insect farming, as climate change has a lot of people rethinking where we get our protein. And insects are now looking like a pretty appealing alternative: They emit considerably less greenhouse gases and waste than other animals, they require little to no land, and many species can consume waste products like animal blood, which means we wouldn't need to produce feed (like soybeans or corn) especially for them.
And if you want to talk about feed efficiency, insects use just 2 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of meat. Cattle, at the other end of the spectrum, require 8 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of beef, the FAO says. Locusts beat out beef when it comes to essential nutrients like iron, too: between 8 and 20 milligrams per 100 grams of dry weight of locusts, compared with 6 milligrams per 100 grams of dry weight of beef.
In addition to bugs to feed people, the FAO is optimistic about opportunities to raise insects to feed to animals. As we reported last year, fly farming in South Africa is starting to get off the ground. Just last week, entrepreneur Jason Drew, who's raising flies to feed salmon and chicken, won the highly competitive U.N. Innovation Prize for Africa.
So why haven't we seen a big insect farming boom yet?
There's the disgust factor, for one thing. But there are also big regulatory hurdles: In many countries, the FAO says, regulations on producing insects for food aren't very clear. (Ironically, in the U.S., regulations allow for a certain amount of insect bits to make it into our food, but they don't cover insects as the main meal, according to the FAO.)
Then there are all sorts of food safety concerns. For example, if you were to raise flies on animal blood — a normal source of food for the insects — what happens if you then feed the flies to chickens meant for human consumption? The FAO is calling for more research to untangle such questions.
But FAO says the future is bright for edible insects. "Although it will require considerable convincing to reverse [feelings of disgust], it is not an impossible feat," the report states. British artists seem to agree: A recent exhibition at the U.K.'s Wellcome Collection showcased 3-D printing demos of "possible novel insect foods" of the future.An Argentine soccer team tried to get ahead by taking Viagra for a match at high altitude. Unfortunately, they lost 2-0 anyway.
Club Atletico River Plate decided to take a cocktail of Sildenafil (commercially known as Viagra), caffeine and aspirin in advance of a match in Bolivia, the Washington Post reports. Research has shown that the anti-impotence drug helps boost circulation and deliver more oxygen to the muscles, allowing athletes to perform better at high altitudes.
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River Plate hails from Buenos Aires, where the elevation (about 82 feet) is fairly low, while their match against San Jose de Oruro in Bolivia took place at 12,400 feet. Still, even Viagra was not enough to help them, and they lost their first group game of the Copa Libertadores de America.
“The players finished very tired and angry, because they know they played a great match,” coach Marcello Gallardo said, according to the club’s website. “[The team’s center back] Pezzella is still sore.”
Contact us at editors@time.com.Speculation over Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal's future has continued to intensify after the Dutchman was absent from the club's training session on Sunday morning.
Sky Sports report that training at the club's Carrington training complex ahead of Monday's game with Chelsea was taken by assistant coach Ryan Giggs, and that Louis van Gaal was conspicuous by his absence.
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It is a uncharacteristic move from van Gaal, who usually insists on taking every single training session with the first-team, unlike Sir Alex Ferguson, who would often delegate responsibilities to coaches Mike Phelan and Rene Meulensteen.
Ryan Giggs arriving at Carrington this morning for training, no sign of LvG. #MUFC pic.twitter.com/v9lOL4xkM6 — MUnitedHome™ (@MUnitedHome) December 27, 2015
Although there is no official confirmation yet, van Gaal's time as United boss certainly seems to be hanging by a thread. The assumption is that Giggs will succeed the Dutchman in a temporary capacity, like he did when David Moyes was dismissed in April 2014.
Van Gaal said following the defeat to Stoke City that he felt the support of everyone but refused to confirm whether he would be in charge of the club for Monday's clash with Chelsea.
As Man United boss, David Moyes had more points after 18 games (30) than Louis van Gaal does this season (29). pic.twitter.com/OJEQeiS0Ft — Squawka Football (@Squawka) December 27, 2015
Story continues
Asked how long he had left at United Van Gaal said: “That’s the question. That’s always the question. It’s another situation because we have lost the fourth job in a row. I feel the support of everyone.”
Asked if he would quit, he said: “It is not always like that, that the club has to fire or sack me. Sometimes I do it by myself. I am the one who wants to speak first with the board of Manchester United and my staff and players and not with you.”
Want breaking footy news sent straight to your phone? Download our 5-star rated app here!After five people were shot Saturday amid a barrage of bullets at the Stargate nightclub, the Maplewood mayor has called for a special city council meeting this week to consider possible sanctions against the business.
The special meeting will be held at 8 a.m. Wednesday to “review the incident and consider possible sanctions and/or conditions of the license of the nightclub,” Maplewood Police Chief Paul Schnell said Sunday night.
No arrests had been made as of Sunday night, but earlier Schnell had said, “We’re closer to identifying persons of interest.”
Schnell said the first shots were fired inside the club around 1:30 a.m. Saturday.
“We don’t really know what prompted it,” he said. “There was some argument, and one man was shot in the club. People began to run out, and as they ran out, other people began shooting.”
Schnell said because of a recent uptick in calls to the club and security issues, two Maplewood police officers were in the parking lot when the shooting happened. As people spilled out into the parking lot, a “barrage of gunfire” erupted.
“There were casings across the entire parking lot. There was a car crash with one of the vehicles that had left,” Schnell said. “There was just a lot going on — very chaotic.”
Ultimately, five people, including the man |
ecaps, foot and hand, according to the documents.
Authorities said the nurse also tried to force the boy to comply by stepping on his bare foot with her shoe and bending his pinky finger back until a crack was heard.
"Her alleged actions demonstrate a shocking departure from the most basic standards of care, let alone the standard of care one would expect for a child with special needs," said Steve Lee, director of the Division of Consumer Affairs.
Derrick couldn't be reached for comment. The Associated Press called a phone number that apparently belongs to her, and its voicemail box was full.Many of us want to earn extra money from home. And, indeed, starting a home business can be a good way to cultivate additional income, and help you reach other financial goals that you might have. There are a number of ways that you can improve your situation by starting a home business. From creative business ideas, to the more mundane, here are 50 home business ideas.
Use Your Skills
One of the best ways to get started with a home business is to use your skills. A number of business startup ideas grow out of the skills possessed by the business owner. If you have the skills — or if you can learn the skills — here are a few ways to make money from what you’re good at:
Online Store-If you are serious about starting a home business then an online store is an excellent place to start. The best part of an online store is that you do not need a large start up capital, with just a few hundred dollars you can start your own online store. Besides the low start up cost an online store has many other benefits, for example it does not require you to rent office space, it has low overhead costs, does not require long hours etc. If you know what you want to sell online great, however you don’t need to know right now. I know it may seem overwhelming and confusing at first, however I would highly recommend Steve’s course on Profitable Online Store. Steve and his wife started their ecommerce store a few years ago and in their first year they made over $100,000! His wife was able to leave her day job and now only works 4 hours a week. Steve has extensive experience in the commerce business and has helped hundreds of students in successfully launching their business. He doesn’t just send you the material and leave you stranded, but he is there with you every step of the way with regular office hours (virtual office). If you are tired of your 9-5 job and want to break free then an online store maybe the answer. Check out Steve’s course and I would highly recommend you enrol in it, it will probably be the best investment you ever make. Writing: I always list this first because it’s what I do. If you write, and have reasonably good grammar, you can find gigs providing content, working for print and online magazines, preparing whitepapers (and doing other technical writing), and providing ad copy and press releases. All form the comfort of your home. Graphic design: Create logos, newsletter layouts, images for ads and other visuals for a variety of clients. Web design and development: Set web sites, and even maintain them. Develop different aspects of web sites, and design web sites for usability. App development: Those who know how to develop apps for different mobile devices, and even those who develop web apps, can make money with their skills. Create apps for others to use, or even for them to sell, and you can get your cut and make a profit. Social media/SEO services: If you are good online, and build social networks, you can leverage your skills to make money by providing your services to others. Help companies and web site owners build their brands in the social media space. Photography: Use your skills to take photos at different events, and even take portraits. Take stock photos and sell their use on stock photo web sites to create a tidy passive income stream. Videography: You can also make videos of special events, and put together montages for special events like birthday celebrations. Presentations: If you have skill at putting together presentations, you can create presentations for others. Make music: Those with musical skill can make money by hiring themselves out for events, as well as by playing in different venues. Many restaurants like to have live music at least some nights a week, and you could make money from the tips people provide for your playing. Consulting: Any skill and experience that you have in a number of areas can be used to help you start a consulting business. From knowledge of statistics, to communication, to image, to public relations, it is possible for you to put your knowledge and skill at others’ disposal and make money.
Share What You Know
Some home business ideas grow out of what you know. You can base a home business on your knowledge and expertise in a certain area. Some ideas that can help you put your knowledge to use can include:It’s been a long time, but the Washington Wizards are heading into the NBA Playoffs with momentum. After beating depleted Boston Celtics on the road tonight and a Brooklyn Nets loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Wizards have moved back up to the fifth seed. Washington will be matched up against the Chicago Bulls in the first round, a team that they’ve beaten twice in the regular season.
But, here are some game notes from the final contest of the 2013-2014 NBA season.
John Wall looked to assert himself right out of the gate, scoring 13 points and dishing out 5 assists in the first quarter. He finished the game with 15 points and 9 assists in just 28 minutes of playing time. Bradley Beal started the game well, and boy, did he help close out the game for Washington. Whenever it looked like the Celtics were going to come back, Washington looked for Bradley Beal, and he delivered. He’s been terrific for the past few weeks, so it was nice to see him continue to play well. He scored 27 points on 10 of 14 shooting, but he also grabbed 7 rebounds. I’m really, really glad he’s picked up his shooting before the postseason begins.
Marcin Gortat has been solid all season long and he definitely took advantage of Boston’s weak front line. Without Jared Sullinger, Gortat was able to control the paint without a problem, picking up another double-double to close out the season. He scored 15 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. Nene also chipped in with 12 points on 5-6 shooting off the bench. Needless to say, Kelly Olynyk didn’t stand a chance.
All five starters scored in double digits, but Trevor Booker was perhaps the most impressive, as he scored 20 points in just 26 minutes. He’s taking advantage of what the defense is giving him and his new-found ability to knock down the open 15 foot jumper has really helped Washington space the floor. Trevor Ariza scored 13 of his own points, including a few Carmelo Anthony-like fall away shots from the mid-range area. Trevor Ariza, Carmelo Anthony-like? Surprising, eh?
Washington is now locked into fifth seed and will play against the Chicago Bulls in the first round, a series I think most Wizards fans preferred, given Chicago’s note worthy struggles on the offensive side of the floor. For the first time in a very, very long time, Washington’s season will continue after the final game of the regular season. It’s definitely a sweet moment.
We’ll continue to bring coverage and insight for the NBA Playoffs. Stay tuned.Poor Nyarlathotep, he was this close.
It’s been a much better week for me this week. The stars lined up just right and I seem to be back on track to finish my novel in the allotted timeframe. I’ll write more on that as it happens…of possibly give a blow by blow description of my mental breakdown. Either way, I’m here to entertain you.
I may have mentioned this before, but do you know Natalie has her own webcomic? You can read Over Encumbered right here.
As always I’m on the lookout for Lovecraftian goodness out there in the world. Anyone got any news of Lovecraft inspired games/books/other? I just remembered a comic I reviewed a long time ago called Colder, by Paul Tobin. While there’s no direct mentioned of Lovecraft or the Mythos, the story centres around the idea of madness as a metaphysical state as well as a state of mind. It’s really good, although it is not for kids or the squeamish.
I’m going to go and see if I mash my face into the keyboard for another hour or so. I hope you are all well, or at the very least that your enemies are worse off that you.
– AndrewPreface
What a mess this day was, with volatile group standings, we move towards the end of group stages as teams claw for the chance to enter bracket stage. Other than the Wild Card games, all of the matches today were rather interesting and show some of the adaptations teams are making after their initial matches. There are two matches I thought were super interesting (I may go into ALL vs NJWS in the later in the week) which were FNC vs OMG and ALL vs C9, so let’s take a look at them.
FNC vs OMG
Pick/Ban phase
FNC 1st Ban Yasuo: A little bit of an odd ban here to be honest, Cool has had a very subpar performance on Yasuo this tournament, with a 0.7 KDA over two games. Ever so vigilant though, Fnatic doesn’t want to risk Cool adjusting with his comfort pick and take this away from OMG. I would have rather seen the Zilean ban first here, as it’s pretty obvious FNC will ban it, and it doesn’t reveal anything about a potential team comp they want, letting them make reactionary bans to OMG’s.
OMG 1st Ban Lee Sin: One of the comfort aggressive junglers other than Khazix for EU/NA teams, pretty standard that we see Lee/Khazix bans at these players.
FNC 2nd Ban Irelia: Fair ban, aimed at Gogoing, this however makes it very likely for him to pick up Ryze since Irelia generally wins the match up post level 6.
OMG 2nd Ban Alistar: Super standard, 4.14 Alistar, etc.
FNC 3rd Ban Zilean: Standard flex ban, however with this, Fnatic leaves OMG a lot of options up in the top lane since Ryze/Maokai are both open.
Thoughts so far: Despite OMG losing a ban, I think Fnatic could have played this ban phase out better. Had they banned Zilean earlier and reactively banned Khazix after seeing Lee sin, they would have taken a lot of power away from OMG’s jungle.
FNC 1st Pick Rumble: This is an good pick, Rumble’s proven that if he can survive past the hellish onslaught teams focus at him during his weak early game, he has huge presence in the mid game team fights and can make it very difficult for teams to engage or disengage with the ever looming threat of his ultimate.
OMG 1st and 2nd Pick Khazix and Thresh: Very good picks from OMG here, despite the losses; Yellowstar performs rather well on Thresh and Khazix is an extremely powerful late game threat and potent counter ganker for the early stages of the game. It’s not as much of a take away however, as Cyanide is comfortable on several other junglers even with Lee Sin banned.
FNC 2nd and 3rd pick Nami and Kogmaw: FNC going for the strong bot lane that scales well here, with Reckkles great csing and Nami to out-trade a Thresh type lane; Kog’maw has a rather free ticket into the mid game. The Nami pick also works well with the Rumble pick, she can support him in a lane when he tries to soak EXP and during the midgame they have a very strong team fight with the combination of their ults.
OMG 3rd and 4th Pick Ryze and Lucian: Avoiding the reveal on their mid lane or top lane by making a flex pick, this is a rather good pick up from OMG, however OMG is dangerously close to making a team comp where they have a very hard time engaging into team fights against Rumble/Nami since they’re all mid-range or melee.
FNC 4th and 5th Pick Syndra and Elise: Astounding pick up from FNC in the form of Syndra, and then they ruin it with Elise. I’m of the opinion that Elise is rather weak right now in comparison to the Lee/Khazix we’re seeing every game, and even when they’re pick or banned; I’d rather see Rengar (Not happening outside of Asian teams) or J4. She works okay in this team comp due to the pick potential off of Syndra, but she just has so little damage when she’s built tank and isn’t the greatest soak either. With no CC other than her cocoon, a very heavy magic damage team out of FNC means that MR will quickly make her near useless in team fights. Syndra on the other hand is perfect here as she zones out Ryze/Lucian very well and with the Yasuo ban, there is no risk of her ult getting nullified.
OMG 5th Pick Zed: A good pick up, but now OMG is locked into the do or die team comp where they have essentially no poke and get zoned very hard by Syndra. This also means Ryze is top, meaning all of the solo lanes are extremely vulnerable during the midgame where Zed is denied farm due to Syndras early lane bullying and Ryzes need to scale up his Tear/Rod.
Overall thoughts and overview
Pick and Ban phase has to go to Fnatic, had they forced team fights in narrow areas such as when teams are dancing around dragon and baron; they would have come out on top more often. With the threats of Rumble and Syndra, OMG has a very difficult time engaging into Fnatic and also doesn’t have any real poke to wear them down with since Nami can keep people healthy against Khazix’s poke and Ryze is short ranged against Syndra. Noticeable though is that OMG lane freezes in the lane swap (FNC has the match up advantage) and FNC doesn’t, they do time a push very well with a dragon attempt, but since Lucian puts damage on the tower at bottom instead of going to secure Dragon, Khazix is able to scare the initial dragon attempt of FNC off on his own. FNC could have gotten a lead IMO had Syndra/Lucian helped out with the efforts. We see a lot of hexdrinkers this game, which is an extremely important point since all of the damage on FNC is magic other than Kog’maws AD. This means that FNC has a hard time finishing off Zed and Khazix because they have no AD to burst them when the magic shield pops, and instead have to deal with the extra chunk of health. As the game drags on to a very late game, we see that Khazix has far more impact on the outcome as opposed to Elise, and that poor positioning is the only way Fnatic really lost their fights.
C9 vs ALL
Pick/Ban Phase
ALL 1st Ban Rumble: Did anyone not see this one coming? This is a high impact comfort pick that Balls has shown to be proficient with, a great first ban from ALL.
C9 1st Ban Lee: If there ever was an easier to predict ban phase, it would be this match up. C9 taking the route of picking on Shook again, given his very poor performance in game 1, they aim to strike ALL where they think they are weak. Shook’s comfort pick and a very strong jungler at the moment.
ALL 2nd Ban Syndra: It’s important to understand here that ALL is confident Froggen can take on Hai in the mid lane. So while Hai has Zed still open to him, it’s more of a risky pick since Hai will be behind in the laning phase as opposed to being able to play the safer Syndra who has a very strong laning phase.
C9 2nd Ban Trist: Somewhat odd ban in my opinion, while Tabzz does play Tristana, he also plays Kog’maw and Lucian so you can’t really ban him out here due to Alliance having 1st Pick. The only way this ban is reasonable is if C9 is picking a very aggressive team comp and doesn’t want Tabzz to have Trist’s Buster Shot as disengage.
ALL 3rd Ban Maokai: This ban phase is played extremely well by ALL here, with this C9 has to decide between Alistar and Khazix for their last ban, either way this makes it so Balls is on a champion he’s not super accustomed to playing with and ALL will get what they want for their first pick.
C9 3rd Ban Khazix: Given that they banned Lee Sin already, C9 decides that they should follow through on trying to keep Shook from having any impact on the game and ban out Khazix, his other comfort aggressive jungler. Important to note here that this also takes away from C9 Meteos’s champion pool, I would have preferred to see C9 leave both Alistar and Khazix open and take the remaining one. Still not a bad ban, but they’re forced into a bad spot due to ALL playing this ban phase out well and C9 somewhat wasting their 2nd Ban.
ALL 1st Pick Alistar: To the surprise of no one, this is the instant lock in. What is important to note as the casters realized later on, is that Alistar is a FLEX pick; able to support and go top.
C9 1st and 2nd Pick Zilean and Lucian: Zilean FLEX pick, however I’ve mentioned this before groups started that Hai hasn’t exactly had a strong showing on Zilean so it makes it a lot less effective than it normally would be. That being said, he played alright in this game and I think it’s more of a team comp issue than a player issue. Lucian being a takeaway from Tabzz and threatens to be a more aggressive lane comp at bottom.
ALL 2nd and 3rd Pick Rammus + Kogmaw: ALL wants to avoid picking either of their solo lanes right now so they don’t reveal where Alistar is going and also so they don’t potentially get counter picked in both. Rammus here being Shooks adaptation to C9 focusing their bans on him, a very strong jungler once he’s ahead and allows for a lot of pick potentials with the very long taunt.
C9 Pick 3rd and 4th Pick Ryze + Jarven IV: I’ve said this time and time again; Meteos is not a good aggressive jungler. Traditionally he’s always excelled at playing utility and poke junglers, as can be seen in his comfort on Elise and Khazix, and his difficulty being able to accurately assess when to go in can also be seen in his Khazix play. When Meteos was known for his signature Zac, it’s important to note that at that time, C9’s solo lanes would always win which allowed him to support them by being a tanky initiator. In the case where Balls and Hai aren’t ahead, the same strategy just doesn’t work as well. With the Ryze pick as well, similar to FNC vs OMG’s game, Ryze has a very hard time getting into the enemy back line and it’s no different in this game.
ALL 4th and 5th Pick Ahri + Irelia: Froggen on a more aggressive mid laner, Ahri has a strong laning phase and creates excellent picks all throughout the game with her charms, this is again Froggen’s confidence that he can outperform Hai and have more presence on the game regardless of a possible counter pick from Hai. Irelia being Wickds champion of choice, I really feel like C9 complete forgot about Wickd being super comfortable on Irelia and his knowledge of the Irelia vs Ryze match up, after level 6 Irelia destroyed Ryze and largely prevented Ryze from being able to scale up as he needed to. This reveals that the Flex Alistar is a support.
C9 5th Pick: At this point I had a good feeling that the Zilean was going to be mid lane and C9 would pick up Janna. They surprised me instead by picking up Morgana which isn’t without its merits, being one of Lemons signature champions; but I think with the triple threat of Irelia, Rammus and Ahri I would have rather seen Janna who is able to zone Irelia and Rammus out very effectively and able to use Monsoon should they break past her Howling Gales. Both ways, C9 has the dominating early game at bottom and Morgana has the benefit of being able to save allies who are about to get hit by a charm/taunt.
Overall thoughts and Overview
I would say that Pick/Ban massively went in the favor of Alliance. They have a huge mid game power spike which is only made worse by C9’s weak mid game with a double tear composition in their solo lanes. Should C9 make it past that mid game though, they likely have the edge due to the burst of damage they can put out from Lucian and Ryze, with Zilean making trades favorable with his Chronoshift. Morgana shows her inability to be effective when Taunt/Charm are aimed at different targets and she doesn’t get a binding on Rammus coming in, even in the optimal case she can bind Rammus and shield a charm, Irelia is a very real threat and Morgana has no remaining way to reliably peel her off her team. Kogmaw is basically untouchable with only Jarvan able to reach him and Alistar able to zone very effectively with his Unbreakable Will. Wickd showed in game 1 that he can take on Balls in the top lane comfortably, with Shook adapting to C9’s target on him, ALL did a very good job at capitalizing on their mid game strengths and closed out the game convincingly.
Conclusions
The EU teams have shown improvement in their pick/ban phases, Fnatic struggled a little in my opinion in playing their team comp correctly, and was literally one hit from winning the game. Alliance has recovered from their atrocious start, and Shook has pleasantly surprised me with his adaptation, with the turn of events, it’s looking very likely the ALL will be the 2nd team out of group stages with NJWS, and while FNC’s odds are looking grim from their loss to OMG (Potential remake though?) they still have a chance should a couple of things swing their way.
–Louis on LeagueSOMERVILLE — Senator Bernie Sanders, who came within two percentage points of winning the Massachusetts presidential primary last year, returned Monday morning to whip up progressives before next month’s election.
At an event supporting 18 local candidates who had received a progressive political organization’s endorsement, Sanders said Democrats are “embarrassingly bad” in midterm elections, urging a “political revolution” forged at the grass-roots level.
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“What today is about is saying that at the local level, at the state level, at the federal level, we are going to demand and will succeed in creating governments that work for all of us, not just the 1 percent,” Sanders said, to applause, at the Once ballroom.
An outgrowth of Sanders’s presidential campaign, labeled Our Revolution, organized the event, where the former presidential candidate also assailed the budget that the US Senate passed last week, putting Congress on a path to a restructuring of the tax code.
“What’s in this budget is $1.9 trillion in tax breaks, 80 percent of them going to the top 1 percent, 40 percent going to the top one-tenth of 1 percent,” Sanders told a crowd of about 200. “And then, insanely, in order to pay for those tax breaks, they propose a trillion dollars in cuts in Medicaid, throwing 15 million people off the health insurance they have. That is beyond terrible.”
Sanders added, “Many thousands of people will die unnecessarily every single year, in order to give tax cuts to billionaires.”
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff A woman recorded Sanders as he spoke.
Sanders targeted President Trump, saying, “He wants to divide us up. Our job is to bring our people together, to fight racism and sexism and homophobia and xenophobia. But simultaneously as we fight back against that effort to divide us up, we need a progressive agenda that speaks to the needs of working families all across this country.”
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Sanders beat eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Somerville with 57 percent of the vote, and took 53 percent in Cambridge.
Sanders on Sunday told the Concord Monitor that he would seek a third term representing Vermont in the US Senate as an independent, rather than as a Democrat, the party with which he caucuses in the Senate and under whose banner he ran for president.
On Monday, he spoke in favor of public funding for elections, boosting the minimum wage to $15 an hour, single-payer health care, and increased infrastructure spending -- all hot-button issues for the political left.
The fissures within the Democratic Party laid bare in last year’s primary remain in Massachusetts. One key Sanders supporter, Paul Feeney, addressed the crowd at the Once ballroom and lounge, saying in an interview beforehand, “All the people in this room are just trying to do everything they can to make sure we get good progressives elected.”
Former Cambridge mayor Ken Reeves, saying he had been a Sanders backer “since the inception,” said Democrats had suffered because Clinton’s message “was not inspiring.”
“I’ve been a Democrat my whole life, but the same-old, same-old is not working,” Reeves said after Sanders’s speech.
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Democratic gubernatoral candidate Robert K. Massie also attended the event.
Sanders, the former mayor of Burlington, remains a widely discussed potential candidate for president in 2020, a favorite of the party’s left wing and voters disenchanted by more traditional politicians.
“We need to think outside the box of the current political situation right now,” said Vatsady Sivongxay, a candidate for Cambridge City Council who received the Our Revolution endorsement.Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin Where: T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas
When: Saturday
TV: HBO PPV, 8 p.m. ET • Middleweights: Gennady Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) vs. Canelo Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs), 12 rounds, for Golovkin's unified world title • Featherweights: Joseph Diaz (24-0, 13 KOs) vs. Rafael Rivera (25-0-2, 16 KOs), 12 rounds, world title eliminator • Junior featherweights: Diego De La Hoya (19-0, 9 KOs) vs. Randy Caballero (24-0, 14 KOs), 10 rounds • Lightweights: Ryan Martin (19-0, 11 KOs) vs. Francisco Rojo (20-2, 13 KOs), 10 rounds
At this point, it's the only question worth asking: Who will win Saturday night's fight between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin? Our experts make their picks.
Dan Rafael
ESPN.com
Golovkin by decision
It's the best fight in boxing and I think it will live up to the hype with Golovkin winning a decision in a memorable battle we'll talk about for years.
Nick Parkinson
ESPN UK
Golovkin by decision
I expect an exciting fight to swing both ways but GGG will will have enough to win on points. I think Golovkin will use his boxing skills and laser beam jab well to break down Canelo in the later rounds, possibly flooring him on the way to a decision.
Teddy Atlas
ESPN TV
Alvarez by split decision
Two years ago I said Golovkin was too big and too strong. Since then Golovkin has declined and perhaps even been exposed as a one-dimensional fighter while Canelo has improved. There will still be danger in that right hand of Golovkin for the first six rounds, but if Canelo can avoid getting caught with the big shot I think he can out box an older Golovkin and win a split decision.
Nigel Collins
ESPN.com
Alvarez by decision
There won't be much to choose between them after 12 rounds of terrific action, but the advantage in that sort of situation usually goes to the fighter with the greater upside. And in this case that's Canelo, whose participation will be responsible for the preponderance of PPV revenue.
Eric Raskin
HBO Boxing
Alvarez by decision
I've felt dating back to Canelo's fight with Cotto that he could at least be competitive with GGG, but I never would have predicted him to actually win -- until now. Golovkin is beginning to show his age, and Canelo is getting better and stronger with every fight. I'm anticipating an intense fight that's close all the way and ends with both men raising their hands, only for Canelo to be announced as the narrow winner.
Salvador Rodriguez
ESPNdeportes.com
Alvarez by unanimous decision
Alvarez and Golovkin will give us an electrifying night in Las Vegas. Golovkin and his devastating power will test Canelo's resistance and heart, but Alvarez also knows he has the boxing skills, the counterattack and defense to neutralize GGG. Canelo wins unanimous decision.
Joe Cortez
ESPN Deportes
Alvarez by decision
Golovkin is a strong fighter who brings lots of talent and has a good chin. But I think Alvarez, who is the younger fighter, is hungry to be the best pound-for-pound fighter and will win in a hard-fought fight by a close decision.
Claudia Trejos
ESPNdeportes.com
Alvarez by split decision
This is a true test of fire for Alvarez and Golovkin. GGG's power can not be denied; 89 percent of his victories have come by way of KO. Nevertheless, that power was somehow neutralized by Daniel Jacobs, who used his ability to walk the ring, using the angles and change of stance, with an impeccable physical condition to put Golovkin in check and revealed his defensive flaws. Against Canelo, Gennady will have to use all the tools acquired in his extensive amateur boxing experience. GGG will have to honor his motto and put on a "big drama show" while bringing his best version of "Mexican style" boxing to the ring. Canelo, with 12 years of experience, is not the same fighter who faced Carlos Baldomir seven years ago. Alvarez is a boxer with 51 bouts in his record, with excellent work ethic and very patient. At age 27 and with physical maturity, Canelo has developed an explosive and effective hook. I expect a fierce fight, both chins will be tested. Alvarez will take the win by split decision.
Bernardo Pilatti
ESPNdeportes.com
Golovkin by KO
It will be a power struggle where Golovkin will be stronger than Canelo. GGG is the king of consistency and technique. GGG should win by KO after the seventh round. Another result will be surprise.
Carlos Nava
ESPNdeportes.com
Alvarez by decision
Canelo Alvarez has improved in all aspects of the game in recent years. Although he still has difficulty cutting the ring, this time he faces an opponent who is not the fastest and who trusts too much in is power to win by knockout. Canelo has never been knocked down and because of his uppercut and counter punches he will be able to get ahead in front of his fans in a full arena.
Carlos Narvaez
ESPNdeportes.com
Golovkin by KO
There is no doubt Alvarez will be in great condition, but I don't think that could be enough to defeat Golovkin, who is a natural middleweight, very powerful and has a huge heart. It will be a great battle between two Mexican boxing style boxers where power would be the big factor. I see Golovkin prevail by KO in the 10th round.
Leopoldo Gonzalez
ESPN Deportes/Noche de Combates
Golovkin by TKO
Alvarez's speed and counterattack will give Golovkin some difficulties in the first five or six rounds. But later in the fight GGG will reduce Canelo's mobility with power punches and take over the fight.
Delvin Rodriguez
ESPN Deportes
Canelo by decision
The first seven rounds will be back and forth between Alvarez and Golovkin. But after the seventh, I think Canelo will use more of his boxing abilities, keeping the distance and using lateral movements to win a close fight.
Pablo Viruega
ESPN Deportes
Alvarez by KO
Golovkin is known for his power and for finishing his opponents fast. But Canelo has shown that he can withstand strong battles. He has a tough chin and his punches are powerful enough to penetrate GGG's defense. It's going to be an intense bout from start to finish.
Your take:Saturday night it was standing room only at the National Guard Armory in Cocoa, Fl. The raucous crowd filled the room with a vibrant energy as they waited to see their favorite NXT stars do battle in the squared circle.
In the opening match Chad Gable takes on newcomer Michael Carter (formerly Mike Rawlis). The Olympian Gable starts things off with some excellent grappling and takedowns. Gable controlled the early goings and did it with ease, despite the size difference between the two. However, a fist is a good equalizer and Carter put an end to the grappling with a punch and took control of the match. Carter relied mostly on strikes and power moves, employing his strength advantage. His offense would come to an abrupt halt though due to a surprise roll-up giving Gable the pinfall victory. I’ve only seen Carter wrestle a handful of times now but he seems more confident with each outing. Chad Gable is a lot of fun to watch and I have no doubt with proper booking he can go very far.
Next up, The Mechanics take on Big Cass and Enzo Amore. The match starts off with plenty of trash talking and shenanigans, at the end of which Amore and Dawson start boxing it out. With that Amore gets the advantage as he and Cass work over Dawson. Eventually, thanks to a distraction from Wilder, The Mechanics managed to take control and work over Amore. When Dawson and Wilder are in control is when they are the most fun to watch, they’re not the flashiest tag team but they are as fluid as any other, working perfectly in tandem. Conversely, Enzo Amore is at his best when playing the underdog which he did until he created the opening to tag in his partner. Big Cass burst into the ring and cleared house, ejecting Dawson and dropping Wilder with a swinging side slam. He followed tossing Amore off the top turnbuckle for a splash onto Wilder for the pin.
The Vaudevillians are out next, seemingly rejuvenated with their old music and playing up to the crowd. They insist the Blake and Murphy are not gentleman, but rather thieves and philanderers. Firstly, for trying to steal Carmella from Cass and Enzo. Secondly, for stealing the tag team title opportunity from them. They promised to rectify that later in the evening. It’s great to see The Vaudevillians in a face role again.
Next is Jason Jordan takes on Solomon Crowe. Jordan takes the immediate power advantage over Crowe, who comes back with a quick flurry before Jordan shuts him down again. Wisely Jordan attempts to slow down the pace of the match with a series of rest holds followed by tossing Crowe around in a series of slams. Later, Crowe found an opening and fought back with a series of stiff punches and kicks. He then topped it off with a stretch muffler to which Jordan tapped out almost immediately. Crowe is explosive and exciting to watch, now that they have finally unleashed him it is only a matter of time before he becomes a part of an increasingly crowded main event scene.
Our next match is Tyler Breeze taking on Baron Corbin. Prince Pretty cautiously approaches Corbin and the two lock up for a moment and break cleanly. Breeze then rolls out of the ring starting his own “I’m the best!” chants while taking a victory lap around the ring. The referee gets Breeze back in and they lock up yet again for another clean break, at which point Breeze repeats his hijinks outside of the ring. Upon a third time, Corbin chased him back into the ring and the fight was on. Corbin nailed Breeze with a quick succession of moves that sent Breeze flying to the edge of the ring. Corbin baseball slides out of the ring, but rather than punch his opponent (like he normally would right then), he took the time to take a selfie with Tylers phone before slugging him. The two ended up brawling outside and Breeze ended up launching Corbin into the ringpost, seemingly turning things around for Breeze. Despite a brief bit of offense, the gorgeous one couldn’t seem to garner any real offense against Corbin. Baron made a comeback and looked to be finishing it with an End Of Days, but Breeze again rolled out of the ring and opted to be counted out giving Corbin the victory.
We follow with womens wrestling action as Bayley takes on Becky Lynch in another excellent contest between the two. These two have developed quite a chemistry and it shows by the amount of back and forth action when these two wrestle. The early advantage went to Bayley, but Becky quickly turned things around. First with a Bexplex and then a trifecta of leg drops, after which she began working the arm of her nemesis. Bayley makes a spirited comeback hitting a lot of her signature offense. Becky fights back but is caught by a Belly-to-Bayley from out of nowhere giving her one more victory over Lynch.
Next, Hideo Itami takes on Finn Balor. Like their match the previous night, this was a back and forth contest that had the entire crowd on the edge of their seat. Both men are similar in a lot of ways but it was Balor who looked to be trying to ground Hideo. Fired up, Itami keeps coming back though eventually |
and communication links have changed the picture for many over recent decades. Free movement of labor within Europe has been a centrepiece of the continent’s economic integration.
What’s more, many view the sort of worker mobility seen within the United States as a model of what should happen between economically-diverse states in any single currency area.
The problem for the euro zone right now is that the workforce may move, but national debts don’t.
And the exit of the former weakens a country’s ability to solve the latter by putting a major drag on growth and tax revenues over time.
While emigration of the young unemployed can be a economic safety valve, relieving pressure on welfare benefit payments in the short term, any permanent ‘hollowing out’ of the workforce at a time when populations are aging could scupper efforts to reduce debt burdens, instead raising pension payments and dependency ratios.
“If the euro periphery economies, through severe austerity, are going to be economically depressed for a long period of time and their populations just walk away, how do they ever get back to fiscal sustainability?” said Citi economist Michael Saunders.
“I think the answer is they don’t,” he said, adding that some form of default or debt restructuring is the only likely solution to the euro sovereign debt crisis over time.
“Slashing entitlement programmes just puts you in a situation where your economy is ever weaker and more people leave,” said Saunders, emphasising that working populations now need to be rising, not falling. “Unless the swing from depression to boom is very quick, migration isn’t something that easily flows back.”
BRAIN DRAIN
Citi’s view on the upshot of the euro crisis may not be the market consensus and the migration angle is just one part of its gloomy prognosis.
But there is no shortage of big investors unnerved by the problem.
“It’s a real problem that, for example, young Portuguese unemployed leave in search of work but the debt remains just as large for everyone left behind,” said Yves Bonzon, chief investment officer at Swiss asset manager Pictet.
So what’s the scale of the problem to date?
Eurostat data shows that in the first half of 2012, working age populations - or those between 15 and 65 - dropped 0.1 percent year-on-year in Italy and Greece, 0.6 percent in Spain, 0.7 percent in Portugal and 0.9 percent in Ireland. Workforces in Ireland and Portugal have been contracting since 2008.
And the bulk of the new emigrants do appear to be the youngest workers. In the second quarter of 2012, for example, the 20- to 29-year-old segment of the population fell 8.8 percent year-on-year in Ireland, 4.3 percent in Spain and 3.5 percent in Portugal — bringing respective peak-to-trough declines for this age group to 25 percent, 17 percent and 18 percent.
Saunders at Citi reckoned these declines in populations in their 20s are “extraordinarily large”, well in excess of those seen in the eastern European countries that joined the European Union in 2004. The drop in Ireland’s 20- to 29-year age group in 2011, at 8 percent, exceeds that seen for this age group in any EU country in the last 40 years, he added.
But are the numbers as bad as they seem and do they necessarily herald future national default or restructuring?
If migrants return quickly is the problem solved? How much of the scale of the recent exit was merely a reversal of huge movements of young workers from eastern Europe post-2004? Spanish statistics, for example, show the biggest destinations for emigrants from Spain in 2011 were Romania and Morocco.
Eurostat, too, shows emigration of recent years only partly reverses the influx to these economies during the boom years. Ireland’s workforce increased 1.8 percent a year on average in the 19 years to 2009.
Lorcan Roche Kelly, chief Europe strategist at Trend Macrolytics LLC in County Clare in Ireland, points out that total net migration flows into Ireland between 1996 and 2009 were about half a million and about 100,000 have left since then.
He also said migration of young adults in their 20s to areas of plentiful work was now very fast and flexible, unlike more traumatic and opened-ended historic episodes of high emigration.
What’s more, Roche Kelly reckons the issue of leaving debts behind argues strongly in favour of some debt mutualisation in the euro zone, rather than default or restructuring, not unlike the U.S. where most debts are held at a federal rather than state level.
“If you want a centralisation of the labor market, which is a definite goal of the euro area, you also have to have a parity of debt across borders,” he said.A bright purple squirrel trapped by a Pennsylvania couple has experts offering all sorts of theories -- but no concrete answers.
Percy and Connie Emert from Jersey Shore, Pa., trapped the brightly colored creature while trying to keep the birds safe in their backyard feeder, reported Accuweather.com. They told the weather service they had no explanation for the rodent’s deep purple color.
"We have no idea whatsoever. It's really purple. People think we dyed it, but honestly, we just found it and it was purple," the Emerts told Accuweather.
Experts queried by Accuweather had several theories for the unusual look, but no hard answers. Indeed, Krish Pillai, a professor at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, told Accuweather he thought the coloring was dangerous for the animal.
[pullquote]
"This is not good at all. That color looks very much like Tyrian purple. It is a natural organobromide compound seen in molluscs and rarely found in land animals. The squirrel (possibly) has too much bromide in its system," he said.
Some AccuWeather.com meteorologists had their own theories. Expert Senior Meteorologist Henry Margusity thought it was merely an accident.
"The squirrel could have been looking for somewhere warm and fallen into a port-a-potty or something similar," he said,
Henry Kacprzyk, a curator at the Pittsburgh Zoo, said Thursday he thought it looked like a gray squirrel tinged in purple, after looking at a picture of the critter on an iPhone.
He knows of albino squirrels. Black squirrels. Gray squirrels. Reddish squirrels.
“But the purple coloration, from the purple I saw … it looked to me like this animal had come in contact with something with its fur and dyed its fur,” Kacprzyk said. The squirrel could have come in contact with a pokeberry patch, but pokeberries aren’t in season.
And strange as it sounds, he thought Margusity’s toilet theory might hold water.
“I’ve got to think one of the suggestions might be it fell in a Porta John that had blue coloration,” he said with a chuckle. “I have no idea why … but I don’t think it was born that way.”
When asked about the suggestions by some people in online forums of the potential impact of fracking fluid, Kacprzyk said the composition of such fluids in Pennsylvania wasn’t known. “My guess there is if you don’t know something, is that there’s no scientific proof to that. … I would find it amazing that it had that kind of effect,” he said.
In general, purple is an unusual color for mammals, let alone squirrels.
“There are definitely birds that have coloration like this … but not mammals,” he said. “Mammals don’t normally uptake color, ingest something it goes through and (then) it comes out through their fur.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.J.K. Rowling may be an acclaimed author, the queen of taking down trolls on Twitter, a screenwriter, and a philanthropist, but she’s also (unsurprisingly) an avid reader.
Over the years, Rowling has recommended many a novel in interviews or on social media. From childhood favorites to all-time classics, the Harry Potter author’s reading list is as varied as a box of Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans. (We just hope there isn’t an earwax-flavor novel equivalent.)
So why not pluck one of her recommendations from the shelf at your next bookstore visit? We can’t guarantee characters as complex and charismatic as Harry, Ron, and Hermione will stroll into your head fully formed as a result, but at the very least it’ll make for impressive conversation.
Check out the list below:
Gallery Books; Seven Dials; Luath Press Ltd
1. The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer
2. Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass by Darren McGarvey
3. The Little Big Things: A young man’s belief that every day can be a good day by Henry Fraser
4.The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
5. The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit
6. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle
7. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
8. The Diaries of Auberon Waugh by Auberon Waugh
Penguin Classics (2); CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
9. The Iliad by Homer
10. Emma by Jane Austen
11. Chéri by Colette
12. The Collected Stories of Colette by Colette
13. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
14. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Dover Children's Evergreen Classics; Puffin Books; Putnam Pub Group
15. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
16. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
17. Manxmouse: The Mouse Who Knew No Fear by Paul Gallico
18. Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford
19. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild
20. The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit
21. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
22. Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman
23. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Simon & Schuster; Collins; Vintage
24. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
25. Grimble by Clement Freud
26. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
27. Secrets of the Flesh by Judith Thurman
28. JFK Playboy of the Western World by Nigel Hamilton
29. JFK: Reckless Youth by Nigel Hamilton
30. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
31. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Simon & Schuster; Grand Central Publishing; Rupa
32. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
33. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
34. Animal Farm by George Orwell
35. The Vanishing Point by Val McDermid
36. Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford
37. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
38. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
39. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Ecco; Knopf; University of Chicago Press
40. The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller
41. Decca: the Letters of Jessica Mitford edited by Peter Y Sussman
42. A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
43. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (Rowling’s pseudonym)
44. The Tale of Two Bad Mice by Beatrix Potter
45. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
46. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
47. Feminism is For Everybody by bell hooks
48. Lethal White by Robert Galbraith (yes, we know this is really J.K. herself)
49. The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
50. Skellig by David Almond
Other authors mentioned:
51. Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries
52. Cressida Cowell’s dragon books
53. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
54. Anthony Trollope
55. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
56. Collected works of Shakespeare
57. Collected works of Colette
58. Collected works of P. G. WodehouseFriends and family of Lauren Perdriau Ward, a 47-year-old Los Altos Hills woman killed Thursday in a bicycle crash with a big-rig, said she was an active mother, a passionate “go-getter” and an avid cyclist out to make the roads safer.
“It’s a huge hole,” Bob Ward, her husband of nearly 30 years, told The Daily News in a phone interview Friday. “She lived a full life and reached and impacted many people.”
Lauren Ward was riding along Alpine Road when her pink Trek bicycle collided with a big-rig near the Interstate 280 underpass at about 3:40 p.m. Thursday. She had left her home on Camino Hermosa Drive at about 3 p.m. after returning from a morning shift at the South Bay Endoscopy Center, where she worked part-time as a registered nurse.
Investigators have determined the big-rig was in the far right lane of westbound Alpine Road and the collision occurred on the left side of the truck, said California Highway Patrol Officer Art Montiel. He added it’s not clear whether Ward pedaled into the big-rig or the truck drove into her. Officers have not yet found any witnesses.
Bob Ward said he and his wife had gone mountain biking in the rain just two weeks ago and she did well. “Basically, her bike-handling skills were pretty damn good,” he said.
Ward, who has cycled competitively, said he didn’t consider the stretch of Alpine Road where his wife was killed to be particularly dangerous compared to other roads in the area, such as Sand Hill.
Lauren Ward was the mother of a freshman daughter and senior son at Mountain View High School, where she had previously worked as a volunteer for the school’s water polo team. She also was heavily involved with the Cupertino Hills Swim and Racquet Club, serving earlier this year as co-president of the swim team.
LeeAnn Constant, a friend who knew Ward through the swim team, said, “she was definitely a take-charge, go-getter person.” A few years ago, Ward organized a six-team championship swim meet at Stanford University.
Bob Ward described his wife as a passionate person who, when she got upset about something, would “go after it.”
Such was the case when their puppy died after drinking antifreeze, he said. Lauren Ward entered state Sen. Joe Simitian’s “There Oughta Be a Law” contest in its first year and suggested legislation that would require antifreeze to include a bittering agent; that way, pets and children would be less likely to consume the poisonous substance. The legislation made its way through the state Senate and was signed into law in 2002.
“I thoroughly enjoyed working with her,” Simitian, D-Palo Alto, said in an interview Friday.
“She was both very gracious and very determined,” he said, recalling that she testified before Senate and Assembly committees, sometimes bringing her family.
Ward’s proactive nature extended to cycling, a passion she shared with her husband.
Veronica Lentfer, a friend who knew Ward through the swim club and went on several bike rides with her, said she was always trying to help make the roads safer for bicyclists.
In May, Ward sent an e-mail to Lentfer’s cycling team, Velo Girls, warning of a hazardous “blind corner” along Camino Hermosa Drive. Ward said in the e-mail that she had asked the city to put up warning signs and trim hedges of a two-story house on the corner.
In January 2009, Ward wrote a letter to the weekly Los Altos Town Crier newspaper titled “Rules of the Road: Respect and Understanding,” in which she acknowledged animosity between some cyclists and motorists, then went on to say: “If we could all have more respect and understanding toward others, life might get a little bit nicer.”
CHP Officer Montiel said the investigation into Thursday’s crash is ongoing. The CHP is withholding the big-rig driver’s statement so it won’t influence what potential witnesses may say later.
No foul play is suspected in the crash and the CHP is asking anyone who may have witnessed it to call investigators at 650-369-6261.
E-mail Jesse Dungan at jdungan@dailynewsgroup.com.dailymilesmorales:
Miles Morales, for fans of comic books and Spider-Man, is very well known. But for people outside of that world, he’s not very well known. With Into the Spider-Verse, we’re introducing a character who our audience already knows is going to become a new Spider-Man. But the audience loves Peter Parker, the Spider-Man they’ve got. It’s a challenging introduction of a character: Our movie doesn’t work if you don’t fall in love with Miles Morales.
We open the movie with a montage that introduces the real Spider-Man. The scale of that scene is enormous. It’s like seeing an entire superhero movie in 45 seconds, guided by this very confident narrator. Then we cut to Miles, and things slow down a lot. In an elegant script, everything is deliberate, and everything is a microcosm for something larger: When you meet Miles, we see him singing a song with headphones on. We made a very deliberate choice to spend the first couple of minutes we’re with Miles really just watching him. We wanted Miles to be kind of lovable. We see him drawing and making stickers; we’re establishing that he’s a creative person, he’s an artist, who is able to create without feeling self-conscious or encumbered.
The most important thing for this scene to communicate is that Spider-Man, as a character, is always punching up. In Miles, we have a kid who’s not ready — he’s not ready for school; he’s not ready for this mission. He doesn’t have all the tools, but he has spirit, and we fall for him because of that. We start the movie looking at Miles, and then we end it with him looking right at us.
We needed Miles to score a foolproof laugh at the beginning of the movie, right when you meet him. There aren’t exactly jokes in this stretch, or any clever lines. It’s just what a reasonably clever kid would say. We had this idea that if he sang a song that was out of his register, it would make the audience laugh. It got a big laugh in the preview screening a year ago, but there was one problem: The song we initially used was the Donald Glover song “Redbone,” and we liked the double-layered joke of opening with a Donald Glover song because of his history with Spider-Man. “Redbone” killed … until Get Out premiered.
It was critical that the song gag landed. We had a feeling it was because people knew the song, and they knew how he was messing it up. We were in big trouble when we couldn’t use it anymore — we needed to replace one of the greatest songs of the year, and we had to do it in time to spend the three months we would need to animate that shot. It turns out “Sunflower” is a massive hit song. We heard it as part of a batch of songs that Republic Records presented to us.
We also liked the metaphor this presents: Miles is singing a song that theoretically he’s a little too young for and he doesn’t know the words yet. That’s the metaphor we’re going to be working with for most of the rest of the movie. He’s going to be asked to step into shoes that he feels he’s not ready for, he’s not going to know the words, and he’s going to feel very self-conscious and nervous about that.
With Jefferson, we need to convey the authority he has in Miles’s life. His lines are delivered from either off camera, or passing. In a very subtle way, there’s a bit of a disconnect between these characters: Miles and his dad talk to each other, but they don’t necessarily look at each other, or face each other. Jefferson is a character who’s searching for a way to communicate with his son. This line — “you’re a grown man now” — was improvised by Brian.
Jeff and Rio are both helicopter parents in some ways. We were always riding a line, we didn’t want Jeff to feel punitive or naggy. We always wanted him to seem like he was a good dad.
We had to have Spanish in this scene. We worked really hard with Shameik [Moore] and Luna [Velez] to have enough Spanish in there that felt credible and that didn’t alienate English speakers when they heard it. It was important that it wasn’t subtitled, that it felt completely normal, and was never presented as foreign or other.
Sometimes we overdid it. And at one point we underdid it. We spent a lot of time fine-tuning that stuff. Even in recording sessions where sometimes Rodney would be on the phone with his mom, and Luna would be on the phone with hers, and we’d be saying, “What would you say if I didn’t do my homework, and you were going to call me out?”
We tried a lot of different versions of this scene, but sometimes the most down-the-middle structure works the best. A lot of these sequences were grounded in conversations we were having about how a lot of the characters in the movie were fighting against inevitable change, and were seeking to go back to a comfortable place in the past that didn’t really exist anymore. That was the intention behind Miles and his old school, and wanting to go back to it. We decided that Miles’s school was around the corner from his house, because it let us say a lot of stuff very quickly.
The initial versions of this scene, in some ways, hit a lot of the same things but in a different order. You saw Miles hanging out a lot with a specific group of friends that we no longer meet specifically. There was a dinner-table scene with the parents, and a lot of the dynamic of that was eventually moved to the scene where he drives to school with his dad. You had stuff about how Jefferson feels about Spider-Man. In those drafts, the movie started with him telling his parents that he decided to quit school.
You don’t get the sense that Miles is Mr. Popular, but you definitely get the sense that he’s a well-liked kid who has history and rapport with the people around him. In some ways we started to draft a lot on Shameik, and his charm. This is just a piece of flavor that popped up, between the writing and the recording sessions. Miles is not in control of his powers; it’s almost like setting up what’s to come. He is a charming kid. He is starting to make connections with other people that may or may not be romantic; it’s unclear. He’s capable of getting the connection, but he just isn’t quite in control of what he’s doing yet.
The stickers that Miles works on came from Bob Persichetti and his rebellious, street-art-skateboarder past. In the initial treatment, we wanted him to have something that was a little lie that he would keep from his parents, because it felt like a good microcosm of the big lie that he has to keep from them, going forward into the next stage of his life. What’s cool with the stickers, too, is that they literally say “My name is.” It very uniquely set up that Miles was someone who was still searching for himself and identity and wasn’t quite sure who he was, and was almost trying out different versions of who he was, graphically, on these stickers.Does Smart Equal Liberal?
Nobody thinks their own values and attitudes are foolish. It goes against human nature. Say you meet someone who believes that a woman’s proper place is in the home. And say, for the purposes of argument, that you firmly believe this as well. You are going to assume that this person who shares this core value is intelligent, that this attitude is a reflection of reason and mental acuity. Or say you meet someone who shares your concern for the natural environment. You will automatically conclude that this new acquaintance must be a sophisticated thinker. At the very least, you are not going to think, hey, he’s a lot like me, he must be stupid.
Given that this is true, how can we ever know if some values are more intelligent, more reasoned, or more cognitively sophisticated than others? Put another way, does native intelligence lead to a certain set of values, and stupidity to another worldview altogether?
Surprisingly, this fundamental question has never been examined scientifically—until now. Psychologist Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh realized he could explore the link between IQ and values using a very large existing data base on kids who were born in 1970. These boys and girls, more than 7000 of them, had all taken IQ tests at the age of ten, so he was able to sort out the bright kids from their duller classmates. These kids had then been tracked and interviewed repeatedly for two decades, so there was a rich record of not only their education and work lives but also their basic attitudes and beliefs: on race, gender equality, the environment, the sanctity of marriage, and so forth. In short, Deary wanted to see what kind of people they turned into at age 30, as they stood on the cusp of the 21st century.
Not to put too fine a point on it: The smartest kids turned into the most broad-minded and progressive adults. For example, the most intelligent kids turned out 20 years later to be much more tolerant of other races. They were also much more supportive of working mothers, rejecting the notion that pre-school children will suffer without a stay-at-home mother. In general, the sharpest kids came to embrace much less traditional moral values and were much more apt to challenge authority. They were also much less cynical as adults, more trusting that the political system can do good.
Why would native intelligence translate into a more enlightened worldview later on? One obvious possibility is that the smarter kids end up getting a better education; they read more books and newspapers and are exposed to a richer culture of ideas. But the data, reported in the January issue of Psychological Science, don’t appear to support this explanation.
Instead, it appears to be something about the intelligent brain itself: Smart people may have a different emotional makeup, a personality that is more open to experience. Or it may be that high IQ at age ten eventually leads to more complex moral reasoning: In short, smart people alone may have the cognitive machinery that’s needed for more flexible analysis of political and moral quandaries.
For more insights into human nature, visit “We’re Only Human...” at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman.Canonical is pleased that Cisco, developer of the Application Centric Infrastructure is joining the Ubuntu Cloud OpenStack Interoperability Lab (OIL). Cisco implements application policy as part of OpenStack Group Based Policy (GBP) and the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) – delivering application policies to improve performance and simplify management of private clouds.
As the OpenStack ecosystem continues to grow rapidly, so does our OpenStack Interoperability Lab. In OIL, Canonical conducts interoperability testing on 3,000 plus cloud configurations each month, now with Cisco ACI along with 32 other OIL partners on Ubuntu OpenStack. OIL delivers customers the confidence that components of an OpenStack cloud work together – making it easier to deploy and consume cloud resources. OIL will provide Juju charms for Cisco ACI APIC and GBP, making it extremely easy to deploy application policy in OpenStack.
Juju is a state-of–the–art, open source, service orchestration tool that captures application-specific knowledge such as dependencies, scale-out practices, operational events like backups and updates and integration options. Juju allows you to configure, manage, maintain, deploy, and scale your workloads quickly and efficiently on public clouds, as well as on physical servers, OpenStack, and containers. You can use Juju from the command line or through its beautiful GUI. Juju charms define everything you all collaboratively know about deploying that particular service brilliantly. All you have to do is use any available charm (or write your own), and the corresponding service will be deployed in minutes, on any cloud or server or virtual machine.
GBP and Cisco ACI APIC will be incorporated into OIL and tested with Ubuntu OpenStack making it easier for Canonical customers to deploy and use, along with solutions from over 25 other partner hardware and software providers.
“We are excited to join Canonical OpenStack Integration Lab.” said Mike Cohen, Director of Product Management for Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure. “With Juju charms for GBP and Cisco ACI APIC plug-in, developers can very quickly create an OpenStack network that accurately reflects application policies for scale, performance, availability and security. Working with other charms, customers can automate service orchestration for a variety of new cloud applications.”
John Zannos, VP Cloud Alliances at Canonical said: “We’re delighted to welcome Cisco to the Ubuntu Cloud Partner community. Canonical and Cisco are providing openness and OpenStack interoperability across a diverse set of technologies. With Cisco’s Group Based Policy and ACI in OIL, we will simplify new application provisioning, security and governance with OpenStack. Through OIL, we run OpenStack testing in combination with solutions from all our Ubuntu Cloud partners to provide validation of interoperability.”
OpenStack has emerged as a preferred open-source cloud management platform based on its openness, interoperability, flexibility and large highly active community of users, developers and vendors. It has also established itself as the platform of choice for NFV workloads. According to the most recent OpenStack Foundation global survey, Ubuntu is the most popular host and guest operating system for OpenStack, with more than half of all OpenStack instances running Ubuntu, and 70 percent of the Public Cloud Guest operating system market.The first exit poll of Election Day 2016 emerged just after noon from Morning Consult/Politico, which reports that twice as many voters in 2016 versus 2012 (36 percent versus 18 percent) said that a “strong leader” was the most important factor in choosing a president.
From the Morning Consult website:
Voters heading to the polls Tuesday are twice as likely to say they want a president who is a “strong leader” than in 2012, according to Morning Consult/POLITICO exit data.
More than one-third (36 percent) of 2016 voters said being a strong leader was the most important quality when picking a president, compared with 18 percent of voters who said the same during 2012 election. It’s an opinion held regardless of partisan leanings: 35 percent of Democrats, 34 percent of independents and 39 percent of Republicans said that was most important.
After being a strong leader, voters said having a vision for the future, at 29 percent, was most important. Sixteen percent picked having a candidate share their values and care about people like them, respectively.
Democrats were more likely than Republicans to place more value in whether the candidate cares about them (20 percent to 12 percent), while GOP voters said it was more important that the candidate shares their values (19 percent to 14 percent).Some years ago I visited Krasnogruda, the restored manor house of Czesław Miłosz, close by the Polish–Lithuanian frontier. I was the guest of Krzysztof Czyzewski, director of the Borderland Foundation, dedicated to acknowledging the conflicted memory of this region and reconciling the local populations. It was deep midwinter and there were snow-covered fields as far as the eye could see, with just the occasional clump of ice-bound trees and posts marking the national frontiers.
My host waxed lyrical over the cultural exchanges planned for Miłosz’s ancestral home. I was absorbed in my own thoughts: some seventy miles north, in Pilviškiai (Lithuania), the Avigail side of my father’s family had lived and died (some at the hands of the Nazis). Our cousin Meyer London had emigrated in 1891 to New York from a nearby village; there he was elected in 1914 as the second Socialist congressman before being ousted by an ignominious alliance of wealthy New York Jews disturbed by his socialism and American Zionists aghast at his well-publicized suspicion of their project.
For Miłosz, Krasnogruda—“red soil”—was his “native realm” (Rodzinna Europa in the original Polish, better translated as European Fatherland or European Family).1 But for me, staring over this stark white landscape, it stood for Jedwabne, Katyn, and Babi Yar—all within easy reach—not to mention dark memories closer to home. My host certainly knew all this: indeed, he was personally responsible for the controversial Polish publication of Jan Gross’s account of the massacre at Jedwabne.2 But the presence of Poland’s greatest twentieth-century poet transcended the tragedy that stalks the region.
Miłosz was born in 1911 in what was then Russian Lithuania. Indeed, like many great Polish literary figures, he was not strictly “Polish” by geographical measure. Adam Zagajewski, one of the country’s most important living poets, was born in Ukraine; Jerzy Giedroyc—a major figure in the twentieth-century literary exile—was born in Belarus, like Adam Mickiewicz, the nineteenth-century icon of the Polish literary revival. Lithuanian Vilna in particular was a cosmopolitan blend of Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Russians, and Jews, among others (Isaiah Berlin, like the Harvard political philosopher Judith Shklar, was born in nearby Riga).
Raised in the interwar Polish republic, Miłosz survived the occupation and was already a poet of some standing when he was sent to Paris as the cultural attaché of the new People’s Republic. But in 1951 he defected to the West and two years later he published his most influential work, The Captive Mind.3 Never out of print, it is by far the most insightful and enduring account of the attraction of intellectuals to Stalinism and, more generally, of the appeal of authority and authoritarianism to the intelligentsia.
Miłosz studies four of his contemporaries and the self-delusions to which they fell prey on their journey from autonomy to obedience, emphasizing what he calls the intellectuals’…X Unable to play video. Neither flash nor html5 is supported!
An arrest warrant has been issued for actress Rose McGowan for felony possession of a controlled substance, according to the Associated Press
The warrant was obtained February 1, after a police investigation of personal belongings left behind on a January 20 United flight arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport tested positive for narcotics.
The warrant has been entered into the national law enforcement database, and McGowan has been contacted to appear in a Loudoun County, Virginia court, according to the AP.
McGowan responded to the warrant in a tweet on Monday:
Are they trying to silence me? There is a warrant out for my arrest in Virginia. What a load of HORSESHIT. — rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 30, 2017
McGowan has become one of the leading voices in speaking out about sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood after accusing Harvey Weinstein of rape. Her accusation followed the bombshell reports in The New York Times and The New Yorker that the movie executive had allegedly sexually harassed and assaulted women for over three decades.
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31 PHOTOS Women who have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment or assault See Gallery Women who have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment or assault Natassia Malthe has accused Weinstein of raping her in a hotel room. On a separate occasion, after she was assured that Weinstein would not come onto her, she was allegedly escorted to Weinstein's hotel room by an assistant. In the room was another woman, who performed oral sex on Weinstein whil he asked Malthe to join. Lupita Nyong'o wrote a detailed essay for the New York Times recounting multiple incidents with Weinstein, including an evening during which he asked her to give him a nude massage while his family was in the same home. Heather Graham said Weinstein told her he had an agreement with his wife that allowed him to sleep with whomever he wants. He then asked him to meet her to discuss a film project at his hotel, falsely telling her that her friend would also be present. She declined. French actress Judith Godreche has accused Weinstein of inappropriately pressing up against her, trying to remove her sweater and asking for a massage. Lauren Holly said that during a seemingly normal meeting with Weinstein to discuss a project, he began disrobing, got into the shower, and went to the bathroom while continuing to converse with her. He then allegedly asked her for a massage. She fled. Angie Everhart said that she was sleeping in her own cabin on a yacht when Harvey Weinstein entered, blocked the door and began masturbating. He told her not to tell anyone, but she "told everyone," including many actors and producers. In response, most told her that it was just Harvey being Harvey. In an interview with TMZ, she emphasized that anyone in the industry who knew Harvey at all knew that he regularly did things like what he allegedly did to her. Kate Beckinsale has accused Harvey Weinstein of coming onto her in his hotel room when she was 17 years old. Tara Subkoff said that in the 1990s, on the same day that she was offered a major movie role, she met Harvey Weinstein at a party. He allegedly made her sit on his lap while he had an erection. He then told her that if he did not do certain sexual things, she would not get the role that she'd already been offered. She declined. Afterward, she said, her "reputation was ruined by false gossip" and she found it near impossible to book roles. Minka Kelly said that Harvey Weinstein offered her a lavish lifestyle in exchange for being his extramarital girlfriend. She declined. Gwyneth Paltrow told the New York Times that Harvey Weinstein asked her for a massage in his hotel suite. After she told then-boyfriend Brad Pitt, Pitt confronted him, leading Weinstein to contact Paltrow and "scream" at her, she said. Asia Argento has accused Weinstein of raping her in his hotel room when she was 21. She first reluctantly agreed to give him a massage, and then he forcibly performed oral sex on her. During subsequent encounters, she had consensual sexual relations with him due to fear that he would otherwise ruin her career. Rose McGowan has publicly accused Harvey Weinstein of rape. In October 2016, she tweeted reference to a studio head raping her. In October 2017, in a tweet to Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, McGowan referred to Weinstein by name while repeating her rape accusation. The alleged incident took |
Rangel] said the Venezuelan president has asked former VP Rangel to reach out to the opposition. Arreaza said Rangel this week met with Primero Justicia leader Julio Borges, and Un Nuevo Tiempo leaders, including Chacao Mayor Leopoldo Lopez. The government sees Lopez as the best channel to the student movement, added Arreaza.”
March 28, 2008: The cable reports on a meeting between U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D – OR) and López, noting that “The Senator and his staff discussed possible media strategies with Lopez and methods for getting his positive message to audiences in the U.S.”
April 11, 2008: The U.S. embassy met with a legal advisor to López, who outlined his legal strategy in fighting his ban from political office. She noted that she “believes making Lopez a victim of the BRV's machinations is making him a more popular candidate.”
July 17, 2008: The U.S. agrees with the analysis of the legal advisor, writing, “Interestingly, the disqualifications appear to be turning Leopoldo Lopez into a national opposition figure, rather than just a rising star in Caracas.”
July 18, 2008: “There is widespread concern within the opposition that a growing rivalry between Zulia Governor Manuel Rosales and Chacao Mayor Leopoldo Lopez is futher [sic] undermining opposition unity.”
July 31, 2008: “Increased international interest this week on the ineligibles' cause suggests that Lopez and other opposition leaders have had some success is rallying support on the international scene, maybe even more so than at home.”
March 28, 2009: “UNT activists report that there was increasing friction between Maracaibo mayor Manuel Rosales and former Chacao mayor Leopoldo Lopez over leadership of the party. She complained that the older politicians in control of UNT -- namely Rosales -- are only interested in claiming power for themselves, rather than grooming rising stars in the party who may generate broader public appeal.”
June 10, 2009: “Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) activist Yenny De Freitas told Poloffs June 8 that the party continues to suffer from a major schism between its self-exiled leader, Manuel Rosales, and Leopoldo Lopez. She said that Lopez, who is currently in charge of UNT's outreach, is scheming to create his own opposition "movement" outside of the current party system -- likely taking advantage of the networks he has developed in his current role and his personal popularity within Caracas.” The cable added, “The absence of the more popular younger generation of opposition leaders almost certainly will feed speculation that all is not well within the parties, and that disgruntled figures like Leopoldo Lopez may be preparing to launch their own self-serving "movement" at the expense of whatever cohesion the current opposition parties are able to achieve.”
September 2, 2009: “Lopez announced September 1, however, that he had in fact been ejected from UNT due to "differences" with party officials over how to proceed in advance of National Assembly (AN) and municipal council elections expected in 2010. Conversations with party rank and file indicate that Lopez, who headed UNT's grassroots "popular networks" outreach initiative, may attract a broad following to his "movement of movements" -- likely creating yet another obstacle to the opposition's limping attempts to achieve electoral unity. Lopez seems to be saying that he has a better idea of what it will take to beat Chavez and is willing to break with his party to get his way.”
September 2, 2009: “Lopez's much-publicized rebelliousness is likely to complicate the opposition's efforts to create a unity slate of candidates for elections in 2010. Lopez seems to believe he knows better how to beat Chavez and will not hesitate to break with his opposition colleagues to get his way.”
October 15, 2009: “[Pollster Luis Vicente] Leon emphasized that the opposition lacks a unifying leader who can transmit its message to the Venezuelan people. He assessed that Leopoldo Lopez was probably hoping to catapult himself into that type of leadership role with his "popular networks" ("redes populares") initiative.”
November 3, 2009: “Former Mayor of Chacao Leopoldo Lopez, who split with UNT over his support for a "unity ticket," told [the Political Counselor, “Polcouns”] October 16 that the parties are too comfortable with the status quo to take risks. He also rejected the idea that there were "major parties," arguing that within the opposition, "all the parties are small parties.”
“Former Chacao Mayor Leopoldo Lopez has become a divisive figure within the opposition, particularly since his very public split with UNT in September. He is often described as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry -- but party officials also concede his enduring popularity, charisma, and talent as an organizer. PJ's Ponte said she had worked for Lopez when he was mayor and was impressed by his ability to organize his staff and effectively implement programs. Nevertheless, she said he summarily fired her when her husband opposed Lopez during an internal party conflict while he was still a member of PJ. (Note: Lopez co-founded PJ but left the party to join UNT in 2007. End Note.)”
November 3, 2009: “While the parties need Lopez's following to expand their narrow electoral base, they appear frustrated with his uncompromising approach and do not trust his motives. Ponte said that for the opposition parties, Lopez draws ire second only to Chavez, joking that "the only difference between the two is that Lopez is a lot better looking." PJ's Caldera minimized Lopez's "social networks" as "political proselytizing" and his projects as no different than those often carried out by opposition parties trying to build public support.”
December 22, 2009: “During a party event December 6, Primero Justicia (PJ) Secretary-General Tomas Guanipa called on Lopez to respect the unity table and its agreements and consensus. Guanipa urged Lopez to "not continue dividing us, we should not go through life like crashing cars, fighting with the whole world. It is not good for the country that you are hoping for something different than us."”By the second week of August 1971 in a bid to to escape the violence of the Troubles, refugees from Northern Ireland arrived into the Republic in unprecedented numbers, putting immense pressure on the designated centres around the country.
This report opens with footage of some of the refugees housed in Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee, County Kerry. Conditions were so bad in many of the refugee centres that a number of those who had fled initially, decided to return home.
Kevin Myers interviews some of the refugees returning to Belfast. The general feeling among those returning is that the camps were overcrowded and the staff were not able to cope with such numbers, although they did the best they could. One man returning from the Gormanston Camp in County Meath was unhappy to be housed in a marquee with soaking blankets for cover. Another returning woman is angry there was no food for the children.
Barry Linnane interviews a Protestant woman forced out of her home. Threatened for two years, she had to get out for the safety of her children. She is entirely dependent on charity and voluntary help and had no idea what the future holds.
One young woman is unhappy about the lack of official support for refugees
The people are giving it but the welfare and the government have done nothing for them.
An RTÉ News report by Kevin Myers and Barry Linnane broadcast on 13 August 1971.The number one movie of last year was based on a comic book. The year before, two of the top five movies were based on comics. The year before that, both of the two top movies of the year were inspired by comics; both went on to make more than $1 billion worldwide and are now among the top 15 highest-grossing movies in history. Next year, no less than ten (10) movies based on comic books will open in theaters. Blessed are the geeks, for they have inherited the earth, at least as far as Hollywood is concerned.
There was a time, not that long ago, when comic books were a niche subculture. Today, that niche subculture has completely conquered the mainstream. After decades in the shadows, comics are now the profit engines of billion-dollar film and television companies. When I was a kid in the 1980s, you were lucky to get one comic-book movie every year or two; you were even luckier if it was not a total and utter embarrassment. In 2016, there will be a comic-book movie almost every month. To a comic fan in his thirties or older, it can sometimes feel like they’ve stepped onto the Flash’s Cosmic Treadmill, and run themselves into an alternate reality.
This Bizarro World is a long way from the 1940s, when comic-book superheroes first transitioned to the big-screen as the subjects of serials. These series of episodic shorts were often cheaply made and sometimes shockingly unfaithful to their source material. Comics were ahead of their time, at least at the movie theater; too adventurous and imaginative to be accurately reproduced with the tools of the day. As technology improved, so did the comic-book movies, leading to a series of watershed films—‘Superman,’ ‘Batman,’ ‘X-Men’—that reshaped the entire industry. How did we get there? All superheroes have an origin story. So do comic-book movies. This column will attempt to find it, one film at a time.
First, though, some guidelines. This column will focus exclusively on comic-book movies. That means movies based on characters from comic strips (like ‘Dick Tracy’ or ‘Popeye’) or pulps (like ‘The Phantom’ or ‘The Shadow’) or superheroes who were invented expressly for films are out (sorry ‘Blankman’). At least at first, we’re going to limit ourselves to American comics and movies, while also excluding anything that debuted on television or went direct-to-video; those categories are each so large in and of themselves they could (and maybe will) be their own columns someday. But that means for the time being you won’t see pieces on ‘Danger: Diabolik,’ David Hasslehoff’s ‘Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.,’ or that weird ‘Man-Thing’ movie from ten years ago that no one saw. Try to contain your anguish.
And now let’s begin, with the very first comic book to cross over to the film world. Dozens of movies, billions of dollars, decades of dreams, all start here, with a single magic word.
‘Adventures of Captain Marvel’ (1941)
Director: William Witney and John English
Writers: Ronald Davidson, Norman S. Hall, Arch B. Heath, Joseph Poland, Sol Shor
Starring: Tom Tyler, Frank Coghlan Jr., Louise Currie
Based on: Captain Marvel, created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck in ‘Whiz Comics’ #2 (1939)
Onscreen Iteration: First appearance
Best Special Effect: Anytime Captain Marvel stops bullets with his chest.
Worst Special Effect: Anytime Captain Marvel flies in front of a greenscreen.
Most Dated Moment: The description of one of the serial’s key settings—a valuable tomb in Thailand—as “a desolate volcanic land which has for centuries been taboo to white men... a realm of mystery, jealously guarded by native tribes unconquered since the dawn of time.” All of the “natives” who live around the tomb dress like extras from a summer stock version of ‘Arabian Nights.’
Most Timeless Moment: While on the hunt for his main squeeze, Betty Wallace, Captain Marvel beats up and interrogates one of his arch-nemesis’ goons. After the thug gives Cap the info he needs, he slaps the guy and heads off in search of his lady. Seeing an opportunity, the goon pulls out a pistol and fires at Captain Marvel—but Captain Marvel is impervious to bullets, so it does nothing. Though the hood presents absolutely no danger to him whatsoever, Captain Marvel stops, turns, runs back, and punches him right in the face. So remember, folks: DO NOT MESS WITH CAPTAIN MARVEL. HE WILL BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF YOU.
Further Thoughts: Modern fans might assume the first comic-book superhero to get the movie treatment would have been Superman or Batman. In fact, one of their biggest rivals throughout the 1940s beat both of them to the screen by several years. According to Wikipedia (which is never wrong), Republic Pictures did try to make a Superman serial first, but National Periodicals (which later became DC Comics) turned them down. The studio then approached Fawcett Comics, publishers of Captain Marvel, who was introduced shortly after the Man of Steel and quickly became one of the Golden Age’s most popular heroes. For much of the 1940s, “The Big Red Cheese” was the top-selling book in the entire comics industry.
The concept that kids flocked to was simple. Orphaned 12-year-old newsboy Billy Batson is selected by a wizard named Shazam to replace him as Earth’s protector. When Billy says the Wizard’s name—an acronym of the assorted gods and heroes who were the source of his power (Solomon’s wisdom, Hercules’ strength, Atlas’ stamina, Zeus’ power, Achilles’ courage, and Mercury’s speed)—he’s transformed by a magic bolt of lightning into Captain Marvel.
The movie version is faithful to the comics... ish. In a cave somewhere in Thailand, a Billy Batson who looks to be somewhere in his mid-to-late 20s (Frank Coghlan Jr.) is granted the powers of Captain Marvel (Tom Tyler) by the old Wizard (Nigel De Brulier). This Billy works as the radio operator for an expedition into “The Valley of Tombs,” where a bunch of American archaeologists break into an ancient tomb over the objections of the local natives. While Billy finds Shazam and gets his superhero identity, the explorers discover “The Scorpion,” a bug-shaped device that functions as a “solar atom smasher,” concentrating the sun’s rays through a series of lenses into a powerful beam that can destroy human life or turn ordinary objects into gold.
Republic Pictures
The Scorpion, which is placed in a heavily fortified tomb, is one of the local culture’s most sacred objects, so naturally, the white archaeologists just take it for themselves. That draws the ire of a mysterious evildoer also named “The Scorpion,” who is technically the serial’s villain, but seems to have a legitimate gripe about the ownership of this thing. He sets out to reclaim the atom smasher, while the archaeologists divide its many lenses amongst themselves in order to protect it; over the course of the 12 chapters, the Scorpion sends his henchman to retrieve each crucial piece while Billy and Captain Marvel try to thwart his progress.
Serials like ‘Adventures of Captain Marvel’ were originally programmed to run in weekly installments at theaters around the country. They weren’t meant to be watched in one sitting—and frankly it shows. The episodes all rely on a handful of tropes (chase scenes, fist fights, cliffhangers) that begin to get awful repetitive over the course of more than three hours of action. If you’re going to watch ‘Captain Marvel,’ your best bet is to do it the way it was intended; in small chunks before other feature presentations. That’ll keep things from getting too stale, and let you bask in the film’s pleasures in smaller, more manageable doses.
Those pleasures are mostly of the two-fisted action variety. ‘Captain Marvel’ was directed by John English and William Witney, who were well-known in their day for their thrilling, stunt-laden serials. This one is no different, and even on a relatively limited budget (and with some bargain basement special effects) they do a very respectable job of conjuring Captain Marvel to life. Some of the stunts are dodgy, but a lot of them still work, like Captain Marvel bursting through walls like they were made out of cardboard (probably because they were made out of cardboard) or breaking rifles over his knee like they’re made out of wax (probably because they were made out of wax). And the fight scenes, which rely on the actors’ and their doubles’ athleticism instead of frenetic editing and shaky camerawork, are fantastic. The centerpiece battle in Chapter 10 between Billy Batson and the Scorpion’s goons, for example, is more fun than anything in ‘Taken 3.’ And there’s at least half a dozen more fights just like it.
There’s less to recommend about the story itself, which is mostly about Billy trying to track down the true identity of the Scorpion. Before too long, he realizes the Scorpion is actually one of the archeologists attempting to subvert the group from within, but he guesses incorrectly several times before the real bad guy reveals himself in the final chapter. (And this guy’s supposed to have the “wisdom” of Solomon? Yeah, no.) There are no clues or any real sense of mystery; it’s mostly just a process-of-elimination guessing game. Again, part of this is the nature of the beast; a serial is meant to be so simple that each chapter can be understood on in its own, in case a viewer happened to catch, say, Chapter 3, at the theater without seeing the first two.
It’s easy to see why Republic wanted comic-book heroes for their serials; they’re well-suited to the format. Not only were comics loaded with the sort of action and intrigue that were the serials’ bread-and-butter, but the construct of a hero and his secret identity also served as an effective cost-cutting measure. Most of the film could follow the human alter ego sleuthing or romancing his leading lady, while reserving his costumed personality (and much of the budget) for just a couple of minutes of excitement in each episode. Billy’s frequent changes back and forth from Captain Marvel strain credulity a few times—Why’s this dope drive everywhere when he could just fly as Cap with the speed of Mercury and be there in a flash?—but it surely helped make things more affordable.
Republic Pictures
When ‘Adventures of Captain Marvel’ was made in 1940, the rules of of comic-book movies hadn’t been established yet; heck in 1940, most of the rules of comic books themselves hadn’t been established yet. Characters onscreen are weirdly unfazed by the appearance of a man in red tights and a cape flying through the air, and Captain Marvel himself is shockingly violent; in the very first episode he kills a whole bunch of bad guys by commandeering their Gatling gun and then mowing them down as they run for their lives. Shooting dudes in the back in cold blood? This is a long way from “family-friendly entertainment.”
But even at this primordial stage, there’s a lot that’s recognizable about modern comic-book movies in ‘Adventures of Captain Marvel.’ Although the serial format itself is a thing of the past, the idea of hooking viewers on a cliffhanger so they’ll keep coming back to the theater— and the idea of selling viewers the perpetual middle of a story they may never see end—hasn’t changed in 70 years. Captain Marvel hasn’t changed much in that time either, although he now goes by Shazam (Thanks, Marvel Comics!), and he’s owned by his former rivals at DC. For the first time since 1940, he’s headed back to the big-screen as well, in a 2019 movie that will star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the hero’s nemesis Black Adam. But that story, like all comics stories, is very much to be continued...
‘The Adventures of Captain Marvel’ is currently available on YouTube and at Archive.org.The CEO of Chevron is sitting in a Perth hotel conference room, clearly unhappy. Why wouldn’t he be? He gets paid more than $20m a year and he finds himself today in front of a table of senators answering questions about the company’s lack of a contribution to Australia’s tax base. He normally doesn’t do media and, by the nature of his position, he is able to avoid public scrutiny, but today he is answering questions from the Australian Senate. He turns to the right and whispers something to his offsider before answering my question.
The treasurer's review into the petroleum resource rent tax will give Chevron everything it wanted
He is trying to answer the question I just asked him, which I flagged to journalists an hour before. Standing in the Perth morning sun, I was holding up a picture of my daughter Hannah. “How old will my five-year-old daughter be before Chevron actually starts paying taxes on its offshore gas projects?” I hold the picture up. The cameras click.
An hour later, the CEO of Chevron finishes his whispered conversation with his offsider and stares back at me. He knows he can’t clearly answer that question. The question doesn’t have an answer. It really comes down to how clever Chevron’s accountants can be. Perhaps 13 years. Perhaps 18. Hannah will have finished school by then.
Petroleum resource rent tax: Scott Morrison rules out changes in budget Read more
The petroleum resource rent tax regime for offshore gas projects is a joke. In previous presentations to shareholders and analysts, Chevron has boasted about its confident position in Australia. Its cash position looks good. Yet Chevron will pay less corporate tax for exploiting Australian petroleum this year than I will pay for a single beer bought after the hearing is over.
Let that sink in for a moment. The five largest Australian offshore gas projects paid less corporate tax than is charged for a single bottle of Little Creatures Pale Ale.
Here are the facts. Chevron has paid no corporate tax in the past two years. None. Zero. Zilch.
It paid paid no petroleum resource rent tax either.
I will spend the hearing highlighting this. It will make me feel good. My supporters on Twitter will congratulate me.
It will achieve nothing. Today we will lose, again. Chevron wins the real fight.
Today is also the day the treasurer hands down a review into the PRRT, which will give Chevron everything it wanted. No change to the PRRT. Nothing that will make anything different. The report is a whitewash, but why would I be surprised? The lobbyists have been out. Working the phones. Walking the corridors of power. Both here and with Australia’s overseas representatives in the markets the petroleum will ultimately reach. The lunches. The dinners. The pressure. So much pressure.
“The world of resources in Australia will collapse if you dare make us pay any more tax,” they will say.
“But you currently aren’t paying ANY tax?” I would reply.
But they will discount that. They call that, in the corridors of power, “being anti-business”. And their supporters will nod.
'The world of resources in Australia will collapse if you dare make us pay any more tax,' they will say
“We have to protect the jobs! Why are you risking jobs by demanding more tax?” they will say.
“It is only going to create 400 jobs on the entire north-west shelf when created,” I would respond. “And that makes no sense. We tax profit. Why would it impact jobs? Yours is a false argument.”
And they will offer a patronising smile. And be polite. And move on. They won’t bother with the likes of me. They don’t need to.
At the hearing we get the information that shows how this could be changed. Three professors will front the inquiry and tell us that you can raise more than $6bn by applying the Hong Kong model that prevents dodgy deductions when corporations move money between their own firms. $6bn. From just two companies. They are brought here by the campaign director of GetUp!, Paul Oosting, so they will be discounted by the conservatives. “Aren’t Getup just a bunch of socialists?” they will say, laughing. They will keep laughing.
Tax justice advocates urge Senate to push for fair take of oil and gas revenue Read more
Jason Ward, the brains behind the Tax Justice Network, will explain how the companies tell their investors one thing and tax authorities something else. That they will will brag about how much money they make in the US and cry poor to tax authorities. That the whole thing is a rort.
Chevron will avoid these questions. Its bosses just have to get through the the hour. But they know that something like the petroleum resource rent tax is complicated. That it isn’t “in your face”. That they can get away with it all by keeping their mouths shut. That you will be angry reading this – but that if they can withstand your rage for a few weeks, nothing will change. And so it will go on.If it seems like the less intelligent have gotten the shorter end of the stick in the post-2009 economic recovery, then your suspicions would be correct. So how is this the revenge-of-the-nerds economy?
The wage disparity between college graduates (if we use college completion as a proxy for for having a high-IQ and for being ‘bookish’) and high school grades continues to widen, especially for advanced degrees and STEM degrees. Although the wage disparity between college grads vs. high school grads has exited for decades, it has widened even more since 2009.
The less intelligent (if we use educational attainment as a proxy for IQ) earn less and are more likely to be unemployed.
STEM jobs have seen the most growth since 2002, especially computer science and math jobs (which generally have the highest IQs of all STEM professions):
..and higher wage growth, whereas non-STEM wages have fallen:
Manufacturing, construction, and energy jobs, which pay good wages for average-IQ people, have seen multi-decade declines. From The Inescapable Pull of Biology:
There are major economic harbingers of this trend: First, the so-called hollowing out of the middle. Most of the jobs created since 2009 are in the low-paying service sector. The problem is the financial crisis permanently gutted a lot of good-paying middle-class professional jobs–jobs that only required an average IQ to attain
Most of the job gains since 2009 have been in low-paying sectors, such as the hospitality industry. High-IQ ‘creative class’ jobs such as programming have also seen gains. ‘Blue collar’ jobs such as energy have seen steep declines, however: More Than 440,000 Global Oil, Gas Jobs Lost During Downturn.
Oil & gas jobs, which employ average-IQ people and pay good wages, have seen steep declines in recent years:
This was because oil prices, which were as high as $100/barrel in early 2014, had fallen to as low as $35 by early 2016. Natural gas and coal prices also saw similar declines. Tech stocks and tech sectors, however, have been on the up-and-up since early 2000′s–and unlike energy, construction, and manufacturing–have not had nearly as much volatility and are less sensitive to macro economic conditions. High-IQ industries and sectors (like coding, and information technology), in general, are much more insulated from economic conditions than manufacturing and energy jobs.
Manufacturing and construction jobs have yet to return to their 2007 highs (adjusted for population growth, and the picture worsens):
‘Non-routine cognitive jobs‘ have seen the most growth, whereas ‘routine’ jobs have stagnated:
Most of the jobs created since 2009 are low-paying; middle-wage jobs were hurt the most by the recession, and many such jobs did not return:
The bifurcation is more obvious here:
Whereas people with high IQs are able to find lucrative work in the financial and tech sectors (the ‘creative class’), those with average IQs, many of whom a decade ago would have had a middle-class job, are stuck with lower-paying jobs. This means people with average IQs (some even with college degrees) are working alongside below-average IQ people in the same low-paying jobs.
Real wages have lagged productivity:
(this is especially so for low & medium-IQ jobs such as retail)
Rent and home prices continue to exceed wage growth. High-IQ people earn more and thus are more likely to own a home instead of having to rent. The less intelligent are hurt the most by surging rents.
Home prices seem to be correlated with IQ, with smarter regions such as Palo Alto and Menlo Park having not only among highest home prices in the nation, but prices that keep making new highs even as home prices for the rest of the nation are still below the 2005-2007 highs:
From Palo Alto Real Estate Versus Everywhere Else:
This is also part of the post-2008 ‘hollowing out of the middle’ theme, of the financial and cognitive elite running circles around everyone else. Now couldn’t be a better time to be smart, especially if you live in the Bay Area, as the wealth opportunities from the web 2.0 boom are abundant. If your IQ is average, the opportunities are probably less plentiful, sorry. When you look at the massive performance of stocks and high-end real estate over the past eight years, versus flat inflation-adjusted wages for most workers, ‘captital’ is kicking labor’s butt, but this is just the system/economy that we have, maybe not the one we want.
The cumulative wealth of the Forbes 400 has risen 130% since 204, versus just 30% for inflation:
Regarding IQ, the top 20 of the top 400 are dominated by technology founders (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Oracle, Cisco, etc.), who have the highest IQs of anyone on the list. If SAT scores are used as a proxy for IQ, all these tech founders have IQs of at least 145.
But also, the correlation between income and IQ. In America’s increasingly automated, efficient, technological, winner-take-all economy, IQ inequality is equal to wealth inequality.
So although having a high IQ is no guarantee of success in our increasingly competitive economy, it certainly seems to help.J. BROOKS SPECTOR listens to The Gathering’s afternoon panel on the nation’s economic prospects and finds much to intrigue the listener from four thoughtful, knowledgeable panellists - but leaves with a great sense of foreboding.
This now-famous, knowing picture, Negotiations Begin, by renowned South African artist William Kentridge, hangs in the writer’s workroom as a constant reminder of that awkward dance between revolutionaries, politicians, big business and the darker, shadowy forces, all of whom were seemingly ignoring the nation’s population left hostage, gagged and bound to a stake.
Created nearly a quarter century ago, Negotiations Begin captured the artist’s ambivalence over the progress (and results) of South Africa’s political transition. Of course some things would change, but many others wouldn’t – and most people, suitably trussed up, unfortunately would be unable to affect much of anything at all by the time the dance was finally called off.
All those years later and the panel discussion on the country’s economic future at the Daily Maverick’s The Gathering 2015 seemed barely more salubrious – and perhaps even less so – than Kentridge’s dark vision. Bringing together a distinguished panel comprising Moeletsi Mbeki, Iraj Abedian, Martyn Davies and Yolanda Cuba; the group wrestled with the state of South Africa’s economy, its economic future – and crucially – whether the government, business and the rest of society actually knew what had to be done and the urgency of this – and if they had the requisite strength to do it.
Speaking first, Moeletsi Mbeki reached back to his experiences as an exile and then segued to his current circumstances as an entrepreneur, author and commentator. He spoke to the evolution in his thinking about South Africa’s economic challenges, noting that his own thinking had become increasingly influenced by the realities of China’s explosive growth that had grown out of Deng Xiaoping’s famous dictum, heretically blessing capitalist accumulation, when he had said, “To be rich is glorious”. Contemplating the implications of that insight eventually changed Mbeki’s mind about the role of business in a new South Africa.
Mbeki also pointed to the power of unintended consequences, noting that the very act of disinvestment by many multinational businesses had perversely made many local corporations bigger and stronger than they had been before the disinvestment campaign had begun. This had real consequences for the country’s economic landscape post-1990, when the political settlement stretched out towards economic issues.
Currently, Mbeki observed, South Africa’s political economy suffers deeply from the whammy of a triple malaise. There is the slow growth, stagnant economy. Then there is its rampant public sector that is debt ridden and burdened with paralytic parastatals – even as it is also thoroughly corruption-ridden. Finally, the country is weighed down by the single party dominance, the effect of which is a process that can inflicts no electoral pain on the governing party, almost regardless of any missteps it takes – or any poor decisions it makes.
Accordingly, Mbeki pointed to some key hallmarks of poor political-economic leadership, including the profusion of BBBEE deals as well as the proliferating transfer of capital beyond South Africa. In Mbeki’s view, now is the time for big business to step up and play a much more visible role in supporting what it takes to create a genuine multiparty democracy in South Africa. It will be, in Mbeki’s argument, impossible to beat down corruption without that multiparty competition – and that should make it in the natural interest of business to support such a movement. As evidence of the malaise, Mbeki noted instead that illegal capital flow levels are now much higher than they were pre-1993.
Iraj Abedian, a resource economist and sometime advisor to government offices, began by noting that all the sectors of the country see the big problems, but that, paradoxically, no one does anything about them. The country is blessed with a diversified resource base and a strong business sector, but businesses must come to the party in order to reach real solutions to the country’s pressing concerns. Abedian noted there were some serious “evils” afoot; specifically a lack of skills, a failure in job creation, a propensity for bashing business – as well as union bashing and the trashing of the clean, accountable state.
Finally, Abedian argued, there is a need for South Africans to pool their resources and intellectual capital to make any real difference. Speaking to effective absence of real alternatives being advanced generally, Abedian said, “I have not yet heard a policy from any political party in this country that has not been tested and tried and failed elsewhere.”
Martyn Davies, perhaps the country’s best expert on Chinese developments and China’s involvement in the South African economy, argued that the current situation almost forces one to start thinking about what Malcolm Gladwell called “the tipping point”. Davies noted that the while the key must be to kick-start growth, that is a task easier said than done.
However, the country is still waiting for the growth spurt, years after the actual end of the 2008-9 financial crisis. He further pointed out that in 2007, only three nations were not growing, while some 114 were. In fact, the race for national development is now structural – but that structural is really just a clever synonym for something that is “politically hard to do.”
In effect, South Africa, unlike much of the rest of the continent, has effectively wasted a good crisis. Davies labeled South Africa the African equivalent of post-property bubble Japan’s continuing economic malaise. But, importantly, many major Japanese multinationals – although not the economy as a whole – have now reconfigured themselves to swim much deeper into the international sea, especially since they can now operate in what is virtually a cost-free environment as far as the borrowing of capital is concerned.
Along the way, Davies also took a poke at the advocates of easily transforming South Africa into an African developmental state – a favourite trope of so many in the country’s government economic leadership cadre. He asked such people to take a close, hard look at the state of Eskom, the institution that surely would have to be a key driver of any developmental state.
Instead, what South Africa really needs, Davies argued, is a competent state. Good riposte, that one.
Tackling yet another sacred cow, Davies addressed beneficiation as well. His argument, based on observations of the explosive growth of East Asian economies over the past two decades, was that “beneficiation” is no longer directly connected to resources, despite the usual idea of keeping mineral resources inside South Africa to move the products up the value chain. Instead, Davies noted, all that stuff in the ground actually conveys little if any comparative advantage globally. Pointing to the ubiquitous cell phone, for example, Davies noted that the vast preponderance of the value in the product resides in the IT sector based in California for its applications and other software, rather than the plastic or that combination of rare earth elements, coltan, that are used to make the devices.
Historically, Davies explained, economists have always argued that growth requires the three fundamental variables: land, labour and capital. But now, in his view, the only resource that really counts is people – educated, highly skilled, efficient, productive, motivated people – especially given the rich international resource supply chains and markets, and the virtually zero cost of capital. Davies pointed out that the most effective growing economies, now, are what must be termed zero resource economies. Davies’ argument was a parallel to what the writer often heard, living in Japan, that that country was a small, nation with no natural resources – ignoring the fact that it had vast stores of investment capital and a redoubtable labour force fit for a modern, high-tech economy. Ultimately, Davies argued, countries must work to grow – it doesn’t come raining down like manna from the heavens.
Speaking last, Yolanda Cuba, a senior executive at Vodacom and a board member at other companies, argued the subliminal message “out there” to business leaders from government and others, too often, was that it is “bad to make a profit”. But a nation of profit-making enterprises is crucial to the growth and building of a prosperous nation – and the paying of taxes. The poster child example of this view is, of course, Zimbabwe, a nation that, over the years, has largely eliminated its tax base.
That said, the South African business community must rethink the ways it frames any discussion of capitalism in the public sphere. It needs to explain fully and convincingly that investors on the JSE are the country’s own people – often by way of their pensions’ investments in businesses. And as for profits representing a social harm, business must similarly begin to explain that businesses earn their profits from solving social harms, rather than from causing them.
Instead of being the enemy, business leadership must turn the conversation around, arguing that the real enemies of development are unemployment, continuing poverty and the |
physical and gravitational factors around them, adding a rich layer of believability to a universe where players have even formed alliances and overthrown in-game governments. “So if it’s telling us that in this area of space, because of the gravitational pull, or because of the orbit from the Sun, that this planet is going to be icy, then we need to make sure that there’s an icy planet that can swap in there that’s going to suit it,” continues Gregory in issue 124 of OXM.
“It was a little bit of a wrench to relinquish control in terms of the art direction and the art style of that, and to trust that the Stellar Forge and the renderer would spit out convincingly pleasing and effective results.”
Click here for more excellent Official Xbox Magazine articles. Or maybe you want to take advantage of some great offers on magazine subscriptions? You can find them here.Justice Antonin Scalia’s death is a tragedy. For the sanity and functioning of the judicial confirmation process, it also could not have come at a worse time. As I’ve noted before, the judicial confirmation process has been in a downward spiral of increasing obstruction and dysfunction for thirty years. Over this period, each side has engaged in an escalating game of tit-for-tat. Senate Republicans have been particularly obstructionist of President Obama’s judicial nominees, retaliating for Democratic obstruction of Republican nominees, and then some.
For years, I’ve suggested that the only way to put an end to this destructive cycle would be for there to be an agreement to adopt a set of neutral rules sufficiently prior to an election that neither side would be sure who stand to benefit. So, for instance, I’ve suggested prior to several of the previous presidential elections that Senate leaders commit to adopt an orderly process whereby every judicial nominee receives prompt consideration and an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor after the next intervening election. Could something like that work now? Probably not, but here’s how the idea could work were anyone interested in setting aside partisan advantage and thinking about the long-term health of the federal judiciary.
First, President Obama would make a recess appointment of one of the three retired Supreme Court justices to fill the vacancy created by Justice Scalia’s death. Second, the Senate leadership of both parties would commit to support the prompt confirmation of any qualified candidate put forward by the next President, and Presidents thereafter.
No one who cares about the make-up of the Court will be happy with this proposal. All three current retired justices (Stevens, Souter, and O’Connor) were GOP nominees, but they are all more “liberal” than Justice Scalia — two of them substantially so — even if they are not as liberal as some individuals President Obama might like to put on the Court. While this would enable the President to fill the vacancy, it would not do so permanently. Such an appointment would likely still deprive conservatives of the fifth vote in several high-profile cases, even if it would not solidify a new liberal majority on the Court.
On the Senate side, it is almost certain that Senate Republicans will continue to hold the majority at least through 2018, so they might not think there is too much to gain from committing to move forward on the next President’s judicial nominees. Without a filibuster, any qualified nominee of a Republican president will sail through, and Senate Republicans might wish to maintain the ability to scuttle a future Democratic President’s nominee without having to defeat the nominee in a straight up-or-down vote. Senate Republicans also seem quite eager to use their current power to block any Obama appointment to the Court.
The long run of continuing to escalate the current brinkmanship in judicial nominations are significant, however. Republicans should recall that Senate obstruction of judicial nominees has kept several highly qualified conservative nominees from the federal bench as well, and that refusing to allow Scalia’s seat to be filled for a year would further politicize an already soiled process.
The underlying idea of this proposal is that the President should be able to nominate judges and the Senate should discharge its advice and consent function without undue delay. Under such a system, elections have consequences as, over time, the makeup of the judiciary will largely reflect the result of Presidential elections, albeit with a substantial lag. It would also make it easier to evaluate judicial nominees on the merits, and lower the political stakes of the confirmation process. As a general rule, Senators are less willing to oppose judicial nominees in the open than they are willing to obstruct and delay.
As a senator, Barack Obama did his share to push the judicial confirmation process further downward, opposing numerous judicial confirmations and supporting a sixty-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominations. As President, however, perhaps he has the opportunity to bring the judicial confirmation process back from the brink. This would require both the President and the Senate leadership placing the long term interest of the federal judiciary ahead of their partisan political interests. Of course, that is probably why something like this would never happen.Oakland police arrested a man who allegedly burglarized a car and later shot four people on Saturday afternoon.
Officers were dispatched to a shooting in the 1700 block of Telegraph Avenue at 4:10 p.m. Saturday, Oakland police Officer Johnna Watson said.
Prior to the shooting, the suspect allegedly broke into a car, stole items and fled, Watson said.
Police said witnesses chased down the suspect and recovered the property. The suspect then returned to the scene on a bicycle with a firearm.
He allegedly shot two women and two men then fled the scene, Watson said.
All four victims suffered gunshot wounds that are not considered life-threatening, according to police.
Police eventually arrested the suspect but have not released his identity pending review of the case by the Alameda County District Attorney's Office.TAMPA, FL - AUGUST 28: Karl Rove, former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush, walks on the floor before the start of the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Tampa Bay Times Forum on August 28, 2012 in Tampa, Florida. Today is the first full session of the RNC after the start was delayed due to Tropical Storm Isaac. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
"It's not FAIR!"
Ah, the scorpion sting of injustice. Alas, no parent can protect his child for very long. The first pangs can be felt as early as infancy. If you doubt this, you've never seen a woman try to breastfeed twins at Target. Stumbling on this brutal tableau a few months ago, I was never so grateful to have been spared the blessing of multiple births. Or functioning nipples.
Take it from my eyewitness account, sucklings: fair play goes flying out the window when your brother's the alpha twin and his boob just ran dry. As I watched this bully boy forcibly unlatch his bawling sister from her rightful tit, I wanted nothing more than to shout over to the wounded child: "Scream out, Louise! I know things seem hopeless now, but justice will prevail. There's a little thing called karma, and that little areola thief is gonna get his comeuppance in the end, I guarantee you, child. Everybody does."
Until I remembered Karl Rove, the Teflon exception to this rule.
In fact, the evil baby-boy Target twin, with his bloated, bulbous, beet-red face and ruthless booby-bandit ways, reminded me a lot of Rove. Which, given what was going on in the Republican campaign at the time, made me want to warn his twin sister to watch out for her reproductive rights.
But the last thing that milk-deprived child needed was something else to worry about, so I held my tongue. Instead, I flashed back to my own daughter's first run-in with the cold, cruel world.
Elizabeth had spent most of her first year in the solitary queendom of her nursery, until we were convinced to enroll her in something called a toddler class. For most of the kids who showed up, it was the first experience they'd had with "socializing outside the home." There's nothing quite like watching seven wide-eyed, Dreft-scented diaper-jockeys realize in the same awful moment they're not the center of the universe.
Things got ugly fast. A dark-haired, beefy kid sidled up to my sweet young daughter, looked her dead in the eye and, with the ruthless efficiency of a Mafia hit man, yanked the ring of plastic keys she was gnawing right out of her mouth, pushed her to the floor and cracked a smile that could have frozen mercury.
I had to restrain myself from stabbing his fat little Rovian hand to the teeter-totter. But it wasn't that kind of class. We'd been instructed not to intervene, only to observe. "Let them work this out," whispered the teacher. "Respect their process." My daughter is barely one, I thought. She doesn't have a process.
Turns out she did. Elizabeth's tears quickly dried to rage as her eyes swiveled from ineffective, observing me and narrowed like lasers on the Corleone princeling who'd snatched her plastic keys. And that was the day my daughter learned the screaming tackle.
My guess is that Karl Rove swiped lots of keys in his toddler class, early training for what seems to be his life's ambition: swiping the keys to the country. It's not for nothing George W. Bush, the most famous beneficiary of Rove's dark arts, called him the Architect, a word I suspect Karl had to teach him phonetically.
For decades Karl Rove has made a career of winning elections by employing a rulebook devoid of rules. Or petty distractions like scruples or truth. It's stunning how low a man can sink without a moral compass; you'd think a dungeon could only have so many basements. But this year the Architect excavated even further, bottoming even himself. In exchange for huge infusions of cash, he guaranteed his lip-smacking billionaire backers not only the Presidency, but both houses of Congress and a Supreme Court so right-wing the statue of Justice would have to be re-chiseled as a granite Ann Coulter.
Overloaded with so many Republicans, naturally the District of Columbia would begin to sink, deeper, deeper and deeper below ground until it settled with a thunk in Karl's favorite neighborhood: Hell-adjacent.
Rove's hubris was made possible, of course, by the Supreme Court's stunning Citizens United decision, a ruling so flagrantly partisan he could have written it himself. In it, the court reversed a hundred-year rule forbidding political contributions by corporations, flooding an unprecedented tsunami of cash into Republican coffers.
The political implications of Citizens United were so dire I started having nightmares. In them a hundred-foot-tall Shirley Temple devil doll lumbered through the streets of America, crushing voters beneath her size-70 tap shoes, crowing "I'm not a corporation! I'm just a really big girl who poos cash!"
Thanks to Shirley United, it was easy for Karl to convince so many of America's corporate billionaires to back him like the Triple Crown champion he imagined himself to be. All he needed was their money to deliver the one thing they'd never been able to buy: a national election. Which is how they came to entrust him with over $300 million on a bet he assured them he couldn't lose.
Oops.
I'm typically not one to bask in the misfortune of others. Still, I must admit that on election night 2012, for a few brief moments, I did allow myself to chew like taffy on the the sweet schadenfreude of Karl Rove puffing up like a blowfish on Fox News, only to sputter and flail, protesting that it couldn't possibly be true, then sort of dying before America's eyes as it was confirmed that Barack Obama had indeed won reelection. That Republicans had not only lost seats in both the House and Senate, but the Senate had gained its first lesbian. And the Supreme Court... well, Ruth Bader Ginsberg could finally retire with no fear of being replaced by Donald Trump.
Karl's immortal crap-your-pants moment.
Karl Rove had been tackled from behind. By voters. African-American voters, Latino voters, young voters, gay voters. Men and women happy to stand in line for nine hours to prove no one could suppress their vote. Auto workers, believers in climate change and affordable care, accused "sluts" and seniors who want their Medicare to stay exactly as it is. Americans who couldn't be bought by Karl's $300 million lie. It was kind of fun towering over him and grabbing our keys back.
Full disclosure: There's a personal reason I find it difficult to feel bad for Karl's public humiliation and downgrading to political junk bond status.
It all started back in 2004. That was the year Karl realized that in order to get George W. Bush reelected he really had his work cut out for him. After four years, even Republicans were beginning to smell the stink on W. What to do? Realizing the election would be very close, he knew he needed a surefire wedge issue. A primal fear he could exploit to scare the bejesus out of voters. And that's when Lucifer's handmaiden came up with his masterstroke. Us.
Using families like mine as bait, Rove saw to it that 11 states put constitutional amendments on their ballots banning gay marriage. Across America, Karl made sure airwaves and billboards were blanketed with the kinds of images that made our families feel a little... unsafe.
Here's a fun one to explain to your kids. Thanks, Karl!
Now, as any of our extended families, or neighbors, or those folks whose kids go to school with ours will tell you, we're not very scary on our own. We tend to be tax-paying, law-abiding citizens who don't dress nearly as well as we're given credit for. Karl had a plan to fix that. Using his time-tested toolkit of fabrication and deceit, he made sure television ads began to run in those 11 states. Ads that shape-shifted boring families like mine into a nightmare vision of ghouls in minivans, flesh-eaters fresh from the zombie apocalypse, pulling into your town to destroy your marriage and ruin your children.
It worked.
Proposed state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage increased the turnout of socially conservative voters in many of the 11 states where the measures appeared on the ballot on Tuesday, political analysts say, providing crucial assistance to Republican candidates including President Bush in Ohio. The amendments, which define marriage as between only a man and a woman, passed overwhelmingly in all 11 states.... [T]he ballot measures also appear to have acted like magnets for thousands of socially conservative voters in rural and suburban communities who might not otherwise have voted, even in this heated campaign. -- The New York Times, November 3, 2004
Even I have to admit that, from a purely political standpoint, it was a brilliant move on Karl's part. He got exactly what he wanted -- the reelection of one of the worst presidents in American history, tens of thousands of dead and wounded in a war with the wrong country, a seal of approval on torture and an unregulated economy that blew up and blew up until it went "pop!" like a big balloon. All for the low, low price of throwing families like mine under the campaign bus.
Never ones to abandon a successful gambit no matter how cynical, four years later Republican strategists made sure to pull Rove's chestnut of a wedge issue out of mothballs just in time for the 2008 election. As a result, only five months after our children joyfully watched their parents exchange legal marriage vows in front of a priest and all their friends and family, the Yes on Prop 8 campaign, using a Rove-tested blueprint of lies and distortions, somehow scared the voters of the most liberal state in the nation into believing that our family is evil.
One of the hardest jobs I've ever had was breaking the news to my second-grade daughter the day after the election, in the car on the way to school. Until then, as it is for most kids, our daughter's definition of family could be distilled into one simple word: us. That day, she learned how easily a nasty election campaign could convince voters we were something to be feared: "them."
"It's not fair!" Elizabeth cried. "They can't take away your marriage."
Though Kelly and I assured her we were still a family and that such a thing could never happen, we weren't sure about that at all. In briefs filed with the California Supreme Court defending Prop 8, Maggie Gallagher and her National Organization for Marriage made it perfectly clear that they wanted those marriages stripped from the books immediately. Forcibly annulled. "To protect the children."
Four months after the election Elizabeth was unable to shake her devastation over Prop 8. She had scary memories of the airplane flying over her school, filling the blue sky with smoky writing urging voters to annul her dad's marriage. Her best friend had recently moved away and, having trouble making new ones, she somehow convinced herself it was because of Prop 8. I urged her to see if she could get her feelings out on paper. Having never written anything longer than a poem, she fired up the computer. Here's what came out of the printer:
Since prop 8 has started it was giving me bad dreams about loosing our house like peeple Putting torches with fire and putting the fire on our house. Also, nobody wanting to be my friend and it has realy effected the parents of the same sex and the kids of Gay and Lessbian parents. So just to let you know for people out there who voted YES on prop 8 and don't know what you're doing to my family well here is your story of what you did. When I saw the vote YES on prop 8 signs it sounded like you don't even care about other people. And I half to tell you people about what your doing in the sky. I can't belive you would wright in air plane smoke right over my school where there are 12 same sex family's. And right where kids can see it. How can you do such a mean thing. I mean like your so rude to us. And speeking of rude I think for doing such a bad thing I think you shoudn't be married. Ya that's what feels like to be yeld that sentince right in your face. So please take back what you said and and help keep California fair. And I just know you will meet a person that is same sex one day. Now back to the story. I thought prop 8 would not pass. But it did. Because you mean people voted YES and held up signs right in our fases. And I Know that the Supream Cort is trying to fix it. Ya nthat's right trying to fix it.I have also been having visions of being seporated [from my dads]. And maybe just maybe you are having visions of wanting that to happen. Now my name is Elizabeth and I am the person writing this and I am 8 years old and am a iceskater. So,same sex is just like prop8 except only a women and women or man and man.So just a tiny bit different.And it's know big deal and if you do it everything will be nice and there will be know more yelling I mean think of how peaceful it would be. And know more fighting. Everything will be just fine.
I'm still getting over what a difference one election cycle can make. Now it's our son who's in second grade. This year, on our morning-after-the-election drive to school went a little differently. Not only was I able to tell both my kids that the dude who supports our family got reelected, I was also able to let them know that the tide maybe seems to be turning in America. For the first time ever, in every state where marriage equality was on the ballot, voters chose us.
Pulling up to a stoplight, we all began to cheer. Another family pulled up next to us and couldn't figure out what was going on. It was almost as if we were a minivan full of zombies turning human again.
I lied. I didn't just enjoy that footage of Karl Rove twisting in the wind for a few minutes on election night. I've permanently bookmarked it on YouTube. Now I can watch it whenever I need a lift. Of even if I'm just feeling hungry, or tired, or sad.
Best of all, I've been able to employ it as a teaching tool, using Karl as a visual aid in explaining to my children the concept of karma.
I confess the guy used to scare me. Not so much anymore. Rove seems as harmless to me now as a cartoon Disney villain -- Karma Karl, as the kids have taken to calling him, finally getting his just desserts.
Now, whenever I find myself back on YouTube, replaying The Komeuppance of Karma Karl, I like to freeze-frame the footage at my favorite part -- the moment that bulbous, beet-red face realizes it's all gone horribly, horribly wrong. The split-second you can see in Karma Karl's beady eyes exactly what he does -- his own zombie apocalypse.
I don't even want to think what happens when the Walking Republican Dead -- whose millions you just blew -- corner you behind a woodshed, ready to exact their revenge.
I lied again. I do.
* * * * *
This post is the eleventh in a series of Spilled Milk columns by William Lucas Walker chronicling his misadventures in Daddyland.
More Spilled Milk:A day after China said that it would safeguard its security interests at "any cost" as its sovereignty was "indomitable", amid a standoff with India in the Sikkim sector, China's state-run media yet again fired a fresh salvo at India on Monday. An editorial in the English language daily Global Times urged China to "teach India a second lesson", in an apparent reference to the 1962 Indo-Sino war.
Chinese defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian on Monday maintained China's hardline stance on the issue. Wu told a media briefing that the willingness and resolve of China to defend its sovereignty was "indomitable". Wu made this assertion ahead of this week's National Security Advisors' (NSA) talks to resolve the standoff.
Meanwhile, the opinion-editorial, written by John Gong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics, accused India of transgressing China's borders and trying Chinese people's patience in the ongoing standoff.
The article in the Global Times backed Chinese Consul General in Mumbai, Liu Youfa, who had urged Chinese troops to capture Indian soldiers, allegedly camping inside Chinese territory, and kill them. Liu had told state-run CCTV:
"According to what I understand of international law, when people in uniform get across the border to move into the territory of the other side, they naturally become enemies who will have to face three consequences: First, they can go out voluntarily, or they may be captured or when the border dispute should escalate, they may be killed." Rubbishing India's concerns over China's road construction along the Sikkim-Bhutan-China tri-junction posing a threat to India's strategic instrests, the editorial said that China was not bothered about the the Chicken's neck which connects North East India to the rest of the country.
The editorial added that China was concerned about improving its own road connectivity in the border areas and not bothered about the quality of road in India.
Bhutan, which has no diplomatic ties with China, is also a party to the dispute as the Doka La area comes under its territory. However, the editorial dismissed Thimpu as New Delhi's "vassal" and "protectorate".
Reiterating China's claim over Doka La, the editorial, while toeing the government's line, slammed India for using road construction as an excuse to "invade" China.
The language became more and more acerbic in the latter half of the editorial where it accussed India of harbouring Dalai Lama in order to launch terror attacks in China.
"Underneath the Dalai Lama's façade of peace, there lies a trace of violence at least half a century old. Immediately after he fled to India in 1959, the Dalai Lama became the CIA's henchman in engaging in a terrorist guerrilla war on China" the editorial read.
Warning India to not take China lightly, the editorial stated that Beijing is not Bhutan or Sikkim, where it claimed India's "hegemonic tactics" will work. In fact, the editorial mentioning Sikkim with Bhutan, came as a surprise as China had already recognised India's sovereignity over Sikkim in 2003.
Blaming India for transgressing China "on behalf" of Bhutan, the editorial claimed that Indian troops entered Doka La through China's border with Sikkim.
The editorial then warned India that China too can enter Jammu and Kashmir on Pakistan's behalf. Urging China to remind India of the 1962 war debacle, the editorial said that New Delhi's bravado was never backed by substance when it came to taking on China's military might. In the two week-long war, the Chinese army invaded India and marched up to the Brahmaputra before unilaterally withdrawing to the pre-war borders.
This is not the first time that the Chinese media has taken the liberty of raising a war hysteria over the ongoing bedlam in the border area of Sikkim. While the stalemate continues, Chinese media, and especially Global Times, have come out with several scathing op-ed which ratcheted up its rhetoric against India. Global Times, warned that Beijing may support "pro-independence appeals in Sikkim" if New Delhi did not stop pursuing "regional hegemony" through the border face-off.
"In the past, China was wary of India playing the Dalai Lama card, but this card is already overplayed and will exert no additional effect on the Tibet question. But if Beijing adjusts its stance on India-sensitive issues, it could be a powerful card to deal with New Delhi," the paper wrote in an article titled China can rethink stance on Sikkim, Bhutan. Global Times, a hardline, party-run tabloid published by the official People's Daily known for its hawkish views, published more than one opinion-editorial pieces, which not only takes almost warlike stance against New Delhi, but it also warns India's political leadership on many instances and advices New Delhi on its foreign policy as far as Beijing is concerned.
Read articles here, here, here and here.
With inputs from IANS
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.Kim Il Sung used to make crazy threats too. AP North Korea is threatening Seoul again, this time over a jointly controlled factory.
The Democratic People's Republic also says it is restarting its nuclear reactor, five years after shutting it down.
But a survey of 50 years of North Korean bellicosity shows nothing major is likely to happen.
We went back and pulled all the major headlines created by North Korean bluster against the South since the end of the Korean War.
As you'll see, there are exactly zero violent outbreaks of any consequence.
In some ways we shouldn't be surprised by all the threats: the conflict never officially ended. Instead, an armistice was signed when the U.N. withdrew troops in 1953.
And there is a new dimension this time around i n the form of the North's brand-new leader, Kim Jong-un
But after five decades, it seems safe to say that we'll get through this one — and the next — in one piece.Image caption A record 272 million iPlayer requests for TV and radio programmes were made in January.
The BBC has commissioned its first original dramas for its catch-up service iPlayer.
Six short films will be broadcast over the next two years by "up and coming talent" as part of a BBC Three strand.
Some comedy pilots and spin-offs from other shows have previously been screened on iPlayer, including Doctor Who mini-series Pond Life.
However this is the first time original drama programming has been created specifically for the service.
Victoria Jaye, BBC's head of TV online content, said it would help to explore "storytelling outside of a scheduled TV slot or duration".
BBC Three controller Zai Bennett added: "This new drama strand is exactly the kind of venture BBC Three is all about."
A record 272 million iPlayer requests for TV and radio programmes were made in January - up 26% on the previous month thanks to new mobile and tablet devices unwrapped on Christmas Day.
The most popular TV programmes requested include David Attenborough series Africa, Top Gear and Miranda.
Figures from the BBC showed usage of the service has grown some 42% in the 12 months to January 2013.ISFJ – Which stands for Introverted, Sensing, Feeling and Judging – is one of the 16 Myers-Briggs Personality Types. This type is known and revered for their compassionate, selfless nature which they express through concrete actions. ISFJs are the ultimate nurturers – and everyone needs one in their life.
1. They’ll be real with you – in a kind way.
ISFJs preserve the unique talent of being both die-hard realists and incredibly compassionate individuals. This means that when you get caught up in a fanciful idea, the ISFJ in your life is happy to help you implement realistic steps that will bring you closer to your dream. They’re realistic in a way that helps, never hinders.
2. They’ll be by your side come hell or high water.
‘Loyal’ is the ISFJ’s middle name. This type takes their commitments to others incredibly seriously and once they’ve let you into their inner circle, you have a friend or companion for life. ISFJs stick by your side no matter what tribulation you’re facing – they’ll be the first to show up and the last to leave your side when you’re in need.
3. They are genuinely happy for their loved ones.
There are two types of friends in this world – those who are
“Happy” for your successes and those who genuinely walk around with a bounce in their step on the days when you’re soaring. The latter is the very definition of an ISFJ. This type feels a personal sense of joy when their loved ones are thriving and you’ll always find this type in the front row clapping when you win.
4. They pick up on subtle patterns in behaviour.
ISFJ’s are not entirely forthcoming about the ways in which they’re analyzing those around them but they’re incredibly aware of behavioural patterns – which choices you make on the regular and which mistakes you fall into time and again. If you’re looking for the type of insight you just can’t have on yourself, turn to an ISFJ – they’re quietly aware of your tendencies and they can give you a realistic idea of what you’ve been doing wrong (and right) this whole time.
5. They are the world’s most patient listeners.
Though they may require a bit of processing time before offering up an opinion, the ISFJ will listen to you talk until the end of time. This type enjoys taking in and storing new information, particularly as it pertains to their loved ones. If you’ve had a rough day and you just need to vent, the ISFJ will always be there to listen – and probably to give you a back rub.
6. They are deliberate and genuine in all undertakings.
Because they rarely – if ever – speak without thinking, you can rest assured that any kind words the ISFJ offers you are straight from the heart. This type weighs heavily on every declaration and decision they make, which means you never have to worry about them saying or doing something in the heat of the moment that they don’t actually mean. This type is genuine on all counts. They may not always say everything they mean but they certainly mean everything they say.
7. They are generous and thoughtful, while asking nothing in return.
Careful not to take advantage of this one. ISFJs are natural givers – nothing makes them happier than helping you out with a practical problem or endeavour. They are happy to drive you to the airport, make you dinner, give you a place to sleep or surprise you with an unexpected gift. These small acts make them genuinely happy and they don’t expect anything in return. That being said, it also means they get taken advantage of a little too often. Careful not to ask too much of your ISFJ – they’ll rarely turn down the chance to help you out, even if it’s taxing them more than they readily admit.
8. They will go to the ends of the earth to make your relationship work.
Whether it’s a friendship, a partnership or a familial tie, the ISFJ will do anything and everything within their power to preserve the relationships they’re invested in. Once they’ve accepted you into their inner circle there’s nothing this type will not do to make sure that both of you are happy and benefiting from the relationship. They’re the ultimate companions and once you have an ISFJ in your life, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without them.Update: The statewide fracking ban bill was passed by the Maryland Senate on March 27 by a vote of 35 to 10. It now goes to the desk of Gov. Larry Hogan, who is expected to sign it.
Maryland is poised to become the third state to outlaw fracking, as the Senate prepares to vote on a statewide ban and with Gov. Larry Hogan saying he will sign it.
The permanent ban would go into effect before a moratorium on the drilling practice expires, meaning that fracking in the state would end before it ever began.
Late last week, Hogan, a Republican who has called fracking "an economic gold mine," announced his unexpected support for the ban.
"We must take the next step to move from virtually banning fracking to actually banning fracking," the governor said at a press conference last Friday. "The possible environmental risks of fracking simply outweigh any potential benefits."
It marked a stunning turnaround for a Republican governor, especially as the Trump administration has voiced unfettered support for the fossil fuel industry. Maryland's bill needs a full Senate vote to pass, but especially now that the governor has added his support, legislators and activists have said it seems likely that it will succeed.
"We're confident that we have the votes to pass the bill to ban fracking," said Thomas Meyer, a senior organizer with the nonprofit Food & Water Watch. "The members have expressed their support."
It's unclear when the vote will happen, but the legislative session ends on April 10. The bill was first introduced in the House, which approved it, 97-40, on March 10. In the Senate's Education, Health and Environment Committee Wednesday it was approved in a 8-3 vote.
If the bill passes, Maryland will join New York and Vermont as the only states that have banned the controversial drilling practice, although Vermont appears to have no natural gas resources, making its ban largely symbolic. Fracking is practiced in about 20 states.
"Obviously we're opposed to it," said Drew Cobbs, the executive director of the Maryland Petroleum Council. "Though probably more than anything else it's a symbolic gesture since it's only a small part of western Maryland that could be developed."
Two counties in western Maryland sit on top of the Marcellus Shale, the same bedrock formation that spawned oil and gas booms in the neighboring states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
In 2006, energy companies started to express interest in moving into Garrett and Allegany counties. According to the Maryland Geological Survey, landmen—energy company representatives who come into a community ahead of oil and gas development to make deals and pave the way for drilling—started showing up. More than 100,000 acres were leased by oil companies, Cobbs said, but over time those leases have expired.
In 2011, before prospectors had the chance to assess how much oil and gas could be in the state, then-Gov. Martin O'Malley called for a study of the economic and environmental impacts of drilling into shale. Drilling in Maryland was off limits until the study's completion in 2014.
In March 2015, state legislators passed a moratorium that would last until October 2017. The bill went into effect without newly-inaugurated Hogan's signature.
Meyer, who has spent the last two and a half years organizing grassroots support for a state fracking ban, said he couldn't believe it when he got word last week that the governor supported the ban.
"I was a little confused at first and then kind of started screaming," he said. "It was probably four or five minutes of pandemonium. This was not just a win—it was a truly shocking revelation."
Hogan hasn't said the reason for his change of heart, but Meyer said support for a ban has been growing. He said he hopes that Hogan's move sends a message to governors in other states—particularly Democrats like Jerry Brown in California and John Hickenlooper in Colorado, who are pro-environment in some aspects, but continue to support fracking—that the practice's risks outweigh its benefits.After 21 years in this business, it’s become pretty easy to detect how journalistic narratives take on lives of their own, particularly in the blood-sport world of political coverage.
Here’s the tl;dr simplified version: A campaign (or its chatty support unit) zeroes in on reporters friendly to hearing them out. They then share (or leak) a story or concept that is then pursued, validated thanks to the provided roadmap and, ultimately, shared widely – at the ideal time – with (or without) indicating from where it came.
In some cases, there’s a trend to which the leaker can point as evidence: “Look at these rumblings of the issue: Don’t you want to get out in front of this with exclusive – but anonymous – comments?!”
Journalistic competitors – and political watchers/sites/bloggers – then piggyback their own version so as not to look bad for their bosses and readers/viewers/listeners. With critical mass reached, that initial whisper becomes – in the eyes of many – a vetted, legitimate reality of the campaign itself.
All of which brings us to today, the Monday on which voters in Iowa will caucus their way into international headlines.
What better way to concoct a "Let's stick it to 'em like they've stuck it to us for way too long, ladies!" rallying cry.
The two narratives that, I believe, followed that path to legitimacy are these: Misogynistic “Bernie Bros” with a penchant for “mansplaining” are haranguing every last female Hillary Clinton supporter online and Bernie Sanders’ level of electability is nil due, in part, to them. (I’ll avoid discussing similar storylines from the GOP primary field since I have exactly nil experience on the Ringling Brothers beat.)
Take this quote from a story headlined “The bros who love Bernie Sanders have become a sexist mob” for instance:
"They're a mob, and it's not positive toward their candidate, it's trying to tear you down from supporting Hillary," said one chief of staff for a Democratic member of Congress who's endorsed Clinton.
Or this snippet |
. There’s many things you can do by knowing the bandwidth.
The biggest caveat with this is that its sampling is wonky. What they do is they give you this start sampling and stop sampling. You’re like, I’ll start when I open the app, and stop when I don’t, when I close the app. What they’re doing is they’re looking at the amount of data you’ve downloaded, and they’re refreshing every second. If the user has your app open and they’re not doing anything, they’re going to think you’re on terrible network. What we’ve done with that is that you can have it going while you, in a interceptor for either your network calls or specifically if you have many image calls, that works well. But beyond that, it is very good to have a strong understanding of how good your person’s network is.There's a new variant of the Shamoon disk-wiping malware that was originally unleashed on Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company in 2012, and it has a newly added ability to destroy virtual desktops, researchers said.
The new strain is at least the second Shamoon variant to be discovered since late November, when researchers detected the return of disk-wiping malware after taking a more than four-year hiatus. The variant was almost identical to the original one except for the image that was left behind on sabotaged computers. Whereas the old one showed a burning American flag, the new one displayed the iconic photo of the body of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee boy who drowned as his family tried to cross from Turkey to Greece. Like the original Shamoon, which permanently destroyed data on more than 30,000 work stations belonging to Saudi Aramco, the updates also hit one or more Saudi targets that researchers have yet to name.
According to a blog post published Monday night by researchers from Palo Alto Networks, the latest variant has been updated to include legitimate credentials to access virtual systems, which have emerged as a key protection against Shamoon and other types of disk-wiping malware. The actor involved in this attack could use these credentials to manually log into so-called virtual management infrastructure management systems to attack virtual desktop products from Huawei, which can protect against destructive malware through its ability to load snapshots of wiped systems.
"The fact that the Shamoon attackers had these usernames and passwords may suggest that they intended on gaining access to these technologies at the targeted organization to increase the impact of their destructive attack," the Palo Alto Networks researchers wrote. "If true, this is a major development and organizations should consider adding additional safeguards in protecting the credentials related to their VDI deployment."
Several of the usernames and passwords are included in official documentation as administrator accounts for Huawei’s virtualized desktop products, such as FusionCloud. The researchers still aren't sure if Shamoon attackers obtained the credentials from an earlier attack on the targeted network or included the default usernames and passwords in an attempt to guess the login credentials to the VDI infrastructure.
In addition to the virtualization-defeating update, the variant found by Palo Alto Networks also contained hardcoded Windows domain account credentials that were specific to the newly targeted organization. The credentials met Windows password complexity requirements, a finding that suggests the attackers obtained the credentials through a previous breach. Like the previous Shamoon variant, the new one spread throughout a local network by "logging in using legitimate domain account credentials, copying itself to the system and creating a scheduled task that executes the copied payload."
The Shamoon update was set to begin overwriting systems on November 29, 2016 at 1:30am. The timing aligns with previous Shamoon strains, which attempted to maximize their destructive impact by striking when the targeted organization would have fewer personnel and resources available on site.
Post updated in the headline and third paragraph to make clear VDI systems are manually accessed.Get the biggest Manchester United FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Ryan Giggs has the capacity to become the next Jose Mourinho.
United boss Louis van Gaal has mentored both the Reds legend and Chelsea’s hugely successful manager and believes the Old Trafford legend’s education as a number two could mark him out as a top manager of the future in his own right.
Mourinho failed to make it big time as a player but broke into management via his time as Bobby Robson’s translator.
When the former England boss moved to Sporting Lisbon in the early 90s he employed the former Portuguese Second Division player to translate for him. Robson took Mourinho with him to Porto and then onto Barcelona.
But it was when Van Gaal became the Barca coach in 1997 he picked up on Mourinho’s thirst for football knowledge.
“I sometimes think I was the only guy who believed in Jose Mourinho. I took him more seriously that most people in the club,” Van Gaal once said.
The Dutchman was so impressed he even allowed him to coach reserve matches and did the homework on future Barca opponents.
“He carried out all the analysis and studied all the opponents,” he said.
Mourinho finally went his own way at Porto and won the Champions League for the Portuguese club in 2004 before moving onto Chelsea for the first time at the age of 41.
Giggs is now 41 and was installed last summer as Van Gaal’s assistant at United.
Like Mourinho at the Nou Camp Giggs has done much of the analysis for the Van Gaal regime and has filled him in on English opposition and has also delivered some inspirational pre-match speeches.
But in contrast to Mourinho’s unsuccessful, humble professional career Giggs is United’s most successful ever player and all-time number one appearance maker.
But Van Gaal still believes Giggs has the hunger to win as a coach.
“It is always difficult to compare people with each other. Jose Mourinho was not a world class player like Ryan Giggs,” says the Reds boss.
“That is the same thing with me. I was not a world class player like Johan Cruyff. But our ambition is then maybe higher.
Ryan Giggs' career at United in pictures
“But I have to admit, I could not imagine when I spoke with Ryan in May to ask him that he could be my assistant manager and we spoke about how we see it, that he would work so very hard.
“As an ex player, you are not used to working hard but he is a very hard worker. He reads the game very good, like Jose. But to manage a group you have to learn. What I can see is that he is also learning quickly.”
So is he successful management material?
“Maybe, yes, you never know.”
Van Gaal, has a three-year contract as United manager and, though he has recently, hinted he could continue beyond that, he would be 65 when the Reds deal he signed last summer expires.
Giggs would then be 44, the age Sir Alex Ferguson was in 1986 when he took over at United, and with the experiences of working under Fergie as a player, Van Gaal as his number two and even as a player coach for David Moyes, he is building up a CV that could well see him become the Dutchman’s United successor.
Giggs was named interim boss last April when the club sacked Moyes and although he admitted the job took him by surprise he is now adding to his education in the background on LVG’s team and could be the next Mourinho.In a year of unprecedented drama and unexpected turns, these 10 stories dominated the political scene.
Trump wins
It was the seismic event that almost no one saw coming.
When 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 announced his bid for the White House in June 2015, the effort was widely dismissed as a self-promotional gambit by the New York property developer. Instead, Trump vanquished a huge Republican primary field that included big names such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 MORE (Fla.) 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).
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Trump’s detractors were sure he would come unstuck in the general election against 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 — right up until he won on Nov. 8, demolishing the “blue wall” that Democrats claimed to have in the Rust Belt and Upper Midwest.
Trump campaigned in a style that defied political norms and survived controversies that would have doomed other candidacies. A large swath of the population appears implacably opposed to him, which will create challenges from the moment he is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Still, Trump won the biggest prize in American politics on his first try. He is not to be underestimated.
Russian hacking
The revelation that the CIA believed Russia had intervened in the presidential election with the express purpose of helping Trump win caused a massive furor in December.
In one sense, the CIA’s assessment was not much of a surprise. Russia had long been believed to be behind hacks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the private email account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. The Obama administration had publicly stated in October that it was confident the Russian government had directed the hacking.
The DNC hack led to the resignation of its chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) when it became apparent that staff members had favored Clinton over her left-wing primary challenger, 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.).
The Podesta hack caused further embarrassment, including to Wasserman Schultz’s temporary replacement, Donna Brazile. A leaked email showed that Brazile, who was then a CNN contributor, had given the Clinton campaign advance notice of a question the frontrunner might be asked at a townhall meeting in Flint, Mich.
Trump, meanwhile, has been deeply skeptical of the idea that Russian hackers sought to swing the election toward him. He called that narrative “ridiculous” in a Dec. 11 “Fox News Sunday” interview. His aides argued that Trump’s critics were trying to delegitimize his election win.
In the year’s closing days, President Obama announced the expulsion of 35 Russian operatives from the U.S, as well as a number of other measures in response to the alleged hacking.
Hillary Clinton’s emails and the FBI
Much to the chagrin of Clinton’s supporters, her use of a private email address and server while secretary of State made big headlines right up until Election Day.
Clinton’s use of the server had first been revealed by The New York Times in March 2015. The story picked up pace in the first half of this year as an FBI investigation into the matter proceeded. In July, FBI director James Comey announced that no criminal charges would be brought against the Democrat, even as he criticized her and her aides for being “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
Clinton aides hoped they had put the matter to rest, but they got an unwelcome surprise 11 days before Election Day. Comey went public with details that more emails had been discovered that “appear to be pertinent” to the new investigation.
Those emails were apparently found during an unrelated investigation into Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former New York Congressman and estranged husband of one of Clinton’s closest aides, Huma Abedin.
Comey emerged again just two days before the election to say that the new emails had not changed his mind regarding charges against Clinton.
The effect of the late Comey disclosures will be discussed for years to come. Clinton told donors on a call days after her loss that his October intervention “stopped our momentum.”
Violence and the police
Even amid the tumult of the presidential election, the vexing issue of shootings involving police officers remained at the forefront of the national debate.
Some cases rose to particular prominence, but it was a cascade of tragic events in early July that raised fears that the U.S. could be on the brink of serious disorder.
First, Alton Sterling was shot dead at close range while being held on the ground by police in Baton Rouge, La. on July 5. Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop in a suburb of St. Paul, Minn., the following evening. Both Sterling and Castile were African-American.
Just one night later, at the end of an otherwise peaceful protest against police violence in Dallas, a man ambushed and shot at police officers, killing five and wounding nine. The shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson, had reportedly expressed hatred of police, and of white officers in particular.
In December, a mistrial was declared in the case of Michael Slager, the police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, in North Charleston, S.C. Scott was running away from Slager at the time.
As of Dec. 30, according to a database maintained by The Washington Post, 957 people have been shot and killed by police in the United States in 2016. Preliminary figures from the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund indicate that 64 police officers were killed in firearms-related incidents in the line of duty.
A vacancy on the Supreme Court
The sudden death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia in February kicked off a political fight that has yet to be resolved.
The loss of Scalia, a conservative and an “originalist” in his interpretation of the Constitution, could have altered the ideological complexion of the court.
The prospect of President Obama being able to give the court a liberal majority excited progressives — and horrified conservatives, for whom the fate of the court remained a rallying cry all the way to Election Day.
Obama nominated Merrick Garland the month after Scalia’s death. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R-Ky.) had already asserted that he would not act on any nomination from Obama, stating that it was for the incoming president to fill the vacancy.
Liberals and Obama protested that this was pure obstructionism from McConnell. But the majority leader’s gamble paid off. Trump’s election made certain that a more conservative justice would be nominated to replace Scalia.
The rise of fake news
The fake news phenomenon hit a nadir in early December, when an armed man made his way to a popular Washington pizzeria. According to police, Edgar Welch was intent on investigating a fictitious conspiracy theory that the pizzeria was at the center of a child abuse ring linked to Clinton.
Welch allegedly fired two shots before being arrested. No one was injured, but the incident was serious enough to intensify worries about the fake news phenomenon.
The label has been applied both to conspiracy theories, such as the Clinton “pizzagate” fantasy, and to “news” that is produced by people, often based overseas, who know it is fictitious but seek to profit from it. Late in the year, Google and Facebook sought to crack down on purveyors of fake news from using their technology to sell ads.
Still, with Americans deeply distrustful of traditional media and increasingly reliant on social networks that often reinforce their existing views, it seems unlikely that “fake news” will disappear anytime soon.
In an end-of-year staff memo obtained by Business Insider, Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith predicted that, in 2017, “fake news will become more sophisticated, and fake, ambiguous and spun-up stories will spread widely.”
Massacre in Orlando
Even amid a year that had more than its fair share of violence and tragedy, the atrocity that unfolded at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando in June was at a different level.
The nightclub, which catered to a gay clientele, was attacked by Omar Matteen, a 29-year old armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a semi-automatic pistol.
Matteen killed 49 people, the worst mass shooting in recent America history. Shortly after the shooting began, Matteen made a 911 call in which he swore allegiance to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). He was eventually killed at the scene by law enforcement.
President Obama described the attack as an “act of terror and an act of hate.” Donald Trump was widely criticized for a tweet in the immediate aftermath that began, “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism.” The sheer horror of what happened in Orlando will be remembered long after the political back-and-forth is forgotten.
Republicans hold the Senate
At the start of the year, Democrats had high hopes of seizing back control of the Senate, where they have been in the minority since the 2014 elections.
It was not to be.
The Democrats netted two seats, three short of the five they needed to win the majority if a Republican won the White House. (Had Clinton won, the Democrats would have needed to gain only four seats).
Trump proved to have much more significant coattails than most Democrats believed. Endangered GOP incumbents such as Sens. Pat Toomey and Ron Johnson Ronald (Ron) Harold JohnsonWhite House, GOP defend Trump emergency declaration GOP senator says Republicans didn't control Senate when they held majority GOP senator voices concern about Trump order, hasn't decided whether he'll back it MORE held on in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, respectively.
The only Democratic gains came in New Hampshire and Illinois, and the party now has to face a brutal 2018 calendar, where it will have to defend seats in 10 states that were won by Trump.
Bernie empowers the left
It was already apparent as 2016 dawned that Beltway pundits had underestimated Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the veteran left-winger who challenged Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
In the end, Sanders won 23 contests and more than 13 million votes. In the first battle, the Iowa caucuses, Sanders missed out by just a whisker on handing Clinton the kind of shock defeat that could have derailed her march to the nomination.
Sanders’s eventual loss to Clinton could not disguise the intensity of his appeal, especially to the Democratic grassroots.
His platform focused on income inequality and the broader idea that the system is rigged against working Americans. He promised a far more fundamental shift in politics than did Clinton — and the fact that millions of Democrats rallied to that flag is a lesson that the party establishment will ignore at its peril.
The war in Syria
The Syrian civil war ground on through its fifth full year, with the overall death toll now estimated at anywhere between 300,000 and 500,000 people.
The government of Bashar al-Assad was aided by continued splintering among the forces opposed to him, which comprise hard-line Islamists, including ISIS, more moderate forces backed by the U.S., and Kurds in the north of the country.
The fact that Assad is backed by Russia and Iran has had times seemed to bring the situation to the brink of a full-scale proxy war. President Obama has resisted calls for full-on U.S. involvement, however.
That has drawn criticism from some Republicans, including Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) who in October accused the Obama administration of having “no strategy” on the conflict.
Assad scored a major victory in December, when his forces defeated the rebels in eastern Aleppo, previously a rebel stronghold.
At year’s end, a tentative ceasefire was in place between pro-Assad forces and some of the rebel groups, though Islamist forces were not party of that agreement. The U.S. had not been involved in the negotiation of that ceasefire, which was brokered primarily by Russia and Turkey.
In mid-December, as evacuations were readied from Aleppo, Trump told a rally in Pennsylvania that his administration would create “safe zones” in Syria. Such an effort would be politically and logistically complicated.packrat386 Profile Blog Joined October 2011 United States 4835 Posts #401 I'm looking on GOM's website right now (season ticket holder) and I can only find VODs' for eight of the matches in the Ro48 for Code A / Challenger league. Are there not VOD's for those available? And if so why not? Goodbye IM.MVP :c
opterown Profile Blog Joined August 2011 Australia 42225 Posts #402 On May 10 2013 19:26 packrat386 wrote:
I'm looking on GOM's website right now (season ticket holder) and I can only find VODs' for eight of the matches in the Ro48 for Code A / Challenger league. Are there not VOD's for those available? And if so why not?
only 8 matches were broadcasted the others were played but not shown only 8 matches were broadcasted the others were played but not shown Moderator Retired LR Bonjwa
packrat386 Profile Blog Joined October 2011 United States 4835 Posts #403 On May 10 2013 19:29 opterown wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 10 2013 19:26 packrat386 wrote:
I'm looking on GOM's website right now (season ticket holder) and I can only find VODs' for eight of the matches in the Ro48 for Code A / Challenger league. Are there not VOD's for those available? And if so why not?
only 8 matches were broadcasted the others were played but not shown only 8 matches were broadcasted the others were played but not shown
Damn, that's kind of frustrating. I was looking forward to those :/ Is this a new policy for GOM or was it because of extenuating circumstances. Damn, that's kind of frustrating. I was looking forward to those :/ Is this a new policy for GOM or was it because of extenuating circumstances. Goodbye IM.MVP :c
Superleggera Profile Joined May 2013 United States 1 Post #404 Okay, I am a noob (silver league) but I'm really curious if someone could help me find an online tournament I could play in? There must be tournaments for people under gold. I'm very interested in just having fun.
Cel.erity Profile Blog Joined September 2010 United States 4468 Posts #405 On May 13 2013 06:06 Superleggera wrote:
Okay, I am a noob (silver league) but I'm really curious if someone could help me find an online tournament I could play in? There must be tournaments for people under gold. I'm very interested in just having fun.
This...isn't even remotely the correct thread to be asking for such information. Check the SC2 Tournaments section, people occasionally run Bronze-Diamond level tourneys. You can also check the
Also, for future reference: This...isn't even remotely the correct thread to be asking for such information. Check the SC2 Tournaments section, people occasionally run Bronze-Diamond level tourneys. You can also check the Clan/Team Thread to join a clan where you can practice and play inhouse tournaments.Also, for future reference: SC2 General Discussion & Simple Q/A We found Dove in a soapless place.
Nabakaron Profile Joined May 2013 United States 1 Post #406 VoDs are really cool but I would much rather download the replays from games played at dreamhack, WCS, blizzcon, etc. Does anyone know a website that host such replays or are they released from the tournaments themselves or what exactly do you have to do? I am sorry. I am very new to the community and I didn't find this in any of the other post. A qoute is just something people say when they can't think of something better- Nabakaron
Piou Profile Joined August 2010 Belgium 414 Posts #407
One Action of HyuN : http://www.youtube.com/PiouStarcraft - http://www.facebook.com/pioustarcraft
c0olL Profile Joined November 2012 129 Posts Last Edited: 2013-06-07 12:08:01 #408 hi!
can anyone help me with VODs for the WSC final s1?
i subscribed for the OSL twitch channel, but all the sites that shows spoilers free vods (sc2 rankings and sc2 links) are linking to gomtv site only.
btw, i have a problem that when im watching the rebroadcasts of OSL2 im hearing the casters of the first channel of OSL. (im seeing MVP vs RYUNG and hearing casting of soulkey vs alive from the other channel.)
does anyone know something about this? this is really frustrating... QQ
tnx
qaz88aof Profile Joined May 2010 Australia 8 Posts #409 can anyone help me with VODs for the WSC final s1?
i subscribed for the OSL twitch channel, but all the sites that shows spoilers free vods (sc2 rankings and sc2 links) are linking to gomtv site only.
I'm having the exact same problem. I want to watch all the WCS action but I've missed the first 2 days and I don't want it spoiled. Does anyone know if there's a (spoiler free) VOD list of the matches (or simply each day) available anywhere? I'm having the exact same problem. I want to watch all the WCS action but I've missed the first 2 days and I don't want it spoiled. Does anyone know if there's a (spoiler free) VOD list of the matches (or simply each day) available anywhere? Hell, Its About Time
Darkdwarf Profile Blog Joined December 2012 Sweden 955 Posts #410 The vods will be free on their channel from the 14th of June, I think. Teams: IM, Jin Air, Invictus || Players: Maru, GuMiho, INnoVation, Ryung, sOs, Squirtle, NaNiwa, Has, Zoun, Life, Rogue, Dark
c0olL Profile Joined November 2012 129 Posts #412 dam!!!
was waching group D on twitch, and then the title of the rebroadcast was "WCS finals - XXXX vs XXXX"
then i said to my self, ok no more twitch for me, closed it and entered to 1 of the links here, and in the right side of the screen i saw the score of the finals.
this sucks.
gomtv are the only ones that have true spoilers free vods, but i wont pay 15$ for 3 day tournament.
QQ
sunshinehero Profile Joined April 2012 Norway 89 Posts #413 Is there no vods with actual casting instead of the lounge talk thingy?
decisioN Profile Joined March 2013 Germany 8 Posts #415
Yea i was looking for the Vods of the Semi and Grand Finals, too. Huge thanks to you for this. -High Master Terran (EU)
decisioN Profile Joined March 2013 Germany 8 Posts #417 Hey does someone know a VoD for a save terran Opening? The Bo is like this: CC first 16 rax 16 gas then a factory and get a fast siege tank out to be save against early all ins. I saw the build in some streams but i wasnt able to write the exact bo down. Pls help me find such a game. -High Master Terran (EU)
waffling1 Profile Blog Joined May 2010 595 Posts #418 Hi, I'm looking for the game where Leenock gets creep, swarmhost, spine and hydra hydra against toss really early like at 13 minutes. Any VOD of executing this strategy would be fine. But the particular one I was thinking of is when Leenock was on the top right against bottom left protoss... possibly on GSL on a twilight themed map. Again, any execution of this is fine.
I was super impressed by the play and want to practice the build, at least for learning purposes.
But I cannot find it anywhere. i searched quite a while on youtube, google, and teamliquid.
Thanks!
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These are the faces of the innocent victims forced to endure some 16 hours of hell as they were held hostage in Sydney's terrorist siege.
Tori Johnson, the manager of the Lindt cafe in Martin Place, and mother-of-three Katrina Dawson were the two hostages killed during the bloody climax.
Mr Johnson, 34, was shot dead after he tried to wrestle the gun from Islamic extremist Man Haron Monis inside the cafe just after 2am on Tuesday.
Ms Dawson, a 38-year-old whose children are all under 10, died in hospital. She was a barrister at Eight Selborne Chambers in Sydney's Phillip Street, opposite the site of the siege.
The remaining hostages were able to make a break for the exit of the cafe about 2am after the gunman began to fall asleep - more than 16 hours after he took 17 people captive.
Scroll down for video
The 34-year-old manager of the Lindt cafe, Tori Johnson (left), and mother of three Katrina Dawson, 38 (right), have been named as the two hostages killed during the Sydney siege on Tuesday morning
Lindt employee Elly Chen (left), lawyer Stefan Balafoutis (middle) and John O’Brian (right) were among the first to escape
Marcia Mikhail, 42, (left) is a Westpac executive and Harriette Denny, 30, (middle) and Jieun Bae, 20, (right) are Lindt employees
Lawyer Julie Taylor (left), 19-year-old Jarrod Hoffman (middle) and Fiona Ma (right) escaped the frightening ordeal
Westpac employees Selina Win Pe (left), Viswakanth Ankireddy (middle) and Puspendu Ghosh (right)
Joel Herat (left), who worked at the Lindt Chocolat Cafe, and Paolo Vassallo (right), the supervisor at the Cafe, found themselves hostages
Ms Dawson, who leaves behind her husband Paul and their children, Chloe, Sasha and Olive, was having a coffee with a pregnant colleague when the siege unfolded. Her children were unaware she was involved until Tuesday morning, the Australian reports.
One of the pregnant women in the cafe at the time, Julie Taylor, was also a colleague of Ms Dawson and had to be treated in hospital following the ordeal.
Lawyer Stefan Balafoutis was one of the first three men to escape the cafe about 3.45pm. He works in the 10th Floor Selborne/Wentworth Chambers, which is directly above Lindt.
Dressed in a bright blue blazer, 83-year-old John O’Brian, was the first out of the cafe when he escaped with Mr Balafoutis.
Marcia Mikhail, 42, was among those hostages forced to record a chilling video message listing the hostage-taker's demands. She was carried out of the cafe by two emergency services workers with blood running down her leg and is still recovering in hospital.
Harriett Denny, a fellow employee, ran from the cafe with five other hostages shortly before police issued their gunfire assault. The 30-year-old's father who lives in Queensland was forced to watch the horrific incident unfold on TV.
Viswakanth Ankireddy, a software engineer at tech giant Infosys, was working for Westpac in Martin Place when he was caught up in the siege. His Westpac colleague, Puspendu Ghosh, also escaped the siege unharmed.
Jarrod Hoffman, 19, and Fiona Ma were also among the hostages, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Selina Win Pe escaped unharmed after she was also forced to relay demands via a recorded message that were subsequently posted online during the siege.
Joel Herat, who lists his workplace as ‘Lindt & Sprüngli’ on Facebook, was another of the hostages to upload a haunting hostage clip on his YouTube account.
Within half an hour, the video was taken down by YouTube and the account was deactivated.
Paolo Vassallo, who was among the first hostages to escape on Monday afternoon, is a married father of three. After escaping, Vassallo was taken to hospital due to a pre-existing medical condition. He was later reunited with his family, reports ABC.
As Australia mourned the dead, thousands of people gathered at Martin Place to lay flowers
Sydney resident Kate Golder cries as she observes the site of a cafe siege in Martin Place
Many of those office workers, friends and tourists leaving tributes were in tears
NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione visited the scene outside the Lindt cafe on Tuesday morning
Visibily distraught men and women have been laying tributes for the two innocent victims of the siege
Ken and Rosemary, the parents of Mr Johnson, who was shot inside the cafe he had run for two years, released a statement on Tuesday.
'We are so proud of our beautiful boy Tori, gone from this earth but forever in our memories as the most amazing life partner, son and brother we could ever wish for.
'We'd like to thank not only our friends and loved ones for their support, but the people of Sydney; Australia and those around the world for reaching out with their thoughts and prayers.'
They also expressed their sorrow for the family of Katrina Dawson who also died.
The siege ended after less than two minutes of gunfire at 2.15am today. Mr Johnson and Ms Dawson died from their injuries, while several others were wounded:
Five hostages were injured in the shootout which left the gunman dead
Three women suffered gunshot wounds - a 75-year-old who was hit in the shoulder, a 52-year-old in the foot and a 43-year-old in the leg
A police officer was injured by gunshot pellets to his face. He has now been released from hospital
Two pregnant women, aged 35 and 30, are both in stable conditions after undergoing health assessment
As Australia mourned the dead, thousands of people gathered at Martin Place to lay flowers, some in floods of tears. Among those paying tribute were Tony Abbott, NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, Premier Mike Baird and the Governor General Peter Cosgrove.
Speaking earlier today, the prime minister said it was tragic people going about their everyday business could get caught up in such a horrific incident.
'Our hearts go out to all of those caught up in this appalling incident and their loved ones. On behalf of all Australians, I extend my sympathy to the families of the two hostages who died over night,' Mr Abbott said.
The 50-year-old gunman is believed to have fired the first shots, which sparked teams of heavily armed police to swoop on the cafe.
More details of the final terrifying moments of the siege have since emerged as tributes flow in for those who were involved.
An injured hostage is carried away on a stretcher by paramedics after police stormed the Lindt cafe in central Sydney
A hostage feared dead is carried out of the cafe after they were reportedly shot by the hostage-taker, prompting police to storm the building
A female hostage is carried out and away from the cafe - clearly in distress with blood pouring down the legs
Gunman Man Haron Monis, pictured here protesting charges against him earlier this year, held 17 people hostage in the Lindt cafe
With terror etched on their faces, two female hostages run into the arms of armed police at the back of the building
Police raided the cafe in central Sydney early Tuesday, bringing a dramatic end to a 17-hour siege. The raid came moments after some hostages fled the Lindt cafe after more than 16 hours
Petrified: Two heavily armed police officers assist a hostage away from Lindt Cafe in Martin Place in central Sydney
A shrine for the hostage victims has grown rapidly since a single bunch of flowers was laid at dawn on Tuesday.
Dignitaries, workers from nearby offices and tourists have been seen paying their respects with some standing in solemn silence and others sobbing uncontrollably.
The law firm Ms Dawson worked for, which was located next door to Lindt, told Daily Mail Australia they were 'devastated by the loss of our beloved floor member'.
It said the 38-year-old was a rising star at 8 Selborne Chambers.
'Katrina was on her way to becoming one of the leading barristers at the bar. She was also a dear friend to all of us and will be deeply missed,' a statement read.
'Our heartfelt condolences to her family and friends. We also send our condolences to everyone affected by this tragic event.
'We thank all those who have sent messages of support.'
Kate Golder, 37, broke down in tears as she paid tribute to the hostages.
'It's the randomness of it, it could have been any of the cafes that I frequent in the city, it could have been any of us,' she said.
'I said to my husband it could have been me - I feel so sorry for the victims and their families. Martin Place is such a lovely place to be but that peace has been shattered.'
Ms Golder works in the finance industry and her office is just 100 metres from the cafe.
'When i I walk through Martin Place now it will always feel different for me,' she said.
'Sydneysiders, like most Australians, we are pretty relaxed but it feels like something has changed overnight.'
Terri Lucia, who also works nearby, sobbed uncontrollably as she placed flowers at the makeshift shrine.
'Im really very shocked. As soon as I found out what happened to those poor people I had to come down just so they know that we care. It's just awful - I'm still in shock,' the 52-year-old said.
'It has changed forever, it's such a beautiful place.I used to come here and have lunch but it just doesn't feel like it today.'
NSW Premier Mike Baird laid a bunch of flowers alongside hundreds of other Sydneysiders
Hundreds of bouquets of flowers have been laid in Martin Place since dawn
Lydia Shelly (left) and Terri Lucia (right) were among those with tears streaming down their faces |
. Is it because one can live without drugs or alcohol, but cannot “remove” sexuality from one’s being? We are, organically speaking, sexual creatures, and the goal of treating sexual addiction is not to remove one’s sexuality but to create healthier, more intimate and less self-destructive behaviors.
I suspect that, because we are dealing with sex after all, the issue goes even deeper. Sexual desires and fantasies often emanate from the very core and are difficult to interpret. Heterosexual men with compulsive sexual issues, for instance, may desire sex with other men while staying married to a woman; some pursue sex with transvestite prostitutes, in ways that put themselves at legal and medical risk. I know of high-functioning women who are compelled to conduct serial affairs, virtual or real, with men whose only apparent goal is to sexually “use” them in sadistic or degrading ways. These are people who have little to gain, it would seem, and everything to lose.
Another complication is that sexuality is a relational activity. It always implies another person, either real or fantasized. One can use heroin or drink alone, as many do. But it always “takes two to tango”, even if one of those people is a fantasy or “virtual” person. Even when one uses online pornography, for instance, another person is “present”, at least onscreen.
Close readings of sexual fantasies and compulsive behaviors can be revealing of one’s buried self-concepts and unexpressed needs; an S&M fantasy may represent a way of coping with an overbearing or shame-inducing caregiver, by sexualizing the pain and staying in control of the fantasy/scenario (even if one is the “M”). Those struggling with scenarios of dominance over others may be trying to compensate for intolerably low self-worth, an attempt to control chaotic emotions leftover from a traumatic upbringing.
My experience with straight men who compulsively watch porn often reveals a desire for a woman who can offer everything but demand nothing, and disappear when the encounter is over, before she decides he’s “too much” for her, or “gross,” or perverted, etc. It’s a sort of mini-relationship, easily controlled by someone who usually has a desire for and deep fear of intimacy, who gets his needs met quickly and then signs off.
It’s almost as if these fantasies provide a window into the psyche, revealing unmet needs. Like the need to feel in control, to express repressed desires, to sexualize (i.e. numb or self-medicate) hurtful or shameful feelings or other emotions that are unconscious or too difficult to articulate.
These are feelings and needs that cannot be expressed in their actual relationships – usually because they are perceived as “disgusting” or “too much” for their partner. Of course, their partner very often has her own “stuff” and tends to be closed off, angry, controlling, etc. It’s an extremely painful dynamic that I see with many of my male clients – straight and gay – who struggle with sexual compulsivity.
Why would a man, or anyone really, seek an “emotionally unavailable” partner? Because we tend to gravitate toward the familiar, even if what is familiar is dissatisfying or even abusive.
Very often the person chooses an emotionally closed off, or overly aggressive (or withdrawn) partner because, in reality, the alternative is too scary. It may sound strange, but what’s even scarier than not finding love – especially in cases of a traumatized upbringing, which includes just about everyone I work with – is actually finding it! Why is that? Because love can be lost or taken away, leaving the person abandoned and traumatized (again) – even more painful than being mistreated or ignored. In the latter case, at least you know someone is there.
Thus the person suffering from core interpersonal trauma – the result of a faulty caregiver, another human being – who ends up sexualizing their needs via the behaviors described above, hovers between a desperate yearning for and deep aversion to intimate connection. The sort of “mini-relationship” described above is often a substitute. It satisfies…for a while. One connects, finds relief via sex and affection (what’s actually virtual feels real at the moment) – then detaches before becoming too invested or emotionally “at risk” for abandonment.
That emotional risk, believe it or not, is usually more frightening than the prospect of the legal or health risks that accompany these behaviors. Abuse and emotional distance is familiar, even if painful, while the possibility of genuine love is new and terrifying.
Thus the compulsive behaviors are a temporary solution to the very real and shameful problem of a confusing inability to connect with others. I say “shameful” because very often the feeling is something like, “I’m an idiot because I don’t know how to stop. Why do I do such disgusting things. What a piece of garbage I truly am.” (Even if the person is outwardly successful, wealthy, etc. As they say in recovery, it’s always an inside job.)
One of my clients once said in my office, with a smile on his face, “I have no love in my life. I’d only ruin it if I did”. This was a successful, married attorney with a compulsion to see prostitutes.
It took me a few moments to realize the smile was an awkward attempt to conceal shame, not any sort of bemusement. That smile was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.
What I want to stress here is the pain that needs soothing is, in part, not the result of an unrequited hunger for love, nor a fear of finding it, but rather an impossible non-reconciliation between the two.
Here are two opposing, powerful forces at work, with radically different agendas – one to connect, the other to protect. Without help, this internal conflict results in unmanageable emotional turmoil and frustration. The cycle never ends, until the person says “enough,” and seeks help.
I’ll talk next time about how therapy can, when effective, provide a slow but steady path towards healthier intimacy and a chance to escape the suffocating shame and loneliness that so many of my clients describe as a slow-moving poison — leading them to behaviors they so desperately want to stop, but can’t.
Related Articles:
Super-sizing Sex
The Good and Bad Sides of Porn
Three Ways to Avoid Sex Addiction Relapse
© Copyright 2011 by By Darren Haber, PsyD, MFT, therapist in Los Angeles, California. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org.
The preceding article was solely written by the author named above. Any views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the preceding article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment below.Police in Louisiana are preparing for “civil disturbances” as tensions over the presidential election and racial discord continue to simmer.
The Bossier Sheriff’s Office, Bossier City police and Bossier City Marshal’s Office will conduct a joint training exercise on Thursday evening “to prepare for any possibility of civil unrest,” reports KSLA.
“Although we don’t expect civil disorder in Bossier Parish, we’re sometimes asked to go to other jurisdictions to help. That’s why we train for these things, so we can be prepared to help other agencies in their jurisdictions – or in the unlikely event of a civil disturbance in our own jurisdiction. It’s our duty to be prepared to keep the population safe in any circumstances,” said Julian Sheriff Whittington.
Louisiana is one of the most at risk states when it comes to riots and civil unrest given recent events.
Back in July, gunman Gavin Long shot dead two Baton Rouge police officers and a sheriff’s deputy in a Black Lives Matter-inspired attack. Long had posted his praise for Dallas cop killer Micah Johnson on social media shortly before the rampage.
The shooting spree occurred less than two weeks after national controversy over the death of Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man who was killed by Baton Rouge officers after a struggle.
Milwaukee was also hit by rioting last month after the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Sylville Smith.
Since the start of the year, police departments across the country have been buying riot gear in expectation of more Ferguson-style civil unrest sweeping the country. Police in Virginia also recently trained for civil unrest and race riots.
Some have suggested that the outcome of the presidential election could also spark civil unrest no matter who wins.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.by
Recently, I was asked how I would feel about serving in Primary in my ward. I paused a moment, considering the painful stone still firmly lodged over my heart, and responded simply “No.” There are multitudes of layers as to why I feel that way, and to the hours of sleep I have lost with the struggle bringing me to that solid answer, but none of that was required in the question. It was simply a time for me to respect a boundary over which I had privately and personally labored and prayed. “No.”
I have no problem saying no. That wasn’t always the case.
When I was much younger, I cared very much about pleasing people. If something was asked of me, saying yes frequently was a shortcut to praise, smiles, and even commendation. Being liked and indispensable was powerfully narcotic, and saying yes gave me a sense of worth and power. It also came with some heavy tolls.
It took me years to figure it out, but when we say yes to something, we are making room in our lives for a commitment. This can be a beautiful thing. Saying yes is one way we serve each other in the world and in church. We say yes to showing up, to contributing, to joining our talents, time, resources and energy towards something we believe in. I could totally get on board with all that! Yes! Yay!
But then… the overload. The resentment. Oh, the resentment. The cascading effect of too many people calling on you, knowing you’ll say yes. Being indispensible is a form of validation- and when people need you, seek your talents, depend on you… you should feel good about this, right? You should be happy, because look at how many people need you… Only… no.
It doesn’t work that way.
I was pleasing everyone but myself. I was not indispensible; I was a doormat. When yes became my default, given without weighing my own needs or my current capacity, I burnt out, and the result was anger at the very people and situations I had invited in with my too-numerous yesses. I had gained brief approval, fleeting smiles, and temporary feelings of importance, but at what cost?
I needed to learn how to say no.
Saying no is scary when you don’t do it often. What if people don’t like you anymore? Who am I if I’m no longer…indispensable? This led me to wonder who or what friends and leaders liked in the first place, if overloading myself was how I got my worth? And why do I need to be liked? Big questions. Internally, it got very messy, very fast.
When I decided to say no, it was more than just a tiny word. It was a statement of self. Learning to say no required personal work, honesty, facing of fears, and a self-awareness of my own capacities and limitations. It was far easier on the surface to just say yes– but that’s a short game I wasn’t willing to play anymore; it didn’t lead me anywhere real.
I practiced on small things. I practiced by saying what I actually wanted when asked. I practiced by answering truthfully where I wanted to dine, or what movie I wanted to see. These may seem like small steps, but it was shocking how acquiesces to the will of others had previously defined my life. The disingenuous and pervasive “Oh, whatever you want…” was exiled.
Learning to say no taught me self-respect. It taught me that I matter, and that my current life-load, prior commitments and desires actually count and should be weighed in my decisions. Learning to say no was a radical means to understanding my capacity to stretch without breaking, and to trust my own knowledge of where that line lies. It didn’t happen overnight, but it changed my life.
No cannot be our default any more than yes. Truly giving an honest answer— be it yes or no— requires work. When we give an honest answer to something, we are acknowledging our own value and personal awareness of ability, and we are trusting and respecting ourselves.
Which brings me to my lived Mormonism.
Being an active part of a Mormon life requires service. We all serve in some capacity, which requires we say yes. Giving honest and self-respecting answers to questions can become particularly tricky when authority and faith are involved.
I offer my “No.” as a gesture of faith. I tell my leaders my answer may one day change, but for now, I know my heart, and I am at peace with my decision. I will continue to serve and attend and do my part in my small corner of Zion, but I cannot allow resentment or grief to attend my service.
Is this selfish? I don’t think so. Were I to accept a calling that was a breaking point, not a stretching point, regardless of the calling, the cost would be too high. My reasons would be wrong-hearted; approval and acceptance by leaders, that smile of validation, is not how I gauge my place in Zion. My husband, my children, my home life would suffer at my unwillingness to respect my boundaries and honor my own inspiration. My family comes first, and a calling that will bring too much stress, sorrow, anger or grief to me is one I cannot and will not accept. I do not need that kind of approval, and I do not believe it’s required of me by God.
This is a balancing act, I admit. Being in this space requires ongoing frankness and self evaluation. I need friends and loved ones to reflect truth to me, test me, call me on it if I am missing something, as I try and keep myself upright. But life has taught me it’s the only way.
It’s not always comfortable. I must trust my own inspiration and my ability to hear what God wants for me, while still navigating life as a faithful, sustaining member. I see my own sense of self experienced through the church as layers of light. Each of our unique light bends on a slightly different wavelengths, each are needed for the whole. It’s my job to monitor my own place in the spectrum, while acknowledging I am but a small part of an immense visible spectrum. It’s hard.
I would never have been able to do it if I hadn’t practiced saying no.Image copyright AFP Image caption Nigerian troops have had some success against Boko Haram in recent days
Nigerian troops, backed by air strikes, have reclaimed the towns of Monguno and Marte from Boko Haram, according to a military statement.
Meanwhile, Cameroon says its army has killed more than 80 Boko Haram soldiers and arrested 1,000 of their supporters.
Niger also claimed on Monday to have arrested 160 people with links to Boko Haram since 6 February.
Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger recently formed a military coalition against the Islamist militants.
Representatives from the four countries are currently in the Cameroonian capital of Yaounde with other African leaders to discuss how best to tackle Boko Haram.
In recent months, Boko Haram had seized control of much of Nigeria's north-east, amid widespread criticism of the Nigerian army.
But backed by its neighbours, especially Chad, some territory has been recaptured in recent weeks.
However, the coalition has had setbacks too. A spokesperson for Cameroon's defence ministry said five soldiers were killed in the recent clashes with Boko Haram.
US support
Meanwhile, an official from the US Africa Command told the BBC that they would provide Nigeria with training and equipment to combat Boko Haram.
Lt-Gen Steven Hummer said Africa Command was "ready to assist in whatever way [Nigeria] see as being practical".
However, he did not clarify how much support Nigeria could expect to receive.
The US has previously voiced concerns over helping the country because of its human rights record.
A senior US official told the BBC that there were also worries over the lack of political will to defeat Boko Haram.
Assaults by Boko Haram have intensified recently, prompting the Nigerian government to delay elections scheduled for 14 February by six weeks.
Boko Haram at a glance
Image copyright AFP
Founded in 2002, initially focused on opposing Western-style education - Boko Haram means "Western education is forbidden" in the Hausa language
Launched military operations in 2009 to create Islamic state
Thousands killed, mostly in north-eastern Nigeria - has also attacked police and UN headquarters in capital, Abuja
Has abducted hundreds, including at least 200 schoolgirls
Controls several north-eastern towns
Has launched attacks on Cameroon
Why is Boko Haram so strong?
Soldiers without weapons
Despite this, Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan has promised elections will take place on 28 March.
But as well as the security threat posed by the militants, officials must deal with the problem of pre-election violence.
Last week, Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission reported that 58 people have been killed since campaigning began 50 days ago.
The election is seen as the most closely fought since the end of military rule in 1999.If I were compelled to summarize the libertarian philosophy's distinguishing feature while standing on one foot, I'd say the following: Every person owes it to all other persons not to aggress them. This is known as the nonaggression principle, or NAP.
What is the nature of this obligation?
The first thing to notice is that it is unchosen. I never agreed not to aggress against others. Others never agreed not to aggress against me. So if I struck you and you objected, you would not accept as my defense, "I never agreed not to strike you."
Even an explicit agreement rests on an unchosen obligation. Let's say you lent me five dollars, I refused to repay the loan, and when you demanded repayment, I said, "Why am I obligated to repay the money?" You would probably reply, "Because you agreed to repay me." If I replied, "True, but when did I agree to abide by my agreements?," what would you say? If you said that failure to repay constituted aggression, and I replied that I never agreed not to aggress against you, we'd be back where we started.
Of course this would point the way to absurdity — an infinite regress of agreements to keep my agreements. We would get nowhere. There has to be a starting point.
If I were to ask, "Why do we owe it to others not to aggress against them," what would you say? I presume some answer rooted in facts would be offered because the alternative would be to say this principle has no basis whatsoever, that it's just a free-floating principle, like an iceberg. That would amount to saying the principle has no binding force. It's just a whim, which might not be shared by others. In other words, if a nonlibertarian demands to know why he is bound by the unchosen NAP, libertarians will have answers. Their answers will differ—some will be more robust than others—but they will have answers. At least I hope so.
Now if we have an unchosen obligation not to aggress against others and that obligation is rooted in certain facts, this raises a new question: Might the facts that impose the unchosen obligation not to aggress also impose other obligations? If one unchosen obligation can be shown to exist, why couldn't the same foundation in which that one is rooted produce others?
To the question "Why do we owe it to others not to aggress against them," I would respond along these lines: because we individually should treat other persons respectfully, that is, as ends in themselves and not merely as means to our own ends. But some libertarians would reject that as too broad because it seems to obligate us to more than just nonaggression. They might answer the question this way: "Because one may use force against another only in defense or retaliation against someone who initiated the use of force." But this can't be sufficient because it amounts to a circular argument: To say that one may use force only in response to aggression is in effect merely to restate the nonaggression principle. One shouldn't aggress because one shouldn't aggress. But the NAP can hardly justify itself.
So we need a real justification for the NAP, and the one I've offered seems like a good start. The NAP is an implication of the obligation to treat persons respectfully, as ends and not merely as means. Of course this also requires justification. Why should we treat other persons respectfully?
Many libertarians, though certainly not all, approach the question of just conduct—specifically, as it relates to the use of force—from egoistic considerations, such as those provided by Ayn Rand. They say we should never aggress against others because doing so would be contrary to our self-interest: the dishonesty required by a life of injustice would be psychologically damaging, and we'd eventually run out of victims.
Socrates and Plato saw a problem with the first part of this answer. If one could act unjustly toward others while appearing to be just, could unjust conduct serve one's self-interest? Egoistic libertarians can be asked the same question. What if you could lead an unjust life with a guarantee of the appearance of justice? Must dishonesty be damaging? The same people who would say yes to that question, however, would also say that a person who spins a complicated web of lies to keep the Nazis from learning he is harboring Jews in his attic won't suffer such damage. If that person can escape harm, why not the unjust liar? Saying that one set of lies is for a good cause doesn't strike me as an adequate answer. How would a good cause save someone from the harm of "faking reality"?
So it seems that a simple self-interest model doesn't take us where we want to go: to the unchosen obligation to respect people's freedom, or more broadly, to treat persons as ends and not merely as means. I would be a little uneasy if a libertarian told me that it is only his self-interest that prevents him from clubbing me on the noggin and making off with my wallet.
And yet, self-interest still might provide an answer. Roderick Long tackles this problem in his extended essay "Reason and Value: Aristotle versus Rand" (PDF). What Long shows, to my satisfaction at least, is that Rand's notion of self-interest as expressed in her nonfiction essays is too flimsy to support the libertarian prohibition on aggression and the general injunction to treat people respectfully. To be more precise, Long shows that Rand's explicit writings on ethics are a tangle of at least three different and inconsistent defenses for the nonaggression principle (one of them Kantian — how's that for irony?).
Before we get to this, however, we must invoke an important distinction that Long emphasizes: instrumental versus constitutive means to an end. An instrumental means is external to the end. A constitutive means is intrinsic to the end; we can't imagine the end without it. Long uses the example of a man dressing up for evening out (where "dressing up" includes a necktie). Shopping for a tie is an instrumental means. Wearing the tie is a constitutive means — it is part of what we mean by "dressing up." One can dress up without shopping for a tie, but one cannot dress up without wearing a tie.
We can look at justice, which includes respect for other persons' rights, in both ways. Does respect for their rights serve our self-interest merely because we would earn good reputations and others will cooperate with us? (This is Thomas Hobbes's position.) Or is respecting their rights also a constituent of living a good human life? The answer is crucial. In the first case, one's self-interest could be served by acting unjustly so long as one could appear to be just. In the second case, one could not flourish by acting unjustly even if one could go undetected. As Socrates suggested, it is preferable to live justly with a reputation for injustice than to live unjustly with a reputation for justice.
Long shows that Rand has both instrumental and constitutive elements in her nonfiction writing on ethics; in some places she says a person's goal should be survival, while in other places she speaks of survival "qua man." It isn't entirely clear whether individuals should aim at the longest possible life regardless of the type of life or at a particular type of life regardless of its length. (Her novels appear to take the latter position — suicide is even contemplated by heroic characters.) If it's the first, then violating someone's rights might occasionally be to one's self-interest. Imagine that at 4 a.m. you pass an alley in a deserted part of town where a man is passed out and a hundred-dollar bill is sticking out of his pocket. The chances of getting caught are zero. Do you take the money? If not, why not? An instrumental model of justice should say to take the money. A constitutive model would not.
It might be said that a rational person acts on rational principles even if in particular cases his or her self-interest is not served. But Long points out that such "rule egoism" ends up being no egoism at all, since the rule is followed regardless of its consequences. This approach is deontological, not teleological, as Rand would want it. So the reply is inadequate.
What are the grounds for accepting the constitutive model of virtue, including justice? Turning to Aristotle, Long writes,Do you remember the first time you saw Henry Cavill wearing his Superman suit from Man of Steel? There were a lot of mixed reactions, but over time it seems like fans have come to like it. Actor Mackenzie Gray, who plays a top secret role in the film, talked to JTM Games recently and gives us a little more insight on the suit Cavill is wearing:
Oh yeah, amount of detail on Superman is unbelievable. Superman’s costume, is a three-layer costume; there’s a body-skin layer and then there’s a muscle layer that was molded to Henry’s muscles – it’s a silver, metallic rubber – and then over that is a mesh skin so whenever he turns into light it looks like he’s made of steel....It’s just incredible, the design of the film is fantastic. All the concepts and the designs is just remarkable and they didn’t have to build fake muscles for Henry because he’s really built.
I can't help but think that costume is uncomfortable to wear. It seems like it would feel claustrophobic, but it sure looks cool!Ohio proves to be a battleground state as the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates work to earn Buckeye votes. The Senate campaigns of Rob Portman and Ted Strickland are both working to get in touch with voters. Flags will fly at half-staff Monday to honor former Rep. Steve LaTourette. Read more in today's Ohio Politics Roundup, brought to you by Robin Goist.
Trump to talk about foreign policy in Youngstown: Instead of holding a conventional rally and perhaps focusing on the economic issues that affect the Mahoning Valley, Donald Trump will give a "major policy speech" Monday to an invitation-only audience at Youngstown State University, reports cleveland.com's Andrew J. Tobias.
The speech is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. at YSU's Kilcawley Center and will be Trump's second appearance in the Mahoning Valley in the last six months. On the day before Ohio's primary election, he held a campaign rally at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport. While he lost the March 15 primary to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Trump won every county in eastern Ohio, including Youngtown's Mahoning County.
Clinton to campaign in CLE: Just as Hillary Clinton discussed the economy during her visit to Youngstown on the heels of the Democratic National Convention, Clinton is expected to contrast her economic plan with Trump's on Wednesday in Cleveland, writes cleveland.com's Mary Kilpatrick. At John Marshall High School Wednesday afternoon, Clinton "will lay out the difference between Trump's vision for an economy that benefits himself and wealthy people like him and her vision for an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top," according to a news release.
But even after Trump leaves Youngstown, his campaign plans to maintain presence in Ohio: Trump's campaign announced Friday the locations of 15 regional offices in Ohio, reports Tobias. "The 'victory offices' will be locations where the campaign can stage its political activity - coordinating volunteers, making phone calls and distributing signs and other materials - for the November election," Tobias writes.
Surprisingly, both Cuyahoga County, Ohio's most populous which cast the third-most votes for Mitt Romney in 2012, and Hamilton County, a swing county that cast the second-most votes for Romney, are absent from the list.
Clinton's campaign, by contrast, has 19 field offices in the Buckeye State, including one in Lakewood and one in Shaker Square, plus a central office in Columbus.
Talk about tax returns: Adding to the large stack of tax documents she has already made public, Clinton released her 2015 tax return Friday, reports cleveland.com's Kilpatrick. Her running mate, Tim Kaine, followed suit Friday and also released his tax returns from the past decade.
The Clinton campaign attacked Trump for failing to make his own tax documents public. Hillary for America communications director Jennifer Palmieri said in a news release that Trump "is hiding behind fake excuses and backtracking on his previous promises to release tax returns. He has failed to provide the public with the most basic financial information disclosed by every major candidate in the last 40 years. What is he trying to hide?"
Trump has said he will release his tax returns once a routine audit is complete, although many tax experts say this process does not bar anyone from making their documents public. Campaign chairman Paul Manafort confirmed last month that the Republican nominee will not release his tax returns before the election.
New ad attacks Portman on anti-heroin funding: "A new $1.1 million Ohio ad campaign from a labor union needles U.S. Sen. Rob Portman for voting against a budget bill that funded his plan to combat heroin addition," writes cleveland.com's Jeremy Pelzer. The 30-second ad from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees will air in Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown through Aug. 22, according to an AFSCME release.
The ad criticizes Portman for voting against the $1.1 trillion "omnibus" spending bill that included money for his Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, or CARA, which Portman has touted as a success during his reelection campaign against former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland.
Spokespeople for Portman said the senator lobbied to get that money in the omnibus spending bill in the first place and only voted against it because he felt other parts of the bill were wasteful.
But this will surely not be the last Senate race ad: Ohio's U.S. Senate race is the most expensive in the nation, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which is largely due to outside groups, reports The Columbus Dispatch's Jessica Wehrman. These groups, such as AFSCME, alone have poured $33 million into the race - and it's not even Labor Day yet. The bulk of that total - nearly $19 million - has been spent opposing Strickland.
The campaigns themselves are working hard to court your vote: Increasingly sophisticated methods of data gathering allow both the Portman and Strickland campaigns to target and categorize voters, reports Wehrman. So even if you might not know much about either candidate, the chances are, their campaigns know about you.
Portman's campaign, for instance, held a "Super Saturday" event this past weekend. When campaign volunteers knocked on doors, they asked a series of questions and logged Ohioans' answers into a database with iPads or iPhones, so voters' interests were updated in real time. Even more, the questions they asked were targeted. Toledo voters received information about Portman's work on toxic algae and the Great Lakes, while voters in southeastern Ohio heard about his stance on coal.
"The research extends to television ad buys," Wehrman writes. "They know, for example, that a certain group of voters watches 'Love It or List It' in one part of the state, but that same group watches 'Property Brothers' in another corner."
Flags to fly at half-staff for LaTourette: To honor former Rep. Steve LaTourette, Gov. Kasich has ordered that flags on public grounds in Cuyahoga, Lake and Geauga counties, as well as at Ohio's Statehouse, fly at half-staff Monday, reports cleveland.com's Sabrina Eaton. The gesture, which will take place in much of the congressional district LaTourette represented in Congress for 18 years, coincides with a planned memorial service at University Circle United Methodist Church in Cleveland. The former congressman and Lake County prosecutor passed away of pancreatic cancer on Aug. 3 at his home in McLean, Virginia.
Ohio to appeal federal judge's ruling: U.S. District Court Judge Michael R. Barrett decided Friday to block Ohio from implementing laws that would defund Planned Parenthood, ruling the laws unconstitutional, writes cleveland.com's Robert Higgs.
While the judge acknowledged that Ohio could legally establish a policy to favor childbirth over abortion and bar use of public funding on non-therapeutic abortion procedures, the programs hit by these laws have nothing to do with abortion. Planned Parenthood cheered the ruling as a victory for access to health care services. The Ohio Department of Health and its director, Richard Hodges, did not have an immediate comment to the ruling, and the attorney general's office said the state will appeal.
U.S. Capitol to install Thomas Edison statue: A bronze statue of Milan, Ohio native Thomas Edison will become part of Congress' Statuary Hall collection on Sept. 21, writes Eaton. Each state contributes two statues, and Edison will accompany former President James Garfield, who hailed from Mentor. Zanesville sculptor Alan Cotrill made the new sculpture of Edison holding a light bulb, which went on display in Columbus' statehouse last year.
Eaton also explains the story of Congress rejecting Edison's first patented invention - an electronic voting system meant to record votes faster than the voice system.
Get Battleground Briefing, our FREE politics newsletter, delivered to your inbox: Sign up here. Tips or links? Send here.The NFL announced Wednesday that the NFL Draft is going to Dallas in 2018, which means Philadelphia is SOL. There is still hope for Philly for future years, but unlike Chicago’s run of back-to-back years, Philly lost. To Dallas.
In 2017, the NFL announced record attendance of 250,000 for the three-day Philly event, held on the Parkway this past April. The first night of the draft featured an attendance of 70,000 fans, which was also a one-day record for any draft, ever. Expectations were that the 2018 event would mirror this year’s in both setup and scope.
Initial whispers about returning to Philly for 2018 began during the draft last year, but word started to ramp up in mid-August. An NFL insider told us then it was “looking really, really good for Philly again.”
In early September a member of the local draft committee said that while it wasn’t hadn’t been confirmed the Draft would be Philly’s, “we’re on the one yard line” for it to come back again in 2018. The official was so sure the draft was coming to Philly we were told to expect an announcement after the Labor Day weekend.
“After last year,” the source said, “how could they not?”
Well, they did not.
For several months, the decision has been down to just Philadelphia and Dallas, per multiple sources, with the Cowboys offering up their stadium for the event, as well as their entire training facility. Jerry Jones gave the NFL every reason to pick Dallas, despite how successful the Philly version was in 2017.
There was not one reported arrest related to the 2017 event during the three full days the NFL was in Philly. One man was questioned for reportedly flying a drone over the Parkway, but was not charged. And that’s it.
That said, the draft was not perfect by any means. While the events on the Parkway were well received, roads in the area were shut down for weeks, and traffic around the ongoing construction near the entrance had both motorists and pedestrians frustrated long before and after the event.
In our post-draft report card, we noted that residents of Spring Garden and Fairmount had expressed concerns for weeks leading up to the draft, specifically about how long the traffic and parking changes were put in place. For events like the pope visit or Made In America concerts, residents were far less inconvenienced than with the nearly month-long build up to the draft, and two-plus weeks it took to break everything down.
Billy Penn also reported before April’s draft that the projected $80-million the NFL and the PHLCVB touted as the estimated economic impact was likely inflated, given much of that figure was based on the three-day television commercial Philadelphia was getting from both ESPN and the NFL Network. And yet, in late August the NFL and CVB released their impact projections had exceeded initial marks, bumping the number up to $94.9 million, including $56.1 million of direct spending, according to the report conducted by the Temple Sports Industry Research Center.
Again, much of that number is financial impact, figured by polling draft-goers to determine if they’d return. Per the report, 79 percent said they would recommend Philly to someone else and 62 percent said they would return to the city within the next year. Perhaps many of them also assumed they’d return for the 2018 draft. Now, many may be headed south.
Last year, PHLCVB CEO Julie Coker Graham said the budget for the event was a total of $25 million, of which $20 would be paid by the NFL. It took right up until the draft for the host committee — led by former Philadelphia Eagle Ron Jaworski — to secure their part of the funding, but even after the event, word of cost overruns had some in the city unsure if the NFL would return.
In May, Building Trades spokesman Frank Keel responded to claims of cost overages by telling us there were no overruns because there was no budget.
“Rumors of cost-overruns are baseless, Keel said, “because there was no budget established by the NFL. None. Remember, the NFL is one of the wealthiest, most successful organizations on the planet. The city and the Trades had much less lead time than Chicago and other prior host cities but, over the span of a few short weeks, the Trades still built the largest stage in the draft’s history and an interactive NFL fan experience and village that enthralled 250,000 people over three days |
1,032, apart from three names that were not included in the newspaper Felesteen’s list. In addition, two fatalities appear on Dr. al-Qudra’s list in a different order of appearance than on the list in the newspaper Felesteen.Now we can’t even have a funny name for a beer without social justice warriors losing their minds and ruining things for everyone.
A popular beer magazine has announced that from now on it will not cover beers with “sexist” names that “fall into poor taste.”
In its upcoming March issue, All About Beer Magazine has announced a ban on beers with names it deems “offensive,” HeatStreet.com reported.
There was day when we laughed at, but otherwise ignored when political correctness ran amuk. And while we still might have a laugh at the absurdity we also now know that we have to battle it out, because this nonsense has gotten out of hand.
In its editorial, the magazine’s editors attacked several beers for being “sexist” because of their names.
The editorial slammed “Panty Peeler. Phat Bottom. And all the unfortunate beers that use the color of a woman’s hair that also coordinate with a beer style–Blonde, Amber–and take a large bra size to create a name.”
The article went on with its lamenting and guilt, “This is still a male-dominated industry, both in terms of its employees and its customers. The jocular attitude that women are somehow beneath men or simply objects, however, is something that should have been eradicated a long time ago.”
The magazine particularly cited “Panty Peeler” beer as an example of evil sexist naming. Liberals recently attacked Panty Peeler for promoting “rape culture.” But according to Heatstreet, the beer was created and named by a female co-founder of Midnight Sun Brewing Co. She told Heatstreet she created it as a symbol of female empowerment.
Different, but definitely not reported or awknowledged by liberals.
But the beer was actually created and named by the female co-founder of Midnight Sun Brewing Co., who told Heat Street last fall that she meant it to be “consensual-sex positive.” She chose the logo as a symbol of female empowerment, a reference to Lady Godiva. As part of its marketing strategy, the brewery has encouraged its female buyers to post photos of themselves on adventures with the Panty Peeler in tow.
But, now we have a magazine that is supposed to be covering the beer industry policing what should be allowed as a beer name in order to satisfy left-wing social conventions.
Yes, this stuff has totally gotten out of hand and we have to fight back. We can’t even enjoy a humorous or ironic beer name without the left turning it all into a political cause.I’ve written previously about some of the interesting innovations taking place in urban transportation, and especially in how buses operate. For instance, the Finnish startup Kutsuplus, which allows users to pick both their own routes AND summon their own buses.
Or you have Bridj, which hopes to make the commute more productive. Bridji operate a shuttle service that hope to offer commuters a more enlightening way to get to work. As with most things these days, the service is driven via a mobile app, through which users can select their desired pick up and destination points, their time of travel and to reserve a seat on the bus.
Driverless buses
With advances in driverless technology happening at such a pace, it’s perhaps no surprise to see a driverless bus as the next stage in bus innovation. The Greek town of Trikala are trying out just that however.
The project is using French built CityMobil2 buses and the trial will run until the end of February. The buses have already been put through their paces in controlled traffic conditions in places such as La Rochelle (France), Lausanne (Switzerland), and Helsinki in Finland. The initial trials all went smoothly with no incidents, so the next stage is to ramp things up a bit.
Greece is renowned for its hilly and winding streets, and the roads are often awash with impatient drivers and zippy bike riders. In other words, it represents a thorough test for the driverless technology.
The government amended its laws to allow the testing to commence, with a dedicated bus lane added for the trial.
Early stages
Suffice to say, the buses still look and feel very different to traditional buses, with a 10 seat capacity and a maximum speed of 20kph. The hope is that the Trikala is another step on the road to driverless buses becoming more mainstream however.
“There were cities bidding for this project all over Europe. They offered relatively restricted urban areas. But we said we could make it happen in a downtown environment and we won,” the project team say. “We have a 2.4-kilometer (1.5-mile) route, the bus route. It’s mixed with traffic, with pedestrians, with bicycles, with cars … That hasn’t been done before.”
Whilst the buses will be fully automated, they will nonetheless have a driver in the control center that can step in if things go wrong.
“It’s as if they are in here and they can stop the bus if they want to, if something goes wrong,” the team say.
At the moment, the buses are running without passengers whilst the team wait for a faster fiber-optic network to be completed to allow quicker data transmission.
With personalized route planning becoming more accepted, together with driverless technology, it is certainly an interesting time for public transport in our towns and cities.
As I’ve written about earlier this week, I suspect the next stage will be to phase more automation into the vehicles we already have, before then becoming fully automated further down the road.
Would you be happy to ride in a driverless bus? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.When Kevin Durant and Team USA play at their best, ESPN's Marc Stein says, there's nothing any of the other international teams can do to stop them. (0:58)
Speaking after the U.S. men's basketball team won a third straight gold medal with a rout of Serbia, USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo said other countries need to find a way to be more competitive.
"I'm all for raising the bar for global basketball," Colangelo told reporters Sunday. "The more interest in basketball on all levels, I'm for. I'm a lifer in the game. I love the game. Basketball is the No. 2 sport in the world, [but] we just need to see these other countries get their acts together and become more competitive."
The Americans went undefeated throughout the Olympic tournament, but several games were closer than expected, including a six-point win over Spain in the semifinals and three-point victories over France and Serbia in pool play.
There was no such trouble against Serbia in Sunday's final, as Kevin Durant led the United States with 30 points during a 96-66 win.
"I'm not going to be making excuses for anyone about our [dominance]," Colangelo said. "Someone said to me [after the game], one of the officials said to me, 'You know next time you play, you ought to play with four.' And I said, 'No, maybe the other teams better get their act together and compete.'"
Since Colangelo took over Team USA in 2005, the Americans have won seven FIBA titles, including gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2012 London Olympics and the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup.
The U.S. team will now begin a period of transition, as three-time gold medalist Carmelo Anthony retires from international play and Mike Krzyzewski steps down as coach after 76 straight international wins and an 88-1 record.
But on Sunday, Colangelo seemed more concerned with the competition catching up to the Americans.
"Some of the programs are going up, some are going down, but the healthiest thing for the game of basketball is to have competition around the world that makes it even more intriguing," he said. "But we're just going to continue to do everything that we do to stay on top."
Information from ESPN senior writers Marc Stein and Andy Katz contributed to this report.It is a huge pet peeve of mine when momentum is ignored with teleporters and gateways and the like in movies. Also someone being caught six inches from the ground after falling 500 feet, especially if the person catching them is traveling laterally at terminal velocity plus. Like the first Star Trek reboot when Kirk and Sulu basically fell from low orbit and Chekov transported them the instant before they splatted, and all that happened was they fell over in the transporter. I think a grating on the floor broke. Edit: As discussed in the comments below, that may not be the best example since transporters would have to compensate for the difference between the velocity of a ship in orbit and the surface of a planet at the very least. All I’m asking for is one line in the movie which explains that, especially since it was pivotal to the scene, and I don’t recall it ever being discussed in any movie or episode of the series. It’s one of those refrigerator logic things that fans think about but I suspect the show creators never did. Granted it would invite all sorts of questions about how it can remove external momentum without stopping blood dead in its tracks or hearts or whatever, but then at least that one scene wouldn’t rank 4 eyerolls out of 5. Low orbit! Still, you guys know the sort of thing I’m talking about.
The way Harem is delivering that kick is a good way to break an ankle or worse, but don’t forget she gets physically tougher when she un-teleports some of herselves. (Which, out of context is a super weird sentence.) So when she pulls a horizontal 2 story drop into the side of someone’s stone head, she quickly contracts down to two of herself for the impact, which makes the both of them about 4 times as tough until she re-exists the dupes. She does that almost immediately because she describes not having all 5 of her out at once like a regular mono-person with walking around with an eyepatch and one ear stopped up.
Fighting Harem would basically be the worst. She’s master of the blindside, and it’s hard as hell to hit her. Obviously a skilled fighter could beat her, (she’s never beaten Math) and if you get one good hit in, it staggers the rest of her.
I asked on twitter what it’s called when gravity overcomes upward velocity and I got a lot of answers, Ballistic Apogee and Trajectory Apex both sound cool but I think those are names for the highest point of the parabola, not necessarily names for gravity countering momentum. Harem went with “velocitudeinal equilibrium.” She’s not a genius, but she’s smarter than average and surprisingly well read. Still, there’s part of her that thinks people (boys) find brainy chicks offputting so she doesn’t wear her education on her sleeve much. She’s still young though so she’ll probably outgrow that eventually, especially hanging around with all the other capable women on the team.
The Renegade X books (one and two) are among my favorite superhero novel series, up there with Wearing the Cape and D-List Supervillain, and the author, Chelsea Campbell, is running a kickstarter in advance of the third book coming out. It doesn’t cost much (as far as I’m aware) to publish an e-book through Amazon, but kickstarters for books like this are cool cause they allow for hardback versions but more importantly, they’re so they can afford to pay artists for cover art. Otherwise you wind up with covers done in Poser with Microsoft Word wordart for the title. There are some god damned dire covers if you go looking through the dregs of e-books. Like unbelievably bad. I’m sure there’s a subreddit just for making finding and making fun of the worst ones.
Speaking of reddit, there is a subreddit for Grrl Power. There’s not too much going on in there yet, but if you’re a big reddit person, you can subscribe there and get updates to the comic that way.
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.Captain America: The Winter Soldier spoilers follow.
This week I tuned in to Agents of SHIELD on ABC because I was curious how the show would tie in to the now-released Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The show hasn't wildly improved since I last tuned in, although the general business of the storyline made it more watchable. Their version of Deathlok is a joke, though, made all the worse by the fact that he only ever appears identifiably as Deathlok in an X-ray. Don't get me started.
This episode, The End of the Beginning, brought the agents of SHIELD face to face with someone who seemed to be the Clairvoyant, the mysterious villain behind the scenes who has been pulling strings all season long. The Clairvoyant, as his/her name indicates, is supposedly psychic and can see into the minds of humans. Coulson didn't believe in psychics when the season began (which always seemed dumb to me), but now he's come around to believing. Just when he does, though, another theory pops up: what if the Clairvoyant isn't reading minds but is reading everybody's SHIELD files? What if the Clairvoyant is actually a SHIELD agent?
Knowing as we do now that SHIELD is rotten with Hydra infiltrators (including the thankfully late Jasper Sitwell, who was briefly on this episode) that makes a lot of sense. But who could the Clairvoyant be? It has to be someone interesting, and it won't be Robert Redford's Alexander Peirce, as there's no way Redford is showing up on an ABC hourlong drama. There is one character from the movies who makes good sense as the Clairvoyant and whose presence would be easy to finesse on the show:
Arnim Zola.
Zola, we learn in the new movie, has uploaded his consciousness to a computer deep below Camp Lehigh, in SHIELD's original headquarters. In a very nice nod to the comics Zola's face appears to Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanov on a computer monitor, and we learn that he's been behind the scenes of SHIELD from the start, gathering and analyzing information. Then a rocket blows the whole place up and Zola is, seemingly, killed.
Except he's a guy in a computer, right? And he could just upload himself to the web; in the movie he's trapped in 1960s computer banks (millions of feet of computer tape, he says!) but you could get all of Arnim Zola on your Xbox One today. It makes sense that he survived. And since we find out he's been analyzing all of SHIELD's data and using that info to look into the future - analytically speaking - at upcoming threats, doesn't it make sense that he's the Clairvoyant?
Having Zola as the Big Bad of Agents of SHIELD season one would be great, and almost make up for how crummy the show has been. Toby Jones plays Zola, and he's not above popping up on TV - especially in a role that essentially requires nothing but voice work. And the latest episode heavily implied Zola, as the fake Clairvoyant communicated with Coulson through computer monitors only. Honestly, it's so well set up that if the Clairvoyant ends up being someone else I'll be mighty disappointed in this already disappointing show.
Thanks to Silas Lesnick for floating this theory by me.Project Cars was only launched in May of this year and a sequel to it has already been announced. That wouldn’t be a problem, says the community behind the title, if the game actually delivered – they say it hasn’t…
They’re accusing major experience-ruining bugs and glitches for a game that reviewers didn’t really know what to make of in the first place. It was praised for the pretty graphics and car handling, but it didn’t really score very highly.
Now with the announcement for Project Cars 2, on the official page, community members proceeded straight to voicing their pent up thoughts on the game so far. It’s not pretty, but scrolling down you’ll get an idea of how pissed they are.
Aside from the quality of the product, fans are also moaning about how the game was funded – they used crowdfunding methods and went for a direct player-is-a-beta-tester approach with all the early backers.
To their defense, Project Cars 2 is still some three years away, and they already have a title that they can improve on and add stuff to. However, they may need to change their strategy as to how they’re going to interact with the community, as well as do their best to fix the current game through patching.
We found a fan-made trailer that seems to sum up the complaints pretty well, as well as a few other related (possibly NSFW) videos and posted them below.
Photo Gallery
VideoNow in her third term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has become a major proponent of marijuana legalization.
After previously serving on the Honolulu City Council, and becoming the youngest person ever elected to the Hawaii State Legislature at the age of 21, Gabbard now represents the state’s 2nd district. Gabbard also served in the Hawaii Army National Guard for nearly 15 years, was deployed twice to the Middle East, and continues to serve as a Major.
Rep. Gabbard currently sponsors the Congressional bill HR1227 to end prohibition on a federal level, knowing that law reform could help benefit her state’s economy and patients in need, as well as the rest of the nation. Gabbard is also scheduled to present a video introduction at the International Cannabis Business Conference this weekend, Dec. 1-3, in Kauai.
Smell the Truth recently spoke with Rep. Gabbard regarding her thoughts on how to legalize cannabis, while breaking down the negative social stigma held onto by the public and lawmakers alike.
Smell the Truth: What led you to introduce HR1227, a bill to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level?
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: For years, our outdated policies on marijuana have had a devastating impact in my home state of Hawaii, and across the country. They have turned everyday Americans into criminals, torn families apart, and wasted huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate people for nonviolent marijuana charges. In addition, the contradictions in state and federal law have also created confusion and uncertainty for our local businesses that affect their bottom line and ability to operate, ultimately hurting our economy. HR1227 would make these long overdue, common sense changes by removing marijuana from the Federal Schedule of Controlled Substances.
StT: There’s a big push for legalization by the veteran community – what can you tell us about that?
Gabbard: The Republican co-lead on H.R. 1227, Rep. Tom Garrett, is a fellow Army veteran and a former prosecutor, and our work together as veterans to advocate for this legislation speaks to how important it is to our brothers and sisters who have worn the uniform. With many of our wounded warriors coming home with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and other visible and invisible wounds of war, it’s critical that we approach their treatment options from a place of compassion and pragmatism. The widespread devastation of the opioid crisis, particularly within our veteran community, speaks to why we must open the doors to alternatives like medical marijuana, rather than continuing to rely on highly addictive pain prescriptions that ultimately worsen the suffering of our veterans.
StT: Why do you think there’s such a stigma surrounding cannabis use and legalization? What can be done to combat it?
Gabbard: For years, Big Pharma has played a major role in preventing cannabis research by lobbying Congress for more stringent and outdated cannabis regulation laws, as well as partnering with Tobacco and Alcohol special interest groups to fund anti-legalization campaigns. This has led to the continuation of our outdated policy that classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug (along with heroin) and made it nearly impossible for medical experts and scientific researchers to fully explore the use of cannabis in treating a number of health conditions. It has also fueled and perpetuated the stigma surrounding marijuana, making it harder to enact change at all levels of our government.
In order to address the stigma that currently exists, we must also do more to highlight that this is a criminal justice issue. The reality is, whether or not any individual chooses to consume cannabis is irrelevant. The important question is, should we really be sending people to jail and turning them into criminals for using a substance that is far less dangerous and harmful than alcohol? The answer is no. The fiscal and social impacts of our current policy, are having devastating effects on individuals and our communities and are only perpetuating the problem.
StT: Do you have any predictions for future law reform on either a state or federal level?
Gabbard: At the federal level, I’ve introduced H.R.1227, the Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act, which would take marijuana off the Federal Schedule of Controlled Substances. This would decriminalize marijuana, and free up banks from current FDIC restrictions that prevent them from doing business with the cannabis industry. Right now we have bipartisan support behind the bill—10 Democrats, and 5 Republicans—but we have a lot more work to do to pass this important legislation into law. You can help by asking your Member of Congress to sign on to the bill.
To find your Representative, visit https://www.house.gov/
Smell The Truth is one of the internet’s most popular destinations for cannabis-related news and culture. This blog is not written or edited by SFGate or the San Francisco Chronicle. The authors are solely responsible for the content.State police search a vehicle after a highway protest slowed traffic on I-75 near I-94 in Detroit on Thursday, March 7, 2013.
DETROIT, MI -- Slow-moving vehicles traveling south on I-75 near I-94 in an apparent protest brought traffic to a near standstill and attracted state police to the scene Thursday afternoon.
Michigan State Police issued citations to nine drivers for traveling under the minimum speed limit, said Lt. Mike Shaw.
"We're not so much concerned about the protest as them endangering other motorists," Shaw said.
A sign that read "right to work" could be seen in the passenger side window of one black sedan involved.
A sign hanging from the rear bumper of a black Ford read, "Detroit Emergency Manager," based on photos and video available on Channel 4's ClickOnDetroit.com.
Another read, "Democracy," with an "Allen Park" sign visible in the rear window. Yet another said "Pontiac."
Police had released all but one of the vehicles by 4:30 p.m. A tan Buick on the shoulder was being searched by troopers.
Update:
Rev. Charles Williams II, head of the National Action Network in Michigan, which held a separate demonstration outside a Downtown Detroit federal building Thursday afternoon, said the group Stand Up for Democracy staged the highway demonstration.
Stand Up for Democracy led the effort to get Michigan's previous emergency manager law repealed in a referendum last year.
The state legislature has since passed a new financial emergency law which takes effect later this month. The governor is expected to appoint an emergency manager before that law, which would give the city other options, takes effect.• Downing determined to prove that he has a future at Liverpool • Several Premier League clubs believed to be interested in him
The Liverpool winger Stewart Downing would consider returning to his first club Middlesbrough to play a part in their promotion push. Downing has had few first-team opportunities under Brendan Rodgers and Liverpool seem likely to attempt to offload the 28-year-old in January. The England winger joined the club in a £20m switch from Aston Villa in July last year but Rodgers is keen to address a lack of goals in his side. There is interest from a number of Premier League clubs in signing Downing permanently, but he is understood to still be determined to prove that he has a long-term future on Merseyside.
The player would prefer a temporary move and his former employers would provide a tempting alternative. Boro, who currently lie in third place in the Championship, would not comment on the matter, but sources on Teesside have indicated that nothing is likely to happen ahead of Thursday's emergency loan deadline.
However, in January there will be an opportunity to resolve a situation which bears a striking resemblance to that in which Andy Carroll found himself.
The £35m striker was surplus to requirements during the summer, but let it be known that he was willing to consider a temporary move back to Newcastle United, the club which had raked in a fee since described by manager Alan Pardew as "astronomical" for their home-grown player. But he ultimately, he ended up on a season-long loan at West Ham, a move which left Rodgers with Luis Suárez and the injured Fabio Borini as his only recognised strikers.
However, while Newcastle would have been able to fund a sizeable percentage of Carroll's wage packet, Boro would need Liverpool to pick up a large part of the tab for Downing, and that could prove a stumbling block even if they were willing to enter into an agreement.
Downing, who came through the ranks at Boro before making a £12m transfer to Aston Villa in July 2009, has managed 14 senior appearances this season, although most of his starts have come in the Europa League. In addition, he has often had to play at left-back rather than on the wing, where the teenagers Raheem Sterling and Suso have been preferred ahead of him.CRANBERRY TWP. — The NHL season reached the Christmas break, long enough to put the offseason far into the rearview mirror.
Yet goaltender Matt Murray admits it feels odd to look around the Pittsburgh Penguins’ locker room and not see Marc-Andre Fleury. Of course, Fleury was a franchise fixture for more than a dozen years after being selected with the first overall pick in the 2003 entry draft and going on to help the Penguins win three Stanley Cups while notching 375 regular-season wins and 44 shutouts.
“(Fleury) is a guy you can rely on, both on and off the ice,” Murray said last week. “He was invaluable to me while we played together here. He has been around so long and pretty much seen everything. I’d use him as a resource all the time. Anytime I had a question about anything, he always had an answer and good advice.
“It’s tough not having him around because he was more than just a teammate. He was also a good friend. Even now, this far into the season, is seems strange that he’s not here because he was just a big part of the Pittsburgh Penguins for so long. It’s just different.”
Fleury has helped the Vegas Golden Knights become one of the best stories in the league this season after they selected him in the expansion draft last summer. Fleury’s departure and veteran free agent Antti Niemi’s early-season flameout has left the 23-year-old Murray as the lone veteran goalie on a roster that also includes rookie backup, Tristan Jarry.
Murray won Cups in each of his first two NHL seasons. However, his third season in the NHL has mirrored that of the Penguins as it has not been such a smooth ride.
Murray on His Own
In the last game before the holiday, Murray was pulled 3:42 into the second period last Saturday night after giving three goals on 13 shots in a 4-0 loss to the Anaheim Ducks at PPG Paints Arena. The Penguins lost for the fifth time in their last seven games, dropping to 18-16-2.
Murray’s record fell to 13-10-1, equaling his total losses from the entire 2016-17 regular season when he was 32-10-4. His goals against average is 2.91 through 26 games after he posted a 2.32 mark in a combined 62 games in his first two seasons. In 32 career playoff games, his GAA is a spectacular 1.95.
The Penguins return to action Wednesday when they host the Columbus Blue Jackets for the second time in six nights. Murray believes the time away should be good for both he and the team.
“We’ve been playing a lot of hockey and things aren’t going the way we want,” Murray said after Saturday’s game. “We’re not going to hang our heads, though. Adversity is always going to come at you at some point and we’re going to handle it. Adversity will make you a whole lot better. We’ll work as hard as we can each and every day to get better.”
Adversity
Murray had some adversity when he sustained a lower body injury Nov. 27 in a victory over the Philadelphia Flyers and missed a little over two weeks. That left the Penguins with a pair of rookie goalies in Jarry and Casey DeSmith.
DeSmith returned to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the AHL when Murray was activated from injured reserve. Jarry remains with the Penguins, though they acquired veteran goalie Michael Leighton from the Phoenix Coyotes in a trade last Monday. The 36-year-old Leighton has played just seven games in the NHL in this decade and is serving as depth with the Baby Pens and a mentor to DeSmith.
Speaking of mentors, Murray chuckled when asked if he is serving as one to Jarry. Murray is just 11 months older than the 22-year-old Jarry.
“I don’t know about that,” Murray said. “I try to give myself every advantage possible, so I try to share that with Tristian and bounce ideas off him. I’ll speak my mind to him when it’s needed but I’ll also ask him stuff. It’s a good relationship.”
While it may not be a veteran-youngster relationship such as the one between Fleury and Murray, Jarry appreciates what his teammate has accomplished during his short NHL career.
“He’s been through a lot already and he’s won two Stanley Cups, which speaks for itself,” Jarry said. “He’s someone I go to for advice. Even though we’re basically the same age, he is very knowledgeable, and he’s gained a lot of experience.
“Matt and I work well as a tandem. We’re able to talk to each other and it’s something that correlates to our games and practices. We’re able to bounce things off each other, talk about different things and it helps us improve each other’s games.”Don’t get fooled by the version number: Windows Phone 8.1 isn’t just a minor update, but it’s a totally new version of our favorite operating system, both for users but, most of all, for developers. At a first glance, you may think that it’s the usual Windows Phone you already know, with its tiles and the familiar user interface. However, under the hood, there’s a huge number of new features that turns greatly improve the platform’s quality and experience.This new version was awaited since a long time and, finally, yesterday Microsoft has revelead it during the BUILD’s keynote, the most important Microsoft conference that is running in these days in San Francisco.
Since, if you’re reading this post, you’re probably a developer, let’s start by talking about all the new features that you probably care most about. Be prepared, because this is probably one of the longest posts I’ve ever wrote
Welcome Windows Phone Store apps!
If you’ve ever tried to develop an application that targets both Windows Phone and Windows 8 you would have discovered that sharing code between the two platforms is not that easy: despite the fact that, under the hood, you can find the same framework, which is the Windows Runtime, there are a lot of features that are implemented using different classes and methods (like tiles, push notifications or the XAML controls). Windows Phone 8.1 changes everything, by sharing almost all the APIs and features that have been introduced in Windows 8. For this reason the new SDK has added a new kind of applications called Windows Phone Store apps: basically they are the same as Windows Store apps, but for Windows Phone, since they share almost all of the features and APIs. If we have already developed one or more Windows Store apps you’ll find yourself at home: application lifecycle, background tasks, XAML controls, etc. are exactly the same you can find in Windows 8.1. Also the package delivered by Visual Studio isn’t a XAP anymore, but it’s an AppX package, which contains a new manifest file called Package.appxmanifest.
For this reason Visual Studio now offers also a new template to create Universal Windows apps, which makes the life easier to developers that are willing to create an application that targets both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone. This template includes two different projects for the two platforms, plus a new shared project: all the code we include will be automatically shared with the other projects, using the linked files approach. This means that the files that are part of the shared project are physically stored just in one location, but they are added as link to the other projects. This approach was already available in the past and it was, indeed, one of the strategies to share as much code as possible between a Windows Store app and a Windows Phone app: the difference is that, if in the past you were forced to use a lot of tricks and workarounds (like conditional compilation symbols) due to the many differences between the two frameworks, now everything is much easier, since the two runtimes are basically the same. This way you’ll be able to write your application’s logic just once and you’ll have just to take care to create two different user interfaces, due to the user experience’s differences between the tablet / pc world and the smartphone one (if this doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to reuse the same XAML code at all).
Another cool announcement related to Universal Windows apps is that, in the future, they’ll be able to run also on XBox One, bringing full convergence across all the screens: tablets, smartphones, computers and TVs.
The Windows Phone Store apps are completely based on the Windows Runtime, XAML included: we don’t have to deal anymore with the managed XAML available in Windows Phone 8, which was still based on Silverlight, but now we can work with native XAML, which offers much better performances. However, there’s a downside: due to the many differences, you won’t be able to automatically upgrade your existing Windows Phone applications to the new framework in the same way like, for example, you do now when you want to migrate a Windows Phone 7 app to Windows Phone 8. There are many reasons, like:
The Windows Phone Store apps only support the new Windows Runtime APIs: as a consequence, all the old Silverlight APIs (like background tasks, tiles management, network interaction, ecc.) are no longer working.
The new native XAML is based on a set of namespaces and controls which is different from the Silverlight ones: many controls, like Panorama or LongListSelector, are not available anymore and they need to be replaced.
or, are not available anymore and they need to be replaced. The application lifecycle and the navigation framework offered by the Windows Phone apps are very different from the Silverlight ones.
Since the Windows Phone Store apps are no longer based on the.NET framework, all the third party libraries that still relies on it won’t work anymore. We’ll need to use specific versions of the libraries that can target the Windows Runtime (however, most of the libraries that are available for the Windows Store apps will work just fine).
If you’re already a Windows Phone developer, don’t panic! Microsoft didn’t leave you behind, but they’ve also updated the Silverlight runtime with the new 8.1 APIs and features, by introducing the Windows Phone Silverlight 8.1 apps. This means that you’ll be able to right click on an existing Windows Phone 8.0 project and choose the option Upgrade to Windows Phone 8.1: this way, you’ll be able to use almost all the new APIs (including the Windows Runtime’s specific ones, like the new background tasks or contracts) without losing the compatibility with your existing codebase. Of course, this approach has some downsides: it will be harder to share code with a Windows Store app (since the XAML, the application lifecycle, the navigation framework, etc. will continue to be different) and you’ll lose most of the performance improvements offered by the new runtime.
It should be clear, now, that Windows Phone 8.1 is totally compatible with Windows Phone 7.1 / 8.0 applications: you’ll need to update your application to 8.1 only if you’re planning to make use of some of the new features. Of course, the new 8.1 apps can be launched only on 8.1 devices: if you want to keep the compatibility with Windows Phone 8.0 and, at the same time, use the new 8.1 features you’ll have to maintain and publish two different projects. However this time, unlike it happened with Windows Phone 8.0, it’s just a temporary requirement: since Windows Phone 8.1 is going to be available as a free update to every Windows Phone 8 device on the market, in the long term you won’t be needed anymore to keep two versions of the same project, since eventually every user will be able to use just the 8.1 version.
In the end, the Windows Runtime has added a new important feature: WinJS support. Exactly like you can do nowadays with Windows Store apps, you have the chance to develop native applications (and not just simple web applications that are rendered using a WebBrowser control) using HTML and Javascript thanks to a library called WinJS, which grants access to all the Windows Runtime APIs and features using Javascript as a programming language, in replacement of C#, VB.NET or C++, and HTML as a design language, in replacement of XAML. At the same time, Microsoft has announced that WinJS is being released as an open source and cross platform library on GitHub.
Which framework should I choose?
Probably now, after reading about the coexistence of two frameworks, you were wondering which one you should choose to develop a Windows Phone 8.1 application. The first thing to consider is if you’re planning to develop a new app or to upgrade an existing one: if it’s the first case, the Windows Phone Store apps are, for sure, the most interesting path to take. If you’ve never developed a Windows Store app there will be a starting learning curve, since you’ll have to know and master all the differences with the old approach when you have to deal with lifecycle, navigation, background activities, etc. However, in the end you’re going to develop an application that can be easily ported to Windows 8.1 and that can take advantage of the new performance improvements introduced by the Windows Runtime.
On the other hand, if you already have an existing application and you just want to make use of some of the new Windows Phone 8.1 feature, |
is totally untrue. On Tuesday a local resident Sophie Bolt and Rev Steven Saxby organised a family vigil, which myself and others helped to publicise quickly on social media. No one asked me to do it, I just did it. It was a beautiful, calm meet-up of for anyone who wanted to show our MP Stella Creasy that we wanted her to vote NO on air strikes in Syria. We met at the Queen’s Road mosque with candles in jam jars and walked quietly to Stella’s Labour office on Orford Road, where there were speeches by religious and community leaders. It was a beautiful, community, inspiring family event of people trying to make their voices heard against the airstrikes and trying to influence Stella, even though we knew she was in Westminster. We took post-it notes and thought it would be powerful to write messages of peace and stick them on the office window. It looked beautiful and powerful. The next day we realised someone had put up a Facebook post with a picture of the start of the vigil, which was outside the mosque. You can see the mosque on the right if you zoom in, but mostly it’s just the houses next to it. He claimed we were outside Stella’s house and said something incendiary about her not having children to worry about. (His exact post was: ‘outside [her] house… apparently she has still to make up her mind – and she has no children to upset’.) He managed to get some police in the pic which made it look like a demo and it was dark and blurry. In fact the very low police presence were very helpful and friendly throughout. Then we went to her office about half a mile away. There were about 200 people including children and various community and religious leaders spoke – it was a very inspiring peace rally. The police were laid-back and friendly there was no intrusive police presence. Now for the most worrying thing: the picture and Facebook post was found by the Independent newspaper and used in an article. This started off a mass media misinformation story about constituents bullying Stella. It was then picked up by LBC radio, the Standard and many other media and went viral on social media. I tried to counteract lots of it, especially with journalists following up the story. When I realised that the Independent had used his picture and post to create their story stating Stella was targeted I contacted the journalist but she wouldn’t retract it. Then it went all over the world. I was sobbing with frustration.
Another local resident, a local vicar and Labour member, Rev Steven Saxby, one of the organisers of the vigil, added:
At the same time as I condemn intimidation of MPs or their staff, I reiterate that the vigil was not intimidation, and condemn those who seek to portray democratic, peaceful actions as such. This is also is a form of intimidation. For my part, I shall not be intimidated into not speaking on issues about which I am passionate and alongside others within and beyond the Labour Party. I refute the erroneous allegations about me and about our peaceful vigil, and look forward to continuing to support Stella Creasy as MP for Walthamstow, and the campaigns to elect Sadiq Khan as mayor and Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister.”
There are many factors that appear to have contributed to distorted coverage, misrepresentation and downright lies including:
agents provocateurs on social media, hiding behind fake identities, who may be Tories or perhaps even Labour members engaged in ‘black ops’;
hostile or opportunistic members of other parties like Nancy Taafe of the Socialist Party who stood against Stella Creasy in May (winning 394 votes for TUSC, good for them but, at less than 1%, an utterly pathetic vote for anyone who lives in the real world) but goes on BBC Daily Politics to demand her deselection;
exaggerated claims by hard right Labour MPs determined to discredit Momentum and Jeremy Corbyn.
However, there undoubtedly are also some people, probably a small number, who think of themselves as being supportive of Jeremy Corbyn and against war in Syria who are guilty of inappropriate behaviour towards MPs – using inappropriate language or photos, abuse, intimidation and even bullying. Many will not be members of Momentum or the Labour Party, but some are which is why Momentum has issued the following statement.Armored bears are conduction too much electricity and are now a danger to the public.
Favored league champion Ezreal was participating in a charity event in piltover. He was giving away balloons when the bear in question(infamous league champion volibear) released large amount of electricity destrying the balloons and most of Ezreal. Ezreal was harmed in such away that recovery was all but impossible. So please dont let this happen anymore. Ban this ravage beast from the league and keep innocent people from being harmed again
wrap up:we managed 19k views by the end of the case. thank you viewers i hope you were entertained note: i had no clue the servers were down for most of this either
Note: Ezreal is undergoing very experimental surgery. So please donate to the Please Fix Ezreal donation fund. he needs your help to pay for this highly experimental Highly expensive surgery.(Not sure where to post this seeing as I'm new to smashboards but I guess I'll put it here)My experience with TGC2 as well as smash in general:This was the first smash bros tournament I've ever been to and holy ****buckets you guys are amazing. Amazing in terms of gameplay skill, helping newbzz such as myself, and being ultra friendly in general. I'd say I played about 50+ matches and only won about 5. I don't even have a WiiU at home but I've been an avid (filthy casual) fan of smash for 10ish years. Over the past year or so my interest piqued and started to really get into watching competitive YouTube vids and such.I found people at my school that played it that have gone to other tournaments and play on their own WiiUs. I actually beat them in 1v1s and surprised myself (sorry Michael and Connor lol.) One of them, @ RageToast told me that I should go to this event and I thought, "Theres no way I'm going to win against these people but ok."Oh yeah, and did I mention @ Xyro77 called me out over facebook before I even knew about any of this? hahaI play Samus. Green Samus. And so does Xyro. He saw me use the green beauty against people in Sm4sh at my school via RageToast's facebook and he called me out for a money match to determine who is the best samus.So I show up at da event, didn't money match fo real, but still 1v1'd xyro. Twice. Aaaaand I lost. THE TV HAD INPUT LAG XYRO!! INPUT LAGGG /johnsI'm mostly kidding, he was a WAAAY better samus than I was, put down your pitchforks guys.I met some great people at the event, shoutouts to mah bois: Gamefreak My doubles partner who was 250% better than I was and wrecked faces with Mario. He was a good sport about my lack a' skill and reminded me to have fun, that's what its all about after all. Derick (I dont know ur smash name forgive me senpai) This dude was my Samus Jedi master right here. He mained Samus too and was ultra supportive and friendly from the start and gave me useful tips whenever I needed them and helped me improve my Samus game just after a few matches. He observed me play her whenever I was in 2v2's and sometimes friendlies in between and helped a lot. Big props man. Onion You let me beat you.. Didn't you.. lol. You were one of the 5 people I beat and my 2 other friends said they lost to you and they go to tournaments all the time. You sneaky bugger. 10 year old hype! I've seen you beast against other people though. Propps Xyro77 Samus masta blasta that set up the tournament. Input lag. lol. I want to see those matches go up on YouTube man, that was fun no lie.There might be more but its 1:07am and I'm tired. Great experience, would rewind time to relive.TL;DR: I'm a filthy casual and I love it.Also for anyone wondering, my name is IveBenDubbed because it's the same as my dubstep producing name, hence "Dubbed" and "Ben" being my real name. Ok thats all, going to bed soon will reply in the morn.Reports have surfaced saying that lefty Boone Logan has agreed to a deal with the Milwaukee Brewers. It appears those reports are now confirmed.
Back in November, we wrote that Boone Logan would make a great addition to this Brewers bullpen. It appears that David Stearns feels the same way.
Boone Logan, 33, has reportedly agreed to a one year contract with the Milwaukee Brewers. The dollar amount is unknown at this time.
I heard the Boone Logan report was accurate and should be official soon after New Year’s. Besides that, it should be a very busy six weeks all around baseball. https://t.co/qTCrRKBVue — Adam McCalvy (@AdamMcCalvy) December 28, 2017
Logan now appears to be the primary lefty specialist in the bullpen. He might have the ability to lock down whole innings but that hasn’t been his track record of late.
Logan pitched to a 4.71 ERA last season with the Cleveland Indians. His 2017 season was cut short in July due to a lat injury. Still, in that injury shortened season, his peripheral stats looked good. His 3.16 FIP suggests some unlucky moments this past season and he also had a 12.0 K/9 last year.
Prior to pitching in Cleveland, he was in Colorado for three seasons after signing a big free agent contract. After some adjusting in Coors Field he put up respectable numbers in his final year there in 2016. His best years were as a Yankee and it was where he earned his big contract. He posted four straight quality seasons as mostly a seventh inning guy.
Logan dominates left handed hitting. Over his career, opposing lefties have hit only.229 against him His slider is his best out pitch and it generates a lot of strikeouts.
With Logan now in the picture, David Stearns will have filled a hole in his bullpen. This is a low risk, high reward signing for the Milwaukee Brewers. Logan has been one of the best lefty specialists in the league in years past. Although an injury cut short his 2017 season, a fully healthy year should be quite productive for the southpaw.
Over Logan’s career, his number of appearances far outnumbers the amount of innings he pitches, suggesting that he pitches less than an inning most of the times he’s out there on the mound. Given his domination of lefties it’s not hard to assume Craig Counsell may want to bring him in only to face lefties in the opposing lineup.
Whether he’s simply a lefty specialist or the full time setup man, Boone Logan will be an asset for this bullpen. With his wealth of experience around the league, he is exactly the type of guy the Milwaukee Brewers need.
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The big, 6’5″ lefty has been in the league for 12 years and this would be his sixth organization. Even though he is a jorneyman, he’s been a quality bullpen option for several years. The Brewers will be lucky to have him.Spee.ch, the only safe way to share your memes and GIFs, is live today! The meme dream can turn into a nightmare when centralized services take your content - that’s why we’re rewarding Spee.ch users who #MemeSafe!
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Finally, in case you are a government agent tasked with the legal enforcement of contents and/or just like fine print, here are our giveaway terms and conditions.About a week ago, the agency that’s been running after people with deep knowledge about occult science has finally released thousands of their X-files dating back 70 years ago.
Will this pave the way for the release of their black projects like free energy and anti-gravity technologies?
Take a Peek Into Our “X-Files”
The CIA declassified hundreds of documents in 1978 detailing the Agency’s investigations into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). The documents date primarily from the late 1940s and 1950s.
To help navigate the vast amount of data contained in our FOIA UFO collection, we’ve decided to highlight a few documents both skeptics and believers will find interesting. Below you will find five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity. We also pulled five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings.
The truth is out there; click on the links to find it.
Top 5 CIA Documents Mulder Would Love To Get His Hands On:
Top 5 CIA Documents Scully Would Love To Get Her Hands On:
Do you want to believe? Then find out how to investigate a flying saucer.
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/blog/2016/take-a-peek-into-our-x-files.html
“The agency humorously noted that X-Files’ Fox Mulder would certainly love to use them to prove the existence of extraterrestrials.
“We’ve decided to highlight a few documents both skeptics and believers will find interesting. Below you will find five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity,” the agency said.
All the documents date from the late 1940s and ’50s.
The CIA picked several documents which may be particularly interesting. They include files from East Germany (1952) where the agents were investigating a story of “a huge flying pan” which had a diameter of about 15 meters.
Another document which would cheer up extraterrestrial fans says that similar ‘flying saucers’ were seen in Spain and North Africa.
“The picture [of the object] shows a diagonal stripe of diminishing width and lighter in shade than the sky over the dark bulk of a building cornice,” the document says.
The CIA even included several pictures of the alleged extraterrestrial objects, including UFOs and suggested alien body parts. The release of the ‘conspiracy’ files surprisingly coincided with the release of new X-Files series.
One of CIA documents explains how to take better photos of UFOs.
Click on the image to enlarge.
“Take several pictures of the object; as many as you can. If you can, include some ground in the picture of the UFO,” the agency advised.
However, for those who sided with skeptical Agent Dana Scully all nine seasons, the CIA said it released documents “to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings.”
The CIA has frequently organized scientific panels to discuss the nature of these allegedly alien objects. In many cases, the scientists concluded that “the subject UFO is not of direct intelligence interest.”
https://www.rt.com/usa/330325-cia-ufo-declassified-files/
This CIA UFO disclosure is, of course, just a mere confirmation of earlier UFO disclosures from government insiders.
Another related disclosure that did not merit mainstream media’s attention is the recently declassified government’s willful suppression of high efficiency energy technologies through the all-encompassing justification of “national security.”
In a document circulated in 1971, “Patent Security Category Review List”, a list of technologies were classified for state suppression among which are the highly efficient solar power converters, MHD generators, pulsed energy sources, and fuel cells.
Page 14 of that document says,
Click on the image to enlarge.
Although these token disclosures lack the necessary technical details, they don’t have to. This FOIA declassified list confirms the veracity of the Bedini and Bearden pulsed energy devices, among other free energy technologies that are already available on the web.
Therefore, this twin disclosures should imply the official lifting of the State-sanctioned ban on exotic technologies, and should now pave the way for the mass production of free energy devices that will facilitate even more the collapse of the petrodollar industry of the Khazarian Empire.
This is the reason why those who are behind the systematic removal of the Khazarians from global power, e.g. China, oil-producing Iran, and India, are all constructing next-generation Russian designed nuclear fission-fusion hybrid power plants to power their industries and commercial centers during the transition towards the Space Age for the Commoner Earthlings.
“Russia is developing a hybrid nuclear reactor that uses both nuclear fusion and fission, said head of leading nuclear research facility. The project is open for international collaboration, particularly from Chinese scientists.
A hybrid nuclear reactor is a sort of stepping stone to building a true nuclear fusion reactor. It uses a fusion reaction as a source of neutrons to initiate a fission reaction in a ‘blanket’ of traditional nuclear fuel.
The approach has a number of potential benefits in terms of safety, non-proliferation and cost of generated energy, and Russia is developing such a hybrid reactor, according to Mikhail Kovalchuk, director of the Kurchatov Research Center.
“Today we have started the realization of a distinctively new project. We are trying to combine a schematically operational nuclear plant reactor with a ‘tokamak’ to create a hybrid reactor,” he told RIA Novosti, referring to a type of fusion reactor design.
“This project is open for our colleagues, the Chinese in the first place. It’s being discussed,” he added.
Being a leading producer in civilian nuclear energy industry, Russia would benefit from improving its plant designs. A hybrid fusion-fission reactor may be several times more efficient than a traditional fission reactor. And building one is “a goal for tomorrow” rather than the distant future, as is the case for a fusion reactor like the famous France-based International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) that Russia collaborates on, Kovalchuk said. ”
https://www.rt.com/news/196088-russia-hybrid-nuclear-reactor/
Will the release and mass production of these devices serve as the necessary introduction to mass landings from other civilizations out there?
We are living in such exciting times indeed.
Just a few hours ago, China announced its plan to construct a nuclear power plant offshore.
“BEIJING: China is planning to build a floating nuclear power station as it seeks to double its atomic capacity by 2020, a senior official said Wednesday.
Authorities are making plans for a “marine floating power station”, which will go through “strict and scientific demonstration”, said Xu Dazhe, chairman of China Atomic Energy Authority.
“China is devoted to building itself into a maritime power and so we will definitely make full use of ocean resources,” he told a press conference.
The use of nuclear power at sea is not unknown — aircraft carriers and missile submarines are often nuclear-powered — but doing so for civilian purposes appears to be unprecedented, although a Russian project is reportedly already under construction.”
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/china-planning-to-build/2462352.html
Under great Khazarian pressure, our own nuclear program was mothballed right after the CIA-Vatican led Yellow Revolution in 1986 which prevented President Marcos from switching on nuclear power which should have propelled my country to full industrialization ahead of South Korea.
In 2011, our tedious march to nuclear power was interrupted for the second time with the deliberate nuking of Fukushima, Japan.
Here’s how mainstream media continue to distort the event in 1986 with some deliberate insults to the people of this country:
“Uranium, flown in from the United States on a chartered Boeing 747, was trucked in, and by 1986, the operators were ready for a penultimate step called core loading.
Then came the Chernobyl disaste r, which led the Philippines to mothball the Bataan plant. Last year, just when years of patient lobbying by Philippine nuclear power advocates appeared to be paying off, the Fukushima disaster occurred.
“We could have been the first nuclear country in Southeast Asia, but we were not able to do it,” said Mauro Marcelo, a nuclear engineer at the National Power Corporation, the state-owned utility. “There are several dates when we could have become a nuclear country, but every time a catastrophic event happened. We don’t need to hire nuclear experts but feng shui masters to get rid of the bad luck.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/world/asia/bataan-nuclear-plant-never-opened-now-a-tourism-site.html
Of course, it wasn’t bad luck.
Bearing in mind that all existing nuclear plants can be upgraded with fusion technology at will, here’s a list of ongoing nuclear power plant constructions worldwide, suggesting a gradual phasing out of fossil fuel energy systems is underway.
Plans for New Nuclear Reactors Worldwide
(Updated October 2015)
Nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with over 60 reactors under construction in 15 countries.
Most reactors on order or planned are in the Asian region, though there are major plans for new units in Russia.
Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading.
Plant life extension programs are maintaining capacity, in USA particularly.
Today there are some 437 nuclear power reactors operating in 31 countries plus Taiwan, with a combined capacity of over 380 GWe. In 2014 these provided 2411 billion kWh, over 11% of the world’s electricity.
Over 60 power reactors are currently being constructed in 13 countries plus Taiwan (see Table below), notably China, South Korea, UAE and Russia.
Nuclear plant construction
Most reactors currently planned are in the Asian region, with fast-growing economies and rapidly-rising electricity demand.
Many countries with existing nuclear power programs (Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Czech Rep., India, Pakistan, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, South Korea, South Africa, UAE, Ukraine, UK, USA) have plans to build new power reactors (beyond those now under construction).
In all, over 160 power reactors with a total net capacity of some 185,000 MWe are planned and over 300 more are proposed. Energy security concerns and greenhouse constraints on coal have combined with basic economics to put nuclear power back on the agenda for projected new capacity in many countries.
In the USA there are plans for five new reactors, beyond the five under construction now. It is expected that some of the new reactors will be on line by 2020.
In Finland, construction is now under way on a fifth, very large reactor which is expected to come on line in 2018, and plans are firming for another large one to follow it.
France is building a similar 1600 MWe unit at Flamanville, for operation from 2018.
In the UK, four similar 1600 MWe units are planned, and a further 6000 MWe is proposed.
Romania‘s second power reactor istarted up in 2007, and plans are being implemented for two further Canadian units to be built there.
Slovakia is completing two 470 MWe units at Mochovce, to operate from 2017.
Bulgaria is planning to build a large new reactor at Kozloduy.
Belarus is building two large new Russian reactors at Ostrovets.
In Russia, six reactors and two small ones are under active construction, one large one being a large fast neutron reactor. About 30 further reactors are then planned, some to to replace existing plants. This will increase the country’s present nuclear power capacity by 50% by 2030. In addition about 5 GW of nuclear thermal capacity is planned. A small floating power plant is expected to be completed by 2016 and others are planned to follow.
Poland is planning two 3000 MWe nuclear power plants.
South Korea plans to bring a further further four reactors into operation by 2018, and another eight by about 2030, giving total new capacity of 17,200 MWe. All of these are the Advanced PWRs of 1400 MWe. These APR-1400 designs have evolved from a US design which has US NRC design certification, and four been sold to the UAE (see below).
Japan has two reactors under construction but another three which were likely to start building by mid 2011 have been deferred.
In China, now with 29 operating reactors on the mainland, the country is well into the next phase of its nuclear power programme. There were seven new grid connections to end of October in 2015. Over 20 more reactors are under construction, including the world’s first Westinghouse AP1000 units, and a demonstration high-temperature gas-cooled reactor plant. Many more units are planned, including two largely indigenous designs – the Hualong One and CAP1400. China aims to more than double its nuclear capacity by 2020.
India has 21 reactors in operation, and six under construction. This includes two large Russian reactors and a large prototype fast breeder reactor as part of its strategy to develop a fuel cycle which can utilise thorium. Over 20 further units are planned. 18 further units are planned, and proposals for more – including western and Russian designs – are taking shape following the lifting of trade restrictions.
Pakistan has third and fourth 300 MWe reactors under construction at Chashma, financed by China. Two larger Chinese power reactors are planned.
In Kazakhstan, a joint venture with Russia’s Atomstroyexport envisages development and marketing of innovative small and medium-sized reactors, starting with a 300 MWe Russian design as baseline for Kazakh units.
In Iran a 1000 MWe PWR at Bushehr came on line in 2011, and further units are planned.
The United Arab Emirates awarded a $20.4 billion contract to a South Korean consortium to build four 1400 MWe reactors by 2020. They are under construction.
Jordan has committed plans for its first reactor, and is developing its legal and regulatory infrastructure.
Turkey has contracts signed for four 1200 MWe Russian nuclear reactors at one site and four European ones at another. Its legal and regulatory infrastructure is well-developed.
Vietnam has committed plans for its first reactors at two sites (2×2000 MWe), and is developing its legal and regulatory infrastructure. The first plant will be a turnkey project built by Atomstroyexport. The second will be Japanese.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide/
Aside from petrodollar, another significant sources of funds for the Nazionist Khazarian Mafia is the healthcare industry which registered a whopping $3.09 trillion in 2014, and is projected to soar to $3.57 trillion in 2017, in the US alone. We believe that this is just a conservative figure.
We can avoid using drugs, defeat any viral attack and scaremongering, like the Zika virus, easily by knowing how to build our own comprehensive antiviral system. Find more about it here.Authored By seanphippster
This week, I walked a whole two blocks from the Nooga.com offices on Market Street to have breakfast at Innside Restaurant at 800 Chestnut St. This is one of those old-school breakfast/lunch places that many think-as suggested by the motto on the employee shirts-is Chattanooga’s “best-kept secret.” And I have to agree with those sentiments. Many people I work with downtown enjoy Innside, but nobody ever talks about it. Why is that?
Innside is located in the Pioneer Building across the street from another local gem, Figgy’s Sandwich Shop. Mary Haymaker, author of local food blog Chattavore, had a great visit for lunch back in 2015, so I thought I’d stop in for a late breakfast instead. In my 15-plus years of living in Chattanooga, I’d never once visited Innside Restaurant. And as it turns out, my stomach has been missing out on what may be the best no-frills breakfast available in Chattanooga. It might not be the gourmet gluttony of a place such as Bluegrass Grill, but a serviceable, proper American breakfast is nothing to scoff about.
According to Haymaker, the lunchtime burgers don’t look half-bad, either. Who knew?
Atmosphere/service
I decided to come to work for an hour and then leave to go have breakfast (any excuse to get out of the office). I brought George Saunders’ novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” to keep me company. One of the best simple pleasures in life-and my personal happy place-is a plate of breakfast food, a steaming cup of coffee and a good book.
As you walk in the door, the eye is drawn to a giant “T” column in the middle of the room. I can only assume this is a nod to the University of Tennessee, but it could be just a T-shaped column that I’m reading too much into. Solo diners such as myself are discouraged from sitting in booths because those are reserved for two or more people. But the counter was also occupied in that not-using-the-urinal-right-next-to-another-guy kind of way, so I snagged a table in the front window and set up camp. Before I even sat down, Sandy asked me what I’d like to have to drink. You know how when you meet certain people you can immediately tell how genuine they are from the way they carry themselves? Sandy is one of those people. Even at the end of a tough midweek morning shift, Sandy was beaming and friendly.
Sandy delivered a large cup of coffee and a water. She said she’d leave me alone for a few minutes to peruse the menu. Innside offers breakfast from 6:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. Lunch is served until the restaurant closes at 2 p.m. During my hour or so, I saw several besuited gentlemen picking up to-go orders. That’s kind of a thing with Innside; even as the breakfast rush was settling down, the team remained busy with orders. It also seemed as if everybody who came in was an old family friend. Sandy welcomed a few of them by name.
The food
Innside offers everything you’d expect for breakfast. The affordable egg plates offer two eggs cooked to order and a variety of meats to choose from: bologna, chicken, sausage, bacon and country ham. There are omelets, loaded biscuit sandwiches, breakfast sandwiches, biscuits and gravy, and pancakes, too. I was hungrier than I expected I would be, so I decided to order an egg plate (over-medium) with country ham, grits and a biscuit. After a few minutes, an enormous plate of food was placed in front of me. Seriously, look at the spread below.
I wondered if Sandy had heard-Ron Swanson-style-that I wanted “all the country ham in the building.” Nobody needs this much country ham, but “need” and “want” are two different things. Sandy brought me some Texas Pete for my eggs, and I dove into the plate. The eggs were exactly how I ordered them-slightly runny (i.e., perfect), but not messy by any stretch. Both the grits and biscuit were well-prepared and tasty. The slice of country ham was less salty than I anticipated, a welcome flavor considering the size of the meat portion. Of course, I ate it all. What, am I leaving perfectly good ham on a plate?
How have I missed out on Innside Restaurant all these years? It was right under my nose the entire time. It makes me question what else I might be missing out on in Chattanooga. Is there an underground sandwich shop just below my feet that I walk over every day? A clandestine back alley hot dog vendor with the savoriest wieners in town? A pumpkin vendor? I don’t know.
Would I go back?
Innside Restaurant is only a few blocks from my office. There’s no reason I won’t head over throughout the week for a cheap breakfast. Of course, my heart can’t handle country ham every day, but I’m always interested in a simple plate of eggs and toast. I’ve also been told that lunch-especially the burgers-is also underrated and under the radar. Call me a convert. One bite and you will be, too.
The opinions expressed in this column belong solely to the author, not Nooga.com or its employees.In two parts, this powerful short-form documentary follows 25 year-old James Young as he tries to regain control of his body after a terrible accident - by becoming part Cyborg.
James tragically lost an arm and a leg when he was dragged on to the tracks between two carriages of the London DLR as it was pulling in. Despite his loss, James refuses to let it interrupt his life and love of travel and video games.
In a bizarre twist of fate, James receives a bionic arm from gaming company Konami, modelled on lead character Snake from Metal Gear Solid.
This moving story is told in a first person perspective including gaming footage and the use of innovative filming techniques with a new type of camera called a ‘dji osmo’.
Will Saunders, Creative Director of Digital BBC TV Production, says:"We don't have to adhere to durations or TV schedules for some of our storytelling on BBC Three now. We really hope the audiences who mass around Gaming content online will share as well as watch James's amazing story."
Part 1
Following his accident, the first short film sees James, an avid gamer, respond to an advert by gaming company Konami, who are looking for an amputee who is interested in wearing a futuristic prosthetic limb.
James, who has become extremely adept at playing games one-handed, is selected to have a bionic arm custom made for him by renowned prosthetics artist Sophie De Oliviera Barata and a team of engineers.
Sophie and James work together and take inspiration from the artist of Metal Gear Solid. The arm is bespoke for James and he is able to indulge his fantasies, adding his own drone, lighting which he can change to suit his mood, a laser, a torch, USB port to charge his phone, a sport watch and a bionic hand which will respond to messages sent by his muscles.
But being given a new body part is not a simple process, the arm seems to have a life of its own and not all his family is sure it is a good idea becoming part robot.
Part 2
After months of waiting, James receives his new arm and interest in the project with the media starts to grow; he is invited to be a key speaker in the first ever ‘Bodyhacking’ conference in Austin Texas. Bodyhacking is a new movement which is bringing scientist and technologist together to explore ways to optimize the body, from placing magnets in the body so you can open doors and turn on laptops, to tattoos that respond to your moods.
With the arm not quite working as it should James starts to wonder if technology is the answer to him finding his way in life again.
James discovers through the process is that it is not just about the tech, but the human connections which are going to help him regain control of his life.
Note to Editors
This is a BBC Studios Production for BBC Three.
MAA Utah high school teacher who was placed on leave for assigning students a questionnaire that officials and parents say inappropriately asked about student sex lives, drug and alcohol use has been reinstated.
Weber School District spokesman Lane Findlay said Friday that district officials wrapped up a four-day investigation into the teacher’s use of the survey at Roy High School as part of an “Adult Roles” course teaching students about human relationships.
Findlay says teacher Candace Thurgood may face some “corrective action” but he did not have details.
The questionnaire was not part of the curriculum but may have been repurposed from a decades-old Ann Landers advice column.
Article continues below
Thurgood has declined through Findlay to comment during the investigation. She did not immediately respond to an email Friday seeking comment.Version Reviewed
English 1.5 Edition
Introduction
My word but One Deck Dungeon was an unexpected treat. We gave it four stars in our review and the only reason it doesn’t have four and a half is that I am craving ever more quantities of it with ever more ravenous hunger. This is a game I am convinced, with time, will grow into one of my perennial favourites. For now, the adventures are just a little bit too predictable since I’ve been down in that dungeon more than a few times now. They even gave me my own parking spot at the entrance. They misspelled my name, but the gesture was appreciated.
What’s not predictable though is where it’s going to fall in our accessibility teardown! Even I don’t know where this sucker is going to land. Let’s don our platemail, pick up our best ‘Sunday go to church’ sword, and start hacking things down until we can see a bit clearer.
Colour Blindness
Colour is a channel of information, but rarely the only one. For all of the skill boxes, an icon is presented along with the colour code for the dice to be used. There’s a disconnect here in that it’s not always clear which of the dice refers to which of the symbols, but this goes away with familiarity. Combat dice and agility dice share a palette when considering Tritanopia, and agility dice and magic dice overlap a smidge when dealing with red-green colour blindness. The icons too are often a little difficult to make out because health and timing implications are overlaid on the top, and often within tight constraints.
The dice exhibit fewer problems, largely because of their translucency, but it can on occasion be difficult to make them out in the aggregate. That’s particularly true when dealing with the pink and blue dice with Protanopic sight. Obviously, monochromatic vision would make this all but impossible to do without assistance from someone that could |
Twitter says during its tests of the new format, more people engaged with the service. The updated format will arrive in the most recent versions of the iOS and Android mobile apps, and on the web. Some will see it now and others will see it shortly after.Charles Manson is sick and may be dying. After a trip to the hospital and back to prison, one of America’s most famous murderers may finally be arriving at his end -- nearly 46 years after California had sentenced him to death. Apparently, Manson is too old and sick for any lifesaving surgery.
That means the state’s taxpayers may soon finally stop paying to keep him alive -- a tab that has easily already exceeded $2 million. Of course, owing to the amorphous nature of the actual costs of incarcerating a single prisoner, the total expense California has incurred for Manson may never be accurately tallied.
But the mass murderer, with at least seven killings to his credit, is likely pleased with himself for the ride he has taken the state on by living to the ripe age of 82. To cover his extended stay in prison, California has paid double the amount that it would have cost to execute Manson after his conviction. And his memory will always be with us: His picture -- often smiling if not glaring -- still stalks us from crime magazines on the supermarket shelf.
Manson is one of the most infamous murderers in history because of his role in the Tate-LaBianca slayings on two hot nights in Los Angeles in August 1969. Members of the so-called Manson “family” carried out the rampage Manson planned that took the lives of five people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate on the first night. Then they bludgeoned and stabbed the LaBianca couple in their home the next night.
This Day In History: Charles Manson guilty of murder
Caught, tried and convicted for these murders, Manson was sentenced to death by a California judge and jury in 1971.
But luck was on his side. In 1972 the California Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty. Instead, Manson received seven concurrent life sentences, making him eligible for parole every seven years.
Over the course of time, Manson has had 12 parole hearings, been denied his freedom all 12 times and remains in California state prison. That makes him a prime example of what happens when a murderer -- an obviously guilty one -- is not executed.
Putting aside the morality of capital punishment, there has always been an economic argument against inflicting the death penalty on someone like Manson. Opponents argue that it costs more to kill a criminal than to keep him incarcerated.
While it’s true that the initial costs of a death penalty case are higher, the exact amounts differ from study to study and state to state. An analysis by a bar association in Washington state indicated that the legal and courts costs, including providing at least two attorneys for the defendant and lengthy appeals that could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, run to a little more than $1 million. The cost of an execution itself, based on a 2010 case, it adds another $100,000.
But having to keep Manson alive all these years has cost the state of California a good deal more. The annual cost of maintaining a prisoner was an average $39,000 in 2010, according to a Vera Institute of Justice study, when items such as correction officers’ pensions were included. Adding inflation from then to now brings it close to $42,000. And in some states like Illinois and Connecticut, costs run more than 30 percent higher.
Charles Manson being taken to an Aug. 20, 1970, hearing related to murder charges he faced resulting from the slayings of actress Sharon Tate and six others. AP Photo/George Brich
So even if Manson had been a routine prisoner, he would have cost California taxpayers nearly $2 million. But during his life in jail, he has been far from a model inmate. Manson has committed more than 100 offenses, including assault, possession of a deadly weapon, trying to intimidate staff and having an illegal cellphone.
Even behind bars he has been described as “the most dangerous man in America,” in one story, “unshackled, unapologetic and unruly” in another. So he required constant watching. In that respect, Manson is similar to other lifers without the prospect of ever being paroled. They have nothing to lose.
How much more does this add to the cost of keeping someone like Manson alive? No one really knows, but convicts on death row, who also have nothing to lose by committing further crimes while incarcerated, cost an average of $90,000 more a year than the average inmate, according to one study.
Manson has lived a long, if not fruitful, life given the average life expectancy for a U.S. male is only 76 years. And in that respect, he’s not a lot different than many death row inmates. In one Florida case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, an inmate was still waiting for execution after 40 years. The court found that the average time on death row is 13 years, and even then about two-thirds of the capital punishment decisions are reversed.
Manson is fairly typical in that the U.S. prison population is aging, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The number of prisoners age 55 or older sentenced to state prison increased four times between 1993 and 2013 and is now 10 percent of the total population.
Aging in prison could prove a lot healthier than being on the street for people like Manson. A John Jay School of Criminal Justice study, which focused only on African Americans, showed that they were likely to live longer in jail than on the outside. And older criminals, like older people, generally cost more in medical treatment.
In addition, here are some other costs to consider:
Recidivism: Will a convicted murderer, either in prison or on parole, continue to commit crimes? Obviously guards and other inmates weren’t safe from Manson even in jail, and Manson himself was assaulted and burned by an inmate who threw paint thinner on him.
And if Manson had been paroled, would people be safe from him? A National Institute of Justice study showed that within five years, about seven in 10 violent offenders were rearrested for a new crime.
Celebrity: Murderers like Manson are able to inspire -- if not directly conspire in -- future crimes. A young Manson himself may have been motivated toward a future life of crime when he took guitar lessons from fellow inmate Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a member of the Ma Barker gang of the 1930s.
If so, he learned his lessons well, because even while in jail, Manson was able to inspire members of his so-called “family” to make two assassination attempts on then President Gerald Ford.
Manson continues to have a cult following, and his life has led to an opera and a musical called “Assassins” by Academy Award-winning composer Stephen Sondheim. An underground newspaper extolled him as “Man of the Year,” and rock group Marilyn Manson was partially named after him. His fame has spread internationally, and current CBS morning anchor Charlie Rose once won an Emmy for an interview with him.
The courts: Would executing Manson and criminals like him make the courts more efficient? Up to 95 percent of all cases that come before the criminal justice system are plea-bargained down.
But in order to plea bargain, a district attorney or federal prosecutor must have the threat of more severe penalties to get a defendant to plead guilty to murder. The death penalty is the ultimate weapon. While most federal and state officials won’t actually say a trade-off is involved in murder cases, many would rather not have to settle for manslaughter in cases where a 25-year-to-life sentence would be more appropriate.
Experienced prosecutors often say the death penalty is no deterrent unless it’s enforced, and in most states, it isn’t. About 2,900 people are currently on death row in 35 states and two federal jurisdictions, but only 20 were executed in 2016 in just five states, with Georgia and Texas having nine and seven, respectively.
This may change. Despite the ongoing moral outcry against the death penalty, liberal California, which leads the nation with 741 inmates on death row, has now reversed direction and approved a referendum to speed executions. Nebraska and Oklahoma voted to retain capital punishment. In South Carolina it’s likely that a jury will impose the death penalty on Dylann Roof for killing nine church members, who died praying for him.
But none of this will affect on Manson. Sooner or later, he’ll peacefully go to his eternal reward, having already had a rich one from taxpayers.A recount Monday confirmed that Democrat Lynwood W. Lewis Jr. won a special election for a Virginia Senate seat this month, giving effective control of the General Assembly’s upper chamber to Democrats.
Mr. Lewis held off Republican B. Wayne Coleman, who asked for the publicly funded recount after an initial tally had him trailing by nine votes in a contest that saw 20,000 ballots cast.
Elections officials confirmed that the margin of victory climbed from 9 to 11 votes after the ballots were re-examined. Mr. Lewis will take the seat formerly held by Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam representing the 6th District in the Hampton Roads area.
The win means the Senate is again evenly divided, 20-20, between Republicans and Democrats. Democrat Jennifer Wexton last week fended off two challengers in a Northern Virginia contest for the seat vacated by Attorney General Mark R. Herring. But Democrats will have effective control because Mr. Northam will cast the tie-breaking vote in the chamber.
Although Republicans hold the majority in the House of Delegates, Democrats swept the top three statewide office in November’s elections, led by Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
Mr. McAuliffe faced the prospect of trying to advance an agenda that includes expanding Medicaid in the face of a Republican-controlled General Assembly.
“I am glad that the process of filling each vacant seat in the General Assembly is now complete and I look forward to working with Lynwood and members of both parties in the General Assembly to tackle the challenges facing Virginia’s economy and communities,” the governor said in a statement.
The recount in the special election is the second in the state in recent months. Mr. Herring claimed victory over Republican attorney general candidate Mark D. Obenshain after a recount last month.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.More than 2 million passwords for sites including Facebook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google have been stolen and posted online, BBC reports.
Security firm Trustwave has discovered the trove of login credentials, email credentials and passwords, it announced on Tuesday.
Security experts told BBC that a criminal gang may be behind the security breach. The stolen information can be used to extract people's personal information from the websites, which can then be sold, according to BBC.
“Facebook takes people’s information security extremely seriously and we work hard to protect it," a Facebook spokesperson told The Huffington Post. "While details of this case are not yet clear, it appears that people’s computers may have been attacked by hackers using malware to scrape information directly from their web browsers."
The spokesperson also emphasized that all of the compromised passwords have been put into Facebook's password reset process, and that Facebook users can protect their accounts by activating Login Approvals and Login Notifications in their security settings.
"We immediately reset the passwords of the affected accounts," a spokesperson from Twitter told HuffPost. A Google spokesperson pointed us to a blog post about the ways in which the company combats "account hijackers."
"This particular incident occurred when users' systems were accessed through malware. It’s likely that these systems had out-of-date browsers or operating systems. We have implemented password resets on these accounts to protect our users," a Yahoo spokesperson told HuffPost. "We urge our users to keep their systems and applications updated, regularly run anti-virus software and not install programs from untrusted sources. We also encourage our users to set up second sign-in verification so they're notified when someone attempts to log into their account from another device."
The passwords and credentials were taken from people all over the world, Trustwave finds, and the site where the information was posted is written in Russian.
The stolen passwords are, in general, weak ones. The most popular password that was stolen is "123456," followed by "123456789," "1234" and "password."announced a new range of Eurorack modules at ModularMeets Leeds in August. Working with Chris Carter of
and Roy Gwinn, the original designer of The Gristleizer guitar effects unit, they’ve adapted the circuit and the sound into four Eurorack modules.
The Gristleizer Eurorack
The latest evolution of the Gristleizer is into Eurorack format working with Future Sound Systems. As well as a single Gristleizer Eurorack panel they have also broken it down into four components. There’s the TG2 Generator, the TG3 Filter and TG4 Modulator and a fourth module, the TG5 Pre-Amplfier, which is inspired by Jonny Reckless’ discrete FET-based designs.
TG1 Gristleizer
The TG1 Gristleizer module brings together the functionality of the Gristleizer range behind one single panel. Normalised connections between the modules allows for simplified patching and instantaneous use. This workflow recalls the original Gristleizer, where audio was fed either into the Filter or VCA sections, both of which being modulated by the LFO. In the TG1, the Master Output from the Pre-Amplifier is normalised to the Input of the Filter. The Output of the Filter is then normalised to the Input of the Modulator, extending the functionality of the original Gristleizer where the Filter and VCA functionality was switched between. The Filter and Modulator sections are controlled by the Fold output of the Generator section, allowing for complex modulation effects to be easily set up.
FSS is producing a limited run of 50 units of the TG1 module, 40 of which will be available to the public to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Throbbing Gristle's Second Annual Report. The panel of the TG1 features etched autographs from Roy Gwinn and Chris Carter, and is also hand-numbered on the rear. Pre-orders are strictly one per customer - any payments for extra units will be refunded - though customers can still add extra TG2, TG3, TG4 or TG5 modules to their TG1.
TG2 Generator
This is designed to replicate the original functionality of the oscillator section, with some interesting additions. Roy Gwinn’s redesign has stabilised the oscillator and features 1V/oct tracking. It can range from LFO frequencies all the way up into the audible range making for “a killer bass oscillator as well as a fully-featured LFO”.
The oscillator is based on a shape-variable ramp generator with similar functionality to the Korg MS. The shape moves from descending saw through triangle to ascending saw. It then goes into a wave folder which outputs both fold and pulse waveforms. The ramp is finally fed into a comparator for the clock output, the pulsewidth of which is set with the shape control.
TG3 Filter
It’s a JFET-controller multi-feedback band-pass filter. Originally used mostly for some wah-wah effect the module adds Resonance and Register controls to the original circuit. The Register shifts the resonant frequency of the core itself. Push the resonance and it will start to self-oscillate. At the end of the circuit there’s a bit of drive to keep things meaty.
TG4 Modulator
This is a JFET controlled, voltage-controlled amplifier. It was originally controlled by the oscillator to create tremolo effects. The TG4 can be controlled by anything so is really a regular VCA with some added features. The Bias control sets the initial control point, whilst an attenuverter allows for full control over how the amplitude is modulated. And there’s a Dirt control which balances the mix between the VCA’s clean output and the output of the JFET. This can bring in some really nice audio character.
TG 5 Pre-Amplifier
Chris suggested that a pre-amp is a good thing to use in front of the other Gristleizer modules, and so the TG5 came into being. Based upon Jonny Reckless’ FET-based discrete amplifier circuitry, Roy Gwinn reworked it into a rep-amp with a high-quality VCA back-end which allows any external audio source to flow into your Eurorack. There are guitar and line inputs which go through the pre-amp and into a THAT VCA. There’a “Clean” output taken directly from this point. Otherwise, the signal goes through 2 more FET amplification stages and tone section, with Bite and Boost controls to give it some wellie. An RMS detector with sensitivity control is used as an envelope follower and gate detector. Access to the THAT VCA’s Gain control input allows the two Envelope outputs to be used as control sources for the pre-amplifier itself, turning the module into a dynamic compressor (Inverted Envelope) or expander (Normal Envelope).
AVAILABLE NOWIt appears that we haven’t heard the last of the Riverhounds bankruptcy saga.Riverhounds trustees are seeking funds that the team’s former managing partner David Wilke, and his accounting firm, Wilke & Associates LLP, apparently transferred prior to the organization filing a petition for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in March 2014.On Friday, according to the website Law360, a trustee for the Riverhounds filed a motion in Federal Bankruptcy Court, alleging that the organization’s former accounting firm and others fraudulently transferred nearly $4 million to them before filing for Chapter 11.The details of Friday’s court filing are outlined in Law360 Article:This looks like the Riverhounds trustees are going after Wilke, developer Craig Cozza and others with complaints in a bid to recover the transfers.
According to the complaints, Riverhounds Event Center transferred more than $2.1 million to Wilke himself, more than $867,000 to his firm and $775,000 to Cozza.
The center also made smaller transfers to other entities before filing a Chapter 11 relief petition in March 2014, despite knowing the company was insolvent, acting with “intent to hinder, delay or defraud one or more of REC’s creditors,” the complaints said.
The new complaints seek recovery of the transferred funds.
The complaint against Wilke alleges he breached his fiduciary duties to Riverhounds Event Center Management (REC) LLC, in which he held a majority interest, contending he led the company to begin construction of the stadium without first securing the necessary funds and financial commitments and that he also switched to more expensive union-worker construction.
Robert O. Lampl, an attorney for Wilke and Wilke & Associates, told Law360 that he had provided information to the trustee’s attorney showing that no fraudulent transfers were made.
Team officials didn’t have any comments regarding Friday’s developments.
The Riverhounds are preparing for their fourth season in its home at Highmark Stadium.
The organization filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in March 2014, only one year after opening a soccer-only facility that cost nearly $10 million to complete and included many cost overruns.
By November 2014, however, Riverhounds trustees’ restructuring plans were approved by a federal judge — and the organization and its entity, Highmark Stadium were out of bankruptcy at the end of 2014.
At the time, Tuffy Shallenberger, who took majority ownership of the team, expressed his thoughts and having to take action in filing for bankruptcy.
“It’s probably one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do in my business career,” said Shallenberger..
“If we’d not made that decision the future of pro soccer in Pittsburgh was very bleak,” he said.
The team has not released its financials following the 2015 season, which appeared to reveal a turnaround on the field with a new coaching staff — and after a slow start in the early in the season — maintained same attendance numbers to 2014.
According to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article – Judge Approves Riverhounds Restructuring Plan in November 2014, a feasibility study released after the team’s restructuring was approved, predicted that the team would lose $750,000 in 2015 and $284,000 in 2016 but make a profit of $130,000 in 2017. The study cited the Riverhounds’ development academy and its summer academy camps as driving force behind most of these anticipated revenues.
According to USL reports, the Riverhounds drew a total of 36,817 fans in 14 league home dates, with an average 2,630 per game. The Hounds averaged a strikingly identical 2,686 fans in 2014 and 3,273 fans in Highmark Stadium’s inaugural season in 2013. Early season games in 2015 were most notably marred with lots of empty seats, but things picked up for the Hounds in the summer months.
The pro team qualified for the USL playoffs, losing in the first round to NY Red Bulls II — and had three additional home dates hosting U.S. Open Cup games in addition to their league schedule. The last U.S. Open Cup game against Major League Soccer’s DC United in June attracted an overflow crowd of more than 3,900.
With a number of new players signed to the roster and a newly formed affiliation agreement with Major League Soccer’s Columbus Crew, the Riverhounds 2016 season is set to open on April 2 at Highmark Stadium, as they will take on the defending USL Champions, Rochester Rhinos.
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Relatedby Soccer America, Jan 5, 2013
[AFRICA CUP OF NATIONS] Fuad Ibrahim, who was the second youngest player after Freddy Adu ever drafted by an MLS club, has been named to Ethiopia's team for the 2013 African Cup of Nations Jan. 19-Feb. 10 in South Africa. Ibrahim, who is now 21 and plays for the NASL Minnesota Stars, is the second American after Nevin Subotic to represent the USA at the Under-17 World Cup and then make a one-time switch to represent another country at the senior level.
Ibrahim was 15 when he was drafted in the second round of the 2007 MLS SuperDraft by FC Dallas. Later that year he played all four games for the USA at the Under-17 World Cup in South Korea. He never played for Dallas but did make 26 appearances for Toronto FC over three seasons.
After sitting out 2011, Ibrahim played five games for Minnesota in 2012. After the season, he played Ethiopia at the CECAFA Cup in Uganda.
Subotic played in the 2005 U-17 World Cup but later decided to represent Serbia at the senior level. The Borussia Dortmund central defender played for Serbia at the 2010 World Cup and is one of the German Bundesliga's top players at his position.Women in Canada still earn much less than men for the same work, and also bear far more of the burden of extra unpaid work, according to a report released today.
That's just one of the findings of the wide-ranging report from Oxfam Canada and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The report, titled Making Women Count, looked at income inequality since the global recession that began in 2008, with a specific focus on how women are faring in Canada and around the world.
Wage gap now at 72%
While there are pockets of progress, on the whole, the report does not paint an encouraging picture. In 2009, women in Canada earned on average 74.4 per cent of what men earned. In 2010, it was 73.6 per cent, and in 2011, it was 72 per cent, roughly where it remains today.
Doubters of the gender wage gap often argue that women earn less than men mainly because they work fewer hours, as a group, than men do. But Monday's report says the data doesn't back that up.
"The gap in men's and women's incomes is not simply the result of women working fewer hours," the report said. "Nor is it the result of different levels of education and experience. Even when all of these factors are considered, the result remains the same: a wage gap."
The most up to date data from Statistics Canada on the issue is from 2011. Even after stripping out the impact of part-time or temporary work people may choose to do, Statistics Canada data shows that women earn 72 cents for every dollar a man makes doing the same type of work: full-time, and full-year.
Part of the problem is that for whatever reason, women find themselves disproportionately represented in lower-paying industries. The report cites the example of truck drivers (the majority are men) who are paid an average of $45,417 per year, while Early Childhood Educators (the majority are women) are paid $25,252 per year.
Worldwide, women still do a disproportionate work related to children and caregiving, whether it is paid or unpaid work. (Nick Ut/Associated Press)
That's just one example of a systemic imbalance.
Women, on the whole, also perform much more unpaid work than men do. That doesn't mean internships and the like; rather, it refers to the hours in the day that are dedicated to primarily household tasks.
Household chores
In low- and middle-income countries, the report says, women spend three times as many hours as men on unpaid care work each day. The situation in Canada is only slightly better, with women performing nearly twice as many hours of unpaid work each day as do men.
Globally, women spend between three and six hours every day on domestic and care giving work. Men spend markedly less time on such activities — between 30 minutes and two hours a day.
All those hours doing unpaid work eats into the earning potential of women during the remaining hours they have available for paid work. And there again, women on the whole are drawing the short end of the stick, the report says.
Levels of women who are employed in Canada have climbed steadily through the 1980s and '90s, but still have yet to match those of men, despite a demographic impetus against that: there are currently more women of working age in Canada than men, and on the whole, they are more likely to have higher education.
Currently, 59 per cent of minimum wage workers in Canada are women. Yet, women in Canada's labour force are more likely to have a university degree than men, but are paid less, on average, across all types of work.
"Education alone is not sufficient to overcome discrimination in wages and employment," the report says. "Clearly other forces are at play."
The wage gap is even greater for some groups of women in Canada, such as aboriginal women, women of different races, and immigrant women.
Global problem
Indeed, it's even worse in other countries, where the report suggests the global manufacturing supply chain is disadvantaging women more than men.
"The fact that women are good for economic growth does not necessarily mean that economic growth is always good for women," the report says. "In a global economy that depends on ever cheaper labour to produce profits for the global elite, paying women in low-income countries desperately low wages has become a means to drive profitability."
While a university-educated career woman in Canada may have little in common with an uneducated low-skilled worker in Bangladesh, they likely have one area in common: child rearing.
Despite modest progress on this front in recent decades, women still perform the lion's share of child-care related duties in the world. In a survey of 31 developing countries, 39 per cent of working women with children under six years old said they care for their children themselves during the work day — "literally doing two jobs at once," the report says.
Impact of child care
It is in the area of child rearing that the report says policymakers have the easiest and most effective tools at their disposal to close the wage gap, by advancing subsidized daycare programs which statistics indicate are more than worth their cost in terms of returns to the economy.
"The lack of child-care spaces keeps mothers out of the workforce long after they want and need to return," the report says. "The high cost of child care means that a working parent often spends as much as a third of their income on child care."
The report gives the example of Quebec, where subsidized full-day daycare was implemented in 1997. Since then, the employment rate for Quebec women has doubled, and their poverty rates have dropped from 36 per cent to 22 per cent. According to a recent estimate from a G20 report, the impact of that surge of workers and taxpayers due to people no longer having to leave work to care for children resulted in a 1.7 per cent increase in Quebec's GDP, and an increase in provincial and federal tax revenues that exceed the program's cost.
In other words, subsidized daycare in Quebec has paid for itself and then some.
Researcher Kate McInturff of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives worked on the report, and said in a release that's part of why fixing the wage gap is good for everyone, not just women.
"In a world where so many women are still left behind, addressing the unequal economics of women's work will have a transformative impact on our economy," McInturff said.Oakland probes disability pay of ex-cop who's now FBI agent FBI special agent still gets $52,000 in disability pay
Oakland officials are investigating why a former police officer is collecting $52,488 a year in medical disability benefits from the city even though he has been working as an FBI agent in Boston.
The unusual case of FBI Special Agent Aaron McFarlane, 41, came to the attention of Oakland officials after the agent was identified last week as the federal officer who shot and killed a key figure last year in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation.
The disability benefit that McFarlane is collecting under the California Public Employees' Retirement System is awarded when a worker is unable to perform the usual duties of his or her current position "due to an illness or injury that is expected to be permanent or of an undetermined duration," said Joe DeAnda, a CalPERS spokesman.
Those on disability retirement are banned from doing similar work for any other government agency in California.
Oakland spokeswoman Karen Boyd said the lifetime payments that McFarlane receives include a 2 percent cost-of-living allowance for each of the past 10 years.
Retired in 2004
"The city of Oakland is investigating the matter and will take further actions as appropriate," Boyd said.
McFarlane retired from the Oakland Police Department on medical disability in 2004, four years after he joined the force as a patrol officer.
He became an Oakland officer the same year that "the Riders" scandal broke, in which four other Oakland officers were accused of beating and planting drugs on suspects in West Oakland. The accused officers weren't convicted, but McFarlane testified for the defense and took the Fifth Amendment when a prosecutor suggested that he had lied on a police report.
McFarlane joined the FBI in 2008, according to the Boston Globe, which reported that McFarlane was the FBI agent who fatally shot Ibragim Todashev, 27, in his Orlando apartment on May 22, 2013, after Todashev allegedly flung a table at him and brandished a metal pole at a Massachusetts state trooper.
The shooting occurred after McFarlane and two state troopers had questioned Todashev for more than four hours about his connection to one of the two men accused of planting bombs at the Boston Marathon last year, the Globe said.
In an interview Thursday, Kieran Ramsey, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI in Boston, declined to confirm McFarlane's identity, details about his being hired or any issues surrounding his pension, other than to say that prospective agents undergo a "very rigorous background investigation."
The FBI website says "physical fitness is often the factor that spells the difference between success and failure - even life and death." It said those who want to become agents "must be in excellent physical condition with no disabilities which would interfere in firearm use, raids or defensive tactics."
'Does seem odd to me'
The media attention on the agent's background, Ramsey said, "has nothing to with what happened in that room that day." He added that no criminal charges have been lodged against the agent, who used "justifiable deadly force" against Todashev.
McFarlane's Oakland disability benefits, however, are raising questions about how he was able to join the FBI.
"It does seem odd to me that somebody would be on disability from one agency and be hired by another agency," said Tony Ribera, a former San Francisco police chief and the director of the International Institute of Criminal Justice Leadership at the University of San Francisco.
Civil rights attorney John Burris, who frequently sues the city of Oakland for alleged misconduct by police officers, said he was "sickened" by what he called "the real scam that takes place when officers take medical retirement and go on to another job, and the city is stuck with it. It's pretty shocking to me that the officer with his record at OPD winds up with the FBI. It makes you wonder about the screening process."
Oakland Councilwoman Pat Kernighan said she wants to know why McFarlane is still collecting disability.
"I am concerned about why our disability retirement allows a disability payment to continue even after an officer is able to return to work at some other law-enforcement agency," she said. "I find it very surprising, and I would like to find out how that can happen, and if it is somehow legal."
Sgt. Barry Donelan, president of the Oakland Police Officers Association, on Thursday described McFarlane as a "solid guy, a good guy" who, like many officers working in high-crime environments, "are the ones that on a regular basis put themselves between decent, hard-working citizens and many of society's worst."
Donelan stressed, however, that he was not familiar with details of McFarlane's pension and what happened after he left the Oakland force.
'Happens all the time'
Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in Sacramento, said he wasn't surprised to hear that McFarlane was collecting a disability pension and yet working as an officer elsewhere.
"I think it happens all the time," Coupal said. "There is huge incentive to take that disability retirement because it is tax-free and more generous."
Coupal said city officials and pension administrators need to do a better job investigating officers who win disability benefits.In case you thought there was a price limit on Star Wars fandom, think again.
An unnamed bidder just spent $450,000 on a miniature model of the blockade runner vehicle flown by Princess Leia in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Reuters reported.
On the block as part of three days of bidding on Hollywood artifacts, it's the largest price ever paid for Star Wars memorabilia at auction, according to Californian auction house Profiles in History.
The miniature spaceship was part of the collection of the late Grant McCune, the Academy-Award winning special effects guru, who made models for the original Star Wars film. It came with a letter of authenticity and was predicted to go for $200,000 to $300,000, according to the auction house.
Princess Leia’s risqué slave costume, which she was forced to wear by Jabba the Hut in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, also attracted a significant price. It went home with a lucky someone for $96,000. The bikini came with a letter of authenticity from Richard Miller, the original creator of the costume.
A Stormtrooper helmet, a Darth Vader helmet prototype and even a Jabba the Hutt maquette were among the other bits and pieces on offer.
The latest installment in the cult series, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, comes out in December.Three people charged in Lowell drug raid
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LOWELL -- Three people were arrested after Lowell police with a SWAT team conducted a drug raid on a home in the Back Central neighborhood early Thursday morning.
Police and about 30 SWAT team members descended on 39 Whipple St., third floor, at 7:15 a.m. to serve warrants in connection with a drug investigation, according to reports.
The SWAT team was called in to help because one of the suspects was out on bail in a firearms case and there were concerns there could be a firearm in the home, according to police. No weapon was found.
During the search baggies containing what is believed to be cocaine, Oxycodone pills, plastic sandwich bags, a digital scale, and $714 were seized, according to Lowell police spokesman Capt. Kelly Richardson.
Arrested and charged with possession of a Class B drug, cocaine, and possession with a Class B drug with intent to distribute were Esteban Lugo, 27, Abigail Rivera, 21 and Joshua Rivera, 19, all of 39 Whipple St. third floor, were charged with possession of a Class B drug and possession of a Class B drug with intent to distribute, Richardson said.
Also present was Jamie Rodriquez of 209 Perry St., Lowell, who was arrested on an outstanding warrant.
Police requested an ambulance to transport several children home at the time of the raid to the hospital to be evaluated, according to scanner reports. Police are contacting the state Department of Children and Family Services, according to the police scanner reports.My father was a sprinter who won many high school track meets just before shipping off to the South Pacific during World War II. As a child growing up in Dorchester, I found my father’s running medals, attached to multi-colored fading ribbons, in a shoe box hidden in a closet. Examining them, I tried to imagine the races he’d won long ago. He’d been running smoothly toward his future, but things didn’t turn out as planned.
By the time I found my father’s medals, his life had changed radically. Somewhere, while sprinting through life, he’d lost himself. He was being treated for schizophrenia, and he’d become remote both physically and emotionally. His medals would become tragic reminders of the man he once was, full of dreams that were dashed.
At first, I was angry at my father for being sick and leaving us to fend for ourselves. Later, I was angry at the doctors for their helplessness in the face of his mental illness. Sometimes I was angry at the universe. But slowly my anger subsided; I realized it was nobody’s fault, and there was nothing to do but resolve my own complex feelings.
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I never really knew him: He’d been a sprinter. He volunteered for the Army right out of high school. After the war, he worked as a newspaper pressman. He met my mother, who’d left County Galway to find a new life. They married and settled in Boston; when I arrived in 1965, they gave me his name. I was 2 years old when my father’s schizophrenia came, and I still don’t know how it happened. |
as long as you're consistent.) Another way to think about this rule is that open type family instances are not standalone instances but rather metadata that is associated with a type constructor when it is constructed. In this way, non-ragamuffin type family instances are modular! A major downside of this technique, however, is that it doesn't really do anything for the legitimate uses of orphan instances in the Haskell ecosystem: when third-parties defined both the type family (or type class) and the data type, and you need the instance for your own purposes.Ford shifts some jobs from Mexico to U.S.
Ford creates a new look for its 2016 Ford F-650 and F-750 (Photo: Ford)
For all the automaking jobs shifting to Mexico, Ford is saying today that it's going to shift some jobs back to the USA.
Production of the 2016 Ford F-650 and F-750 medium-duty trucks will move to Ford's Ohio Assembly Plant in Avon Lake, near Cleveland. Currently, Ford makes its medium-duty trucks in Mexico.
For just announced the new medium-duty trucks to its lineup earlier this week.
Ford plans to invest $168 million to retool the plant to make bigger trucks. The new line will replace the Ford E-Series delivery vans tha are currently made in the plant, which has been open since 1974. The E-Series is being phased out in favor of new, more efficient Transit vans.
Still, the move to the Ohio plant represents a rare victory for automaking in the U.S. Automakers are continuing to open or expand their factories in Mexico. Honda, for instance, has a plant there that will make the Fit subcompact.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1cfWkTYA 3000-year-old rectangular copper mask found in Argentina is one of the oldest human-made metal object from South America.
Archeologists say the discovery goes against the idea that South American metal work originated in Peru.
The mask, found in the same place where adults and children were buried, has holes in its eyes, nose and mouth positions - with small openings on the side that could have been used with thread to attach the mask to a face.
Front (A) and back (B) view of the 3,000 year-old copper mark. Some of the small, circular perforations near the edges, which could have been used with thread to attach the mask to a face, are visible
The mask was discovered in the southern Andes in Argentina, at an archaeological site called Bordo Marcial.
Metallurgy in pre-Colombian America first developed in the Andes, and Peru has long been considered to be the initial point of origin - but the recent discovery of the copper mask in north-west Argentina points to the southern Andes a a center of early metalworking.
The excavation of the site where the mask was found revealed a collective burial of at least 14 people.
The mask was discovered in the southern Andes in Argentina, at an archaeological site called Bordo Marcial
The mask is about 18 centimeters (7 inches) long and 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) wide, and 1 millimeter (0.04 inches) thick.
It's perforated near the left eye, and the entire mask is fractured and covered by a layer of corrosion from natural weathering.
To preserve the mask and prevent further damage, the researchers didn't remove this layer of corrosion.
Copper ore was found within 44 miles (70 kilometers) of the the site, suggesting that the mask was made locally.
To make the mask, the researchers said that someone would have hammered the metal while it was cold, and then reheated it.
Pictured is the Bordo Marcial tomb where the mask was found (circled in dotted lines). The site revealed a collective burial of at least 14 people, including adults and children
Based on this evidence, the researchers, based at the University of Bueno Aires, say that metalworking in Argentina emerged at the same time as in Peru.
Gold objects estimated to be 4,000 years old have been found in southern Peru, according to a February 2008 study, and bronze objects dating from AD 1,000 have also been found in the Peruvian Andes - however, experts weren't sure if the objects originated there or if they were brought there.
A copper pendant was found buried with a child's remains in a site nearby to the mask
The mask, as well as the human remains, were exposed to rain from the summer rainy season.
The bones were mixed together, with the mask on top of a corner on the pile.
Near the site, a second burial site was found, containing the remains of an eight to 12-year-old - dating from 3,000 years ago as well.
The child was buried with a stone bead and a copper pendant, with a small hole near the top.
'Proof of copper smelting and annealing further highlights the northwest Argentinian valleys and northern Chile as early centers in the production of copper,' the researchers wrote.
'This data is essential to any narrative that seeks to understand the emergence of Andean metallurgy,' they wrote.Matthew Kaminski has been the organist for the Atlanta Braves since 2009.
He’s played his tunes plenty of times at Turner Field, but when the Braves packed up and moved to Cobb County for SunTrust Park, so did he. His popularity has grown for playing distracting and funny songs as the opposing batters approach the plate, like theme songs from “The Office” or “Veggie Tales.”
But never before has Kaminski, 40, played the organ at a football game. That will change this fall when Kaminski marches back into the press box at what was once “The Ted” — now known simply as Georgia State Stadium — to play his tunes during Georgia State University football games.
“I'm very pleased to announce that I will be playing the organ for Georgia State University Football this season!!!” Kaminski wrote in an Instagram post, accompanied by a photo of him looking out over his keyboards onto a covered football field. Kaminski is a GSU alumnus, holding a Master of Music degree from the Atlanta school.
It’s rare to find an organist at football games. Most college teams rely on marching bands and pre-recorded music. But original music from organists is something that can still be found in pro baseball parks and basketball arenas around the country.
Sir Foster, the organist for the Atlanta Hawks, has become famous for playing hip-hop music — like Future’s “Mask Off” — on the organ at games.
Kaminski plays all types of music at Braves games. In his first season with the Braves, he greeted former Atlanta first baseman Mark Teixeira with his own rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep.”
Recently, Kaminski trolled Cubs’ outfielder Kyle Schwarber by playing ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” as he approached the plate. A few weeks earlier, Chicago had sent the struggling slugger down to the minors to work out a few kinks.
Kaminski has a large following on social media, and often takes to Twitter for song suggestions. On Friday, he asked followers what song they would consider as the “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” of football.
The answer might be Hank Williams Jr.’s “Monday Night Football” theme, but Kaminski will likely be flooded with suggestions in the coming days.
Maybe he’ll put an Atlanta twist on it and play OutKast’s “Bombs Over Baghdad” to get Panthers’ fans charged up when they open their new stadium on Aug. 31 against Tennessee State.
I'm very pleased to announce that I will be playing the organ for Georgia State University Football this season!!! This may be the first time that organ music will be performed at a football game (college or pro) and I'm really excited about starting a whole new tradition for the GSU Panthers at Georgia State Stadium! @GSUStadium @GSUPanthers A post shared by Matthew Kaminski (@bravesorganist) on Jul 21, 2017 at 1:52pm PDT
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MORE GSU STADIUM...The Janitor is a fictional character, played by actor Neil Flynn in the American comedy-drama Scrubs. Though he is a janitor at Sacred Heart, he is rarely referred to as the janitor, but rather just called Janitor.
Neil Flynn was originally billed as a recurring guest star throughout Season 1, although he appeared in all 24 episodes of that season. He was promoted to a series regular beginning with Season 2 and remained a regular through to Season 8. He made his final appearance in the Season 9 premiere, "Our First Day of School", as a guest star.
Janitor appeared in every episode during the first eight seasons except Season 2's "My Lucky Day" and Season 8's "My Last Words", "My Absence" and "My Full Moon".
Fictional character biography [ edit ]
In the series' pilot episode, protagonist J.D. sees Janitor fixing a sliding door that is stuck, and suggests someone might have stuck a penny in the door. Janitor immediately accuses J.D. of sabotaging the door, and swears revenge.[1] For the rest of the series, Janitor makes it his personal mission to torment J.D. with insults, mind games and practical jokes. In the season eight finale, J.D. admits to accidentally sticking the penny in the door; Janitor replies he saw J.D. do it and began torturing him because he failed a "test of character" by keeping silent about it.[2] Some of Janitor's practical jokes have been on the severe side, such as destroying J.D.'s bike (twice),[3] trapping him in a water tower,[4] stranding him in the middle of nowhere,[5] and tricking him into robbing a couple's house.[6]
Neil Flynn has said:
"I think it's possible that he doesn't hate J.D. Maybe J.D. is as close to a friend as he has. For all we know, he just has poor social skills. I think that the Janitor constantly misreads J.D.'s motives and assumes he's a young punk."[7]
It is suggested in the episode "His Story III" that he is in some way responsible for a medical intern named Jill having a child.
During the first six seasons he has a crush on Dr. Elliot Reid, but in season seven he meets his future wife Lady, and they get married the following season.[8]
In the first episode of season 9, a flashback is seen of Janitor's last appearance the day after J.D. leaves Sacred Heart. Janitor believes that J.D. is simply hiding, as a practical joke, and will reappear. When Turk convinces him that J.D. has left for good, Janitor hands over his mop to Turk and leaves, never to be seen again.[9]
Personality [ edit ]
Concrete information about Janitor's personal history is sparse and is confounded by his penchant for giving outrageous (and often conflicting) accounts of his past. Many of the stories he has told J.D. are patently absurd, some bordering on the surreal or fantastical.
He has claimed that his parents are also his siblings, has made multiple conflicting accounts of having been married and having children, has claimed that, in college, he came close to a world record in the 100m hurdles race, and has given an explanation for learning sign language so convoluted that he asks to have it read back to him when J.D. asks if any part of it is true. His childhood and family life are equally mysterious. The occasional flashback sequences imply that his parents were fastidious and mildly abusive. One flashback implies the loss of a stuffed animal in the "clutter" of his bedroom led him to take on a janitorial career. He also claims that his great-grandfather was the Civil War general Ambrose Burnside (mispronounced "Burnsides").[10] However, it is hinted on some occasions that Janitor's anecdotes are at times true to some degree, e.g. he does show a considerable skill in hurdles racing in the same episode in which he claims to almost have broken said world record.
Janitor speaks Spanish, Korean, German, Italian and American Sign Language. When the hospital support staff wants dental coverage, he becomes their spokesman.[11]
On occasion Janitor indicates he does little actual work. He tells J.D. that he spends only an hour and a half a day performing his duties at work. He does, however, defend his sanitary responsibilities in the hospital whenever J.D. questions him about it, and he takes great pride in the cleanliness of the hospital's floors.[12]
Although he spends most of the series harassing J.D., on occasion Janitor will torment other characters such as Christopher Turk.[13] This is usually in response to a perceived wrong, such as another character creating a mess in the hospital or disrespecting him.
Several episodes show Janitor pretending to be a doctor ("Dr. Ján Ĩtor") and he also greatly enjoys one occasion when he is asked to assist during a medical emergency.[4] On one occasion, he uses a set of broken defibrillator paddles to pretend to revive a patient (in reality, a pair of pillows and a mop). He also pretends to be the chief of medicine when the real chief, Bob Kelso, is away.[14]
Janitor shows a softer side on several occasions. He harbors a schoolboy crush on Elliot Reid, to whom he usually refers as "Blonde Doctor". He has also shown genuine compassion for the hospital's patients; in one episode he spends the day talking to a patient with Locked-in syndrome just to keep him company.[4] In another, he joins the others in saying a heartfelt farewell to Nurse Laverne Roberts, who dies of injuries suffered in a car accident. Later, as the hospital mourns Laverne's passing at a bar, Janitor buys them a round of drinks and raises his glass in salute.[15] He later reveals he and Kelso had both slept with Laverne.[16]
Flynn had a small role in The Fugitive. The show's writers took advantage of this, placing Janitor (in his fictional role) as the real actor in the film. J.D. notices this as he watches the movie. When J.D. confronts Janitor, he (eventually) admits that it really was him- after J.D. explains that he wanted it to be Janitor as it would show him to be more than a bitter wretch but a man who once had hopes and dreams, even if they didn't work out- but admonishes him not to tell anyone.[17]
Janitor's father is portrayed as having treated him the way a drill instructor would treat a new recruit. (His father is played by actor R. Lee Ermey, who famously played a drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket.)[18] However, Janitor later tells J.D. that his father died when he was young. When J.D. remembers meeting his father, Janitor responds mysteriously that "You met a man."[19]
At the beginning of the eighth season, Maddox fires Janitor for pulling a prank on J.D. that could have resulted in serious injury. At the end of the episode, he is replaced.[20] He is rehired due to a clerical error.[21]
Janitor is the self-appointed leader of the "Brain Trust", an unofficial club at the hospital that consists of a rotating cast of Sacred Heart staff members such as hospital lawyer Ted Buckland, surgeon Todd "The Todd" Quinlan, Dr. Doug Murphy (whom Janitor calls "Nervous Guy"), and Lloyd Slawski, a delivery man. The Brain Trust originally had three other members, but Janitor became fed up with them during lunch, and joined the table behind him where the new members were sitting.
Name [ edit ]
The mystery of Janitor's name is a running gag throughout the series. In several episodes, he calls himself "Janitor" (even in his own mind), and in many episodes he refers to himself as "Doctor Ján Ĩtor".
In "My Hero", Janitor chastises J.D. for not even knowing his name while Janitor knows many personal details about J.D.'s life (though it's later shown Janitor has been breaking into J.D.'s locker and reading his journal). When J.D. protests that he does in fact know Janitor's real name, Janitor asks him to say it aloud and quickly claps his hand over his name badge so J.D. can't read it.
In "My Manhood", Janitor tells Dr. Cox "I've been called a great many horrible names in my life: backstabber, zebra poacher, Josh..." (In an interview before Bill Lawrence stated the Name of the Janitor is Josh, standing for (J)anitor (o)f (S)acred (H)eart but then said this was a joke. )
In the beginning of the eighth season, when Sacred Heart's new Chief of Medicine, Dr. Maddox (played by Courteney Cox Arquette), asks what Janitor's name is, he chuckles and makes reference to the fact she's new, alluding to the fact that she's oblivious to the fact even the longest-standing members of staff don't know his name. She examines his name tag only to find it says "The Janitor."[20]
Bill Lawrence gave a hint toward Janitor's name at a speech at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia on January 29, 2009. He said that the only clue he had given was that Janitor's name is the same as the janitor on Clone High (Glenn, voiced by Neil Flynn).[22]
In the Season 8 finale Janitor tells J.D. that his name is Glenn Matthews;[23] "My Finale" was the series finale, in which Janitor's real name would be revealed. When J.D. asks why Janitor is revealing his name only now, Janitor points out that J.D. has never before asked what his name is, and proves that J.D. has already forgotten it. However just a few seconds later, someone else walks by and calls Janitor by another name, "Tommy," to which he responds.[2]
In a Twitter post on April 5, 2011, Bill Lawrence confirmed that Janitor was telling the truth when he revealed his name as Glenn Matthews.[24]
Figment of J.D.'s imagination [ edit ]
As revealed in the DVD commentary on several episodes, the Janitor character was initially to be used as a figment of J.D.'s imagination if the show had been canceled during the first season or the first half of the second. This would have been revealed to the audience in the finale.
From the beginning of Season 2, Flynn joins the rest of the main cast appearing in the show's extended opening credits, but the credits were changed back due to objections by NBC, who wanted longer episodes instead. However, he was still acknowledged as a main cast member by the producers as of the second season. Since the start of season two, Janitor has had encounters with most of the other regular characters. He has even had an entire episode ("His Story III") devoted mostly to him.[4] Along with this, in the season 1 episode "My Bad", Elliott throws coffee on the floor and as Janitor looks up in anger she seemingly engages with him and sarcastically says "sorry".
Production notes [ edit ]
Flynn is an improv comedian and, as such, ad-libs many of his lines. Although it is often stated that Flynn ad-libs all of his lines, on several parts of the Season One DVD commentaries and special features, both Flynn and series creator Bill Lawrence say that it is generally a mix of ad-libbed lines and the original script, with Flynn usually building on the original lines. Lawrence has also said that the rest of the cast followed Flynn's lead and that he (Lawrence) would occasionally enter the rehearsal room with no idea what scene was taking place due to its lack of resemblance to the original script. Janitor's alter ego, Dr. Ján Ĩtor, is a happy consequence of one such moment of inspiration. Sam Lloyd once commented on Flynn's improvising: "I opened my script up once and it said 'Janitor: Whatever Neil says,' and I just started laughing."[25]
Flynn originally auditioned for the role of Dr. Cox (which ultimately went to John C. McGinley). However, Lawrence asked Flynn if he would consider another part: the mysterious custodian who makes tormenting J.D. his life's work.[7]
The role of Janitor was originally devised as a one-time gag in the series' pilot episode, Lawrence admitted: "When we watched the pilot, we knew instantly we had to keep this guy around."[26]
In flashback scenes of Janitor's childhood, he is played by Brandon Waters.You don't care about the Padres. Most of the country doesn't care about the Padres. They suck. But if you allow me a few minutes of your time, I'll tell you why they suck. Bear with me.
THE CLIFF'S NOTES
Everyone knows and hates Jeffrey Loria. He's widely known amongst baseball fans as the evil dipshit who screwed over Miami citizens for a new stadium and millions of dollars. But no one knows John Moores. John Moores is the ninja Jeffrey Loria. He's Jeffrey Loria with a good PR team, common sense, luck and great timing.
THE HISTORY
John Moores made his fortune on the front of the technology wave in the early 80's and 90's as a tech savvy programmer and investor. The Texan built his fortune through his own business, BMC Software, and from smart investments in other tech companies. In 1994, on the heels of the (team devaluing) strike, John Moores bought the lowly Padres from current Red Sox owner, Tom Werner, for $80 million.
His purchase of the team ushered in a new wave of optimism for a club that had only won its division once in its then 25-year history.
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THE TURNAROUND
Moores' influence was felt immediately as the team posted 91 wins in the 1996 season behind big name acquisitions of players like Steve Finley, Rickey Henderson, Ken Caminiti, and Wally Joyner. As the fans reveled in the new-found success, plans were already underway to move the Padres out of dual-purpose Qualcomm Stadium (then Jack Murphy Stadium) into a taxpayer-funded stadium of their own.
In 1998, the Padres continued their National League ass-kicking tour as they added Greg Vaughn and Kevin Brown and ended up with 98 wins and a (brief, four-game) appearance in the World Series. San Diego was in a baseball frenzy.
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THE FIRST BIG SCORE
On November 3rd, 1998, 13 days after the Yankees recorded the final out of a four-game sweep of the Padres in the World Series, San Diego voters approved a ballot measure to begin construction on a new, downtown stadium that would give the Padres a home of their own. The deal was a half-billion-dollar downtown redevelopment of which the Padres (Moores) would be on the hook for just $115 million. The remaining $300-400 million would be footed by the city (the taxpayers).
In the end, the stadium would belong to John Moores, along with partial ownership in a new hotel and other downtown properties developed in the deal.
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This is the type of deal that investors dream of.
But the taxpayers never batted an eyelash because the downtown development ended up being great for the city. The east village area of downtown San Diego was revitalized; businesses were making money, condos and hotels were springing from the ground, and no one seemed to care that John Moores had essentially fleeced the city and taxpayers in the deal, because they won, too.
THE COMEDOWN
In the five seasons between 1999 and 2003, the Padres never finished better than fourth in the five-team NL West. The mantra became "wait until the new stadium is finished." The promised land was a construction site that was hung up in legal battles that were, in part, inspired by those who suspected that the 1998 season was a one-time effort by an owner who was trying to cash in on a single-season down payment.
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Eventually the dream became reality and in 2004 the Padres began playing in a beautiful new stadium called PETCO Park.
But despite the new digs, the revitalized downtown, the luxury boxes and the fancy new logo (that no one really liked), the payroll failed to keep pace.
It seemed that John Moores had gotten everything he wanted, but the team failed to keep up with MLB payrolls, and MLB competition.
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THE IN-BETWEEN
By 2009, the Padres had the league's second lowest payroll and had only a pair of one-and-done playoff appearances (1-6 playoff record) to show for the first six seasons in their new park. High payroll players like Jake Peavy and Adrian Gonzalez were shown the door when it became apparent that they would actually have to paid their MLB worth.
The company line from John Moores and the Padres front office had changed, but the theme remained the same. Instead of the "poverty due to lack of a good stadium" excuse, they'd shifted to the dual purpose "poverty due to stadium loan payments AND due to an outdated, undervalued TV contract."
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Let's quickly attack the arguments there:
John Moores was only on the hook for $115 million of a $500 million stadium that he owned and claimed that the payments he had to make on those loans prevented him from putting a decent team on the field.
John Moores claimed that the $10 million-a-year deal that was in place with Cox Cable wasn't enough for him to go after any free agent who wasn't just looking to finish out his playing days in the warm San Diego sun.
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John Moores tended not to address the claims put forth by many fans that his $80 million investment had matured into something worth hundreds of millions of dollars - and that's ignoring the fact that he was also taking in tens of millions of dollars annually from big market teams.
If you owned a diamond — an actual diamond — that kept getting bigger and bigger, year after year, at some point don't you think that someone would call bullshit on your poverty claims if you kept lamenting that your diamond wasn't shitting out dollar bills?
In any case, one of those circumstances wasn't changing for twenty years (stadium loan payments) but the other one (the TV contract) was going to be up for renewal after the 2011 season. This was finally going to be the end of stagnant offseasons and "big" signings of players like Greg Maddux, Vinny Castilla, and David Wells about five years after their manufactured usefulness.
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The new TV contract represented hope. It was the glimmer of sunlight on the horizon after a long, dark night. The recent news of the Dodgers negotiating a multi-billion dollar TV deal made Padres fans realize what may lie in store.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
In 2009, it was announced that John Moores had reached an agreement with former player agent Jeff Moorad to sell the team to Moorad's contingent of investors for $540 million. The subtext to the sale was that John Moores "had a pitcher warming up in the bullpen" and now his wife wanted a divorce. The Padres being the largest shared asset between them meant that the team would have to be sold in order to complete a divorce.
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Hope sprung in San Diego.
Jeff Moorad had corralled a group of 12 investors (including Troy Aikman) to pool their resources and purchase the team in a series of payments over the course of two to three years. Moorad, despite being a minority owner, immediately assumed the ownership role and the front office underwent an overhaul.
This arrangement went smoothly for approximately 18 months until the time when the final payment which would take the Moorad ownership group from 49% ownership to 100% was to be made. You see, any ownership transfer in Major League Baseball must be approved by the League's other owners. And when it finally came time for the transfer in early 2012, the owners took a close look at Moorad, Aikman et. al. and decided that they were not worthy. Apparently the other owners had "concerns" that Moorad's group didn't have enough money to operate a competitive team.
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Ignore the fact that they were taking over a team with the lowest payroll in baseball. Ignore the fact that the current owner had a metric fuckton of money and was still receiving MLB welfare from the Yankees and Red Sox. Something about this ownership group just didn't feel right.
Oh, right, Jeff Moorad was a player agent who had fought against most of these owners to get their money in his clients' pockets in the past. But I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. The other owners just wanted to ensure competitive balance with the team that had just put up a 71-win season.
THE BIG SCORE
Now here's where John Moores goes from your everyday greedy team owner to Jeff Loria-level scumbag. Hope you're still with me here.
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Going into the 2012 season, the Padres were without a TV contract. Their $10 million-a-season contract with Cox Cable had expired, and it was time for the new, big, payroll-boosting contract. At the same time, the Moorad group had been rejected as to-be owners of the Padres, and so the team was back on the market.
In March 2012, just prior to the 2012 season, it was announced that the Padres, re-helmed by John Moores, had reached an agreement with Fox Sports on a new Padres TV deal worth up to $1.2 billion (billion) over the course of 20 years. The most significant part of the deal was that Fox would put up a $200 million up front payment on the new contract.
Throughout the 2012 season, Padres fans heard about several different ownership groups making bids on the team. As the season went on, the groups were narrowed down until finally a deal was reached. In August 2012, it was announced that a group fronted by former Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley had reached a deal with John Moores to purchase the team for $800 million.
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$800 million.
Keep in mind that the Moorad group had been rejected by the other MLB owners to finalize the purchase of the team that same year for $540 million.
What?
What had happened in the course of the two-and-a-half years to make the Padres increase in value from $540 million to $800 million? Simple, the down payment on the TV contract. That $200 million down payment was going into the pocket of John Moores.
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And the other MLB owners quickly approved the sale and moved on. They saw a deal that they would love to get for themselves one day and moved on.
$200 million pocketed and gone.
And now we get offseason reports that the new ownership group is broke. Competitive balance my balls.
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A SYNOPSIS
John Moores bought the Padres dirt cheap in 1994 after the baseball strike. He pumped money into the team and reached the World Series weeks before a ballot granted him a new stadium and shit-tons of taxpayer money. He skimmed money off the team while they remained terrible for about a decade. He got caught banging some chick and had to sell the team in a divorce. He agreed to sell the team in payments. The payment deal didn't work out. He found $200 million sitting in his baseball team's account. He put that money in his pocket. He tried selling the team again and succeeded. He disappeared.
THE AFTERMATH
The Padres did nothing this offseason. Their biggest signing was Freddy Garcia, who didn't make the team. They're sitting at 2-10 and look like the worst team in baseball. John Moores is nowhere to be found and, undoubtedly, likes it that way.
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And yet, the fanbase is apathetic. No one calls into local sports radio and yells about it. John Moores isn't vilified in San Diego and is unknown anywhere else. He's the Kaiser Soze of MLB ownership. He's Jeffrey Loria in sheep's clothing.
I just thought someone should know.When you boot up Windows 10 for the very first time, you have the option to customize several settings related to the collection of data from Microsoft’s servers.
You can stop your machine from sending contact and calendar details, typing and speech data, location data and even error and diagnostic reports. Unfortunately, no matter how many boxes you uncheck, Microsoft is still going to collect information from your computer, whether you know it or not.
READ MORE: This year’s best Android phones still might not be as fast as last year’s iPhone 6s
In a Voat thread last week, a user by the name of CheesusCrust published his findings after running a network traffic analysis relating to the telemetry and surveillance features of Windows 10. The results were troubling, to say the least.
While setting up a fresh copy of Windows 10 Enterprise Edition on VirtualBox, the user went through and disabled all three pages of tracking options, one by one. He then left the computer running for eight hours overnight, and returned to find that Windows 10 had attempted to contact 51 Microsoft IP addresses 5,508 times.
After 30 hours, over 112 IP addresses had been contacted.
The user attempted the same experiment once again with a fresh install of Windows 10 as well as a third party tool called DisableWinTracking. He discovered that the name of the tool is slightly misleading, as Windows 10 had contacted 30 IP addresses 2,758 times in the same 30 hour time frame.
As Gordon Kelly explains over at Forbes, the end user license agreement (EULA) you sign to when you install Windows 10 gives Microsoft the legal right to collect this data. That’s all well and good, but Microsoft refuses to explain why it needs this data or how it improves Windows 10 in any meaningful way.
The most damning aspect of the entire investigation is the fact that Microsoft is lying to us when it gives us the ability to turn certain tracking features off. No matter what you do, or which settings you disable, Microsoft isn’t going anywhere.Gas Powered Games' Chris Taylor has revealed his desire to work on a sequel to Total Annihilation. Speaking to VG247, Taylor said he'd love to revisit the RTS series, but admitted he was unsure if people wanted a direct sequel to a game nearly two decades old. Given that plenty of developers have secured millions on Kickstarter using exactly that tactic, I'd suggest that they probably do. Especially when it involves giant mechs.
"I would love to yes, but the problem is you can't just make a sequel to a game that's 17 or 16 years old," Taylor said. "You have to update and evolve it to fit into the current situation in the market. But it's a really complex question to answer because, do people want something that's been evolved, or do they want to just go back in time and imagine that it's 1998, and we're beginning work on Total Annihilation 2? Do they want that game?
"What do they want in terms of mechanics, do they want a boxed product experience? But yes, it would be wonderful to do something with it."
Taylor also talked about returning to GPG's once planned strategy Kicks and Castles, a game he describes as "basically Total Annihilation with Supreme Commander in the Medieval era." (So, wooden mechs?) Taylor explained that, at the time it was being developed, GPG was struggling to find an eager publisher. "The publishing industry was going through a very tough time, and it kind of still is in some ways, so to make an investment on a game like Kings and Castles was highly risky. We saw a lot of that, and that's frankly what made business hard for many people, and many businesses closed too."
"We're happy to see the stability of PC gaming come back through several world-leading companies like Wargaming, and we hope it'll just continue to get better and better."
Gas Powered, under new owners Wargaming.net, are currently working on an unnamed "free-to-play triple-A MMO".All sorts of unusual passengers ride the Berlin metro - pets, homeless people, musicians, and even a flash mob of people with no trousers on in January this year during the “No Pants Subway Ride”.
But two recently uploaded YouTube videos show that a man took things one step further and nonchalantly rode the U1 and U4 lines completely naked, to the surprise of his fellow travellers, Tagesspiegel reports.
An elderly man, embarrassed by the whole spectacle, hid behind his newspaper at first but then offered it to the naked guy to cover himself up.
The videos have since been removed from YouTube.
But this wasn’t the first time that the mystery man had exposed himself in public.
Youtube Channel “Urban Nudist” displays further footage of him starkers in the Greek town of Thessaloniki and a second video showing him naked on the streets of Berlin.
BVG spokeswoman Petra Reetz could not confirm to The Local that the naked man actually travelled on the U-Bahn recently, arguing that the videos could have been made a few years ago.
However, she did have something to say about the Berlin metro dress code.
Nudity “is not welcome” on the underground, and counts as “causing public disturbance”, Reetz said.
Though there is no specific dress code, the BVG website states that metro users should “be considerate of other passengers”.
Although "there would be no punishment" for nudist metro-riders, “we would simply throw them out” and say “please get off the train!”, Reetz said.
Passengers should wear “appropriate clothing” she said, adding that wearing something inflammatory like a swastika would not be acceptable, but “If you get on the metro in a giraffe costume, it really doesn't matter to us."
BVG’s disapproval of nudity on the Metro seems rather out of character for their normally easy-going stance towards passengers.
In December 2015, the company created a wildly successful ad campaign with the song “Is’ mir egal” (“I don’t care”) in which a rapper walks up a metro train explaining how the BVG is relaxed about almost anything except for passengers riding without tickets.
“The message is this: Whoever you are, we love you and we’ll take you with us”, Kazim Akboga told the Berliner Zeitung.
Just not if you're stark naked.
By Verity MiddletonThe day after voters approved a measure requiring porn performers to wear condoms while filming in Los Angeles County, opponents vowed to fight the initiative in court and explore ways to move the industry out of L.A. "as quickly |
More Mongo than Mongo
HyperDex Logo
The latest HyperDex 1.6 release has a surprising feature: HyperDex can now act as a stand-in for MongoDB. HyperDex now supports a new Python interface, a Mongo veneer, that is API-compatible with its namesake. Many applications written for MongoDB can now work seamlessly with HyperDex.
Surprisingly, HyperDex-pretending-to-be-Mongo is 1-4X faster than Mongo itself. It's also strongly consistent, tolerates faults up to a user-specified threshold without data loss, and enables ACID transactions. It can be set up in under 15 minutes, and it simplifies dev-ops with seamless, cluster-wide, consistent backups.
Let's take a brief look at HyperDex's new interface.
A Better World Switching from Mongo to HyperDex is trivial. Suppose you have some application code that uses MongoDB: >>> import pymongo # the old import >>> client = pymongo. MongoClient ( 'localhost', 27017 ) Switching to HyperDex involves simply replacing this snippet with the following: >>> import hyperdex.mongo as pymongo >>> client = pymongo. HyperDatabase ( 'localhost', 1982 ) The rest of the code, like the snippet below, remains unaffected and continues to work: >>> # Here's the code you don't change >>> collection = client. db. profiles >>> collection. insert ({ '_id' : 'jane', 'name' : 'Jane Doe','sessioncount' : 1 }) 'jane' >>> collection. update ({ 'name' : 'Jane Doe' }, { '$inc' : {'sessioncount' : 1 }}) { 'updatedExisting' : True, u 'nModified' : 1, u 'ok' : 1, u 'n' : 0 } Just as in MongoDB, there's no need to explicitly declare schemas or hyperspaces. The Mongo veneer automatically creates and manages the necessary data spaces, and translates MongoDB queries and updates to HyperDex calls. Let's examine the document type that this veneer supports, and delve into the operations supported on documents. All of the examples in this post can be run interactively against a HyperDex shell using HyperDex's quickstart docker image. To follow along with this post, we can set up a cluster with these two commands: $ docker pull hyperdex/quickstart $ docker run --net = host -t -i hyperdex/quickstart With the running cluster, we can then play with our temporary cluster from within Python using the same Docker image. Look at the output of the running cluster for a statement like, "You can connect to this cluster at address=172.17.0.15, port=1982." Use that address and port in the sample below: $ docker run --net = host -t -i hyperdex/quickstart /usr/bin/python > >> import hyperdex.mongo as pymongo > >> client = pymongo.HyperDatabase ( 'address from cluster', 1982 ) > >> collection = client.db.profiles
The Document Type The new release builds on HyperDex's existing documents. This datatype allows us to store, retrieve and operate on JSON documents directly. HyperDex imposes few limits on the structure of documents -- they can be deeply nested, contain any number of fields, and so forth; it requires only that they be valid JSON, not contain more than 200 levels of nesting, and not exceed 32MB. These limits are double what is supported by the latest release of MongoDB.
The Document API The HyperDex document API supports many of the operations and operators supported by MongoDB. The following code examples work identically under both MongoDB and HyperDex, and will produce the output shown. Many MongoDB tutorials can now be executed, word for word, on the HyperDex Mongo Veneer instead. Operations Of the features present in MongoDB, this latest release (1.6) supports operations like: insert: Store a document into the database. For example, this will insert a document with the key "andy1": >>> collection. insert ({ '_id' : 'andy1', 'name' : 'Andy', 'friends' : []}) 'andy1'
save: Overwrite a document, changing its value, possibly inserting it if it does not exist. For example, this overwrites the Andy object with a new one, where his name is "Andy", and he has an Age of 17: >>> collection. save ({ '_id' : 'andy1', 'name' : 'Andrew', 'age' : 17, 'friends' : []}) 'andy1'
find: This will find all documents that match a particular predicate. So we can find every user named Andrew: >>> list ( collection. find ({ 'name' : 'Andrew' })) [{ u 'age' : 17, u '_id' : u 'andy1', u 'friends' : [], u 'name' : u 'Andrew' }]
findOne: This will find at most one document that matches the predicate. So we can find any one user named Andrew: >>> collection. find_one ({ 'name' : 'Andrew' }) { u 'age' : 17, u '_id' : u 'andy1', u 'friends' : [], u 'name' : u 'Andrew' }
update: This will update the documents that match a particular predicate. The predicate is the same form as the selection used for "find". For example, this sets value "is_andrew" to true for every user named Andrew: >>> collection. update ({ 'name' : 'Andrew' }, { '$set' : { 'is_andrew' : True }}) { 'updatedExisting' : True, u 'nModified' : 1, u 'ok' : 1, u 'n' : 1 } >>> collection. find_one ({ 'name' : 'Andrew' }) { u 'age' : 17, u '_id' : u 'andy1', u 'friends' : [], u 'name' : u 'Andrew', 'is_andrew' : 1 } Predicates HyperDex also supports many of the same predicates, such as: "$eq": Check that the values are equal. Here we find everyone named Andy: >>> list ( collection. find ({ 'name' : { '$eq' : 'Andy' }})) [{ u 'trinkets' : 5.05, u 'name' : u 'Andy', u 'is_andy' : 1, u 'age' : 17, u 'perms' : 45, u '_id' : 'andy1', u 'friends' : [ u 'Buzz' ]}]
"$lt", "$lte", "$gte", "$gt": Less than, lesser-equal, greater-equal, and greater-than. These operators will work to compare numbers like this: >>> # Find people who are underage >>> list ( collection. find ({ 'age' : { '$lt' : 18 }})) [{ u 'trinkets' : 5.05, u 'name' : u 'Andy', u 'is_andy' : 1, u 'age' : 17, u 'perms' : 45, u '_id' : 'andy1', u 'friends' : [ u 'Buzz' ]}] >>> # Find people who qualify for AARP >>> list ( collection. find ({ 'age' : { '$gt' : 65 }})) [] >>> # Find people in the [25-35] demographic >>> list ( collection. find ({ 'age' : { '$gte' : 25, '$lte' : 35 }})) []
Performance The surprising part of HyperDex's Mongo veneer is that the resulting system not only has stronger consistency and fault-tolerance guarantees as well as features such as ACID transactions over multiple keys, but it's also faster than Mongo. Let's go through some microbenchmarks and compare the performance of the two data stores. These benchmarks explore both writing complete documents as well as modifying small subsets of a document in place. They were all executed on Amazon EC2 c3.2xlarge instances. In each experiment, the documents average 16KB in size with an average of 1,000 top-level fields. We use a single client to write the data, so that we may quantify the throughput a typical single-threaded application will see; in practice, many threads may run in parallel and performance will increase accordingly. In our first deployment scenario, we'll look at a small two-node cluster configured to provide fault tolerance such that either node may fail without introducing data loss. With such a cluster, data will be written to each node before a write is considered complete in order to ensure that data cannot be lost. With HyperDex, these writes will always be strongly consistent, inline with HyperDex's strong consistency guarantees. For these benchmarks, the MongoDB client was configured to wait for a write to propagate to all replicas to ensure that writes can never be rolled back. http://hackingdistributed.com/images/2015-01-12-more-mongo-than-mongo/fault-tolerant-load.svg Bulk Loads To the right is the result of loading one hundred thousand documents, or 1.6GB, into both systems. Documents are inserted in sorted order by their identifier starting from an empty state of the database. We can see that HyperDex provides more than twice the throughput of MongoDB. In this same benchmark, the measured 99th percentile latency for HyperDex operations is just 2.6ms, while for MongoDB the same measurement is 5.6ms. The speedup is due partly to the optimized HyperLevelDB backend HyperDex uses to store its data. http://hackingdistributed.com/images/2015-01-12-more-mongo-than-mongo/fault-tolerant-put.svg Random Writes This second benchmark, shown to the right, measures the rate at which new documents may be inserted in a random order. The documents have the same size as those inserted in the first benchmark, but have keys chosen at random, rather than in a sequential order. Again, we see that HyperDex provides twice the throughput of MongoDB on the same workload. Our optimizations to HyperLevelDB are robust across workloads, not special-cased for a specific insertion pattern. http://hackingdistributed.com/images/2015-01-12-more-mongo-than-mongo/fault-tolerant-add.svg Atomic Increment The third benchmark measures the rate at which a single field may be atomically incremented using the "$inc" operator. This benchmark differs from the first two in that the amount of traffic between the client and the server is much smaller than the whole document, and proportional to the single field to be mutated. As with the first two benchmarks, HyperDex provides more than twice the throughput of MongoDB. http://hackingdistributed.com/images/2015-01-12-more-mongo-than-mongo/fault-tolerant-set.svg Set Operator A fourth benchmark is similar to the third, but uses the "$set" operator in place of the "$inc" operator. Similar to the third benchmark, this one uses small amounts of client-to-server communication to atomically mutate documents that reside on the server. In this benchmark, HyperDex provides approximately one and a half times the throughput of MongoDB. http://hackingdistributed.com/images/2015-01-12-more-mongo-than-mongo/fault-tolerant-del.svg Deletion The final benchmark measures the performance of removing documents one at a time by their primary key. In this benchmark, HyperDex provides more than four times the throughput of MongoDB. To summarize, two clusters deployed with the same fault tolerance guarantees, and the same benchmark code, were able to provide a single client thread with the following throughput. http://hackingdistributed.com/images/2015-01-12-more-mongo-than-mongo/fault-tolerant.svg Single Node Performance Up to this point, we've only investigated the performance under a replicated deployment. Historically, MongoDB has incorporated optimizations that improve single-node performance, where concerns for data safety and fault tolerance across replicas are secondary to raw performance. For an example of such optimizations, see our article on why MongoDB is broken by design. These optimizations have the potential to improve MongoDB performance beyond the linear speedup expected by removing the replication component. Indeed, this is exactly what we see when running both HyperDex and MongoDB in a single-server without fault tolerance or replication. The figure below shows the same workloads described above, but without any replication. Here, MongoDB's single-node performance optimizations can take effect and provide higher throughput. Even under such a scenario, HyperDex provides similar throughput to the MongoDB cluster on a variety of conditions. And it does so without weakening any consistency guarantees or special-casing for non-fault tolerant clusters. http://hackingdistributed.com/images/2015-01-12-more-mongo-than-mongo/single-node.svg Of course, applications can always get an additional performance boost by using the native HyperDex API instead of the Mongo veneer. But a 1-4X performance improvement without trying is a good start for most applications.
What's The Catch? A common refrain in conversations about distributed systems is that "everything is a tradeoff." So it might seem a little hard to believe that a data store can be better than another one across every metric. Surely, people will say, there must be something that HyperDex is worse at. What is it that you're not telling us? So let's talk a little bit about this line of reasoning. It's definitely the case that there are many tradeoffs in distributed system design, and that features often come at the expense of other features within the same code base. But to claim that one system must always have some weakness compared to another is to assume an equivalence among implementations, and there is no sound basis for such an assumption. The same way quick sort is better than bubble sort, a second generation computer program can easily be, and often is, better than first-generation alternatives across the board. That said, there are some things to keep in mind: The Mongo veneer provides coverage of many basic operations within MongoDB, but certain features may not yet be available. MongoDB's features are already heavily driver dependent, leading to their presence or absence across different drivers. The Mongo veneer should be treated as yet another driver for MongoDB that offers a particular set of features. This is the first release with the Mongo veneer. While HyperDex is stable, and the Mongo veneer is a part of the officially support release, we advise testing the veneer before jumping straight into production with it. HyperDex does not have anywhere near the market penetration of MongoDB. This means that it's easier to find a developer who has used MongoDB than one who's used HyperDex. The Mongo veneer makes this a non-issue for application developers by exporting the same API, though devops teams might need to get accustomed to a slightly different set of tools.
Supported Platforms HyperDex is free and open source. It supports Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Mac OSX, and docker with prepackaged binaries. Users looking to quickly try out HyperDex can use the "hyperdex/quickstart" Docker image for experimentation. A simple one-node HyperDex cluster can be created with just these two commands: $ docker pull hyperdex/quickstart $ docker run --net = host -t -i hyperdex/quickstart For production, HyperDex provides binary packages for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and CentOS, and source downloads for other platforms. A Mac OSX port for development is also available via Homebrew.
Benefits to Switching Upgrading from MongoDB to HyperDex brings several advantages: HyperDex is easy to set up. There is no need to configure replica groups or manually manage fragile configuration files. A fault-tolerant coordinator will automatically set up a cluster and manage sharding and replication.
HyperDex offers fast, atomic backups that can take a complete, cluster-wide consistent, near-instantenous snapshot of the cluster for easy archival and restore.
HyperDex can provide seamless operation through up to f failures without degradation, where f is a user-selectable parameter that may be set on a per-collection basis.
HyperDex provides strong consistency in all configurations. Every object retrieval will always return the latest written object. There's no need to tune journal parameters, write concern, write timeout or the dozen other parameters that MongoDB requires be set correctly.
Related Download HyperDex
HyperDex quickstart
Use HyperDex from Node.js.
If you have questions about whether your favorite MongoDB feature is supported, or would like to offer said feature as a suggestion, email the HyperDex discuss list.
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DisqusFor the record, there’s no reason to believe the American president has any idea what’s in the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, known as Korus. It’s far more likely Trump simply assumes that any trade deal, practically by definition, must reflexively be rejected, unless he’s helped negotiate its terms. (It’s also quite possible that he’ll announce today that “it turns out” he actually likes the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement after having a brief conversation with someone who tells him he should support it.)Regardless, Trump didn’t stop there. The president went on to say he wants to deploy a missile-defense system – Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense (Thaad) – in South Korea to help protect against a North Korean attack, but only if South Korea pays for the technology.“”On the THAAD system, it’s about a billion dollars,” Trump explained to Reuters. “I said, ‘Why are we paying? Why are we paying a billion dollars? We’re protecting. Why are we paying a billion dollars?’ So I informed South Korea it would be appropriate if they paid.”All of this is completely bonkers. Against the backdrop of a possible nuclear crisis with North Korea, Donald J. Trump has decided it’d be wise to antagonize our allies in South Korea – again.Complicating matters, let’s also not forget that South Korea’s presidential election is less than two weeks away, and Trump’s bizarre antics mean that South Korean candidates will, for purely domestic reasons, have no choice but to condemn the White House’s pointless posturing.As a consequence, no matter who wins the South Korean election, the next president of the country will begin his or her term with some hostility towards the United States – all because Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about – despite the fact that South Korea and the United States are supposed to be strong allies.When making a list of American friends that Trump has gone out of his way to alienate, we have a new contender for the top slot.COLUMBUS, Ohio – The state capital might talk Buckeyes' football 365 days a year, but it would love to be home to the Browns for three weeks every summer.
A prominent Columbus business leader with ties to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam told cleveland.com his organization has submitted a bid to become the team's new training camp home. Alex Fischer, president and CEO of the Columbus Partnership, acknowledged he's spearheading a campaign to lure the Browns to the state's largest and most prosperous city for their annual summer camp.
The deadline for bids was Aug. 15, although the Browns have not decided whether they will relocate camp from their Berea facility. The University of Akron, which hosted the Browns' Family Day scrimmage, is known to be one of the bidders. It's unclear how many locations are vying for the honor or when the Browns will make a decision. One source said Ohio Wesleyan University in suburban Columbus also is in the running.
Columbus' proposal included letters of recommendation from the mayor, county commissioners, local businessmen and other "political types," Fischer said.
The Browns have been strengthening their ties with the nation's 15th largest city since they named Alec Scheiner team president in December 2012. One of his first trips was here to introduce himself to businessmen in the vibrant corporate community.
Fischer's effort to make Columbus the Browns' summer home intensified about six weeks ago, however. A native of Hendersonville, Tenn., Fischer has worked in the private and public sectors. He served as a deputy governor and chief of staff to former Tennessee governor Don Sundquist. He also was commissioner of the Tennessee department of economic development.
Fischer lived in Knoxville – home to Pilot Flying J – and knows the Haslam family.
"Nobody in Ohio holds Jimmy Haslam and the Haslam family in higher regard than me," Fischer said.
Unlike the University of Akron's plan, the Columbus proposal does not have a specific site targeted.
"There are a number of places we think could meet the Browns criteria," Fischer said. "During the process we've expressed that to them."
Greater Columbus Sports Commission executive director Linda Shetina Logan told cleveland.com Ohio Dominican University is one place under consideration. Another possibility is eventually building a facility, which also could be used by the Columbus Crew, the city's MLS entry, and area youth soccer organizations.
Central Ohio represents an NFL battleground market, one within 185 miles of four franchises: Browns, Cincinnati Bengals, Pittsburgh Steelers and Indianapolis Colts. The Browns' losing ways have enabled the Steelers and Bengals to make inroads in a region that's created 100,000 jobs in the past four years.
Browns officials want to be a serious player here, capitalizing on marketing opportunities and a shifting population base. The club's vice president of fan experience and marketing Kevin Griffin is a Columbus native and former Buckeyes football player. He's also the nephew of OSU icon Archie Griffin.
In January, he told cleveland.com:
"We will do an event or two down there in the off-season," Griffin said. "The strategy is not fleshed out, but I can tell you it's one of our top priorities."
The Browns might ultimately opt to stay in Berea, where camp has been held since 1992, but General Manager Ray Farmer and coach Mike Pettine seem receptive to moving it.
"I definitely like the idea," Farmer said on Sept. 5. "Now, whether or not it makes sense, that's a whole other subject – where you go, how far away is it, what the facility is like. There are a lot of intangibles that go into making that decision, but I do think there are positives and there are negative either way with taking training camp somewhere else."
The NFL trend, however, has teams returning to their home facility. This past summer just 13 of 32 clubs conducted camps offsite.LANAO DEL SUR, Philippines – Amid the trauma and terror that have gripped Marawi City here since Tuesday, leading to President Duterte’s imposition of martial law in the whole of Mindanao later that day, a band of terrorists that has reportedly pledged allegiance to international terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) has been blamed for the attacks: the Maute group.
More than two years ago, just as the ISIS in the Middle East started making international headlines, the Maute group first emerged in this province’s Butig town.
Siblings Omar and Abdulla Maute founded the group, originally named Dawlah Islamiya, but eventually became known as the Maute terror group feared today for its impunity.
Ex-OFWs
Omar and Abdullah are descendants of a big Maranaw warrior clan in Butig, a hinterland town in the first district of this province.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has a government-recognized enclave in Butig, Camp Busrah Siomorong.
Somewhere in the same municipality, the late MILF founder Salamat Hashim was laid to rest after he died of a cardiovascular disease in 2003.
Omar and Abdullah were former contract workers in the Middle East. They both studied Islamic theology in between working in secular schools in Syria and in the United Arab Emirates.
Taliban-style justice system
The Maute brothers espouse hatred for non-Muslims and are known for their propensity to enforce a Taliban-style justice system, which Maranaws find ruthless and absolutely primitive.
Local officials and moderate clerics disagree with the kind of Islam being preached by the Maute group, premised on what is widely perceived as a “distorted concept” of a puritanical Islamic community governed by a Sharia justice system and absolutely detached from non-Muslims.
Moderate clerics argue there is not a single verse in the Qur’an encouraging persecution of non-Muslims.
Islam has very extensive teachings on universal love, fraternalism and tolerance based on the principle “la iqra fidin,” meaning there is no compulsion in religion.
Preachers opposed to the ways of the Maute group use as pitch to counter its radical views how their prophet Mohammad extended friendship to the Catholic, Jewish and pagan communities in the ancient Mediterranean communities that were to become the different countries now in the Middle East and North Africa.
Among the first official acts of Mohammad, after he established the first-ever Muslim community in what is now Saudi Arabia, was to send a letter, through a scribe, to Catholics in a monastery in Mt. Sinai in Egypt, assuring them of respect of their religion and protection in case of persecution by any feudal group.
Fanatically misguided militants
For many residents of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which covers all 39 towns in Lanao del Sur and its capital, Marawi City, Maute group is a fanatically misguided group of Islamic militants inspired by ISIS and with extremely dangerous tendencies.
In what seemed like a baptism of fire, the group’s initial adventurism carried out in Butig ruined the town and dislocated thousands of residents. Many of them are still reluctant to return to their villages that were plundered in one attack after another from 2015 until early this year.
Some local officials in Maguindanao have stories purporting that no fewer than 10 young recruits of the Maute brothers were trained in the fabrication of improvised explosive devices by the slain Malaysian terrorist Marwan and his Maguindanaon cohort, Abdulbasit Usman, in Barangay Pidsandawan in Mamasapano town in late 2014.
Marwan (real name: Zulkifli bin Hir) was killed by a team of the police’s elite Special Action Force in a dawn raid in Barangay Pidsandawan in Mamasapano, Maguindanao on Jan. 25, 2015.
Usman, an ethnic Maguindanaon, was shot dead about three months later by guerrillas of the MILF in keeping with their ceasefire accord with the government.
Brutal beheadings
The Maute group became even more notorious when, in April 2016, its members beheaded captives Salvador Janobas and his younger brother Jaymart on mere suspicion of being spies of the military.
The Visayan victims, who were lowly laborers in a mini sawmill owned by an illegal logger in Butig, were kidnapped by Maute gunmen a month before they were executed, after their family failed to raise a P5-million ransom in exchange for their release.
Video footage of their brutal execution was immediately circulated through Facebook timelines of local self-proclaimed jihadists using aliases.
Links with Umbra Kato
The Mautes’ relatives said that even before Omar and Abdullah organized the Dawlah Islamiya, they already had links with the founder of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) in Maguindanao, the late Ameril Umbra Kato.
Kato was also a radical cleric trained in a religious school in Saudi Arabia. He studied abroad as a government scholar during the time of the late former president Ferdinand Marcos.
Kato started as a commander in the MILF, but got booted in 2010 for insubordination and differences with members of their central committee.
The Maute brothers reportedly sent representatives to visit Kato in his hideout in a hinterland surrounded by Maguindanao’s South Upi, Guindulungan and Datu Saudi towns after he suffered a hypertensive stroke that left half of his body paralyzed and eventually caused his death.
Early this year, the Maute group and the Abu Sayyaf fused ranks, according to local officials here and sources in the Army’s intelligence community.
The BIFF, the Abu Sayyaf and the Maute group have a common denominator: that of using the black ISIS flag as their revolutionary banner.Samajwadi Party leader and Rajya Sabha MP, Amar Singh was granted Z-category security cover by the Centre, news agency PTI reported on Sunday. It is unclear why Amar Singh’s security cover was upgraded to the country’s third highest category. Z-category cover would normally entail 22 security personnel, including four or five NSG commandos and police personnel. Last year, Amar Singh was at the centre of the controversy surrounding Samajwadi Party as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav locked horns with his uncle Shivpal Yadav. Akhilesh also hinted that a few “outsiders” were working against the interests of the party.
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In October 2016, Amar Singh claimed that he fears party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav and even wrote to the Centre asking them to provide additional security. “I am scared of him after he said that. I will meet the home minister and appeal to him to provide security for my life,” Amar Singh said. “He (Ram Gopal) uses the pen as well as the carbine [woh kalam se carbine tak chalate hain]. He is both an intellectual and a muscleman [woh bahubali aur budhibali dono hain].”
Interesting in 2010, when he was expelled from the party, Amar Singh alleged that there was a threat to his life from SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and then chief minister Mayawati.
Meanwhile, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh are scheduled to meet officials at the Election Commission on Monday with signed affidavits of party MLAs. The SP split into two factions — one led by Akhilesh Yadav and the other by Mulayam — and both staked claim over the use of the party election symbol, the cycle. The EC asked both sides to prove their majority by submitting signed affidavits of the party leaders. Party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav already met EC officials and submitted a set of documents proving that Akhilesh enjoys a clear majority within the party.
At a national executive meeting convened by Ram Gopal Yadav, Akhilesh was crowned as the new national president, a position held by his father Mulayam for decades. Mulayam termed the meeting ‘illegal’ as only the party president can convene the executive board, according to the SP constitution.
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The first of the seven phases of polling in Uttar Pradesh will begin from February 11 and end on March 8. The counting of votes is on March 11.The Crimea region of Ukraine is headed toward a referendum this Sunday, with the peninsula, home to a majority Russian-speaking population and a major Russian naval base, already out of Ukraine's grasp.
Russian soldiers posing as Crimean "self-defense" forces are thick on the ground, and the referendum has been written to make separation from Ukraine a foregone conclusion. Voters are being given a choice between independence or unification with Russia, and the pro-Russian legislators who control the regional government are already laying the groundwork for joining the country. Russia seems fine with this.
How did we get here so quickly? Russia has been preparing for this contingency for years – which comes as a surprise to no one who had been following the situation closely. While there have been howls from corners of Congress that the US intelligence community failed to see this coming, Russian contingency planning over Crimea has been known to the US government for at least seven years.
A Dec. 7, 2006 cable from the US Embassy in Kiev, leaked to Wikileaks by former US soldier Chelsea Manning, outlined the ways in which Russia – alarmed by NATO expansion to the east and afraid of Ukraine possibly joining the European Union – was setting the table in Crimea. Ukraine's so-called Orange Revolution, which brought a government to power that looked west more than east, had happened just two years prior.
Russia had been busy in the meantime.
The author of the cable, titled "The Russia Factor in Crimea - Ukraine's Soft Underbelly?" writes on how Ukrainian officials were dismissive of Crimean separatism at the time, but:
Nearly all contended that pro-Russian forces in Crimea, acting with funding and direction from Moscow, have systematically attempted to increase communal tensions in Crimea in the two years since the Orange Revolution. They have done so by cynically fanning ethnic Russian chauvinism towards Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians, through manipulation of issues like the status of the Russian language, NATO, and an alleged Tatar threat to "Slavs," in a deliberate effort to destabilize Crimea, weaken Ukraine, and prevent Ukraine's movement west into institutions like NATO and the EU. While the total number of pro-Russian activists in Crimea is relatively low, the focus is on shaping public perceptions and controlling the information space, so far with success.
Give that diplomat a star. In the past few weeks, Russian President Vladimir Putin's government has, as predicted, made trumped-up claims that its actions have been necessary to protect ethnic-Russians in Crimea (never mind that there have been no reports of attacks against them) and effectively used the Russian-language media it controls to frighten the region's people.
As Sabra Ayres wrote for the Monitor from Simferopol, Crimea, earlier this month:
It was an altogether different scene from the media reports running on the predominately Russian news outlets broadcast across Crimea. Russian news channels, such as Russia 24, run hourly reports depicting a deteriorating situation in Ukraine, with editorial suggestions that the lives of the peninsula’s ethnic-Russian population are under threat.
... The televised claims of Ukraine in chaos and promises of Russian troops coming in to save the Russian population has built up support in Crimea for Mr. Putin’s actions and the Russian military has encountered a population that has largely accepted with open arms.
The diplomat wrote of Russian financial outreach to groups in Crimea and the use of disinformation and intelligence operations from Russia's Black Sea Fleet, based in Ukraine's Sevastopol under a lease agreement, to foment and strengthen anti-Kiev sentiment.
The author also noted that the area was fertile ground for pro-Russian inclinations. That is a result of Stalin's purging the peninsula of its ethnic Tatars and smaller minorities in 1944 – and replacing them with ethnic Russians from eastern Ukraine and Russia proper. Many Tatars, eager for independence from the Soviet Union, backed Nazi Germany during the war. Today, "up to 70 percent" of Crimea's population is ethnic Russian.
The cable reads: "While there has always been overwhelmingly pro-Russian sentiment in Crimea's population, the beginning of systematic, organized efforts by pro-Russian groups backed by Russian money is a relatively new phenomenon, most Crimean observers claimed. [Oleksandr, then a member of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council] Lytvynenko stated that the Russian [Black Sea Fleet's] sizable intel unit, part of the GRU (Russian military intelligence), was active in deliberately fostering interethnic tensions in Crimea to ensure that a state of constant simmering tension was maintained. This included money to local groups carrying out Moscow's wishes, information campaigns, and occasional logistic support, including for the May-June anti-NATO protests in Feodosia.
This cable doesn't speculate as to where all this could be heading. But an Embassy Kiev cable from October 2009 does. The cable, "Ukraine-Russia: Is Military Conflict No Longer Unthinkable?" was written in the context of Russia's lease on the Sevastopol naval base expiring in 2017 (the lease was extended until 2042 shortly after now-deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych came to office in 2010). But it's still a good read on Russia's strategic concerns in Crimea.
"Recent Russian actions have spurred a public discussion within the Ukrainian elite about Russian intentions toward Ukraine," the author writes. "The overall impression is that Russian military action against Ukraine, while still unlikely, is no longer unthinkable."
The cable quotes two articles from former Ukrainian National Security Advisor Volodymyr Horbulin, in which he argued "that Russia has many non-military levers with which to influence Ukraine (above all, by stirring up trouble in the Crimea)" and "he did not rule out the use of military force, especially if Ukraine's new president proves not to be as pliable as the Kremlin may hope."
The new president, Yanukovych, turned out to be sufficiently pliable. But his flight to Russia late last month as angry crowds surged against him in Kiev's Maidan has brought a clique to power that are far less reliable from Russia's perspective.
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Today, Russia is successfully consolidating its position in Crimea and Mr. Putin seems unconcerned about how the US sees things. Why would he? Either a Crimea incorporated in the Russian Federation, or a weak independent state that will probably be reliant on financial transfers from Moscow to replace those lost from Kiev, will suit him.
Did the US see this coming? As a possibility, yes. But could that knowledge have been used to head off Russian action on its doorstep, in an area of both emotional and strategic importance to the country? It's hard to see how.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.) on Monday vowed to fight back against Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
Sanders called the plan an "obsession" that has "nothing to do with improving healthcare."
Republicans in Congress have returned to their old obsession of trying to defund Planned Parenthood. This is outrageous for many reasons. — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 9, 2017
Republicans’ plan has nothing to do with improving health care. They want to defund Planned Parenthood simply because it provides abortions. — Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 9, 2017
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Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.) said last week that language defunding Planned Parenthood would be included in a bill repealing ObamaCare.
With a Republican majority in the House and Senate, and an incoming Republican president, the GOP stands its best chance in years of defunding the organization.
Republicans have long sought to defund Planned Parenthood because it provides abortions, though no federal funding is used for the procedure.
Democrats, including Sanders, argue that cutting |
rates at 6.4pc per 1,000 residents - some distance behind the EU average of 9.7pc.
The new figures, released by the EU's statistical office Eurostat, now puts Ireland's population at 4.6 million.
Given the nation's birth and death rates, it means Ireland saw a natural change in population of +8.1pc in 2014.
Housing and childcare sectors are already struggling under the weight of young families, while at the other end of the scale the low death rate means the pensions bill is spiralling.
Experts warned that childcare in the country was not fit for purpose, given the nation's growing young population.
Early Childhood Ireland CEO Teresa Heeney has said that while Ireland's high birth rate is the "envy of our European neighbours", she warned that the sector is facing a crisis.
"Our current level spending in the sector is just 0.2pc of GDP. This is far short of where we need to be and we must move towards 0.7pc which is closer to the European average, and ultimately to 1pc," she said.
"This Government must make choices in the next Budget which will have a long- lasting impact on Irish children, families and early childhood educators.
"The lack of a clear plan today is leading to duplication and poor sustainability in a childcare sector that is overstretched and not invested in properly."
Fianna Fáil spokesman for children Robert Troy has also expressed concerns in relation to Ireland's early childhood care infrastructure.
"While the increase in births is very welcome, we must asses our current systems. The structures we have in place are just not fit for purpose."
The total population of the EU ballooned by almost two million people last year. As a whole, the population grew from 506.9 to 508 million.
Germany continues to be a European powerhouse with some 81.2 million residents accounting for 16pc of the total.
France takes the second spot with 13pc of the population or 66.4 million residents.
The UK, which is home to some 64.8 million people, makes up 12.9pc.
During 2014, 5.1 million babies were born, 33,000 up on the previous year. It appears Europeans are now living longer with the number of deaths across Europe down by 46,000 to 4.9 million.
Irish IndependentAbove: Philadelphia student walk-out protesting school closures 2013.
Othella Stanback could very well be a Philadelphia public school success story in the making. At 19 years old and in her senior year at Ben Franklin High in North Philly, she’s dropped out of school twice and considered leaving more times than that. But she’s always come back. And she has dreams for herself.
“I want to be an FBI agent,” Stanback says, sitting in the late afternoon on the steps of a local welfare office, where she’s come to file paperwork. She has two young children—4-year-old Amor and 2-year-old Amira—and while it’s been tough juggling school and parenting, her ambitions have remained intact. “Or teach philosophy,” she says, ticking off her potential careers. “Except I took one of those quiz things for college recently and it told me the thing I’d be good at is organizing.” Of course, before starting any of those careers, she needs to get into to college—and that’s where the odds are stacked against her.
Stanback’s got her sights set on Millersville University, a state college in Pennsylvania an hour and a half west of the city. College applications are typically due at the end of November, but she doesn’t have the strong file she ought to. From ninth through eleventh grades, Stanback attended University City High, where she took biology, chemistry and physical science from a favorite science teacher. That’s who Stanback would have asked for a letter of recommendation for college. But earlier this year, Universtiy was shut down in a massive sweep of school closures in Philadelphia. In the ensuing chaos, Stanback lost touch with her science teacher.
“I had connections with teachers, it was relationships I built,” Stanback says, looking back at the educational home she lost. “So now when I come to school I don’t really know anyone. I have nobody I can connect to and no teacher I can really trust to talk about certain things, because that takes time.”
Philadelphia’s public education system, with roughly 140,000 students, is struggling for survival. In 2010, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett was elected on a platform that included a range of controversial, if increasingly widespread education reform ideas. He called for test-driven teacher accountability, vouchers, decreased regulations for charter schools and a larger role for private, for-profit entities. So when Corbett faced a state fiscal crisis—one that has been compounded by the loss of federal stimulus money, which was propping up the state’s education budget—he responded with a mixture of austerity measures and hardline reforms for public schools. Last year, the governor slashed $1.1 billion from the state’s K-12 budget, cuts that particularly devastated Philadelphia’s state-controlled schools. On the advice of a private consulting group, school officials announced that the district would need to close a stunning five dozen schools, and noted that the district ought to brace itself for dissolution. This year, in an effort to forestall that devastation, the district asked teachers to take pay cuts of between 5 and 13 percent of their salaries. That wasn’t enough. In the spring, the district closed 23 schools, including Stanback’s. This fall, students went back to schools with skeletal staff after the district laid off 3,859 people, one of every five district employees.
Philadelphia is deep into worst-case scenario territory, but it’s not alone. In cities like Cleveland, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Chicago—all of them with sizable black populations and long histories of entrenched poverty—lawmakers have responded to budget crises with cuts to public education and market-driven education reformagendas. In a city like Philadelphia, which has the worst poverty rate of the ten largest U.S. cities, in which 39 percent of the city’s children live in poverty and in which blacks and Latinos are twice as likely as whites to be poor, robust public schools are even more vital. The consequences of the collapse of the city’s public school system is falling squarely on the backs of Stanback and her classmates.
Government Shutdowns
Stanback was uprooted from University City High and replanted in a crowded field. She was one of roughly 9,000 students, the overwhelming majority of them black and Latino, whose schools were shut down in the mass closures. Benjamin Franklin High School, which Stanback now attends, is bursting at the seams with an influx of new students from shuttered schools. “The hallways are so crowded, and at lunch you have to fight to find a seat, that’s how packed the lunchroom is,” says Sharron Snyder, an 18-year-old senior at Ben Franklin who is best friends with Stanback.
Ben Franklin has thus far weathered the immediate budgetary crisis intact. But previous rounds of budget cutting have been wearing away at the school for years. “We used to have pre-calculus, and an advanced writing class,” says Kelli Ross, a 17-year-old senior at Ben Franklin who had her eye on that advanced writing class for years. By the time she was old enough to take it, it was gone. “We had honors classes for ninth graders, too. But we don’t have any of that anymore.” When Ross started in her freshman year the school had a counselor for every grade. Gradually counselors disappeared and today there’s just one serving the whole school. “We’ve always had good programs,” Ross says. “It’s just, a lot of the good stuff, we can never keep.”
“Budget crisis” is too tame a phrase to describe what’s happening in Philadelphia right now. The cuts hit bone. Nurses, counselors, teachers, lunchroom aides, assistant principals and librarians were eliminated. On Sept. 25, a sixth-grader namedLaporshia Massey passed away after she suffered an asthma attack at school. Massey’s school didn’t have a nurse, and her family argued one could have saved their daughter’s life. In fact, during the budget crisis, school nurses warned that cuts to nursing staff would hurt student academic performance and endanger student safety. Three weeks after Massey’s death, amidst public outcry, Gov. Corbett released $45 million in state money to rehire some teachers, counselors and other support staff. Corbett had been withholding the money on the demand that the teachers union hand over further concessions in their contract standoff. When he released the funds, Corbett’s administration made sure to mention that he wasn’t doing it because of Massey.
The budget crisis in Philadelphia, in cutting as deep as it has, highlights the fact that schools are so much more than buildings that house desks and kids, and that education is much more than classroom learning and testing. Schools are lifelines in communities, often functioning as the hub in a neighborhood. Nurses, counselors, assistant principals, music teachers and librarians play crucial roles in sustaining those communities and keeping children afloat. Take counselors, for instance, who do so much more than settle class schedules and lay out college brochures. At the start of November, 80 counselors laid off in the midst of the crisis were returned to Philadelphia schools so that every high school will have at least one counselor,thePhiladelphia Inquirer reported. But the damage was done for many students. Not having counselors around for nearly two months at the beginning of the school year left them without guides through the testing and college application maze. Some schools even declined to offer PSATs, which prep students for the SATs, because they didn’t have counselors to coordinate the tests.
Sometimes, though, it’s the everyday details that are the most maddening. Trina Dean, a fourth grade teacher at Thomas Mifflin Elementary in North Philly, had 42 students at the start of the year and only 30 textbooks. So what did she do? She started photocopying the books. “Which is illegal, actually,” Dean notes. By the time the district shifted 10 students out of her class, she had gone through an entire case of copy paper—a supply that was supposed to last her the entire semester. Students across the district have been sent home with supply wishlists asking parents to bring in copy paper, pencils, markers, even toilet paper.
“There’s no other word for it than ‘criminal,’” said Hiram Rivera, executive director of the Philadelphia Student Union. “They’re destroying futures, the impacts of which will be felt for generations after. What has been done to the Philadelphia school district the past two years alone will leave impacts that will be felt for generations after.”
If only it was just the past two years, though. Philadelphia has been the guinea pig for every kind of education reform fad that’s come along in the past 30 years, driven primarily by venture-philanthropists like Bill Gates and for-profit consultants like McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group. Performance standards, state control, vouchers, restructuring, decentralization, charters, teacher-focused and test-driven accountability efforts—Philadelphia students have had a front-row seat to all of it.
Mass school closures are a hallmark of this movement. Sharron Snyder, Stanback’s friend at Benjamin Franklin High School, has seen it reshape the North Philly neighborhood where she grew up. Snyder ended up at Ben Franklin in her junior year after Rhodes, the all-girls public high school she attended from seventh through tenth grades, was reconfigured into a co-ed school last year. This kind of churn isn’t just a symptom of education reform, it’s a tactic. In the business world, successful businesses thrive and weak, underperforming ones wither and shut down. Proponents argue that when this principle is carried over into public education, the resulting competition lifts the bar of expectation and results for everyone. But in practice, schools are not businesses and communities don’t function the same way as markets, and school closures haven’t left a trail of academic success stories in their wake. Rather, the instability they provoke takes a toll on communities. For Snyder, it goes back further than high school. She and her siblings went to a neighborhood elementary school that was remade into a daycare center after it was shut down in the last round of closures. It’s still jarring for her to walk by the school and not see neighborhood kids playing in the yard. “It’s like, where are all the kids?” Snyder says.
Back in March, Snyder, Stanback and Ross, who are all active with the Philadelphia Student Union, took part in a walkout to protest the mass school closures. Some 5,000 students and parents took part, using the hashtag #walkout215—Philadelphia’s area code—to mobilize students. The closures still went ahead, and by every account more are on the way.
Snyder is direct about the racial dynamics at play. “They’re taking away mainly from the black and brown communities,” she said. “Everyone can notice that.” Black youth are 54.5 percent of the district but were 80 percent of those whose schools were announced for closure. “They make us feel like we’re the bad ones,” Snyder says. “We’re not. You’re just not giving us the things we need. So when you see our failing test grades you want to close our schools?” Snyder says those low test scores reflect the catch-22 in which students are trapped. “It’s because we don’t have books, because of what you’re doing.”
Independent Study
Othella Stanback’s two big college-application challenges today are studying for the SAT and gathering the means to visit colleges.”Ideally I want to be able to expand my options and see as many campuses as possible, but that’s the hard thing right now,” she says.
Even getting through this school year will be a challenge for Stanback. She notes that University City High supported teen parents with a program to help pull them through school with extra social and academic support. Ben Franklin’s got its own Teen Parent Classroom, one merciful constant from her University City days. But Stanback’s had to miss school to take care of her kids, and of her own mom, who usually looks after Amor and Amira while Stanback’s at school.
Instability is the norm at Ben Franklin now. Seven weeks into her last year in Philly public schools, Othella’s course schedule has been changed three times. Teachers and students and classrooms were swapped every few weeks. Of her six classes, Stanback doesn’t have textbooks in three. The books she does have are chewed up, bindings broken and pages missing, she says. Both Stanback and Snyder say that in their English classes they sit three students to one book. There simply aren’t enough books for everyone, so no one’s allowed to take them home. All Stanback’s schoolwork fits in a small children’s backpack meant for toddlers.
The other thing Ben Franklin doesn’t have? An open library. “I asked them the first day here, ‘Do you have a library?’ and they told me, ‘It’s closed,’” says Stanback. The doors are shut; students can’t go in.
Of course, Stanback doesn’t remember the book and library situation being a whole lot better at her old school. “At University City High, you couldn’t ever take a book home,” she says. “Ever.” But she was close with a teacher who looked after her. “She’d give me books to read,” Stanback says. “If she had it, then I could have it.”
According to the Association of Philadelphia School Librarians, at the end of the last academic year 13 librarians took an early retirement in anticipation of the mass layoffs. Brenda Maiden, the president of the association and former librarian at Carver High School of Engineering and Science, was one of those who chose early retirment. She says that eight of the 16 school librarians who remained after the early retirements got laid off, which left eight school librarians to serve the entire district this school year. That doesn’t mean they’re able to guide students through the library. “Our certified librarians are being used as classroom teachers, or as prep teachers for testing,” Maiden said. “The libraries may be open, but the books are sitting on the shelves.”
The only thing that clearly stings Maiden more than being forced into early retirement is that Philly students are being denied access to a school library experience. “It’s a disservice to the children of Philadelphia,” she says. “Especially at the elementary school level. Those children need those skills. What is a fiction book? What is a non-fiction book? Are they being read to? It’s like having a baby. And you have to take care of and mold that child,” Maiden frets.
Since the start of the school year, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, together with the advocacy group Parents United for Public Education, have collected roughly 800 parent and community complaints about the impact that this year’s budget crisis has had on students. They are filing their complaints with the state in an attempt to force Pennsylvania to take responsibility for Philly youth. Philadelphia schools have been state-controlled for a dozen years, and the movement argues that Corbett and state lawmakers are failing in their legislatively mandated duties to provide adequate, quality public education.
It’s unclear what course the legal process will take, if any. Pennsylvania has 60 days to investigate each complaint made. “I think the filing of these complaints is unprecedented, and the reason why this is happening is because parents are desperate and are searching for anything they can do to provide some hope of action,” says Michael Churchill, an attorney at the Public Interest Law Center.
Stanback certainly feels the urgency. For herself, for her family’s future, for her daughters. When asked to envision her ideal high school environment, she doesn’t ask for much. “It wouldn’t even have to be beautiful,” Stanback says. “It would be like, you know, you have books. You have paper. You have the classes you need to get you to college.”Oct. 12, 2016, 5:57 PM GMT / Updated Oct. 12, 2016, 5:57 PM GMT By Drew Katchen
The first thing I learn about Misty Snow when I meet her at a beauty salon in downtown Salt Lake City is she’s not a coffee person. The first-time Democratic candidate for Senate prefers Mountain Dew Voltage, which according to the label, is charged with raspberry, citrus flavor and ginseng. She’s taking sips from a can here and there as her hair and makeup is perfected by a volunteer. Snow apparently is not a fan of this part of the morning, but she realizes that it’s part of the new life she’s chosen as a public figure and possible senator. If elected in November, Snow would be the first transgender senator and first millennial senator on Capitol Hill, but she tends to downplay the historic nature of her campaign as others celebrate its significance.
“You would think that would happen in California or New York, but Utah of all places,” Amanda Berg, a student at the University of Utah, told me recently about Snow. “We are so much more progressive than they think we are.”
Just a few months earlier, prior to her June win in the Utah Democratic primary against a massage therapist named Jonathan Swinton, Snow, 31, was working full-time as a cashier at a Harmons Grocery store, a job she’s had since the age of 17. Snow tells me she had no real interest in seeking the political limelight or a new life representing 3 million Utahans.
“The other guy pissed me off so much,” Snow says about Swinton, as a friendly woman named Skyler puts the final touches on Snow’s curls. “I want Democrats to nominate people who will stand up to the Republicans, not agree with the Republicans.”
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Utah, Misty Snow, talks with supporters at a campaign barbecue event on July 13, 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. George Frey / Getty Images
Despite having tuition-free higher education as central to her platform, Snow didn’t attend college. Yet she spent the bulk of her 20s obsessively following current events and being energized by progressive politicians like Ralph Nader and former two-term Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, who famously called for the impeachment of former President George W Bush. And as Snow watched Swinton rail against Planned Parenthood and as Bernie Sanders enthusiasm swept Utah, Snow decided to pony up the entirety of her income tax return and submit the $1,355 needed to become a federal candidate in the state. And now here she is, in awe of most of the attention she’s gotten, but remaining firm on why she jumped into the race in the first place.
“I’m not sure there’s a normal day, because every day is different,” she tells me. “There’s always a million things going on. It can be exhausting some days, but we just gotta do it. I kind of miss my quiet life, but I do think it’s important to stand up for issues I care about.”
It’s a Tuesday, and Snow has little time left to make her case to Utahans on why they should vote for her. And at this stage every vote counts for Snow, especially in a state with low voter turnout. Despite endorsements from Our Revolution, an organization run by Bernie Sanders, and Howard Dean’s Democracy for America, the most recent polling by Utah Policy, a site covering the state’s political landscape, has Senator Mike Lee -- the popular Mormon Republican incumbent and pointed Trump critic –- leading by 37 points. Snow realizes her long odds as a progressive Democrat in Utah taking on a high-level Republican, but she remains undaunted, at least in conversations with me and in public.
Utah Senator Mike Lee, speaks at republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz campaign rally on March 19, 2016 in Provo, Utah. George Frey / Getty Images
When I ask her about those numbers, she works to put things in something of a historical context.
“It’s been more encouraging I think than a lot of people realize. In 1992, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Utah [Wayne Owens] got 39.7 percent of the vote. Since then the best showing for a Democrat for Senate has been 33 percent of the vote. If I could get more than that, it would be the best showing for a Democrat since 1992. I think I can; I think I’ll beat 33 percent. I think I’ll show them that you can run as a progressive, and you can actually do well.”
One thing I learn quickly about Snow is she’s formidable with statistics and numbers –- clearly a valuable skill on the stump and in office -- prompting me to ask her if she has something of a photographic memory. She responds saying that is a question she’s received her entire life.
Troy Williams, the Executive Director of Equality Utah, tells me that Snow’s campaign is exciting for state politics. “All Democrats in the state of Utah have an uphill battle on statewide races and in federal races,” he tells me. “But that is how the LGBT community is in the state of Utah. We know that the odds are stacked against us, but we’re to keep fighting anyway.”
A silhouette of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Utah, Misty Snow, is imposed against her campaign sign at a campaign barbecue event on July 13, 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. George Frey / Getty Images
Today, Snow is kicking off the day at Brigham Young University (BYU) -- roughly an hour south down I-15 from the deeply conservative Provo –- meeting college voters at what’s being billed a political involvement fair. Later, she has the Democratic Women’s Annual Spaghetti Dinner and Candidate Fair just a bit north of BYU on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem. When we arrive at BYU, campus workers are still setting up tables for the event.
“It would be nearly impossible for a Democrat to win,” Richard Davis, a BYU political science professor and onetime candidate for Utah state Democratic Party chair, tells me during the fair. “It is a very Republican state. In Utah, [Trump] is likely to win, but he’s likely to win with just a plurality of the vote. And that means that’s an opening for Democrats, but it’s unlikely Misty Snow will fill that gap. She is first a Democrat in a Republican state, and the fact that she’s also very liberal makes it unlikely that voters are going to turn to her. I think Mike Lee will win by a large margin.”
Snow grew up Mormon before leaving the church in her early teens after objecting to what church elders preached about Ellen Degeneres, who famously came out as lesbian in the late 90s. Snow also cites her growing awareness of being transgender as another factor in choosing to leave the church.
“I always had these feelings, and they all started coming to a head when I went through puberty,” she says. After years of struggling, Snow finally began living openly as a transgender woman in late 2014, and while she admits to this causing temporary strain at home, her mother is now supportive of her and her campaign.
“People tell me they like what I'm doing,” Snow offers in a rare moment of semi-boasting. “Another woman in Texas who is trans says she's running for House of Representatives in 2018 because she really likes what I'm doing here. A lot of people tell me their own stories and how much it means to them and how inspiring I am."
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Utah, Misty Snow, talks with supporters at a campaign barbecue event on July 13, 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. George Frey / Getty Images
Back at the candidate fair at BYU, it’s apparent that Snow approaches these events with determination, seemingly jumping into them with a fierce focus and boundless energy. Snow seems to have a heads-down style toward campaigning; she's not much for small talk or asking a lot of questions, but it’s apparent she’s absorbing everything around her and likely remembering all the small details. When she does engage, whether it’s an interviewer or a potential voter, her speech is often rapid-fire and sometimes jumbled and difficult to pick up, her sharp mind is clearly working at top-speed to get out the myriad big ideas she has in what she seems to view as little time.
At BYU, Snow is the first candidate to arrive, and one of the only actual candidates running for office in Utah attending the fair. Incumbents Mike Lee and Jason Chaffetz are both in Washington for the work week, and Snow makes it a point to tell any potential voter she’s never been to Washington. Not on vacation; not for work.
As one of her volunteers helps her set up a campaign booth in the Wilkinson Student Center Garden Court, Snow paces back and forth around the tables, noting she’s by the glass doors facing the Jamba Juice, which, as she notes, is good for traffic. Snow also observers she’s not in the main row near the booths set up for Lee, Donald Trump, Mia Love or Doug Owens, and the bulk of the traffic is flowing that way, all of which is perhaps a physical reminder of her status in the race. Snow is able to give anyone a friendly hello, especially the undergrads with their eyes trained on the refreshment table. All afternoon she reaches out her hand and says “I’m Misty Snow, and I’m running for Congress. If elected, I will be a voice for my generation.” Despite being a Mormon school and in a deeply conservative area, many students are receptive to Snow’s message of clean energy, extended maternity leave and the fact that she’s a working-class woman with a passion for politics. The fact that she is transgender rarely seems to rise to the surface.
“More working class people in Congress would allow more working class issues to be heard,” I overhear her tell a female college student. “It’s hard for these people who were born rich, who grew up rich, have lived a life of privilege to understand what it’s like to be poor, what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. As somebody with that background, I can relate to average people much better than most people in our Congress. I’ve never even been to Washington.”
Democratic candidate for Senate Misty Snow poses for a photograph Tuesday, June 28, 2016, in Salt Lake City. Rick Bowmer / AP
Snow has never met Senator Lee, but she is slated to debate him at the school, which is Lee’s alma mater, on October 12.
Liz, who is 31 and considers herself a nontraditional student and cites pollution as a big issue for her, was getting a smoothie, realized the fair was happening and rushed in to meet Snow.
“I saw Misty’s sign, and I was really really excited,” she tells me. “She’s sort of a celebrity. It’s a big deal. Coming here she’s very, very brave. In my women’s studies class, we talk about her. I was worried that maybe they weren’t being nice to Misty.”
"These are my people," Snow tells me before another student arrives to inspect her table, which is largely bereft of what the other candidates seem to have. There are no big banners emblazoned with her face on them. She didn’t bring t-shirts to hand out, but she has bumper stickers. Other candidates have candy; she has buttons. Gary Johnson and Bill Weld’s table seems to have some kind of board game. A lot of men are hanging out at his table.
"The air quality is killing us," I overhear Snow tell a student.
Snow seems to get the stragglers from other tables. Mostly women talk to her, but some men are receptive, including one pushing a baby in a stroller. She engages a Trump supporter named Bryan, who is registered to vote in Virginia. Bryan, a registered Republican, says he engaged Snow in a conversation on home schooling, and that he also cares about issues such as terrorism, the economy and education among others.
Later Snow tells me that her customers, many of which are Republican and have known her since she was a teen, often compare her to Trump. “They’ll say I’m an outsider just like him. I’m not going to tell the Trump Republicans they can’t vote for me, right? I could certainly use their votes. And there are some Trump Republicans that just hate Mike Lee because of what Mike Lee did at the RNC.”
Snow frequently mentions her working class roots during the event; I do not once hear her mention being transgender. And as the event begins winding down, she stays until the very end. She is literally the last person to leave the room. And it doesn’t feel calculated.
A campaign worker holds a postcard for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Utah, Misty Snow, at a campaign barbecue event on July 13, 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. George Frey / Getty Images
Snow’s campaign office is one room on the top floor of the Mike Weinholtz campaign complex in south Salt Lake City, just off a busy four-lane road near the Central Pointe TRAX station and the shell of what was once Club Expose. The campaign building once housed a non-denominational church. It’s here where I meet Snow for our sit-down interview, in the campaign office where a woman named Rikki sits at a computer near a fan. The room has large windows that overlook the road, old carpeting, a rickety conference table and a big bowl of candy -- Lemonheads and other items in brightly-wrapped plastic.
"The demographics are changing,” Snow tells me. “Utah's a very young state. Millennials are much more liberal, even Mormon millennials. I think that's going to change the politics of the state. Also, there's more diversity. It's becoming less LDS; it's becoming less white, so there's a lot of different factors there."
After our interview, volunteer Chris Lejeune drives Snow to a "meet the candidate" event at the Jitterbug Coffee Hop, a cozy little spot off a busy road in Salt Lake City. About 15-20 people have shown up for the event, sponsored by the 1 to 5 Club, a “support and social group” run by the Utah Pride Center. People other than Snow are drinking coffee and eating plates of nachos. There are some amplifiers and a guitar stacked next to chairs in the right corner of the room. The crowd is a mix of younger hip kids and a senior citizen or two.
RELATED: Will 2016 Be a 'Watershed' for LGBTQ Women in Politics?
During the event, people are encouraged to ask questions about Snow’s platforms. The questions range from health care and bisexual concerns to clean air. Snow, sitting on a stool at the bar, looks relaxed and eagerly answers any questions that come her way. Her responses are still a blur, she fires off answers in rapid-fire bursts, and, while she's speaking passionately, I’m not entirely sure people are understanding what she’s saying. I see a woman looking at her plate of food as Snow is speaking, while another person is taking notes.
When the cameras are all packed up and the recording devices are off, Snow slows down a bit and seems more at ease. In the limited time I spend with her, it’s a rare moment when she just seems to be relaxing. She’s milling about, talking with her campaign staffers and people who have hung around to answer questions away from a larger group. As I’m packing up my gear, I ask her if she’s headed home to get some sleep before tomorrow. She looks at me and gives me a smile and then says "Sleep? What is that? Everyone keeps telling me about it."
I also ask Snow if she ever wants to take a Sunday off at the grocery store, since she’s campaigning steadily every other day of the week. Snow basically indicates working there is her form of relaxing. She says if she’s at home, she’s looking at her emails or dealing with campaign stuff, but being at work is her time to turn all that off and focus on the task at hand. She can’t look at her phone while she’s on the clock, and that to her is relaxing.
When I leave her, Snow is still standing outside the Jitterbug, talking with stragglers and her campaign people. Even if she’s down in every poll, she’s not acting like it. As she told me outside BYU, she’s always the first person to show up and the last person to leave, because that is what you have to do when you’re serious about the issues and your campaign.
As introverted as Snow seems to be, and maybe as much as she might prefer to just be working at the grocery store and being at home, she does seem like a natural fit for civic life. She’s deeply well-versed in the issues she cares about: clean air, health care and marijuana decriminalization at the federal level. This really does seem like the arena for her -- maybe not as a member of Congress but somehow helping to shape policy and affect change in some way.
Perhaps most noticeably -- and despite the breakneck pace of the campaign trail -- she never seems to lose sight of what brought her to this arena in the first place.
“Why not actually stand up for the working class and the LGBT community and women and minorities? Let’s talk about the issues we care about, try and raise awareness and move the dialogue and make progress on issues we care about instead of trying to run away from them. Let’s actually excite people.”
Drew Katchen is an NBC OUT contributor and a writer and producer for MSNBC.com.
Follow NBC OUT on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.WALLDORF — SAP today announced it has been named the overall market share leader in the worldwide business intelligence (BI) market, which spans BI platforms, corporate performance management (CPM) suites, analytic applications and performance management. According to the April 2012 report issued by Gartner Inc., “Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide, 2011,” SAP ranks No. 1 with 23.6 percent share of the worldwide market based on revenue for 2011, reflecting a 19.5 percent growth from 2010.[1]
“We believe our performance, which is ahead of the market growth rate, demonstrates how customers look to SAP as a trusted business partner empowering them to better know their business, make confident, data- driven decisions and then take action,” said John Schweitzer, senior vice president and general manager, Analytics, SAP. “It is great to see recognition of our leadership in the BI, CPM, analytic applications and performance management markets from Gartner. Our portfolio represents the future of analytics with real-time, mobile and social capabilities that give business users access to information so they can make better-informed decisions that leads to improve financial and operational performance.”
SAP offers a comprehensive analytics portfolio that helps companies better understand their business and act boldly. In another year of solid growth, SAP has invested in the analytics space and has made several advancements to its portfolio, such as SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis software, which aims to empower companies with the ability to improve decision-making by predicting future outcomes. Additionally, the SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application, version for SAP NetWeaver, powered by the SAP HANA platform aims to help customers run better by accelerating planning, streamlining financial reporting processes and reducing risk. Analytic applications from SAP address industry- and line-of-business-specific needs and can be deployed quickly to provide the insight, analysis and best practices required to better understand key performance indicators, uncover opportunities and make the right decisions.
For more information, visit the SAP Newsroom. Follow SAP on Twitter at @sapnews and @businessobjects, and participate in the conversation using the hashtag #sapanalytics.
[1]Gartner “Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide, 2011” 29 March 2012
Media Contacts:
Susan Miller, SAP, +1 (610) 661-9225, susan.miller@sap.com, EDT
Jeff Shadid, Burson-Marsteller, +1 (214) 224-8419, jeff.shadid@bm.com, CDTYeah Samake, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and one of the 28 Malian presidential candidates, brought in.56 percent of the votes in Mali's July 28 election.
Former prime minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita will have a run-off with former finance minister Soumaila Cisse because Keita’s 39.24 percent of votes failed to secure a clear majority. Mali’s second round of voting is scheduled for Aug. 11.
In a conference, Samake expressed his congratulations to Mali’s future president, as well as thanks to those who helped with his campaign. He has not released a statement on whether he plans to run for president again in the future.
This year’s election yielded a record 51.54 percent turnout, according to CBC News. Previous elections in the country never drew in more than 40 percent of registered voters. This election had been postponed more than a year because of a military coup that left Mali in an unstable condition.For Latter-day Saint teens, the modern dating scene can look |
of those two prospects, I don’t see any realistic returns from the Habs in a Kane deal.
The Kings desperately need scoring help. They are 6th in goals against per 60 minutes, but sit just above the Sabres at 25th in goals for per 60. Jeff Carter is really the only consistent scoring threat, as regulars like Kopitar have not been very productive this year. The Kings still are just 4 points behind the surging Flames for the final wild card spot in the west right now, and would like to add a scoring forward to get them into the playoffs.
To land Kane, the Kings would need to give up their top defensive prospect, Kale Clague, and possibly a 2nd or 3rd round pick. Clauge, like Juulsen, is still two or three years away from playing in the NHL. The Kings could use Alec Martinez as a piece in this deal, but the Sabres will likely be looking for someone younger, since they are still in a rebuild. Even if the Sabres were interested in Martinez, he would have to be packaged with picks.
This is all assuming that the Kings believe they can compete for the Stanley Cup this year. With Jonathan Quick almost ready to return, the Kings might believe they are just a winger away from being competitive. Kane certainly fits the bill, and could really help the Kings jump start their offense.
The problem is, I just don’t see the Sabres wanting to move Kane. He is young enough to continue growing with the team through this rebuild. Additionally, how many 25 year old proven scorers are really out there? Kane has had his share of controversies in his career, but maybe he is intereacting better in the locker room with the Sabres. At 25, I think Kane is yet to reach his peak, and I think the Sabres are ready to wait and see what he can really achieve.
Featured Image is Credit of Kevin Hoffman/USA TODAY Sports
Like this: Like Loading...Okay, I confess, it’s not just the Bible. The Rupert, Idaho ordinance is from 1960, and it reads,
A. Purpose: The purpose of this section is to promote the general welfare, good morals and safety of the inhabitants of the city, and particularly the minor children thereof, by protecting said minor children from the harmful influences of the prohibited matters hereinafter mentioned. (1960 Code, Sec. 9-801)
B. Prohibitions: No person shall distribute, exhibit, display, sell, give or furnish or possess with intent to do the same, to a minor or in any place within the view or which may be within the view of any minor, any book, magazine, pamphlet, printed paper, card, postcard, leaflet or article which:
1. Contains an account, plot, story, narrative, statement, picture, drawing, illustration or photograph of a gruesome, weird or horrible deed, character or thing depicted as real or fanciful, human or inhuman; or of a crime of violence, brutality, bloodshed or lust;
2. Contains an account, plot, story, narrative, statement, picture, drawing, illustration or photograph which is sexually indecent or suggestive or which features or portrays illicit love, immoral conduct, or vice, or which is otherwise obscene, immoral, lewd or lascivious;
3. Advertises wares for the prurient minded. (1960 Code, Sec. 9-802)
C. Exceptions: The provisions of this section shall not apply to any media for the general dissemination of current news nor to scientific, sociological or educational treatises or studies by qualified authorities, nor to such drawings, illustrations and photographs as are reasonably necessary to illustrate the same. (1960 Code, Sec. 9-803)
D. Enforcement: The publications advisory board shall enforce the provisions of this section. (1977 Code)NFL Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Amara Darboh left war-torn Sierra Leone as a child. His early-life experiences with adversity prepared him well for a career in American football. (1:28)
RENTON, Wash. -- The Seattle Seahawks' headquarters and practice fields could pass for a luxury resort, bald eagles nesting above one far end zone, and the shore of scenic Lake Washington barely the distance of a shanked punt away.
It seems a cushy environment for the kind of player Seahawks general manager John Schneider likes to bring in: guys with a trait he calls "grit." It's about a prospect's capacity to persevere, and whether he has developed a degree of inner steel and determination by living through challenging experiences.
Recently, Schneider has been finding that grit in players born in Africa.
Rookie receiver Amara Darboh was an orphaned refugee from war-torn Sierra Leone, and tackle Rees Odhiambo was the first Kenyan-born player drafted into the NFL.
"It's staying in tune with our philosophy of acquiring players who have had big obstacles to overcome in their lives," Schneider said. "These are guys who know how to handle adversity." The theory, shared by head coach Pete Carroll, is that someone who has been through difficulties, or even life-threatening circumstances, is less likely to come unglued when challenged by comparatively trivial hardships on the football field.
"I'm driven to be the best," says Seattle WR Amara Darboh, who was orphaned in war-torn Sierra Leone. Ben Liebenberg/AP Photo
Darboh and Odhiambo are part of a growing diaspora of African-born athletes across the NFL. The league's 2017 media guide lists 16 African-born players starting training camps. Nigeria leads with seven players.
Darboh (Michigan) and Odhiambo (Boise State) were third-round draft picks for the Seahawks in 2017 and 2016, respectively. In 2015, Seattle used a sixth-round pick on Oregon State defensive end Obum Gwacham (a Nigerian-born lineman now with the New Orleans Saints).
Tackle Germain Ifedi, the Seahawks' first-round draft pick in 2016, was born in America as the son of immigrants from Nigeria. Their work ethic, Ifedi said, has been an inspiration for him every day in the NFL. And he can see those qualities in teammates Odhiambo and Darboh, too.
"One thing I do know about Africans, as a whole, we're grateful for the opportunity [to be in the NFL]," Ifedi said. "[They're] some of the hardest-working guys you'll ever see. You really appreciate how hard they work."
"Both Rees and Amara have had a rough go," Schneider said. "That gives guys another level of maturity, coming to a different country, [both lost their] folks. They've made it through a lot in their lives."
Amara Darboh's assimilation to the U.S. quickened when he made friends with youth-sports teammate Max Schaefer, left. His adoptive father, Dan, middle, calls Darboh's story "inspiring." Courtesy of the Schaefer family
When asked to recount the path that brought him from impoverished Sierra Leone, Amara Darboh politely steered an interview from the civil war that cost the lives of an estimated 50,000 -- including his parents.
"Right now, I'm in the moment," Darboh said recently after a Seahawks practice. "There are goals I haven't reached, things I have yet to accomplish. And I'm driven to be the best."
Darboh has more than just an interesting backstory. He led Michigan in receptions last season, and has all the size (6-2, 214 pounds) and speed (4.45 in the 40) to give him a strong chance to make the team. After the Seahawks drafted him, Carroll cited Darboh's impressive drive and tenacity. "The guy has such a great story; he went through a lot," Carroll said. "He just came through as such an amazing kid. That tells you a lot about a guy."
Darboh's family walked from Sierra Leone to Gambia and finally to Senegal, a distance estimated at more than 400 miles, where a charitable group arranged for their relocation near Des Moines, Iowa. He doesn't downplay the experience, but doesn't want his family to have to relive it with every publicized iteration.
"I was so young [2] when I went through it, I don't remember much," Darboh said. "I want to respect my family and their part of it. I know the media wants to use it to inspire others, but I also know it brings back memories for my family, and I don't like to put them through that."
Amara Darboh was Michigan's leading receiver last season with 56 catches for 862 yards. AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
His assimilation to Iowa quickened when Darboh made friends with youth-sports teammate Max Schaefer. Eventually, he was adopted by the Schaefer family.
"It's a really inspiring story, but it's a really sensitive and private matter for them," adoptive father Dan Schaefer said. "They don't want people to feel sorry for them, or think they're trying to get attention. I just know they went through a lot and they took good care of each other through quite a bit."
Seahawks rookie safety Delano Hill was a Michigan teammate of Darboh's. "He's so humble and quiet, but he's my guy," Hill said. "He knows where he's from and still has that strong family connection."
Darboh's maturity and giving nature were contagious at Michigan. "He's all about helping others," Hill said. "You can really tell he's been through something in life that shaped him well. He's helped me a lot, by how he acts. He's somebody who is very, very appreciative of everything he gets."
Seahawks starting left tackle Rees Odhiambo was born in Kenya. His mother died of brain disease 10 years after Odhiambo moved with her to the United States. His father died in Kenya. Elaine Thompson/AP Photo
At age 7, Rees Odhiambo moved with his mother from Nairobi, Kenya, to a suburb of Dallas. His father had died in Kenya, and his mother, Evelyn, came to America on a student visa. Evelyn lived only 10 more years, succumbing to a brain disease at age 38. But she left Rees something he uses every day -- the knowledge of how hard she worked to provide a life for her family.
"She just kept working hard, telling me that things would work out," Odhiambo said. "She would work 12-hour shifts [at a Texas Instruments plant] while she was going to school, taking 16 to 18 credit hours. She always got her job done and she always had a smile on her face." Evelyn Odhiambo brought to America her goal of becoming a pharmacist.
"She graduated at the top of her class in chemistry," Odhiambo said. She never got to see him accept his scholarship and play at Boise State. But he honored her with his own academic discipline. He majored in exercise science and for three seasons was named to the Mountain West Conference All-Academic team.
Chris Peterson, Odhiambo's coach at Boise State, now leads the University of Washington. Before drafting Odhiambo, Schneider asked for a scouting report from Peterson.
"Coach Peterson cares about kids as people first, more than as prospects," Schneider said. "And he told me several times that Rees was really one of the top guys because of his intelligence and his make-up and that perseverance of getting through all the things he went through."
With his mother's passing, Odhiambo became even more involved in his role as big brother to his younger sister, Evette, who studies biological chemistry at the University of Texas at Arlington.
"That, alone, shows a lot of maturity," Schneider said.
When a season-ending knee injury sidelined George Fant in the preseason, Odhiambo earned his shot at the starting left tackle position.
Born in Sierra Leone, Amara Darboh became a U.S. citizen in 2015. David Turnley/University of Michigan
In 2015, Darboh became an American citizen. In preparation for his test, he studied the principles of democracy, and the rights and civic responsibilities of citizens. After he took the oath of citizenship, and finished waving the small American flag he had been given, he was asked what the best part of being a citizen would be.
"Voting," he said. "I always felt I was a citizen, but this was the last step to getting my full voting rights and being able to have my opinion voiced."
Asked about the immigration issues in the news, Amara answered like someone freshly versed in the Constitution. "I was fortunate that my family was able to immigrate here from Africa, and I would want the same opportunities for other people," he said.
But then he added, "Everyone has their own opinion, and I'm not going to judge anyone on their choices. They have that right. That's America."
Seattle GM John Schneider, right, shown with Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, would like to see an NFL-sanctioned league or academy in Africa. Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports
Schneider didn't hesitate when asked if he saw a future for more African-born players in the NFL. "Oh, absolutely, for sure," he said. "I personally believe in some sort of developmental league, something like we had with NFL Europe, but on a larger scale where it's a league in and of itself, or an academy where people can go and refine their skills."
The notion has been considered by league executives, he said, but the expense is an issue. The World League and its successor, NFL Europe, were backed by the NFL. NFL Europe folded in 2007.
This season, the NFL is testing a new International Player Pathway program. The four teams in the NFC South have been given an exemption for an overseas player to serve as an 11th practice squad member. He would be ineligible for activation during the season, but would get a full season of experience in NFL practices.
"Most guys are really good soccer players," Odhiambo said of the African athletes he knew. "They could have speed and agility, but they're only thinking about running and kicking the ball. Most kids don't lift [weights] because power is not that important."
The power of will is, though.
"When you come into an environment like [the NFL], there's another level of maturity that has to develop," Schneider said. "But when you think of guys who have had those things to overcome when they were young, that's already a kind of maturity that can make them special."UPDATE: Don't come for Kylie! The youngest Jenner wasted no time clapping back at Amandla Stenberg for the Hunger Games star's criticism of her 'do. "@amandlastenberg Mad if I don't, Mad if I do…. Go hang w Jaden or something," the reality star wrote in response to Stenberg's Instagram shade. Jaden Smith, of course, is the longtime friend and rumored ex of Jenner, who later accompanied Stenberg to her prom. Looks like there's more to this feud than meets the eye!
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Amandla Stenberg doesn't want anyone cash cropping her cornrows — least of all Kylie Jenner. The Hunger Games actress called out the teenage reality star on social media, after Jenner posted a pic of herself rocking a new hairstyle on Instagram with the caption, "I woke up like disss," and a link to her new wig line.
"When u appropriate black features and culture but fail to use ur position of power to help black Americans by directing attention towards ur wigs instead of police brutality or racism #whitegirlsdoitbetter," Stenberg wrote.
| WHEN STARS EXPERIENCE RACISM |
So far, it doesn't look like Tyga's girl is defending herself against Stenberg's accusations. And we don't blame her. The young actress has strong opinions when it comes to cultural appropriation, and has already taught us not to step to her.
As for Kylie, maybe she should just stick to appropriating Smurf culture for her edgy look.Go Ask Alice is a 1971 fiction book about a teenage girl who develops a drug habit at age 15 and runs away from home on a journey of self-destructive escapism. Attributed to "Anonymous", the book is in diary form, and was originally presented as being the edited "real diary" of the unnamed teenage protagonist.[1][2] Questions about the book's authenticity and true authorship began to arise in the late 1970s, and it is now generally viewed as a work of fiction written by Beatrice Sparks, a therapist and author who went on to write numerous other books purporting to be real diaries of troubled teenagers.[2][3][4][5][6] Some sources have also named Linda Glovach as a co-author of the book.[1][7]
Intended for a young adult audience, Go Ask Alice became a widely popular bestseller.[2][3] It was initially praised for conveying a powerful message about the dangers of drug abuse,[8] but more recently has been criticized as poorly written anti-drug propaganda[1][9] and also as a literary hoax.[2][3][10] Nevertheless, its popularity has endured, and as of 2014 it had remained continuously in print since its publication over four decades earlier. Go Ask Alice has also ranked among the most frequently challenged books for several decades due to its use of profanity and explicit references to sex and rape, as well as drugs.[11]
The book was adapted into the 1973 television film Go Ask Alice, starring Jamie Smith-Jackson and William Shatner.[12] In 1976, a stage play of the same name, written by Frank Shiras and based on the book, was also published.[13]
Title [ edit ]
The title was taken from a line in the 1967 Grace Slick-penned Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit"[6][14] ("go ask Alice/when she's ten feet tall"); the lyrics in turn reference scenes in Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, in which the title character Alice eats and drinks various things, including a mushroom, that make her grow larger or smaller. Slick's song is understood as using Carroll's story as a metaphor for a drug experience.[15][16]
Plot summary [ edit ]
In 1968, a 14-year-old girl begins keeping a diary, in which she records her thoughts and concerns about issues such as crushes, weight loss, sexuality, social acceptance, and relating to her parents. The dates and locations mentioned in the book place its events as occurring between 1968 and 1970 in California, Colorado, Oregon, and New York City. The two towns in which the diarist's family reside during the story are not identified, and are only described as being college towns.
The diarist's father, a college professor, accepts a dean position at a new college, causing the family to relocate. The diarist has difficulty adjusting to her new school, but soon becomes best friends with a girl named Beth. When Beth leaves for summer camp, the diarist returns to her hometown to stay with her grandparents. She meets an old school acquaintance, who invites her to a party. There, glasses of cola—some of which are laced with LSD—are served. The diarist unwittingly ingests LSD and has an intense and pleasurable trip. Over the following days the diarist socializes with the other teens from the party, willingly uses more drugs, and loses her virginity while on LSD. She worries that she may be pregnant, and her grandfather has a minor heart attack. Overwhelmed by her worries, the diarist begins to take sleeping pills, first stolen from her grandparents, then later prescribed by her doctor upon returning home. Her friendship with Beth ends, as both girls have moved in new directions.
The diarist befriends a hip girl, Chris, with whom she continues to use drugs. They date college students Richie and Ted, who deal drugs and persuade the two girls to help them by selling drugs at schools. When the girls walk in on Richie and Ted stoned and having sex with each other, they realize their boyfriends were just using them to make money. The girls report Richie and Ted to the police and flee to San Francisco. Chris gets a job in a boutique with a glamorous older woman, Shelia. Shelia invites both girls to lavish parties, where they resume taking drugs. One night Shelia and her new boyfriend introduce the girls to heroin and brutally rape them while they are under the influence of the drug. Traumatized, the diarist and Chris move to Berkeley where they open a jewelry shop. Although the shop is a success, they quickly grow tired of it and miss their families; they return home for a happy Christmas.
Back at home, the diarist encounters social pressure from her drug scene friends, and has problems getting along with her parents. Chris and the diarist try to stay away from drugs, but their resolve lapses and they end up on probation after being caught in a police raid. The diarist gets high one night and runs away. She travels to several cities, hitchhiking partway with a girl named Doris who is a victim of child sexual abuse. The diarist continues to use drugs, supporting her habit through prostitution, and experiences homelessness before a priest reunites her with her family. Now determined to avoid drugs, she faces hostility from her former friends, especially after she calls the parents of one girl who shows up high for a babysitting job. The diarist's former friends harass her at school and threaten her and her family. They eventually drug her against her will; she has a bad trip resulting in physical and mental damage, and is sent to a psychiatric hospital. There she bonds with a younger girl named Babbie, who has also been a drug addict and child prostitute.
Released from the hospital, the diarist returns home, finally free of drugs. She now gets along better with her family, makes new friends, and is romantically involved with Joel, a responsible student from her father's college. She is worried about starting school again, but feels stronger with the support of her new friends and Joel. In an optimistic mood, the diarist decides to stop keeping a diary and instead discuss her problems and thoughts with other people.
The epilogue states that the subject of the book died three weeks after the final entry. The diarist was found dead in her home by her parents when they returned from a movie. She died from a drug overdose, either accidental or premeditated.
Diarist's name [ edit ]
The anonymous diarist's name is never revealed in the book.[17] In an episode where the diarist describes having sex with a drug dealer, she quotes an onlooker's remark indicating that her name may be Carla.[18][19][20] Although a girl named Alice appears very briefly in the book, she is not the diarist, but a fellow runaway whom the diarist meets on the street in Coos Bay, Oregon.[19][20][21]
Despite the lack of any evidence in the book that the diarist's name is Alice, the covers of various editions have suggested that her name is Alice by including blurb text such as "This is Alice's true story"[22] and "You can't ask Alice anything anymore. But you can do something—read her diary." [23] Reviewers and commentators have also frequently referred to the anonymous diarist as "Alice",[1][8][11][14][17][24][25] sometimes for convenience.[10][26]
In the 1973 television film based on the book, the protagonist played by Jamie Smith-Jackson is named "Alice".[27] The protagonist is also named "Alice Aberdeen" in the 1976 stage play adaptation.[13]
Production [ edit ]
The manuscript that later became Go Ask Alice was initially prepared for publication by Beatrice Sparks, a Mormon therapist and youth counselor then in her early 50s, who had previously done various forms of writing. Sparks had reportedly noted that the general public at that time lacked knowledge about youth drug abuse, and she likely had both educational and moral motives for publishing the book.[10][26][28] Sparks later claimed that the book was based on a real diary she received from a real teenage girl,[28] although this claim was never substantiated[10] and the girl has never been identified[4] (see Authorship and veracity controversies).
With the help of Art Linkletter, a popular talk show host for whom Sparks had worked as a ghostwriter, the manuscript was passed on to Linkletter's literary agent, who sold it to Prentice Hall.[28] Linkletter, who had become a prominent anti-drug crusader after the 1969 suicide of his daughter Diane,[29] also helped publicize the book.[30][31][32] Even before its publication, Go Ask Alice had racked up large advance orders of 18,000 copies.[30]
Reception [ edit ]
Public reception [ edit ]
Upon its 1971 publication, Go Ask Alice quickly became a publishing sensation[33] and an international bestseller, being translated into 16 languages.[2] Its success has been attributed to the timing of its publication at the height of the psychedelic era, when the negative effects of drug use were becoming a public concern.[34] Alleen Pace Nilsen has called it "the book that came closest to being a YA phenomenon" of its time, although saying it was "never as famous as [the later] Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games series".[2] In addition to being very popular with its intended young adult audience, Go Ask Alice also attracted a significant number of adult readers.[33]
Libraries had difficulty obtaining and keeping enough copies of the book on the shelves to meet demand.[35][36][36] The 1973 television film based on the book heightened reader interest,[36] and librarians reported having to order additional copies of the book each time the film was broadcast.
By 1975, more than three million copies of the book had reportedly been sold,[31] and by 1979 the paperback edition had been reprinted 43 times. The book remained continuously in print over the ensuing decades, with reported sales of over four million copies by 1998,[1] and over five million copies by 2009.[3] The actual number of readers probably surpassed the sales figures, as library copies and even personal copies were likely circulated to more than one reader.[37] Go Ask Alice has been cited as establishing both the commercial potential of young adult fiction in general, and the genre of young adult anti-drug novels,[1] and has been called "one of the most famous anti-drug books ever published."[6]
Critical response [ edit ]
Go Ask Alice received positive initial reviews, including praise from Webster Schott in The New York Times, who called it an "extraordinary work", a "superior work" and a "document of horrifying reality [that] possesses literary quality".[38] It was also recommended by Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and The Christian Science Monitor,[34] and ranked number 1 on the American Library Association's 1971 list of Best Books for Young Adults.[39] Some reviews focused on the realism of the book's material, without further addressing the literary merit of the book.[24][25][34][40] According to Nilsen and Lauren Adams, the book was not subjected to the regular forms of literary criticism because it was presumed to be the real diary of a dead teenager.[2][34] Lina Goldberg has suggested that the publishers were motivated to list the author as "Anonymous" partly to avoid such criticism.[26]
Years after its publication, Go Ask Alice continued to receive some good reviews, often in the context of defending the book against censors (see Censorship).[8] In a 1995 Village Voice column for Banned Books Week, Nat Hentoff described it as "an extraordinarily powerful account of what it's actually like to get hooked on drugs" that "doesn't preach".[41]
However, starting in the 1990s, the book began to draw criticism for its heavy-handedness, melodramatic style and inauthenticity, in view of the growing consciousness that it was fiction rather than a real teenager's diary (see Authorship and veracity controversies).[1][5][9][34][42] Reviewing the book again for The New York Times in 1998, Marc Oppenheimer called it "poorly written", "laughably written", and "incredible", although some other writers have pointed to the material as being plausible or even appealing to young readers.[34] The portrayal of the diarist's drug use, progressing from unwittingly ingesting LSD to injecting speed within a few days, and making a similar quick transition from her first use of marijuana to heroin, has been deemed unrealistic.[5][26][43] The book has been criticized for equating homosexuality with "degradation", illness, sin, and guilt.[43] More recent analyses have expressed ethical concerns with the book's presentation of fiction to young readers as a true story.[2][26][42] Despite all these criticisms, the book is frequently called a young adult classic.[5][37][44]
Educational use [ edit ]
Although school boards and committees reached varying conclusions about whether Go Ask Alice had literary value,[31][32] educators generally viewed it as a strong cautionary warning against drug use.[32] It was recommended to parents and assigned or distributed in some schools as an anti-drug teaching tool. However, some adults who read the book as teens or pre-teens have written that they paid little attention to the anti-drug message and instead related to the diarist's thoughts and emotions,[9][45] or vicariously experienced the thrills of her rebellious behavior.[5][34] Reading the book for such vicarious experience has been suggested as a positive alternative to actually doing drugs.[46] Go Ask Alice has also been used in curricula dealing with mood swings[47] and death.
Authorship and veracity controversies [ edit ]
Although Go Ask Alice has been credited to an anonymous author since its publication, and was originally promoted as the real, albeit edited, diary of a real teenage girl, over time the book has come to be regarded by researchers as a fake memoir written by Beatrice Sparks,[2][3][4][5][6][10][26] possibly with the help of one or more co-authors.[1] Despite significant evidence of Sparks' authorship, a percentage of readers and educators have continued to believe that the book is a true-life account of a teenage girl.[3][10][26]
Beatrice Sparks authorship controversy [ edit ]
Go Ask Alice was originally published by Prentice Hall in 1971 as the work of an unnamed author "Anonymous". The original edition contained a note signed by "The Editors" that included the statements, "Go Ask Alice is based on the actual diary of a fifteen-year-old drug user....Names, dates, places and certain events have been changed in accordance with the wishes of those concerned."[3][48] The paperback edition first published in 1972 by Avon Books contained the words "A Real Diary" on the front cover just above the title,[49] and the same words were included on the front covers of some later editions.[34]
Go Ask Alice presented it as "A Real Diary". The cover art of the Avon Books paperback edition ofpresented it as "A Real Diary".
Upon its publication, almost all contemporary reviewers and the general public accepted it as primarily authored by an anonymous teenager. According to Lauren Adams, Publishers Weekly magazine was the only source to question the book's authenticity on the grounds that it "seem[ed] awfully well written".[34] Reviews described the book as either the authentic diary of a real teenage girl,[1][14][24] or as an edited or slightly fictionalized version of her authentic diary.[25][50] Some sources claimed that the girl's parents had arranged for her diary to be published after her death.[12][24][50] However, according to Alleen Pace Nilsen, a "reputable source in the publishing world" allegedly said that the book was published anonymously because the parents had initiated legal action and threatened to sue if the published book could be traced back to their daughter.[28]
Not long after Go Ask Alice's publication, Beatrice Sparks began making public appearances presenting herself as the book's editor.[5] (Ellen Roberts, who in the early 1970s was an editor at Prentice Hall,[51] was also credited at that time with having edited the book;[52] a later source refers to Roberts as having "consulted" on the book.)[53] According to Caitlin White, when Sparks' name became public, some researchers discovered that copyright records listed Sparks as the sole author—not editor—of the book, raising questions about whether she had written it herself.[5] Suspicions were heightened in 1979 after two newly published books about troubled teenagers (Voices and Jay's Journal) advertised Sparks' involvement by calling her "the author who brought you Go Ask Alice".[28][34][54]
In an article by Nilsen, based in part on interviews with Sparks and published in the October 1979 issue of School Library Journal, Sparks said that she had received the diaries that became Go Ask Alice from a girl she had befriended at a youth conference. The girl allegedly gave Sparks her diaries in order to help Sparks understand the experiences of young drug users and to prevent her parents from reading them. According to Sparks, the girl later died, although not of an overdose. Sparks said she had then transcribed the diaries, destroying parts of them in the process (with the remaining portions locked in the publisher's vault and unavailable for review by Nilsen or other investigators), and added various fictional elements, including the overdose death. Although Sparks did not confirm or deny the allegations that the diarist's parents had threatened a lawsuit, she did say that in order to get a release from the parents, she had only sought to use the diaries as a "basis to which she would add other incidents and thoughts gleaned from similar case studies," according to Nilsen.[28]
Nilsen wrote that Sparks now wanted to be seen as the author of the popular Go Ask Alice in order to promote additional books in the same vein that she had published or was planning to publish. (These books included Jay's Journal, another alleged diary of a real teenager that Sparks was later accused of mostly authoring herself.[55]) Nilsen concluded, "The question of how much of Go Ask Alice was written by the real Alice and how much by Beatrice Sparks can only be conjectured."[28] Journalist Melissa Katsoulis, in her 2009 history of literary hoaxes Telling Tales, wrote that Sparks was never able to substantiate her claim that Go Ask Alice was based on the real diary of a real girl and that copyright records continued to list her as the sole author of the work.[10]
Urban folklore expert Barbara Mikkelson of snopes.com has written that even before the authorship revelations, ample evidence indicated that Go Ask Alice was not an actual diary. According to Mikkelson, the writing style and content—including a lengthy description of an LSD trip but relatively little about "the loss of [the diarist's] one true love", school, gossip or ordinary "chit-chat"— seems uncharacteristic of a teenage girl's diary.[4] The sophisticated vocabulary of the diary suggested that it had been written by an adult rather than a teen.[4][56] Mikkelson also noted that in the decades since the book's publication, no one who knew the diarist had ever been tracked down by a reporter or otherwise spoken about or identified the diarist.[4]
In hindsight, commentators have suggested various motivations for the publishers to present Go Ask Alice as the work of an anonymous deceased teenager, such as avoiding literary criticism,[26] lending validity to an otherwise improbable story,[26] and stimulating young readers' interest by having the book's anti-drug advice come from a teenager rather than an adult. Sparks said that while there were "many reasons" for publishing the book anonymously, her main reason was to make it more credible to young readers.[28] Although the book has been classified as fiction (see Treatment of book as fiction and non-fiction), the publisher has continued to list its author as "Anonymous".
Controversies involving other works by Sparks [ edit ]
Sparks was involved in a similar controversy regarding the veracity of her second diary project, the 1979 book Jay's Journal. It was allegedly the real diary, edited by Sparks, of a teenage boy who committed suicide after becoming involved with the occult.[26] The publisher's initial marketing of the book raised questions about whether Sparks had edited a real teenager's diary or written a fictional diary, and recalled the same controversy with respect to Go Ask Alice.[57] Later, the family of real-life teenage suicide Alden Barrett contended that Jay's Journal used 21 entries from Barrett's real diary that the family had given to Sparks, but that the other 191 entries in the published book had been fictionalized or fabricated by Sparks, and that Barrett had not been involved with the occult or "devil worship".[55]
Sparks went on to produce numerous other books presented as diaries of anonymous troubled teens (including Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager and It Happened to Nancy: By an Anonymous Teenager) or edited transcripts of therapy sessions with teens (including Almost Lost: The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets). Some commentators have noted that these books use writing styles similar to Go Ask Alice[34] and contain similar themes, such as tragic consequences for spending time with bad companions, a protagonist who initially gets into trouble by accident or through someone else's actions, and portrayal of premarital sex and homosexuality as always wrong.[26] Although Sparks was typically listed on these books as editor or preparer, the number of similar books that Sparks published, making her "arguably the most prolific Anonymous author in publishing",[56] fueled suspicions that she wrote Go Ask Alice.[34][56]
Linda Glovach authorship claims [ edit ]
In a 1998 New York Times book review, Mark Oppenheimer suggested that Go Ask Alice had at least one author besides Sparks. He identified Linda Glovach, an author of young-adult novels, as "one of the 'preparers'—let's call them forgers—of Go Ask Alice", although he did not give his source for this claim.[1] Publishers Weekly, in a review of Glovach's 1998 novel Beauty Queen (which told the story, in diary form, of a 19-year-old girl addicted to heroin),[58] also stated that Glovach was "a co-author |
on 17 September. But it will still take a few more weeks for the 630m (2,060ft) deep hole to be redrilled to allow the miners to be pulled out. The final width will need to be about 70cm (28in).
The Plan A operation - currently drilling a pilot hole for rescue shaft 1 - has reached a depth of 320m.
Plan C, using machinery usually used in oil drilling, started on 19 September.Researchers continue to expand the types of tissue that can be produced in small amounts to form organoids, lacking the integrated blood vessel network needed to support larger sections, but otherwise at least partially functional. This stage of development in the tissue engineering field offers considerable benefits, both as a way to speed up research with a cheaper alternative to animal studies, but also the potential for transplantation. Even small tissue patches can be an effective therapy for some conditions: the tissue will integrate with the body, and blood vessels will grow in to support it. For organs that are essentially chemical factories or filters, such as the kidney and liver, transplant of numerous functional organoids grown from a patient's own cells may well prove to be good enough to address a number of presently incurable degenerative conditions. Here, researchers demonstrate construction of stomach tissue organoids:
Scientists report using pluripotent stem cells to generate human stomach tissues in a petri dish that produce acid and digestive enzymes. Researchers grew tissues from the stomach's corpus/fundus region. The study comes two years after the same team generated the stomach's hormone-producing region (the antrum). The discovery means investigators now can grow both parts of the human stomach to study disease, model new treatments and understand human development and health in ways never before possible. "Now that we can grow both antral- and corpus/fundic-type human gastric mini-organs, it's possible to study how these human gastric tissues interact physiologically, respond differently to infection, injury and react to pharmacologic treatments." The current study caps a series of discoveries since 2010 in which research teams used human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) - which can become any cell type in the body - to engineer regions of the human stomach and intestines. They are using the tissues to identify causes and treatments for diseases of the human gastrointestinal tract. This includes a study in which scientists generated human intestine with an enteric nervous system. These highly functional tissues are able to absorb nutrients and demonstrate peristalsis, the intestinal muscular contractions that move food from one end of the GI tract to the other.
A major challenge investigators encountered in the current study is a lack of basic knowledge on how the stomach normally forms during embryonic development. "We couldn't engineer human stomach tissue in a petri dish until we first identified how the stomach normally forms in the embryo." To fill that gap, the researchers used mice to study the genetics behind embryonic development of the stomach. In doing so, they discovered that a fundamental genetic pathway (WNT/β-catenin) plays an essential role in directing development of the corpus/fundus region of the stomach in mouse embryos. After this, researchers manipulated the WNT/β-catenin in a petri dish to trigger the formation of human fundus organoids from pluripotent stem cells. The team then further refined the process, identifying additional molecular signaling pathways that drive formation of critical stomach cell types of the fundus. These include chief cells, which produce a key digestive enzyme called pepsin, and parietal cells. Parietal cells secrete hydrochloric acid for digestion and intrinsic factor to help the intestines absorb vitamin B-12, which is critical for making blood cells and maintaining a healthy nervous system. It takes about six weeks for stem cells to form gastric-fundus tissues in a petri dish. Researchers now plan to study the ability of tissue-engineered human stomach organoids to model human gastric diseases by transplanting them into mouse models.As a teenager, I once had an opportunity to fly in a police helicopter over a major American city. Naively, I thought the experience might be uneventful. Perhaps there would be no crime between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night. However, from the moment we were airborne, there was a fresh emergency every fifteen seconds: Shots fired… rape in progress… victim stabbed…It was a deluge. Of course, the impression this left on me was, in part, the result of a sampling bias: I was hearing nothing but incident reports from a city of 4 million people, most of whom would never encounter violence directly. (No one calls the police to say “Everything is still okay!”) Yet it was uncanny to discover the chaos that lurked at the margins of my daily routine. A few minutes from where I might otherwise have been eating dinner, rapes, robberies, and murders were in progress..
Just as it is prudent to wear your seat belt while driving, it makes sense to know how best to respond to violence. In fact, it is overwhelmingly likely that some of you will become the targets of violence in the future. The purpose of this essay is to help you prepare for it. While I do not consider myself an expert on personal security, I know enough to have strong opinions. In my youth, I practiced martial arts for many years and eventually taught self-defense classes in college.[ ]
My education included work with firearms and a variety of other weapons. I eventually stopped training and moved on to other things, but my interest in self-defense has resurfaced. It’s hard to say why. No doubt receiving occasional death threats and other strange communications has been a factor. But I think that having a family has played a much larger role. I now feel acutely responsible for the safety of those closest to me.
In my experience, most people do not want to think about the reality of human violence. I have friends who sleep with their front doors unlocked and who would never consider receiving instruction in self-defense. For them, gun ownership seems like an ugly and uncivilized flirtation with paranoia. Happily, most of these people will never encounter violence in any form. And good luck will make their unconcern seem perfectly justified.
But here are the numbers: In 2010, there were 403.6 violent crimes per 100,000 persons in the United States. (The good news: This is an overall decrease of 13.4 percent from the level in 2001.) Thus, the average American has a 1 in 250 chance of being robbed, assaulted, raped, or murdered each year. Actually, the chance is probably greater than this, because we know that certain crimes, such as assault and rape, are underreported.
Of course, your risks vary depending on who you are and where you live. In Compton, one of the more dangerous parts of Los Angeles, your chances of experiencing violent crime in 2010 were 1 in 71; if you lived in Beverly Hills they were 1 in 458. Still, even in good neighborhoods, the likelihood of being attacked is hardly remote. In the comparative safety of Beverly Hills, assuming the crime rate stays constant, the probability that you will be robbed, assaulted, raped or murdered at some point over the next 30 years is 1 in 16. (The average risk in the U.S. is 1 in 9; in Compton it’s better than 1 in 3.) Again, these statistics surely paint too rosy a picture, because many crimes go unreported.
It may seem onerous to prepare yourself and your family to respond to violence, but not doing so is also a form of preparation. Failing to prepare is, generally speaking, preparing very well to do the wrong thing. Although most of us are good at recognizing danger, our instincts often lead us to behave in ways that increase our chances of being injured or killed once a threat emerges.
Why can’t civilized people like ourselves simply rely on the police? Well, look around you: Do you see a cop? Unless you happen to be a police officer yourself, or are married to one, you are very unlikely to be attacked in the presence of law enforcement. The role of the police is to respond in the aftermath of a crime and, with a little luck, to catch the person who committed it. If you are ever targeted by a violent predator, whether you and your family are injured or killed will depend on what you do in the first moments of the encounter. When it comes to survival, therefore, you are on your own. Once you escape and are in a safe place, by all means call the police. But dialing 911 when an intruder has broken into your home is not a reliable strategy for self-defense.[ ]
However, instruction in self-defense need not consume your life. The most important preparations are mental. While I certainly recommend that you receive some physical training, merely understanding the dynamics of violence can make you much safer than you might otherwise be.
Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places.
The primary goal of self-defense is to avoid becoming the victim of violence. The best way to do this is to not be where violence is likely to occur. Of course, that’s not always possible—but without question, it is your first and best line of defense. If you visit dangerous neighborhoods at night, or hike alone and unarmed on trails near a big city, or frequent places where drunken young men gather, you are running some obvious risks.
I once knew an experienced martial artist who decided to walk across Central Park late at night. He was aware of the danger, but he thought “I have a black belt in karate. Why shouldn’t I be able to walk wherever I want?” As it happened, this rhetorical question was answered almost immediately: My friend hadn’t ventured more than a hundred yards into the darkness of the park before he was confronted by three men, one of whom plunged a hypodermic needle into his thigh without a word. Our hero bolted and escaped, otherwise unharmed, but he spent the next three months wondering whether he had been infected with HIV, hepatitis, or some other blood-borne disease. (He was fine.) The lesson: Whatever your training, you needn’t be foolish.
Similarly, all men should learn to recognize and shun status-seeking displays of aggression. This is one problem that women generally don’t have to worry about. It is, for instance, very rare for a woman to find herself party to an exchange like this:
“What are you looking at, asshole?”
“Who are you calling an asshole?”
“You, bitch. What are you going to do about it?”
Nevertheless, young men are easily lured into social dominance games from which neither party can find a face-saving exit. The violence that erupts at such moments is as unnecessary as it is predictable. If you want to preserve your health and stay out of prison, you must learn to avoid or defuse conflict of this kind.
When a conflict turns physical, there is always a risk that someone will be severely injured or killed. Imagine spending a year or more in prison because you couldn’t resist punching some bully who dearly deserved it, but who then hit his head on a fire hydrant and died from a brain injury. As a matter of law, the moment you engage in avoidable violence of this kind—rising to a challenge and escalating the conflict—you lose any legal claim to self-defense. Rather, you were fighting—which is illegal—and in this case you accidentally killed your opponent. You are now likely to get more practice fighting in prison. (Meanwhile, the costs of your criminal defense, and perhaps a subsequent civil lawsuit, could easily bankrupt you.) Take this maxim to heart: Self-defense is not about winning fights with aggressive men who probably have less to lose than you do.[ ]
Another principle is lurking here that should be made explicit: Never threaten your opponent. The purpose of his verbal challenge was to get you to respond in such a way as to make him feel justified in attacking you. You shouldn’t collaborate in this process or advertise your readiness to defend yourself. Even if violence seems unavoidable, and you decide to strike preemptively, you should do so from a seemingly unaggressive posture, retaining the element of surprise. (This requires training.) Putting up your dukes and agreeing to fight has no place in a self-defense repertoire.[ ]
Thus, whatever ego problems or impulse-control issues you have should be worked out ahead of time. You should forget about saving face while recognizing that if you ever find yourself in a social-dominance contest you will probably feel a deep urge to say or do the wrong thing.[ ]
Deciding on an appropriate course of action in advance is your best protection against being dangerously stupid in the heat of the moment. The challenge for every man is to decline to play an ancient game whose rules and imperatives have been inscribed in his very cells. If you want to avoid unnecessary violence, you must keep your inner ape on a very short leash.
“What are you looking at, asshole?”
“Sorry, man. I was just spacing out. It’s been a long day.”
De-escalate and move on.
You should also learn to trust your feelings of apprehension about other people—revising them only slowly and with good reason. This may seem like a very depressing piece of advice. It is. Most of us don’t want to see the world this way, and we take great pains to avoid being rude or appearing racist, suspicious, etc. But violent predators invariably play upon this commitment to civility. The truth is that most of us are very good at detecting ulterior motives and malevolence in others. We must learn to trust these intuitions. To read the reports of rapes, murders, kidnappings and other violent crimes is to continually discover how easily good people can be manipulated by bad ones.
You are under no obligation, for instance, to give a stranger who has rung your doorbell, or decided to stand unusually close to you on the street, the benefit of the doubt. If a man who makes you uncomfortable steps onto an elevator with you, step off. If a man approaches you while you are sitting in your car and something about him doesn’t seem right, you don’t need to roll down your window and have a conversation. Victims of crime often sense that something is wrong in the first moments of encountering their attackers but feel too socially inhibited to create the necessary distance and escape.
Principle #2: Do not defend your property.
Whatever your training, you should view any invitation to violence as an opportunity to die—or to be sent to prison for killing another human being. Violence must truly be the last resort. Thus, if someone sticks a gun in your face and demands your wallet, you should hand it over without hesitation—and run.
If you look out your kitchen window and see a group of youths destroying your car, you should remain inside and call the police. It doesn’t matter if you happen to be a Navy Seal who keeps a loaded shotgun by the front door. You don’t want to kill a teenager for vandalism, and you don’t want to get shot by one for hesitating to pull the trigger. Unless you or another person is being physically harmed, or an attack seems imminent, avoiding violence should be your only concern.
Principle #3: Respond immediately and escape.
If you have principles 1 and 2 firmly installed in your brain, any violence that finds you is, by definition, unavoidable. There is a tremendous power in knowing this: When you find yourself without other options, you are free to respond with full commitment.
This is the core principle of self-defense: Do whatever you can to avoid a physical confrontation, but the moment avoidance fails, attack explosively for the purposes of escape—not to mete out justice, or to teach a bully a lesson, or to apprehend a criminal. Your goal is to get away with minimum trauma (to you), while harming your attacker in any way that seems necessary to ensure your escape.[ ]
If you find yourself in such a situation, you should assume that your opponent is a career criminal who has victimized many others before you.[ ]
Do not waste an instant imagining that you can reason with him. Most victims of violence are so terrified of being injured or killed that they will believe any promise a predator makes. It is not difficult to see why.
Imagine: You are loading groceries into your car and man appears at your side with a gun.
“Get in the car, and you won’t get hurt.”
Your instincts are probably bad here: Getting in the car is the last thing you should do.
“Get in the car, or I’ll blow your head off.”
However bad your options may appear in the moment, complying with the demands of a person who is seeking to control your movements is a terrible idea.Yes, there are criminals whose only goal is to steal your property. But anyone who attempts to control you—by moving you to another room, putting you in a car, tying you up—probably intends to kill you (or worse). And you must understand in advance that your natural reaction to this situation—to freeze, to comply with instructions—will be the wrong one.
If someone puts a gun to your head and demands your purse or wallet, hand it over immediately and run. Don’t worry about being shot in the back: If your attacker is going to shoot you for running, he was going to shoot you if you stayed in place, and at point-blank range. By running, you make yourself harder to kill. Any attempt to move you, even by a few feet—backing you off a sidewalk and into an alley, forcing you behind a row of bushes—is unacceptable and should mobilize all your physical and emotional resources.[ ]
If you find yourself in a situation where a predator is trying to control you, the time for listening to instructions and attempting to remain calm has passed. It will get no easier to resist and escape after these first moments. The presence of weapons, the size or number of your attackers—these details are irrelevant. However bad the situation looks, it will only get worse. To hesitate is to put yourself at the mercy of a sociopath. You have no alternative but to explode into action, whatever the risk. Recognizing when this line has been crossed, and committing to escape at any cost, is more important than mastering physical techniques.
Herein lies a crucial distinction between traditional martial arts and realistic self-defense: Most martial artists train for a “fight.” Opponents assume ready stances, just out of each other’s range, and then practice various techniques or spar (engage in controlled fighting). This does not simulate real violence. It doesn’t prepare you to respond effectively to a sudden attack, in which you have been hit before you even knew you were threatened, and it doesn’t teach you to strike preemptively, without telegraphing your moves, once you have determined that an attack is imminent.
Whatever your physical skills, when you commit to using force against another person, your overriding goal is still to escape. Even if you are at home, in possession of a firearm, and well trained to use it, when confronted by an intruder your best defense is to get out of the house as quickly as possible. In such a circumstance, a gun is a means of ensuring that no one can block your exit.[ ]
Nothing good ever comes to people who allow themselves to be moved to a remote location at the mercy of a violent predator. The police call such places “secondary crime scenes.” They are always better for the attacker and worse for his victim because they are more isolated than the first point of contact. And although your home may be the most familiar place on earth to you, the moment an intruder enters, it becomes the equivalent of a secondary crime scene. You should also expect that any criminal who breaks into your home when you’re inside it has come prepared to murder you and your family. To naive readers, this may sound like an extraordinarily paranoid assumption. It isn’t. Mere burglars generally make sure a house is empty before breaking in.
If a window shatters in the middle of the night and someone comes through it, your life is on the line. There is nothing to talk about, no offer of cash or jewelry to muster, no demands worth listening to. You must do whatever it takes to escape.
One of the most common and disturbing features of home invasions is how the victims’ concern for one another and desire to stay together is inevitably used against them. By exploiting these bonds, even a single attacker can immobilize an entire family. By merely holding a knife to the wife’s throat, he can get the husband to submit to being tied up. Again, it is perfectly natural for victims in these circumstances to hope that if they just cooperate, their attacker will show them mercy. If you get nothing else from this article, engrave this iron law on your mind: The moment it is clear that an assailant wants more than your property (which must be assumed in any home invasion), you must escape.
What if your attacker has a knife to your child’s throat and tells you that everything is going to be okay as long as you cooperate by lying face down on the floor? Don’t do it. It would be better to flee the house—because as soon as you leave, he will know that the clock is ticking: Within moments, you will be at a neighbor’s home summoning help. If this intruder is going to murder your child before fleeing himself, he was going to murder your child anyway—either before or after he killed you. And he was going to take his time doing it. Granted, it is almost impossible to imagine leaving one’s child in such a circumstance—but if you can’t leave, you must grab a weapon and press your own attack. Complying in the hope that a sociopath will keep his promise to you is always the wrong move.
Here is how the police look at it:
From a cop’s point of view, citizens seem to keep making the same mistakes over and over, until all cases begin to sound alike…. The objective of a violent criminal is to control you, emotionally and physically. Everything he does—his threats and promises—is intended to terrify and control you. The more control you give to the violent criminal, even if you see it as temporary, the less likely you are to escape. For most crime victims, their temporary cooperation backfired into full control over them. Time works against the victim and for the criminal. The longer you stall, the more you talk, the deeper you sink. (S. Strong. Strong on Defense. pp. 49-50).
True self-defense is based not on techniques but on principles. Yes, it is good to know how to deliver a palm strike or elbow to a person’s head with real power (technique), but it is far more important to know when to unleash with whatever tools you have for the purpose of immediate escape (principle). You must install a trigger in your mind—to act explosively once a certain line has been crossed—and you must understand that your inclination will most likely be to freeze and acquiesce, in the hope of avoiding injury or death. Mental preparation is a matter of resolving, in advance, to burst past these inhibitions and escape immediately, or fight with everything you’ve got until escape is possible.
Certain scenarios are intrinsically confusing and should be discussed with your family in advance:What if a person dressed as a police officer comes to your door and asks to be let in? Unless you are absolutely certain that he is a cop—e.g. you can see that he arrived in a marked police car—you should explain that you have no way of knowing who he is and then call the police yourself. Thousands of crimes are committed each year by people impersonating cops. (Anyone can buy a uniform and a badge over the Internet.) Similarly, many home invasions begin with a criminal’s acting like a person in distress: A woman or a teenager might come to your door reporting an accident or some other emergency. Again, the safe move is to keep your door locked and call the police.
Finally, you do not need to learn hundreds of techniques to become proficient in the physical aspects of self-defense. Rather, you should train a small number of skills nearly to the point of reflex. Although you cannot do this by simply reading books or watching videos, I have recommended a few resources below that will help you start thinking along practical lines.
It is unpleasant to study the details of crime and violence—and for this reason many of us never do. I am convinced, however, that some planning and preparation can greatly reduce a person’s risk. And though there are exceptions to every rule, I don’t believe that there are important exceptions to the advice I have given here. May you never have occasion to find it useful.
Recommended Reading
G. de Becker, The Gift of Fear.
R. Miller, Meditations on Violence.
R. Miller, Facing Violence.
S. Strong, Strong on Defense.
G. Thompson, The Fence.
G. Thompson, Dead or Alive.
People who appear to know what they are talking about:
Tony Blauer: http://www.tonyblauer.com/
Marc MacYoung: http://nononsenseselfdefense.com/
Rory Miller: http://chirontraining.com/Site/Home.html
Lee Morrison: http://www.urbancombatives.com/
Geoff Thompson: http://www.geoffthompson.comTwo things:
1. Though I think officials’ calls can certainly cost a team a game in situations, I don’t feel that happened to Tennessee on Saturday. Oklahoma was better and deserved to win the game.
2. Holding happens on almost every play in football. I’ve played/coached offensive line and I realize that. Tennessee held on Saturday night. Oklahoma also held on Saturday night…
And with those things being said, it did seem like Oklahoma had some extremely egregious incidents of holding that went unflagged by the SEC officiating crew and Twitter took notice. Here are a few of the best screen grabs of Oklahoma grabbing, holding, hog-tying and doing just about anything else to stop UT’s defensive players, many of whom had a fairly large advantage in overall athleticism over the bigger OU offensive line. The Sooners weren’t called for an offensive holding until the game was out of reach at 34-10. The hashtag #Oklaholding was going strong during the game and is still lingering out there a couple days after the game.
Oklahoma is holding every play and no flags but pic.twitter.com/HxHQ0wDiom Zone not found or deactivated.Zone id : 5 — Liam (@liamaronoff) September 14, 2014
Yeah. So this isn’t holding according to Oklahoma refs. BS pic.twitter.com/Qjlzp4jjmu — Rocky Top Info. (@loganbrooks4298) September 14, 2014
Im so sick of oklahoma holding my gosh pic.twitter.com/ruZ2XxHfeb — Eric Arnold (@EricArnoldTN) September 14, 2014
OU’s right tackle gets beat by Vereen. So he just grabs him by the jersey and drags him to the ground. No call. pic.twitter.com/tXvfFNnNDY — VolRumorMill (@VolRumorMill) September 15, 2014
Unbelievable.@NCAA can you please for the love of Peyton Manning,tell me what this is.. pic.twitter.com/X6lq4krxxW — Remington (@SirDrakeWilson) September 14, 2014Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images African penguins, which are native to that continent, are found mostly in South Africa and Namibia.
The African penguin is in trouble. Its population has plummeted by more than 97 percent in less than a century. Fewer than 25,000 breeding pairs are estimated to remain on Earth, and experts say the endangered bird could be extinct in just 10 years.
But the penguins’ demise is not inevitable, says the Association of Zoos & Aquariums, an organization that has undertaken efforts to pull the species back from the brink. The penguin, under threat from climate change, overfishing and other human actions, just needs a helping hand.
Thanks to the generosity of thousands on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter this month, it seems many of the warm weather penguins, found mostly in South Africa and Namibia, are soon going to get just that ― in the form of thousands of penguin homes.
AZA launched a Kickstarter campaign in May to raise funds for their “Invest in the Nest” project, an initiative aimed at creating and installing artificial nests for African penguins in the wild. The campaign’s last day is Friday, but it’s already fully funded — with more than $188,000 donated thus far by more than 2,000 people.
Among the pledge rewards on offer: penguin T-shirts and totes, as well as “original penguin paintings” created by African penguins themselves.
It's the last week to #InvestInTheNest! Your dollars can give wild African penguins homes and help save a species.https://t.co/Il31XIeRnR pic.twitter.com/iBMhPqF7Tk — Maryland Zoo (@marylandzoo) June 15, 2017
A lack of proper nesting space has posed a major threat to African penguin populations. As AZA explained on the Kickstarter campaign page, African penguins used to build their nests in thick layers of guano, or bird excrement, but guano was over-harvested by humans over many decades, leaving the penguins “without a safe place to make their homes.”
Rob Vernon, senior vice president of communications for AZA, described seeing the penguins on South Africa’s Robben Island nesting under “discarded rubbish and inside abandoned buildings” because of a lack of guano.
“African penguins instinctively look for nesting sites that are under cover to protect the chicks from predators like gulls and from hot sun and heavy rain,” he told HuffPost in an email Thursday.
“Improving chick survival is an important first step in making a difference to the long term survival of the species,” Vernon added. “Nest failure is one of the reasons the population has continued to decline.”
To address this need, scientists have been developing artificial nests in which the penguins can lay their eggs and raise their families. Some nests have already been introduced to African penguin colonies, but according to Vernon, the ones used so far haven’t been the most ideal.
“The old-style nests overheated and were abandoned or caused chick mortality,” he said. “Some scientists think they caused more harm than good.”
Experts at AZA have thus been working to develop an improved version ― something they believe they’ve now achieved.
“The new artificial nests... are designed to provide appropriate internal temperature and humidity conditions [that] will give the breeding penguins a much better chance to keep their chicks alive through the first 30 days when the chicks remain inside the nests for protection,” Vernon said. “If the chicks can survive that critical period, their chances of fledging [leaving the nest after acquiring their feathers] are greatly improved.”
AZA An African penguin with an AZA nest prototype.
The artificial nests, which cost about $100 each to make, are molded by hand and created from a material similar to hardened ceramic. Vernon said the nests will be undergoing further testing before being introduced in the wild on a large scale.
But thanks to Kickstarter, he said, thousands of penguins will soon have a safe place to call home.
“Because the project is fully funded and then some, we anticipate building and installing over 2,000 artificial nests over the next year for African penguins in colonies in South Africa and Namibia,” Vernon said. “That means homes for 2,000 penguin families that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.”BY: Follow @BillGertz
China flight tested a new variant of a long-range missile with 10 warheads in what defense officials say represents a dramatic shift in Beijing's strategic nuclear posture.
The flight test of the DF-5C missile was carried out earlier this month using 10 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. The test of the inert warheads was monitored closely by U.S. intelligence agencies, said two officials familiar with reports of the missile test.
The missile was fired from the Taiyuan Space Launch Center in central China and flew to an impact range in the western Chinese desert.
No other details about the test could be learned. Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gary Ross suggested in a statement the test was monitored.
"The [Defense Department] routinely monitors Chinese military developments and accounts for PLA capabilities in our defense plans," Ross told the Washington Free Beacon.
The test of a missile with 10 warheads is significant because it indicates the secretive Chinese military is increasing the number of warheads in its arsenal.
Estimates of China's nuclear arsenal for decades put the number of strategic warheads at the relatively low level of around 250 warheads.
U.S. intelligence agencies in February reported that China had begun adding warheads to older DF-5 missiles, in a move that has raised concerns for strategic war planners.
Uploading Chinese missiles from single or triple warhead configurations to up to 10 warheads means the number of warheads stockpiled is orders of magnitude larger than the 250 estimate.
Currently, U.S. nuclear forces—land-based and sea-based nuclear missiles and bombers—have been configured to deter Russia's growing nuclear forces and the smaller Chinese nuclear force.
Under the 2010 U.S.-Russian arms treaty, the United States is slated to reduce its nuclear arsenal to 1,550 deployed warheads.
A boost in the Chinese nuclear arsenal to 800 or 1,000 warheads likely would prompt the Pentagon to increase the U.S. nuclear warhead arsenal by taking weapons out of storage.
The new commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, stated during a Senate confirmation hearing in September that he is concerned about China's growing nuclear arsenal.
"I am fully aware that China continues to modernize its nuclear missile force and is striving for a secure second-strike capability," Hyten told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"Although it continues to profess a ‘no first use' doctrine, China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple nuclear warheads and continues to develop and test hyper-glide vehicle technologies," Hyten added.
"These developments—coupled with a lack of transparency on nuclear issues such as force disposition and size—may impact regional and strategic stability and are cause for continued vigilance and concern."
The 10-warhead missile test comes amid heightened tensions with China. State-run media in recent weeks has carried reports calling for China to expand its nuclear forces. A broadcast report showed that new long-range mobile missiles could strike the entire United States.
The Chinese state television channel CCTV-4 last week broadcast nuclear threats, including graphics showing new DF-41 missiles deployed in northern China and graphics showing the missiles' strike path into the United States. The Jan. 25 broadcast included a graphic of a 10-warhead MIRV bus for the DF-41.
The Chinese Communist Party propaganda newspaper Global Times, known for its anti-U.S. stance, issued stark calls for China to build up its nuclear arsenal for use against the United States. On Jan. 24, the newspaper said China's strategic forces "must be so strong that no country would dare launch a military showdown."
"China must procure a level of strategic military strength that will force the U.S. to respect it," the newspaper said.
The same state-run organ criticized President Donald Trump in an article on Dec. 8 and said China should use its wealth "to build more strategic nuclear arms and accelerate the deployment of the DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile."
"We need to get better prepared militarily regarding the Taiwan question to ensure that those who advocate Taiwan's independence will be punished, and take precautions in case of U.S. provocations in the South China Sea," the newspaper said.
China conducted a flight test of the DF-41 in April.
Trump in December called for boosting America's aging nuclear arsenal.
"The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes," he stated in a tweet.
Military analysts said the large number of warheads is unusual for the Chinese nuclear program.
Rick Fisher, an analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the multi-warhead missile test appears to be aimed at sending a signal to the new Trump administration.
Trump has tangled with China in opposing its military buildup on disputed South China Sea islands and on U.S. policy toward Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province and not an independent country.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the United States is prepared to block China's access to reclaimed islands he said are located in international waters and not China's sovereign maritime domain.
"This test of the 10-warhead DF-5C is China's latest nuclear intimidation exercise aimed at the new Trump administration," Fisher said.
"China's nuclear intimidation signals have included the public revelation in late December via Chinese websites of the new DF-41 ICBM in Heilongjiang province, plus articles in China's state-controlled media touting the need for China to increase its nuclear forces to intimidate Washington," Fisher added.
China's known force of around 20 D-5 missiles were deployed with large single warheads in the past, while some were upgraded with three-warhead top stages.
In September 2015 China revealed for the first time during a military parade that it had deployed a new DF-5B multi-warhead missile. Unofficial published reports suggested the DF-5B carries between six and eight warheads.
"The revelation that China has tested a new version of the DF-5 carrying ten warheads constitutes a very strong indication that China has produced a smaller warhead to equip its MIRV-capable ICBMs," Fisher said.
Some analysts speculate that the recent test of the DF-5C used the older missile as a test platform for a new warhead delivery bus that will be used on the new DF-41.
French China watcher Henri Kenhmann reported on his website East Pendulum that a Chinese missile test was to be carried out Jan. 15, based on air closure notices issued by the Chinese government for areas around Taiyuan and a missile impact range in western Xinjiang Province.
Analysis of the impact range suggests the test would include multiple test warheads.
"The point of impact is located south of the Taklamakan desert, in the former ballistic range of Minfeng," Kenhmann said, noting the Chinese had imposed an unusually large air exclusion zone of 125 miles around the impact zone.
"It should be noted that this zone of ballistic impact is abnormally large," he stated, a sign the large area would be used for multiple dummy warheads.
‘The size of this impact zone could indicate testing several MIRVs," he said.
A similar Chinese test of the DF-41 in April involved two MIRVs that were fired to a much smaller impact area of 60 miles by 37 miles.
The Pentagon's latest annual report on the Chinese military said Beijing continues to upgrade its nuclear forces by enhancing silo-based missiles and adding new road-mobile missiles.
"China’s ICBM arsenal to date consists of approximately 75 to 100 ICBMs, including the silo-based CSS-4 Mod 2 (DF-5) and multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV)-equipped Mod 3 (DF-5B); the solid-fueled, road-mobile CSS-10 Mod |
heist (no dialogue, no soundtrack) that brilliantly throws viewers right into the heart-pounding, tension filled robbery. A masterpiece in every sense of the word, “Rififi” remains the torchbearer for the genre with very good reason.
“Dog Day Afternoon” (1975)
35 years on from its release, it’s easy to take for granted how brave and ahead-of-its-time Sidney Lumet’s “Dog Day Afternoon” was. Based on a real incident, it follows Sonny (Al Pacino), a Vietnam vet who, with a group of cohorts, robs a bank in order to finance his (male) lover’s sex-change operation. It’s remarkable for the honest, sympathetic, cliche-free way it depicts a gay character — even now, it’s rare to see a gay character like Sonny. Even then, however, his homosexuality isn’t the focus — much like “Network” (probably the only film on Lumet’s CV that can top this one), the director is interested in celebrity, the way the media, and the people of New York, vilify and celebrate Sonny’s plan. The handheld documentary feel is still fresh today, Frank Pierson’s screenplay is kind of a masterclass, and the editing, by the late, great Dede Allen, is top of the grade. Perhaps most noteworthy is Pacino’s performance: strong, vulnerable, desperate, revolutionary, masculine, feminine: you can keep Michael Corleone, this is the one we’ll remember him for. The supporting cast can’t be forgotten either: John Cazale, Charles Durning, Chris Sarandon, even a young Lance Henriksen are all superb.
– Rodrigo Perez, Nick Clement, Andy Linnane, Oliver Lyttelton, Jessica Kiang, Kevin Jagernauth, Tristan Eldritch, Tan Nguyen
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.Many animals produce vocal sequences that appear complex. Most researchers assume that these sequences are well characterized as Markov chains (i.e. that the probability of a particular vocal element can be calculated from the history of only a finite number of preceding elements). However, this assumption has never been explicitly tested. Furthermore, it is unclear how language could evolve in a single step from a Markovian origin, as is frequently assumed, as no intermediate forms have been found between animal communication and human language. Here, we assess whether animal taxa produce vocal sequences that are better described by Markov chains, or by non-Markovian dynamics such as the ‘renewal process’ (RP), characterized by a strong tendency to repeat elements. We examined vocal sequences of seven taxa: Bengalese finches Lonchura striata domestica, Carolina chickadees Poecile carolinensis, free-tailed bats Tadarida brasiliensis, rock hyraxes Procavia capensis, pilot whales Globicephala macrorhynchus, killer whales Orcinus orca and orangutans Pongo spp. The vocal systems of most of these species are more consistent with a non-Markovian RP than with the Markovian models traditionally assumed. Our data suggest that non-Markovian vocal sequences may be more common than Markov sequences, which must be taken into account when evaluating alternative hypotheses for the evolution of signalling complexity, and perhaps human language origins.
1. Introduction
Many species of animals produce vocalizations comprising multiple element types, combined into complex sequences. Some species have vocal repertoires of tens or even hundreds of discrete elements; others have only a handful, but use them to generate a wide variety of combinations. For example, an individual mockingbird Mimus polyglottos can mimic over 100 distinct song types of different species, and combine them into diverse sequences [1]. Even the rock hyrax Procavia capensis, using no more than five discrete vocal elements, creates long vocal sequences that are rarely the same on repetition [2]. Thus, even species with few vocal elements can sometimes generate an apparently unbounded range of possible combinations. Such varied vocal behaviour raises the question of the role and origin of complexity in animal vocal communication, and the comparison of vocal complexity across taxa, including human speech.
Complexity seems easy to identify, but hard to define, and even harder to quantify [3]. Numerous metrics have been suggested to ascribe a value to the complexity of vocal repertoires. However, these metrics all rely, either explicitly or implicitly, on assumptions of the underlying process that generated sets of sequences. For instance, a frequently cited complexity measurement, Shannon entropy, is only appropriate when each element in a sequence is produced independently of all other elements (i.e. an independent production process), although the assumption of independence is rarely tested [4–7]. If vocal sequences are generated by a non-independent random process, however, Shannon entropy is probably not suitable for quantifying complexity [8]. Whether vocal sequences are random independent processes or conform to some other non-independent stochastic model, identifying the process operating is an essential task for quantifying and comparing sequence properties.
Beyond the application to complexity metrics, uncovering the processes underlying vocal sequence generation in animals may prove crucial to our understanding of language origins. Vocal complexity naturally brings to mind human language; however, the comparison appears to be inappropriate. One of the main differences between language and non-human animal communication is the grammar used to produce sequences. Human language uses ‘context-free grammars’ (CFGs) that are capable of generating recursive sequences and unbounded correlations [9,10]. By contrast, animal vocal sequences are usually described as ‘regular grammars’, the simplest class of formal grammars [11], and many researchers have analysed animal vocalizations as such [12–15]. Regular grammars correspond to finite state automata (FSA), because they comprise a set of rules that could instruct a simple machine (automaton) to move between a (finite) number of well-defined states. In the case of vocal sequences, each state is an acoustic element. Finite state automata can be deterministic; for example, syllable ‘A’ is always followed by syllable ‘B’. They can also be probabilistic (pFSA), in which case multiple possible transitions between states are governed by fixed probabilities; for example, syllable ‘A’ is followed by syllable ‘B’ 90% of the time, and by syllable ‘C’ 10% of the time. In contrast to deterministic finite state automata, different sequences can be generated each time a pFSA is used. pFSAs are an example of a Markov chain [16], the most common model used to examine animal vocal sequences [14]. The pFSA (or Markovian) paradigm assumes that future occurrences (or the probability of each future occurrence) are entirely determined by a finite number of past occurrences. This property of a stochastic sequence is known as the Markov property. For example, the probability of the next syllable in a sequence being of type ‘A’ is determined by the types of the immediately preceding syllables—or at most some finite number of preceding syllables.
pFSAs remain popular for characterizing animal vocal sequences [11,14], as the mechanism for producing Markov chains is easily understood, and simple neural mechanisms for implementing them have been postulated, based on neuroanatomical observations [17,18]. However, Markov chains are insufficient for producing the complexity of any human language [9], and there exist grammatical structures that no pFSA can generate, in particular tree-like syntax such as ‘the hyrax ate the grass that grew near the rock under the tree’ [11]. Furthermore, no intermediate grammatical form exists between pFSA models and the CFG of human language [9]. It is not clear what adaptive force could drive the gradual evolution of CFGs in a species that uses only pFSA vocal communication. In computer science, the addition of register memory, which provides the ability to count the number of repetitions of a syllable, appears to be a simple transition from regular to context-free automata [19]. However, such models have not been described in animal communication.
Despite the widespread use and simplicity of pFSA, there are other, non-Markovian stochastic processes, in particular models where future occurrences are determined by the (infinite) entirety of preceding events [20]. Non-Markovian processes have been used to describe (non-vocal) animal behaviour, for instance the renewal process (RP) model in the reproductive behaviour in sticklebacks, canaries and Drosophila [21], and the psychohydraulic model (PHM) of motivation proposed by Konrad Lorenz [22] for basic drives such as hunger. Although we are not aware of any prior work using non-Markovian processes to describe vocal behaviour, they seem likely candidates for vocal production. For example, non-Markovian mechanisms are able to describe both rapid shifts among vocal elements and long strings of repeated elements. Here, we test whether vocal sequences in several species are more consistent with a Markovian pFSA model, or a non-Markovian process, such as the RP or PHM. Non-Markovian stochastic processes like the RP have properties somewhat between the pFSA and the CFG, and the investigation of language evolution would not be complete without consideration of other, biologically realistic sequence-generating mechanisms.
Both RP and PHM models are considered non-Markovian because they do not rely on finite memory. In RP models, a particular behaviour (for instance, production of a particular vocal syllable) is repeated for some probabilistically determined time. Transitions between syllables of different types are still defined by a transition table as with a pFSA, but the number of repeats of each syllable in between transitions may be drawn from a distribution (e.g. Poisson). Although at first surprising, it can be shown that the sequence generated by such a process is non-Markovian [23] and cannot be well described by a pFSA. The RP does not fit the Markovian paradigm of finite memory, since the Poisson tail is unbounded. The PHM also relies on a nominally unbounded memory; in this case, the probability of a particular syllable occurring increases with the time since its last occurrence, and then falls to a minimum as soon as the syllable is used.
We gathered vocal sequences from seven taxa: the Bengalese finch Lonchura striata domestica [24], Carolina chickadee Poecile carolinensis [25,26], free-tailed bat Tadarida brasiliensis [13], rock hyrax Procavia capensis [2], short-finned pilot whale Globicephala macrorhynchus [27], killer whale Orcinus orca [28], and orangutan Pongo abelii and Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii [29]. For comparison with a human sequence corpus, we also analysed letter order in a sample of English (the text of the play Hamlet [30]), although the intention was not to imply that letter order in human language has any relevance to the evolution of vocal sequences in animals. These sequences were coded for distinct vocal elements (syllables) as described in the above-cited previous works. We aimed to match these sequences to the most likely generation model, from a range of possible models of varying complexity by testing each species's sequences against stochastic production from six different prospective processes: (i) a zero-order Markov process (ZOMP), (ii) a first-order Markov process (FOMP), (iii) a second-order Markov process (SOMP), (iv) a hidden Markov model (HMM), (v) an RP and (vi) a PHM process.
2. Material and methods
(a) Description of the stochastic processes
First, we describe each of these processes in detail. Consider a sequence S of n elements [1 … n], taken from a set of C different element types. The ZOMP defines a production process where each element is generated according to a fixed prior probability π, independent of the preceding elements, so that the probability of the nth element S n being of type i = [1 … C] is given by Pr(S n = i) = π i. In the FOMP, the probability that the nth element will be of type i is determined only by the preceding element j, and the C × C transition matrix T, which defines the probability that element i will occur after element j, so that Pr(S n = i | S n−1 = j) = T j,i. Similarly, the SOMP defines the probability of the nth element in terms of the two preceding elements: Pr(S n = i | S n−1 = j, S n−2 = k) = U (j,k),i. Note that the size of the second-order transition matrix U is of size C2 × C, which indicates the rapid increase in sample size required for accurate estimates of the transition probabilities, as the order of a Markov process increases [31].
The HMM [32] provides a more parsimonious and memory-efficient representation of higher-order Markov processes, and has been used successfully to capture the characteristics of vocal sequences from different species (e.g. [24,33]). As with the traditional Markov models, in generating an HMM sequence, successive elements are chosen probabilistically given the current state. Unlike traditional Markov models, though, in the HMM the states themselves are not explicitly defined in terms of preceding sequences of a fixed number of elements, but are constructed from the data by an expectation-maximization optimization known as the Baum–Welch algorithm [32]. This allows the HMM to represent a combination of low- and high-order Markov relationships within the same model.
The RP is defined by a first-order transition matrix, which determines the pFSA transitions between different elements. This matrix R is defined in a similar way to the FOMP transition matrix T, but with zeroes along the main diagonal. Instead, those self-transitions are generated by a separate stochastic process. In this case, we define the number of repeated elements as being drawn from a Poisson distribution with mean µ, with a separate Poisson distribution for each element type i. A graphical description of the differences between the RP and Markovian processes can be found in [8], and is reproduced in the electronic supplementary material, figure S1.
Although the PHM has not previously been used to describe animal communication, it forms a useful counterpoint to the RP. Whereas in an RP model repeated elements occur more often than would be expected in a Markov model, in a PHM repeated elements are less common than expected. We implement a simplified PHM by defining for each element type i a function of the form, where t i is the time elapsed since element i last appeared, k i is an element-specific rate constant and A i is the equivalent of what Lorenz coined the ‘action-specific energy’ (i.e. the driving motivational force that builds up within an animal until a particular behaviour is precipitated). The probability of the next element being of type i is then given by.
(b) Generation of synthetic sequences
We determined the maximum-likelihood estimator parameters for each of the processes, given the empirical data. For the ZOMP, the parameter π is simply the observed prior probabilities of each of the element types i. For the FOMP and SOMP, the matrices T and U are estimated from the number of occurrences of the specific transitions between element types within the observed sequences.
For the HMM, the parameters of the model are calculated from the empirical data using the standard Viterbi algorithm [34]. In any HMM implementation, the number of states is a crucial factor in the model performance; therefore, we optimized the number of hidden states by minimizing the Akaike information criterion [35]. To do this, we calculated the log likelihood of generating the training sequence from the trained HMM and used the number of hidden states as the number of parameters in the information criterion calculation.
For the RP, the matrix of transitions between different elements R is calculated as for the FOMP, and the means μ of the repeated-element Poisson distributions are estimated from the empirical distributions of number of repeats, separately for each element type i. For the PHM, the rate constants κ are also estimated from the empirical distributions of the intervals between elements of the same type.
Having extracted the maximum-likelihood estimator parameters for each model, we used these to generate artificial sequences based on each model, where the sequence lengths matched those of the original vocal datasets (figure 1). An overview of the dataset sizes and sequence lengths is given in table 1, and the data themselves are available in the electronic supplementary material (data.xls). For each species, we generated 200 artificial datasets using each of the model types.
Table 1.Summary of the datasets used and their characteristics. Collapse species no. element types no. sequences total sequence length source free-tailed bat Tadarida brasiliensis 3 71 514 [13] rock hyrax Procavia capensis 5 263 3296 [2] Bengalese finch Lonchura striata domestica 7 2130 27 858 [24] Carolina chickadee Poecile carolinensis 7 4246 37 094 [25,26] short-finned pilot whale Globicephala macrorhynchus 20 18 246 [27] orangutan Pongo spp. 7 32 373 [29] killer whale Orcinus orca 5 8 224 [28] English language 25 455 3816 [30]
Figure 1. Flow diagram illustrating the calculation of the distance metric between model and empirical data. Empirical sequences (1) are used to derive maximum-likelihood estimator parameters for each of the models (2). Using these parameters, simulated sequences are generated (3) and compared to the corresponding original sequences (4). The average edit distance between these pairs of sequences is a measure of similarity between sequence and model (5).
(c) Comparison of artificial and recorded sequences
Determining whether a particular sequence, vocal or otherwise, is Markovian or not is a non-trivial problem. Rigorous tests for finite-state sequences exist [37], but are not easily applied to datasets of limited size. When limited data are available, transition probabilities are poorly estimated by the small number of transitions observed. In addition, rare states may be completely absent. Previous authors have used multiple measures of the statistical properties of the sequences, such as n-gram distribution [24]. However, these techniques measure aggregate similarity and do not directly address the similarity of the individual sequences. Aggregate comparisons may be an effective way of comparing very long sequences, where the probability distribution of n-grams would be expected to be limiting. However, they would be less accurate when comparing short strings such as those found in real recordings, and when the processes generating these strings may not be stationary (for instance, owing to shifting motivational state and responses to external events). We used a more direct method by comparing each simulated sequence with the corresponding original data, and calculating the edit (Levenshtein) distance [38] between the pair of sequences. Levenshtein distance measures the minimum number of insertions, deletions and replacements necessary to convert one sequence into another, and has been used for assessing vocal syntax in previous studies [2,39,40]. This distance gives a measure of dissimilarity between the simulated and original sequences, which we then averaged over the entire dataset. We calculated the Levenshtein distance between corresponding sequences, both in the simulated and original data, to generate a pairwise distance matrix. We then repeated this for 200 randomly generated sequence datasets for each model and each species.
Having measured the mean Levenshtein distance between a dataset and the maximum-likelihood estimator prospective models, we used multi-dimensional scaling [41] to convert the Levenshtein distance matrix to a series of Cartesian vectors, one for each sequence, which preserved to the greatest extent possible the pairwise Levenshtein distances between all of the sequences. The transformation of the distance matrix to a feature-space matrix allowed us to use classification algorithms for assigning the simulated data to the most likely model. For each dataset of N sequences, we used the Matlab function cmdscale to convert the N × N distance matrix to a matrix Y consisting of a series of N vectors of length p, where p < N is the minimum dimensionality in which the N points can be embedded (i.e. where the pairwise distances between the points are conserved). We then reduced the dimensionality of each vector to length q ≤ p, where q is the number of eigenvalues E of Y·Y’ for which E is positive, and the change in successive eigenvalues ΔE = [E(r) − E(r + 1)]/E(r), r = [1 … p − 1] is greater than 1%.
We used both a naive Bayesian classifier and a Z-test to determine from which of the six generation models the original sequences were most likely to have been drawn. The naive Bayesian classifier [42] calculated the posterior probabilities of belonging to each of the six model clusters, in q-dimensional space, given the distribution of the 200 sequences for each of the six models. The model with the highest posterior probability was chosen as the candidate model. We then performed an additional Z-test, using the Matlabnormfit function, to compare the mean distance of the original data to 200 simulated samples of the candidate model. We used a Monte Carlo method to take into account the variation within each model, and gave an estimate of the probability that the observed data were drawn from a distribution characterized by the 200 simulated samples of the candidate model. Simulated sequences that are very similar to each other (low variance) are clustered together in distance space, whereas simulated sequences with a high variance are spread out in distance space (figure 2). Therefore, any particular empirical dataset is more likely to fall within 95% confidence limits of a high-variance model than a low-variance one. Figure 2. Location of the simulated sequences and original data (black circle) in two-dimensional Levenshtein distance space. Coloured points indicate only the first 30 randomly generated sequences from each model, for clarity: ZOMP (red), FOMP (green), SOMP (blue), HMM (cyan), RP (magenta) and PHM (yellow). Solid colours indicate the domains of the naive Bayesian classifier for each model type.
Higher-order Markov models are, by definition, generalizations of lower-order models, and in particular, the HMM is a generalization of any arbitrary-order Markov model. Therefore, it might appear that an HMM model must necessarily provide a maximum-likelihood estimator of the model parameters that is at least as accurate as lower-order models, if less parsimonious (having a greater number of model parameters). However, we compared the original sequences directly to the corpus of generated sequences, so our similarity metric more broadly measured the appropriateness of each model, and often showed a better fit from the lower-order models (figure 3). We also performed an analysis of variance and a post-hoc Tukey test to assess whether the Levenshtein distances between the original sequences and their corresponding simulated sequences are significantly different among the different models. Figure 3. Histograms of the Levenshtein distances of simulated sequences from each other (blue bars) for the best-fit model (indicated in the title of each panel), and the fitted normal distribution (green line) using the Matlabnormfit function. The red line shows the mean Levenshtein distance of the original data from the simulated sequences, and the p-value indicates the probability of this mean distance (or greater) having been drawn from the distribution of simulated sequences (Z-test).
Given that transition probability estimates are likely to be inaccurate for small sample sizes, we tested the robustness of our conclusions by repeating the analyses using smaller subsets of the empirical data. We sub-sampled each dataset and determined the best-fit model for each sample size. If the dataset in its entirety is of sufficient size to estimate the best-fit model, we expect that the best-fit model would be consistent between the larger and full sample sizes.
3. Results
For the purpose of visualization, the naive Bayesian classifier is illustrated in figure 2 with a two-dimensional embedding, rather than a full q-dimensional embedding (although the two-dimensional embedding is in general insufficient to capture the distribution of the sequences in Levenshtein distance space). Figure 2 illustrates the location of the simulated sequences in distance space, the location of the original data and the domains of the classifier. Note that the spread of the simulated sequences varies substantially between models. For those models where the simulated sequences are tightly grouped (small Levenshtein distance between them), the Z-test is more likely to reject the hypothesis that the original data belong to this model, as the variance of the simulated sequences is small, and the original data are likely to fall several standard deviations from the mean of the simulated cluster. Figure 3 shows the results of the Z-test, comparing the distribution of distances within the simulated dataset of the candidate model and the distance of the original data from the simulated set. Where the original data distance is far from the intra-model distances, the data are unlikely to have been drawn from the model.
Table 2 shows the results of the Bayesian classification for each of the eight species (including English), along with the result of the Z-test for the most likely candidate model. The Shapiro–Wilk test for normality did not reject a normal distribution for any of the best-fit models, supporting the use of a Z-test. Electronic supplementary material, table S1 shows the results of the Z-tests for all models. Of the seven non-human species, none show clear Markovian behaviour. The Bengalese finch, Carolina chickadee, free-tailed bat, pilot whale and killer whale appear most similar to the non-Markovian RP, and the Z-test does not reject the RP model (p = 0.824, p = 0.989, p = 0.764, p = 0.586, p = 0.646, respectively). The orangutan and the hyrax are most similar to the Markovian FOMP, but for both of these species the FOMP is a poor fit to the data, and the vocal sequences are sufficiently different that we reject the null hypothesis of belonging to that model (orangutan p = 0.026, hyrax p < 0.001). Letter order in a sample of English writing appears to follow a Markovian ZOMP model (p = 0.914). The PHM did not appear to be a good model for any of the datasets tested.
Table 2.Results of the Bayesian classifier to find the best-fit model to the observed data. Embedding dimension shows the number of multi-dimensional scaling dimensions used for the classification, and p-values indicated by asterisk show that the Z-test rejects the hypothesis that the data belong to the best-fit model. Collapse species best-fit model embedding dimension p-value free-tailed bat RP 5 0.764 hyrax FOMP 7 <0.001* Bengalese finch RP 7 0.824 chickadee RP 8 0.989 pilot whale RP 14 0.586 orangutan FOMP 9 0.026* killer whale RP 14 0.646 English ZOMP 6 0.914
The test of robustness by varying sample size showed that for all datasets used, except the pilot whale (which passed the Z-test) and the hyrax (which failed the Z-test), the conclusion of best-fit models was consistent at larger sub-sample sizes (see the electronic supplementary material, figure S2).
4. Discussion
Our results show that the vocal sequences of over half of the species studied—the Bengalese finch, the Carolina chickadee, the free-tailed bat, the pilot whale and the killer whale—can be better described as non-Markovian RPs, rather than traditional first-order, second-order or arbitrary-order HMMs. We cannot reliably identify a stochastic process generating the sequences of the hyrax or the orangutan, and it would be interesting to investigate why these vocalizations are qualitatively different from the others studied, whether because of phylogeny, functionality or other constraints.
This diversity of production models is quite unexpected, as previous works have overwhelmingly used the Markovian paradigm as a starting point for the analysis of animal vocal sequences [11,14]. Although putative Markovian generation processes are popular, partly because of their simplicity and partly because of the clear role that they fill in the Chomsky hierarchy [9,10], it is inappropriate to assume that they adequately describe the true generation process simply because of their utility. Indeed, it seems simplistic to assume that animals would primarily generate their vocal sequences based solely on a small number of preceding elements. RPs, in which a certain element is repeated until the animal is ‘tired of it’ (whether physically, cognitively or only figuratively), are alternative models, and indeed we have shown the RP to be a better approximation for the vocalizations of most of the species we examined.
Repetition has long been recognized as a feature of animal behaviour (e.g. eventual variety in birdsong [43] and non-vocal behavioural repetition [21]), although the mechanisms responsible may be diverse [44,45]. Mating and aggressive displays make use of repetition to augment the magnitude of the display signal [44], and repeated displays appear more effective in attracting a mate or deterring a rival in species including songbirds [46] and fallow deer Dama dama [47]. However, a trade-off must exist between the benefit of signal repetition and energetic costs or physiological constraints [46,48]. Such a trade-off may be a proximal cause of a non-monotonic distribution of the number of repeats, such as the Poisson distribution of the proposed RP, which appears to be consistent with our empirical data.
Characterizing vocal sequences as Markov chains places animal vocal sequences in the category of regular grammars and distinguishes them from the more complex context-free structure of human language. However, we have shown that the oft-cited conclusion that all animal communication conforms to regular grammars [11,18] is misleading. Indeed, little mention has been made in the literature of non-Markovian alternatives to the pFSA grammar. No attempt has been made until now to test whether animal vocal sequences are indeed most likely to be generated by pFSAs, or instead by some other, non-Markovian stochastic process. It has been pointed out [49,50] that insufficient attention has been given to the different levels of complexity in pFSAs of different types (i.e. different orders versus HMMs), and we extend this observation to non-Markovian processes. Claims that certain species such as European starlings Sturnus vulgaris perceive vocal sequences with a grammar more complex than regular grammar have met with scepticism [36,51,52]. However, our findings do not point to greater grammatical complexity, but to different grammatical processes, something so far barely examined in the literature.
For this comparison, we have used a small but diverse set of data. Some of the datasets, such as the sequences obtained from orangutans, were necessarily rather small because of the difficulty of working in the wild with an inaccessible, endangered and semi-solitary species. The sequences from the pilot whales potentially contained biasing information, since the audio recorders attached to the animals could also detect the calls of other individuals. However, such a bias would tend to produce a more independent (ZOMP-like) sequence, whereas our findings for the pilot whale indicated a low probability of independent generation. The pilot whale data were also unusual in that they consisted primarily of stereotyped calls, with few non-stereotyped calls; the occurrence of such sequences is probably highly context-dependent [27]. This could indicate either atypical behaviour or, possibly, unusually communicative behaviour. We believe that, despite these limitations, inclusion of these species helps to broaden the scope of our comparison, since primates and cetaceans are mammalian orders recognized as having particularly sophisticated acoustic communication.
Estimating the parameters of probabilistic models from small sample sizes is necessarily problematic [53,54]. For example, an FOMP transition table for the English alphabet is a matrix of size 26 × 26 = 676 cells, and assuming that at least 10 observations are required to provide a reasonable estimate of each transition probability, then at least 6760 transitions must be made. In practice, the required number of observations is much more, as some transitions may be rarely observed. For an SOMP, more than 105 observations are required. In most cases, our data fall far short of the desirable number of observations. However, reasonable estimates of model parameters can often be made with surprisingly small sample sizes [8,54]. The results of our test for robustness show that, with the exception of the pilot whale data, wherever a clear best-fit model is indicated, the chosen model is consistent between larger sub-sample sizes, and we believe that this is an indication of reliability of our conclusions.
We found that the letter order in the English language is best modelled by a ZOMP, whereas previous work has indicated that an SOMP is a more appropriate model [55]. However, English is clearly neither a ZOMP nor an FOMP, and so the resemblance of a corpus of English letters to one or the other may be more dependent on the metric used to assess similarity, rather than the underlying stochastic processes. Information-theoretic approaches [37] naturally lean towards the second-order Markovian paradigm; for example, because the letter ‘t’ is so often followed by the letter ‘h’. However, we believe that our approach of comparing the string similarity of sequences generated by putative models provides a more useful comparison in the field of animal communication research, although possibly less useful for analysing human texts.
To the best of our knowledge, no extant species other than humans have a true language, with an unlimited ability to communicate abstract concepts [56]. Although many non-human animal species have essential precursor abilities, such as vocal production learning [57], contextual reference [58–61] and non-semantic syntax [2,27,62], only humans have a grammatical structure that is sufficiently complex for true linguistic potential [56]. Since no non-human species demonstrate proto-linguistic grammars, proposed mechanisms for the evolution of language in humans remain speculative (e.g. [63]). Among theories of language origin that posit language evolving from systems like extant non-human animal communication, it is debated whether language arose as a gradual adaptation of simpler vocal communication systems [64] or gestural systems [65], or whether essential linguistic abilities arose suddenly (or at least very rapidly) [11]. Although a conceptual path between regular and supra-regular grammars is well accepted in the computer science literature [19], an important question is whether an incremental evolutionary path exists between the pFSA regular grammars that heretofore were considered common in animals, and the CFG linguistic structures that exist in humans. The incremental hypothesis must explain the lack of ‘proto-languages’ in the animal kingdom, representing a link between animal and human linguistic capabilities [66]. Conversely, saltationary or rapid-evolution hypotheses must provide a convincing and evolutionarily plausible mechanism that could explain the qualitative gap between the regular grammar of animal communication and the CFG of human language. Examples would include metric (timing) features [11], or a synthesis of multiple regular grammars [63] as a ‘bridge’ between the two capabilities. Recent work has indicated that complex syntax can develop as the result of simple neurological changes; for example, in Bengalese finches, which have syntax qualitatively more complex than their wild ancestors [67].
Our findings appear to indicate that pFSA is not the ubiquitous nature of animal vocal sequences, and this requires re-evaluation of both gradual and saltational hypotheses. Application of our analysis to more species, and the use of more putative non-Markovian stochastic models, may reveal intermediate steps between known Markovian animal grammars and human CFGs, narrowing the gap between human and non-human animal communicative abilities.
Pilot whale permits: US NMFS 1121–1900, 981–1578, Bahamas 01/09, 02/07, 02/08; funding: SERDP, ONR, NOAA, US Navy Environmental Readiness Division; call classification: Laela Sayigh, Nicola Quick, Gordon Hastie, Peter Tyack. A.R.L. permissions: Indonesian RISTEK, Indonesian PHKA, Leuser Ecosystem Management Authority (BPKEL); support: Universitas Nasional Jakarta, Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme, Borneo Orangutan Survival, Carel van Schaik, Maria van Noordwijk, Serge Wich. Killer whale call classification: Jessica Crance, Juliette Nash; support: SeaWorld Parks.
Funding statement
A.K. was financially supported by the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, US Department of Homeland Security, US Department of Agriculture (#EF-0832858), The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; A.R.L. by The Menken Funds (University of Amsterdam); and D.Z.J. by NSF IOS-0827731.
FootnotesSource: Xinhua| 2017-08-29 17:14:32|Editor: Xiang Bo
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BEIJING, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- China lifted 13.91 million people out of poverty each year from 2012 to 2016, and the annual per capita income in impoverished rural areas has grown 10.7 percent every year, according to a report from the State Council Tuesday.
The report on poverty relief work was submitted for review at a five-day bimonthly session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which opened Monday.
"The State Council has always put a lot of effort into poverty relief. The government work reports in the past four years all promised to lift at least 10 million out of poverty," said Liu Yongfu, director of the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.
As of the end of 2016, there were 43.35 million people in China living below the country's poverty line of 2,300 yuan (344.30 U.S. dollars) of annual income (as constant with 2010 prices), accounting for about 3 percent of China's population.
About 775,000 officials have been sent to impoverished areas for poverty relief work, said the report.
China has set 2020 as the target year to complete the building of a "moderately prosperous society," which requires the eradication of poverty.
To achieve the target, China needs to bring more than 10 million people out of poverty every year, meaning nearly one million people per month or 20 people per minute.Students Zap Their Brains For a Boost, For Better Or Worse
toggle caption Courtesy of Matt Herich
Last October, Matt Herich was listening to the news while he drove door to door delivering pizzas. A story came on the radio about a technology that sends an electric current through your brain to possibly make you better at some things — moving, remembering, learning. He was fascinated.
The neurotechnology is called transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS for short. At its simplest, |
fering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees.” If Dershowitz’s view were correct, Nixon would not be able to “interfere” with the conduct of a Department of Justice investigation because he could unilaterally determine who to investigate or not investigate.
Beyond the legal arguments, Trump is taking an entirely new posture. Before, he argued that the entire investigation was a hoax. Now he is arguing that even if what he did were to meet the legal definition of obstruction of justice by any other person, it does not count because he’s the president. Or, as Nixon put it, “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”With the constant technological whirlwind that our society endures every day, it’s tempting for businesses to believe that they need to hop onto every trend and platform. One area of confusion that many business owners often fret about is app development. When does a company need it and when does it not? It’s important to reach customers where they are – and where they are in today’s environment is mobile. But, this does not necessarily mean that they need an app to get the message.
If you’re thinking of creating a mobile app for your business, here are a few tips to help out along the way:
Create An Innovative Idea: Shape your app around a service or action that no other app in the industry provides. Take Nike as an example. The exercise giant was one of the first to jump on this train, developing the Nike+ Running App for users to easily track their running activity. While most brands provide shopping or customization tools, Nike chose to build their brand using an alternative outlet. Runners began to associate Nike with the activity of running, in turn building brand loyalty. Their mobile marketing efforts have continued to evolve with innovation at the heart of it all.
Shape your app around a service or action that no other app in the industry provides. Take Nike as an example. The exercise giant was one of the first to jump on this train, developing the Nike+ Running App for users to easily track their running activity. While most brands provide shopping or customization tools, Nike chose to build their brand using an alternative outlet. Runners began to associate Nike with the activity of running, in turn building brand loyalty. Their mobile marketing efforts have continued to evolve with innovation at the heart of it all. Minimize Processes: Your app should minimize an otherwise difficult process for customers. This will allow them to be better served, offering the company a competitive edge. Chase Bank set the standard for mobile app banking – first launching the mobile check scanning function, which all other major banks have fought fiercely to catch up with. No longer do customers have to drive to the bank or stand in line during work hours; they can do it from their own home on their own time. On a smaller scale, a company might have the opportunity to develop a client portal in order to access information or to accomplish a particular task that would otherwise be more complex or time-intensive.
Your app should minimize an otherwise difficult process for customers. This will allow them to be better served, offering the company a competitive edge. Chase Bank set the standard for mobile app banking – first launching the mobile check scanning function, which all other major banks have fought fiercely to catch up with. No longer do customers have to drive to the bank or stand in line during work hours; they can do it from their own home on their own time. On a smaller scale, a company might have the opportunity to develop a client portal in order to access information or to accomplish a particular task that would otherwise be more complex or time-intensive. Focus On An Extension of a Product Or Service: Use your app to simplify the buying, planning or building process for customers on-the-go. Chipotle, Dominos and other restaurant chains have begun offering food ordering apps, allowing customers to customize their burrito or pizza and place their order – with their credit card already saved – in no time. There is no “about” section; this is not a mobile version of their site… this is about extending the service through their tablet or phone.
As mentioned above, apps are not for everyone. If the following aspects are present in your company’s app brainstorming, it may be best to steer clear of development:
No Clear Goals. First and foremost, an app should not be invested in without a clear purpose. Many companies dive in with the mindset that they must create one to stay current, without thinking through why they are doing it. Without pain to resolve and goals to accomplish, put the app conversation aside.
First and foremost, an app should not be invested in without a clear purpose. Many companies dive in with the mindset that they must create one to stay current, without thinking through why they are doing it. Without pain to resolve and goals to accomplish, put the app conversation aside. No Problem Being Solved. One question you must ask before delving into the world of app development is – will this app provide something more to the customers than what a mobile-optimized, responsive website can provide? If the answer is no, then skip. It’s not worth the hours and dollars needed to build a replica of an existing website.
One question you must ask before delving into the world of app development is – will this app provide something more to the customers than what a mobile-optimized, responsive website can provide? If the answer is no, then skip. It’s not worth the hours and dollars needed to build a replica of an existing website. Small Budget. Bottom line – app development is not cheap. It takes serious dollars to create an app that will provide a strong return on investment. Beware of app development companies touting claims that they can develop a proper business app with $5000 or less. Typically this kind of app development allows for very little customization, very little functionality and requires the app design to stay within a very strict template or layout. This combination makes for an app that is not unique, cannot solve any problems and, therefore, is not worthwhile.
While apps have the potential to be great business tools, they’re not right for everyone. Always remember to be realistic about your company’s services and budget. Who knows? The next “must-have” app just might have your company’s name on it.Not since "True Detective" (Season 1) has an HBO limited series built a mystery this compelling, even as the questions driving "Big Little Lies" are bigger than the whodunit.
“Big Little Lies” may sound like a cute, paradoxical title; something easy to remember, but quick to dismiss once the true lesson of the series hits. But those three little words prove telling — damning, even — after just a few episodes. The lives of three women and their families living in idyllic Monterey, CA, are slowly revealed to be more troubled than their pristine homes and views would suggest. Stress leads to anger and anger turns to danger, all because of the everyday lies we all tell ourselves, each other and, yes, even our children.
Writer David E. Kelly (adapting the book by Liane Moriarty) and director Jean-Marc Vallée (“Wild”) use these white lies, guarded secrets, and passive aggressive vendettas to frame a grave, life-changing consequence: murder. Who died and who did it remains unknown (through the four episodes made available to critics), and the storytellers seem ready to hold out for a climactic reveal at or near the end of these eight episodes. But the wait is made deliciously diverting by a talented cast clearly relishing the opportunity to dig into complex, multi-dimensional women eager to break a bubble they refused to admit was trapping them.
What drives the story is the unveiling of truth: yes, the answers behind who did the damning deed and who died, but also the truth buried deep inside people who have come to accept life as it is, rather than what they want it to be. At a time when the world is waking up to harsh realities every morning, seeing personal, non-political self-discoveries is an enriching experience that doubles as escapism. “Big Little Lies” is a series built to be as entertaining as it is enlightening, and they’ve pulled off both feats with great zeal.
READ MORE: Reese Witherspoon Made ‘Big Little Lies’ Because She Had Enough of Hollywood Reducing Women to ‘Wives and Girlfriends’
Told in flashback via an omniscient perspective but framed by interrogations of otherwise minor characters, “Big Little Lies” starts on Jane Chapman (Shailene Woodley). A single mother of one, Jane has just moved to Monterey to find a better life for her son. Whether her own situation improves seems secondary, if that, as Jane is healthily devoted to her child, even if her protective ties are laced with deep-seated personal issues. On Ziggy’s first day of school, Jane meets Madeline McKenzie (Reese Witherspoon), an alpha mom with a daughter in Ziggy’s class and another daughter in high school.
The two quickly bond and form a friendship built on Jane’s early act of kindness later matched by Madeline when an incident at school forces parents to pick sides. Joining them in spirit and for seaside drinks is Madeline’s best friend, Celeste (Nicole Kidman), whose twins are in the same class as Jane and Madeline’s kids. The trio share intimacies with one another, but largely come together to back each other up. Jane is worried about Ziggy fitting in at school. Celeste is struggling with her stay-at-home-mom role, and Madeline, well, Madeline is at the center of everything.
A master manipulator who relishes a showdown, Madeline is like every controlling mama bear you’ve seen prowl the halls of prep school. And yet here, she’s very much her own person. Witherspoon brings a ferocious attitude to the role, providing all the spiteful energy you’d need to believe Madeline would kill if she deemed it necessary or be killed because any one of her enemies could no longer tolerate the queen bee. Still, the story includes many a contemplative moment. We watch Madeline drive down the winding, oceanside highway or stare off her back porch at the vast sea that is her backyard, regularly lost in thought. She’ll break down eventually, giving way to core truths with her husband (Adam Scott, giving a restrained, pathos-filled performance that still sports an edge), just as she’ll burst with emotion when spurred on by her friends.
READ MORE: ‘Santa Clarita Diet’ Review: Drew Barrymore Bites Off More Than She Can Chew in a Skin-Deep Netflix Comedy
It’s a precise turn with sharp, informed decisions made time and time again, in a role perfectly built for Witherspoon’s talents. Her co-stars match her high bar without overworking to clear it. Woodley is measured in her emotional output, crossing a wide spectrum but full of youthful purity that perfectly contrasts Madeline’s constant scheming. Kidman, meanwhile, juxtaposes her two selves: She puts forth a serene exterior for her friends that masks a recklessness shown only to her husband (Alexander Skarsgård, turning a two-note character into a man you hate to hold empathy for). The Oscar winner ties them together nicely, especially in later episodes when she’s forced to confront her choices.
Herein lies the true mission behind the limited series: For all the hubbub about murder, “Big Little Lies” is an intricate examination of what women want; from marriage, sex, motherhood, friendship, work — from life in general. By building their captivating individual stories around a development as drastic and tantalizing as murder, the series asks us to imagine how something so small could lead to something so big. Could a little lie, a minor miscommunication, an innocent tiff, lead to death? Some stories are easier to imagine ending in tragedy than others, but Kelly and Vallée treat each woman’s arc with equal weight, demanding we consider their struggle on the same level as their friends’. After all, people don’t have to die for lives to be ruined.
So much of the show’s overall impact will depend on the ending, as whoever winds up dead and whoever killed him or her will force audience to reframe their perspective on these characters. With all murder mysteries, a less than satisfying finale can damn the whole thing to obscurity. But the lessons learned from “Big Little Lies” won’t be as easily shaken. They lie not in discovering the truth, but in searching for it. And this is one damn addictive search.
Grade: A-
“Big Little Lies” premieres Sunday, February 19 at 9 p.m. on HBO. New episodes air every Sunday.
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“People want more Britain, not less,” he said, donning a pith helmet, “and that’s what I am going to give them. Now that we are about to be liberated from the EU, there will be no corner of the globe from which the union jack does not fly.”
It’s considered good form to let a new minister witter on for 10 minutes at the start of their first appearance before a select committee and Boris was determined to use every second. No one anywhere in the world was talking to him about Brexit. Brexit was for the gloom and doom merchants who worried about the pound falling to a 168-year low. He was here to sing Rule Britannia and waffle. No one can accuse Boris of being a poor waffler.
Eventually, the committee chair, Crispin Blunt, decided enough was enough. “I’m sorry to stop you waffling,” he politely interrupted. “But how are you going to recolonise the world when your department is so badly underfunded?” Boris didn’t have an answer so he waffled on a bit more. People would just fling open their borders to us at the very moment we were slamming ours shut in their faces.
The idea of painting the world red had Tory Andrew Rosindell priapic with excitement. “Can we talk about Norfolk Island?” he yelped, having recently just returned from an all-expenses-paid trip there. Boris appeared unaware of the existence of the island, so Rosindell pressed on. Could we have a Commonwealth flag flying on every embassy? Boris didn’t know there was a Commonwealth flag but was certain the Commonwealth would soon be far more influential than the EU. Could he make sure the Queen paid a visit to Gibraltar? And could he make sure the Queen was given another royal yacht? Rosindell has an unerring eye for the big issues of the day.
Boris knew his luck was in when John Baron started quizzing him on Brexit. The Tory MP is a long-term Eurosceptic and who some might think would consider nuclear war a price worth paying for Britain to leave the EU. “What would you say to the remoaners?” he asked.
“I’m not going to give a running commentary,” Boris said. “But I will say that they should jolly well cheer up a bit. Everything is going to be fine so long as we all keep our fingers crossed. The prime minister has made it absolutely clear she has no idea what she is doing but whatever it is she does end up doing will all be fine.” The two Foreign Office minders sitting on either side of Boris didn’t seem to be nearly as confident about this as their boss.
Boris Johnson: west looking at military options in Syria Read more
It took the SNP’s Stephen Gethins to try to pin down Boris. Was he for or against the single market? “The single market is an increasingly useless term,” Boris ad-libbed. Some couldn’t help feeling that it was the term Boris Johnson that was becoming increasingly useless. Sensing he was about to say something that might get him another ticking off from the prime minister, Boris defaulted to his familiar riff about Britain drinking tanker loads of champagne and prosecco.
“Is it even your objective to stay in the single market?” Gethins cut in.
“The single market isn’t the Groucho Club,” Boris replied. Nothing escapes him. The single market has rather less champagne, prosecco and cocaine than the Groucho.
Boris was also a little off-message when he pronounced himself proud to be a citizen of the world – Theresa May has serious punishments for anyone calling themselves a citizen of the world – but he did manage to get his serious face on when Ann Clwyd brought up Syria. Boris may not be sure where Syria is, but he knows there’s something bad going on there. “It’s all very difficult,” he mumbled. “But I wouldn’t rule out kinetic action.” For kinetic, read military. Hey ho, hey ho, it’s off to war we go.Good, in fact excellent, tidings for those who find themselves able to enjoy Fallouts both old and new, and for anyone who lived through the 90s heyday of PC RPGs. Tim Cain, the main brain behind the original Fallout and later co-founder of the much-missed Troika, has fetched up at Obsidian. Until this July, he was at Carbine, working since 2005 on what turned out to be Wildstar, but today we discover that he’s now Senior Programmer at the Fallout: New Vegas/ KOTOR 2 devs. AVENGERS ASSEMBLE.
This originated via a Facebook spot by a member of the Obisidan forums, but has since been verified by a glance at LinkedIn.
Obviously, we don’t have a clue whether or not he’ll work on a Fallout game – that’s going to be up to Bethesda – but hopefully it spells good things for Obisidan’s ever-valiant but uneven roleplaying output. And it means he’s now working with the likes of Chris Avellone and Feargus Urquhart, as well as fellow Fallout co-creator Chris Jones, which makes for quite the RPG supergroup.
Interesting to note that Cain’s title is Senior Programmer, given his Carbine title was Design Director. Going back to his roots, perhaps?
The only known Obsidian game in development at the moment is an adaptation of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel Of Time, but hopefully they’re experimenting with something original too. They’ve worked with other people’s properties for almost their entire existence, bar the divisive Alpha Protocol: I’d love to see them bust out entirely and spectacularly on their own at last.
Thanks, João.Nasty story. Fortunately, the state handled it well. Well, they apparently didn’t handle it well when they were first informed of the problem – it took a third person to tell them that they too were offended before the state felt they “had” to act.
Dunkley and his father, Daniel Reddy, who live in Tulsa, went to Broken Arrow on Tuesday night for a hunter safety course normally required to get an Oklahoma hunting license….
But when father and son arrived at the lesson, the volunteer instructor, Kell Wolf, asked if any of the students voted for President Barack Obama.
Reddy, a transplanted Californian — and former Marine — raised his hand.
According to Reddy and others in the room, Wolf called Obama “the next thing to the Antichrist” and ordered Reddy and Dunkley from the room. When Reddy refused, Wolf said he would not teach “liberals” and would cancel the course if Reddy didn’t leave.
So Reddy and Dunkley left, as did a few others.5 years ago
Washington (CNN) - Most Americans say the government shutdown is causing a crisis or major problems for the country, according to a new national poll.
And while a CNN/ORC International survey also indicates that slightly more people are angry at Republicans than Democrats or President Barack Obama for the shutdown, it is clear that both sides are taking a hit.
The poll, conducted over the weekend, was released on Monday, nearly one week into the partial shutdown over a push by tea party backed GOP lawmakers trying to dismantle or defund Obama's signature health care reform law.
According to the poll, 63% of those questioned say they are angry at the Republicans for the way they have handled the shutdown.
"But the Democrats are not getting off scot-free. Fifty-seven percent of Americans are also angry at the way the Democrats are dealing with the shutdown. And a 53% majority say they are also angry at President Obama," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "It looks like there is more than enough blame to go around and both parties are being hurt by the shutdown."
The CNN poll results are similar to those from a new Pew Research Center poll also released Monday and surveys from Gallup and CBS News/New York Times surveys conducted last week, which indicate slightly more people blaming - or angry at - Republicans than Democrats or the president for the shutdown.
Not surprisingly, huge majorities of Democrats are angry at the Republicans, and huge majorities of Republicans are angry at Obama and Democrats. Independents are equally angry at all sides, with 59% of Independents very or somewhat angry at the Democrats, six in 10 angry at the GOP, and 58% angry at Obama.
The poll indicates that 18% of the public says the shutdown is a crisis and an additional 49% say the shutdown has caused major problems.
"That's a higher level of worry than in November 1995, when the government shut down because the Democrats, led by President Bill Clinton, and the Republicans, led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, could not agree on funding. In 1995, 12% felt the shutdown at that time was causing a crisis and 44% thought it was a major problem," adds Holland.
The two-thirds who say the shutdown is causing a crisis or major problems is similar to the seven in 10 who said the same thing in the Gallup poll.
According to the CNN survey, Democrats are most concerned about the shutdown, although a majority of Independents and Republicans also say the shutdown is causing a crisis or a major problem.
There's also a gender gap, with three-quarters of women but only 57% of men saying the shutdown has caused a crisis or major problems.
Some 800,000 federal workers have been furloughed due to the shutdown, with many government services and agencies are closed, suspended.
The CNN poll was conducted October 3-6 by ORC International, with 1,009 adults nationwide questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.SMS abandoned cart messages
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For LLINs, we estimate a cost of $1.36 per “person protected by an LLIN per year.” (This is based on $5.15 per LLIN distributed, with each LLIN covering an average of 1.8 people for an average of 2.22 years; details at the spreadsheet linked from our cost-effectiveness analysis of LLINs, column H).
(This is based on $5.15 per LLIN distributed, with each LLIN covering an average of 1.8 people for an average of 2.22 years; details at the spreadsheet linked from our cost-effectiveness analysis of LLINs, column H). For deworming, we estimate a cost of $0.51 per person treated (details). This $0.51 figure incorporates costs that SCI, our top-rated deworming charity, reported to us. We have not fully investigated all costs associated with deworming programs (as we have for bednets and cash transfers) and believe the cost per person treated could be ~10-25% higher, leading to a cost per person treated of $.51-.64.In high-prevalence areas, deworming is annual, and all of the information we have about the impacts of deworming is based on high-prevalence areas. There is an additional question of what percentage of people treated are children, since the main case for deworming (in our view) is its developmental impacts when applied to children; we have little ability to estimate this figure and generally assume that 50% of those treated are children, leading to a figure of $1.02-$1.28 per child treated.
(details). This $0.51 figure incorporates costs that SCI, our top-rated deworming charity, reported to us. We have not fully investigated all costs associated with deworming programs (as we have for bednets and cash transfers) and believe the cost per person treated could be ~10-25% higher, leading to a cost per person treated of $.51-.64.In high-prevalence areas, deworming is annual, and all of the information we have about the impacts of deworming is based on high-prevalence areas. There is an additional question of what percentage of people treated are children, since the main case for deworming (in our view) is its developmental impacts when applied to children; we have little ability to estimate this figure and generally assume that 50% of those treated are children, leading to a figure of. Cash transfers are much more difficult to model on a “per person per year” basis, since they are structured as one-time “wealth transfers.” One way of coming up with a partially informative “per person per year” figure is to look at the cost of a metal roof, which is a commonly reported use of cash transfers. GiveDirectly estimates that such a roof costs about $250 for a household and lasts about 20 years. During our visit to GiveDirectly’s operations in Kenya, recipients reported spending closer to $500 for a roof. At an average household size of 4.7 (from the “Household size analysis” document in our GiveDirectly review) and 20 years per roof, that implies about $2.66-$5.32 in recipient expenditures per “person-year of roof coverage”; at a rate of 90c transferred for each $1 in expenses, that implies about $3-$6 in donor expenses per “person-year of roof coverage.”
The obvious problem with these figures is that we don’t know how beneficial a year of LLIN coverage is relative to a year of deworming or a year of coverage by a roof. However, estimating such benefits involves a lot more judgment calls than estimating the costs. We think the figures listed above – while inconclusive and unsatisfying – are much less likely to be wildly inaccurate on their own terms than the figures that follow, so we think it’s appropriate to keep them in mind.
Humanitarian outcomes
The cost per life saved for LLIN distribution
Our current best estimate of the “cost per life saved” for LLIN distribution is about $2300 (details at the spreadsheet linked from our cost-effectiveness analysis of LLINs, column H). Some notes on this figure:
This figure is only including direct lives saved for children under five. It is also possible that LLINs save adult lives, but figures on adult malaria deaths are disputed and we have not seen studies addressing whether LLINs save adult lives. As discussed previously, we believe the case that LLINs have non-mortality-related “developmental benefits” is somewhat comparable to the case that deworming has such benefits. Finally, LLIN distribution may reduce the burden of malaria, on LLIN users and on the health system, in ways not captured in the above considerations.
. Our spreadsheet also estimates the cost per life saved under different assumptions about questions like “How long do LLINs last in the field?” and its overall range comes out at ~$1700-$5500.
There are several potential major sources of uncertainty in our estimate that are not captured in our spreadsheet, including the possibility of insecticide resistance, the possibility that today’s conditions differ in other ways from the conditions under which the original studies of mortality effects were done, and more. These are listed in our discussion of LLIN cost-effectiveness.
The cost per “equivalent life saved” for deworming
We see a lot of uncertainty around the benefits of mass deworming. We have not seen evidence that it directly saves lives, and any such lives saved are likely to be quite rare (not competitive with how often LLINs save lives). However, there is some evidence suggesting that deworming has developmental impacts: that deworming someone in childhood can cause them to earn more money later in life (among other benefits).
When attempting to estimate a “cost per life saved equivalent” for deworming, one must take a view on multiple difficult-to-quantify factors, all of which are listed in the “assumptions” sheet of our spreadsheet on “cost per life saved equivalent” comparisons:
The relative value of saving a life vs. realizing the developmental benefits associated with deworming. The value assigned by the corrected Disease Control Priorities Report to averting “cognitive impairment” is 2.4% of the value it would assign to averting death, but many might consider improving a life to be more than 2.4% as valuable as saving a life. (Assumption 9 on “Assumptions” sheet)
The proportion of people dewormed by SCI who are children. (Assumption 2)
Whether the benefits of deworming are likely to scale linearly with repeated treatments. The Kenya study on developmental benefitslooks at the benefits of receiving ~2.5 years of additional treatment; it’s possible that people treated by SCI receive fewer or more years of treatment. (SCI generally aims for repeated treatment throughout childhood.) (See Assumption 3; we formalized this issue via a multiplier that captures “how helpful years of treatment in SCI’s program are, relative to the years of treatment in the key study.”)
Whether to make a “replicability adjustment” due to the fact that developmental benefits for deworming are not as robustly established as mortality effects for LLINs. (We have discussed this issue previously.) We have sought a reference point for how likely it is that a given study result will hold up under replication, and have seen some potentially relevant figures in John Ioannidis’s analysis of biomedical literature (here and here), though the analogy between biomedical studies and the studies in question has substantial limitations. We have formalized this adjustment as Assumption 4 in the sheet.
Whether to make an “external validity” adjustment, to account for the fact that infection prevalence rates were unusually high due to El Nino in the Kenya study on developmental benefits (the study that provides the most helpful information for quantifying the benefits of deworming). We have formalized this adjustment as Assumption 1 in the sheet.
How to account for the shorter-term health benefits of deworming, including both rare severe health effects (such as intestinal obstruction due to ascariasis) and subtle general health effects. Given recent developments, we think it is reasonable to consider the subtle general health benefits negligible, but we also provide the option to use our previous estimate of such benefits, which is based on the Disease Control Priorities Report.
Our spreadsheet on “cost per life saved equivalent” comparisons shows the “cost per life saved equivalent” under different assumptions. We have provided many possible assumptions in the “assumptions” sheet and calculated the “cost per life saved equivalent” for deworming under each possible combination of inputs; it ranges from $31 in the most optimistic scenario to over $2 million in the most pessimistic. It also includes scenarios that represent different GiveWell staff members’ best guesses, discussed further below.
Comparing LLIN distribution and deworming
Recall that LLIN distribution may also have developmental benefits. Generally, the more optimistic one is about the case that health in childhood affects quality of life in adulthood, the more optimistic one ought to be about both LLIN distribution and deworming. Personally, I would guess that LLIN distribution has stronger developmental benefits than deworming on a “per-person-per-year” basis (for reasons outlined previously) though one could easily argue either side of this question.
If one assumes that LLIN distribution and deworming have equal benefits on a “per-person-per-year” basis, and that the proportion of people treated who are children is similar for the two, then this implies that when considering developmental benefits alone, deworming accomplishes about 2.5x as much good per dollar as LLIN distribution (based simply on the “cost per person treated per year” from the previous section).
One may also try to combine the mortality benefits and the developmental benefits of LLIN distribution under these assumptions, as we do in our spreadsheet on “cost per life saved equivalent” comparisons. Below, three of us – myself, Elie, and Alexander – explain our assumptions and give the resulting cost-effectiveness comparison. We also encourage readers to use the spreadsheet to enter their own assumptions. You can do so by going to the “Master” sheet in our spreadsheet on “cost per life saved equivalent” comparisons, manually editing columns M through V for any row, and watching the output in columns X and Y.
Elie’s assumptions: $0.56 per person dewormed (assumes that our $0.51 estimate is too low by 10%, based on an underestimate we previously made of AMF’s costs before analyzing more deeply); 50% of deworming goes to children; child-years of deworming by SCI are on average 1/3 as effective as child-years in the key study; developmental benefits should be valued 20% as much as lives saved; the external validity of the key deworming study is 30.25% (based on the change in moderate-heavy infections experienced during the course of the study); 40% chance that the study would hold up under replication; standard (Disease Control Priorities Report-based) minor health benefits of deworming. $1,668 per life saved equivalent for deworming (83% from developmental benefits); $1,564 for nets.
Holden’s assumptions: $0.51 per person dewormed (uses our current estimate); 50% of deworming goes to children; child-years of deworming by SCI are on average (2.41/10) as effective as child-years in the key study (this is equivalent to assuming that SCI is treating all children throughout childhood, and that benefits do not increase beyond the 2.41 years point); the external validity of the key deworming study is 30.25%; 10 people with developmental benefits are morally equivalent to 1 life saved (this figure comes from regressing my own intuitions about what’s valuable – which put very low value on saving lives relative to improving them – somewhat toward “normality,” since I’m not confident that my intuitions are appropriate on this point); 30% chance that the study would hold up under replication; standard (Disease Control Priorities Report) based minor health benefits of deworming. $3,813 per life saved equivalent for deworming (56% from developmental benefits); $2,004 per life saved equivalent for nets.
Alexander’s assumptions: $0.51 per person dewormed (uses our current estimate); 50% of deworming goes to children; child-years of deworming by SCI are on average exactly as effective as child-years in the key study (this is based on ignorance about where in the distribution of child-years of deworming additional funds might be spent, and takes into account the upside potential of later years conceivably helping to eliminate schistosomiasis from an area); the external validity of the key deworming study is 30.25%; a 2.4% quasi-disability weight for developmental effects (following the Disease Control Priorities Report, not due to confidence that it is the correct estimate but because it roughly maps to the intuition that a permanent 25% increase in income [derived from Baird et al 2012] for ~40 people starting in adulthood would be roughly as valuable as saving a life of a young person); 50% chance that study would hold up under replication; standard (Disease Control Priorities Report 3% discount rate DALY-based) minor health benefits of deworming (with no minor health benefits for bednets). $2,981 per life saved equivalent for deworming (73% from developmental benefits); $2,027 per life saved equivalent for nets. (Alexander comes up with broadly similar figures because he’s more confident in the representativeness and quality of the deworming studies than Elie or I, but places much less weight on developmental effects than either of us.)
All of these figures can be converted straightforwardly to DALYs if one prefers these units. The DALYs per “life saved equivalent,” for three different versions of DALYs, are given in column AC of our spreadsheet on “cost per life saved equivalent” comparisons.
Cost per “equivalent life saved” for cash?
We have not attempted to use the “equivalent life saved” framework to quantify the benefits of cash transfers, since we know so little about how they are spent and what the likely results are. Instead, we compare cash transfers to the other interventions using a different framework, discussed immediately below.
Financial returns
We can estimate a similar figure for cash transfers, using what we know about the longer-term returns to cash transfers, and compare the two. Finally, we can do a similar calculation for LLIN distribution |
and even drew a general election opponent, Patty Judge, who targeted him over his obstruction of the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
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Now JCN, which spent more than $5 million encouraging Republicans and moderate Democrats to block Garland, is running TV and digital ads in Iowa and Washington, D.C., aimed at bolstering Grassley's resolve ahead of the next fight: Confirming Trump's nominee.
“They said it would be too hard. A risky gamble. They said he would have to give in and approve Obama’s liberal Supreme Court nominee. Liberals attacked him over and over. But Senator Grassley stood strong, protected the Supreme Court during a heated presidential campaign," reads the ad's narrator. "Senator Grassley’s been fighting for Iowa’s conservative values for years. This year, he led the fight for the rule of law and made us proud. Tell Senator Grassley thank you.”
The ad may end up being just the opening salvo in what could be a bruising confirmation fight, and the deep-pocketed JCN could launch further campaigns to aid Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in confirming Trump's justices, sources said.
"The president and the Senate have the opportunity to nominate and confirm a Supreme Court justice that protects our founding document from overreach and liberal interpretation in a way that honors the late Justice Scalia’s legacy of jurisprudence,” said JCN chief counsel Carrie Severino.The police on Tuesday evening picked up journalist Pushp Sharma to question him in connection with an RTI reply he claimed to have received from the ministry of Ayush. Police sources said a case has been registered.
In the weekly newspaper Mili Gazette, Sharma had published a RTI report suggesting that the government adopted a policy of not hiring any Muslim candidates as yoga trainers.
The report claimed the government in its reply said that though 711 Muslim candidates had applied for short-term assignment of trainers and teachers for the World Yoga Day in 2015, ‘no Muslim candidate was invited, selected or sent abroad as per government policy.’
Read | Ayush minister rejects RTI response of no-Muslim hire policy
The Ayush ministry denied the report and accused the publication of publishing a fictitious reply as annexure-I. The ministry officials filed a complaint with police and accused Sharma of promoting disharmony and distrust with ulterior motives.
“We have not arrested him. We needed some papers for our investigation which is why we called him to the police station. The allegation is serious and if true, it is a crime. We are looking into the case,” said a police official.
In its clarification, the ministry had said that in September last year, it replied to an RTI query from Sharma, which was forwarded to the three agencies Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga, Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturopathy and International Cooperation wing of the ministry.
“This is a simple forwarding letter under section 6(3) of RTI Act and therefore does not contain any reply to the queries. The same forwarding letter of the ministry has been used by a section of the media in this matter, but with a non-existent, fictitious “ANNEXURE- I”, (which has never been issued by the ministry).”
It said the reply published by Sharma was fabricated.
First Published: Mar 16, 2016 07:34 ISTAmerican intelligence agencies have long warned of a cyber Pearl Harbor. The threat of cyberattack looms so large in Washington D.C. that it has eclipsed terrorism as the greatest threat to the country according to a recent poll of defense and intelligence leaders.
However, when testifying in front of the House committees on cybersecurity and terrorism today, Homeland Security senior intelligence officer Glenn Lemons said his chief worry wasn’t so much about a cyberattack from terrorists or politically-motivated hackers like Anonymous but what happens afterwards: High profile press coverage and chatter around the world.
Terrorists “will continue to seek cybertargets of opportunity,” Lemons explained. “Therefore, despite the low probability of destructive terrorist cyberattack occurring, such an event may have a high profile impact even if unsuccessful. Success in this may be determined by press coverage [as opposed to] destructive network activity.”
Lemons, an officer in Homeland Security’s Cyber Intelligence Analysis Division, spoke at length about what he considers very real threats from nation states like China and criminal hackers but said even failed attacks can be deemed successful with the right public relations strategy.
“Criminal hackers are politically or ideologically motivated and target for publicity,” Lemons said, “which can result in high profile operations but often with limited effectiveness.”
#OpUsa, a 2013 hacking campaign organized by Anonymous and other groups against American banks and government agencies, did virtually no damage (it did take out a bakery’s website) but the attacks were covered extensively throughout online media.
“#OpUsa showed the group’s desire for media attention,” he said, “despite its lack of capability to disrupt websites of US government, financial, and commercial entities.”
Screengrab via C-SPANTodd Starnes speaks to Fox News (screen grab)
A Fox News contributor and the head of the Family Research Council took to the airwaves Thursday to complain that Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent announcement adding two Muslim holidays to the New York City public school calendar “discriminates” against Christians.
In audio captured by Right Wing Watch, Fox contributor Todd Starnes told the FRC’s Tony Perkins that the inclusion of Eid al-Adha and al-Fitr “marginalizes ” Christians in the name of “tolerance.”
Starnes, who has an extensive history of attempting to create anti-Christian controversies where none exist and falsely reporting stories, agreed with host Perkins who said, “When it comes to Christmas and Easter, two very prominent Christian holidays, they’re not on the school calendar, they’re called ‘winter break’ and ‘spring break.’”
Despite the fact that Easter falls on Sunday — which is not a school day — and Christmas is on the New York City schools’ list of holidays, Starnes was in total agreement.
“Oh yes!” an agitated Starnes exclaimed. “For the sake of tolerance and diversity, that normally means the Christians are going to be discriminated against or their holidays are going to be minimalized.”
Despite New York schools also observing the Christian Good Friday, as well as Jewish holy days of Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Passover, Perkins noted that “something is rotten” in a country that predominately identifies as Christian.
“When 85 percent of the population identifies as Christian but we can’t have a Christmas holiday because it’s religious but yet we can have Muslim holidays — something is not right there in New York City, ‘The Big Apple,’ something is rotten,” Perkins lamented.
Starnes agreed, blaming de Blasio’s decision on an environment of Christian marginalization encouraged by President Obama’s administration.
“How many times have we seen this, where the Islamic faith is being given accommodation and the Christian faith and other religious faiths are being marginalized, not just in the public workspace but also through the Obama administration.”'I used to feel irresistible to women. Not any more': The melancholy confessions of Jack Nicholson
The 73-year-old Oscar-winning actor talks about everything from mortality to drugs to heartbreak
'I would love that one last romance. But I'm not very realistic about that happening,' said Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson is in a grand suite in an upmarket hotel overlooking New York’s Central Park, enjoying the view – and, in a city with some of the world’s most draconian smoking laws, his 12th cigarette of the day. At 73 years of age, he is a man who remains implacably resistant to rules.
As he says in that mesmerising, molasses-mixed-with-gravel drawl, now wreathed in smoke, ‘It’s a hard-wired thing in me. I’m not good with being told. I just immediately start resisting the situation… I overreact to having my attention directed.’
And then his face slowly breaks into the iconic Joker smile.
Nicholson is everything you expect him to be in the flesh. He smells of expensive car-seat leather and nicotine. He speaks in strange, complex riddles. He allows a 30-minute interview to run on for an hour and 40 minutes as he talks about everything from mortality to drugs to heartbreak. He is charming, fascinating, funny, strangely vulnerable and completely original in every way.
‘I’m definitely still wild at heart. But I’ve struck bio-gravity. I can’t hit on women in public any more. I didn’t decide this; it just doesn’t feel right at my age.’
He pauses to get straight to the heart of his own theory of life.
‘If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women. There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I’m not in that state now and that makes me sad.
‘But I also believe that a lot of the improvements in my character have come through ageing and the diminishing of powers. It’s all a balancing act; you just have to get used to the ride.’
Nicholson has a presence that radiates right off the Richter scale, and even a simple request for ‘water, plain water’ carries some sort of profound import that makes the waiter tremble helplessly as he pours.
His face, with those roof-shaped eyebrows, the glint in the eyes, the teeth-baring smile, calls to mind all of his most famous performances: as the manipulative McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, mad Jack in The Shining, the drunken George in Easy Rider and commitment-phobe Garrett in Terms Of Endearment.
'If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women. There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I'm not in that state now and that makes me sad,' said Jack
His latest movie, the romantic comedy How Do You Know, sees him star alongside Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd as a rich, selfish tycoon who sets his son up to go to jail for a crime that he himself committed.
While most actors relish blinding others with their presence, Nicholson does not.
‘I hate it. I don’t want to be treated like the Medusa or the Lincoln Memorial. People have an idea of me which is not the reality. On set I’m an actor like every other actor. Most times, for every part I play, I can think of other actors who would be better. I worry from the moment I take a job. I worry about how I’m going to do it, if I can do it. I try to work out what I have to do on set and how I do that.
'I get extremely anxious. I panic. I can’t get it. It happens every time, and I get myself into this state, and then I walk on set and the director says, “Roll”, and all of a sudden all of it disappears and it’s all happening, and I relax and I’m doing what I do and I’m not even thinking about it. And I relax up until the moment they yell “Cut”.’
'It's a movie that's based on a good script and good acting, and it's supposed to move you': Jack on his latest film How Do You Know
Given that he rarely gives interviews, it’s surprising he has agreed to promote a romcom which showcases the talents of others. Nicholson insists otherwise, though.
‘It’s very important,’ he says.
‘I am from a different era of movie acting. My career doesn’t depend on explosions and pyrotechnics. What I liked about this script is that the same rules apply. It hasn’t got people flying off walls and lots of guns and yelling.
'It’s a movie that’s based on a good script and good acting, and it’s supposed to move you. It’s the sort of movie I want to be a part of. In these times people need to be able to laugh.’
As he talks, the actor begins to relax. Initially he resists talking about Jack Nicholson, the legendary womaniser, drinker, drug-taker and party animal, batting off questions with responses like, ‘It’s a conceptual point of view, not always the reality’.
The day he flew into New York from his LA home, he headed straight to a private party to meet up with his old friend Keith Richards.
I remind him of Robin Williams’s joke that Nicholson is the only man in the world to whom Richards would say, ‘I have to go home now, Jack.’
He laughs.
'It’s funny, because he’d already left the party before I arrived… But contrary to opinion, however sated I got, I always looked after myself. I’ve woken up in trees, I’ve woken up almost hanging off cliffs, but I’ve always known how to sort myself out.
‘Keith would stay up seven nights in a row. I stayed up late, but I slept in late, too. I always believed in taking care of myself. There was always a discipline within my partying structure. I’ve never kept a camera waiting, and in all my career I only missed one day of work, on The Shining. I put my back out.
‘At the time I thought it was down to a scene where I had to throw this ball. In fact, the reason was that the movie was filmed in London. I loved British actors, and the fact there were these wild guys over there, and I wanted to show them what Jack the Waggle could do.
'The reality was that I was annihilated emotionally by the separation from Anjelica (Huston). That was probably the toughest period of my life'
'I wanted to work like a beast and then go out and be all over London like a fire, the wildest of the lot. I rented a house next to the Thames that had a big high wall, and I’d come home most nights without my keys and I’d climb this wall. The first time I had no memory, and the next day at work I did in my back after this ball scene.
‘A few nights later I was out again, climbing the wall, and when I landed I knew exactly how I did my back in – it was no ball.’
It’s true that Nicholson’s face doesn’t betray his past like Richards’s does. Yes, he has a hedonist’s paunch and greying hair, but he has few lines and could easily pass for a man 15 years his junior.
‘I haven’t had surgery. I don’t want to be judgemental, but some of the things you see these days in Hollywood are a bit horrifying. I mean, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want to scare people.
‘I’ve never been comfortable about surgery. I was on the receiving end of one of the very first chest augmentations. When I touched what felt like polythene, that was it. The fuse went out. Maybe it’s childish, but I couldn’t cope with it.
‘I mean, if someone can fool me with a new chest or lips, then I’m happy to be fooled. But I have to admit I have a prejudice against it. I’m not worried about wrinkles, in myself or in women. I find them interesting. I can’t see so well, so sometimes I look in the mirror and I see how I was as a young man. But a few years back I noticed I don’t have any hair below my sock line, and I thought to myself, “Jackie, that’s an old man.”’
Born in New York, he was raised as a Catholic by his grandmother, who he believed was his mother. He only discovered the truth, that his older sister June was in fact his mother, years after both had died.
‘I was raised entirely by women. My grandmother ran a beauty parlour and I spent most of my time there. She taught me manners and I learned how to be around women, what women liked. I am insanely well mannered and polite, and because of that I have nothing but gratitude for my upbringing.’
A rebel at school, after moving to Hollywood he initially worked in MGM’s animation department, but his ambition was always to act.
‘I was recruited as a mathematician after school, then I used to read law biographies, and at one point I thought about being a sports writer, but to be honest I don’t think there would have been any other job that I would be good at.’
His big break came with Easy Rider, a cult classic starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper which is infamous for its behind-the-scenes debauchery, and which brought Nicholson his first Oscar nomination (he has now been nominated for 12 Oscars, of which he’s won three).
Jack's women: Rebecca Broussard (left) is the mother of two of the actor's five children, and with actress Lara Flynn Boyle (right)
Hopper, a fellow hellraiser who became one of his closest friends, died last year. Nicholson’s face visibly clouds as he admits to having to face up to his own mortality.
‘One of the toughest parts of ageing is losing your friends. At first it starts quietly, then pretty soon it’s every month, and you can’t help but think, “When is that bell going to go off for me?” And on top of that you feel this constant loss. At this time of life, you feel just a sword’s point from death. It’s frightening – who wants to face God and the clear white light? I know I definitely don’t. Yet.’
There’s an unexpected honesty to Nicholson which makes him entirely different to the politically correct Hollywood A-list of today. He casually throws out pronouncements like hand grenades (he worries afterwards that he has ‘probably been a bit too open’). He forged his reputation as part of the free-loving, rule-breaking hippy generation. He lives in the first house he ever bought, on Mulholland Drive, where in his younger days he hung out with Mama Cass, Jim Morrison, Warren Beatty, Joni Mitchell and Marlon Brando.
‘I bought the next two along from me and I also acquired Marlon’s house. It seems a little dinky, because people don’t get that it all functions as one house – many of the women I’ve been with have said, “Go and find a better place, find a mansion” – but it’s the best place and I love to be where I always was.’
'On set I'm an actor like every other actor. Most times, for every part I play, I can think of other actors who would be better. I worry from the moment I take a job,' said Jack (above in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
These days the hard drugs are gone, but he continues – against the Hollywood grain – to smoke cannabis. ‘I don’t tend to say this publicly, but we can see it’s a curative thing. The narcotics industry is also enormous. It funds terrorism and – this is a huge problem in America – fuels the foreign gangs. More than 85 per cent of men incarcerated in America are on drug-related offences. It costs $40,000 a year for every prisoner. If they were really serious about the economy there would be a sensible discussion about legalisation.’
His home is stuffed with art by Matisse, Warhol, Tamara de Lempicka and Picasso; the collection is estimated to be worth over $100 million. He flicks a match to light another cigarette.
‘Now I’m at home so much more, there are these moments once in a while when I think, “Jesus, look at all that.” Those pictures actually intimidate a lot of people. I’m totally solid with the “truth is beauty/beauty is truth” idea. But if I’m around it too long I start to feel trapped in this material world. I think I mustn’t get owned by my possessions, I mustn’t fall prey to materialism. Sometimes I think, “Hell, I’m going to burn them all.”’ Again, the slow Joker smile.
'Here's...Johnny': Jack goes insane in The Shining
Nicholson – whose lovers have included actresses and models such as Michelle Phillips, Bebe Buell, Lara Flynn Boyle, Anjelica Huston and Rebecca Broussard – was once described by the actor Peter Finch as a ‘very social loner’. It’s a surprising description for a man who has reportedly slept with 2,000 women (‘Hell, I don’t count’), yet it’s one he has come to agree with.
‘My life has changed. I don’t enjoy the things I used to so much. I don’t go out to nightclubs, I don’t like clubs any more. I don’t go out raging, looking out for women; now it’s just a game that isn’t worth the candle.
‘The last three times I’ve been in New York filming, I didn’t leave my hotel room for one single night. People won’t believe that, but it’s true. But you adjust your life to your circumstances, and I can spend a lot of time on my own. I think of myself as social, but my friends are always telling me, “Jack, you need to get out more.”’
There is nothing in his life he regrets, but one thing he yearns for. A lasting relationship with a woman.
‘I’ve had everything a man could ask for, but I don’t know if anyone could say I’m successful with affairs of the heart. I don’t know why. I would love that one last real romance. But I’m not very realistic about it happening. What I can’t deny is my yearning.
‘I’ve been in love in my life, but it always starts with obsession that lasts exactly 18 months and then it changes. If I’d known and been prepared for that, I may have been able to orchestrate the whole relationship thing better.
Poll Does Jack Nicholson still have it? Yes No Does Jack Nicholson still have it? Yes 9825 votes
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‘But when I’m with someone I’ve often defied every one of my conventions. I’ve been so struck I’ve said, “Come on, let’s go, let’s get married.” But no woman has ever recognised what I say as being legitimate. They think of my reputation, Jack the Jumper. I’m damned by what people think. Now I think I have a gap I won’t ever cross.’
He has five children – Jennifer, 47, from his only marriage, to actress Sandra Knight; Caleb, 40, whose mother is actress Susan Anspach; Honey, 29, the daughter of model Winnie Hollman; and Lorraine, 20, and Ray, 18, from a relationship with actress Rebecca Broussard, which ended his 16-year romance with Anjelica Huston. Nicholson says his heart was broken by Huston, despite the fact that he cheated on her (when he told her Broussard was pregnant she beat him up).
‘The reality was that I was annihilated emotionally by the separation from Anjelica. That was probably the toughest period of my life.’
Jack picking up his third Oscar, this time for As Good As It Gets (pictured with co-star and fellow Academy Award-winner, Helen Hunt). He has been nominated 12 times
Asked if he wishes he could turn back time, he shakes his head.
‘I may have made a mistake, but I don’t want to go back and correct it. I would rather deal with it.’
He clearly dotes on Ray and Lorraine.
‘They’re great. I was never what you call a hands-on sort of father, but I’m lucky my kids have turned out the way they have. Parenthood is all about being in the lap of the gods. All you can do is your best.’
He shakes his head.
‘I would never complain about my life, even though I really would like to have a mate. It’s not like I’m starved for company – I have a few very good lady friends – but there’s only a certain amount of times a woman wants to see you and never go out for dinner. I got tired of arguing with women about going to have dinners, so I hired somebody to cook. The food is better at my house.’
He laughs.
‘I had a very late eureka experience not so long ago. I was up around where I live and I looked out at the blue skies and the clouds and I realised that this was paradise.’
He leans back in his seat, stubs out his cigarette and gives a final Nicholson chuckle.
‘And that’s something pretty big to hang on to.’Advertisement
Collider caught up with Hans Zimmer at a press event for Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadow and asked for an update on his score for The Dark Knight Rises. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Well, before I started on Sherlock, I had an idea for Dark Knight. I said to Chris [Nolan], “Would it be okay if I got the most outrageous orchestra together and tried this experimental thing?” It involved chanting and all sorts of stuff. And, if I decided that it was just complete rubbish, then we could just throw it away and nobody would ever mention that Hans went and spent all that money. So, I went off and spent weeks writing it. I recorded the piece, and Chris came by and said, “Well, you’ve done half the movie now.” I said, “Well, I don’t think that’s quite true.” But, I think I figured out my cornerstone to the thing.
I’m hellishly ambitious on that. The chant became a very complicated thing because I wanted hundreds of thousands of voices, and it’s not so easy to get hundreds of thousands of voices. So, we Twittered and we posted on the internet, for people who wanted to be part of it. It seemed like an interesting thing. We’ve created this world, over these last two movies, and somehow I think the audience and the fans have been part of this world. We do keep them in mind. And I thought it would be something nice, if our audiences could actually be part of the making of the movie and be participants in this. So, we’ve got this website up, www.ujam.com, where you can go on and be part of it. It was fantastic. The first Tweet that went out just melted our server because we had tens of thousands of people a second, trying to get onto the site.In 1986, twenty-five years after the publication of Fantastic Four #1, which launched the modern Marvel Universe, Marvel editor in chief Jim Shooter introduced a new fictional reality in Marvel Comics, the New Universe. This was an ambitious experiment, but it did not last for a quarter century. It did not even last half a decade, collapsing in 1989.
Through the Marvel revolution of the 1960s, Stan Lee and his collaborators had brought a new level of realism to the superhero genre. Shooter’s intention in devising the New Universe was to take that revolution further.
The Marvel Universe was filled with fantastic elements: not just costumed superheroes and supervillains, but also myriad extraterrestrial races, hidden races on Earth such as the Atlanteans and Inhumans and Eternals, gods such as the Asgardians, and sorcerers like Doctor Strange and supernatural beings like Dracula. Clearly the world in Marvel Comics was radically different from the world of its readers. Moreover, in the 25th anniversary year of modern Marvel, it was clear that time was not being treated realistically in the comics. Peter Parker, alias Spider-Man, had been fifteen when he debuted, but by 1986 was no older than his mid-twenties. (If Peter Parker aged in real time, he would now be collecting Social Security.)
In Shooter’s conception, the Earth of the New Universe would initially be just like the readers’ real world until the mysterious cosmic “White Event” took place, which endowed various individuals with superhuman powers. Most of these “paranormals” would not become costumed superheroes. Furthermore, their lives would be presented in real time: after twelve monthly issues of their comic books, they would be a year older. The goal was to attempt a more realistic exploration of what would happen in the real world if suddenly some people developed super-powers. In Marvel’s catchphrase, the New Universe was “the world outside your window.”
The New Universe line of comics was initially comprised of eight monthly series. The flagship title was Jim Shooter and artist John Romita, Jr.’s own creation Star Brand, about a man named Ken Connell, who mysteriously acquired a tattoo-like mark called the Star Brand, which endowed him with seemingly limitless super-powers. Connell sought a purpose for his new powers, initially acting in secret because he feared public exposure. Shooter seemed particularly interested in the theme of an all-powerful man attempting to find out how to act responsibly; he had done a variation on this theme with the alien Beyonder in Secret Wars II, which began in 1985 and ended in early 1986.
Other New Universe series included Kickers, Inc., created by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz, about a group of former football players, led by the super-strong Jack Magniconte, who became a team of heroes for hire. Spitfire and the Troubleshooters, co-created by Eliot Brown and John Morelli, centered on its leader, Jenny Swenson, who wore a super-powered armored battlesuit, making her the New Universe’s counterpart to Iron Man. The late Archie Goodwin, one of the most respected writers and editors in comics, had a hand in creating four more New Universe series: Psi-Force, about a team of teenage paranormals with psionic abilities; Nightmask, whose title character could enter people’s dreams; Justice, about a vigilante who claimed to be from another dimension; and Mark Hazzard, Merc, about a Vietnam veteran turned mercenary.
The most interesting of the original New Universe series, however, is D.P. 7, created by writer Mark Gruenwald and artist Paul Ryan, who also teamed up in 1986 on the Squadron Supreme limited series.
The first issue begins in a hospital “somewhere in Wisconsin” (Gruenwald’s home state), where Dr. Randy O’Brien receives a mysterious new patient: David Landers, a massively muscular man with superhuman strength, suffering from a drug overdose. Revived, Landers explained that he somehow “put on almost two hundred pounds of muscle in a week”; feeling he had become a freak, he tried to kill himself. The premise of the series already seems clear: O’Brien is the kindly doctor who will care for paranormals like Landers. But Gruenwald then springs a surprise. During an argument with his unreasonable boss Dr. Eastman about Landers’ treatment, O’Brien fantasizes about strangling Eastman.
Abruptly, an eerie, silent black entity in human shape emerges from O’Brien’s body and nearly strangles Eastman until O’Brien shouts at him to stop. O’Brien worries that he is imagining this shadow creature, but the reader realizes that the doctor, too, is a paranormal. For now, though, O’Brien tells himself in a thought balloon, “If the thing is real, then I’m as much a medical oddity as my patient, David Landers.”
O’Brien sees a newspaper advertisement for “The Clinic for Paranormal Research,” and he and Landers go there, seeking help. Seeing the Clinic, Landers says it resembles “an ultramodern rest home.” There, a woman named Dr. Semple tells them that the Clinic has only been in operation for three months, but is already handling many paranormal cases. “We try to teach our patients how to cope with those gifts that make them different.” When O’Brien refers to his and Landers’ “paranormalities” as “handicaps,” Dr. Semple corrects him: “Not handicaps—gifts. Some of you are society’s very gifted.”
And now aficionados of the superhero genre will perceive a similarity between D.P. 7 and the early decades of Marvel’s X-Men. Professor Charles Xavier founded his school for young super-powered mutants, in which he teaches them how to cope with and utilize their unusual powers. Xavier called his institution his “School for Gifted Youngsters,” and the title’s implication was that the young mutants’ superhuman abilities were “gifts,” the word that Dr. Semple keeps using. The mutants’ strange powers and, in some cases, their unusual physical appearances, were not handicaps, and the mutants themselves were not freaks, in Xavier’s view; instead, their powers were gifts, blessings rather than curses.
But Xavier’s institution was a school. The original X-Men were unusually gifted students attending a private high school or college to train them for careers as superheroes. The X-Men ‘s lives paralleled those of typical college students: taking classes in standard academic subjects, Xavier’s version of gym classes (combat training in the Danger Room); rooming together as if in a dormitory; heading into the city for nights on the town at places like Bernard the Poet’s coffee house.
In contrast, D. P. 7 are based in a hospital. Showing O’Brien and Landers into the gym, Dr. Semple explains that “you’ll be placed in a therapy group composed of other paranormals who will help you get in touch with your feelings about your gifts. You’ll also receive individual counsel and instruction. And in between all that, you can use our facilities to have fun and get healthy.”
The X-Men are students; the members of D.P. 7 are patients. Moreover, the particular focus of the Clinic is on the paranormals’ mental health. The X-Men are members of a class; the members of D. P. 7 are in a therapy group.
Now certainly Xavier’s school benefits its students’ mental well-being. Scott Summers (Cyclops) was on the verge of despair when Xavier recruited him; according to a backstory that Chris Claremont devised for her, Jean Grey had emotional difficulties coping with her telepathic abilities as a child until Xavier began helping her; Wolverine famously suffers from berserker rages. Xavier’s school provides all his students with a sense of family and community; without the school they would feel alone and alienated from society.
But D.P. 7 implies that having a super-power is inseparable from needing psychiatric help. Why is that?
Perhaps one answer is that a super-power is a metaphor for whatever makes a person different, for better or for worse, than other people, perhaps a metaphor for individuality itself. And to be an individual, to be different, is to be alienated to some degree from the rest of society, and anyone can use help in adjusting to that.
It may also be that D.P. 7 simply reflects contemporary American society, in which psychiatric help and treatment are no longer unusual, or administered only to the mentally ill, but are in widespread use. D.P. 7 suggests that not only that there is no shame in seeking psychiatric help, but that everyone, including the series’ heroes, can benefit from it. This positive view of psychiatry in D.P. 7 sharply differs from other portrayals of psychiatry in comics over the last three decades, most notably the neo-Gothic chamber of horrors that is Arkham Asylum in the Batman books.
D.P. 7 may also show the influence of the popular trope in 1960s pop culture according to which the supposedly “mad” are actually saner than people in the outside world, as in the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or the film King of Hearts. The members of D. P. 7 are certainly not insane, but they are a community within a psychiatric institution who prove to be sane, morally upstanding, and as good or better than anyone in the series who is not a patient.
Perhaps D.P.7 is simply following the logical evolution of Stan Lee’s revolutionizing of the superhero in the 1960s. Stan Lee endowed his superheroes with psychological conflicts and emotional problems. All of them suffer from stress; Spider-Man has been described as neurotic; the Hulk has multiple personality disorder and considerable anger management problems. To read Lee’s superhero stories is to watch the heroes soliloquize or have an internal monologue voicing his angst over whatever new troubles beset him in life. Perhaps the typical Marvel superhero story is a sort of metaphorical therapy session in which the hero grapples with his personal problems. So why not take a further step and do a superhero series involving a team who really are in group therapy together?
Indeed, Dr. Semple brings O’Brien and Landers into a group therapy session in which they meet the other five members of D.P. 7. Charlotte “Charly” Beck is a teenage African-American dance student who can stick to solid objects and cause other people to lose their balance. Jeff Walters is an African-American with the power of super-speed, like DC’s Flash and Marvel’s Quicksilver, but Gruenwald uses Walters to explore some of the difficulties that such a power would actually cause. (For example, Jeff has a super-fast metabolism, and must frequently eat extraordinarily large amounts of food.) Dennis “Scuzz’” Cuzinski is a rebellious teen who exudes a substance from his skin that causes things, even his clothing, to disintegrate. Lenore Fenzl’s skin emits a different sort of substance that has a tranquilizing effect. Stephanie Harrington can impart energy to other people by touching them, and can utilize her own energies to boost her strength.
In at least some cases, the powers of the D.P.7 members seem to have a connection to their personalities. Landers falls in love with Stephanie, but does not think she would ever return his feelings; his supposedly freakish appearance thus reflects his poor self-image. (Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had already done something similar with the Thing in Fantastic Four, but whereas the Thing soon found love with Alicia Masters, Gruenwald does not resolve Landers’ romantic distress until the series’ final issue.) Stephanie’s energy-boosting abilities fit her sunny, positive personality; certainly Landers regards her as a kind of life force in human form.
The first issue’s narration refers to the silhouetted form that emerges from O’Brien’s body as “his phantasmal other self.” O’Brien later dubs it his “antibody,” but it inescapably seems to be a variation on Negative Man from DC Comics’ Doom Patrol. The major difference is that Gruenwald depicts the Antibody (and later Antibodies) as if it was a manifestation of a side of O’Brien’s psyche. As we see in its first appearance, it tries to carry out the desire of his id by killing O’Brien’s boss. O’Brien’s control over the Antibodies varies; perhaps he does indeed need psychiatric help to gain mastery over these embodiments of his subconscious self. Although the Antibody resembles Negative Man, the relationship between O’Brien and his Antibodies may parallel that between Bruce Banner and the embodiment of his id, the Hulk.
But while |
treatment” and “control” groups.
FIGURE 3
Figure 3. Pre and post power ratio index and NIHSS scores of “treatment” and “control” groups.
FIGURE 4
Figure 4. Box plot comparing pre and post delta–alpha ratio, power ratio index, and brain symmetry index for the “treatment” group.
Patient Follow-up Data
We have had no patient follow-up data on this preliminary study, but have scheduled all subjects for follow-up with repeat diagnostics at 1 year and at yearly times after the initial long-term follow-up. We will report our outcomes to long-term follow-up when they are available.
Efficacy of Treatment
The M-GLM analysis on the initial measurements (“pre”) of the outcome measurements (first question in Table 2) indicated that the “treatment” and “control” groups are not different to begin with, with an overall multivariate tests significance of p = 0.305 (observed power = 0.341). After verifying the sphericity of the data using Mauchly’s test of sphericity, the M-RM-GLM analysis on the pre/post measures with the group as a factor (second question in Table 2, confirmed by Figures 2 and 3) showed that the differences in the changes between the two groups are indeed statistically significant. Specifically, the multivariate tests showed that the changes are different overall with a p = 0.004 and observed power of 0.922 and the tests of between-subjects effects and parameter estimates showed that the changes in the DAR, PRI, and BSI are different between the “treatment” and “control” groups with p of 0.003, 0.029, and 0.001 and observed power of 0.875, 0.602, and 0.926 respectively, whereas the NIHSS change is not significantly different between the two groups (p = 0.162). The M-RM-GLM analysis on the pre and post measures of the “control” group (third question in Table 2, confirmed by Figures 2 and 3) showed that there is a statistically significant difference in the pre and post measurements for this group (p = 0.011 with observed power of 0.879), but this difference is produced mostly by the change in NIHSS, which is the only measure changing significantly with p = 0.008 and observed power of 0.823. The same analysis on the “treatment” group (fourth question in Table 2, confirmed by Figure 4) showed that the pre/post measures are statistically significantly different for this group: the multivariate tests show that the measures are different overall with a p = 0.008 and observed power of 0.882 and the univariate tests and the tests of within-subjects contrasts show that NIHSS, DAR, and BSI are different with p of 0.037, 0.026, and 0.000 and an observed power of 0.568, 0.633, and 0.985 respectively, whereas the PRI is not different to a statistical significance (p = 0.158, observed power of 0.286).
Discussion
We did not find any published studies that investigated outcome measures in the treatment of acute ischemic stroke using the NIHSS and electrical brain activity after EMT. Our results show that the group of stroke patients undergoing EMT, although not initially different from the “control” group, had a significant improvement of the electrical brain activity as measured by the DAR and BSI qEEG indices. Such improvement was not observed for the “control” group. Furthermore, the improvements in all the qEEG indices considered, i.e., DAR, PRI, and BSI, were significantly larger in the patients treated with EMT than in the controls. We did not investigate a functional relationship between qEEG findings in this pilot study, but other investigators have considered qEEG as a biomarker for neurological function. Song and colleagues (43) concluded that qEEG measures of background rhythm frequency (BRF) and relative power in the qEEG theta band are potential predictive biomarkers for cognitive impairment in patients with cerebral infarcts. These biomarkers may be valuable in the early prediction of cognitive impairment in patients with cerebral infarcts. Our findings suggest that EMT might change the qEEG and have the potential to decrease cognitive impairment in MCA ischemic stroke patients. Song and colleagues (43) also demonstrated that the risk hazard of developing cognitive impairment was 14 times higher for those with low BRF than for those with high BRF (p < 0.001). We have found that EMT increases BRF and perhaps decreases the risk hazard of developing cognitive impairment. Schleiger and colleagues (44) also analyzed correlations between post-stroke qEEG indices and cognition-specific functional outcome measures. They reported highly significant correlations with cognitive outcomes: frontal DAR (ρ = −0.664, p ≤ 0.001) and global, relative alpha power (ρ = 0.67, p ≤ 0.001). We have demonstrated that EMT changes these qEEG indices and as a consequence may have a functional effect specific to cognition-specific outcomes and clinical decision-making. Other investigators have utilized electrophysiological measurements to identify the potential therapeutic effects of various treatments in acute stroke. For example, Liao and colleagues (45) utilized electrophysiology to evaluate neural and vascular responses of the rat cortex to peripheral sensory stimulation following ischemic insult. They demonstrated neural recovery and the preservation of neurovascular function as well as an optimal time window of treatment that might result in minimal infarct volume in the ischemic hemisphere. Our findings of qEEG changes after EMT have led us to postulate that EMT might also be associated with neural recovery and better functional outcomes. The DAR has also been correlated with motor function recovery. Zhang and colleagues (46) evaluated the temporal alterations of neural activities using EEG from the acute phase to the chronic phase, and compared EEG with the degree of post-stroke motor function recovery in a rat model of focal ischemic stroke. The DAR was found to have the highest correlation coefficients with the motor function recovery. The statistically and substantively significant qEEG changes that we have reported after EMT would suggest that our therapy might be of use in the treatment and rehabilitation of motor function. Our study was specific to observe whether EMT would result in changes of qEEG and NIHSS without measuring other functional neurological changes. Other investigators have used similar technology to explore the relationship between qEEG global indexes and their association with functional outcome after neurorehabilitation in stroke patients. Leon-Carrion and colleagues (47) found that qEEG indexes and other clinical variables were correlated with functional recovery after neurorehabilitation. They suggested that the ratio between delta and alpha may play a significant role in predicting and monitoring functional rehabilitation outcome. We agree, and our findings that EMT changes the DAR suggest a functional application in the treatment of stroke along with other neurorehabilitation tools. We have demonstrated statistically significant changes in the NIHSS after EMT. The NIHSS offers a reliable approach to capture the true response patterns that are associated with function, outcome, and mortality post-stroke (48).
The addition of simple EMT to a patient’s treatment paradigm has demonstrated statistically significant changes in outcome measures and is a low cost, safe, and effective complement to standard treatment in MCA ischemic stroke. These results complement previous studies utilizing EMT discussed in the introduction to this report.
Limitations
The outcome measures include only the three qEEG parameters and the NIHSS. The NIHSS is a scale of stroke severity and does not provide any insight as to functional changes. The study would have benefited from the inclusion of some functional outcome related to the rationale, e.g., change in visual tracking, cognitive and functional testing, etc. Other investigators have found that the outcomes we have utilized have been associated with functional changes in neurological function. We expect that EMT will also be associated with functional changes and improvement of outcomes after stroke treatment. We intend to address functional outcome measurements in a new randomized controlled study as our present investigation is considered a pilot from which to guide and direct future investigations and did not include other functional measurements.
Author Contributions
FC: designed the study and the eye-movement strategies, wrote the manuscript, and contributed to the statistical analysis. EO: contributed to the study design, reviewed and edited the manuscript, and contributed to the statistical analysis. GP: contributed to the study design, reviewed and edited the manuscript, and contributed to the statistical analysis. CW: reviewed and edited the manuscript and contributed to the statistical analysis. CM: prepared IRB submissions, patient recruitment, and review of the manuscript. GE: coordinated subject diagnosis and treatment, and reviewed the manuscript. AP: reviewed and edited the manuscript and contributed to subject assignment. JC: reviewed the manuscript and contributed to the data collection and compilation. CB: reviewed the manuscript and contributed to subject treatment assignments.
Conflict of Interest Statement
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Funding
We thank the Carrick Institute and Plasticity Brain Centers for generously funding this study.
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A parliamentary committee chaired by South Australian Liberal MP Rowan Ramsey is examining country-of-origin labelling laws amid concerns that up to 90 per cent of consumers misunderstand the “Made in Australia’’ claim.
Citrus Australia SA Region chairman Con Poulos told the inquiry that clever marketers were manipulating labelling rules to the detriment of consumers and farmers.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Should country-of-origin laws be changed? Are they clear enough?
Mr Poulos said “vague’’ laws allowed juice manufacturers to fill containers with mostly imported products and label them as being made from local and imported ingredients.
“The current legislation also allows a product that has over 50 per cent of their weighted content produced in Australia to legally have ‘Made in Australia’ on their label,’’ Mr Poulos said in a submission to the inquiry.
“In the case of juice, this could include the water to mix the imported concentrate and the container it is sold in.’’
Riverland growers had once supplied 180,000 tonnes of valencia oranges for juicing each year, but increased imports of Brazilian concentrate had seen this fall to 50,000 tonnes.
South Australian Labor MP Amanda Rishworth said constituents had complained to her about a lack of information on food labels about where ingredients had been imported from.
“Consumers who wish to access competitive information about food products in order to satisfy information about food products in order to satisfy health requirements and their own personal value system often find that the current regime is inadequate to meet their needs,’’ Ms Rishworth said.
Australian pork producers were concerned that bacon made in Australia with imported pork could be labelled as Australian-made.
But other products manufactured using mostly local ingredients could be denied the label because they used a small number of elements that could not be sourced locally.
The committee was told there were concerns about goods being imported into Australia from New Zealand which contained ingredients from third countries with less stringent food-safety laws.
These were simply packaged or processed in New Zealand, but still labelled “made in New Zealand’’ and experts told the inquiry this would be a breach of New Zealand laws.
Australian seafood producers wanted country-of-origin laws to be applied to foods sold in restaurants.
This would enable diners to reject seafood from countries that did not follow environmentally sustainable or good health practices.
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Originally published as How ‘made in Australia’ juice can be the oppositeDemocratic media is a form of media organization that strives to have the principles of democracy underlying not only the production of content, but also the organization of the entire project.
Definition of the term [ edit ]
Democratic Media is the concept of organising media along democratic lines rather that strictly commercial and/or ideological lines. Like the idea of democracy itself, democratic media looks to transparency, inclusiveness, one-person-one-vote and other key concepts of democracy as principals of operation, "This is a media whose primary objectives are to inform, be open, independent and be accountable."[1] This is in contrast to the idea that media should be run by commercial operations and with an agenda to make profit from providing media and where the media reflects the opinions and values of the owner and /or advertisers It is also in contrast to state-run operations where the media reflects the value system of the state itself. Edward S Herman lays out what he thought the form that democratic media would take[2]
“ A democratic media can be identified by its structure and functions. In terms of structure, it would be organized and controlled by ordinary citizens or their grass roots organisations....As regards function, a democratic media will aim first and foremost at serving the informational, cultural and other communications needs of members of the public which the media institutions comprise or represent. ”
Background of the term [ edit ]
The idea of democratic media stems from the belief that media is a vital part of a democratic society;[3]
“ First, media perform essential political, social, economic, and cultural functions in modern democracies. In such societies, media are the principal source of political information and access to public debate, and the key to an informed, participating, self-governing citizenry. Democracy requires a media system that provides people with a wide range of opinion and analysis and debate on important issues, reflects the diversity of citizens, and promotes public accountability of the powers-that-be and the powers-that-want-to-be. ”
To therefore, if media is vital for democracy, democratic media argues that media itself needs to be organized along different lines to the existing forms;[3]
“ The evidence is clear: if we want a media system that produces fundamentally different results, we need solutions that address the causes of the problems; have to address issues of media ownership, management, regulation, and subsidy. Our goal should be to craft a media system that reduces the power of a handful of enormous corporations and advertisers to dominate the media culture. ”
The idea of democratic media is still in its infancy as noted by Carroll & Hackett (2006[4] where they term it 'democratic media activism' however the idea does have older roots; In 'Triumph of the Market: Essays on Economics, Politics, and the Media' Edward S Herman wrote that democratic media was a condition of democracy;[5]
“ A democratic media is a primary condition of popular rule, hence of a genuine political democracy. Where the media are controlled by a powerful and privileged elite, whether of government leaders and bureaucrats or those of the private sector, democratic political forms and some kind of limited political democracy may exist, but not genuine democracy. ”
The term has been used to describe a number of new media projects from Wikipedia[6] to the Indymedia movement to describe how it saw itself;[7]
“ Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth. ”
Democratic media differs from similar (and related) concepts such as citizen media, media democracy and independent media (aka alternative media) in that it puts as much emphasis on the organization of the media project as it does on the content. (Note; this definition means that an independent media or citizen media project can also be a democratic media project, but being an independent media or citizen media project does not mean it is automatically a form of democratic media. It also means there could be a project that promotes the concepts of media democracy without it itself explicitly claiming to be a form of democratic media.) For a media project to be considered democratic media it must have (or strive towards) the following characteristics:
See also [ edit ]Harry Potter Books Redesigned as Penguin Classic Editions
Amazon's Kindle
Texas Instrument's Speak & Spell
The artist M.S. Corley has redesigned the Harry Potter book covers to make them look like important, weighty Penguin Classics:Suddenly, the Harry Potter books are simmering, dangerous literature that gets deep at the root of the human experience. OR MAYBE THEY ALWAYS WERE.The opposite can be accomplished as well, like these chick-lit redesigns of important literary Works at Radar Online And then there's the real deal, such as when a former hack writer gets big-time apotheosis and his or her work moves from cheap pulp to understated immortality. Like when Philip K. Dick got picked up by the Library of America:You can sell books by not selling them. You can package books by stripping them naked.In the future, you'll be able to pick your favorite cover from all of history to temporarily persist on the front of your ebook reader, lifting your novel to the sacred-human-condition heights or dragging it down into the tawdry, sex-and-murder depths.Book cover design will hit a tremendous renaissance (the renaissance of CHOICE) as soon as publishers get their shit together and demand more from ebook readers: namely, that covers are displayed for all the world to see, and not buried as part of the strange graphing calculator aesthetic that we are currently being sold.Editor's Note: A special court is likely to decide the fate of former telecom minister A Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi and several others in the much-anticipated 2G spectrum allocation scam cases. For a quick understanding of the scam, read this shorter explainer by Shalini Singh, reporter who broke the story.
1. What is the allegation?
The allegation relates to the fact that Telecom Minister A Raja, who after taking office in May 2007, manipulated the policy regime and TRAI’s recommendations, and in blatant violation of law (TRAI Act) and other settled law:
1. B. Prabhakar Rao Vs. State of A.P. (1985) SUPP.SCC432
2. D.S. Nakara Vs. Union of India (1983) 1SCC305
3. Monarch Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. 2000 (v) SC287
4. K. Manjusree Vs. State of A.P. (2008) 3SCC512
5. Union of India Vs. S Tel, 1 July 2009, Justice G.S. Sistani, Delhi High Court
6. Union of India Vs. S Tel 24 November 2009, Delhi High Court, Hon’ble Chief Justice Dr. S. Murlidhar
Raja sold licenses/2G spectrum to a handful of arbitrarily selected (120 out of 575) companies in January 2008 at a bargain basement 2001 price. In doing so, he not only violated the law, committed several improprieties, but caused a loss to the exchequer of at least Rs 40,000 crore.
2. How was the spectrum scam executed?
The spectrum scam was executed in 12 simple steps:
1. Inviting companies who were not in the telecom business to put in applications for licenses / 2G spectrum.
2. Resorting to the announcement of an arbitrary cutoff date (1 October 2007) to stop legitimate applicants from applying, thereby creating sellers (who were not in the telecom business) and buyers (genuine telecom companies who could not apply / were left out due to the manner in which the cutoff date was implemented) - Improper
3. Changing the cutoff date illegally to award license / precious 2G spectrum only to a handful of applicants (120 out of 575). – Illegal
4. Cherry-picking and manipulating multiple recommendations of the TRAI to award licenses / 2G spectrum to a favored few companies in violation of the TRAI Act. This, while publicly pronouncing to follow TRAI’s recommendations. – Illegal
5. Manipulating the concept of ‘first come first served’ to benefit companies by awarding spectrum first to companies which applied last. – Illegal
6. Further allowing these companies to sell equity / conduct private auctions and garner large sums of monies by changing / ignoring specific recommendations of the TRAI against M&As. – Illegal
7. Further favoring the companies by changing rollout obligations for these favored companies so that they had no pressure to build out infrastructure – since these were not telecom companies and any pressure to build out would have defeated the purpose of getting cheap spectrum for further sale. – Illegal
8. Continuously and willfully ignoring specific directions and requests / official DOs of the TRAI, seeking TRAI’s involvement / re-reference (as provided under the TRAI Act) wherever recommendations of the TRAI / inter-linkages were modified, changed or ignored. – Illegal
9. Ignoring specific directions of the Law Ministry to seek the opinion of the EGoM on the matter – snubbing them by suggesting that this was not an inter-departmental issue and that the Law Ministry’s recommendation for the EGoM was ‘totally out of context’. – Improper
10. Publicly defending the sale of equity / valuation of the beneficiaries of the spectrum scam by putting out multiple press releases during October / November 2008 – Improper
11. Pretending to prohibit the sale of promoters’ equity to ensure that beneficiaries of the spectrum scam could not sell their stakes in the open market – but surreptitiously doing so only after receiving confirmation that Swan and Unitech had completed the deals with Etisalat and Telenor respectively. – Improper
12. By covering the entire misdeed and the loss to the exchequer under the façade of benefiting the Indian consumer, lowering prices and breaking a cartel – with the help of lobbyists and PR agencies working for the beneficiaries of the spectrum scam. – Improper
3. Is Raja's conduct illegal or improper?
Both.
There are specific violations of the TRAI Act which are admitted through the evidence / press releases of the department itself as well as responses to Parliamentary questions. Apart from blatant violation of the TRAI Act and ignoring three written DOs of the independent statutory regulator – TRAI – in the matter, there is a high court decision (single and double bench) which has already held that the cutoff date used by Raja to select only 120 out of 575 applications was blatantly illegal.
Further, many improprieties have been committed, manipulation of rules, precedents as well as blatant favoritism shown even while implementing first come first served:
While implementing first come first served, specific directions, requests and official notices to give away licenses / 2G spectrum through auction and not through first come first served, were ignored by Raja from the following quarters:
1. D.S. Mathur, Secretary, DoT
2. Mr. N. Misra, Chairman, TRAI
3. Mr. Bhardwaj, Law Minister
4. Mr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister
5. Mr. Subbarao, Finance Secretary
Each of these letters was written to Raja before 10 January 2008 – the date on which he decided to proceed with first come first served using an arbitrary cutoff date of 25 September 2007.
4. Legal Violations:
4.1 Using an illegal and arbitrary cutoff date
· DoT had sent a reference on 13th April 2007 (page 158, 159), seeking the recommendations of TRAI under Section 11 on issues such as capping of number of operators, M&A, and other terms and conditions relating to UAS licenses.
· Raja took office in May 2007 (page 2).
· Between August and October 2007, 46 companies filed 575 applications for UAS licenses.
· |
well even while being wrong.
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From there you gradually begin to add in more maneuvers. You ride in large ovals, do tight figure eight turns, and work on emergency lane changes and panic braking. All of this is interspersed with classroom sessions and instructional videos. My instructors were very thorough about giving you one on one advice, like when they told me to lead with my shoulder instead of my head on emergency lane changes. Your head doesn’t make you lean, pushing on the fucking bars does.
There is a written test near the end that I think might actually be impossible to fail. But the big daddy is the practical skills test. It is structured to combine all of the skills of the past two days. You do a low speed figure eight, getting docked points for every time you put your foot down. That sucks. Everyone is rough at it, even on the light bikes the class provides. From there there’s a few other small sections that are fairly simple as long as you’ve been trying. The final skills test is a timed portion. You accelerate up to second gear, go through a few corners, and bring it to a stop.
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I was one of the last people in my class to perform this section, and I was petrified of being too slow. I did find out later that every single person before me was docked points for going over the time limit. Well, go big or go home. In my determination to not be slow, I came in way too hot to the final sweeper. There was definitely a moment of dawning realization that I might not actually make the turn. So, summoning some weird well of confidence that I had no right to have, I cranked that tiny Honda over as hard as I could.
We made it through, and my classmates congratulated me on my form, but secretly I had the urge to go inspect my underwear. The first, but not last time I’d terrified myself on a motorcycle. But me scaring myself witless did pay off, as I wound up being the only person to not have a time penalty. Well worth it, I’d say.
So, at the end of the class, which every single person passed, you get a little card that tells the state of Missouri (or wherever) you don’t need to take the skills test for your license exam. You walk out of there with your head up, and your chest full of ego and bravado. You’ve handled everything the instructors could throw at you.
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You’re a goddamn biker now. Except you’re not. Not even close.
Some of the instruction, like not resting your fingers on the brake and clutch levers (also known as “covering” them), is good advice for people that don’t understand how the controls work, but is less practical in the real world. When riding in traffic, you can be damned sure I’m covering the brake. Sure, it’s a fraction of a second to move two fingers from the bar to the brake lever, but that may the difference between you stopping in time, and you kissing the rear bumper of a Tahoe.
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The accident avoidance techniques you practice at the MSF class are good, but knowing you have an emergency lane change in 30 yards is not quite the same thing as unexpectedly needing to try and dodge the CR-V that decided to run that stop sign. The MSF doesn’t really cover proper technique for trying to shoot the gap between the curb and the latte-powered crossover that is trying to shove you off the road.
Regardless, it’s a great way to learn the basics in a low risk environment. You don’t have to worry about traffic. The bikes are all provided, and there’s no real repercussion for laying one down. So get your practice in, and understand how the controls work.
But make no mistake—this does not prepare you for reality. So take the lessons they taught you, keep what works for you, discard what doesn’t, and keep riding.
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Shiny side up, sticky side down, if possible.Just in time for travel season, check out our interactive guide to state parks and forests.
By the numbers
95: Total state parks, forests, trails and recreation areas in Wisconsin.
1,700: Number of miles in Wisconsin's 41 state trails. Fourteen of the trails are managed by the state Department of Natural Resources, 25 are led by county entities and two are National Scenic Trails -- the Ice Age Trail and the North Country Trail.
14 million: Estimated number of visits per year to Wisconsin's state parks, trails, forests and recreation areas. The most-visited state park is Devil's Lake, with an estimated attendance of more than 2.2 million in fiscal year 2012 (July 2011-June 2012).
$1 billion: Approximate amount spent annually (in 2013 dollars) by visitors to the Wisconsin State Park System. More than half the spending, 60 percent, is shown to be from those residing outside the local community.
--Wisconsin Department of Natural ResourcesA recent press release from the University of New Orleans (UNO) claims its researchers have discovered a “way to delay symptoms of deadly Huntington’s disease”. Music to the ears of HD family members everywhere. But does the science live up to the hype? The short answer, sadly, is no.
The science
The science behind the press release focuses on the protein Rhes. The last two letters of its name stand for ‘Enriched in the Striatum’, because the part of the brain where most Rhes is found is called the striatum.
Eye-catching scientific headlines, sadly, may not live up to their promise.
As it happens, the striatum is also where neurons die early in Huntington’s disease. For that reason, and because it’s involved in telling cells what proteins to get rid of, Rhes has attracted interest among researchers trying to understand HD and develop treatments.
Some previous research has suggested that the Rhes protein might be an ‘accomplice’ to the mutant Huntingtin protein in harming neurons. The picture wasn’t clear, though, since others have found that it might have some protective effects. So Rhes remains a bit of a puzzle.
Led by Dr Gerald LaHoste, researchers at UNO produced some special mice through genetic engineering and cross-breeding. They wanted to see whether mice that make the harmful mutant huntingtin protein did better or worse, if they also make less than the normal amount of Rhes.
The Rhes-deficient ‘HD mice’ were successfully bred and observed for six months through a series of tests. The Rhes-deficient mice still got sick and developed movement problems, but did so more slowly than the ‘HD mice’ that produced a normal quantity of Rhes. The difference represented about two months' worth of decline.
This improvement in the movement symptoms of the mice is encouraging, but wasn’t the whole story. Like HD patients, the brains of these ‘HD mice’ shrink. It turns out that making mice Rhes-deficient, by itself, also caused brain shrinkage. Obviously, brain shrinkage is not something we look for as a side effect in a therapy for HD.
This might be an encouraging start to a long journey, but the amount of work in getting from a genetic manipulation experiment like this to a drug to help human patients is huge, and will take many years, with the potential for failure at each stage, especially when making the leap from mice to humans.
There are many reasons why results in animals often don’t translate to patients. Here, it’s worth noting that the mice in this work produce only a small fragment of the huntingtin protein, which makes them a less accurate model of human HD than some other mice that could have been used. And the reported 16% delay in symptoms, while better than nothing, is certainly not the biggest improvement that’s been seen with a genetic manipulation.
The press release
Press releases are a two-edged sword. They are a useful way of getting the word out about research breakthroughs. But too often, they’re written in ways that grab attention but over-hype the published scientific findings.
To put it politely, we have major reservations about the press release that UNO chose to put out to announce this work. It contains a number of claims that could raise people’s hopes up for future progress that’s very unlikely to be delivered.
There may be many reasons for this, and to be clear, we’re not saying anybody has deliberately set out to mislead. But ‘overselling’ is something that scientists and Universities need to guard against.
“Delaying symptoms of HD”
“ This press release is a striking example of how thoughtless writing can over-inflate expectations ”
Starting at the top, the headline claims the researchers have discovered a “Way to Delay Symptoms of Deadly Huntington’s Disease”.
As we now know, what they’ve actually discovered is an artificial genetic manipulation that makes mice less susceptible to the effects of the HD mutation, but also have shrunken brains. While it’s true that the symptoms were delayed, mice don’t get Huntington’s disease. All researchers know this, so anyone publishing press releases in the HD field needs to avoid making headlines that could be mistaken for the ‘cure’ announcement we all wake up hoping to read.
Does a bit of creative headline-writing really matter? Yes - and here’s why.
To get new HD drugs to patients, we need drug trials, which generally require hundreds of patient volunteers, drawn from a population of busy people struggling to live normal lives. Huntington’s disease is quite rare, and currently only around 20% of people at risk of HD choose to be tested. So the pool of volunteers physically helping us to develop drugs is pretty small, and we rely on people’s good will and faith in the scientific establishment.
Whenever someone reads a headline touting good news for HD families, then is disappointed when the science fails to deliver what the headline promised, there’s a risk we’ll lose a volunteer - pushing the advent of effective treatments a little bit further away. That’s an absolute tragedy, and one that’s easily avoided by responsible public engagement.
“The first treatment?”
Next, the paper’s lead author, Dr LaHoste, says “I believe that these findings are important because they may lead to the development of the first treatment for this horrible disease.” But the Rhes pathway is a relative newcomer to the list of targets for Huntington’s disease drug development, and the gap between manipulating a target genetically like LaHoste’s team did here, and a pill taken by patients, takes many years to bridge.
So LaHoste’s statement may well overestimate the potential of this work. But at the same time, it underestimates the progress in developing drugs that’s been made by the global HD research community
In fact, experimental treatments like huntingtin gene silencing are so advanced we expect human trials in Huntington’s disease patients to begin in the next year or so - treatments with the highest hopes for success we’ve ever seen.
So, while it’s theoretically possible that Rhes-targeted drugs may be the first treatments to slow HD, there are plenty of other approaches that are closer to success.
Why are statins in there?
One statement in the press release is particularly baffling. It reads, “Based on their findings, they believe that a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, could greatly slow the symptoms of Huntington’s Disease in humans.” What’s odd here is that neither cholesterol nor statins are mentioned in the actual research paper. What’s more, we know of no connection between Rhes and statins.
Our article ‘ten golden rules for reading a scientific news story’ aims to shield you against disappointment from over-hyped press releases.
So this statement appears not to be justified by the scientific work reported, and has the potential to cause great confusion among patients and family members. To be clear, there is no evidence that taking statin drugs is helpful for HD, from any work done in animals, humans or anything else.
Mice are not people!
A little lower down, the press release falls into a common trap. Reporting the delay in symptom onset in the genetically altered mice, it says, “Relative to the lifespan of these mice, the delay translates to about five years in humans.”
In our opinion, this is a very unwise thing to suggest. Even LaHoste’s original research paper itself cautions that “it is difficult to compare lifespans between species”, and anyone who follows HD research knows that, so far, of the many drugs that have benefited HD mouse models, none has produced any benefit in human patients.
Predicting human benefits from mouse work - especially in such specific terms, runs the risk of creating false hope, followed by real disappointment.
What can we learn from this?
All in all, what we have here is a fairly simple study reporting a modest benefit from the genetic manipulation of HD model mice, along with a potentially worrying side effect. It provides some support for the further study of Rhes in Huntington’s disease but is a long way from being of direct benefit to HD patients. Work on the Rhes pathway is continuing in several labs and if there’s a major breakthrough, we’ll let you know.
But the press release that accompanied the paper’s publication is a striking example of how - even if nobody involved intends any harm - expectations can be over-inflated by hype, risking harm to our efforts to advance research through the involvement of HD family members.
Above all, we urge scientists and media professionals to exercise caution and responsibility when preparing press releases for the public. The UNO Communications Office didn’t respond to our request for comment on this release.
To help yourself sort out the hope from the hype when reading press releases in future, check out our article ‘Ten Golden Rules for reading a scientific news story’.A car ditched by two subjects in a high-speed police chase is tying up rush hour traffic on U.S. 59 northbound near Beltway 8. A car ditched by two subjects in a high-speed police chase is tying up rush hour traffic on U.S. 59 northbound near Beltway 8. Photo: ABC13 Photo: ABC13 Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Police chase blocks rush hour traffic on U.S. 59 1 / 8 Back to Gallery
UPDATE, 6:34 p.m.: Police arrested three suspects after the U.S. 59 chase Monday afternoon, according to reports by KTRK and KPRC.
KTRK says two of the suspects were found about 90 minutes after they fled, and a K-9 unit found the third. KPRC also tweeted a photo.
The suspects' names were not released. But their ages were listed as 20, 19 and 15, according to KTRK.
PREVIOUS REPORT
All lanes of traffic have reopened after a car ditched by two subjects in a high-speed police chase tied up rush hour traffic on U.S. 59 northbound near Beltway 8.
Around 4 p.m. Monday, two suspects engaged in a chase with police left their car in the middle of traffic, and ran across both directions of U.S. 59/Eastex Freeway traffic, plus an HOV lane and frontage road before disappearing into the woods nearby, according to KTRK-TV.
Police investigating the car the two were driving in tied up northbound traffic of U.S. 59/Eastex near Rankin Road for a short period.
Authorities are searching for the two men who left the vehicle.
Lanes reopened at about 4:20, TranStar reports.In an increasingly creative-driven world, having the best ideas are essential to getting ahead. Few people know that better than Elon Musk, who recommends coming up with new ideas with the "first principles" method.
The way it works is simple: start with the fundamentals you know to be true and work up from there. While many of us reason by analogy—relating our new ideas to existing things—the first principles method can change your whole approach:
"I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there."
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Most major revolutions that have occurred build on this basic premise. Cars examined the fundamental principles of transportation instead of iterating horse-drawn carriages and smartphones looked at the principles of communication instead of improving dumbphones. While you might not be creating new industries, breaking down whatever project you're working on to simple questions ("What is this project trying to accomplish?") can get you a lot further than trying to make a slight improvement to someone else's system.
How Elon Musk Thinks: The First Principles Method | 99uBuy Photo A worker adds stickers for absentee voters while preparing ballots to send out on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014, at the City of Detroit Department of Elections in Detroit. (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
With less than a week before the polls open on election day, Michigan is on track to see a significant increase in absentee voting.
But just which candidate, or what issues, that benefits is anyone's guess. More than 1,247,000 Michigan voters have requested absentee ballots, an increase of more than 265,000 from four years ago; and 918,992 of those ballots have been returned, which is up more than 245,000 from this point in the 2012 election.
A trend that may worry the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton: While many local clerks are reporting big spikes in absentee voting, the city of Detroit, where Clinton is counting on a big turnout among African-American voters on Nov. 8, is reporting slower than usual requests and returns of absentee ballots, despite having four satellite voting locations open across the city.
“Absentee ballots are a little modest this year,” said Daniel Baxter, director of elections for the city, noting that 54,460 have been issued and 38,796 have been returned.
► Voter Guide: Hear what the candidates have to say
That compares with 81,000 voters casting absentee ballots in 2012, leading Baxter to predict: “If I were to use those numbers as a barometer for what turnout might be on election day, I’m thinking 45% to 48%. And typically, we would exceed 50%.”
“The city of Detroit is predominantly African-American, and when President Obama ran in 2008 every person, every Detroiter, felt a need to go to the polls on Election Day,” Baxter said. “Then in 2012, we saw the same phenomenon. This election, I think that what we're seeing right now is a lack of enthusiasm as a result of President Obama not being on the ballot."
Turnout in the city of Detroit in 2012 was 53% and the vast majority of the votes — 98% — went to President Barack Obama’s re-election race over Republican Mitt Romney. Those numbers aren’t expected to change much with recent polling in Michigan showing Clinton with a substantial lead, getting 88% of the black vote surveyed for the poll. Trump’s numbers were so small among African Americans that they don’t register.
Sandra Cavette, 69, was one of a steady stream of people dropping off ballots at Detroit’s election office last week. As someone who lived through the civil rights movement, she can’t imagine sitting an election out, but this one is especially important.
“It is critical this year, because so much is at stake. There may be three or four appointments to the Supreme Court,” she said. “And jobs are starting to come back so we need to continue the same type of economic policies that we have now.”
► Related: Buyer's remorse? Michigan absentee voters can recast ballots
Her vote went for Clinton because of her qualifications and experience, and she fears that a Trump presidency would further erode voting rights.
“He talks about getting people out to watch the polls,” she said. “Well, we cannot retreat to the day when I had to count the beans in the bottle to pass a literacy test.”
Mary Ann Simon, 82, of Harrison Township, mailed her absentee ballot back to her local clerk the day after she received it in September and voted for Trump because she can’t stand Clinton.
“She’s for partial birth abortion and I’m pro-life. My conscience wouldn’t let me support any Democrat if they’re not pro-life,” she said. “I’m disappointed with the way Trump acts and talks. He really frightened me at first, but we have to give him a chance because he’s a businessman.”
Of the ballots requested by Democrats, 75.5% have been returned; while 70.3% of the absentee ballots requested by Republicans have come back, said Mark Grebner of the East Lansing-based Practical Political Consulting, which tracks voters. Those partisan leanings were mostly gleaned by how people voted in the presidential primary election, where voters had to ask for either a Republican or Democratic ballot.
But the Republicans have been gaining on the Dems in terms of the rate of ballot returns, Grebner said. And GOP voters could catch up to or be within a few percentage points by election day.
Local clerks around metro Detroit are reporting big leaps in absentee voting. And some are reporting increased numbers of people who have already turned in their ballot, but want to change how they voted.
In Livonia, where requests for absentee ballots have already exceeded the entire number for 2012, 118 people have come in to “spoil” their ballots for a variety of reasons, including inadvertent mistakes, forgetting to cast votes on the back side of the ballot, or changing their mind about who they voted for, said city Clerk Susan Nash.
“We’ve had four or five of those in the last two days,” she said. “Michigan is one of the few states where people can change their minds.”
West Bloomfield Clerk Catherine Shaughnessy said people are hanging on to their ballot longer than usual this year as the twists and turns of the presidential race have voters waiting to cast their ballots.
“Boy, oh boy, we’ve spoiled a lot of ballots this year,” she said, adding that voters may have “messed up” their ballots or could be changing their minds. “And I’ve had an unprecedented number of people tell me that their ballot is sitting on their kitchen table. So I think we’re going to see a lot of people waiting until election day and voting at their precinct.”
Warren hasn’t had an uptick in voters changing their minds, said city Clerk Paul Wojno, but there has been a big increase in the number of absentee voters with 3,000 more people asking for absentee ballots than the 13,000 absentee voters in 2012. The city sent letters to any voters over age 60 to see if they wanted to be put on a permanent absentee voter list.
“And we got 3,000 responses to that letter,” he said. “But there’s also a particular interest in this election. There’s always an uptick when we have no incumbent in the White House on the ballot.”
For Harrison Township Clerk Adam Wit, the number of absentee voters went from just over 3,000 to 4,800 this year.
“It’s been steady every day in here and I expect to have lines on Saturday,” he said, noting an increase in voter turnout could also be due to a competitive state House race in the township, as well as township resident Candice Miller being on the ballot for Public Works Commissioner against Anthony Marrocco that might be drawing people to the polls.
All local clerks’ offices will be open until 2 p.m. Saturday for people to request an absentee ballot. Voting booths will be set up so voters can mark their ballots and leave them with the clerk. Several clerks around metro Detroit have been open for several recent Saturdays for absentee voters.
In Troy, residents have been able to vote absentee the past two Saturdays, and city Clerk Aileen Dickson said that may cut down on the number of people voting absentee this Saturday.
Pat Christensen, 73, dropped her absentee ballot off at a drop box set up in front of Troy City Hall on Saturday. The Troy resident said the one word she’d use to describe this election is “sad.”
“It’s not about what they’re standing for,” Christensen said. “It’s putting down the other person, and it’s just not what I’ve known elections to be.”
She described herself as a “Republican with a small r,” explaining she votes for the person, not the party. And this year, that translated into a vote for Clinton.
Anyone who wants an absentee ballot mailed to them must have their request in to their local clerk by 2 p.m. Saturday. Voters can ask for an absentee ballot on Monday, but will have to mark their ballot and leave it with the clerk that day. For people who still have absentee ballots, they can be turned in at their local clerk’s office up until 8 p.m. Tuesday. Absentee voters who want to change the votes they've already cast have until 4 p.m. Monday to do that at local clerks' offices.
Staff writer Joe Guillen contributed to this report. Contact Kathleen Gray: kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/2fkK3lS[Editor’s note: the transcript, edited lightly for length and clarity, appears below.]
Many scholars in Native Studies have argued that the field has been co-opted by broader discourses, such as ethnic studies or post-colonial studies.1 Their contention is that ethnic studies elide Native claims to sovereignty by rendering Native peoples as ethnic groups suffering racial discrimination rather than as nations who are undergoing colonization. These scholars and activists rightly point to the neglect within ethnic studies and within broader racial-justice struggles of the unique legal position Native peoples have in the United States. At the same time, because of this intellectual and political divide, there is insufficient exchange that would help us understand how white supremacy and settler colonialism intersect, particularly within the United States. In this paper, [you] will examine how the lack of attention to settler colonialism hinders the analysis of race and white supremacy developed by scholars who focus on race and racial formation. [You] will then examine how the lack of attention to race and white supremacy within Native Studies and Native struggles hinders the development of a decolonial framework.
The Logics of White Supremacy
Before [you] begin this examination, however, it is important to challenge the manner in which ethnic studies have formulated the study of race relations as well as how people of color organizing within the United States have formulated models for racial solidarity. As argued elsewhere, the general premiss behind organizing by “people of color” as well as “ethnic studies” is that communities of color share overlapping experiences of oppression around which they can compare and organize.2 The result of this model is that scholars or activists, sensing that this melting-pot approach to understanding racism is eliding critical differences between groups, focus on the uniqueness of their particular history of oppression. However, they do not necessarily challenge the model as a whole—often assuming that it works for all groups except theirs. Instead, as also argued, we may wish to re-articulate our understanding of white supremacy by not assuming that it is enacted in a single fashion; rather, white supremacy is constituted by separate and distinct, but still interrelated, logics. [We] would argue that the three primary logics of white supremacy in the US context include:
(1) slaveability/anti-black racism, which anchors capitalism; (2) genocide, which anchors colonialism; and (3) orientalism, which anchors war.
One pillar of white supremacy is the logic of slavery. This logic renders black people as inherently enslaveable—as nothing more than property. That is, in this logic of white supremacy, blackness becomes equated with slaveability. The forms of slavery may change, be it explicit slavery, sharecropping, or systems that regard black peoples as permanent property of the state, such as the current prison–industrial complex (whether or not black Americans are formally working within prisons).3 But the logic itself has remained consistent. This logic is the anchor of capitalism. That is, the capitalist system ultimately commodifies all workers: one’s own person becomes a commodity that one must sell in the labour market while the profits of one’s work are taken by somebody else. To keep this capitalist system in place—which ultimately commodifies most people—the logic of slavery applies a racial hierarchy to this system. This racial hierarchy tells people that as long as you are not black, you have the opportunity to escape the commodification of capitalism. Anti-blackness enables people who are not black to accept their lot in life because they can feel that at least they are not at the very bottom of the racial hierarchy—at least they are not property, at least they are not slaveable.
A second pillar of white supremacy is the logic of genocide. This logic holds that indigenous peoples must disappear. In fact, they must always be disappearing, in order to enable non-indigenous peoples’ rightful claim to land. Through this logic of genocide, non-Native peoples then become the rightful inheritors of all that was indigenous—land, resources, indigenous spirituality, and culture. Genocide serves as the anchor of colonialism: it is what allows non-Native peoples to feel they can rightfully own indigenous peoples’ land. It is acceptable exclusively to possess land that is the home of indigenous peoples because indigenous peoples have disappeared.
A third pillar of white supremacy is the logic of orientalism. “Orientalism” was Edward Said’s term for the process of the West’s defining itself as a superior civilization by constructing itself in opposition to an “exotic” but inferior “Orient.”4 (Here, [we] are using the term “orientalism” more broadly than to signify solely what has been historically named as the “orient” or “Asia.”) The logic of orientalism marks certain peoples or nations as inferior and deems them to be a constant threat to the wellbeing of empire. These peoples are still seen as “civilizations”—they are not property or the “disappeared.” However, they are imagined as permanent foreign threats to empire. This logic is evident in the anti-immigration movements in the United States that target immigrants of color. It does not matter how long immigrants of colour reside in the United States, they generally become targeted as foreign threats, particularly during war-time. Consequently, orientalism serves as the anchor of war, because it allows the United States to justify being in a constant state of war to protect itself from its enemies. Orientalism allows the United States to defend the logics of slavery and genocide as these practices enable it to stay “strong enough” to fight these constant wars. What becomes clear, then, is what Sora Han declares: the United States is not at war; the United States is war.5 For the system of white supremacy to stay in place, the United States must always be at war.
Under the old but still dominant model, organizing by people of color was based on the notion of organizing around shared victimhood. In this model, however, we see that we are not only victims of white supremacy, but complicit in it as well. Our survival strategies and resistance to white supremacy are set by the system of white supremacy itself. What keeps us trapped within our particular pillars of white supremacy is that we are seduced by the prospect of being able to participate in the other pillars. For example, all non-Native peoples are promised the ability to join in the colonial project of settling indigenous lands. All non-black peoples are promised that if they conform, they will not be at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. And black and Native peoples are promised that they will advance economically and politically if they join US wars to spread “democracy.” Thus, organising by people of colour must be premised on making strategic alliances with one another, based on where we are situated within the larger political economy. Coalition work is based on organising not just around oppression, but also around complicity in the oppression of other peoples as well as our own.
It is important to note that these pillars of white supremacy are best understood as logics rather than categories signifying specific groups of people. Thus, the peoples entangled in these logics may shift through time and space. Peoples may also be implicated in more than one logic simultaneously, such as peoples who are black and Indigenous. This model also destabilizes some of the conventional categories by which we often understand either ethnic studies or racial-justice organizing—categories such as African American/Latino/Asian American/Native American/Arab American. For instance, in the case of Latinos, these logics may affect peoples differently depending on whether they are black, Indigenous, Mestizo, etc. Consequently, we may want to follow the lead of Dylan Rodriguez, who suggests that rather than organize around categories based on presumed cultural similarities or geographical proximities, we might organize around the differential impacts of white-supremacist logics. In particular, he calls for a destabilization of the category “Asian American” by contending that the Filipino condition may be more specifically understood in conjunction with the logic of genocide from which, he argues, the very category of Filipino itself emerged.6
In addition, these logics themselves may vary depending on the geographic or historical context. As outlined here, these logics reflect a United States–specific context and may differ greatly in other places and times. However, the point [we] are trying to argue is that analyzing white supremacy in any context may benefit from not presuming a single logic but assessing how it might be operating through multiple logics (even as these multiple logics may vary).
The Disappearing Native in Race Theory
With this framework in mind, [you] will now explore how the failure to address the logics of genocide/colonialism negatively affects the work of scholars who focus on racial theory. Of course, the most prominent work would be Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial Formation in the United States.7 Their groundbreaking work speaks to the centrality of race in structuring the world. Omi and Winant demonstrate that race cannot simply be understood as epiphenomenal to other social formations, such as class. They further explain how race is foundational to the structure of the United States itself. As [we] will review later, their work makes important contributions that those engaged in Native studies will want to take seriously. At the same time, however, it generally ignores the importance of indigenous genocide and colonialism in its analysis of racial formations.
The one instance where Omi and Winant discuss colonialism at length is in their critique of the “internal colonialism” thesis—that communities of color should be understood as colonies internal to the United States. In rejecting this thesis, they do not differentiate Native peoples from “racial minorities.” Interestingly, they judge that the applicability of the internal colonialism thesis to the contemporary United States “with significant exceptions such as Native American conditions …appears to be limited.”8 But then they do not go on to discuss what the significance of this “exception” might mean.
One possible reason that the “exception” of Native genocide is not fully explored is that it is relegated to the past. That is, Omi and Winant argue that the United States has shifted from a racial dictatorship characterized by “the mass murder and expulsion of indigenous peoples” to a racial democracy in which “the balance of coercion began to change.”9 Essentially, the problem of Native genocide and settler colonialism today disappears. This tension is then reflected in some contradictory impulses in Omi and Winant’s analysis. On the one hand, they note that “the state is inherently racial.”10 Their analysis of the state as inherently racial echoes Derrick Bell’s notion of racism as permanent to society. However, they do not necessarily share his conclusions. Bell calls on black peoples to “acknowledge the permanence of our subordinate status.”11 He disavows any possibility of “transcendent change.”12 On the contrary, “It is time we concede that a commitment to racial equality merely perpetuates our disempowerment.”13 The alternative Bell advocates is resistance for its own sake—living “to harass white folks”—or short-term pragmatic strategies that focus less on eliminating racism and more on simply ensuring that we do not “worsen conditions for those we are trying to help.”14
While Omi and Winant similarly argue that the United States is inherently racial, they clearly do not want to adopt the pessimism of Bell. Consequently, they argue that a focus on institutional racism makes it “difficult to see how the democratization of U.S. society could be achieved, and difficult to explain what progress has been made.” The result is thus “a deep pessimism about any efforts to overcome racial barriers.”15 Now, if the state is understood to be inherently racial, it follows that one would not expect racial progress, but rather shifts in how racism operates within it. Thus, under this racial realism framework, one is forced either to adopt a project of racial progress that contradicts the initial analysis that the United States is inherently racist, or to forgo the possibility of eradicating white supremacy. The reason for these two equally problematic options is that this analysis presumes the permanency of the United States. Because racial theorists often lack an analysis of settler colonialism, they do not imagine other forms of governance that are not founded on the racial state. When we do not presume the givenness of settler states, then it is not as difficult to recognise the racial nature of nation-states while simultaneously maintaining a non-pessimistic approach to ending white supremacy. Many people in Native studies believe alternative forms of governance can be developed that are not based on nation-states. We can work towards “transcendent change” by not presuming it will happen within the confines of the US state.
This tendency for theorists of race to presume the givenness of the settler state is not unique to Bell or Omi and Winant, and in fact appears to be the norm. For instance, Joe Feagin has written several works on race that focus on the primacy of anti-black racism because he argues that “no other racially oppressed group …has been so central to the internal economic, political, and cultural structure and evolution of the North American society.”16 He does note that the United States is formed from stolen land and argues that the “the brutal and bloody actions and consequences of European conquests do often fit the United Nations definition of genocide.”17 So, if the United States is fundamentally constituted through the genocide of Native peoples, why are Native peoples not central to the development of American society? Again, the answer is that the Native genocide is relegated to the past so that the givenness of settler colonialism today can be presumed.18
Jared Sexton, in his otherwise brilliant analysis in Amalgamation Schemes, also presumes the continuance of settler colonialism.19 He describes Native peoples as a “racial group” to be collapsed into all non-black peoples of color. Sexton goes so far as to argue for a black/non-black paradigm that is parallel to a “black/immigrant” paradigm, rhetorically collapsing indigenous peoples into the category of immigrants, in effect erasing their relationship to this land and hence reifying the settler colonial project. Similarly, Angela Harris argues for a “black exceptionalism” |
now. This has led to huge price cuts across the board. Even VaporFi, one of the biggest companies in the vaping industry, cut their prices by 20-30%. You can buy mods today for less than $50 that would have cost over $300 just five years ago. Now is the best time to stock up on equipment ahead of regulations. You can get anything you need at basement prices. If regulations never come to fruition and the smear campaign ends, then people will start vaping in droves. That’s when the supply/demand ratio will change and prices are likely to rise. Who knows by how much, but it’s almost a guarantee that they’ll rise.Ten thousand dead – a conservative estimate at best. Three million internally displaced. Twenty million in need of aid. Two hundred thousand besieged for over a year. Thirty-four ballistic missiles fired into Saudi Arabia. More than 140 mourners killed in a double-tap strike on a funeral. These are just some of the numerical subscripts of the war in Yemen.
The British government would probably prefer to draw attention to the money being spent on aid in Yemen – £37m extra, according to figures released by the Department for International Development in September – rather than the £3.3bn worth of arms that the UK licensed for sale to Saudi Arabia in the first year of the kingdom’s bombing campaign against one of the poorest nations in the Middle East.
Yet, on the ground, the numbers are meaningless. What they do not show is how the conflict is tearing Yemeni society apart. Nor do they account for the deaths from disease and starvation caused by the hindering of food imports and medical supplies – siege tactics used by both sides – and for the appropriation of aid for financial gain.
Since the war began in March 2015 I have travelled more than 2,500 miles across Yemen, criss-crossing the front lines in and out of territories controlled by Houthi rebels, or by their opponents, the Saudi-backed resistance forces, or through vast stretches of land held by al-Qaeda. On those journeys, what struck me most was the deepening resentment expressed by so many people towards their fellow Yemenis.
The object of that loathing can change in the space of a few hundred metres. The soundtrack to this hatred emanates from smartphones resting on rusting oil drums, protruding from the breast pockets of military fatigues, or lying on chairs under makeshift awnings where flags denote the beginning of the dead ground of no-man’s-land. The rabble-rousing propaganda songs preach to the watchful gunmen about a feeble and irreligious enemy backed by foreign powers. Down the road, an almost identical scene awaits, only the flag is different and the song, though echoing the same sentiment, chants of an opponent altogether different from the one decried barely out of earshot in the dust behind you.
“We hate them. They hate us. We kill each other. Who wins?” mused a fellow passenger on one of my trips as he pressed green leaves of the mildly narcotic khat plant into his mouth.
Mohammed was a friend of a friend who helped to smuggle me – dressed in the all-black, face-covering garb of a Yemeni woman – across front lines into the besieged enclave of Taiz. “We lose everything,” he said. “They win. They always win.” He gesticulated as he spoke of these invisible yet omnipresent powers: Yemen’s political elite and the foreign states entangled in his country’s conflict.
This promotion of hatred, creating what are likely to be irreversible divisions, is necessary for the war’s belligerents in order to incite tens of thousands to fight. It is essential to perpetuate the cycle of revenge unleashed by the territorial advances in 2014 and 2015 by Houthi rebels and the forces of their patron, the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. This demand for retribution is matched by those who are now seeking vengeance for the lives lost in a UK-supported, Saudi-led aerial bombing campaign.
More than 25 years after the two states of North and South Yemen united, the gulf between them has never been wider. The political south, now controlled by forces aligned with the Saudi-led coalition, is logistically as well as politically severed from the north-western territories under the command of the Houthi rebels and Saleh loyalists. Caught in the middle is the city of Taiz, which is steadily being reduced to rubble after a year-long siege imposed by the Houthi-Saleh forces.
Revenge nourishes the violence, but it cannot feed those who are dying from malnutrition. Blowing in the sandy wind on roadsides up and down the country are tattered tents that hundreds of thousands of displaced families now call home. Others have fled from the cities and towns affected by the conflict to remote but safer village areas. There, food and medical care are scarce.
The acute child malnutrition reported in urban hospitals remains largely hidden in these isolated villages, far from tarmac roads, beyond the reach of international aid agencies. On my road trips across Yemen, a journey that would normally take 45 minutes on asphalt could take five hours on tracks across scrubland and rock, climbing mountainsides and descending into valleys where bridges stand useless, snapped in half by air strikes.
Among the other statistics are the missing millions needed by the state – the country’s largest employer. Workers haven’t been paid in months, amid fears of an economic collapse. This is apparently a deliberate tactic of fiscal strangulation by the Saudi-backed Yemeni government-in-exile. The recent relocation of the central bank from the Houthi-controlled capital, Sana’a, to the southern city of Aden is so far proving symbolic, given that the institution remains devoid of funds. The workforce on both sides of the conflict has taken to the streets to protest against salaries being overdue.
Following the deaths of more than 140 people in Saudi-led air strikes on a funeral hall on 8 October, Saleh and the Houthi leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, called for yet more revenge. Within hours, ballistic missiles were fired from within Houthi territory, reaching up to 350 miles into Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, in the Red Sea, Houthi missile attacks on US warships resulted in retaliation, sucking the US further into the mire. Hours later, Iran announced its intention to deploy naval vessels in the area.
Vengeance continues to drive the violence in Yemen, which is being drawn ever closer to proxy conflicts being fought elsewhere in the Middle East. Yet the impact on Yemeni society and the consequences for the population’s health for generations to come are unlikely to appear to the outside world, not even as annotated numbers in the brief glimpses we get of this war.American Sports Network was created in 2014 by Sinclair Broadcast Group to air college sports and provide local sports coverage to certain areas across the country. It appears that Sinclair is pulling the plug on the network after three years. TV news website FTV Live first reported that staffers were informed that their roles were being cut and the network was ceasing operation.
Not only does ASN have contracts with several conferences, but it also provided local sports coverage to several Sinclair stations.
FTV Live said staffers were informed of the news today:
The staff at “American Sports” based at WPEC in West Palm Beach was called together to a mandatory staff meeting and told their roles were eliminated. Sinclair will cease operations of the fledgiling sports operation at the end of the month resulting in many questions around the national subchannel as well as their local sports coverage on Sinclair stations. Newsroom, production and master control teams will all be impacted.
American Sports Network has contracts with the Atlantic Hockey, Atlantic 10, Big South, CAA, Conference USA, ECAC, Hockey East, Horizon League, Ivy League, MAC, NCHC, Ohio Valley, Patriot League, SoCon, Southland, Sun Belt, WAC and WCHA conferences. It also had rights to the Arizona Bowl. Just this week, it aired the first round of the A-10 Tournament. ASN also aired NCAA Division II football and basketball in 2016-17.
The operations were based in Florida and games were called off monitors at ASN’s headquarters in attempts to keep costs down. In addition, sports anchors did local sports for a number of Sinclair stations.
As for its college basketball, football and hockey contracts, FTV Live says it appears the over the top Campus Insiders network will take over coverage that ASN will leave behind. Campus Insiders already streams games with several of the leagues that ASN had deals.
For some of the leagues, American Sports Network gave them exposure to a broadcast television audience, but some of the production values were less than network quality.
Not only was ASN offered to Sinclair stations, but games were syndicated on other broadcast groups as well as various cable regional sports networks including Altitude, Comcast SportsNet, MASN and NESN.
Sinclair also owns Tennis Channel and Ring of Honor Wrestling.
It’s a sudden end for a network that in theory should have worked, but the execution and production didn’t quite catch on. The end of American Sports Network won’t leave the conferences in the dark, but it may leave several leagues scratching their proverbial heads.
[FTV Live]Fellow Scientific American blogger Melanie Tannenbaum is flustered by allegations that psychology is not a science and I can see where she is coming from. In this case the stimulus was a piece by Alex Berezow, a microbiologist, who in a short and provocative piece in the LA times argued the case that psychology is not a real science. I think he's right. I also think that he misses the point.
Berezow's definition of science is not off the mark, but it's also incomplete and too narrow. Criticism of psychology's lack of rigor is not new; people have been arguing about wishy-washy speculations in fields like evolutionary psychology and the limitations of fMRI scans for years. The problem is only compounded by any number of gee-whiz popular science books purporting to use evolutionary and other kinds of "psychology" to explain human behavior. Neither is the field's image bolstered by high-profile controversies and sloppy studies which can't be replicated. But it's hardly fair to kill the message for lack of a suitable messenger. The same criticism has also been leveled at other social sciences including economics and sociology and yet the debate in economics does not seem to be as rancorous as that in psychology. At the heart of Berezow's argument is psychology's lack of quantifiability and dearth of accurate terminology. He points out research in fields like happiness where definitions are neither rigid nor objective and data is not quantifiable.
Happiness research is a great example of why psychology isn't science. How exactly should "happiness" be defined? The meaning of that word differs from person to person and especially between cultures. What makes Americans happy doesn't necessarily make Chinese people happy. How does one measure happiness? Psychologists can't use a ruler or a microscope, so they invent an arbitrary scale. Today, personally, I'm feeling about a 3.7 out of 5. How about you?
This is absolutely true. But you know what other fields suffer from a lack of accurate definitions? My own fields, chemistry and drug discovery. For instance there has been a longstanding debate in our field about how you define a "druglike" molecule, that is, a chemical compound most likely to function as a drug. The number of definitions of "druglike" that have sprung up over the years are sufficient to fill a phonebook. The debate will probably continue for a long time. And yet nobody will deny that work on druglike compounds is a science; the fact is that chemists use guidelines for making druglike molecules all the time and they work. In fact why talk about druglike compounds when all of chemistry is sometimes regarded as insufficiently scientific and rigorous by physicists? There are several concepts in chemistry - aromaticity, hydrophobic effects, polarizability, chemical diversity - which succumb to multiple definitions and are not strictly quantifiable. Yet nobody (except perhaps certain physicists) denies that chemistry is a science. The accusation that "softer" fields are less rigorous and scientific than your own is common enough to be captured in this xkcd cartoon, but it's more of an accusation than, well, a quantifiable truth.
Now chemical definitions are still admittedly more accurate and quantifiable than definitions of happiness or satisfaction. But the point is that not everything measurable needs to be quantifiable to the sixth decimal point to call itself scientific. What matters is whether we can come up with consistent and at least semi-quantifiable definitions that are useful enough to make testable predictions. Psychological research is useful not when it's quantifiable but when it says something about human nature that is universal and revealing. A few days ago I watched a new movie about the life of psychologist and political thinker Hannah Arendt and mulled over the "banality of evil" that Arendt made famous. Now the banality of evil is not exactly rigorously quantifiable like the angular momentum of a figure skater, yet few people would deny that Arendt made an enormously valuable contribution to social science. The contribution worked because it was testable and repeatable (in Milgram-style experiments for instance) and true, not because you could accurately measure it with an fMRI machine. Or consider Daniel Kahneman's seminal work in behavioral economics which has led to real insights into decision making and biases; very few people would call what he did unscientific.
In fact one can argue that social scientists tread on dangerous ground when they start trying to make their discipline too accurate; the proliferation of mathematical models of finance that led to disaster on Wall Street are good testaments to what happens when financiers start longing for the rigor of physics. As the particle physicist turned financial modeler Emanuel Derman puts it, "Physicists are trying to discover 3 laws that will explain 99% of the universe; financial modelers should be content with discovering 99 laws that explain 3% of the universe". So is finance a science? The point is that we still know too little about biology and social systems to achieve the kind of quantitative prediction that sciences like physics do (on the other hand, physics - depending on what kind of physicist you are talking to - does not have to deal with emergent phenomena on a routine basis). But that does not mean that everything we say about human nature is completely unquantifiable and useless.
One valuable contribution that Berezow makes is to indicate the criteria that a field of study should satisfy to call itself a science. I think these criteria are incomplete and too rigid, but I think they provide a useful ruler for psychology to examine its own gaps and goals.
Why can we definitively say that (psychology is not a science)? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally, predictability and testability.
I have already talked about the first two criteria and indicated that lack of clear terminology and quantifiability does not automatically consign a field to the bin of pseudoscience. The third criterion is actually interesting and important and it's not completely clear how to get around it. Since human beings are not electrons, it's indeed very hard to do an experiment with them and get the exact same results every single time. But that is why psychology relies heavily on statistics, to determine precisely whether the variability in results are due to chance or whether they reflect a real difference between samples. Admittedly this is a limitation that psychology will always have, but again, that does not mean it will preclude it from ever being useful. That's because as Melanie accurately notes, even fields like particle physics rely heavily on statistics these days. Nobody observed the Higgs boson directly, it was only visible through the agency of complex tests of statistical significance. And yet particle physics has always been regarded as the "purest" science, even by other physicists. Or consider non-linear dynamics where dependence on initial conditions is so extreme that systems like weather and biological populations become completely chaotic after a while. And yet you can apply statistics to these systems, make more or less reliable predictions and call it science. Which brings us to Berezow's last two points. Testability and prediction are indeed two cornerstones of science. I have already indicated that testability can often be accurate enough to be useful. As for prediction, firstly it can lie within a window of applicability. In my own field we routinely predict the activity or lack thereof of novel drug molecules. Sometimes our predictions are 90% successful, sometimes they are 40% successful. Even when they are 40% successful we can get useful data out of them, although it's also clear that they have some way to go before they can be used on a completely quantitative basis. And all this is still science.
But more importantly, prediction is not actually as important to science as Berezow thinks. The physicist David Deutsch has noted that after watching a magician perform a magic trick ten times you would be able to predict what he would do next, but it doesn't mean at all that you have actually understood what the magician is doing. Contrary to popular belief, in science understanding is at least as or more important than prediction. And psychological studies have definitely provided some understanding of how human beings behave under certain circumstances. It has helped us understand questions like: Why do smart people believe weird things? Why do otherwise decent people turn into monsters under certain circumstances (the banality of evil)? What is the basis of the bystander effect in which empathetic people don't come forward to stop a crime? Psychology has provided intriguing clues and explanations in all these areas, even if those explanations are not one-hundred percent reproducible and quantifiable. Is this science? Well, it's not a science like physics, but why should physics be the yardstick for measuring the "sciencyness" of various fields?
At the same time, I agree with Berezow that science cannot be redefined to such an extent that it no longer obeys time-honored criteria like testability and reproducibility; if you gradually start relaxing foundational requirements like hypothesis testing and observation you quickly slide down a slippery slope, at the bottom of which lie creatures like creationism, the Piltdown Man and astrology. But this was also the case with the beginnings of modern science when data collection was dominant, explanations were few and nobody had any idea what hypothesis testing meant. Yet we call what Linnaeus was doing science, and we call what Brahe was doing science. For crying out loud, even some of the work done by alchemists classifies as science; they did refine processes like distillation and sublimation after all. In my view psychology is in what we might call the Linnaean stage, collecting and classifying data and trying to find the right theory for describing its complexities. To me the acrimonious debates about evolutionary and positive psychology reflect the trial-by-fire that every field goes through in its early days to separate the chaff from the wheat. If you apply a narrow-minded definition of science then it might indeed be hard to call psychology a science. But what matters is whether it's useful. And to me the field certainly seems to have its uses.Pornography degrades women (those cocksure feminists who claim otherwise have fallen for the biggest male confidence trick of all time). It alters the neural pathways of the brain and literally changes the way its consumers think. It hinders men from developing mature emotional relationships with women. It reinforces and supercharges the notion that sex is a commodity over which the consumer has complete control. Further, if an article by Cosmo Landesman in this week’s Spectator is to be believed, it is impacting the middle-aged as badly as it is affecting the younger generation.
The strangest thing about the article is that the author clearly takes personal advantage of the phenomenon which he claims to find so disturbing. Yet perhaps we should not judge him too harshly on this score. Maybe the honesty, the refusal to gloss selfish sleaze as virtue or freedom, is refreshing even if the attitude itself is disturbing.
One might take the article as more evidence that sex has lost all meaning, becoming divorced not only from procreation but from any relationship. Yet the article also suggests that in a certain sense sex has gained greater meaning than ever.
It is first worth noting that pornography has become important for both men and women. The market among women for porn is said to be increasing, a claim the Fifty Shades phenomenon would seem to confirm. This does not mean its effects are equally distributed. For two years as a graduate student, I cycled almost every day through the docks in Aberdeen on my way to school. I thus had plenty of opportunities to observe at close range the human faces of those allegedly empowered by prostitution. I am no aficionado of postmodern feminist theory, but the women selling themselves on the street for their next heroin fix did not look to me to be particularly powerful.
Why does porn have such allure? After all, it would seem to bring in its wake some brutal and unattainable demands which guarantee dissatisfaction and ultimate despair. A porn-saturated culture places pressure on women both to cling desperately to the vestiges of youth and, as Landesman suggests, to become more compliant to the selfish sexual demands of men. Ironically, it also places impossible demands on men: the need to spill vast silos of seed with the limitless abandon of an eighteen-year-old becomes a key measure of life itself. Regardless of one’s moral commitments, the physical work rate alone would seem to be off-putting. Yet still the cruel culture of pornography draws us ever onward.
Why has sex come to be seen as the central purpose of human existence? Is it just hedonism? A combination of Augustine, Pascal and Freud might provide the answer: Sex distracts us from death. Again, the Spectator article inadvertently points towards this. To put it as delicately as possiblethe apparent growing preference for prepubescent sexual aesthetics among women (and presumably among the men in the sexual marketplace) may well offer worrying witness to, and reinforcement of, a rising predilection for pedophilia. But it would also seem to point just as plausibly to our current obsession with youth and denying the aging process.
Perhaps our obsession with sex is not really an obsession with sex at all. Perhaps it is really an obsession with death, to be avoided by remaining perpetually young or by tricking ourselves by sexual athletics into thinking that we do so. Yet whatever the aesthetics, sexual activity as a means for preserving the myth of eternal youth is always going to involve the law of diminishing returns and thus ironically prove a powerful witness to its own falsehood. It really does not matter how many orgasms you have, or how intense they are, you are still going to die.If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
A phenomenon that had had been declining is making a comeback. The seedy dangerous world of the loan shark is experiencing a new surge of popularity as progressively greater numbers of people are refused credit by the major and sub-prime lenders.
‘Loan sharks’ is the term used to describe money lenders who operate illegally. These lenders are not licensed by the financial services and so are completely unregulated. The Office of Fail Trading (OFT) issues guidelines to first and second line lenders. These guidelines must be adhered to or the lender will lose its licence. They concern a raft of items, however they specifically lay down a set of rules that are designed to protect the interests, livelihood and privacy of the borrower; for instance licensed lenders are prohibited from using unethical tactics to pursue debt arrears and are not permitted to charge unethical interest rates.
On the other hand the loan sharks operate with a completely free rein. Examples of this are interest rates and repayment terms. Loan sharks will often charge enormous rates of interest and offer loans on extremely bad terms for the borrower. Should the borrower fail to make scheduled repayments on the loan, the loan shark will often use extremely unethical tactics in order to get their money back. Often they will make further loans in order to enable the borrower to repay the first one. Gradually the borrower will become entrapped in a debt mountain with which they are unable to cope.
Read
Anyone who is finding it difficult to borrow money in a normal manner should seek debt advice from a reputable practitioner. To check whether a lender is licences is simply a matter of phoning the OFT.
There is no legal obligation to repay loans obtained from loan sharks, however resisting their demands can be very difficult. Often it is necessary to involve the local Trading Standards Office and even the police if things get very difficult. Anyone who has fallen into their clutches needs to seek help as soon as possible and before things get even more desperate.
Be Sociable, Share!Good win for the Wild tonight because after consecutive slow starts out of the gate, particularly in the second period in Denver and Calgary, the Wild started well tonight, defended well for the most part, generated chances against a good Tampa Bay Lightning team and wound up edging them for a 2-1 win.
The Wild moved to sixth in the Western Conference, but that means absolutely nothing in the new playoff format. The top three teams in each division make the playoffs, the next two teams with the most points earn wildcard spots.
So with Chicago, St. Louis and Colorado way ahead of the Wild, the Wild’s all but locked in a wildcard spot unless one of the three Central Division teams north of them tank. The Avs are 10 points up on Minnesota.
So, currently, the Wild resides in the first of two wild card spots with 24 games left this season. Vancouver, which is four points behind Minnesota, and Phoenix, which is five points behind Minnesota, both lost, so the Wild gained ground on each.
Dallas and scorching-hot Winnipeg both won and are each six points behind the Wild, which has 67 points in 58 games.
The big concern after tonight’s game is how serious Marco Scandella’s apparent knee injury is. He was lost 2:01 into the game and 55 seconds into his night when he crossed the offensive blue line, collided with Tyler Johnson and did the splits. His knees bent awkwardly, and it looked like his right knee was seriously hurt.
Coach Mike Yeo called it a lower-body injury, said he’s doubtful for Thursday and said he would have more of an update after Wednesday’s practice. Hopefully it’s not too long-term because Yeo indicated that maybe the 20-day Olympic break will help heal whatever’s wrong with him. If it is serious, this could be a significant loss because Scandella's been playing well.
Clayton Stoner will surely play Thursday in the final game before the Olympic break against Nashville.
The good news is Jared Spurgeon returned from a foot injury tonight and despite missing 14 games didn’t miss a beat. He assisted on goals by Nino Niederreiter and Dany Heatley.
Heatley had a solid game. He made plays, set up Jason Zucker for a breakaway and scored his 11th goal. Yeo was real happy with Niederreiter’s game. He scored for the first time since the tying goal in the third period and shootout winner Jan. 7 in L.A. That was a 12-game drought.
Besides the goal, Yeo said, “[Niederreiter] played a very strong game as far as I’m concerned. His puck strength was outstanding. We stressed the last couple games spending more time in the offensive zone, and he did a great job on the wall in the D-zone and more so in offensive zone, the way he managed the puck and the way he held onto it [was impressive].”
Darcy Kuemper was also impressive with 34 saves, a nice bounceback after giving up eight goals in his past two starts. He came up big late and was helped out by his handy post when Tyler Johnson clanked it with 39 seconds left.
The Lightning pressed late bigtime, but the Wild held on.
Yeo had Erik Haula on the ice with two minutes left and Yeo called this easiest one of his best games. He said when he plays like tonight, he has a “ton of confidence in him.”
As I’ve written, Zucker and Haula will spend the Olympic break playing in Iowa. I’ll be interested to see what the Wild does if Mikko Koivu as expected plays in the Wild’s first game after the break Feb. 27 in Edmonton.
Maybe the Wild would consider bringing Haula back and going Mikael Granlund, Koivu, Charlie Coyle and Haula 1, 2, 3, 4 at center and move Kyle Brodziak to the right wing. The other option is Granlund, Koivu, Kyle Brodziak and Haula, and moving Coyle back to right wing.
But Haula is very useful with his speed and on the penalty kill. Tonight, he used his lightning speed to create a heck of a shorthanded chance for himself.
Keith Ballard had three hits. Nate Prosser blocked three shots. Zach Parise had six shots and three takeaways. Mikael Granlund had a couple awesome shifts. Jason Zucker makes a great pass for Spurgeon on the first goal and got the puck up ice on transition to Spurgeon for the second goal.
Overall, very good game from the Wild, a tough game in which it played 58 minutes with five defensemen. The Wild’s D were great and the forwards were terrific defensively with back pressure all game. They were also better taking care of the puck than they have been the past few games.
Suter logged 34:31, but he had a great line afterward, saying, “I had the shanks all game. I couldn’t make a pass coming out of our end, couldn’t make a pass through the neutral zone. I felt like Roy McAvoy out there.”
That’s a Tin Cup reference, a good move with Kevin Costner and Rene Russo.
Spurgeon, always overshadowed and often underrated, had a good line after the game about the fact that nobody bothered asking him questions the past month because so many bigger names – Mikko Koivu, Parise, Josh Harding – were sidelined.
“It was sort of nice. Well, not nice, but I didn’t have to answer any questions,” he joked.
“It was a fast game. Quick skating team. It was fun out there. It was sort of a playoff atmosphere. We know they’ve been rolling, so it’s a big win for us,” Spurgeon continued.
It was a fun game to watch. Tampa’s a fast team that goes north-south quickly. So there was a lot of counterattacks by both teams tonight and plenty of Grade A chances. The Wild could have easily blown this game open in the first two periods. They had some dynamite chances, especially in the second.
“I liked the way our guys came into this game, their preparation,” Yeo said. “You could tell that they had the right focus defensively and execution wise. We did generate a lot of chances, but the way we were generating them, I was real happy.”
That’s it for me. Talk to you after Wednesday’s practice.The petition was just launched on April 14 and already has over 16,000 signatures. You can sign on here!
I’m launching this petition calling on Bernie to run independent and launch a new party. Here’s why.
Despite all the obstacles thrown in the path of Bernie Sanders by the corrupted American electoral system, his campaign has made an enormous impact. Sanders has become a lightening rod for the enormous discontent at the billionaire class and its domination over the political system. His campaign has shown the widespread support for breaking up Wall Street, free higher education, a $15 an hour minimum wage, single payer healthcare, major public investment in renewable energy, and reforming a broken criminal justice system.
Bernie has conclusively demonstrated that it is possible to raise the resources needed to run a strong political campaign without begging billionaires for donations. By running on an unapologetically anti-corporate, pro-worker platform, Bernie has inspired millions of working people to donate to a campaign that actually represents them.
In March alone, Bernie raised a $44 million, his largest monthly haul yet, beating Clinton for a third straight month – all without accepting corporate donations. He has received 6.5 million individual contributions from two million donors, averaging just $27 apiece.
Blocked by the Democratic Party
Yet it has become increasingly clear that the Democratic Party establishment is completely opposed to this political revolution. Rather than support the candidate who is best positioned to stop Trump and the Republicans, they are hell-bent on defending the Wall Street and big business interests that bankroll them.
That’s why I’ve launched a petition urging Bernie – if he is blocked in the rigged primary process – to run as an independent or as a Green on the ticket with Jill Stein. If you agree, sign and share my petition today at www.Movement4Bernie.org.
Under 15 percent of eligible voters will participate in the Democratic primaries, skewing the results heavily toward wealthier and older party loyalists. Most workers and young people only tune in during the general election. We can’t allow this tiny minority of primary voters, the corporate media, Wall Street PACs, and the party establishment to block Bernie before the real election even begins!
Splitting the Vote?
Unfortunately, alongside Clinton’s supporters, Sanders himself has argued that an independent run risks splitting the progressive vote and allowing a Republican victory. Especially with Trump as the GOP frontrunner, this fear is understandable – though given the mass hatred of The Donald, it’s far from clear he could win a three-way race with Clinton and Sanders.
If electing a Republican is really Bernie’s main concern, there is no reason he could not at least run in the 40+ states where it’s absolutely clear the Democratic or Republican candidate will win, while not putting his name on the 5-10 closely contested “swing states.” This could still allow for an historic campaign if linked to building a new party for the 99%, laying the foundation for an ongoing mass political movement to run hundreds of left candidates for all levels of government, independent of corporate cash.
Defeating the Far-Right Agenda
There is another danger if Bernie drops out to back Hillary. It would leave Trump, Cruz, or other right-wing Republicans a free hand to monopolize the growing anti-establishment anger, while most of the left is trapped behind Clinton, the crowning symbol of establishment, dynastic, Wall Street politics. Could the far right even dream up a better scenario to build their forces? While Trump might not win the election, support for hard-right populist politics will grow if there no fighting left alternative offered.
Meanwhile, the confidence and energy of our youthful working-class political revolution will turn into demoralization and disorganization if the movement is corralled into Clinton’s Wall-Street-funded campaign – the exact opposite of a political revolution!
The stakes are too high to let this moment slip through our fingers. Capitalism is plunging humanity into a social and ecological catastrophe. Bernie’s campaign shows a viable fight-back is possible. What’s missing is a strategy to sustain and grow our movement. Now is the time for bold action to build a fighting, working-class political alternative – a party for the millions, not the millionaires.The five of the eight Democratic candidates for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District descended on Pahrump on Thursday in their last attempt to court Nye County voters ahead of early voting.
Susie Lee, Ruben Kihuen, Dan Rolle, Rodney Smith and Brandon Casutt answered questions about immigration, jobs, veteran services, solar energy and infrastructure and a host of other issues during Nye County’s first Democratic debate that was put on by the Nye County Democratic Central Committee.
The Nevada 4th Congressional District race is expected to be one of the most competitive races in this primary’s season as Democrats are looking to regain the control of the seat that was taken by Republican Cresent Hardy in a surprise victory over Democrat Steven Horsford in 2015.
Lucy Flores, Morse Arberry Jr. and Mike Schaefer didn’t attend the event. Flores’ campaign representative read a statement to the audience.
“I’m running for Congress because Nevada needs someone who is not afraid to stand up, speak out and fight back in Washington,” Flores said in a statement.
The five candidates talked about a number of issues in Nevada’s Congressional District 4, such as infrastructure and rural Nevada’s potential for renewable energy.
“I think with renewable energy, the state of Nevada has the opportunity to be at the top of the good list,” Lee said.
She said the recent decision by the Nevada Public Utilities Commission to change the net-metering tariff for rooftop solar customers is an “abdication of responsibility” by the Legislature.
Rolle also criticized the PUC’s decision.
“It should be easier and more affordable to get renewable energy and it’s now more complicated and more expensive to get renewable energy,” he said.
Additionally, Lee said the state has an opportunity for drone technology.
In 2013, Nevada was selected as one of six states where the FAA could test unmanned drones in civilian airspace.
“I think we need to continue to give companies incentives to invest in renewable energy here, in Nevada,” Lee said.
Candidates also talked about immigration reform and their support for citizenship for DREAMers, young immigrants with temporary legal status through the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Rolle called for changing the dialogue on immigration.
“We have to stop the dehumanizing dialogue that’s happening in our country,” he said.
Smith said many of those who come to the United States may not necessarily become citizens but just want to work.
“We really need to determine as of now, who do we want here, how do we want to bring them in here and is our system to bring them here as effective and as efficient as it should be,” he said.
Kihuen whose campaign was endorsed by former President Bill Clinton as of Tuesday said he supports immigration reform and the path to citizenship.
“There’s a reason why there’s an American dream. There’s no such thing as a Mexican Dream or Canadian Dream. There’s the American Dream, and we have to allow that opportunity for those who are willing to work hard for it,” Kihuen said.
Lee said Democrats and Republicans should work together on the immigration issue.
“Nevada is ground zero for the need for comprehensive immigration reform,” she said.
Each candidate also pledged to pay visits to Pahrump on a regular basis, if they get elected. Casutt said he wants to establish a liaison with veterans. Smith promised to create a “constant dialogue.” Lee said she would pay quarterly visits to the town.
Candidates also answered a series of questions on veteran services. Funding, wait times and staff levels dominated the discussion.
“We need to make sure that there’s proper funding, it needs to be a priority,” Casutt said.
Rolle proposed providing veterans with a single-payer health care system and single-payer Medicare system.
“We need to have some type of whistle-blower program in our VA to help us get rid of some of those inefficiencies and ineffective people who are currently working and we need to increase the percentage of people who are veterans that are actually working at VA,” Smith said.
Kihuen called for “streamlining the process” for veterans to get benefits and apply for benefits |
a chicken adoption event and found homes for 93 rescue hens.
Enriching the Lives of Both Animals and People
Mullin says the goals of the museum also include "enriching the lives of animals and people." A year ago they coordinated the largest service fair on Skid Row for people and their pets. About 100 people attended. The animals received free grooming, veterinary care, food, and supplies. Food and supplies were donated and made available for the people as well. "Not only were dogs in attendance, but we saw several cats, two birds, and a giant bunny!"
The museum is located at 4302 Melrose, Los Angeles, but for those not in the Southern California area, there is a robust website to explore. Visit the National Museum of Animals and Society as well My Dog is My Home.Welcome!
The mission of the Dharma Treasure community is to offer Buddhist teachings, clear and systematic meditation instruction, and retreat opportunities for all people pursuing spiritual development and awakening.
We offer online and in-person meditation and Dharma teachings, aimed at spiritual awakening, rooted in the teachings of the Buddha. Grounded in The Mind Illuminated meditation manual, well-trained teachers offer a practical synthesis of traditional wisdom and western thought. The Dharma Treasure Retreat center at Cochise Stronghold hosts individual and group retreats for practitioners of every level. We collaborate with other traditions interested in more effectively achieving insight and liberation of the heart and mind.
This website is the exclusive home to the vast audio archive of his Dharma talks and discussions. All are free for you to download or stream.
Culadasa’s Comprehensive Guide to Meditation
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A note from Culadasa about The Mind Illuminated
Dear Dharma Friends,
I am delighted to report that the book has been big hit with the meditation community world wide. It will soon be released in the U.K., Germany, Korea & Spain as well. I thank you especially for your support.
The book is receiving accolades with over 200 five star reviews on Amazon; there are active discussions on Reddit and other online communities. I sincerely hope you personally find The Mind Illuminated useful.
Special thanks to my co-authors Matthew and Jeremy. We wrote and rewrote every chapter many times, striving for maximum clarity and usefulness, and found creative ways to graphically illustrate both subtle inner experiences and abstract ideas.
In joy and service,
Culadasa
Feel free to check out what else Dharma Treasure has to offer:Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (October 24, 1788 – April 30, 1879) was an American writer and an influential editor. She was the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Hale famously campaigned for the creation of the American holiday known as Thanksgiving, and for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument.
Early life and family [ edit ]
Sarah Josepha Buell was born in Newport, New Hampshire, to Captain Gordon Buell and Martha Whittlesay Buell. Her parents believed in equal education for both genders.[1] Home-schooled by her mother and elder brother Horatio (who had attended Dartmouth), Hale was otherwise an autodidact.
As Sarah Buell grew up and became a local schoolteacher, in 1811 her father opened a tavern called The Rising Sun in Newport. Sarah met lawyer David Hale the same year.[2] The couple married at The Rising Sun on October 23, 1813,[2] and ultimately had five children: David (1815), Horatio (1817), Frances (1819), Sarah (1820) and William (1822).[3] David Hale died in 1822,[4] and Sarah Josepha Hale wore black for the rest of her life as a sign of perpetual mourning.[1][5]
Career [ edit ]
In 1823, with the financial support of her late husband's Freemason lodge, Sarah Hale published a collection of her poems titled The Genius of Oblivion.
Northwood: Life North and South (1852) (1852)
Four years later, in 1827, her first novel was published in the U.S. under the title Northwood: Life North and South and in London under the title A New England Tale. The novel made Hale one of the first novelists to write a book about slavery, as well as one of the first American woman novelists. The book also espoused New England virtues as the model to follow for national prosperity, and was an immediate success.[5] The novel supported relocating the nation's African slaves to freedom in Liberia. In her introduction to the second edition (1852), Hale wrote: "The great error of those who would sever the Union rather than see a slave within its borders, is, that they forget the master is their brother, as well as the servant; and that the spirit which seeks to do good to all and evil to none is the only true Christian philanthropy." The book described how while slavery hurts and dehumanizes slaves absolutely, it also dehumanizes the masters and retards their world's psychological, moral and technological progress.
Reverend John Blake praised Northwood, and asked Hale to move to Boston to serve as the editor of his journal, the Ladies' Magazine.[6] She agreed and from 1828 until 1836 served as editor in Boston, though she preferred the title "editress".[1] Hale hoped the magazine would help in educating women, as she wrote, "not that they may usurp the situation, or encroach on the prerogatives of man; but that each individual may lend her aid to the intellectual and moral character of those within her sphere".[5] Her collection Poems for Our Children, which includes "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (originally titled "Mary's Lamb"), was published in 1830.[7][8] The poem was written for children, an audience for which many women poets of this period were writing.[9]
Hale founded the Seaman's Aid Society in 1833 to assist the surviving families of Boston sailors who died at sea.[10]
Louis Antoine Godey of Philadelphia wanted to hire Hale as the editor of his journal Godey's Lady's Book. He bought the Ladies' Magazine, now renamed American Ladies' Magazine, and merged it with his journal. In 1837, Hale began working as editor of the expanded Godey's Lady's Book, but insisted she edit from Boston while her youngest son, William, attended Harvard College.[11] She remained editor at Godey's for forty years, retiring in 1877 when she was almost 90.[12] During her tenure at Godey's, several important women contributed poetry and prose to the magazine, including Lydia Sigourney, Caroline Lee Hentz, Elizabeth F. Ellet, Eliza Cook, and Frances Sargent Osgood.[13] Other notable contributors included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding, William Gilmore Simms, and Nathaniel Parker Willis.[14] During this time, she became one of the most important and influential arbiters of American taste.[15] In its day, Godey's, with no significant competitors, had an influence unimaginable for any single publication in the 21st century. The magazine is credited with an ability to influence fashions not only for women's clothes, but also in domestic architecture. Godey's published house plans that were copied by home builders nationwide.
During this time, Hale wrote many novels and poems, publishing nearly fifty volumes by the end of her life. Beginning in the 1840s, she also edited several issues of the annual gift book The Opal.
Final years and death [ edit ]
Hale retired from editorial duties in 1877 at the age of 89. The same year, Thomas Edison spoke the opening lines of "Mary's Lamb" as the first speech ever recorded on his newly invented phonograph.[16] Hale died at her home, 1413 Locust Street in Philadelphia, on April 30, 1879.[17] A blue historical marker exists at 922 Spruce St. She is buried in a simple grave in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[18]
Beliefs [ edit ]
Hale, as a successful and popular editor, was respected as an arbiter of taste for middle-class women in matters of fashion, cooking, literature, and morality.[1] In her work, however, she reinforced stereotypical gender roles, specifically domestic roles for women,[5] while casually trying to expand them.[1] For example, Hale believed that women shaped the morals of society, and pushed for women to write morally uplifting novels. She wrote that "while the ocean of political life is heaving and raging with the storm of partisan passions among the men of America... [women as] the true conservators of peace and good-will, should be careful to cultivate every gentle feeling".[19] Hale did not support women's suffrage and instead believed in the "secret, silent influence of women" to sway male voters.[20]
Hale advocated education, and ultimately women's entry into the work force. She supported play and physical education as important learning experiences for children. In 1829, Hale wrote, "Physical health and its attendant cheerfulness promote a happy tone of moral feeling, and they are quite indispensable to successful intellectual effort."[21] Hale became an early advocate of higher education for women,[22] and helped to found Vassar College.[1] Her championship of women's education began as Hale edited the Ladies' Magazine and continued until she retired. Hale wrote no fewer than seventeen articles and editorials about women's education, and helped make founding an all-women's college acceptable to a public unaccustomed to the idea.[23] In 1860, the Baltimore Female College awarded Hale a medal "for distinguished services in the cause of female education".[24] Furthermore, as an editor beginning in 1852, Hale created a section headed "Employment for Women" discussing women's attempts to enter the workforce.[10] Hale also published the works of Catharine Beecher, Emma Willard and other early advocates of education for women.
Hale also became a strong advocate of the American nation and union. In the 1820s and 1830s, as other American magazines merely compiled and reprinted articles from British periodicals, Hale was among the leaders of a group of American editors who insisted on publishing American writers. In practical terms, this meant that she sometimes personally wrote half of the material published in the Ladies' Magazine. In later years, it meant that Hale particularly liked to publish fiction with American themes, such as the frontier, and historical fiction set during the American Revolution. Hale adamantly opposed slavery and was strongly devoted to the Union. She used her pages to campaign for a unified American culture and nation, frequently running stories in which southerners and northerners fought together against the British, or in which a southerner and a northerner fell in love and married.
Legacy [ edit ]
1863 letter from Hale to Lincoln discussing Thanksgiving
Hale may be the individual most responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States; it had previously been celebrated mostly in New England.[25] Each state scheduled its own holiday, some as early as October and others as late as January; it was largely unknown in the American South. Her advocacy for the national holiday began in 1846 and lasted 17 years before it was successful.[26] In support of the proposed national holiday, Hale wrote letters to five Presidents of the United States: Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Abraham Lincoln. Her initial letters failed to persuade, but the letter she wrote to Lincoln convinced him to support legislation establishing a national holiday of Thanksgiving in 1863.[27] The new national holiday was considered a unifying day after the stress of the American Civil War.[28] Before Thanksgiving's addition, the only national holidays celebrated in the United States were Washington's Birthday and Independence Day.[29]
Hale also worked to preserve George Washington's Mount Vernon plantation, as a symbol of patriotism that both the Northern and Southern United States could all support.[30]
Hale raised $30,000 in Boston for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument.[12][31] When construction stalled, Hale asked her readers to donate a dollar each and also organized a week-long craft fair at Quincy Market.[31] Described as "'Oprah and Martha Stewart combined,'" Hale's organization of the giant craft fair at Quincy Market "was much more than a 'bake sale'"—"refreshments were sold... but they brought in only a fraction of the profit."[31] The fair sold handmade jewelry, quilts, baskets, jams, jellies, cakes, pies, and autographed letters from Washington, James Madison, and the Marquis de Lafayette.[31][32] Hale "made sure the 221-foot obelisk that commemorates the battle of Bunker Hill got built."[31]
Liberty Ship #1538 (1943–1972) was named in Hale's honor, as was a New York City Board of Education vocational high school on the corner of Dean St. and 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. However, the school closed in June 2001.
A prestigious literary prize, the Sarah Josepha Hale Award, is named for her.[33] Notable winners of the Hale Award include Robert Frost in 1956, Ogden Nash in 1964, Elizabeth Yates in 1970, Arthur Miller in 1990, and Julia Alvarez in 2017.[34]
Hale was further honored as the fourth in a series of historical bobblehead dolls created by the New Hampshire Historical Society and sold in their museum store in Concord, New Hampshire.[35]
Hale is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on April 30. She is commemorated on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.[36]
A box of her correspondence, containing 28 folders, is in the collections of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.[37]
Selected works [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]Which Third Party Candidate Is Right For Me?
Kevin Froleiks Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 4, 2016
“Vote your conscience.” — Ted Cruz, US Senator and marionette that recently became a real boy
At this point, I think it’s safe to say that 2016 will go down in history as one of the most interesting election years in United States history.
This year marks the first time ever that a woman has won the nomination of a major political party. Regardless of how you feel about Hillary Clinton’s policies, this is incredible!
This year will also be remembered as the year Donald Trump hijacked the Republican Party and gave a voice to conservatives nationwide. Except of course for Mexican conservatives. Or Muslims. Or people of color in general. Also, he and Mike Pence are not really speaking on behalf of women but I digress.
The point is that you might be frustrated with the nominees of both major parties. You probably think America is stuck in a South Park election, where we’re forced to choose between A Turd Sandwich and a Giant Douche.
But here’s the thing…
You have another option! You can always vote for a Third Party!
Yes, in America we have the privilege of voting for anyone or any party we want. If you don’t like the values of the Republican or Democratic parties, then you are absolutely within your rights to vote for a Third Party, regardless of what the naysayers may say.
Now comes the tricky part. Which party is right for you? To help you answer this question, let’s take a look at some of the more popular Third Party candidates.
1. Gary Johnson
Gary Johnson is the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee. The Libertarian Party seeks limited government and freedom for all individuals.
Pros: Keep the government from meddling in your everyday affairs and encourage people to pull up their boot straps and paddle their own canoe.
Cons: Limiting federal power and giving more power to the individual states would mean potentially losing a lot of social programs that do a lot of public good.
2. Jill Stein
Jill Stein is the presumptive nominee for the Green Party. The basic principals of the Green Party are Grassroots Campaigning and social and environmental justice.
Pros: The Green Party refuses to accept donations from corporations or PAC’s.
Cons: Very weak on Foreign Policy. Focusing solely on diplomacy could weaken America’s defense and open us up to attack.
3. Santa Claus
Santa Claus is the presidential nominee for the Christmas Party. The Christmas Party is all about unwinding after a tough Q4, drinking way too much, and telling your boss how you really feel.
Pros: We’ll finally have a Commander in Chief that understands that we want presents all day everyday.
Cons: Santa Claus was very much pro-segregation as we discovered in the famous court case, Rudolph v. All Of The Other Reindeer, until one particularly foggy Christmas Eve forced him to flip-flop on this position.
4. A Dog With People Hands
A Dog With People Hands is simultaneously one of the most adorable and most unsettling things given to us by Sesame Street. They do not belong to a formal political party, but I think they should start one because nobody messes with A Dog With People Hands.
Pros: You’ll have a lot of good laughs watching A Dog With People Hands sign bills into law or fishing at Camp David.
Cons: Nightmares. All the time. Forever.
5. Sernie Banders
This young, new hotshot just emerged on the political scene with some radical ideas. Sernie Banders is a Democratic Socialist and is definitely not Bernie Sanders wearing a fake mustache, although many people think this due to his catchy campaign slogan, “Feel the Sern!”
Pros: Take this country back from the 1% and let the lobbyists and corporate interests know that America belongs to the people.
Cons: Facial hair is gross. That’s why we haven’t had a president with facial hair since Taft.I knew I should have been online early today or last night, but since it is the holiday season, we’ve been giving ourselves some time off (okay, lots of time off), and when that happens, there is that unfortunate chance of almost missing out on great surprises, like this 20-second clip of Descendants of the Sun. And of course, it’s one that takes a look at the push-and-pull romance between the leads.
My Gad! The cameras have sure missed Song Joong Ki, and what else can you say about Song Hye Kyo, right? Can’t really keep your eyes off her.
Clip Translation (c/o hclover96)
Yoo Shi Jin (Song Joong Ki): About the time when I kissed you without permission …
Kang Mo Yeon (Song Hye Kyo): Before I talk this matter out …
Shi Jin: What should I do then? Apologize or confess?
Sources | Credit to uploader | Soompi, c/o hclover96The Greg Inglis injury sustained during South Sydney’s loss to the Tigers last Friday night has rocked the NRL.
Whilst the injury is no doubt shocking, it’s the way South Sydney handled it out on the field that has raised some serious questions.
The Injury
Inglis suffered a knee injury in the seventh minute of the game. Instead of having him sit out the match, club staff allowed him to play on until the 58th minute.
It was obvious to all watching the match that Inglis was far from 100%. He could hardly move and was basically a passenger out there.
The Diagnosis
Scans have since revealed that Inglis has suffered a tear to the ACL. This will put him out of action for the remainder of the season. The Rabbitohs are denying that leaving him out on the field caused the seriousness of the injury.
The Expert
Osteopath Dayne Sweres of Melbourne’s Inner North Osteopathy is an expert on musculoskeletal biomechanics. Sweres agrees that it is a complicated situation and empathises with South Sydney club medical staff.
“Diagnosing a ruptured ACL in the acute phase (very soon after injury) can be difficult and we would hope that the testing would show up any damage to the ACL. I’m sure that the medical staff would have performed these tests and had they have come back positive they would not have allowed Inglis to return to play.”
“A full rupture can be less painful than a partial because there’s no pulling through the damaged tissue to cause pain, it’s just floating free.”
“A full rupture on testing will be quite loose but very soon afterward the injury can be masked by muscle spasming and swelling (as it will make everything tighter). So it may have felt more stable than it was and Inglis may have felt less pain due to full rupture.”
Playing It Safe?
Sweres agreed that in that situation he would play it safe. But he also mentioned that it is a complicated call for medical staff in a sporting environment.
“When it comes to ACL I’d definitely be on the side of caution. Especially in Round 1 when your best player is involved.”
“But being a sports doctor/physiotherapist/osteopath in that position would be really difficult because, let’s be honest, everyone wants the player out there. The fans do and so does the player himself.”
“So it all falls on you the medical professional. If you keep him off and they lose and he gets a scan the next day that clears him of structural damage, you can look a little silly.”
“Having said that, I think most people in a sports organisation would accept that a long term perspective and cautious approach will get you further than a gamble.”
“Any time you let a player return to the field under an injury cloud, you’re putting him at risk of not only injuring that particular issue further but also at risk of other injuries due to altered gait, movement patterns and also a player having a protective/hindered attack on situations.”
“As you know, it’s often the person who goes in harder that ends up on the better side of a collision. If you pull out slightly you’re in trouble.”
The Coach
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph Bunnies, coach Michael Maguire discussed how devastated he was by the injury.
“Hindsight is a great thing and obviously we put our hand up and we didn’t get the call right,” Maguire said.
One week to go! Who's excited?! Swipe right for more. #GoRabbitohs A post shared by South Sydney Rabbitohs (@ssfcrabbitohs) on Feb 23, 2017 at 4:40pm PST
“When I got to him at halftime and I spoke to the doc, he was determined to go back out and he thought it was going to be OK. Unfortunately it didn’t come across as any of us would have liked.”
“When I got the news the following day after the scan, I was shattered like everyone. I have worked with Greg for a long, long time. He and I are very close.”
Road To Recovery
G.I is understood to have undergone surgery and is expected to spend six months on the sidelines.
Thanks everyone for your support! Can't wait to get to work with our medical team on my knee rehab #GoRabbitohs ✌?? A post shared by GI (@greg_inglis1) on Mar 5, 2017 at 5:22pm PST
Australian coach Mal Meninga hasn’t ruled out selecting Inglis for the national World Cup squad later in the year. The World Cup kicks off in late October and Mal wants to give his star every chance of playing.
“Greg’s a really important part of the rep program, he’s one of our best players in the game. It’s very important that he’s part of the team if he’s available,” Meninga told Fox League.
“We’d have no hesitation in picking him if he hasn’t played any games this year.”
I wish G.I all the best with his recovery. Let’s hope Mal and the Kangaroos selectors don’t rush him into the Aussie side with too much haste.
by Michael T. Lynch – contributorWill legal cannabis soon be as easy as point, click, and wait by the door for the delivery guy?
Online shopping is a future that many in the adult-use industry are eager to embrace.
That’s a scenario being pushed in an intriguing new report by VolteFace, a UK drug policy think tank. Though focused mainly on the United Kingdom, where popular pressure is building for legalization, the report makes a fairly compelling case for the “virtualizing” of the global cannabis business—where all products are ordered online and delivered directly to the consumer, without the inefficiency or social risks of a bricks-and-mortar shop. Report author Mike Power, the UK journalist who wrote Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That’s Changing How the World Gets High, writes that it’s the only sensible future for mega markets like Canada and the United States.
Power writes: “A controlled and regulated online market is both essential and long overdue in order to protect users from the risks of the illicit market; to limit access to younger users; to offer safer products and increase consumer choice; to develop less harmful products and safer routes of administration; and to control marketing and advertising in any eventual legal context.”
A digital-only cannabis market, he adds, “would protect children, and limit their access to cannabis, but allows adults to make their own informed health choices.”
Already Working: Eaze, Tweed, and Others
It’s a compelling vision for the future of cannabis, to be sure. Beyond the element of convenience, such a digital-only marketplace does seem to address many of the concerns that regulators have, in everything from product safety to more efficient tax collection.
More to the point, it’s a future that much of the cannabis marketplace itself is also quite eager to embrace.
In California, for example, online delivery platforms like Eaze already offer tightly controlled app-based ordering and direct-to-your-door delivery for medical cannabis, and are anxious to expand the service to adult-use cannabis, which state voters approved last year. In the Eaze model, the company is simply a branded intermediary that coordinates deliveries from local dispensaries via a fleet of Uber-like drivers.
In Canada, meanwhile, players such as Tweed Mainstreet have created vast mail-order systems whose massive inventory and short delivery times are almost Amazonian in their efficiency and scope.
Constrained For Now, But Not For Long
True, these early movers in the virtualization space face constraints. Eaze, for example, is currently allowed to work only in California. Tweed is, of course, limited to Canada. But investors who have poured millions of dollars into these players clearly believe that the virtualization model can readily expand into other states and, eventually, to the continent as a whole.
Keith McCarty, former CEO of Eaze 'It's a matter of flipping a switch. We can expand tomorrow.'
“We can scale extremely fast,” Keith McCarty, then CEO of Eaze, explained to Cannainsider last year. That’s true in part because the company is itself largely virtual: its delivery network is built on top of the existing retail and wholesale networks that are already in place in a given market area. “For us it’s really just a matter of flipping on a switch,” McCarty said. “We can expand tomorrow.”
These app enabled delivery-dispensary partnerships may well be just the first stage in a much larger transformation of the cannabis end-user experience. Given how rapidly the other segments of the cannabis industry, most notably production, are being disrupted by business models centered on scale volumes and technology-driven cost reductions, it seems inevitable that the retail side will also be transformed. Just as bricks-and-mortar retailing has been decimated by an online model that offers low-cost two-day delivery, so, too, the huge network of dispensaries that has followed legalization and decriminalization may itself be but a stage in the cannabis industry’s accelerating evolution.
Amazon Cannabis Prime? Not So Fast.
Not that we’ll be seeing cannabis offered as part of Amazon Prime any time soon. No doubt much of the cannabis trade will eventually migrate from the physical market into the virtual one, particularly in product areas, such as low-cost edibles, that are more and more like commodities. But it’s far from clear how far this transformation will go, or how long it will take.
Virtualization is already a reality in Canada’s medical marijuana market, where patients click-through their purchases and receive medicine in the mail. But it’s a different story in the United States. Even before the election of Donald Trump, online entrepreneurs faced a market that was fragmented among cannabis-friendly and unfriendly states, and even among pro- and anti- local governments within states. That’s hardly the best environment for the emergence of an Amazon-esque cannabis company.
Since the appointment of Trump’s cannabis-loathing attorney general, Jeff Sessions, even first movers in the virtualization space seem to be reassessing their expansion plans. As Jim Patterson, Eaze’s new CEO, told The San Jose Mercury News last month, “I think what a lot of people are doing is waiting and seeing.”
More fundamentally, the virtualization model makes some assumptions about the existing cannabis retail segment that may not bear out entirely. The VolteFace report, for example, assumes that physical dispensaries are so problematic socially (magnets for “antisocial behavior…. public consumption and intoxication”) that consumers will abandon them as soon as a virtual option is available. Yet given the way many new, higher-end dispensaries are emphasizing a rich consumer experience, with experts on hand to assist in selection, and spa-like ambience—it’s hardly clear that the bricks-and-mortar cannabis model is going extinct tomorrow.
To the contrary, just as independent bookstores have made a comeback from an assumed Amazon-led extinction—in part by offering a hands-on, in person experience that is simply unavailable online—there is every reason to believe that some form of the bricks-and-mortar cannabis experience will survive even in the age of the virtual high.By, 14
SAN FRANCISCO — Henry Samueli spun my head around so fast I thought it would snap off. He explained why the worst possible thing that could happen to the electronics industry might be a good thing for Broadcom, the company he co-founded.
Moore's Law is slowing down, and its end appears to be in sight, he said. No surprise. Back in May he became the first semiconductor executive I ever heard frankly acknowledge this increasing apparent reality. Then he added a new head-snapping twist:
From our perspective [this situation] gives us more breathing room to be clever about design. Most people run to the current process node as fast as they can. That's going to change. Instead of running to the next node, you will come up with new architectures and circuit designs, and that will create more opportunities on the design side, bringing more value to a company like Broadcom.
Laughing, I asked, "So Moore's Law is ending... and that's a good thing for Broadcom?"
We both laughed. "Yes, in a way it is," he said.
While Samueli argues Broadcom could expand its slice, the overall pie will slow its pace of growth, a prospect that quickly sobered up our conversation.
There will be a slowdown in rate of innovation in products [end users] buy. The smaller/cheaper/faster [dynamic] is definitely going to slow and potentially 15 years from now even stop -- then it's a matter of leveraging the system as a whole rather than the end product.
Samueli is not alone in speaking frankly about this trend. In a keynote at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), one of the top gatherings on the future of semiconductors, Geoffrey Yeap, vice president of technology at Qualcomm, painted a similar picture.
Chipmakers face "more material/process cost and design complexity... to meet product specifications for low leakage/power and higher performance," he wrote in a paper for the IEDM proceedings.
"This positive feedback loop drastically accelerates the increase in die cost ($/mm2)... making area scaling less attractive," Yeap wrote. "We are getting dangerously close to this inflection point as the scaling box with four sides of speed, density, power, and cost is becoming smaller as we march towards the 7 nm node."
Engineers are researching several areas in hopes of countering or at least slowing down the trend. They include new backend materials and processes, multiple 3D chip stacking efforts, and industry collaboration on extreme ultraviolet lithography, 450mm wafers, and design optimizations of all sorts, Yeap wrote.Google Keep's new feature will help you find notes old and new even if you never even bothered slapping a label on them. The free app now organizes your notes based on automatically created topics, such as food, places and travel. Even better, you can look for entries simply by clicking on the search bar to bring up topic shortcuts you can access. Google didn't exactly explain how it works, but Keep likely takes cues from the words you use. If you write down "pack for trip to Paris," the app will automatically associate that entry with travel. Useful, especially if you're too lazy to organize your to-do lists and "notes to self" manually. The new feature is now live on Android and iOS, as well as for Keep on the web.This week, Vanity Fair and Condé Nast are publishing a special edition entitled Vanity Fair: Trans America, focused on gender identity and expression, and featuring groundbreaking stories on the transgender community’s pioneers (including Caitlyn Jenner, Renée Richards, Chaz Bono, and Laverne Cox), several of which were previously published in *Vanity Fair’*s sister publications, including The New Yorker, Glamour, GQ, and Vogue. Among some of the highlights, Vanity Fair: Trans America includes Buzz Bissinger’s full Vanity Fair profile of Caitlyn Jenner, photographed by Annie Leibovitz; an interview with Mixed Martial Arts fighter Fallon Fox, by Nancy Hass for GQ; and a Vogue piece by Alice Gregory on Make Up for Ever’s new face (and reputed new Taylor Swift BFF), Australian supermodel Andreja Pejic. In addition, the issue features a helpful primer on transgender history, a look at gender roles and expression in the movies, and a photo portfolio of the transgender names you should know. Also included is a 1997 New Yorker essay by the late John Gregory Dunne on the assault and murder of Brandon Teena and two companions, a horrific crime that would inspire the 1999 film Boys Don’t Cry.
Sadly, in the weeks since the edition was sent to print, at least six transgender women of color were lost to senseless violence. The publications involved in creating this special edition share in the grief surrounding these tragedies. It is the hope that this issue, on newsstands this week, will help educate people and underscore the efforts of those who have helped promote wider understanding of transgender people.
In creating the issue, Vanity Fair publisher Condé Nast also sought to recognize several organizations that serve the transgender community, including the Los Angeles Gender Center; the National Center for Transgender Equality; the Trans Justice Funding Project; the Translatina Network; and the Center for Transyouth Health and Development, Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Vanity Fair: Trans America can be found on newsstands everywhere and online on August 18.Did you know premarital sex didn't exist until a mere 40 years ago? Yeah, neither did we...
bride and groom on bed via Shutterstock
Think that anti-choice politicians and activists aren’t trying to outlaw contraception? Think again. Follow along in an ongoing series that proves beyond a doubt that they really are coming for your birth control
A lot has changed since 1972. An African American has been elected President of the United States. Computers fit into the palm of your hand. And people have started having sex, even though they aren’t married.
No, really, that’s a new thing, and totally within the last four decades. Or so claims Family Research Council fellow Pat Fagan, who eloquently explained his belief that contraception for single people should be outlawed since those who have sex outside of marriage should be punished for their actions. Right Wing Watch has the transcript:
The court decided that single people have the right to contraceptives. What’s that got to do with marriage? Everything, because what the Supreme Court essentially said is single people have the right to engage in sexual intercourse. Well, societies have always forbidden that, there were laws against it. Now sure, single people are inclined to push the fences and jump over them, particularly if they are in love with each other and going onto marriage, but they always knew they were doing wrong. In this case the Supreme Court said, take those fences away they can do whatever they like, and they didn’t address at all what status children had, what status the commons had, by commons I mean the rest of the United States, have they got any standing in this case? They just said no, singles have the right to contraceptives we mean singles have the right to have sex outside of marriage. Brushing aside millennia, thousands and thousands of years of wisdom, tradition, culture and setting in motion what we have. … Get the facts, direct to your inbox. Subscribe to our daily or weekly digest. SUBSCRIBE It’s not the contraception, everybody thinks it’s about contraception, but what this court case said was young people have the right to engage in sex outside of marriage. Society never gave young people that right, functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever. The institution for the expression of sexuality is marriage and all societies always shepherded young people there, what the Supreme Court said was forget that shepherding, you can’t block that, that’s not to be done.
Ah, they “shame” people, right? And that’s exactly what is behind the mindset of those who are coming to take away birth control. After all, contraception allows couples … no, let’s be frank, allows unmarried women and girls … the ability to have sex privately without becoming pregnant. That’s the part that upsets the anti-choice activists so very much. A pregnant teen is a teen that has to publicly show that she engaged in sex, and allow everyone to see the consequences of her actions. The only way to hide that “shame” is to marry, which instantly changes her guilty action into an acceptable one, since sexual intercourse once married is allowed.
Of course, this isn’t an argument that remains outside of the marital bed. Once inside, contraception has the same “hiding” aspect, allowing a wife to potentially hide infidelity.
So does Fagan really want to jail people who have sex outside of marriage? Actually, it wouldn’t be too surprising if he did. Just this February 25 members of the Virginia House voted to keep on the books a law that would continue to consider cohabitation and sex outside of marriage “a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $500 for the first offense; and by up to a year in jail, a fine of up to $2,500, or both, for a second offense.” They were a small minority of the vote, but a distinct reminder that there are a number of people still willing to throw a person in |
ump or a catchall.)
– 1x Annul (There are a number of problem enchantments we just can’t let resolve stick around.)
– 1x Wear // Tear (Same reason as Annul. Helps hit the enchantment if we miss it, but not as good against Banishing Light and Detention Sphere).
– 1x Boros Charm (For the Verdict Matchups. You can also try Ajani’s Presence in this slot.)
Thanks for tuning in!
– EvaRia
Advertisements“Anti-immigration rhetoric” is an accusation regularly levelled at Ukip, and it has happened again in the case of one of the party’s so-called rising stars, who, as reported in this newspaper yesterday, has publicly distanced herself from the party. Leaving aside the fact that Alexandra Swann initially resigned her membership when she wasn’t selected as a Ukip MEP candidate, this episode brings a key issue to the forefront.
Ukip has never been “anti-immigration”. We are anti-uncontrolled immigration – which is a quite different thing from this far-fetched idea that one hears coming from Nick Clegg and his ilk that we want to pull up the drawbridge. We don’t want to pull it up. We want to control who comes over it.
This is something that anyone viewing the “In-Out” debates could have seen: the determined refusal to admit that Ukip doesn’t have a problem with letting foreign-born nationals come to live, settle and work in this country. The difference between us and the other parties is that we don’t want to decide who comes here based purely on geography. The Tories can only control immigration from outside the EU and this means tight controls on those people coming from countries we have traditionally had close ties with.
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Our historic link with the Commonwealth and our trading links going back centuries mean this country has always had a steady flow of immigration and emigration. Our fair justice system and meritocratic mentality meant that we became the destination of choice for many displaced, persecuted peoples. And of course after the Second World War, we actively invited people from the Commonwealth to emigrate to the UK.
Providing refuge and opportunity for skilled migrants who want to work hard and assimilate into our society is not what Ukip has a problem with. Instead, we insist that this country has an immigration policy that has both quantity and quality control.
What we have seen over the past decade is an unprecedented level of migration such as we have never seen before, with no skills or language tests for entry but with full access to one of the most generous welfare systems in the world. It is an outrage that parents with children not even living in the UK are given child support benefit which is then sent out of the country. It is an insult to our own youngsters that politicians think they are lazy and that we need migrants from Eastern Europe to come to pick our fruit. Before 2004 strawberries did not go rotting in the field as feckless 18-year-olds pointed and laughed.
But we should also look at the other side of the coin: this week Polish MP Artur Debski arrived on a budget flight from Poland and plans to seek work in London and live on £100 a week. This is not because he’s heard about the expenses opportunities for politicians in this country, but because he sees the number of young people leaving Poland to work in the UK as “dangerous”.
“Brain Drain” is a serious problem for all countries but especially poorer countries. For if their brightest and best leave to seek work abroad, doing jobs which are below their skill set, this has consequences both there and in the country they move to. It is simply not an optimal allocation of skills and talents. It will stifle growth in their home country whilst causing a downward depression on wages and an oversupply in the unskilled labour market in the country they migrate to.
The definition of full employment is that everyone who wants a job, has one. Until we make fundamental reforms to our social security to ensure that a life on benefits is not an option – as well as reforming our immigration policy – we will see abuses of the system and a resentment towards migrants by sectors of society who feel pushed out.
Liberate our high streets
The question of our high streets is still one successive governments try to address with little success. But instead of “tsars” and “enterprise zones”, I think there could be some simple, fundamental reforms which could make a huge difference to struggling businesses.
Take parking. A hairdresser in North London says she is losing clients because of the high cost and difficulty in parking for her customers, with limits on time permitted which are less than the length of time of her appointment.
And business rates must be reformed. Why, when businesses are the engine of growth and provide employment and prosperity in this country, are we not slashing rates? It is completely short-sighted of this Government to think that small businesses should fork out sky-high rates when that money could be used on employing a new member of staff.
The money which goes to Government in taxation is inefficiently spent. The money which goes towards expanding a business and providing employment is what brings abut economic growth. Why don’t we give that a shot instead of launching endless new, yet fundamentally useless, initiatives?
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 nowStephen Harper's chief spokesman is leaving the Prime Minister's Office seven months before the official start of the next federal election campaign, a source said Friday.
Jason MacDonald, the prime minister's director of communications, took on the job in September 2013, after the previous spokesman, Andrew MacDougall, left. MacDonald had been the director of communications to Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt.
Rob Nicol, vice-president of corporate affairs at Canadian Tire, will take over from MacDonald.MacDonald will join the public relations and lobbying firm Hill+Knowlton.
Stephen Harper's directors of communication
The average lifespan of a chief spokesman for the prime minister is about 18 months. Rob Nicol will be Harper's ninth director of communications since Harper became prime minister. The others were:
Jason MacDonald
Andrew MacDougall
Angelo Persichilli
Dimitri Soudas
John Williamson
Kory Teneycke
Sandra Buckler
William Stairs
Nicol has been at Canadian Tire in various roles since 2010, according to a resume posted online. He was also director of communications for Mike Harris when he was Ontario premier from 2000 to 2002.
Rob Nicol is taking over as director of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper as Jason MacDonald steps down. (Linkedin) While Nicol is leaving Canadian Tire for the Prime Minister's Office, another former PMO director of communications recently joined Canadian Tire. Sandra Buckler, who was Harper's spokeswoman for almost 2½ years, started with the company last month as vice-president of communications.
MacDonald is leaving the PMO in the wake of John Baird announcing his departure from federal politics. Baird, who was foreign affairs minister until he announced his plans to leave politics, has been a stalwart Harper supporter since the Conservatives formed government in 2006.
Harper has also cut ties with Dimitri Soudas, a long-time adviser and once director of communications, since Soudas was found to have interfered in the nomination race of his fiancée, MP Eve Adams, almost a year ago. Soudas was fired as executive director of the Conservative Party over the conflict. Earlier this week, Adams crossed the floor to the Liberal Party and said she had Soudas's support to make the move.Hawaii Football Will Stream Games To The Mainland, For Free
After a year hiatus, Hawaii football fans can stream games through the Mountain West app.
Contact/Follow @JeremyMauss & @MWCwire
Late night football just got better
After a year of having to rely on not-so-legal viewing options for Hawaii football home games for those living on the mainland, a change has been made to allow for free streaming of games to those outside of Hawaii through the Mountain West app.
Ferd Lewis of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser relayed the great news to football insomniacs everywhere. Those who do live in Hawaii will still need to order any of these six games via pay-per-view.
The games that are streaming are produced by Spectrum PPV; so for example, the season finale where Hawaii hosts BYU will air on CBS Sports Network and will not be streamed via the Mountain West app.
This is more than great news for those fans of Hawaii who live stateside or those on the East Coast who want more football at midnight local time. This is a great move to get the Hawaii brand out there to the masses.
Hawaii is coming off a 7-7 with a bowl victory over Middle Tennessee State which was the Warriors first bowl game since 2010 and its first post season victory since 2006.
The expectations for the Warriors football team are increasing as they were projected by the media to finish second behind San Diego State in the West Division and multiple outlets predict that Hawaii will be going bowling for the second-straight year which is something the Warriors have not done since the 2007-08 seasons.
Stock up on your favorite energy drink and get ready for the fall to enjoy an extra three-plus hour block of college football.
The only thing that could top this for Hawaii football is if they brought back their rainbow uniforms full-time.
The games that will be featured on the mainland on the Mountain West app are below:
Date Team Time Sept. 2 Western Carolina 6 p.m. HT Sept. 30 Colorado State 6 p.m. HT Oct. 14 San Jose State 6 p.m. HT Nov. 4 @ UNLV 12 p.m. HT Nov. 11 Fresno State 6 p.m. HT Nov. 18 @ Utah State TBA
As for the opener at UMass, it will be a free game for those with Spectrum in Hawaii and if you want to watch this game and are on the mainland it looks to be available through the sports package on your pay TV provider.Washington, DC: The federal government's anti-drug efforts are inefficient and ineffective, according to a report issued last week by the Congressional watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The report assessed whether the Obama administration's anti-drug strategies, as articulated by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in its 2010 National Drug Control Strategy report, have yet to achieve its stated goals. In virtually all cases it had not, authors reported.
Concluded the report: "The public health, social, and economic consequences of illicit drug use, coupled with the constrained fiscal environment of recent years, highlight the need to ensure that federal programs efficiently and effectively use their resources to address this problem. ONDCP has developed a 5-year Strategy to reduce illicit drug use and its consequences, but our analysis shows lack of progress toward achieving four of the Strategy's five goals for which primary data are available."
Specifically, the GAO report's authors criticized the administration for failing to adequately address rising levels of youth marijuana consumption. They also rebuffed the ONDCP's allegation that increased rates of adolescent marijuana use are a result of the passage of statewide laws decriminalizing the plant or allowing for its therapeutic use, stating: "The studies that assessed the effect of medical marijuana laws that met our review criteria found mixed results on effects of the laws on youth marijuana use.... [S]tudies that assessed the effect of marijuana decriminalization that met our review criteria found little to no effect of the laws on youth marijuana use."
Full text of the report is online at: http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/653354.pdf.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500 or Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org.This is odd. I suppose the strategy of Cook and Lewandowsky is to keep polling until you get the answers you want. Who would have thought there would now be a third survey? Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. reports on the solicitation he received:
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 08:45:15 +0000 From: “Verheggen, Bart” To: “Verheggen, Bart” Cc: “Strengers, Bart” Subject: Survey questions available on PBL website Dear survey respondent, Based on requests we received, we hereby make the Climate Science Survey questions and answer options available on the PBL website: http://www.pbl.nl/en/news/newsitems/2012/survey-on-the-opinions-on-climate-change With kind regards, Bart Verheggen, Bart Strengers, Rob van Dorland, John Cook Regards, Dr Bart Verheggen Scientist ……………………………………………………………… Department of Climate, Air and Energy PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency Ant. van Leeuwenhoeklaan 9 | 3721 MA | Bilthoven | W.340 PO box 303 | 3720 AH | Bilthoven Issues related to the role of climate science in society will also receive attention. The results and their analysis will be published on our website and submitted to a scientific journal. We anticipate this study to facilitate a constructive dialogue on the selected issues, between people of different opinion, and to help communicate these issues to a wider audience. See also: The questions asked in the survey (PDF, 403 KB) More information For further information, please contact the PBL press office (+31 70 3288688 or persvoorlichting@pbl.nl).
Meanwhile. Dr. Tim Ball discovered (after taking the survey) that John Cook was associated with it and wanted to be removed. He writes:
From: Tim Ball Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2012 9:52 AM To: Anthony Watts Subject: Heads up
I have had a brief battle with a Netherlands government agency being used to do a survey on climate responses much like the one Lewandowsky did. When I discovered John Cook (I assume it is the same person) was involved I asked for my contribution to be removed. They refused. Here are the emails involved. Most recent at the bottom so you can read them in sequence. Tim Ball From: Tim Ball Tim Ball Sent: donderdag 20 september 2012 7:27 To: Verheggen, Bart Cc: Strengers, Bart Subject: Re: Thank you for responding to our climate science survey I would be grateful if you could send me copy of the survey. I don’t want the results, just the survey as circulated. Thank you Tim Ball On 2012-09-20, at 8:10 AM, Verheggen, Bart wrote: Dear Dr Ball,The initial invitation email with the request to participate in our survey was signed by the same people (i.e. including John Cook), so the information of his involvement should not be new to you. We will not remove any responses from our database.With kind regards, Bart Verheggen Here’s the response he got back from Bart Verheggen to that request for a copy of the survey: From: “Verheggen, Bart” Subject: RE: Thank you for responding to our climate science survey Date: 24 September, 2012 5:43:49 AM PDT To: ‘Tim Ball’ Cc: “Strengers, Bart” Dear Dr Ball, We are considering how to reply to your request. This will take a bit of time since we will need internal approval. We will let you know as soon as a decision is made. Dr Bart Verheggen Regards, Scientist ……………………………………………………………… Department of Climate, Air and Energy PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency Ant. van Leeuwenhoeklaan 9 | 3721 MA | Bilthoven | W.340 PO box 303 | 3720 AH | Bilthoven “…we will need internal approval.” yet the questions Dr. Ball requested are publicly available online here: http://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/Climate_Science_Survey_Questions_PBL_2012_0.pdf As a link from the news release about the survey here: http://www.pbl.nl/en/news/newsitems/2012/survey-on-the-opinions-on-climate-change So in the same week that Dr. Verheggen makes a publicly available copy of the very same questions Dr. Ball asked for available to Dr. Roger Pielke in the solicitation, he frets about how to make them available to Dr. Tim Ball after he’s already taken the survey! Could there be a more blatant display of lack of integrity? We anticipate this study to facilitate a constructive dialogue on the selected issues, between people of different opinion, and to help communicate these issues to a wider audience. See also: The questions asked in the survey (PDF, 403 KB) Constructive dialog or manipulation of opinion under the guise of science? Given the Cook-Lewandowsky track record we know so far, you be the judge.
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RedditIf you don’t know, I’m a graduate student at the University of Utah, which means I make a living my teaching classes. Recently a student charged that I lost a good deal of her homework. We wound up in a “he-said/she-said” situation where ultimately the dean concluded that we need to raise her grade by a letter under the assumption that I really was up to shenanigans (we ultimately gave her 100% credit in the “homework” column in the grade book, raising her grade from F to D). Not a pleasant situation: aside from a track record of strong teaching evaluations, there was nothing to defend my reputation.
Experienced teachers know that claims of “lost” work are frequent. If we want to be objective about this (and we do), the claims need to be taken seriously, since lost things rarely leave a trail. All we have when analyzing such claims is the following:
The missing work never seems to turn up. Not after a week, a month, a semester, a year, or ever.
If a person rarely finds that they misplace his own belongings, it’s hard to accept that he is misplacing student work (assuming they treat student work with a reasonable amount of care, as we typically do, given how terrible it would be to lose it!)
These claims never seem to come from students who are doing well on exams; they tend to come from students who are backed into a corner, grade-wise.
Of course, it is entirely conceivable that these claims are occasionally correct, and it would be terrible to allow such mistakes — our mistakes — to adversely effect our students.
Last Spring was the only time a student has accused me of losing their work. It was a lousy situation that I have no intention of ever repeating. So when I was assigned to teach a half-term class this summer, I decided it was time to try something new. I’ve recently finished teaching that class; here’s what I did.
The idea
A digital signature is a cryptographic technique to verify that a document was authored by a particular person. They are frequently used in situations where someone might later claim to have not authored a document in order to weasel out of a precarious situation. It is usually the recipient of the document who insists that a digital signature be used.
Digital signatures can be used in other situations where authenticity is important. For instance, concert tickets can be printed with a digital signature that validates they were printed by the ticketing agent. The signature on each ticket will need to be different, but this isn’t hard to arrange. If the cryptography is sound, no one will be able to forge the signature, hence no one should be able to print a phony ticket.
This summer I experimented with using digital signatures to provide students with a way to prove that they’ve turned an assignment in. Every time I made an assignment I produced a corresponding batch of digitally-signed receipts. One receipt per student per assignment. I wrote a program to automate this: it takes a list of students and the name of the assignment and produces a PDF file of receipts. I’d then print the PDF, take it to the cutting board, and produce an alphabetized stack of receipts for each assignment (the program was clever enough to sort the receipts on the printed page in such a way that the alphabetizing didn’t require me to sort through the cut up pages).
I then instituted a policy: I won’t take your homework unless you take your receipt. Because the receipts were sorted this didn’t take long to do (though to save class time, I only accept homework before and after class, or during problem sessions).
I’d then periodically create printed grade reports for each individual (again I had a program that automated this, taking data from my spreadsheet and turning it into a PDF with one page per student). This allowed students to check whether or not I was giving them credit for their work. At the end of the term, I gave them one last report that showed the grade I was going to submit for them. No one can claim that I was withholding information.
The wonderful thing about this system is that it gives the students proper recourse: if it looks like I lost an assignment, the receipt proves they are right, and I’ll give them full credit. Because the receipts are digitally-signed, they cannot be forged, so there’s no funny business to be had by any bad apples.
Reception
Naturally I described my plan to the bosses in the math department. My department chair conjectured that no one on earth had tried this before. The associate chair laughed at the lengths I was going through. My peers suspected that the students would find this system confusing, annoying, and unnecessary.
When I implemented this system the results were fantastic. I don’t believe anyone in class understood how the digital signatures worked, but they didn’t need to: all they had to know is that the receipts give them recourse if I lose their work. And they loved it. Why wouldn’t they? It was apparent that I was doing extra work to expose myself for their sake (nevermind that I was originally motivated to try this to avoid getting in hot water myself).
Contrary to initial predictions that I would be mired down in extra paperwork, this process did not take much time on my end. Once I had the programs written to automate the work (which took an afternoon) the time investment was nearly zero. The most time consuming part was passing out the receipts as students turned in their work, but since this was taking place during problem sessions, it didn’t actually increase my working time.
For me the most interesting thing is that I did apparently lose someone’s assignment! I have no clue how, and part of me still hasn’t accepted this, but the evidence suggests that it happened. I gave someone a grade report, it said they were missing an assignment, but sure enough they had a receipt. They called me on it in front of the class, and when I reaffirmed my promise to give them credit, a couple people in the class praised me. The receipt system actually took my mistake and turned it into an asset. Incredible.
Edit: this is what a sample of my receipt-PDF looks like (here shown with just a small number of hypothetical students). Notice how it’s sorted — makes it very easy to just go to the chopping board, stack the pages, make 4 cuts, and concatenate the little stacks.
How I did it
There’s a considerable about of machinery that goes into such a scheme. If you’re interested in implementing something like this, and have a good familiarity with computing, you can follow these steps to get rolling. For all of this I’m using openssl, which is installed by default on my Mac, and also on every Linux distribution I’ve ever used. I’ll show how this is done using a test receipt.
Step 1: Create the key files. Create a directory to do your work in. Within this directory, issue the following two commands:
$ openssl genrsa -out private.pem 1024
$ openssl rsa -in private.pem -out public.pem -outform PEM -pubout
This will create a public and a private file, so-named by openssl. The public file can be put on your website, or included in your syllabus, allowing a 3rd party to arbitrate any disputes that may arise. The private file must be kept private, as it is the key to signing the receipts.
Step 2: Create a test receipt to work with. Later you’ll do this step for each student, for each assignment (consider using a script to do this for you!). Here’s my test receipt:
$ cat Test-receipt.txt
FAKE, STUDENT ASSIGNMENT 0001
Step 3: Sign the receipt, putting the output into base64 (this will allow you to print the signed receipt so you can give it to your student in writing)
$ openssl rsautl -sign -inkey private.pem -in Test-receipt.txt |
openssl enc -base64 -out Test-receipt.sig
You can examine the output:
$ cat Test-receipt.sig
hRqaY5LAns3CrzueaMXirehihYCn6TI6K4Luwo9T6F4JVMXiBb10wSN4fDLnM12m
NICQihiAt5prlqDxjwqpr2J4tPMmQZpXr8dpFKdyQgxn6IesLiEm9HIVjYUELRMW
kzxv86+8oVl6qQny+kMVWo3w7pI/JTTnHP3yLl1NJJw=
When you go to print your student’s receipt, include both the contents of the receipt (in my case, Test-receipt.txt ) as well as this gibberish.
Step 4: Make sure you know how to verify a receipt! This isn’t so bad. If someone gives you their receipt, you enter the gibberish into a file (in this case, Test-receipt.sig ) and execute the following:
$ cat Test-receipt.sig | openssl enc -base64 -d | openssl rsautl -verify
-pubin -inkey public.pem
FAKE, STUDENT ASSIGNMENT 0001
If the signature is correct (that is, not entered wrongly, nor an invalid forgery) you should see the receipt in plain text, as demonstrated here.
As an example, if I modify even a single letter in Test-receipt.sig, I’ll wind up with something that makes no sense, or more likely, I’ll get an error. For instance, if I replace the first letter (a lower-case h ) with an upper case H, I get the following:
$ cat Test-receipt.sig-error | openssl enc -base64 -d | openssl rsautl -verify -pubin -inkey public.pem
RSA operation error
286:error:0407006A:rsa routines:RSA_padding_check_PKCS1_type_1:block type is not 01:/SourceCache/OpenSSL098/OpenSSL098-27/src/crypto/rsa/rsa_pk1.c:100:
286:error:04067072:rsa routines:RSA_EAY_PUBLIC_DECRYPT:padding check failed:/SourceCache/OpenSSL098/OpenSSL098-27/src/crypto/rsa/rsa_eay.c:697:
This will allow you to detect cheap forgeries.
Conclusions
This summer I ran this experiment with a class of 55 students, and in this setting, homework collection took about 15 minutes. It worked fantastically. In the Fall I’m teaching a group of 180. The turn-in time might make this plan infeasible for such a large group unless I can have my TA’s come to class to help collect work. I’ll definitely post my experience with this group in the comments to this post.
AdvertisementsXerox and Espresso! Makin' Replicators!
Xerox and On Demand Books -- makers of the Espresso Book Machine -- are going into business together.Get your wallets out, copy shops, coffee shops, and bookstores!From the Xerox press release: "Xerox and On Demand Books will jointly market and sell, on a worldwide basis, the Xerox 4112 Copier/Printer together with the Espresso Book Machine -- a fully integrated solution that prints, binds, and trims books with full color covers on demand in retail locations and libraries. The Espresso Book Machine can produce paperbacks in variable combinations of trim sizes between 4.5" x 5.0" and 8.25" x 10.5" for a production cost less than one cent per page.""With the Xerox 4112, the Espresso Book Machine produces a 300-page book in less than four minutes and has the capacity to print more than 40,000 paperback books per year."The University of Texas Co-op Bookstore is buying one this spring. In two years, these things will be at 711 and you won't even care.Disposable, instantaneous paperbacks are gonna be everywhere. You'll be able to print up your favorite book and give it a to a pal for nothing, for no effort, like playing a song on a juke box. You'll even be able to pick between multiple covers, or make your own. Then you can sell these books back to the little shop where you bought 'em for a few dollars for other people to pick up who don't mind cheaper, used books.Get ready for a paperback revolution, the kind we haven't seen since Penguin got cranking after WWII, printing up books so affordable and dirty that you could buy them in vending machines:All six major publishers are already in negotiations with Apple to make books for their devices. Soon there will be ebooks all over your computers and tablet PCs! Ebooks that are instantly printable on Espresso Machines for a small fee down at the coffee shop!Publishing means: making beautiful and interesting electronic media, and then making sure that this electronic media prints up real nice "on demand" for people who prefer print.Publishing means: making sure that the media you make is not restricted to one proprietary device, thus ensuring that you control throughput and dissemination. If people want to make better devices to display the beautiful and interesting electronic books that you make, fair fucks to them.Bookselling means: printing books instantly on demand, while also buying back used books at fair rates for resale in order to stock your shelves with something.Avant garde and independent publishing means: the union of physical and electronic media, sold in digital sculptures and other magical objects. The whole world glutted with books and book seeds, online and on tables!Books yanked from the cloud like lightning! The cloud seeded by all kinds of angry punks and soulful iconoclasts!Grand Slam: secrets of the devastation caused by the largest WWII bomb ever tested in the UK - Barnes Wallis creation left a hole 70ft deep and 130ft wide BelfastTelegraph.co.uk The final secrets of Britain's largest-ever conventional weapon of war, codenamed 'Grand Slam', are being 'unearthed' by archaeologists. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/grand-slam-secrets-of-the-devastation-caused-by-the-largest-wwii-bomb-ever-tested-in-the-uk-barnes-wallis-creation-left-a-hole-70ft-deep-and-130ft-wide-29943199.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article29943198.ece/1fcb8/AUTOCROP/h342/bomb.jpg
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The final secrets of Britain's largest-ever conventional weapon of war, codenamed 'Grand Slam', are being 'unearthed' by archaeologists.
Geophysics experts are using ground-penetrating radar and other high tech methods to 'x-ray' the ground, in a remote area of the New Forest in Hampshire, to shed new light on the most powerful top secret World War Two weapon test ever carried out in the UK.
The weapon - a bomb designed by the British aircraft and munitions inventor, Barnes Wallis, was almost 26 foot long and weighed 22,000 pounds, substantially bigger than any other wartime explosive device ever developed by Britain.
The New Forest test is historically important because it heralded an expansion in the crucial strategic air offensive against key infrastructure targets in Nazi Germany. The first RAF bomber command Grand Slam sortie got underway within hours of the successful test of the bomb.
Four geophysical techniques - ground penetrating radar, magnetometry, electrical resistivity and electrical resistivity tomography - are being used by the archaeologists to assess the damage done to the large concrete target building which has lain buried under a vast mound of earth for the past 66 years.
Barnes Wallis' Grand Slam bomb was designed to seriously damage and destroy buildings, bridges, viaducts and other structures without necessarily having to achieve a direct hit against them. It worked by creating a severe yet localized artificial earthquake.
The one and only test of the bomb took place on 13 March 1945. The weapon was released from a specially adapted Lancaster bomber flying at 16,000 feet over the River Avon just east of the Hampshire town of Fordingbridge, almost two miles west of the New Forest target building. Half a minute after release, the bomb, with its specially designed aero-dynamic fins, hit the target area at more than 700 miles per hour.
Penetrating deep into the ground it produced, after a predetermined nine second interval, a massive explosion which generated the desired artificial earthquake - and created a 70 foot deep 130 foot diameter crater. It was the biggest bomb ever dropped on Britain before or since.
The geophysical investigation and the research operation in the National Archives are expected to reveal just how much damage the earthquake effect had on the target building - but oral history research recently carried out by the New Forest archaeological team suggests that the entire structure was seen to physically move when the bomb exploded some 250 feet away.
After the New Forest test, Grand Slam bombs were used between 14 March and 19 April, 1945 against nine strategically important German targets including the Schildesche railway viaduct near Bielefeld, the Arnsberg railway viaduct, the Nienburg railway bridge, submarine pens near Bremen and German gun batteries on the island of Heligoland.
The Grand Slam campaign played a key role in helping to speed up the defeat of German forces in the final two and half months of the war. Almost 100 Grand Slam bombs were produced of which 42 were used in nine major Bomber Command sorties. Today only five publicly accessible examples survive - in the RAF Museum in north-west London, Brooklands Museum in Surrey, Dumfries and Galloway Aviation Museum, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Visitor Centre at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire and Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield.
The New Forest National Park Authority's current geophysical survey and historical investigation into Grand Slam is part of a wider project researching and surveying the park's often unappreciated wartime role.
Quite apart from Grand Slam, the New Forest was used as a test site for the first Barnes Wallis bouncing bombs, the development of the 'Tallboy' predecessor of Grand Slam, as well as early demonstrations of the Churchill tank. The forest was also home to nine wartime airfields, many of which played a key role in D-Day.
The vast concrete bunker which formed the centre of the Grand Slam target area had originally been built in 1941.
Up till now, historians had thought that it was constructed as a replica enemy submarine pen complex - so as to develop bomb strategy against such targets along occupied Europe's coastline.
However, a series of once-secret documents found in the National Archives by the New Forest National Park research team over the past year have now revealed that the building was originally constructed as a test structure to help develop more effective public air raid shelters.
It appears to have been experimentally constructed out of successive layers of different types of concrete - designed to inhibit the transmission of shock-waves through its walls and roof.
The researchers have even found a previously unknown plan of the building, showing the points at which test detonations were carried out on its roof to assess the effectiveness of the newly developed experimental multi-layer air raid shelter technology.
Bizarrely, Barnes Wallis had actually designed Grand Slam back in 1940 - but political disinterest, bureaucratic obstacles and weapon delivery problems conspired to prevent its final development until early 1945.
"Our geophysical and historical research is helping us to more fully understand and appreciate the testing of Grand Slam - and the New Forest's more general major, yet little known, role in World War Two," said James Brown, an archaeologist at the New Forest National Park Authority.
For more information, click HERE
Belfast Telegraph DigitalAtlantic Media's online publication Quartz prides itself on being a “digitally native news outlet” “for business people in the new global economy” which publishes “bracingly creative and intelligent journalism with a broad worldview.” Its “deputy ideas editor,” however, wants to silence journalism that does not fit in with her self-described “feminist” worldview.
In a series of tweets, Meredith Bennett-Smith, Quartz’s “deputy ideas editor,” denounced a Washington Post article on the topic of feminism by Cathy Young. Young's title succinctly encapsulates her article's point: “Feminists want us to define these ugly sexual encounters as rape. Don’t let them.”
Despite the article explicitly drawing the line between rape and regrettable decisions, Bennett-Smith accused Young of being a “damaging, horrendous rape apologist.” She also called for the Washington Post to stop publishing Young’s work:
In another tweet, Bennett-Smith wrote that Young’s articles inflict “trauma” “on an all-too common basis”:
Bennett-Smith's call for censorship conflicts with Quartz’s commitment to “intelligent journalism with a broad worldview.”
Quartz did not respond to MRCTV’s request for comment.On Wednesday, Marine veteran Steven Gern posted a video to his Facebook page that outlined his thoughts on President Trump’s recent executive order on immigration.
In the video, Gern stated that he currently works in Iraq and claimed that, just like America, there’s a lot going on over there, too. We just don’t see it.
His video was posted as a reflection on a conversation he had with Iraqis. First, he described their viewpoint:
“A lot of the Iraqis showed their displeasure in this executive order, and why they feel like they’ve been betrayed by the United States.”
After he listened to their opinions, he said he got an answer, “without hesitation,” to a simple question he had. |
, i.e., “Oh, is your mom German?” Then they both give up and go straight to bed, hoping for a better tomorrow. It just goes to show: You can put two people in a room and take away their clothes, but you can’t make them appreciate it.
Date 2:
Keegan goes on a spa date with the overly confident Jesse. This time, shy Keegan chooses to rely on his brawny muscles to do the talking rather than actually talking. (This show is the perfect place for him to meet women.) Their charming DIY spa date essentially turns into soft porn as they rub each other down with “spa mud” and wrestle on the beach. Keegan can’t contain his enjoyment and lets lets his flag fly, if you will. Ladies and gentleman, we have our first accidental boner of the season!
Meanwhile, if Keegan is Captain Taciturn, Diane’s date Dan is his polar opposite. In 30 seconds he reveals that he’s never had a girlfriend, never had a drink, kissed his first girl at 19, lost his virginity at 24, and went on a really bad trip to Disney World once. I fell into a deep hypnosis listening to him talk and talk while stress hives slowly crept up his back. When I came to, it seemed Diane surprised us all. She was totally into it. She was receptive to his personality — not his looks, though, definitely not his looks. It’s a powerful lesson in values. And it looks like Dan is finally going to kiss another girl!
Back at the Jungle Villa, things go from porno to PSA as Keegan turns into a total alpha-male meathead. He takes one look at poor Dan, gingerly sipping his first margarita like a 16-year-old at TGI Fridays and says, “I would have made that kid cry in high school.” His total jock-douche shtick is a huge turn-off. Let this be a lesson to you all: When you peak in high school, you don’t get laid as an adult.
DATE 3:
Diane is still kind of mooning over skinny, nerdy Dan. Then she meets Scott, a manly man who tickles all of her primal urges. He goes right in for the hug, attempting to dick-poke her because that’s went men do. He also uses the phrase “rock out with my cock out” and has a terrible ankh tattoo on his sternum. I don’t get Scott’s appeal, but they circle each other for a bit, check out each other’s butts and decide to be in love.
Finally, Dating Naked delivers on two promises: naked ziplining and foul-mouthed Katie. Katie is from Queens, curses like a sailor, and talks about her vagina. She’s just your typical woman on the hunt for her “ride-or-die guy.” Keegan tries to run from her, but Katie came to this tropical island to wrap her bare legs around someone on a tandem zipline. She gets her wish. They strap into the harness and meld together into one flying naked blur. It’s thrilling! Until someone forgets to pull the handbrake and Katie’s face slams into the stopping block. Ladies and gentleman, our first naked injury! Luckily, the producers let you put your clothes on to go to the hospital.
Of course this is not the last of the unsinkable Katie. She shows up later with a shiner and a thirst for revenge. She bullies “Johnny Football Hero” (Keegan) until everyone except manly Scott slinks away to hide. Is it possible that this ankh-man is the ride-or-die dude Katie needs? “Either way it’s a porno, no matter what we do,” she murmurs by way of pickup line. VH1 should thank her for providing an accurate tagline.
In the end, however, the rules of heartwarming teen movies prevail: the Prom Queen choses the nerd. Diane goes with Dan, even though he was way too invested — but who cares, she won’t return his texts anyway. Keegan chooses Jesse instead of Katie. And Katie — well, Katie goes off in a glorious rant. All those bleeps and blurs cannot hide her hurt feelings. She’s stripped of clothing, blacked of eye, waving her middle fingers to the sky — “F*CK YOU VH1! Take your picture, bitches!” And we did:
Most awkward naked activity of the episode: Failed naked paddleboarding:Ontario Protecting Tenants from Unfair Rent Increases
Province Keeping Rental Housing Fair and Affordable
May 18, 2017 12:00 P.M. Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing
Ontario passed legislation today to help keep rental housing affordable and predictable by protecting tenants from unfair rent increases.
The Rental Fairness Act, 2017 expands rent control to all private rental units, including those occupied on or after November 1, 1991. Effective April 20, 2017, landlords cannot raise rents more than the rent increase guideline, which is 1.5 per cent in 2017. Any rent increase notices above this amount given on or after April 20 must be reduced to 1.5 per cent.
The legislation also introduces additional protections for tenants, including:
Enabling a standard lease to help both tenants and landlords know their rights and responsibilities, while reducing the number of disputes
Protecting tenants from eviction due to abuse of the "landlord's own use" provision
Ensuring landlords can't pursue former tenants for unauthorized charges
Prohibiting above-guideline rent increases in buildings where elevator maintenance orders have not been addressed
Removing above-guideline rent increases for utilities, to protect tenants from carbon costs and encourage landlords to make their buildings more energy efficient.
Landlords can continue to apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board for above-guideline rent increases where permitted, and can also determine rent levels for new tenants.
Expanding rent control and strengthening protections for tenants are key components of Ontario's Fair Housing Plan, to help more people find an affordable place to call home.
Making the rental housing system fairer is part of Ontario's plan to create jobs, grow our economy and help people in their everyday lives.
Quick Facts Ontario is also strengthening its transitional housing system by exempting transitional housing providers – like those that provide mental health and addiction supports – from the Residential Tenancies Act for up to four years, as long as participants are protected by written tenancy agreements. This will help more people successfully transition to longer-term, stable housing.
There are approximately 1.2 million private rental households in Ontario.
The annual rent increase guideline is capped at a maximum of 2.5 per cent.Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out…
From CNN:
Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that a time could come when he no longer supports the Republican Party.
“If the party can’t be fixed, Jake, then I’m not going to be able to support the party. Period. That’s the end of it.” Kasich said in an interview with anchor Jake Tapper.
Asked what that meant for his future in the GOP, Kasich said he was committed to the party and intended to win it over from the surging nationalist wing.
“I want this party to be straightened out,” Kasich said.
Kasich repeatedly pointed to public dissatisfaction with the Republican and Democratic parties, and referenced the strength of independent political identities. He said both parties needed to grapple with ideological currents pulling them away from the center, adding that he had “no idea what the Democrats are for.”
“What I’m trying to do is struggle for the soul of the Republican Party the way that I see it,” Kasich said. “And I have a right to define it, but I’m not going to support people who are dividers.”
Kasich made clear he did not support former Judge Roy Moore, the far-right Republican nominee for Alabama’s Senate seat with a history of incendiary comments on race, sexuality and religion. As for whether the Republican Party should continue to support Moore in the December special election, Kasich demurred and returned to his broader desire to reshape the party.
“I don’t run the party,” Kasich said. “I can tell you, for me, I don’t support that. I couldn’t vote for that.”
Kasich ran for president last year and became a frequent critic of President Donald Trump throughout the race. He has continued to criticize Trump since the inauguration and expressed his dissatisfaction with the right wing of the party as well as some of its major initiatives, like its attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare.Netflix warns loophole, Comcast-NBC merger could hurt open Internet
Netflix’s main business -- DVDs delivered by mail -- couldn’t be more 1990s. But increasingly, the company’s streaming online video service has emerged as a threat to cable and satellite television providers.
The company is now warning the Federal Communications Commission that unless the agency strengthens a key portion of its proposed net neutrality rules, companies like theirs won’t ever make it to the mainstream. And Netflix worries the merger by Comcast and NBC would make it even easier for the cable giant to give its own content priority over that of competitors.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said in House and Senate hearings last week that the company has no incentive to withhold NBC content from competitors. But he didn’t speak specifically about how that content would be offered and if, as one competing ISP said, the company would make NBC shows and movies available at such steep prices and conditions that it would be difficult for competitors to lease rights to the content.
In recent comments to the agency, the Los Gatos video services company said the “managed services” portion of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s open-Internet rules could be a loophole for the biggest Internet service providers to gain unfair advantage for their own applications over those of competitors.
“If left unchecked, the “managed services” category could engulf
the Commission’s open Internet policies altogether. As such, the Commission
must carefully circumscribe the network operators’ ability to exempt certain
services from the openness rules by classifying them as managed services,” Netflix wrote in its filing.
Think of a managed service as a dedicated channel on the Internet for things like telemedicine or streaming video like Netflix. A carrier allots a certain amount of bandwidth and assurance of quality to that channel. Those companies have pushed for exemptions in the FCC's net neutrality rules, bringing up examples of video for remote medical care that need prioritization. But also imagine how a company would put their own video services in that channel – essentially extending the cable television model to the Internet.
Netflix is among a growing number of Internet video companies pairing up with TV makers like LG and set top boxes like that of Roku, which sit at the intersection of the Web’s convergence with the television. Those companies have pushed a slow but remarkable move by consumers to cut their cable and satellite subscriptions. Parks Group Associates, a research firm, said last week that 8 percent of broadband users (5.5 million homes) would cut the chord on paid TV services, down slightly from 11 percent the year earlier. The company said about 0.5 percent of all homes have cut the chord.
Consumer advocates say viewers are largely reluctant because they still can’t get full libraries of their favorite shows online. They media companies like NBC, Viacom and News Corp. aren’t as inclined to strike distribution deals with newcomers like Vuze and YouTube because of their relationships with carriers. Those upstarts don’t have the built-in subscriber base that those cable and satellite companies have.
They also point to a recent cable and satellite television strategy called TV Everywhere that brings cable and satellite content online, but only to subscribers of both paid TV and broadband services.
“By bundling the traditional cable TV offering with Internet delivery of content, vertically integrated MVPDs and network operators are potentially extending and expanding their dominant market position at the expense of competitive online offerings,” Netflix wrote. “Moreover, the recent announcement of the proposed merger of Comcast and NBC Universal serves to exacerbate the growing concern that MVPDs will use their control over programming networks to stifle competition, including the growing competition from online video providers like Netflix.”President Donald Trump has opened the door for mass deportations of people in the U.S. illegally, just weeks after instituting a controversial ban on refugees and travelers from seven mostly Muslim nations entering the country. But a few thousand miles to the northeast, one country’s president would like to ban something a little less contentious, but debated heavily nonetheless: pineapple on pizza, The Washington Post reported. When asked if he liked pineapple on his pizza by high school students in Akureyri last week, President Gudni Thorlacius Johannesson replied that he was “firmly opposed” and would ban the topping if he could. Recommended Slideshows 4 Pictures PHOTOS: Singapore's treasures star in NY Botanical Garden's 2019 Orchid Show 4 Pictures 36 Pictures Oscars 2019: Red carpet looks and full list of winners 36 Pictures 36 Pictures All of these celebrities have had their nudes leaked 36 Pictures More picture galleries 16 Pictures These photos of Trump and Ivanka will make you deeply uncomfortable 16 Pictures 3 Pictures Take an immersive journey into the art of sound at On Air Fest 3 Pictures 4 Pictures Inside Brooklyn's Teknopolis is tech that makes us more human 4 Pictures Supporters and detractors alike took to social media, including frozen pizza maker DiGiorno.Soon after, Johannesson issued a statement saying he likes “pineapples, just not on pizza.” “I do not have the power to make laws which forbid people to put pineapples on their pizza. I am glad that I do not hold such power. Presidents should not have unlimited power. I would not want to hold this position if I could pass laws forbidding that which I don’t like. I would not want to live in such a country.” Well, we guess that statement could explain why Johannesson’s recent approval ratings were 97 percent, but the former university history professor and published author has shown he's kinda just like us. Soon after taking office last August, the new president — and the country’s youngest to be elected — was spied picking up a Dominos pizza during the chain’s “Mega Week” promotion. So what’s his pizza topping of choice? “I recommend seafood,” Johannesson said.World’s number one DJs, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike, have been forced to cancel all remaining gigs this year after the duo’s shared bunk beds collapsed while they were sleeping last night.
According to reports, the brothers had worn themselves out with a boisterous jumping session on the beds prior to their 9:30 bedtime, which may have resulted in some structural damage to the beds, later causing them to collapse.
“It was really horrible, I’ll never forget the noise of the boys screaming,” explained Margaret Pobbins, the duo’s full time nanny. “There were bed slats and teddy bears everywhere. It’ was like something out of a disaster movie.”
“Dimitr, who was on the top bunk, got away with a couple of bruises but poor old Mike got the worst of it,” continued the nanny. “He has cuts all over his thumb, he sucks it in his sleep so he bit himself during the impact, and he has scratches all over his face. He nearly died.”
“Thank god he had his security blanket with him, otherwise he’d still be crying now,” claimed Ms. Pobbins. “I think they’ll have to sleep in their mum and dad’s bed for the next few weeks. They’ve both asked for new bunk beds for Christmas so hopefully by the time it comes around they’ll be brave enough to go back to their own room.”
According to the duo’s management, a number of shows in Belgium, India and Brazil have been cancelled, with Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike offering a full refund to all of their fan’s parents who bought tickets for their children, while any adults who bought tickets for themselves won’t be receiving any reimbursements because they should have know better.Get the latest Flash Player
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Scaachi Koul is a BuzzFeed Canada writer, and Scaachi Koul is a BuzzFeed Canada writer, and her pieces are mostly about race and gender. Beyond the garden variety garbage men bombard every woman on the internet with, Koul’s occupation and beat means she is subject to especially vile tweets, emails, and Facebook messages.
Tonight she decided to do something a little different, and when the GamerGaters and Men’s Rights Activists tweeted at her, she replied by quoting lines from Good Will Hunting. The result is an fantastic bit of Twitter theater, where toxic man-babies have no idea that they are being fucked with, and think they are winning nonsensical arguments that don’t actually exist anywhere except inside of their heads.
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It is incredible how long this goes on for without this doofus ever realizing what’s going on. Good Will Hunting scenes. She also got two other chaps, and all of your favorite lines are there. How do you like them apples?; Son of a bitch. He stole my line. ; and of course My wife used to fart in her sleep. It is incredible how long this goes on for without this doofus ever realizing what’s going on. Congratulations, you played yourself. It goes on for so long that Koul finishes the iconic “It’s not your fault” speech and moves onto otherGood Will Huntingscenes. She also got two other chaps, and all of your favorite lines are there.How do you like them apples?;Son of a bitch. He stole my line.; and of courseMy wife used to fart in her sleep
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And finally...
That’s the good stuff."This is the 'Bring your Own Billionaire' election," says Melissa Yeager, a writer with the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks campaign funding and money in government. "This is what it takes to compete in this election cycle."
America Next is one of a growing number of "dark money" groups that qualify as 501(c)4 nonprofits, which have emerged as a powerful political fundraising tool for many campaigns. Unlike super PACs — the conduit of choice for billionaire donors in the 2012 presidential election — groups like America Next do not have to register with the FEC as super PACs do, nor are they required to disclose their donors. But they can give unlimited money for political lobbying. These groups allow candidates who've raised little from individual donors to stay in the race by relying almost entirely on groups funded by a select few anonymous donors.
Jindal's super PAC, Believe Again, raised nearly $3.7 million last quarter. But the majority of Jindal's war chest is coming from a secretive nonprofit called America Next, which raised $4 million in the first quarter of 2015, according to the Washington Examiner.
Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal raised $579,000 in the third quarter of 2015, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings released Friday. That probably wouldn't cover the costs of television ads in one swing state, let alone fund an entire campaign until the next debate. But Jindal will likely be able to stay in the race thanks to an additional $9 million from pro-Jindal groups whose donors' identities are kept secret.
Read more
Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal raised $579,000 in the third quarter of 2015, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings released Friday. That probably wouldn't cover the costs of television ads in one swing state, let alone fund an entire campaign until the next debate. But Jindal will likely be able to stay in the race thanks to an additional $9 million from pro-Jindal groups whose donors' identities are kept secret.
Jindal's super PAC, Believe Again, raised nearly $3.7 million last quarter. But the majority of Jindal's war chest is coming from a secretive nonprofit called America Next, which raised $4 million in the first quarter of 2015, according to the Washington Examiner.
Related: You Can Now Donate Bitcoins to Political Campaigns
America Next is one of a growing number of "dark money" groups that qualify as 501(c)4 nonprofits, which have emerged as a powerful political fundraising tool for many campaigns. Unlike super PACs — the conduit of choice for billionaire donors in the 2012 presidential election — groups like America Next do not have to register with the FEC as super PACs do, nor are they required to disclose their donors. But they can give unlimited money for political lobbying. These groups allow candidates who've raised little from individual donors to stay in the race by relying almost entirely on groups funded by a select few anonymous donors.
"This is the 'Bring your Own Billionaire' election," says Melissa Yeager, a writer with the Sunlight Foundation, which tracks campaign funding and money in government. "This is what it takes to compete in this election cycle."
America Next raised $2.4 million in its first year after being quietly created in Virginia in 2013, according to its tax filing documents. The group maintains that its purpose has nothing to do with elections and is instead a conservative free-market research organization. "We are not one of those groups that merely pretend to be focused on policy, but are actually focused on campaigns," its website says.
But America Next's website also features pictures and videos of Jindal at campaign events. As of its filing Friday, it had spent $340,000 on pro-Jindal television advertisements.
These dark money organizations, which are registered with the IRS as "social welfare" groups, are legally allowed to do direct political lobbying as long as it is not their primary purpose. But it is not clear what purpose many of the organizations serve beyond working on behalf of a candidate's interests.
It's not just campaigns that are benefiting from these groups. For mega-donors, the benefit of using nonprofits as a conduit to a campaign is twofold: One, they allow a donor to remain anonymous. Two, there is a long delay between the donation and when the donation needs to be reported, explains Yeager.
"By the time people start learning where the money came from, the election is over," she says.
If a billionaire donor wanted to give millions of dollars to support a candidate, he or she could donate to a 501(c)4, which in turn would donate to the super PAC supporting the candidate. The super PAC is required to report its donors to the FEC, but the donation would be reported as coming from the nonprofit, masking the identity of the original donor.
"The problem is that a lot of these groups do political work and their purpose is clearly to influence elections, but they claim that's not what they're all about," says Larry Noble, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which monitors violations of campaign finance regulations. "So for that reason they don't register as political committees, they don't register their political donors, and the FEC has not done anything about them."
Nonprofits are not new, but the extent to which they're used to further circumvent the dwindling restrictions on money in elections has grown recently. The murky nonprofits played a large role during the 2014 midterm elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), by funding waves of political advertisements late into the election.
Even though the 2016 election is more than a year away, the role of dark money is already dwarfing past cycles. Outside spending on campaigns is up by more than a third compared to this point during the 2014 midterm elections, reported the CRP. Dark money nonprofits like Jindal's have so far spent more than $4.6 million on the 2016 election, up from just over $300,000 at this point in the 2012 presidential election.
Details about the money these nonprofits control are difficult to come by. Since they're not regulated by the FEC, information on how much money they have or where it is being spent does not emerge until they file with the IRS, which is often not until long after the election is over. Even then, the names of their donors remains anonymous. This means that "voters won't have a chance to see who is behind these groups and where they sent their money until well after they've cast their votes," Yaeger says.
The only way to get a sense of these nonprofits' activity during the election season is if they directly pay for political ads, which they can do a small amount since they are required to disclose that money to the FEC. But most nonprofits get around this regulation by donating to super PACS, which can then run the ads for them. Or they spread out donations to a wider swath of issues or candidates over time so they cannot be accused of carrying out activities on the behalf of a political campaign.
Related: Watch a US Senator Throw a Snowball on the Senate Floor to Prove Climate Change Doesn't Exist
Most candidates are now supported by both super PACs and nonprofits that work in tandem, Noble says. Marco Rubio's campaign is relying almost entirely on his allied nonprofit, Conservative Solutions Project, to run his ads across the country. Outside groups have raised $6 million for Mike Huckabee, while his actual campaign raised only $2 million in the most recent quarter.
Groups like the Campaign Legal Center have filed complaints with the FEC and the IRS over some of these nonprofits and other groups but have little to show for it. Noble says this is because the FEC is hampered by gridlock and unable or unwilling to enact much change. This could mean that for future elections, most of the actual campaigning is probably not going to be done by campaigns.
Follow Olivia Becker on Twitter: @obecker928Designing for Web or Desktop?
13 minutes to read
In this article
Paul D. Sheriff
PDSA, Inc.
January 2002
Summary: Learn about the advantages and disadvantages of using both Web and desktop user interfaces (UI), and gain an understanding of how to weigh other factors that need to be taken into account before deciding on the final user interface for your application. (8 printed pages)
Objectives
Learn the features of Web development
Learn the features of desktop development
Compare and contrast the two
Assumptions
The following should be true for you to get the most out of this document:
You understand Microsoft® Windows® application development techniques
You understand Web application development techniques
Contents
Making the Choice
Web Versus Desktop Development Factors
Summary
About the Author
About Informant Communications Group
Making the Choice
When you begin any new development project, you need to decide which technologies you will use to develop the application. There are a wide variety of languages to choose from, various database engines you can employ, and you need to choose a style of user interface to use. In all of these areas, you need to weigh a lot of disparate criteria when deciding on the best technologies for the task at hand.
To decide which language to use, you need to consider which languages you know and which language will let you perform the tasks that need to be accomplished in the application. For example, you would not use Microsoft Visual Basic® to develop a device driver. Instead, you would choose a language like Microsoft Visual C++®, as it allows you better access to the hardware than does Visual Basic. You would choose Visual Basic over Visual C++ to create a standard business application because the Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment lets you create this type of application much faster than Visual C++.
When choosing a database engine, you will also weigh certain factors. You need to consider what database engine your client might already have in-house. You might look at how much and what type of data needs to be stored. You also want to consider how easy it might be to integrate with other databases, or to be able to replicate data from one server to another. All of these factors are weighed before you choose a particular database engine.
Although this document will not help you decide which language or database engine you should choose, it will help you make some informed decisions about your user interface. You will go through the same type of decision making when choosing your user interface as you do when deciding the language or database engine to use.
Some choices about the user interface you choose will be very clear-cut. Some choices will not be so clear, and you will have to weigh many different factors before making the final decision. For example, if you are building any of the following types of applications, you will definitely be using a Web interface:
E-commerce store
Company Web site on the Internet
Remote users with no VPN capabilities, but access to the Internet
Likewise, if you are going to be building any of the following types of applications, you will definitely use a desktop type of interface:
Graphical applications, like games or CAD/CAM
Word Processors
Spreadsheets
You'll also be using a desktop interface if:
You need drag-and-drop support in the application.
You need to integrate one or more products, like Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, with your application.
You need to integrate with hardware like POS systems, scanners, cameras, or medical systems.
Of course, there are always those applications that don't fall neatly into the above categories. For example, if you are building any of the following types of applications, you could use either type of interface:
Look-up systems, like product catalogs
Data entry systems
Order processing systems
Accounting systems
Work flow management systems
Charting/graphing applications
In these cases, you need to look at many other factors before deciding on which method will suit your application the best.
In this document, you will learn about the advantages and disadvantages of using both of the different types of user interfaces: Web and desktop. Then, you will learn how to weigh other factors that need to be taken into account before deciding on the final user interface (UI) for your application.
Web Advantages
When you wish to target a Web browser, it's probably because of the advantages the Web UI brings to an application. Developing with the Web allows you to use standard HTML interface elements. Most potential users are familiar with browsing the Internet and are used to how Web pages look and feel.
You get the benefit of centralized application deployment and upgrading without having to distribute the Microsoft.NET Framework. Instead of having to roll out a new software application (with the large.NET Framework) to hundreds or thousands of desktops, you only need to place the new software on a central server and all users can access the software in one place. Similarly, when it is time to make a change to the system, you only need to make that change in one place. Of course, if your users already have the.NET Framework available on their PCs, then you can deploy Windows Form applications in the same manner across your intranet.
If you have to create an application that remote users can use, it is much easier to export data through corporate firewalls over the HTTP protocol rather than other proprietary protocol.
Some applications take a lot of processing power. Instead of having to update each individual workstation, you can increase the power of your central server. This will be a more cost-effective solution than upgrading hundreds or thousands of workstations.
Web Disadvantages
Of course, developing for the Web is not without its limitations. The same standard HTML elements that are an advantage are also a disadvantage, as they can be somewhat limiting. Elements can appear differently to various users, depending on the browser that is used. This may cause some confusion if users move from one workstation to another.
Another problem with standard HTML elements is that they have no standard way of providing an input mask. A lot of users like knowing the format into which they should enter data. For example, a phone number can be entered in many different ways. In a desktop application, you can specify an input mask very easily; when using standard Web controls, it is much more difficult, as you may have to resort to using script in the client's browser.
You will also have limited control over where screen elements appear on the screen. Standard HTML does not allow for the absolute positioning of elements. This might make your design less elegant than you would get in a desktop application.
Performance can be slower in a Web application because you are sending both the data and the screen design each time you request an HTML document. In a desktop application, the interface is rendered locally once, and just the data is brought across a fast network connection.
It is not easy, with HTML, to go beyond the boundaries of the browser. This means that any integration with other products is almost out of the question. With Microsoft Internet Explorer, it is much easier to integrate than with other browsers, but even then it takes a lot more programming to make it happen. In fact, at this point, you are almost creating a desktop application anyway.
Desktop Advantages
When you program using a desktop UI, you get a much richer set of UI controls than you do with HTML. You can make your UI look like almost anything you want. You can make Tab controls; you can use input masking controls, editable grids, and many other controls that make creating a rich UI very easy. You also have total control over the exact positioning of screen elements.
When creating a desktop application, you can take advantage of the hardware that is already on the machine. You will need to do this if you are thinking of creating a game. Games typically need to interact directly with the video card, which is very difficult (if not impossible) to do with a browser. If you are developing a Computer-Aided Drawing (CAD) or Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) application, you will also need to interact directly with the machine's hardware.
Performance is generally quicker on a desktop because the screen is drawn only once on the desktop and only the data changes. This prevents a lot of screen data coming from the server to the client, which increases the time taken to display the data.
If you need to integrate with any special hardware, such as Point of Sale (POS) systems, numerical control machines, printers, and scanners, it is much easier to produce a tidy interface using a desktop application than it is from within a browser. Browsers are such a closed environment that it is difficult to load the DLL needed to interact with this special hardware. If you are using Internet Explorer 5.x, it is not really that hard, but this does lock the user into using one browser and one operating system.
If you need to integrate with other products, you will find it much easier to do from a desktop application than you will from a browser. Many times you might need to exchange data with Word or Excel. Doing this using automation is very easy in a desktop application, but not so easy with a browser-based interface. The integration process between applications is hard to make generic enough to work across all browsers.
Desktop Disadvantages
Although you can do a lot with the rich UI support that a desktop application provides, you can also do too much. There are now so many third-party controls available that it is possible to deviate from the Microsoft style guide for Windows applications. If you do deviate from these standards, this can lead to additional training costs, and may cause some confusion when users use a variety of applications in which some follow the standards and others do not.
Desktop applications are sometimes hard to use if the user works from a remote location. Connecting to the main network can sometimes be a problem as users have to deal with dial-up connections, VPN software, firewalls, and a host of other confusing issues.
One of the biggest disadvantages of a desktop application can be felt when you deploy that application to hundreds or thousands of users. Imagine having to burn CDs or setting up a "push" server (like SMS) to distribute an application to that many users! This can be quite a job. And each time you have to do an update, you have to do it all over again. Of course,.NET can help because it is now possible to push desktop applications across HTTP just like Web applications.
If users move from one workstation to another, they have to worry about whether or not the application is installed. Also, if one user sets up their machine with different colors, different Start bar location, or other "preferences," another user trying to use that machine will have a more difficult time.
Web Versus Desktop Development Factors
Now that you have learned the advantages and disadvantages of designing your application using a Web or desktop style, let's take a look at some other factors you will need to take into account.
As you read the various factors in the primary and secondary questions, keep track of how many "Yes" answers you get, scoring 1 point for each. You'll deduct the total score of the secondary questions from the primary questions. If, after you have worked through both lists you have a fairly high number relative to the total number of primary questions, you should probably develop for the Web, and vice-versa.
Primary Questions
Question Score (1=yes, 0=no) Are your users comfortable using a Web browser? Are your users located in remote sites? Do your users in remote sites have access to the Internet? Are you creating a Business to Business (B2B) application? Are you creating a Business to Consumer (B2C) application? Is the amount of data entered minimal? Is the amount of data to display on the screen minimal? Is the number of fields on the screen fairly small? Does each user "own" their data? Are the same rows of data rarely updated by multiple users at the same time? Is this application mainly for light data entry, where speed of data entry isn't critical? Is there a lot of data review that requires "tall" pages? Do your users like to scroll through the data, as opposed to tabbing through data? Are there minimal data items on a screen that cause other data to change on that same screen? Can your users minimize the need to exchange data dynamically with other products running on the same desktop? Is performance a secondary consideration? Do your developers (or you) want to develop for the Web? Do your developers (or you) have the skills to develop for the Web (or can they quickly learn how)? Do you want a very graphically appealing look and feel? Do you have a lot of large screens that would warrant scrolling windows? Is it important to keep deployment costs to a minimum? Is it important to keep upgrade costs to a minimum? Will there be frequent updates to software? Can you hire/train Web programmers more cheaply than desktop programmers? Do investors and/or shareholders want a Web application? Would your users prefer a browser interface to a desktop application? Do users in remote sites have a high-speed connection to your internal network? Is it fairly easy to install Internet access in remote sites? When your users travel, do they usually have access to the Internet? Is this application only for one department? Subtotal for Primary Questions
Secondary Questions
Question Score (1=yes, 0=no) Is there a need to connect to special hardware? Do you need Drag-and-Drop support in this application? Are you designing a game, CAD, or CAM application? Do you need a lot of special controls for limiting data input (such as input masks)? Can deployment of this system be done through a network, by distributing CDs, or using push servers? Can upgrades of this system be done through a network, by distributing CDs, or using push servers? Subtotal for Secondary Questions
Now Do the Math!
Subtotal for Primary Questions Deduct Score for Secondary Questions Total Score
A higher score leans toward developing a Web application, and a low score leans toward developing a desktop application.
The |
ask, why did that vision fail in bringing about a widely used currency?
Well, for me, one of the problems may have been Satoshi’s understanding of economics. This is not to say that Satoshi wasn’t a genius when it came to inventing the 1st real usable decentralized money system that has been exceedingly resilient to attacks and gained huge favor amongst it’s adherents. I’m just saying that as much as a great software architect and cryptographer that he was, his understanding of economics may not have been one of his greatest strengths.
The way I see it is that Satoshi saw many of the problems with Fiat currencies and wanted to avoid them. Perhaps the main problem he saw was an increasing money supply led to price inflation, which only seemed to benefit the bankers and the rich. I say this because of his quote in the “genesis” block of Bitcoin
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks[1]
Given that, I think Satoshi wanted a currency with a limited supply, that is something closer to Gold than Fiat. For Austrian economists, Gold is seen not only as money but “sound” money. It should be noted that Gold doesn’t have a fixed supply since it is being continually mined, but that it’s supply grows very slowly — estimated at 1.5% annually according to this page http://www.businessinsider.com/gold-supply-rising-faster-than-money-supply-2011-1
It’s also interesting to note that the process of creating Bitcoins is also called mining although it bears little physical resemblance to Gold mining.
So, how does one create this limited supply digitally in such a way that it is fair and open to everyone to participate in? Satoshi’s hope was to allow the computers that most people owned do this, so that a truly decentralized currency could be created, that wouldn’t be dominantly owner by any small group. Also, the idea was to mine the currency over a limited time period giving advantages to the early adopters who were willing to spend their resources and risk putting money into holding Bitcoin.
Block Rewards
The way that Satoshi achieved this was to give a “block reward” to the miners in such a way that the reward would half approximately every four years. This is a quote from Satoshi’s whitepaper
“By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them. The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.”
While that is all good, I don’t think Satoshi anticipated that in 2017, most of the mining would be done by a small number of powerful mining groups in limited areas of the world rather than being distributed evenly amongst adherents. This seems to be due perhaps to the unanticipated success of Bitcoin, since there is fierce competition to mine it because of the high rewards provided by ‘finding’ a new Bitcoin block.
Another problem I see is that the mining reward has very large step changes at discrete points in time. This drastically changes the dynamics of trading and the supply of new coins which in turn can cause the price to rise dramatically. As an analogy in our current economic system, imagine if banks only met ever 4 years to change interest rates and when they did so they either doubled or halved the interest rate.
A currency that is always increasing in value is not ideal. Some would say it is just as bad as one that always falls in value as it disproportionally favors the early holders and it will discourage people from using it at all if there are other alternatives available that don’t have that same property. At some point Bitcoin mining will completely cease — giving us a fixed supply. If that happened at a point in time where it’s distribution was considered “fair” by everyone, that may not be a problem. Now “fair” may be quite ambiguous to define, but I think I can safely say that most people won’t consider the distribution fair if it is mostly held by a small group of people (i.e. early adopters). The beauty of Bitcoin, however, is that it is open source. So once it gains worldwide approval as a viable currency it potentially could be cloned and restarted in a way that would lead to what is considered a fairer distribution for all.
Altcoins
Due to the popularity of Bitcoin, various clones of Bitcoin have been created. They usually change some parameters or add some form of innovation. However, because of more awareness of cryptocurrencies, these coins can perhaps be distributed more fairly than Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin was unknown, it was actually solo mined by Satoshi for at least 10 days before others joined in the process. New coins tend to have announcements ahead of time with a predefined schedule of when the currency will be launched so that anyone can partake of the process.
Even with that, however, not all coins are the same. Rather than having a pure mining approach, some coins “premine” set amounts that are set aside for the software developers or “core” team. And then there are others such as Dash which had what is now famously called an “instamine” (see here or just Google “dash instamine” for more details) whereby 2 million coins (or about 10% of the final supply) were mined in the 1st day.
Although these other methods are seen as unfair, they do address one problem. That is, how can the software continue to develop and be maintained by the development team if they are not getting paid. Obviously it is in the interest of people holding the currency that this happens too.
The solution to that problem, seems to be increasingly, to have a set amount of the currency being mined (or staked/minted — more on that later) set aside for developers and for building the infrastructure or ecosystem around the coin. Probably the most advantageous way of doing this is through a system usually called “Governance” that not only allows this but allows payments for other needs and can be adjusted at regular intervals.
Another side effect of this type of mechanism is that these new coins are paid out to developers and others that contribute to the network. These people will likely have to spend some of these coins to cover their own expenses. This in turn helps the distribution of these coins perhaps in a better way than mining does — spreading it out to the wider economy rather than in just buying more mining equipment. Also, it doesn’t require burning large amounts of electricity for no other productive use in the process.
So we have now reached a point where we can potentially have a fairer distribution (due to a wider audience) and also a self-sustainable system, but we have still not addressed the ‘halving’ problem. Before that though, let’s talk about an alternative to mined that is often referred to as ‘minting’
Graphic by Chad Ballantyne
Proof of Stake
The Proof-of-Stake concept was invented by Peercoin around 2012. Although it is beyond the scope of this article to talk about the technical merits of it, I will mention that it helps avoid some of the centralization issues associated with Bitcoin. However, we are primarily interested in it’s economic properties.
As far as I know, Peercoin wasn’t invented to address the economic weakness of Bitcoin (or other Proof-of-Work currencies), but as a consequence of it’s technical innovation, it is quite easy for a Proof-of-Stake currency to go beyond having a fixed supply for eternity. This is due to the fact that coins tend to be “minted” by ordinary users rather than mining conglomerates and thus it is “easy” in the sense that large mining resources are not required.
For proof-of-stake currencies, many users minting coins helps secure the network in a way akin to what Satoshi envisioned with Bitcoin. In turn for this effort, they are rewarded with a small amount of coins. Since the network will run continually in the foreseeable future, there will not be a limited amount of coins.
The consequences of this (ignoring the initial bootstrapping of the coin for now), is that there will not be these large discrete steps whereby the supply of new coins sees drastic changes. So there won’t be large dislocations in price as a consequence — which harms the ability of people seeing the coin as an actually currency.
Currently Proof-of-Stake coins seem to have two solutions to this issue. One is where the block reward is fixed — resulting in a decreasing inflation rate as the supply grows over time. The other is where the inflation rate is fixed at some small number such as approximately 1% in the case of Peercoin.
Although these are the two most common solutions, if we have a good governance system as part of the ecosystem, it is not inconceivable in the future for the public to be able to adjust the inflation rate in very small steps at regular intervals to deal with economic conditions — let’s say varying it between 1 and 0%. I won’t go into the reasons why that should be done at this point but that is something that could be done with governance if it would be beneficial
Effects of inflation
Fiat money and inflation revisited
At this point, many people will probably say — “But that’s exactly the problem with Fiat money”, i.e you have continual inflation that decreases the purchasing power of money and leads to several other problems.
To me, this idea comes more from a place of fear of inflation and replicating Fiat money, than a real understanding of inflation as it exists in cryptocurrency. Sometimes when building something new we become overly focused on avoiding previous problems than finding new solutions that can work.
First of all inflation in a cryptocurrency per se is not the same as in a nationally used currency (I spoke about this previously last year) — at least until the cryptocurrency gains widespread usage.
However, while skipping over those details, what is also different about inflation in a Proof-of-Stake currency, is that the “owners” of the currency are the ones who benefit from the inflation. That is, the inflationary coins are paid back directly to the coins owners in proportion to the amount of coins they hold — provided they are helping to secure the network in some way.
So in a future world where that coin is let’s say a national currency and prices are delimited in that coin, what would the effect of that inflation be? Well, I’d say it would be similar to the effect of inflation in our currently used currencies. That is, a bigger supply of money will drive prices up. So let’s say that over 1 year a 1% bigger money supply drives prices up by 1% (an ideal situation). Well, in the case of Proof-of-Stake minting, the owners of the coin will have earned 1% more coins. So if it costs them 1% more for goods they are no worse off than before because in turn they have 1% more coins.
When you look at it that way, then inflation is not really an issue nor is not have a fixed maximum supply of coins.
One more thing on inflation. Obviously price inflation is not really desired, but then again deflation is not ideal either. What is desired by most people is neither. Imagine stabile prices, especially for food and lodging! Well if Fiat is inherent inflationary and max supply cryptocurrencies are inherently deflationary, wouldn’t a small amount of coin inflation be good if it could be used to create a situation where prices are stable?
Conclusions
There have been many innovations since Satoshi invented bitcoin. Some of the highlights mentioned above are
Built-in Governance and Budget system to streamline development and maintenance of the coin Avoidance of coin ecosystem becoming centralized through use of Proof-of-Stake minting over Proof-of-Work mining Avoiding large steps in the liquid supply of new coins over time causing ever increasing prices and dislocations Having a small amount of inflation that helps redistribute new coins while not penalizing people who help secure the network in any way.
Given these innovations, you may ask, well which currencies have these properties?
For me, these is one contender that I really like. It is PIVX. It started as a clone of Dash so it has inherited various innovations there such as governance, instant transactions and privacy. However, because it has transitioned from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, it now also has all of the benefits of that system. In addition, it is a community centric coin (which is not to be understated in my opinion), that will transition to having even better privacy than Dash (through zerocoin protocol) and even better governance through its being more directly connected to the community.
Graphic by Chad Ballantyne
You can find out more about Pivx here, join the slack or forum to discuss these points more and help us in our journey to make Pivx a useful currency that benefits the community that uses it.In June of last year, attorneys Jared Beck and Elizabeth Beck of law firm Beck and Lee filed a class action law suit against the DNC and former chairwomen Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The suit claims that the DNC acted against its charter when it showed demonstrable favoritism towards Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, and failed to secure the data of DNC donors. The suit could have massive significance for the Democratic Party and could have an even wider impact if the origin of the DNC leaks are disclosed in the proceedings.
Attorney Elizabeth Beck described the lawsuit to US Uncut:“We think that the DNC has been running absolutely out of control and completely disregarding their responsibilities, rights, and duties to the public.”
The DNC lawsuit has so far received very little press coverage, despite revealing blatant corruption in the Democratic establishment. The death of Shawn Lucas, a process server who would have been a federal witness for the Becks, added further fuel to speculations of corruption surrounding the case. Jared Beck has also stated that Seth Rich would have been a potential witness in their case.
The lawsuit has so far revealed an absolutely unabashed level of corruption in the Democratic Party establishment. Attorney Bruce Spiva stunningly argued in defense of the DNC during the latest April 25th hearing on the case: “There’s no right to not have your candidate disadvantaged or have another candidate advantaged. There’s no contractual obligation here,” Spiva further stated that the party had the right to select its candidate in any way it chooses and was “not bound by pledges of fairness.”
Spiva’s defense has proved controversial, as it effectively admits the DNC primary process was rigged, but argues that this was not illegal. Jared Beck told US Uncut that he believed their suit would prove successful based on Article 5, Section 4 of the DNC charter which explicitly requires the chair of the DNC to remain impartial during the primary.
The New York Times reported that the DNC leaks that formed the impetus for the DNC lawsuit had suggested the DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, and other officials “favored Hillary Clinton over Mr. Sanders.” The DNC leaks have also raised serious questions regarding DNC funding methods.
Disobedient Media spoke with Jared Beck, who said that the initial momentum for the case stemmed from the rigging of the primary, but added: “There’s another aspect to this case that deals with why information leaked into the public domain, and that’s also part of this very intense mystery… that a lot of us are very concerned about right now.”
Beck told Disobedient Media that in addition to the claims based on donations made to the Bernie Sanders campaign, and to the DNC, he also believed that there is a claim based on the DNC’s negligent failure to secure the data of its donors. This may be an important claim in terms of establishing why that data was released into the public (due to DNC negligence, in Beck’s view). Beck stated that he thought his team might be able to get discovery on this issue and specifically how it came to be that the data was released. Beck said that he believed the topic to currently be a very important issue right now given public interest about who leaked the DNC documents.
Beck also discussed how the DNC lawsuit’s claims regarding DNC negligence with donor data may be especially important as it relates to the unsolved murder of Seth Rich. Rich was a staffer for the DNC who died in an unsolved murder last July. In August last year Fox News reported that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had strongly hinted that Seth Rich was the source for the DNC leaks. The Washington Post also reported that Wikileaks had offered a reward for information leading to a conviction in Seth Rich’s murder. Jared Beck has stated via twitter that Seth Rich would have been a potential witness in the DNC lawsuit.
If the Becks successfully gain the right to discovery on the origin of the DNC documents, the mystery regarding whether Seth Rich leaked the information might potentially be resolved. If Rich did indeed leak the DNC emails to Wikileaks, the ‘Russian hacking’ narrative would be utterly negated.
The Becks based their lawsuit on Guccifer2.0’s release of the information, which occurred in June last year, before Wikileaks had announced they would be releasing DNC documents. Guccifer2.0’s role in the DNC leaks was discussed in a previous report by Disobedient Media. There has been speculation that Guccifer2.0’s early release of the information was intended to smear Wikileaks and potentially Seth Rich as the leaker, by intentionally fabricating evidence of ‘Russian hacking’ in the earliest available version of the data.
Adding further questions surrounding the lawsuit was the unexpected death of Shawn Lucas, who was filmed serving defendants in the suit last July. Police reports describe how Luca’s girlfriend found him unconcious on the bathroom floor in early August. Paramedics were unable to revive him. The Becks have indicated Shawn Lucas was to be a Federal witness in the proceedings.
Jared Beck told Disobedient Media that Lucas would have served as a witness in order to rebut the defendant’s contention that process was incorrectly served. This would have included a sworn declaration from Lucas; Beck stated that footage of Lucas serving process had been introduced as evidence in the case in his stead, due to the unexpected death.
The Becks have provided Disobedient Media with copies of their communications with Washington D.C. police that include discussion regarding the body cameras worn by police as well as Shawn Lucas’ death report. Lucas’ cause of death was described by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of Washington D.C as “Combined adverse effects of fentanyl, cyclobenzaprine, and mitragynine,” with the manner of death listed as “accident.” Fentanyl is a strong opioid pain medication, sometimes used as part of anaesthesia. Cyclobenzaprine is a muscle relaxant, while mitradynine is a substance found in Kratom.
As the case continues to be a developing story, Disobedient Media will provide further coverage of the DNC lawsuit should new facts emerge.
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The Frendly Gathering Music Festival, produced by best friends and professional snowboarders Danny Davis and Jack Mitrani, announces its initial music lineup for the sixth annual event to be held June 23 – 25 in Windham, Vermont.
Heralded as one of New England’s premier music festivals, Frendly Gathering will feature a lineup for all genres of music fans, including rock and roll, bluegrass, folk, jam, reggae and electronic acts. Frendly Gathering will showcase 26+ musical acts to play on four unique stages throughout the festival grounds. The festival not only incorporates music, but also camping, yoga, food, skateboarding, dance workshops, inspiration and of course “Frendship.”
The lineup at this year’s Frendly Gathering is all time. | Photo: Ali Kaukas
Headlining the three-day music festival is Twiddle, the Vermont-based jam band who has been playing at Frendly Gathering since the festival’s inception. Making his debut as an artist at Frendly Gathering is Trevor Hall, once an attendee and now a frend of the Frendly crew. Two more familiar faces returning to Frendly will be Turkuaz and Moon Hooch, two of the most requested and beloved shows from 2015.
“The line-up this year includes a lot of bands who have become our frends throughout the years,” said co-founder Danny Davis. “While a few of the bands are veterans to Frendly, most are new to the festival, and we are very excited to bring some new sounds to the Frendly folks.”
“Every year, Frendly Gathering becomes one step closer to mine and Danny’s goal of establishing itself as a music festival where fans not only see artists they love, but also discover new ones,” continued co-founder Jack Mitrani. “We are also very lucky to have such an engaged online community of fans who are constantly sharing artists that they think should perform. Collaboration is a key ingredient to building the lineup and festival.”
Making the festival possible are Jack Mitrani and Danny Davis, alongside a massive Frendly crew that share the same passion for music, the outdoors, the environment and the ideals of bringing “Frendship” to the masses with their motto being “there is no ‘I’ in Frends.” In 2010, they brought their favorite bands, both known and unknown, to one venue in a frendly and intimate festival setting in California, which became the inaugural Frendly Gathering. The following year, they moved the event to Vermont where they both have strong family roots. Today, organizers work to keep the festival as intimate as its inception by capping ticket sales, ensuring short lines, easy access to the stages and a frendly family-like atmosphere.
The festival will once again be held at Timber Ridge, located in Windham, Vermont. Multi-day passes are available, as well as Thursday early arrival passes for those who want to set up their tents in prime locations.
While Frendly Gathering is rooted in Vermont, the word about the festival has traveled around the globe thanks to the power of the Frendly crew. Most recently, Davis and Mitrani, along with the Frendly crew, have journeyed to snowboard contests around the country in a customized 1973 Airstream named the “FrendShip” that has been re-assembled as a recording studio. Live shows of the Frendly crew featuring snowboarding, jam sessions and interviews with special guests can be seen at Frendlypresents.com via Skype.
2016 Frendly Gathering Lineup to Date:
Twiddle
Trevor Hall
Turkuaz
Givers
Moon Hooch
The Ballroom Thieves
Lynx & The Servants of Song
Marco Benevento
Cabinet
Sinkane
Son Little
Jaden Carlson Band
Eminence Ensemble
Madaila
Helado Negro
Mariachi Flor de Toloache
Kitchen Dwellers
Natural Child
The Smooths
Into The Mystic
Disco Phantom
Canyon Collected
Tommy Alexander
The High Breaks
Upstate Rubdown
Mal Maiz
For more information on The Frendly Gathering, and to purchase tickets (on-sale now), visit FrendlyGathering.com, and @FrendlyGathering on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter @FrendlyG.By: Fouad Suleiman
In lieu of the recent less then friendly soundbite given by Toronto Maple Leafs star Phil Kessel to Toronto Star reporter Dave Feschuk, the latest instalment of Raptors Cage’s original series Northern Nostalgia will look at the most memorable player/coach interview moments in franchise history.
The pre and post game bites and the shoot-around scrums are pretty much a contrived formulaic practice. “The effort wasn’t there last night”…. “we just couldn’t execute”…. “gotta play a full 48″… you’ve heard them all before, all excerpts from the almanac of safe, PC, stock answers for the NBA media. Every so often, however, amongst this painfully uniform formula, the real personalities creep through.
When these instances occurred in Raptorland, they have left us with some truly timeless classics. From the the seven minute rant of a certain shot happy “point” guard, to the character flip of a certain superstar, Raptors Cage will both relive and rank these moments in time.
HONOURABLE MENTION: MASAI UJIRI
Since this great moment occurred less that a year ago, it would be disingenuous to include this in a list for Northern Nostalgia. We would be remisced however if we didn’t recognize this amazing moment that could very easily be number one. Everything about this moment was perfect. The frenetic energy of the crowd. The unexpectedness of such bravado and profanity from a General Manager. The little grin of Tim Leiweke. Jason Kidd retort of “I can’t believe Bryan Colangelo would say that. The angry letter by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. Everything.
5. JAY TRIANO: “WHAT THE F***ARE YOU GONNA DO?”
It was one of the first games of what would be a LONG season for Jay Triano‘s Raptors, the team was routed in Utah 125-108. The Jazz at the time were led by then premier floor general Deron Williams, who at the time was neck and neck with Chris Paul in the national conversation for the league’s best point guard. Williams had a masterful performance in this game to the great dismay of Triano, whose tone of utter dismay while uttering the expletive would truly represent the state of the team under his tenure.
4. MIKE JAMES: “POINT GUARD”
With the ticker on the bottom summarizing Mike James‘ mind boggling 5-25 shooting performance, the Toronto media was looking for answers. What they would get was a highly entertaining “shoot first ask questions last” manifesto that sounded eerily similar to Kanye West’s patented rants on his Yeezus tour. James spent a lone season as a Raptor after being traded from Houston for Rafer Alston averaging 20 points and 6 assists in that time. For those not willing to sit through the seven minute sermon, I have taken the liberty of presenting the quotable gems listed below. Be inspired.
“I’m sorry I can put the ball in the hole at a very high rate.”
“If I miss five, 10 in a row, I’m not afraid take 15 to 20.”
“What I do I gotta do to be called a point guard? Average 20 assists per game?”
“I believe I’m like wine, the older I get the better I’m gon’ get”
“You miss 100% of the shots you take.”
– Obviously James tried to recite the famous Wayne Gretzky quote seen in almost every 5th grade classroom, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take but misspoke. The mistake did provide some hilarious irony, however, considering the context.
“If they (Raptors) did their research on me, I’ve been jacking my entire career. If you didn’t like my style of play you should’ve never traded for me.”
“Y’all thought you saw something this year, wherever I go, if it’s Toronto or anywhere else, I’m going to be a terror in this NBA for at least the next five years.” – Upon leaving Toronto, James would make five different NBA stops and also would make appearances in China, Turkey, and the D-League, where he is currently playing for the Texas Legends at the age of 39.
3. DAMON STOUDAMIRE: “DON’T PLAY MIND GAMES”
Deep within the cavernous confines of the Raptors first home, the SkyDome, the teams first ever NBA draft pick would do the unthinkable and completely tear apart General Manager Glen Grunwald to the media. After Grunwald pulled on a deal that would have sent the disgruntled guard to the Houston Rockets, Damon Stoudamire was left in the precarious position of being “one foot in, one foot out.” Very rarely does a feud between the front office and a star player become so ugly and so public. Matters were also made worse as head coach Darrell Walker was in the same position. The turmoil would reach its end when Stoudamire was shipped to the Portland Trail Blazers with Walker resigning simultaneously in the middle of the 1998 season.
2. VINCE CARTER: “I DON’T WANT TO DUNK ANYMORE”
(unfortunatly we could not locate a direct YouTube link, but you can see the video here;)
http://www.sportsnet.ca/basketball/nba/vince-carters-most-disappointing-moments-to-publish-tuesday-morning/
Keeping with the theme of disgruntled superstars, this soundbite sent shockwaves throughout the league as it signalled the beginning of the end of the Vince Carter era. In this interview, Carter indicated that he was prepared to turn his back on what allowed him to take the league by storm and help put the Raptors franchise on the map. That, coupled with his dry and sarcastic tone towards the subject was reminiscent of Hulk Hogan trading in his patented heroic red and yellow for the black and white of the NWO. Reminiscent of fan favourite rebel Stone Cold Steve Austin shaking the hand of his arch nemesis and tyrannical boss, Vince McMahon. If you haven’t caught the pro wrestling analogies, the situation was bad. The greatest dunker of all time decided he was giving up the dunk for good. So it seemed.
Of course, after being traded to the New Jersey Nets and continuing to do things like this…
didn’t exactly help endear him to Toronto fans.
1. HEDO TURKOGLU: “BALL”
Long before Seattle Seahawks Running Back Marshawn Lynch set off a firestorm of ire for his one word answer trolling of the media, there was a man ahead of his time in the realm of media relations. This man was the man once affectionately referred to as the “Michael Jordan of Turkey.” This man was Hedo Turkoglu. After giving a perfectly pedestrian answer to poor Jack Armstrong’s question of what was crucial in the comeback, when asked about his personal performance all he needed was one glorious syllable. For better or for worse, this moment came to be the most memorable moment in the single season tenure of the current Los Angeles Clippers. In the words of this great man, we conclude by saying…”we got nothing else to say.”Fans have noticed that “Produce 101 Season 2” contestant Kang Daniel has been supporting comfort women, victims of sexual slavery at the hands of Japanese soldiers during World War II.
Several social media accounts and online communities have recently posted photos of the trainee wearing a shirt from Marymond, a company known for financially supporting comfort women.
He has also been spotted wearing a bracelet from Heeum, another company known for supporting former comfort women.
Another one of his bracelets that he had worn on the show is reportedly from B.CONNECT, which supports children in poverty.
Kang Daniel has been receiving lots of praise for raising awareness and silently showing his support for both comfort women and children in poverty.
How awesome is that?
Meanwhile, you can vote in our international prediction polls for “Produce 101 Season 2” here!
Source (1)When I turned around from the chalkboard, there was chubby Mr. Kamei with his plump fist stuffed inside his waistband. We were in the middle of English 301 and he’d either developed one fearsome case of poison ivy in his pants or was masturbating like crazy. This is what it’s like teaching college in Japan.
Half the class hadn’t even bothered to show up. Everybody was job hunting, or sick, or out of town. Any excuse not to come to English, even though you’re a Senior English major. All right, because.
“Jeezus, stop that,” I said, and Mr. Kamei looked a little puzzled, but pulled his hand out and ran it through his hair. Eeuuwww.
The two girls in the back were doing their make-up, the big guy working as a nightclub bouncer was unconscious with his head on the desk, and the geeky kids in the middle were updating their Line profiles. Nobody had a notebook, much less a pen, and almost nobody had bothered to bring the textbook. One girl had hers open to the wrong page and the blonde kid with the guitar had a manga stuck in the middle of his.
“Okay, great class,” I said. “For homework—and 30 percent of your grade—write a one-page paper describing what you think the world will be like in 50 years.” This was the easiest assignment I could dream up.
“This is,” I said, “the easiest assignment I could dream up. Flying cars, robot bartenders, cure for cancer, whatever. Just make sure it’s typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman, as we discussed.”
Aaaaand… next week. I get four papers, two hand-written, one in pencil on a the back of a chemistry printout. To his credit, Mr. Kamei turned in the best one, which I was hesitant to touch—a flimsy paragraph of single-spaced Arial, entitled “Will Flying Cars Cure Cancer?”
Did I mention that Japanese university’s a joke? So far I’ve taught at five, and of the thousands of students I’ve had, 98 percent couldn’t bumble their way through a rural Arkansas community college.
Request Numero Uno for teachers at Japanese universities is: Please don’t fail everyone. Sorry, that was a typo. We meant anyone. Please refer to the following grading scale: Students who show up to half the classes warrant a C, regardless of performance. Those who do crayon drawings for assignments are displaying additional artistic talent, and deserve a B. Any half-ass approximation of actual classwork (except when done by a Chinese foreign-exchange student) is worthy of an A.
To get an F, a student literally has to not exist. And still the administration will change it to a C, because even if you’re no one, well, no one fails university in Japan.
So here’s Professor Seeroi in the university Admin Office, talking to the little fat lady behind the desk:
“Excuse me, umm… but why’s Matsuda Yuki on the roster for English 306? She got an ‘F’ in 305. On account of she doesn’t exist. Never came to a single class.
“Oh, Matsuda,” said the little fat lady. “It’s okay, Ken Sensei.
“It’s Seeroi, and I seem to remember ‘okay’ as having a slightly different meaning...
“Her parents came in and worked everything out,” she said.
“Her parents? Well, unless they taught a crash-course in English over the summer, she still failed...
“No, Ken, she got a B.
“A ‘B’? Are you mental... ah, great... Fine, I’ll change my grade-book to reflect her newfound proficiency.”
As long as your parents can pay the tuition, you’re set. The standard of education might actually be lower than in high school. I suspect there are some real exams in Engineering or Physics, but hide out in the Liberal Arts and... let’s just say nobody’s pulling all-nighters in dorm rooms debating issues while stuffing down handfuls of Doritos or arguing philosophical points over cans of Natty Lite. I mean, it’s not exactly Trump University.
Studying for Standardized Exams
But let’s back up, to middle school, where students study for tests, with right-and-wrong answers, that determine the high school they get into. There’s little discussion, considering the pros and cons of immigration, abortion, religion, nuclear power, war, crunchy peanut butter versus smooth. Teachers stand at the board and lecture, and students are expected to memorize facts and formulas, then regurgitate them on demand. Sensei says smooth is best, you write smooth. Then you move up.
To high school, where you study for harder tests with harder formulas that determine what college you go to. Aerated peanut butter, what’s that? Who cares, just spell it right. And once you get into college, if you go, you’re largely free to screw off and stop studying. The first two years are for partying, and the next two for job-hunting. The end result being—-having never been challenged to evaluate any real-world issues—-the average Japanese college graduate literally has the reasoning skills of a middle-schooler.
The Language Advantage
About a year ago, I read a study (which I wish to hell I could locate again) that made the case that children raised with more phonetic languages, such as Spanish and Finnish, had a notable advantage over children whose native language is English, because they learned to read and write much earlier. While American, British, and Australian children puzzle over words like “plough,” “epitome,” and “Worcestershire,” children in Spain are steadily progressing through more and higher-level books, enabling them earlier access to advanced skills such as reasoning, synthesis, and discussion. They simply read at a higher level than English speakers of the same age.
Or put another way: English speakers are held back, retarded by their nutty language.
This reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell’s assertion that children starting school several months later than their peers enjoy a lifetime of advantages. The average six year-old is bigger and more developed, socially and intellectually, than the corresponding 5-and-1/4 year-old. Older students in the same grade thus outshine the younger ones, garnering praise and support from teachers, a process that continues through years of schooling. A small advantage that ultimately makes a huge difference.
So if Spanish-speakers are the six year-olds, English-speakers the five year-olds, then...
And then There’s Japanese
And then there’s... the language where students are still studying the alphabet into high school. Even worse than Chinese, where at least you’ve got one reading per character, Japanese folks struggle for years with how to pronounce their own words. The language itself retards—hinders—learners, putting them at a massive disadvantage. Kids in Spain are reading Kiss of the Spiderwoman, kids in America Harry Potter, and kids in Japan...
Naruto, the adolescent ninja. What’s Japan famous for? Literature? Movies? Music? Web design? Please. Comic books. Anime. Illustrations everywhere. You’re hard-pressed to find an instruction sheet in Japan that doesn’t include some cute bear or penguin gesturing with his little paw or flipper about how to sort your trash, sign up for health insurance, or microwave a serving of pasta.
Why is Manga so Popular in Japan?
Every bookstore, magazine stand, and school, has a significant portion of its bookshelves packed with comic books. Why? It’s generous, and a bit dismissive, to say that Japanese folks simply love “cute” things. It’s probably truer to note that a significant segment of the population isn’t accustomed to reading, or thinking, at an adult level. Young adults here read comic books for the same reason children do elsewhere: because they’re fun, funny, and not too hard. Sure, a few deal with “real” issues, but it’s not like we’re talking To Kill a Mock |
That phenomenon of the traveling exhibition, offering vast global reach, is another expanding aspect of the museum world. The hats of the British designer Stephen Jones were displayed in 2009 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London before moving to Brisbane, Australia, and a separate Jones exhibition was recently in Istanbul after appearing at Mode Museum in Antwerp (known as MoMu), where the curator Kaat Debo works mainly with living designers.
Is fashion really so exhibition worthy? And, more importantly, are there explicit standards by which the various shows should be judged?
Crowds are pouring into the Pushkin Museum in Moscow for an “Inspiration Dior” exhibition (until July 24) installed by the house of Dior to compare and contrast fashion with major works of modern art. In the same vein, Chanel showed “Culture Chanel,” a modernist exhibition it put together, in Shanghai. It will move to Beijing in October.
Such self-funded exhibitions are not purely promotional — they have an artistic base. But they also underscore the history of a brand and educate residents of what will soon be the world’s largest luxury market.
Sidney Toledano, president and chief executive of Christian Dior, explains the strategy, referring also to the house’s previous collaborations with Chinese artists in Beijing and Shanghai.
“It is a way of speaking about the savoir faire, the creator, the house and its history — and the 150,000 people who go to the Pushkin understand that Mr. Dior was an artist and that there is a way of contemplating the dresses with fine art,” says Mr. Toledano.
The explosion of museum exhibitions is only a mirror image of what has happened to fashion itself this millennium. With the force of technology, instant images and global participation, fashion has developed from being a passion for a few to a fascination — and an entertainment — for everybody.
The reason there are so many exhibitions is, as Beatrice Salmon, director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, explains, because fashion consistently attracts a large audience.
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The museum factor has certainly transformed the way designers treat their own archives. At a new museum at Getaria, Spain, the birthplace of Cristóbal Balenciaga, dresses are linked to their original owners, some of whom were at the opening ceremony this summer. Hubert de Givenchy, a force behind the Balenciaga museum, spent a decade persuading couture ladies to donate.
It was slightly different for the editor Hamish Bowles, who mounted a Balenciaga exhibit in New York last year and recently at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Mr. Bowles had access to the archive used by the current Balenciaga designer Nicolas Ghesquière. But as guest curator in San Francisco, he worked with the museum’s archive and other loans.
Thirty years ago it was not normal practice to archive part of a collection. Katell le Bourhis, who worked with Ms. Vreeland on the 1983 Saint Laurent exhibit, remembers that the house had a single brown lace dress available for the Met’s Costume Institute show. Ms. Vreeland, herself a Saint Laurent devotee, asked American women to donate dresses. Only afterward was an archive established by Pierre Bergé, Y.S.L.’s partner. That period marks the beginning of fashion’s acceptance as not just a decorative art, but part of a cultural heritage.
Now all brands are constantly building from their pasts — not least because history is used as inspiration. Gucci will open a dedicated museum in Florence in September. Frida Giannini, its current designer, says the museum, which will be in the 15th-century building that was formerly her office, will “mix fashion with art.”
Ferragamo already has a museum in Florence — suggesting that the Italian brands are ahead on what will surely become a brand trend.
Significantly, it was the Italian maestro Giorgio Armani whose exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2000 caused controversy because the designer was a benefactor. Pamela Golbin, curator in chief of Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris, sees that exhibition as one that “changed the landscape.”
All the many different efforts to energize the past, to offer “stimulating visual elan” as Mr. Bowles puts it, raise one simple question: What is a fashion exhibition for?
The subsidiary questions are: Who should be the keeper of the flame, especially with a living designer? Should an independent museum curator take an objective exterior approach, or work in tandem with a designer? And can an exhibition mounted by a house ever be considered objective?
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Claire Wilcox, senior fashion curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, draws on a lifetime of experience mounting shows and says that, in taking a historical approach, she allows herself what can be “years of research.” Because the museum focuses on art and craft, the curator is equally involved in textile conservation and innovations in that field. She also focuses on catalogues and images available online and says that it is because she has worked with the “most wonderful collections in the world” that she began to “understand the vocabulary of design.”
“For me, objectivity is the key,” says Ms. Wilcox, particularly now that designers are increasingly aware of heritage and value their own history.
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In spite of the V&A’s scholarly approach to fashion, it also has had fun with an exhibition of the singer Kylie Minogue’s show wardrobe, imported from Australia, and with a continuing series called “Fashion in Motion” that draws a hip, young crowd. (Yohji Yamamoto was at the museum on Friday for the live catwalk shows. An exhibit of his work continues there until Sunday.)
By contrast, an exhibition like “The Golden Age of Couture” in 2007, curated by Ms. Wilcox, was presented from a historical perspective and made a point of technique — something that Damien Whitmore, director of public affairs and programming at the V&A, says is part of the museum’s responsibility.
“My main focus is on creating a program because our collections are so varied,” says Mr. Whitmore, who has 100 exhibitions of various sizes on display around the world. For example, the museum’s “Cult of Beauty” exhibition on the Aesthetic Movement (until July 17) will move to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in September and on to the de Young in San Francisco next February.
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs is, like the V&A, a decorative arts museum, although that even includes Ralph Lauren’s vintage car collection (until Aug. 28), which Ms. Salmon says is about the art and craft of the automobile.
Ms. Golbin, who joined the museum in 1993, has produced exhibitions on fashion as varied as Balenciaga and Viktor & Rolf, said, “I know what can work. It has to be strong enough from design point of view.”
Her next exhibition, after Chalayan, is already raising eyebrows: Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs. Ms. Golbin sees a story about the industrialization of the 19th century followed by the globalization of the 20th. Others might read it as pure promotion.
Ms. Salmon says the 2012 exhibition will reflect the museum’s attitude, drawing around 50 percent of the items from its own archives of Louis Vuitton leather bags and trunks. The Jacobs material will come from Vuitton, which will be the show’s sponsor, just as the Alexander McQueen exhibition in New York is sponsored by the house of McQueen, part of the PPR luxury empire.
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The subject of sponsorship is delicate. With all museums short of money, almost no fashion exhibition could take place without some external investment. Mr. Saillard is even frustrated that sponsors — in fashion or art — are drawn always to the same big museum names and that wealthy brands do not try to help museums with funding, even though their creative teams do research there. To the curator’s chagrin, luxury groups like LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and PPR are investing in contemporary art projects, rather than in museum fashion.
In Montreal, Ms. Bondil is adamant that “a museum is not a showcase.”
“Independence is sometimes expensive, but freedom is priceless,” she says. “I hate the word ‘blockbuster.’ If we compare ourselves with cinema, we belong to the independent circle — not the Hollywood one. When we organized with San Francisco the Saint Laurent first retrospective, I insisted on having an independent curator and expert. In my mind it was not possible to conceive of such an exhibition which still had an active commercial brand without any independent outlook.”
Although Ms. Bondil sees funding, and curating contemporary art in general — not just fashion, as a complex subject, Ms. Debo, director of MoMu in Antwerp, refuses to view sponsorship as a moral issue.
“I don’t have a problem. It comes down to how you collaborate. Sometimes the press are too suspicious, thinking that a museum cannot decide anything,” Ms. Debo says. “It is important how you use the collaboration and what kind of agreement.”
However, it is difficult to imagine how a deep critical appraisal — suggesting, for example, that the most creative years of a famous designer were far behind — could possibly appear in an exhibition sponsored by the brand.
Some museums have a crystal clear vision about what constitutes a proper subject for a fashion exhibition. John E. Buchanan Jr., director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, says that the first is whether a show can “find its strength and derive its origin” from the museum’s permanent collections of textiles, costume and couture, citing the 46 Balenciaga pieces that provided a springboard for the Bowles show.
“Second is the fact that fashion designers are artists,” says Mr. Buchanan. “In considering a monographic exhibition, we look for ‘the genius factor.’ We want the designer who is seminal — who has created a singular vision, silhouette, technique or style unlike that which came before and who has a broad-reaching oeuvre that inspires and influences successive generations of designers.”
That judgment is easier to make of a designer who has passed into history. But, aside from the funding issue, the other big debate about museum exhibitions is whether they should be led by the will of a living designer.
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Ms. Debo, whose Antwerp exhibitions have included monographs on the Belgian designers Martin Margiela and Veronique Branquinho — as well as Mr. Jones and his hats — thinks it essential that a living designer works with the curator.
Although she says she has to redirect the designers’ tendency to show their latest work, the Antwerp curator says, “There is a value in working with living designers. With Dior, you can’t ask Mr. Dior himself.”
She cites her coming exhibition in the autumn on the Antwerp designer Walter Van Beirendonck and the need to surround herself with his collaborators to get into the “Walter World.” But she says the Margiela exhibition was a different experience, as the designer said: “You are the curator. Propose me your concept.”
It certainly made sense for the Met to have the input of the set designers of McQueen’s fantastical runway shows. The museum installation includes a cabinet of curiosities, displaying jewelry by the same Mr. Leane who made the Daphne Guinness armor and hats by Philip Treacy, as well as videos of shows.
However, it was definitely Andrew Bolton, who works with Harold Koda at the Costume Institute, who had the vision of the McQueen exhibit. He divided the show into categories (all starting with “Romantic”): Gothic, nationalism, exoticism, primitivism and naturalism.
“Our exhibition strategy is very specific,” says Mr. Bolton, referring to a need to put clothes in a context of social history and education and to “present costume as living art.”
The Met’s approach is therefore thematic and interpretational, putting fashion in a context. The museum criteria for a monographic show, like those on Paul Poiret, Chanel or McQueen, is whether the designer “changed the course of fashion history,” Mr. Bolton says. Another type of exhibition was “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity” based on masterworks from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection.
Mr. Bolton, who came from the V&A, says that the main difference is that the London establishment is a design museum “but the Met is an art museum with the main focus on artistic merit.”
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Since the furor surrounding the Saint Laurent show in the 1980s, the Met does not do monographic shows of living designers. But the museum has a strong New York rival in FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology), where the curator Valerie Steele produces exhibitions with piquant subjects.
Jean Paul Gaultier is unquestionably a highly creative designer, and the exhibition in Montreal matches that imaginative talent, using mannequins with “talking heads” created by digitally projected faces. Mr. Gaultier was involved in the choice of sections titles, including “Skin Deep,” “Punk Cancan” and “Urban Jungle.”
But the exhibition, two years in the making, has the curatorial vision of Ms. Bondil, who stresses the importance of craft and the need for a decorative arts museum to concentrate on Mr. Gaultier’s exceptional work in haute couture.
“I am not a fashion specialist but an art historian, and the museum’s mission is to show works which are not usually accessible,” she says. “It is also to show excellence, which includes the high standards of haute couture, and to enlarge its public. In my mind, design presents a special interest, as the public can easily recognize an object through its form and function. That can attract them towards other fields, which need more learning.”
“We try to promote social, humanist values in the programming far beyond art,” Ms. Bondil continues. “When art supports a more engaged message it reaches all kinds of people, not only the amateurs and specialists: the museum then talks a universal language.”
That fashion dialogue takes many forms. And one of those is Ms. Guinness, muse, animator and fashion original. Not only is Mr. Leane’s extraordinary jeweled glove (five years in the making) going on display in London at the White Cube Gallery of the modern art supremo Jay Jopling but an exhibition, “Daphne Guinness”, is to open at the Museum at FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York on Sept. 16 — making her the Marina Abramovic performing artist of a fashion world with art as its beating heart.Do federal judges have the power to reduce jury awards in copyright-infringement cases?
The Obama administration and the Recording Industry Association of America don’t think so. They argued that point Monday before a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which has released a 41-minute audio recording (.mp3) of the hearing.
They were urging the circuit to reinstate a $675,000 file sharing verdict that a Boston jury levied against Joel Tenenbaum, the nation’s second defendant to go to trial against the RIAA in an individual file sharing case. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner reduced the verdict to $67,500 last year.
Sony v. Joel Tenenbaum
Listen to the April 4, 2011 appeal
Both sides appealed, with Tenenbaum claiming it was still too excessive, and the RIAA and government arguing the reduction was an abuse of judicial power.
The Copyright Act allows damages ranging from $750 an infringement to $150,000.
The RIAA had sued thousands of individuals for file sharing over five years ending last year. Most defendants have settled out of court for a few thousand dollars.
Only two cases have gone to trial. Enormous jury verdicts In both were reduced by the presiding judges.
The outcome of the other case against Jammie Thomas-Rasset is pending.
The significance of the Tenenbaum and Thomas-Rasset cases appears to be minimal in the illicit music-sharing context. The RIAA has abandoned its litigation campaign and instead is working with internet service providers to warn file sharers, or kick them off the internet if they repeatedly engage in online copyright infringement. The RIAA has also successfully lobbied for the Obama administration to seize file sharing websites.
But where the RIAA litigation campaign left off, independent movie makers have picked up. In the last year, they have sued about 130,000 BitTorrent users for downloading and sharing low-budget movies.
The players you’ll hear on the tape include RIAA attorney Paul Clement, who is the former solicitor general; Jeffrey Clair, for the Obama administration; Jason Harrow, a Harvard Law School student, and Harvard professor Charles Nesson, both for Tenenbaum; and Julie Ahrens of the Electronic Frontier Foundation for Tenenbaum.
The circuit panel consists of Judge Sandra Lynch, Judge Juan Torruella and Judge Rogeriee Thompson.
Briefs in the case were filed in February.
Hat Tip: techdirt
See Also:Brace yourself, Sassenachs: this good news may also feel like, well, sad news.
Starz finally announced Wednesday that the third season of Outlander, which just wrapped production in Scotland to move to South Africa, won’t return until September. For season 1 and the second half of season 2, the show bowed in April, but the scale of production warranted the (oh-so-depressing) delay.
“While Droughtlander will last just a little longer, we feel it is important to allow the production the time and number of episodes needed to tell the story of the Voyager book in its entirety,” Starz President of Programming Carmi Zlotnik said in a statement. “The scale of this book is immense, and we owe the fans the very best show. Returning in September will make that possible.”
Go ahead and take a moment to cry. We’ll wait.
Also, just know you aren’t alone in your suffering: Fans of Game of Thrones, who usually get their fix in the spring, will have wait until July for the season 7 return of the HBO drama. Does that help?
Okay, back to business: Here’s a quote from another programming executive who no doubt feels your pain, Outlander nation. “With the scope of the production and all of the intricate details that go into the Emmy-nominated sets and costumes, we had to make sure everything is kept to the high standard of the previous seasons and [author] Diana Gabaldon’s beautiful story,” stated Exec VP Steve Kent of Sony Pictures TV, which produces the drama for Starz. “We’re so proud of the incredible work that Ron [Moore] and the Outlander team have done.”
In case you’ve forgotten, all 13 episodes of season 3 are based on Voyager, the third of eight books in Gabaldon’s best-selling Outlander series. In March, production will resume in Cape Town, South Africa, on the former sets of the Starz series Black Sails to depict Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire’s (Caitriona Balfe) adventure-packed voyage.
Filming is expected to wrap in June — just in time for the cast to attend San Diego Comic-Con. So there’s that, Sassenachs!
The new season picks up right after Claire travels through the stones to return to her life in 1948, where she gives birth to Jamie’s daughter Brianna and resumes her marriage to her first husband, Frank (Tobias Menzies). Back in the 18th century, Jamie suffers from the aftermath of his doomed last stand at the historic battle of Culloden, as well as the loss of Claire.
Here’s a video of Balfe and Heughan saying goodbye to the chill of Scotland so they can begin shooting in sunny South Africa.GORUCK Expedition Heavy 001, Navigator Heavy, Heavigator? – whatever you want to call it, is in the books. And you probably missed it, and missed out. Good job.
Indoc and testing.
This event started out much like other events and races. Cadre gave a brief overview of who they were, what (roughly) we could expect over the next 24 hours, and what was expected of us. It was made clear that while there wasn’t going to be a ton of mindless PT to beat us down, this was still very much a Heavy. There would be very little downtime, information would come at us fast, and we were expected to retain it the first time.
There would be no droning out during this event. We were expected to be on our toes and engaged at all times. Roll call was taken, gear was checked, and we got weighed in (ruck and personnel). 17 souls, stepping off.
We moved immediately into the UBRR (Upper Body Round Robin) test to individually assess the strengths and weakness of each team member. I personally haven’t tested my situps in ages and was a little twitchy about that element, but everything went fine. This was not a drop element, but you were definitely informed of your failures. The run portion of the test was deferred until later – I personally would have much rather just gotten out of the way up front, but keeping that aspect floating over our heads was a nice way to ratchet up nerves.
Once the team had cycled through all other testing elements, Chris Way gave instruction on how to fit a climbing harness and we were set loose on a climbing wall. The goal was for each participant to run 10 climbing routes in ~an hour. I have a decent background in sport climbing and this volume was definitely nothing to be taken lightly. If nothing else, it would greatly diminish people’s ability to perform heavy carries later in the event. I went a little nutty on my routes and wasn’t loving life later on.
Watching other teammates overcome their fear of heights / the unknown and tackle the climbing portion was a great way to start the working portion of the event.
Getting our learn on.
Cadre made it clear that every aspect of this event would be done with intensity – that includes classroom instruction. In small groups, cycling stations every few minutes, we covered: basic map navigation, mission critical knots, correcting for declination, calculating pace count (walking and running), construction of load bearing rope systems, and dead reckoning vs using terrain & attack points.
Got it? Ok. Good, moving on. You’ll be tested on all that later. In the dark, under duress.
Putting theory into practice.
Gear up, we’re moving in 60 seconds. The friendly indoor portion of the event was over and we were on the move to begin refining skills under real world conditions. The team moved a mile or so south of the start point and cut off the main drag into a trail system. It was dark, woods were thick, and we were about to begin a series of dead reckoning exercises.
Each team member was responsible for leading the group along a given heading for a set distance (usually only 100m or so), then shoot a back azimuth and get us back to our exact start point. Sounds easy, but if you aren’t used to counting your steps, adding fudge factor for weaving around impassible obstacles, adjusting your pace count for terrain, and keeping your eyes on your instruments – all at the same time, while leading a group – it can be a daunting task.
Once everyone had their chance to TL we were sent off on an unknown distance run (as a team) with the task of maintaining a good estimation of distance. I know -my- running count, but running in a group radically changes stride / pace, so keeping a good count here was a nightmare.
Chris Way brought out toys and gave us a lightning fast introduction to Search and Rescue avalanche trackers. The goal being to use one’s own device to locate the unknown position of a fallen/missing/endangered teammate. Beacons were hidden in the woods and one by one folks were sent off to recover their targets in the dark. While our team members were out hunting, the remaining group would get PT’d or tossed into stress positions. Intensity was maintained, as promised.
One final teachable element, as a team, was splitting into small squads and instructed on following a handrail (the trail in this case) through overgrowth for various distances. More stumbling in the dark, tripping over logs, and thorns. So many thorns.
Yes, it’s a Heavy.
With the “getting smarter and better at stuff” portion of the event well underway, it was time to get strong. This is still a Heavy after all.
We emerged from the woods at a road crossing, and a support vehicle rolled up. A pile of logs, tarps, and 2 liter soda bottles were dumped out. We got a quick refresher course on construction of litters for transporting “injured”, or in our case, “big ass logs”. Half the team got started on their construction while the rest of us got briefed on the soda bottles.
From this point forward, everyone was required to have a 2L bottle affixed to the top of their ruck. Cadre would periodically be puncturing these bottles to simulate a massive hemorrhage, and it was the team’s responsibility to ensure that no one “bled out”. If a bottle dropped below half full, that person was a casualty.
Read: From here on out, Cadre would randomly be stabbing people in the back and we needed to have a fast reaction plan to duct tape them back together. Toot sweet.
At this point it was ~3am at a Heavy. I won’t bore you with the details, but we carried heavy things a long way and every once in a while someone got snippy with someone else. Happens every time, this time was no different.
Running around and setting fires.
Sunrise was at 0655. We arrived at the beach around 0645. We were then reminded that we had still yet to complete the running portion of the UBRR.
Time for a sunrise run up the beach. Mocha then informed us that we were to complete a 4 mile run. We were to head west along the beach until we ran out of room to run, then turn around and return to cadre for further instructions. An 8:00 min/mi pace was expected. We all nervously smiled at each other regarding the impossibility of this request. Mocha did not return the favor.
We were given a countdown and then were off. The sand was looser than I feared, and we had a headwind. Super. Dooper.
I’m not a great runner, but wanted to do at least ok, so I shot for negative splits and hoped that I would run out of beach before my body/brain/lungs quit on me. I came in second with a time around 34:30, and a heart rate somewhere in the “you should probably sit down” range. Beach running is awful. All running is awful, but beach running is more awfuller.
Pays to be a winner. As people came in, they got a chance to refit on water, check their feet, and down some chow. Well, they did, I got sent off by Cadre to start collecting firewood. Looked really nice over there though. -_-
Once everyone was back and refit, we collected more firewood and Chris Way led a quick and dirty demonstration on how to build fires. Survival fires are best appreciated when you really need a fire, so we were told to strip down and get into the ocean. We did. It was cold. People got really good, really quick about tending to the warming fire until we got orders to get ready to move again.
Pays to be a winner. Pays to pay attention.
We were split into two groups and informed that it was now a competitive event. TL and ATL from each group were pulled aside and given two grid coordinates. The first was a target in the wooded area to our south, the second was a rally point to the east. We were to move to the first point, activate our SPOT tracker, then move as a team to our secondary objective. Easy enough.
But first we needed to demonstrate our knot tying abilities based on the rapid fire instruction we received ~12 hours previously. Oh, and cadre kept stabbing our bottles, so we constantly needed to break and tend to the “wounded”.
We did (mostly) and were told that our time hack for the next movement was one hour. We completed it in just over 3.
Moving heavy stuff, through thick stuff, over wet stuff is nasty slow going. Our maps were 30 years old, and we were trying to navigate through sand dunes. Sand, if you aren’t aware, moves around a lot – on account of being sand.
Cadre were not, let’s say, impressed.
Instead of a planned rest break, we got a chance to fix our water situation, down some chow, and get our next set of points. These looked far more manageable, so the team stepped off in high spirits. Navigation was pretty straight forward, we shot a heading to a river, and just had to follow that handrail for around a kilometer. Of thorns. Chest high, blood thirsty thorns. Other than that it was great and we didn’t waver off track. Our second point point was southeast from our first, and we thankfully found a light trail that took us most of the way
From there it was a simple matter of stomping through knee high mud around half a lake to rendezvous with cadre and the other team. Turns out their route took them along the beach. Sounds like it was a nice stroll.
Still a Heavy.
We were again one team, and given a little bit of downtime to sort ourselves out. While we were checking bodies and gear, cadre were unloading flat tires, 2x4s, and chunks of fence post from a truck. It was time to build an Apparatus. If you’ve never done this before, it’s a hoot.
Your task to take whatever materials your team are given, and construct some form of cart/buggy/sled to move a crushingly heavy load. The “trick” of the exercise is that none of the pieces really work well together, so no matter how good your plan or intentions, your team is just going to have to suck it up, work together, and muscle through a plan that slowly unravels.
Somehow, our device stayed mostly together and we made pretty decent time. Eventually we were halted, the contraption was broken down, and we prepped to a litter for casualty carries to our ENDEX. We loaded up and started moving with a purpose. It was cold and getting colder, and we all new that a patch, beer, and possible taco truck were up the road waiting for us.
The team worked well in transporting personnel and gear, and in a reasonably non-terrible amount of time were back at the start point and given the order to down our rucks.
It was over.
The class had an surprising large number of first timers, but all 17 that started finished the event. It was a very solid 24 hours, but definitely an incredible experience, and great exercise in which to practice skills in near real world conditions. Cadre were fantastic, and I highly recommend you check the series out if you have interest in getting off the beaten trail.
Gear
What I brought that worked:
Nylon runners – 120cm
Any option to shift around load is welcome.
Any option to shift around load is welcome. Gorilla tape
We went through a ton of the stuff holding our litters, bottles, and cart together.
We went through a ton of the stuff holding our litters, bottles, and cart together. Headlamp with red & green light – Black Diamond Storm
Reading maps at night by white light is brutal, and certain map features (especially contour lines) are way easier to read under green light.
What I wish I brought:
A known good local map & waterproof case
I check my map constantly, and not having a case was making me itchy as mud and junk started piling up. Additionally, and this is 100% on me, I should have stopped by the park office on the way into town and grabbed a copy of the park map. Would have made using foot trails way easier.
I check my map constantly, and not having a case was making me itchy as mud and junk started piling up. Additionally, and this is 100% on me, I should have stopped by the park office on the way into town and grabbed a copy of the park map. Would have made using foot trails way easier. Personal compass – Suunto MC2
Each team had at least one compass, but I’m a control freak and would have loved my own instrument.
Each team had at least one compass, but I’m a control freak and would have loved my own instrument. Map protractor – 1:24000 scale and a hole in the middle
Same reason at the compass. This is what I normally carry in the field, and would have used it heavily at this event.
Same reason at the compass. This is what I normally carry in the field, and would have used it heavily at this event. Fixed blade knife – ESEE 6
Cutting cordage, batoning firewood, cutting off spent tape – it’s a knife, they are super useful. And this one is lime green, which makes it better.
Cutting cordage, batoning firewood, cutting off spent tape – it’s a knife, they are super useful. And this one is lime green, which makes it better. Ferrocerium fire rod
It lives on my knife, and generally makes me feel better about life
Parting thoughts
What worked well:
Small teams, accountable to ourselves, with limited training. We were given guidance early on, and forced to work out problems/confusion within the group. There wasn’t a lot of spoon feeding.
Heavy, but with a purpose. Every physically challenging element was operationally important. There were no “spitefully unpleasant” tasks. All of the hard work was indicative of real life scenarios.
What can be refined:× This page contains archived content and is no longer being updated. At the time of publication, it represented the best available science.
It has been 150 million years since South America and Africa were joined as a single continent, but even the ocean dividing them today can’t separate them completely from each other. This photo-like satellite image from June 1, 2010, shows their modern connection: Saharan dust ferried across the Atlantic on easterly winds.
The image has been stitched together from a series of images collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite during successive orbits. Terra orbits from pole to pole. It returns to the same latitude roughly every 90 minutes, progressing westward with each orbit. Thus, the right side of this image was captured before the left side; gray areas show gaps between satellite overpasses.
The long-distance connection between these two former neighbors may seem tenuous, but in fact, it’s tremendously important. Each year, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere winter, storms like the one pictured here deliver about 40 million tons of dust from the Sahara to the Amazon River Basin. The minerals in the dust replenish nutrients in rainforest soils, which are continually depleted by drenching, tropical rains. From more than 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) away, the barren Sahara nourishes the lush vegetation of the Amazon.
The dust plume approaches the northeast coast of South America in this image, and then it arcs northward, hinting at the seasonal shift in the trajectory of Saharan dust transport. As the seasons change, the primary path of dust storms shifts northward, reaching the Caribbean in the spring and the Southeast United States in the summer.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.AIFF Media Team
NEW DELHI: Russia U-18 hammered India’s U-17 World Cup squad 8-0 in a Group B match of the Valentin Granatkin Memorial Cup being played in St. Petersburg, Russia on Sunday night (January 8, 016).
The result could have been worse had not Russia missed a penalty just before the half-time. The hosts led lead 5-0 at the interval.
The first goal came as early as the 2nd minute when Glushkov headed in the first corner of the match. It wasn’t the start which the Indians were looking for.
The second goal came off another corner in the 12th minute – this time Goalkeeper Dheeraj Singh fumbling to collect it and it was gleefully tapped in by Denisov.
Glushenkov made it 3-0 in the 21t minute. He followed up a long ball played behind the defence, beat his marker for speed and lobbed it over Dheeraj.
Rudenko made it 4-0 in the 25th minute and Gluskenov scored his second in the 31st to make it 5-0. Following a cross from the left, he trapped in between the two defenders and made space with a deft feint to blast it in.
Russia scored the sixth goal immediately after the changeover when Tsypchenko tapped it in after dribbling past Boris Singh.
It was 7-0 in the 67th minute -- this time Tsypchenko heading in a corner.
With nine substitutions being allowed in the match, Coach Nicolai Adam brought in as many as six substitutions but they failed to make any impact. Late in the second half, India did have a shy at the rival goal but first, Sanjeev’s shot sailed wide and then Komal’s shot went straight to the rival Goalkeeper.
Latchevic completed the rout in added time when he made no mistake to slot in from the penalty spot.
India next play Belarus U-18 Team on Tuesday (January 10).
Posted on : Monday January 09, 2017Poudre High School senior Emily Tashea joins a protest against the current standardized testing in Denver, CO March 7, 2015.
In 2010, Diane Ravitch, an activist for the most militantly anti-reform wing of the teachers-union movement, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed proposing that Republicans use their newfound control of the House of Representatives to roll back the Obama administration’s education reforms. Since then, the union backlash against the Obama administration’s agenda has gained force. Yesterday, it manifested itself in a Senate vote in which Republicans and the unions worked in more open cooperation – against the Obama administration and civil-rights groups allied with it – than at any time in the past.
You should read Libby Nelson’s terrific |
women are the negative counterpart to men, they corrupt male perfection through witchcraft and must be destroyed.
Although authors give many examples of male witchery in the second part of the handbook, those witchcraft trials that are independently confirmed and that were led by Kramer himself are related to persecution of women almost exclusively. They took place in Ravensburg near Constance (1484) and Innsbruck (since 1485). According to Brauner, trial records confirm that Kramer believed that women are by nature corrupt and evil. His position was in harmony with the scholastic theory at the time. In contrast, Sprenger never conducted a witch trial though he was consulted in a few cases. Kramer and Sprenger use a metaphor of a world turned upside down by women of which concubines are the most wicked, followed by midwives and then by wives who dominate their husbands. Authors warn of imminent arrival of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible and that men risk bewitchment that leads to impotence and sensation of castration. Brauner explains authors' prescription on how a woman can avoid becoming a witch:
According to the Malleus, the only way a woman can avoid succumbing to her passions – and becoming a witch – is to embrace a life of devout chastity in a religious retreat. But the monastic life is reserved to the spiritually gifted few. Therefore, most women are doomed to become witches, who cannot be redeemed; and the only recourse open to the authorities is to ferret out and exterminate all witches.
Elaborated concept of witchcraft [ edit ]
Strixology in the Malleus Maleficarum is characterized by a very specific conception of what a witch is, one that differs dramatically from earlier times. The word used, malefica, carries an explicit condemnation absent in other words referring to women with supernatural powers. The conception of witches and of magic by extension is one of evil. It differs from earlier conceptions of witchcraft that were much more generalized. This is the point in history where "witchcraft constituted an independent antireligion". The witch lost her powerful position vis-a-vis the deities; the ability to force the deities comply with her wishes was replaced by a total subordination to the devil. In short, "[t]he witch became Satan's puppet."[109] This conception of witches was "part of a conception of magic that is termed by scholars as 'Satanism' or 'diabolism'". In this conception, a witch was a member of "a malevolent society presided over by Satan himself and dedicated to the infliction of malevolent acts of sorcery (maleficia) on others."
According to Mackay, this concept of sorcery is characterized by the conviction that those guilty engage in six activities:
A pact entered into with the Devil (and concomitant apostasy from Christianity), Sexual relations with the Devil, Aerial flight for the purpose of attending; An assembly presided over by Satan himself (at which initiates entered into the pact, and incest and promiscuous sex were engaged in by the attendees), The practice of maleficent magic, The slaughter of babies.
Demonology [ edit ]
In the Malleus demons are the ones who tempt humans to sorcery and are the main figures in the witches' vows. They interact with witches, usually sexually. The book claims that it is normal for all witches "to perform filthy carnal acts with demons." This is a major part of human-demon interaction and demons do it "not for the sake of pleasure, but for the sake of corrupting." It is worth noting that not all demons do such things. The book claims that "the nobility of their nature causes certain demons to balk at committing certain actions and filthy deeds." Though the work never gives a list of names or types of demons, like some demonological texts or spellbooks of the era, such as the Liber Juratus, it does indicate different types of demons. For example, it devotes large sections to incubi and succubi and questions regarding their roles in pregnancies, the submission of witches to incubi, and protections against them.
Controversies [ edit ]
Approbation and authorship [ edit ]
Joseph Hansen, a historian who was appalled by the witch-craze and those who carried it out, proposed that coauthorship by Sprenger was a falsehood presented by Institoris (Kramer) and that approbation is partially a forgery. This had never been proposed before until Joseph Hansen in the nineteenth century.
Christopher Mackay, author of the modern academic translation of the Malleus into English offers rebuttals to arguments of proponents of this theory and in an interview gives an accessible summary:
The argument was made in the nineteenth century by a scholar hostile to what the Malleus stood for that the approbation was a forgery by Institoris and that Sprenger had nothing to do with the composition. The evidence for this is in my view very tenuous (and the main argument is clearly invalid). Nonetheless, once the argument was put forward, it took on a life of its own, and people continue to advance arguments in favor of the idea that Sprenger's involvement was a falsification perpetrated by Institoris, despite the fact that this argument was vitiated from the start.[116]
In addition, Mackay points out that allegations raised in support of this theory that supposedly two of the signatories had not in fact signed the approbation are unsubstantiated.
A similar response is offered by the author of the first translation of the Malleus into English Montague Summers. In his introduction, he ignores completely the theory that joint authorship or approbation could be a mystification. Nonetheless, he mentions briefly that it was questioned whether Kramer or Sprenger contributed more to the work. He comments that "in the case of such a close collaboration any such inquiry seems singularly superfluous and nugatory".[h]
Broedel, a historian who writes that it is likely that Sprenger's contribution was minimal, nonetheless says that "Sprenger certainly wrote the Apologia auctoris which prefaces the Malleus and agreed to be a coauthor.
Encyclopædia Britannica and The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca ignore completely Hansen's theory and list Sprenger and Kramer as co-authors.[118]
Wolfgang Behringer argues that Sprenger's name was only added as an author beginning in 1519, thirty-three years after the book was first published and decades after Sprenger's own death.[24] One of Sprenger's friends who was still alive denounced the addition of Sprenger's name as a forgery, stating that Sprenger had nothing to do with the book.[25] Many historians have also pointed out that Sprenger's actual views in his confirmed writings are often the opposite of the views in the Malleus, and Sprenger was unlikely to have been a colleague of Kramer since Sprenger in fact banned Kramer from preaching and entering Dominican convents within his jurisdiction, and spoke out against him on many occasions.[120]
The alleged approval from the theologians at Cologne, which Kramer included in the Malleus with a list of names of theologians who he claimed approved the book, has also been questioned by many historians, since in 1490 the clergy at Cologne condemned the book and at least two of the clergy listed by Kramer, Thomas de Scotia and Johann von Wörde, publicly denied having approved the Malleus.[121][122]
Jacob Sprenger's name was added as an author beginning in 1519, 33 years after the book's first publication and 24 years after Sprenger's death.[24]
Jenny Gibbons, a Neo-Pagan and a historian, writes: "Actually the Inquisition immediately rejected the legal procedures Kramer recommended and censured the inquisitor himself just a few years after the Malleus was published. Secular courts, not inquisitorial ones, resorted to the Malleus".[38]
The preface also includes an allegedly unanimous approbation from the University of Cologne's Faculty of Theology. Nevertheless, many historians have argued that it is well established by sources outside the Malleus that the university's theology faculty condemned the book for unethical procedures and for contradicting Catholic theology on a number of important points : "just for good measure Institoris forged a document granting their apparently unanimous approbation."[36]
Authors' whereabouts and circumstances [ edit ]
Preceding publication [ edit ]
In 1484 Heinrich Kramer had made one of the first attempts at prosecuting alleged witches in the Tyrol region. It was not a success and he was asked to leave the city of Innsbruck. According to Diarmaid MacCulloch, writing the book was Kramer's act of self-justification and revenge. Ankarloo and Clark claim that Kramer's purpose in writing the book was to explain his own views on witchcraft, systematically refute arguments claiming that witchcraft does not exist, discredit those who expressed skepticism about its reality, claim that those who practiced witchcraft were more often women than men, and to convince magistrates to use Kramer's recommended procedures for finding and convicting witches.
Kramer wrote the Malleus following his expulsion from Innsbruck by the local bishop, due to charges of illegal behavior against Kramer himself, and because of Kramer's obsession with the sexual habits of one of the accused, Helena Scheuberin, which led the other tribunal members to suspend the trial.[123]
Kramer received a papal bull, Summis desiderantes affectibus, in 1484. It directed Bishop of Strasburg (then Albert of Palatinate-Mosbach) to accept the authority of Heinrich Kramer as an Inquisitor, although the motivation of the papal bull was likely political.[124] The Malleus Maleficarum was finished in 1486 and the papal bull was included as part of its preface, implying papal approval for the work.[125] However, the Malleus Maleficarum received an official condemnation by the Church three years later, and Kramer's claims of approval are seen by modern scholars as misleading.[i][citation needed]
Kramer was intensely writing and preaching until his death in Bohemia in 1505. He was asked by Nuremberg council to provide expert consultation on the procedure of witch trial in 1491. His prestige was not fading. In 1495 he was summoned by the Master General of the Order, Joaquin de Torres, O.P. to Venice and gave very popular public lectures and disputations. They were worthy of presence and patronage of Patriarch of Venice. He also wrote treatises Several Discourses and Various Sermons upon the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist (Nuremberg, 1496); A Tract Confuting the Errors of Master Antonio degli Roselli (Venice, 1499); followed by The Shield of Defence of the Holy Roman Church Against the Picards and Waldenses which were quoted by many authors. He was appointed as papal nuncio and his assignment as inquisitor was changed to Bohemia and Moravia by Pope Alexander VI in 1500.
Sprenger continued his work as Inquisitor Extraordinary for the Provinces of Mainz, Trèves and Cologne. Later, he was elected Provincial Superior of the whole German Province (in 1488). He had enormous responsibilities. He received a letter from Pope Alexander VI praising his enthusiasm and energy in 1495.
Summers observes that 17th century "Dominican chroniclers, such as Quétif and Échard, number Kramer and Sprenger among the glories and heroes of their Order".
Popularity and influence [ edit ]
Gender-specific theory developed in the Malleus Maleficarum laid the foundations for widespread consensus in early modern Germany on the evil nature of women as witches. Later works on witchcraft have not agreed entirely with the Malleus but none of them challenged the view that women were more inclined to be witches than men. It was perceived as intuitive and all-accepted so that very few authors saw the need to explain why women are witches. Those who did, attributed female witchery to the weakness of body and mind (the old medieval explanation) and a few to female sexuality.
Some authors argue that the book's publication was not as influential as earlier authors believed.[131][133] According to MacCulloch, the Malleus Maleficarum was one of several key factors contributing to the witch craze, along with popular superstition, and tensions created by the Reformation.[32] However, according to Encyclopædia Britannica:
“ The Malleus went through 28 editions between 1486 and 1600 and was accepted by Roman Catholics and Protestants alike as an authoritative source of information concerning Satanism and as a guide to Christian defense [against acts of Satan]. ” — Encyclopædia Britannica
Factors stimulating widespread use [ edit ]
Between 1487 and 1520, twenty editions of the Malleus Maleficarum were published, and another sixteen between 1574 and 1669.[134] The Malleus Maleficarum was able to spread throughout Europe rapidly in the late 15th and at the beginning of the 16th century due to the innovation of the printing press in the middle of the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg. The invention of printing some thirty years before the first publication of the Malleus Maleficarum instigated the fervor of witch hunting, and, in the words of Russell, "the swift propagation of the witch hysteria by the press was the first evidence that Gutenberg had not liberated man from original sin."[135]
The late 15th century was also a period of religious turmoil. The Malleus Maleficarum and the witch craze that ensued took advantage of the increasing intolerance of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe, where the Protestant and Catholic camps respectively, pitted against one another, each zealously strove to maintain what they each deemed to be the purity of faith. The Catholic Counter-Reformation would eventually even out this religious turmoil, but until then both the Catholics and Protestants constantly battled for what they believed was right.
Translations [ edit ]
The Latin book was firstly translated by J. W. R. Schmidt [de] into German in 1906; an expanded edition of three volumes was published in 1923. Montague Summers was responsible for the first English translation in 1928.
Year Target language Description 2009 English The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, trans. by Christopher S. Mackay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 2007 English The Malleus Maleficarum, ed. and trans. by P.G. Maxwell-Stuart (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007) (partial translation, this work excludes or summarizes crucial sections ) 2006 English Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, ed. and trans. by Christopher S. Mackay, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) (edition in vol. 1 and translation in vol. 2) 2000 German Der Hexenhammer: Malleus Maleficarum, trans. by Günter Jerouschek, Wolfgang Behringer, Werner Tschacher 1928[j] English Malleus Maleficarum - The Witch Hammer, J. Sprenger, H. Kramer, trans. by Montague Summers 1923[k] German Der Hexenhammer von Jakob Sprenger und Heinrich Institoris, trans. by Johann Wilhelm Richard Schmidt (available online 1923 edition)
Some translations ignore the most brutal third section and may be misleading to the reader. For instance, sections one and three have never been translated into Polish.[citation needed]
See also [ edit ]
General
People
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ Alternative translations: The Witch Hammer, Hammer for Sorceresses, Hammer Against Witches, Hammer For Witches ^ Malleus was ubiquitous, but at the end of the 16th century its role as a theoretical authority was superseded by Demonolatry by witch-hunter Magical Investigations by Martin del Rio. Amongst the authors on witchcraft it had an ultimate authority and even 17th century " Dominican chroniclers, such as Quétif and Échard, number Kramer and Sprenger among the glories and heroes of their Order ". Thewas ubiquitous, but at the end of the 16th century its role as a theoretical authority was superseded byby witch-hunter Nicholas Rémy andby Jesuit ^ not a sacrament, but sacramental ^ According to Summers, the Malleus "lay on the bench of every judge, on the desk of every magistrate". ^ Additional note: "Such thinking was also mirrored in the groundbreaking work of the German scholars Wilhelm Gottfried Soldan (1803-1869) and Joseph Hansen (1862-1943) both of whom blamed witchhunts on the overweening power of the Roman Catholic Church and saw the demise of witch trials as a natural corollary of the progress of reason and science." ^ [48] Additional note: "But although Catholics have been fed comforting errors by overeager apologists about the Church's part in persecuting witches, we must face our own tragic past. Fellow Catholics, to whom we are forever bound in the communion of saints, did sin grievously against people accused of witchcraft. If our historical memory can be truly purified, then the smoke from the Burning Times can finally disperse." ^ via moderna, he was "one of Sprenger's most distinguished colleagues at Cologne, and the man whose name appears first on the faculty endorsement of the Malleus, [he] even went so far as to lead an abortive drive to obtain beatification for Aristotle." Broedel 2003, p. 93: He was one of the advocates of Aristotelian thought and opponents of, he was "one of Sprenger's most distinguished colleagues at Cologne, and the man whose name appears first on the faculty endorsement of the, [he] even went so far as to lead an abortive drive to obtain beatification for Aristotle." ^ According to Summers, "It has been asked whether Kramer or Sprenger was principally responsible for the Malleus, but in the case of so close a collaboration any such inquiry seems singularly superfluous and nugatory." ^ Summis desiderantes affectibus. See ^ second version; first was published in 1928 ^ expanded edition; first was published in 1906
Citations [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]
Secondary sources [ edit ] Mackay, Christopher S. (2009). The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum (1 volume). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-53982-4. (in English)
Mackay, Christopher S. (2006). Malleus Maleficarum (2 volumes). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85977-8. (in Latin) (in English)
Broedel, Hans Peter (2003). The Malleus Maleficarum and the Construction of Witchcraft: Theology and Popular Belief. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719064418.
Summers, Montague (2012). The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. Courier Corporation.
Halsall, Paul, ed. (1996). "Witchcraft Documents [15th Century]". Internet Medieval Sourcebook. Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies. Tertiary sources [ edit ] Hayes, Stephen (1995). "Christian responses to witchcraft and sorcery". Missionalia. 23 (3).
Guiley, Rosemary (2008). The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca. Checkmark Books.
Levack, Brian P. (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America. Oxford University Press.
Levack, Brian P. (2006). The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe. Pearson Education Limited. ISBN 0-5824-1901-8.
"Malleus maleficarum". Encyclopædia Britannica.
"Witchcraft". Encyclopædia Britannica.
Burns, William (2003). Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia. Greenwood. ISBN 0-3133-2142-6.
Jolly, Karen; Peters, Edward; Raudvere, Catharina (2001). Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 3: The Middle Ages (History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe). Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 0-4858-9103-4.
Brauner, Sigrid (2001). Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-5584-9297-6.
Ankarloo, Bengt; Clark, Stuart, eds. (2002). Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 3: The Middle Ages. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1786-1.
Ankarloo, Bengt; Clark, Stuart, eds. (2002). Witchcraft and Magic in Europe Volume 4. The Period of the Witch Trials. The Athlone Press London. ISBN 0-485-89104-2.
Bailey, Michael D. (2003). Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-02226-4.
Henningsen, Gustav (1980). The Witches' Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition. University of Nevada Press.
Kieckhefer, Richard (2000). Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press.
Maxwell-Stewart, P. G. (2001). Witchcraft in Europe and the New World. Palgrave.
Pavlac, Brian (2009). Witch Hunts in the Western World: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9780313348747.
Trevor-Roper, H. R. (1969). The European Witch-Craze: of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays. Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-131416-1.
Thomas, Keith (1971). Religion and the Decline of Magic – Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-013744-6.
Robbins, Rossell Hope (1959). The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. Peter Nevill.
Further reading [ edit ]
Flint, Valerie. The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ. 1991
. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ. 1991 Hamilton, Alastair (May 2007). "Review of Malleus Maleficarum edited and translated by Christopher S. Mackay and two other books". Heythrop Journal. 48 (3): 477–479. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2265.2007.00325_12.x.
(payment required)
(payment required) Institoris, Heinrich; Jakob Sprenger (1520). Malleus maleficarum, maleficas, & earum haeresim, ut phramea potentissima conterens. Excudebat Ioannes Gymnicus.Use of BoNT-A in different types of focal dystonias has been well studied and has proven to be very effective. Botulinum toxin injection is the treatment of choice for cervical dystonia (spasmodic torticollis). [14, 15, 87]. A Cochrane review concluded that a single injection of BoNT-B was effective and safe for treating cervical dystonia. [88] This injection benefits the highest percentage of patients in the shortest time and has been proven effective in many double-blind, placebo-controlled trials.
BoNT has fewer side effects than do other pharmacologic treatments. The efficacy and safety of BoNT injections for the treatment of certain movement disorders, including blepharospasm, hemifacial spasm, oromandibular dystonia, cervical dystonia, focal limb dystonias, laryngeal dystonia, tics, and essential tremor is ongoing. [89]
In a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial by Greene and colleagues, 55 patients who previously had failed to find relief in 2 trials of medication received either BoNT or placebo in a double-blinded fashion and were tracked for 12 weeks. [90] Four weeks of open phase then followed when all patients received BoNT. By 6 weeks, 61% of patients showed improvement in head posture, and 39.5% reported reduction of pain. Both measures significantly improved (P<.05) compared to controls. During the open phase, patients who previously received placebo exhibited a similar response. Overall, 74% of patients improved by the end of the study.
A study by Brans and colleagues showed that in 64 patients with cervical dystonia, 84% reported long-term benefits in terms of impairment, disability, handicap, and quality of life (QOL). [91] Mezaki et all described their experience with a Japanese type A toxin for the treatment of cervical and axial dystonias. [92] Injections were given repeatedly at intervals of 28-30 days to carefully chosen muscles with increased activities, with a maximum dose per session of 300 units. The maximum improvements in subjective and objective ratings were obtained only after repeated injections.
Procedure
Treatment dosages of BoNT-A in the United States have been reported to range from 100-300 U per patient. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, Poewe and colleagues demonstrated that magnitude and duration of improvement were greatest after injections of 1000 U of Dysport, but the injections caused significantly more adverse effects. [93] The researchers recommended a lower starting dose of 500 U of Dysport (1 U of BoNT-A = 3 U of Dysport). One hundred U of toxin per mL of preservative-free normal saline are commonly used.
Injections are performed with a Teflon-coated, 24-gauge needle connected to an electromyographic (EMG) machine. Those muscles with highest clinical and EMG activity are injected. Usually, 2-4 separate muscles are injected in 1 session and, in larger muscles, 2-4 sites per muscle are injected.
No general consensus exists among users of BoNT regarding the need for EMG guidance while injecting the compound for cervical dystonia. EMG guidance, however, is helpful, particularly in obese patients whose neck muscles cannot adequately be palpated.
Identifying the specific muscles involved in cervical dystonia prior to the injection is important. Those most commonly injected are the sternocleidomastoid, trapezius, splenius capitis, and levator scapulae muscles. An EMG study of 100 patients found that 2 or 3 muscles commonly are abnormal. Eighty-nine percent of patients with rotating torticollis had involvement of the ipsilateral splenius capitis and contralateral sternocleidomastoid with or without the additional involvement of the contralateral splenius capitis. Patients with laterocollis had ipsilateral sternocleidomastoid, splenius capitis, and trapezius involvement, while retrocollis was produced by bilateral splenius capitis activity.
Beneficial effect from toxin injection usually is apparent in 7-10 days. Maximum response from the toxin is reached in approximately 4-6 weeks and lasts for an average of 12 weeks. Injections usually are repeated every 3-4 months.
Complications
Neck weakness, dysphagia, and local pain at the injection site are the most commonly reported side effects. Other adverse effects (eg, local hematoma, generalized fatigue, lethargy, dizziness, dry mouth, dysphonia, flulike syndrome, pain in neighboring muscles) also have been reported.
Most studies have reported side effects in 20-30% of patients per treatment cycle. The incidence of adverse effects varies based on the dosage used (ie, the higher the dose, the more frequent the adverse effects); however, Jankovic and Schwartz reported that incidence of complications was not related to the total dose of BoNT used. [94] Women and patients who received injections into the sternocleidomastoid muscles had significantly higher rates of complications.
Dysphagia has been the most prevalent significant complication and most probably is related to diffusion of the toxin into nearby pharyngeal muscles. In the study by Comella and colleagues, 33% of patients receiving their first dose of botulinum toxin experienced dysphagia. [95] This complication most commonly occurs with injections of the sternocleidomastoid and can be reduced significantly when the dose of toxin administered is 100 U or less.(In which the 2017 season gets an auspicious start)
The Thorns started the new season with an attractive win over the Orlando Pride, the league started the new season with new media partners, and the Riveters started the new season with a display worthy of the team’s ambitions.
The opening statement
The Thorns won 2-0, scoring a goal in each half. The score hints at a level of dominance that was not there for much of the match. Especially in the first half, the Thorns made some silly errors in the back. Orlando lacked the quality to punish these mistakes.
Mallory Weber got the game off to a quick start, attacking the Pride box and forcing a save within seconds of the whistle. Orlando never could cope with Weber’s quickness as she got behind the defense several times. Her cross just missed by Nadim was a work of art. When Hayley Raso replaced Weber after an hour, she enjoyed the same success. Ultimately however, it was not speed that killed Orlando but wile; nobody mistakes Christine Sinclair for a rabbit these days.
The first goal was a clear penalty for a handball on Alanna Kennedy as she tried to deal with Sinclair on the edge of the Orlando six-yard box. Nadim buried the PK. But some scary moments occurred before Portland got the lead.
In the tenth minute, a poor touch by Adrianna Franch gifted Orlando’s main striker an open shot at the empty net. Somehow Jasmyne Spencer missed.
Five minutes later, Emily Sonnett had a moment of insanity and rolled a slow pass across the Thorns box about 12 yards from goal. Franch did well to save the resulting Spencer shot.
In the 42nd minute, another adventure in dribbling by Franch led to a turnover just outside the box. Franch fouled Chioma Ubogagu to prevent the shot and was fortunate not to be carded or sent off.
Aside from these heart-in-throat moments, the team also struggled to move the ball out of the back on more routine plays. The Thorns were fortunate to host Orlando sans Marta and Morgan – a high press by those two would have surely resulted in goals. The Thorns were playing a 3-6-1 formation with Allie Long as the middle centerback. It was a variation of the defense used versus the USWNT U-23’s in preseason. In that preseason match Long rotated with Henry dynamically throughout the game. It was not a success. Parsons apparently simplified things for the season opener.
In the first half, the Thorns favored their left side moving the ball forward. Klingenberg and Weber had 18 meaningful touches combined, while Boureille and Nadim had only seven on the right. The team’s best chances also come from Klingenberg, who missed with a good look in the 20th, and Weber who had multiple chances saved.
The closing argument
The second half started much as the first ended, except the attacking side tended more to the Thorns right. Klingenberg with Weber / Raso had 14 meaningful touches while Boureille with Nadim / Morris had nineteen. Incidentally, Orlando favored their right side heavily for the entire 90 minutes.
The Thorns also were much steadier in the back in the second half. I have a feeling that Parsons was not kind to Sonnett and Franch in the locker room.
In the 68th minute, the game broke open. On her very first foray to the halfway line in the entire match, Allie Long intercepted a pass, shrugged off a would-be tackler and slotted a perfect pass to Christine Sinclair for the simple finish.
Orlando tried to get back in the game after conceding the second but this just left them more exposed. Long netted the ball twice in the next 15 minutes on passes from Sinclair, but was offside both times. And she had a near miss on a third chance. Raso had a couple more looks and Meg Morris had one.
Both of Long’s offside calls were correct. Danielle Chesky’s crew did a good job officiating with only one dubious foul (for Orlando) called, one (on Long) not called, and one card not given to Franch.
Player ratings
The league announced a partnership with OPTA for statistics on the matches this year and this scribe was thrilled. No more stepping through the match one minute at a time counting touches. Ha! Player-level game stats are either not included in NWSL’s package, or are not offered to the general public. So the old way remains the only way. But enough whining – here are the results:
Four Thorns had essentially perfect outings with zero negative meaningful touches: Menges (9:0), Sinclair (17:0), Long (19:0), and Henry (20:0). Raso (7:0) and Morris (5:0) were also flawless, albeit for only a third of the match. Both Raso and Morris get a ding for touches they did not make – it was them and not Long who should have been on the end of those Sinclair feeds. Presumably the more experienced forwards would be better at staying onside. But neither of them was in the neighborhood of goal on those plays.
Two side notes: Even though it was a fairly warm day, Menges did not roll her sleeves up. “Sun’s out, guns out”, Emily. In a preseason interview, Allie was asked if she was going to put her husband’s name on her kit. She replied, “Wait and see.” Well we waited and we saw – it’s Long.
There are strong arguments for Sinclair as WOTM, given her goal and “assist” for the penalty. Also Allie Long for her assist, three near-goals, and general great defense. But my WOTM was Amandine Henry. Playing central midfield she spent ninety minutes breaking up Orlando attacks and springing Portland runners. It’s hard to fathom playing such a key role for so long with no mistakes.
Celeste Boureille put in a fine shift (12:3), especially in the second half. Mallory Weber had a great first half (10:1), but flagged in the second with only one touch each way. Nadia Nadim had her usual decent outing (9:3) as did Lindsey Horan (10:3). Mana Shim (3:2) was energetic and had a very good chance on goal.
That leaves Emily Sonnett (5:3) who had a rough first half but a better second. She had many more touches than I recorded, most of them very short passes back and forth with Long and Menges, but not many passes that started an attack.
And finally, we have AD Franch (21:4). She made some excellent saves. Her goal kicks and punts were long and accurate with only one miss all game. But the four bad touches included three doozies that a better opponent could have netted. Call me skeptical, but we didn’t see these mistakes last year with Betos, or in the Houston preseason match with Eckerstrom. Coach Angerer has some work to do.
Mark Parsons’ initial genius rating will need to wait for a better test. Orlando is clearly weak beer without Marta and Morgan – their midfield was passive and their strikers were poor. Also agitating against a genius rating is Parsons’ handling of Allie Long. I simply do not understand the desire to put Long in the back line. Look at when the game opened up in the Thorns favor – it was the exact instant that Allie Long crossed the midfield line for the first time. We scored one goal and nearly had three more. Why not play that way from the first minute? Especially when you have Henry to play the defensive midfield. Was he trying to lull Orlando to sleep and then pounce? Did he owe Henry an offensive outing? Is he punishing Long? Does he have a crush on Jill Ellis?
The genius test will not have long to wait – the Thorns go to Raleigh to face the Western New York Flash Carolina Courage and Paul Riley. A result there will be a true statement to the league about the Thorns intentions for 2017. Get three points and there will be a picture of a famous smart person in this space next week.
League news
There was a lot of news from the league recently, nearly all good. First was the announced participation by A+E Networks which includes the season-long Game of the Week on Lifetime, digital coverage, and an undisclosed payment/investment in the league. For the first televised match, the quality was significantly improved over Fox Sports last year:
The match and season was heavily promoted on A+E affiliated networks
The picture quality on Lifetime is outstanding, at least comparable to FIFA World Cup broadcasts
The announcing crew was professional, well-prepared, analytical yet occasionally light-hearted. The exception was the sideline guy, who contributed little. The coach interviews were strangely short and formulaic
The surprise (to me, at least) appearance of Julie Foudy was welcomed. She is so knowledgeable and relatable
The TV rating was 82k for the match. For reference, last year’s home opener versus Orlando had 120,000 views on YouTube while the home closer against the Flash had only 11,000.
In other broadcast news, Verizon paid a “significant” licensing fee to the league to carry the non-TV games on their funky go90 app. For the first week, this was an interesting user experience:
You need the latest version of the app – the bloatware version that may have come with your phone doesn’t work
With a good smartphone and either an HDMI adapter or Chromecast dongle, the feed produced an excellent quality picture when pushed to a television
Go90 is mobile only. With only a computer, live games are not available to US |
. Freedom Works ran a summer campaign helping local activists demand their members of Congress hold town hall meetings.
J. D. Winteregg, co-founder of the Ohio Accountability Project, said the poll reflects the mood of the people he talks in the district.
Winteregg said he has heard from conservatives contacting the project and from elsewhere in the district that Boehner is disconnected from the local mood.
It would not surprise him if there were a primary challenge to the speaker, he said.
The schoolteacher said he, along with local Tea Party activists, held an Aug. 27 “Defund Obamacare” rally in front of the speaker’s Troy office with a few hundred people showing up. “As far as I know, no one from Boehner’s office came out to talk to us.”
The Troy, Ohio resident said he was surprised to see support for military action in support of the Syrian rebels at 20 percent. “It seems a little high to me.”
There is little appetite in the district for the president’s plan to get involved in Syria, he said. “I have not met one person who is in favor of it, I have a buddy, who was thinking about it, but now he is against it.”
Winteregg said Boehner’s quick and full support for the president’s plans in Syria is no longer a surprise. “It’s just another Obama bailout.”
A Capitol Hill staffer said the polls numbers do not look good for the speaker.
The staffer said there are rumors in Washington that Boehner may retire at the end of this congressional session.
“Boehner’s days on Capitol Hill are numbered,” the staffer said. “It’s either his choice or the voters. Regardless, conservatives can no longer be ignored.”
Professor Daniel R. Birdsong, who teaches political science at The University of Dayton, said GOP voters might welcome a primary challenge to Boehner, not because they want him out of office, but maybe to send him a message.
Birdsong said as the Speaker of the House, Boehner is pulled towards national issues and a more national perspective. “They may think he is preoccupied with other things, so this would be a way to pull him back into the district.”Please enable Javascript to watch this video
MICHIGAN -- The Federal Aviation Administration last month approved requests from the Michigan State Police to be the first agency in the country to be authorized to fly drones statewide.
MSP, under approval of the FAA, began training flights of the unmanned aircraft systems in Feb. 2014 at the agency's Lansing training academy. Authorization for field use began on Feb. 25 this year, according to Sgt. Matt Rogers, tactical flight officer with MSP's aviation section.
“We are in that phase right now where we are going to determine what this could be used for--for law enforcement purposes--and where we’re going to benefit from its use," Sgt. Rogers told FOX 17.
The state's first and only drone currently in operation was used in its first mission last week following a house fire in Georgetown Township. Rogers said the technology offered an opportunity to work with a local municipality to assist in providing aerial photography of the fire damage.
The camera on the Aeryon SkyRanger drone the state purchased through a grant is capable of capturing photo, video and infrared images. The device is controlled by a two-man team on the ground. One person pilots the drone using the touch pad controller, while another acts as a safety observer.
MSP policy requires the drone be flown below 400 feet in "Class G" airspace and it must always be within sight of the crew.
Rogers said there is a wide possibility of uses for the drone, from aiding in search and rescues to assisting in a barricaded gunman type situation, or helping with traffic crash reconstructions.
The massive pile-up on I-94 that spanned two counties in January is a prime example of when having aerial photos would've proven immensely helpful had the state been approved then for drone use, Rogers said. "We could've flown it over to document all those vehicles and what their position is, and we can put all these pictures together into a mosaic where you can print off that entire crash scene."
“With this new technolo, there’s a lot of unknowns just yet on how all this policy is going to be written, so we’re very fortunate to be the first state agency in the country to have a statewide operations area.”A team at the University of Tokyo has developed a pair of "glasses" aimed to aid dieters by making food appear up to 50 percent larger than it really is. The video eyewear processes the image to enlarge the food's appearance while maintaining the original size of the hand and surroundings. The idea is that tricking the wearer into believing that they've eaten more than they really have will give them a greater feeling of "fullness."
The stats appear to bear this out, at least slightly: according to the Yomiuri Shinbun, a test group of 12 men and women ate 9.3 percent less cookies than normal when shown the 50 percent enlarged image, but 15 percent more when the glasses were set to reduce the cookies' size by 33 percent. Japan isn't a nation known for having an obesity problem, but perhaps that's outweighed by a love of unique technology.NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 extrasolar planets.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, these planets range in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to giants larger than Jupiter. All of them are closer to their host star than Venus is to our Sun.
Fifteen planets are between Earth and Neptune in size. Further observations should help determine which are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune.
“Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky,” said Dr. Doug Hudgins, a scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits.”
Each of the newly confirmed planetary systems was called from Kepler-23 to Kepler-33.
“Confirming that the small decrease in the star’s brightness is due to a planet requires additional observations and time-consuming analysis,” said Dr. Eric Ford, a lead author on the paper confirming Kepler-23 and Kepler-24, and an Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Florida. “We verified these planets using new techniques that dramatically accelerated their discovery.”
The paper describing Kepler-23 and Kepler-24 will be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Kepler-25, Kepler-27, Kepler-30, Kepler-31 and Kepler-33 contain a pair of planets where the inner planet orbits the star twice during each orbit of the outer planet, while Kepler-23, Kepler-24, Kepler-28 and Kepler-32 contain a pairing where the outer planet circles the star twice for every three times the inner planet orbits its star.
The confirmation of four planetary systems Kepler-25, Kepler-26, Kepler-27, and Kepler-28, containing eight planets and one additional planet candidate, will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“By precisely timing when each planet transits its star, Kepler detected the gravitational tug of the planets on each other, clinching the case for 10 of the newly announced planetary systems,” said Dr. Daniel Fabrycky, Hubble Fellow at the University of California and a lead author on the paper confirming Kepler-29, 30, 31 and 32.
The paper on the discovery of Kepler-29, 30, 31 and 32 planetary systems will appear in the Astrophysical Journal.
Kepler-33 hosts five transiting planets with periods ranging from 5.67 to 41 days. All of the planets are closer to their star than any planet is to our Sun.
“The approach used to verify the Kepler-33 planets shows the overall reliability is quite high,” said Dr. Jack Lissauer, a lead author on the paper on Kepler-33 and a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. “This is a validation by multiplicity.”
The confirmation of Kepler-33 will appear in the Astrophysical Journal.Ellen Pao will appeal the result of a high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit she lost against a Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
Earlier this year, Pao lost all four claims in her lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, where she was a junior investing partner. She had claimed gender discrimination after she was passed over for senior partner, but a jury sided with the firm, finding that it did not engage in retaliation or discrimination.
Pao — who is now chief executive of Reddit — filed a claim in May arguing that the $972,814.50 she owes in legal fees to the firm is "grossly excessive and unreasonable."
Her decision to appeal, which was reported Monday by Reuters and other media outlets, appears to take a previous offer by Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers to wave the legal fees "should Ellen Pao choose to bring this legal matter to a close."Golden Retrievers are known to be one of the most common family dogs in the world. They tend to be social, intelligent and loyal. Originally they were bred in the Scottish highlands to retrieve game for hunters. There are really no tasks that a Golden can’t do, other than be a guard dog. In the last century multiple standards have been created by various kennel clubs. The most well known are the American and English Golden Retriever. They are still considered the same breed, but certain kennel clubs have a tendency to prefer one color over another as well as other physical attributes.
The American Golden Retriever
First recognized by AKC (American Kennel Club) in 1925. The trademark of this sporting breed is of course it’s golden color. The color ranges from light (cream) to dark golden (red). Topline is level with a sloped croup at 30 degrees. Their coats tend to be longer but are straight or wavy. The body is lean, and they have more energy. The average life is between 10 and 11 years and information obtained from UC Davis states the cancer rate is at 60%. An older study from the Golden Retriever Club of America states the cancer rate is at 60-72% with an average lifespan of 10 years 8 months.
The English Golden Retriever
First recognized by KC (The Kennel Club) in 1913. Often American breeders identify the standard as the English Cream Golden Retriever, British Golden Retriever, or European Golden Retriever. The English sporting gundog tend to be a lot lighter in color. Red is not an acceptable color to KC standards. They are generally shorter than their American counterparts by 1-2 inches. Topline should be considered level. Their coats are shorter but still flat and wavy. The dog is more muscular, and is built for strength, but not energy. They tend to have fewer health problems, such as a less chance of cancer. Average life is slightly longer at 12 years 3 months. A study from the Kennel Club stated that cancer rates are at 38.8%.
The American Golden is not accepted in The Kennel Club of the UK. However, in the United States the English standard is still accepted as a Golden Retriever to the American Kennel Club. No matter where you go, a Golden Retriever is first and foremost always called a Golden Retriever no matter what label it is given.
Below is a infographic that we created that illustrates the differences between American and English Golden Retrievers.Researchers from the Purdue University in Indiana have developed a method that uses an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water. The hydrogen may be used for running fuel cells or internal combustion engines, which in turn could be used to replace gasoline.
One of the key issues with hydrogen fuel is that it is expensive to manufacture and is complicated to transport over long distances due to its explosive nature. With the newly developed technique hydrogen is generated on demand and only in the amount needed at the time.
The process for producing the hydrogen is remarkably simple: water is added to a liquid alloy of aluminum and gallium to produce hydrogen, which can then be fed directly to an engine. The process generates a chemical reaction which splits the oxygen and hydrogen contained in water, releasing hydrogen in the process.
According to the scientists, the addition of gallium is critical to the process because it hinders the formation of a skin normally created on aluminum’s surface after oxidation. This skin usually acts as a barrier that prevents oxygen from reacting with aluminum. Preventing the skin’s formation allows the reaction to continue until all of the aluminum is used.
The discovery was accidentally made by one of the scientists who was cleaning a crucible containing liquid alloys of gallium and aluminum. When the researcher added water to the alloy a violent explosion occurred (probably caused by the creation of highly explosive hydrogen in the tank).
Currently, the biggest obstacle to this technology is cost. By recycling the aluminum it will be possible to reduce the cost in the future. This process still requires a lot of energy that must be produced in an environmentally friendly way (using wind power, solar power, or at worst nuclear power plants). If these problems will be resolved the new process will offer a way for producing cheap hydrogen which does not need to be transported across the country, eliminating the two major problems currently facing the hydrogen economy. You would simply drive into your local refueling station and fill the tank of your car with an aluminum-gallium alloy that would be mixed with water to create small quantities of hydrogen to be used as you drive along.
In 2005 a group of scientists from the Weizmann Institute in Israel developed a very similar technology using zinc and solar energy to produce hydrogen. The problem with the Weizmann process was that zinc is heavy (and again fairly costly to recycle) and thus does not make for a very useful car fuel. Aluminum was also suggested at the time but it now appears that the Purdue University team was able to reach the target first and patent the technology for aluminum.As a Tampa Bay resident with Forrest Gump-like luck, I found myself sitting literally a foot away from the protesters from Uhuru during the Obama St. Petersburg town hall. Here are some observations I think both the media and the Obama campaign might be missing if they consider the outcome of that event anything but positive.
1) Six protesters just secured 2,000 votes. -- This event was far from an Obama love-fest. Having been ostracized during the primary and the punch line for more than a few political jokes on late night talk shows, Floridians are well aware of their swing state status. A large number of attendees were still "purple" and looking to make an educated decision on which candidate to support. Also, the local history between St. Petersburg authorities and the Uhuru organization is a sore spot to many residents on both sides. Obama gaining firm but respectful control of the situation was not lost on observers in the crowd and many left the event having a lot more positive things to say than they did coming in.
2) And the grace under pressure award goes to... -- The organizers for the St. Petersburg event could not have been pleased when the protesters not only disrupted the Senator's remarks, but dominated the media coverage afterwards. But the campaign should breathe a little easier after reading the Internet comments on most of the coverage. Apparently the blogosphere has concluded that Obama's ability to calm the outbursts at the beginning of the event and then to address protester Diop Olugbala's question showed poise and restraint -- two adjectives that most likely would not have come into play under normal circumstances.
3) The following people are not paid actors. No, really. -- One of the questions I heard asked most as people were filing into the bleachers was whether or not the questions would be scripted. I remember the days of Jeb Bush's re-election campaign, when loyalty oaths had to be signed before you were allowed in the door and neatly typed question cards were handed out to camera-friendly faces. This event was a definite departure from the controlled environment strategy. While one nervous woman did read from a piece of paper, the Uhuru incident underscored the point that the town hall questions -- spanning from veterans to veganism -- were certainly not planted.
4) A protest is sexier than the economy. -- I would love to think that, had the protest not happened, that the main stream media would have given the same air time to the new economic policy unveiled at the St. Petersburg town hall, but the cynic in me just doesn't quite buy it. After all, why discuss the merits of a thousand dollar energy credit for middle class families when you can run an endless loop of six individuals chanting and holding a homemade paper banner? While many people watching the 24-hour news channels may not have walked away knowing much about Obama's unveiled economic policy, even fewer of them would be able to tell you that McCain was also in Florida at the same time. Once again, Obama wins the battle of media coverage.
5) Way to take the wind out of the sails for McCain's "He's Too Big of a Celebrity" charge. -- You gotta kind of feel sorry for McCain at this point and his inability to win a news cycle. The guy can't buy a break. The Reverend Wright tapes are leaked and then his own supporter Reverend Hagee is exposed as being anti... well, anti-everybody. He gets prime television coverage just before Obama accepts the Democratic nomination and the result is the "Green Monster" speech. (Say it with me now -- "THAT'S not change we can believe in. Heh heh.") He challenges Obama to go overseas in hopes of labeling him as inexperienced at foreign affairs and the result is that his opponent is all but knighted. Now, his campaign seems to find their stride in a cleverly concocted "You Can't Elect Obama Because Too Many People Like Him" series of ads and what happens? The ongoing debate about McCain's ads is replaced with the coverage of six people that certainly do not think Obama is cool. (No word yet on Paris and Britney's thoughts on Uhuru...)The great trade debate – it’s “us” vs. “them”: so who really benefits? May 22, 2015 Posted by Guest Blogger
A Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign poster on the Washington D.C. metro taken on May 22, 2015. Photo: Stephanie Burgos/Oxfam America
In the case of the TPP, as in US trade deals before it, the rules are written to benefit special interests over the public interest
Stephanie Burgos is Oxfam America’s Economic Justice Policy Manager.
The only thing that everyone seems to have in common on all sides of the current trade debate is that this is a battle of “us” against “them”. So who really are the “us” and “them” that each side is referring to?
Going by the news coverage, proponents such as the Obama Administration are making this out to be the United States vs. other countries (particularly China). As Secretary Kerry just reminded us, 95 percent of the world’s consumers live beyond the US borders (probably the most repeated statistic by such proponents over the last few decades). “When we increase what America sells overseas, our payrolls get larger, our paychecks get fatter,” he said.
I doubt the US Trade Representative has been using that line with any success at the negotiating table with the other 11 countries engaged in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. Anyway, that line of thinking is so very 20th century.
In today’s world, the winners and losers from these trade agreements – the real “us” and “them” – are divided not along national lines, but rather along economic lines. That is in large part because the trade agreements of today have little to do with tariffs or cross-border trade. The reason they are so controversial is that they set in stone the economic rules of the game, creating an “enabling environment” for corporations to do their business globally, unencumbered by pesky national regulations designed with the public interest rather than shareholder interest in mind.
Yet the growing inequality in this country and around the world is a factor that policymakers ignore at their own peril. Those who insist that “the Law of Comparative Advantage has held up nicely for 198 years” have failed to notice that the world has changed, and that US free trade agreements serve to lock in far-reaching domestic regulations that adversely affect a wide range of public interests – including health care and food security – that David Ricardo never foresaw.
In reality, today’s big debate about trade agreements is actually not about trade itself – which will continue with or without more free trade agreements (FTAs). Instead, FTAs have become a euphemism for standardizing policy, regulatory and legal frameworks around the world that benefit and reduce risks for investors. Yet, high school civics classes teach that in representative democracies, determining national policies and regulations is the domain of elected officials in consultation with their constituencies.
So the unprecedented breadth of resistance to the current US trade agenda – and in particular the discontent, disapproval, criticism and downright opposition by well-respected economists and commentators – may not have been anticipated by policymakers, but should not come as a big surprise.
At Oxfam, we believe that trade can be an engine for poverty reduction and shared prosperity only if the rules of trade enable working families and people living in poverty to benefit. But in the case of the TPP, as in US trade deals before it, the rules are written to benefit special interests over the public interest. In essence, that means more for the “haves” and less for the “have nots” – in other countries as well as here at home.
So while the public debate has been focusing on the impacts of these free trade agreements in the United States, Oxfam and others have been raising alarm bells to underscore their adverse effects particularly in developing countries. Many others, including labor unions and environmentalists, have echoed our concerns, recognizing that the “us” in this debate does not mean the United States but instead the working families and people striving to overcome poverty and join the middle class everywhere.
We haven’t yet seen the rules in the TPP, as they have been negotiated in secret, except for a few leaks. But they have been seen – and influenced or even written – by hundreds of corporate leaders and lobbyists. And that should tell you something about who is likely to benefit.
The administration has billed the TPP as the most progressive trade agreement ever. But since the devil is in the details, and since the details are secret, they can call it what they want. They seem to believe that repeating the same talking points ad nauseum will magically turn their self-serving justifications into universal truths.
But a few Members of Congress, who have been given access to and taken the time to read the text, have been bold in refuting the administration’s rhetoric. Senator Sherrod Brown and Representative Sander Levin convened an expert panel to discuss a range of concerns with the TPP – as the Senator jokingly said, they wanted to assemble a group of people “who make stuff up”, referring to President Obama’s dismissal of some fellow Democrats’ views on the trade agreement. And a number of Members of Congress have provided serious critiques of the TPP – in particular, Sandy Levin, Elizabeth Warren and Rosa DeLauro.
It also seems the public is not buying the administration’s rhetoric, and for good reason. To illustrate one key problem, the TPP would do more to undermine access to affordable medicines than any previous US trade agreement. Oxfam has joined with others to raise this serious public health concern for patients everywhere. Doctors Without Borders has been actively lobbying on the issue, which has also been highlighted by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, whose statements seem to have upset the powers that be in Washington.
Thanks to Joe for speaking truth to power! Stiglitz spent an hour speaking to negotiators from the 11 other countries involved in TPP negotiations about why they should reject the US-proposed intellectual property (IP) provisions affecting pharmaceuticals. He explained why those provisions aren’t appropriate for the US either. It’s not just a moral issue, he said, it’s about budgets – the cost for governments as well as for patients.
It is notable that the former chair of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors is being ignored by President Obama’s advisors. But Stiglitz reminisced that things weren’t so different during his time in the White House 20 year ago, when the US Trade Representative (USTR), in the service of certain business interests, prevailed over his and other dissenting voices from the scientific and economic communities in negotiations over the TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement as part of the Uruguay Round that established the World Trade Organization.
The problems with TPP and the FTA agenda are not limited to adverse impacts on public health. Stiglitz has also shown how the TPP could be disastrous for development and consumers everywhere by privileging the interests of foreign investors over the rights of local communities, limiting governments’ ability to regulate in the public interest. This gift to corporate lobbies has been criticized by prominent legal experts, academic institutions and the libertarian CATO institute, among others.
Furthermore, US free trade agreements continue to be a concern from the perspective of global food security. We saw last year how the USTR forced the government of El Salvador to revise part of its national food security program, saying that it ran afoul of government procurement rules in the US-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). And new evidence from Colombia is beginning to show how the US FTA with that country is undermining the livelihoods of family farmers. A recent Oxfam study in Colombia outlines how in the two years after entry into force of its trade deal with the US, Colombia’s agricultural trade deficit increased by 300 percent, adversely affecting many small and medium-scale farmers. Interviews with farmers showed that many have had to resort to reducing their use of inputs, reducing household consumption or defaulting on debts. Overall, farmers’ incomes dropped, they reduced production and saw themselves facing an uncertain future.
The bottom line is that the TPP is bad for public health, bad for consumer protections, bad for poor farmers, and bad for our efforts to fight poverty. In other words, unless you are a corporate executive, this trade deal is bad for “us.”Russian Supreme Court bans Jehovah’s Witnesses branch
© flickr.com/guampedia.com
13:45 09/06/2016
MOSCOW, June 9 (RAPSI, Lyudmila Klenko) – Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Belgorod as extremist organization, RAPSI reports from the courtroom.
In February 2016, the Belgorod Regional Court has granted a lawsuit lodged by prosecutors seeking liquidation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses branch. The organization appealed the ruling. The Supreme Court thus upheld the lower court’s decision.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have had many legal problems in Russia.
In March 2015, a court in Tyumen fined the organization 50,000 rubles ($773) and seized prohibited literature.
In January 2014, a court in Kurgan ruled to ban the organization’s booklets as extremist. The books talk about how to have a happy life, what you can hope for, how to develop good relations with God and what you should know about God and its meaning.
In late December 2013, the leader of the sect’s group in Tobolsk, Siberia was charged with extremism and the prevention of a blood transfusion that nearly led to the death of a female member of the group.
In 2004, a court in Moscow dissolved and banned a Jehovah’s Witnesses group on charges of recruiting children, encouraging believers to break from their families, inciting suicide and preventing believers from accepting medical assistance.
Jehovah's Witnesses is an international religious organization based in Brooklyn, New York.Story highlights Official: At least five people die as clashes break out in Qalyubia province, north of Cairo
Muslims are angry because Coptic Christians drew crosses on a Muslim school, he says
Tensions between Egypt's Muslim majority and Christian minority are high
At least five people have been killed and five more injured after clashes between Christians and Muslims in Egypt's Qalyubia province, a spokesman for Egypt's health ministry said.
The violence in the city of Khosous, north of Cairo, broke out after Coptic Christians drew crosses on the walls of a Muslim school, angering members of the Muslim community, said spokesman Ahmed Osman.
Some of those caught in the clashes pulled out weapons and live ammunition.
The alleged perpetrators and other Christians took shelter inside a Coptic church, Osman said. Angry members of the Muslim community tried to storm the building, but security forces arrived in time to prevent them.
Tensions between Egypt's Christians and the Muslim majority are heightened.
The Christian minority has been the target of a number of high-profile attacks in the past several years.
The bombing of a major church in Alexandria in January 2011 left at least 21 people dead, and at least 25 Coptic Christians and their supporters were killed in clashes with the army in October. That incident was the bloodiest in Egypt since its revolution in February.
According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Egypt's population as of 2010 included an estimated 77 million Muslims and 4 million Coptic Christians.Famed short seller Jim Chanos took another shot at Tesla on Thursday, saying the company's equity is worth nothing.
"Let's just say Tesla and Mr. Musk have a broad interpretation of the truth," Chanos, founder of Kynikos Associates, told CNBC's Kelly Evans. "There have been all kinds of announcements that this company has made … that turned out not to be true."
Chanos mentioned the unveiling of Tesla's electric Semi truck and roadster last month as examples. The short seller noted that Tesla CEO Elon Musk said "the Semi would be available in 2019 and the roadster in 2020. Where is he producing those? Those production lines have to be up and approved years before we get into production."
Chanos has been short Tesla for a long time. On Nov. 14, he said he added to his short position against the electric vehicle maker throughout the year.
However, Tesla shares are up sharply this year, advancing nearly 60 percent.
"To me, where the stock is now is not the story," Chanos said. "I don't care that it came from $30 or $200 or $300. That's just meaningless."
"We think the equity is worthless," he said in the interview on "Closing Bell."
Tesla did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.Sheetsee.js is a client-side library for connecting Google Spreadsheets to a website and visualizing the information in tables and maps.
Spreadsheets!?
Google Spreadsheets can be used as simple and collaborative databases, they make getting a data driven site going much easier than traditional databases. Read more about using spreadsheets for databases.
Modules
Each of Sheetsee's functions are divided into modules. Use just the parts you need; see docs on building. If you don't want to build your own, you can just use the full library which includes all modules, it's here on GitHub.
Module Contains Docs sheetsee Command line module for make a custom build of Sheetsee. Doc sheetsee-core Included in all builds. Has helpful working-with-your-data functions. Doc sheetsee-tables Contains everything you'll need to create a table including sortable columns, pagination and search. Doc sheetsee-maps For making maps with your point, line or polygon spreadsheet data. Built with Leaflet.js. Doc
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More resources on using Sheetsee:McDonald's is planning some big raises for its top brass, according to a filing late Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Steve Easterbrook, CEO of the world's largest burger chain, is set to receive an 18.2 percent raise in his base salary, to $1.3 million. The pay raise takes effect March 1, when Easterbrook will have been in the top job for one year.
Chief Financial Officer Kevin Ozan will get a salary of $700,000, a 16.7 percent increase. Doug Goare, president of McDonald's international lead markets, will see a 10.2 percent bump to $650,000. Those raises also take effect March 1.
The base salary for high-ranking executives is often a small portion of their overall compensation. The officers receive stock awards and perks that can include everything from insurance to use of a company jet or car. McDonald's says Easterbrook's target incentive plan compensation is equal to 175 percent of his base salary, or about $2.8 million. Easterbrook's predecessor, Don Thompson, earned total compensation of about $7.3 million, but that was nearly half of what he was paid in his first year as CEO in 2012.
McDonald's in recent months has shown signs of a turnaround starting to pay off, with its stock near an all-time high and customer traffic improving at its restaurants. The launch of all-day breakfast in October, spearheaded by Easterbrook, has been a key driver in McDonald's growth. Last month, the Oak Brook-based company said its fourth-quarter earnings rose 10 percent and sales at established stores were growing at a clip that outpaced Wall Street's expectations.
sbomkamp@tribpub.com
Twitter @SamWillTravelReducing inequality by levelling up rather than levelling down
Stimulating economic growth
Mitigating the impact of economic growth on the environment
Personal freedom and the religious view point
The core of our philosophy is referred to as "Georgism" ( Wiki entry ). Simply put, taxes should be collected from the value of land (and other monopolies) and not from earnings and output. As an add-on, the bulk of the welfare and state pension system (excluding severe disability benefits and housing related benefits) and most tax breaks and reliefs should be replaced with a flat rate Universal Basic Income for all children, adults and pensioners (different weekly amounts for different age groups).This is often painted as a radical or extremist point of view, but actually it is very centrist/moderate. There are Land Value Taxers (and UBI supporters) in most political parties, but in all parties they are a minority and have been going backwards for the last century. YPP has gained members from - and lost members to - all the other political parties. We get shot from all sides, who all lump us in with their opponents!The point is that this Georgism is the best - and possibly only - way to achieve three apparently conflicting goals. There is broad support for each of these (think Corbyn's Labour v Conservatives v Green Party) but those parties focus on one or two at the expense of the other(s):Land ownership is the biggest driver of inequality if you look at the most relevant way of measuring it i.e. net disposable income after tax and housing costs. Taxing land values instead of earnings or consumption will greatly reduce this state-sanctioned inequality. There is also a huge inequality between those lucky enough to have bought homes in the south east when they were still affordable compared to most of the rest of the country.The next biggest driver of inequality is unemployment. Reducing taxes on earnings and output will stimulate the economy i.e. more jobs will be created, and replacing means-tested benefits with a flat rate universal payment will not discourage or penalise low earners (which is why UBI has supporters on left and right).Simply reducing taxes on earnings and output (the most damaging/regressive taxes are VAT and National Insurance, or'sales taxes' and 'payroll taxes' for non-UK readers) might achieve this, but if land is left untaxed, most of the gains will just accrue to landowners and the tax shortfall will increase inequality/endanger public services.LVT stimulates economic activity further bymore efficient use of the most favourable locations (it is the only tax that can actually encourage economic activity).This is a complicated topic as it relies on secondary effects rather than crude direct intervention:- LVT will encourage a more compact urban environment, heating and lighting flats or terraced houses uses less energy than sparser housing, and urban dwellers are more likely to be able to walk or use public transport to get to work/the shops/school.- Direct 'Green' measures impose trade-offs. Renewable energy is (for the time being) more expensive than fossil fuels, which in turn impacts low-income households most and dampens economic activity. It has been observed that when people become wealthier, they start to care more about more intangible things - like the environment - because they can afford to do so.- 'Land' in the wider sense includes use of natural resources, so taxes on fossil fuels, vehicle use and disposable goods are natural complements to LVT.We could add at least two more circles/goals to the Venn diagram, which would also overlap in the middle:Early Georgists and early Libertarians (not to be confused with today's Alt-Right who incorrectly label themselves Libertarians) had a lot in common and many were both.Untaxed land ownership is like slave ownership; those who collect rent are little better than slave-owners and those who pay it are, in economic terms, little better than slaves. Most would agree that abolishing slavery is a good thing and increases overall personal freedom; few would argue that abolishing slavery took away people's right to enjoy slaves. Similarly, most would agree that giving women or non-landowners the right to vote was a big step forward; few would argue that it diluted the voting power of men or landowners. In each case, overall, personal freedom was increased.Those who argue against LVT always say that it reduces the freedom of landowners (or owner-occupiers) to sit back and relax once they have paid off the mortgage; but they are still relying on public services funded by taxes deducted from (a burden placed on) other people's earnings and output. So LVT would reduce the perceived economic freedom of some (landlords and semi-retired households) it actually increases overall total personal freedom.Similarly, Universal Basic Income keeps the best aspects of the welfare system, while increasing people's personal freedom by reducing state interference in people's lives to a minimum.There are also more thoughtful Christian and Jewish people who support LVT (and/or UBI) for religious reasons - surely, if there is a God and s/he created the earth (and the natural resources and the radio spectrum |
methane compared to carbon dioxide from the latest synthesis report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in September of this year, it is clear that natural gas is no bridge fuel. When used to generate electricity, natural gas likely has a greenhouse gas footprint similar to that for coal. However, when used for domestic heating of water, the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas is at least two-times larger than that of using modern electric-driven heat pumps. Society should move as quickly as possible away from using natural gas for water heating and domestic and commercial space heating – uses which are equal to the use of gas to generate electricity in the US. This is the low-hanging fruit for reducing the total greenhouse gas emissions from the United States. When you add up that there is more methane being emitted than E.P.A. has estimated, that methane is responsible for up to half of all the greenhouse gas emissions for the entire US, and that each unit of methane emitted is far more important in causing global climate change over the critical few decades ahead, it should be clear that bridge-fuel argument just doesn’t hold up. And the oil and gas industry is the major source of these methane emissions.
I invited the lead authors of the new paper to react to the commments from Hamburg and Howarth. Anna Michalak offered this reply:
I agree with Steve’s comment, and want to add the following, which is, I think, objectively representative of what we can say based on our studies. Re. Hamburg: Our study reinforces the fact that specific source types for methane are higher than current E.P.A. and EDGAR inventories suggest, and they do indeed need more attention because emissions in some regions of the US appear to be substantially higher than previously estimated. Our study says nothing about whether such sources can be reduced, or even specifically about what aspects of oil and gas production, refining, and transport is responsible for the elevated sources. Re. Howarth: Our study bolsters recent smaller-scale studies that hinted that methane emissions associated with energy production may be higher than previously estimated. Our study does not address how the magnitude of the source types that we present translate into an overall climate impact for natural gas vs. other fuel types, nor does it address implications for natural gas as a bridge fuel. I think that the one policy implication that I would feel comfortable drawing from our study is that any discussion of methane must be based on a robust understanding of the current situation with regard to emissions. What our study shows is that these emissions appear to be substantially higher than the most recent inventory estimates from E.P.A. and EDGAR suggest.It's that time of year again, it's GUN SEASON! Time for the NRA annual convention which will be held April 10-12 in Nashville, Tennessee. The ruby red state of Tennessee has gun laws among the most lax in the country. Just a few days after Sandy Hook, the state proposed a Guns In Trunks law, making it easier to carry weapons on school property, and it passed a half a year later.
The convention will host roughly 70,000 people who will converge on Nashville. The convention will be
the host of concerts, meetings, forums, auctions, breakfasts, children's activities and, of course, "16 acres of guns," according to an ad for the event. Over 400 exhibitors are competing for space within the 350,000-square-foot Music City Center.
The speaker list is strictly a who's who of the G.O.P. The speakers at NRA-ILA Leadership Forum include:
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, (and) Donald Trump.
Interestingly enough, the gun extravaganza has safety measures in place.
A multilevel security plan went into works not long after Nashville was chosen as the convention destination. All guns on the convention floor will be nonoperational, with the firing pins removed, and any guns purchased during the NRA convention will have to be picked up at a Federal Firearms License dealer, near where the purchaser lives, and will require a legal identification.
The NRA and the insatiable ammosexual, Wayne LaPierre, claim that the only thing that kills a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. If the answer to gun violence is more guns, then why not keep them all operational and ready? I'm sure this issue won't be addressed in Nashville.
Gun shows or conventions forbidding loaded weapons isn't a new phenomenon. It's just something they don't care to advertise as much as their Second Amendment remedies. The Silver State (NV) has many residents who simply love guns, many of them who identify with the Mormon Church. They are against any laws restricting their rights to purchase deadly weapons. Senator Mike Lee (R) of Utah, recently proposed an amendment to prevent federal gun control laws.
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Nevada borders Utah, a state with the second highest per capita gun ownership in the country. Not surprisingly, some of the gun dealers aren't exactly model citizens. For example, the Templeton family, who operate the 47 shows-per-year Crossroads Gunshow, is not exactly what one might consider a virtuous bunch.
In 2002, Crossroads VP Jeffrey Templeton called the police after hearing a suspicious noise outside his house. The police found more than just a suspected prowler, as this report states. The indictment lists 57 firearms confiscated at the home by agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Kaysville police on Dec. 11. The discovery was made after someone at the Templetons’ home in Kaysville called police to report something suspicious, possibly a burglar or prowler. But when Kaysville police arrived, they spotted a slew of weapons with illegal drugs nearby, said Kaysville Police Chief Dave Helquist. He said the drugs appeared to be methamphetamine and are being tested.
The Templeton family continues to own and operate the lucrative gun show to this day.
We know that these gun shows are where straw purchasers do much of their business. It's among the worst in the state where the NRA convention will be held, in addition to my state of Nevada.
A 2009 undercover investigation by the City of New York at gun shows in Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee “observed many private sellers doing brisk business at gun shows.”The investigators tested whether firearms dealers and private sellers would conduct what appeared to be illegal transactions, and found that:
When investigators claimed that they “probably” could not pass background checks, 19 of 30 private sellers (63%) were still willing to complete the firearm sale;and
When investigators approached licensed dealers and appeared to conduct straw purchases on behalf of prohibited people, 16 of 17 dealers (94%) were willing to complete these transactions.
In a subsequent investigation – conducted at a Phoenix gun show just a few weeks after the Tucson massacre – an investigator successfully purchased guns from two private sellers despite informing both that he “probably couldn’t pass” a background check.
This convention of death merchants and the "patriots" who love them is largely used by right wing G.O.P. hopefuls to show their Second Amendment bona fides. The fact the operators of said show know the risks of unfettered gun possession, truly demonstrates the hypocrisy of gun manufacturers and sellers. The glorification of this industry is just a reminder of how Republican ammosexuals value profit over the pursuit of happiness and human life.Review Series Part Three: The Midfield
The nadir of the Liverpool midfield under Brendan Rodgers was the performance against Southampton away, in his first season in charge. Not only did the defeat mark the end of any possible challenge for the top four places, but the manner in which the team was carved apart time and again was deeply disturbing. A half-fit Joe Allen and a slowing Steven Gerrard were overwhelmed in an experimental midfield, a 4-2-4 formation aimed at flooding the pitch with attacking players. Fast-forward to the season just gone and the contrast could not be more striking. Liverpool’s two best midfield performances of the season – Arsenal at home and Tottenham away – were a far cry from the shaky, uncertain matches of the year before. Not only were the opposition players dominated, but the two matches showed the ability of the team to adjust to different styles of play in order to get the best results. The Tottenham game was an excellent demonstration of controlled, high-pressing possession football; a disciplined midfield trio of Lucas, Allen and Henderson working in tandem to provide a platform for their attacking colleagues, protecting the defence with ease and pulling the Spurs team apart through a combination of slick passing and intense pressure on the ball. Equally as impressive was the home game against Arsenal. This time however, the midfield was content to draw the opposition into their own half before releasing a devastating barrage of counter-attack after counter-attack, slicing through one of the best defences in the league at will.
Of course, there were games when a willingness to drive forward left the Reds a little short at the back. Moments of naivety against the likes of Southampton and Aston Villa were punished; likewise, the frustrations of Chelsea and Crystal Palace showed a team still getting to grips with their new-found status as title contenders. A number of injuries, most crucially in the pile-up of fixtures in the Christmas period, also had a negative effect on the stability and efficacy of the midfield unit. That said, tactical innovation from the manager and a number of top quality performances throughout the season meant a quality campaign for the Liverpool middle.
Tactical Changes
The two most obvious alterations to the Liverpool line-up over the course of the season were the changes in role for Philippe Coutinho and the captain Steven Gerrard. Gerrard was reinvented in a deep-lying, regista position in front of the of the two centre-backs. Although further back on the pitch, this position was not exclusively defensive as a lot of the early pressure on opponents came from a hard running pair of central midfielders ahead of the captain; Jordan Henderson excelled in this role, and the adaptation of Coutinho to a similar task alongside the former Sunderland man meant the Reds added some much-needed attacking quality in the central midfield positions. The switch from a 4-2-3-1 formation to a 4-3-3 (and later a 4-4-2 diamond) saw an end to the vast gaps between midfield and attack (or defence) which had been a feature of previous seasons. Passing ability all over the pitch coupled with no deficit in numbers at the back meant the team were able to play some of the most exciting attacking football in Europe, varying the offensive play as the situation demanded. Raheem Sterling’s inclusion as a number 10 was a further revelation which allowed the youngster to make good on his early promise and finish the campaign with an impressive goalscoring record. The versatility of players such as Allen, Henderson, Coutinho and Sterling was a key factor in allowing the side to play in a variety of different formations over the course of the year. That said, there were times when injury and suspension threatened to reveal the relatively threadbare nature of the Liverpool squad. It is no great surprise to hear the club are in talks with Southampton over the availability of the versatile Adam Lallana; the ability to play in more than one position will be an essential quality if the Reds are to compete across multiple competitions next season.
Jordan Henderson
Jordan Henderson had his best season yet in a Liverpool shirt, scoring 5 goals and assisting 7 across all competitions. The numbers do not tell the whole story, however; the fact that his inclusion in the England squad has raised no eyebrows is testament to his importance to Liverpool’s title charge. Indeed, a rare bad tackle against Manchester City which saw him banned for three games may well be seen in hindsight as one of the turning points of the season. His industry and increasingly sharp eye for a pass would have been invaluable against the parked bus of Chelsea, whilst his stamina and leadership skills would have no doubt been of great use in the capitulation at Palace. Adaptable, strong, athletic and growing in confidence, Henderson can be a vital cog in next year’s search for silverware. A bit of shooting practice and £16m will look more of a bargain than ever.
Henderson – 8.5/10
Steven Gerrard
As one of the greatest players in the club’s history, Steven Gerrard deserves to lift the Premier League trophy more than any other member of the squad. His own desire to do so has been more evident than ever this year, with a fantastic contribution to the Liverpool cause once again from the skipper. A truly magnificent return of 15 goals and 15 assists in all competitions a fitting example of how Gerrard can produce consistently at the very top level. All this in a season of learning a new position which will enable him to play on for another couple of years – hopefully enough time for him to win the one trophy which has evaded him so far in a stunning career. There are still occasions when his desire to win can cause lapses in discipline, such as the games against Chelsea and Palace. As trust in his team-mates and the manager grows, however, it is likely that Gerrard will be happy to play any role he can in bringing the league title back to Anfield. His presence in the dressing-room and his experience make him an invaluable member of the Liverpool team, now and in the future.
Gerrard – 9/10
Lucas Leiva
Lucas Leiva had another injury-hit season which proved to be a metaphor for his Liverpool career as a whole. The Brazilian was excellent on occasion, showing his class and ability most clearly when played as the sole defensive pivot in a traditional 4-3-3. The games against Manchester City and Tottenham, both played away, were prime examples; the Spurs game in particular a timely reminder of just how good Lucas can be in shielding the back four. The conversion of Gerrard, however, meant a slightly different role for Lucas – one in which he struggled a little. Despite originally being a box-to-box midfielder, his various injury problems have meant a loss of mobility which is badly exposed in Liverpool’s high-pressing game. When asked to sit deep and read the game, Lucas is exceptional; when pressuring the opposition high up the pitch, his inability to protect the space behind him due to a lack of pace is a real problem. Although his calming presence and confident passing on the ball were useful in closing out games, it would appear that rumours of his exit may not be unfounded. A shame for a player whose true worth was becoming apparent before a run of devastating injuries.
Lucas Leiva – 7/10
Joe Allen
Another player with a chequered injury history, Joe Allen took some significant steps in his journey as a Liverpool player this year. Not only in grabbing his first Premier League goal for the Reds, but also in consistent demonstrations of the quality and control he can bring to games. In and out of the side due to some niggling injuries and the form of players around him, Allen nonetheless showed, on more than one occasion, why Brendan Rodgers was so keen to have him in the squad. A tidy and efficient passer of the ball with good tackling ability and superb vision, Allen will be a key part of next year’s campaign.
Joe Allen – 7.5/10
Philippe Coutinho
Injuries aside, Allen was also kept out of the side by the development of Philippe Coutinho in a central midfield position. Initial doubts about his ability to shoulder his defensive responsibilities were brushed aside after two stellar performances at Anfield, against Everton and Arsenal respectively. A snappy tackler with a good low centre of gravity and an instinctive knowledge of when to put pressure on an opposing player, Coutinho adapted very quickly to the demands of his new role. Allied to his wonderful vision, passing range and dribbling ability, the young Brazilian had a very good season that was only just short of excellent. A slight tendency to go missing at times and an over-eagerness to shoot are facets of his game that will disappear as he gets older. A steal at £8.5m, Coutinho will be an essential part of the Liverpool teams of the future.
Philippe Coutinho – 8/10
Conclusion
An extremely encouraging year of improvement for the Reds’ midfield. It will be fascinating to see if Sterling will continue his run in the number 10 position, or if he will revert back to the wide-forward role which characterised much of his season this year. Likewise, the additions and sales the club makes over the summer will say a great deal about the direction Rodgers is wanting the club to go in. Should Lucas depart, a back-up option for Gerrard seems likely, whilst the attacking berths in central midfield may well be bolstered by the arrival of Adam Lallana. The increased number of matches will no doubt lead to multiple changes in personnel and position, but on the evidence of this season the midfield is more than up to the task.FreeRange Productions, based in the South East, is a professional touring theatre company. We’re dedicated to fostering the artistic talent of actors, directors and writers at the start of their careers and working with them to create high-calibre, accessible professional productions.
Since forming, FreeRange have worked with over 60 of the next generation of theatre practitioners, offering many their first professional jobs. We tailor our productions to the unique vision of our members, and our work allows them to flourish as part of a like-minded team.
FreeRange Productions are the next generation of theatre.
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This year, in association with Just The Tonic, FreeRange Productions and Quite Nice Theatre (also from Reading) are teaming up to bring four shows to the Fringe, giving a whopping 96 performances over the month. Our two shows are:
The Sign of Four
A handful of actors retell Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s epic Sherlock Holmes tale of steamboat chases, hidden treasure, poison-darts and revenge in a madcap rollercoaster of a show.
Packed with mystery and intrigue and featuring some of the oddest characters in literature, the story travels from the fog-bound banks of the River Thames to the sweltering heat of India during the great mutiny of 1857.
Shakespeare’s Cymbeline
In a rare performance of one of Shakespeare’s darkest and most intense plays, anger, jealousy and lust are intimately explored in a powerful new production.
Against the backdrop of a great war, young lovers fight for love, pride and survival.
Cymbeline is a brutal tragedy, passionate romance and touching comedy. FreeRange bring this theatrical epic to the stage in a new professional production of Shakespeare’s little known masterpiece.
Both productions are running as part of Edinburgh Fringe 1-27 August (Not 13th) at Just The Tonic @ The Caves.
The Sign of Four is at 13:00 and Shakespeare's Cymbeline at 18:00
You can find out more about us on our website: www.freerangeproductions.co.uk
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What the money is for:
Well, costs at Edinburgh are always very high - accommodation and travel being particularly big ones. Our team work with limited budgets for expenses, and need your help to survive at Fringe.
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Contact Us:
Feel free to email or call us if you'd like to know more.John William Waterhouse’s painting “Miranda – The Tempest.”
Those in the premodern world who hoarded possessions and refused to redistribute supplies and food, who turned their backs on the weak and the sick, who lived exclusively for hedonism and their own power, were despised. Those in modern society who are shunned as odd, neurotic or eccentric, who are disconnected from the prosaic world of objective phenomena and fact, would have been valued in premodern cultures for their ability to see what others could not see. Dreams and visions—considered ways to connect with the wisdom of ancestors—were integral to existence in distant times. Property was communal then. Status was conferred by personal heroism and providing for the weak and the indigent. And economic exchanges carried the potential for malice, hatred and evil: When wampum was exchanged by Native Americans the transaction had to include “medicine” that protected each party against “spiritual infection.”
Only this premodern ethic can save us as we enter a future of economic uncertainty and endure the catastrophe of climate change. Social and economic life will again have to be communal. The lusts of capitalism will have to be tamed or destroyed. And there will have to be a recovery of reverence for the sacred, the bedrock of premodern society, so we can see each other and the earth not as objects to exploit but as living beings to be revered and protected. This means inculcating a very different vision of human society.
Our greatest oracles have sought to impart this wisdom. William Shakespeare lamented the loss of the pagan rituals eradicated by the Reformation. When Shakespeare was a boy, the critic Harold Goddard pointed out, he experienced the religious pageants, morality plays, church festivals, cycle plays, feast and saint days, displays of relics, bawdy May Day celebrations and tales of miracles that made up the belief system during the reign of the medieval Catholic Church. The Puritans, the ideological vanguard of the technological order, would eventually ban or greatly weaken all of these, and they made war on the Elizabethan and Jacobean theaters for celebrating these premodern practices.
The London authorities in 1596 prohibited the public presentation of plays within city limits. Theaters had to relocate to the south side of the River Thames. The Puritans, in power under Cromwell in 1642, closed the London theaters. In Puritan New England at about the same time the authorities banned games, revels and “harlotry plays.” In 1644 the Puritans tore down Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Within four years all other theaters in and around London had been destroyed. The Puritans understood, in a way that is perhaps lost to us today, that Shakespeare subverts modernity.
Shakespeare portrays the tension between the premodern and the modern. He sees the rise of the modern as dangerous. The premodern reserved a place in the cosmos for human imagination. The new, modern, Machiavellian ethic of self-promotion, manipulation, bureaucracy and deceit—personified by Iago, Richard III and Lady Macbeth—deformed human society. Shakespeare lived during a moment when the modern world—whose technology allowed it to acquire weapons of such unrivaled force that it could conquer whole empires, including the Americas and later China—instilled through violence this new secular religion. He feared its demonic power.
Oracles were revered in premodern societies. These oracles were in touch with realities and forces that lay beyond the empirical. All societies have oracles—such as Thomas Paine, Emma Goldman, W.E.B. Du Bois and James Baldwin in the United States—but in a modern society they are pushed to the margins, ridiculed and often persecuted. Those who spoke out of their vision quests in Native American society, or from Delphi in ancient Greece, did not employ the cold, clinical language of science and reason. They spoke, rather, in the nebulous language of love, tenderness, patience, justice, redemption and forgiveness. They paid homage, and called on us to pay homage, to the mysterious incongruities of human existence. A society that loses its respect for the sacred, that ignores its oracles and severs itself from the power of human imagination, ensures its obliteration.
Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization. But reason does not lift us upward to the heavens. It does not bring us into contact with the sacred. It does not permit us to curb our self-destructive urges. Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson mocked the myth of human progress and the folly of hubris. They, like Shakespeare, warned that conflating technological advancement with human progress deforms us.
Prospero in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” is master of an enchanted island where he has absolute power. He keeps the primitive Caliban and the spirit Ariel as his slaves. The play is about liberty, love and the capacity for awe. It reminds us that the power unleashed in the wilderness can prompt us to good if we honor the sacred but to monstrous evil if we do not. There are few constraints in the wilderness, a theme that would later be explored by the novelist Joseph Conrad. Imagination triumphed in “The Tempest” because those who were bound to their senses and lusts were subjugated. However, overseas in the American colonies, as Shakespeare knew, the poison of dark passions embodied by the Calibans and evil dukes of the world had unleashed an orgy of greed, theft and genocide.
Those who worship themselves, the essence of the modern, commit spiritual suicide. In love with himself after seeing his reflection in a pond, Narcissus is doomed, as many in the modern world are, by vanity, celebrity and the need for admirers and sycophants. Narcissists master the arts of manipulation, seduction, power and control. They eschew empathy, honesty, trust and transparency. It is a form of mental illness.
It is through imagination that we can reach the dark regions of the human psyche and face our mortality and the brevity of existence. It is through imagination that we can recover reverence and kinship. It is through imagination that we can see ourselves in our neighbors and the other living organisms of the earth. It is through imagination that we can envision other ways to form a society. The triumph of modern utilitarianism, implanted by violence, crushed the primacy of the human imagination. It enslaved us to the cult of the self. And with this enslavement came an inability to see, the central theme of “King Lear.” Imagination, as Goddard wrote, “is neither the language of nature nor the language of man, but both at once, the medium of communion between the two—as if the birds, unable to understand the speech of man, and man, unable to understand the songs of birds, yet longing to communicate, were to agree on a tongue made up of sounds they both could comprehend—the voice of running water perhaps or the wind in the trees. Imagination is the elemental speech in all senses, the first and the last, of primitive man and of the poets.”
All of the great visionaries and leaders of the Indian tribes, from medicine men like Black Elk and Sitting Bull to warriors such as Crazy Horse, in the presence of the natural world heard it speak to them, in the same way it spoke to Shakespeare, Dickinson or Walt Whitman. All elements of life, especially those that lie beyond articulation, infuse the human imagination. The communion—accentuated by vision quests, the sanctity of dreams, odd occurrences, miracles and the wonder of nature, as well as rituals that take place within a communal society—blurs the lines between the self and the world. This ability to connect with the sacred is what Percy Shelley meant when he wrote that poetry “lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world and makes familiar things as if they were not familiar.” We are reminded at that moment of the wonder of life and our insignificance in the vastness of the cosmos, reminded that, as Prospero said, “we are such stuff as dreams are made on.” Too often this wisdom comes too late, as it does when Othello stands over the dead Desdemona or Lear over his executed daughter, Cordelia. This wisdom makes grace possible. Songs, poetry, music, theater, dance, sculpture, art, fiction and ritual move human beings toward the sacred. They clear the way for transformation. The prosaic world of facts, data, science, news, technology, business and the military is cut off from the mysteries of creation and existence. We will recover this imagination, this capacity for the sacred, or we will vanish as a species.An Asian Pygmy and his Pal from Far Rockaway
toggle caption Wildlife Conservation Society
Dr. Alan Rabinowitz was born in New York City, grew up in Queens, in Far Rockaway, and for a while was the "Knife Man" in a neighborhood gang. Back in the early 1960s, Knife Men led the charge in street fights, maybe stabbed their rivals to draw blood and certainly tried to make them run away. But they didn't want to kill or seriously wound anyone. They just wanted to claim a territory and scare the other guys off. That's what Alan did, for a while.
Then he finished high school, went to college, then grad school in ecological science and for the last three decades, he's spent his time working for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Taiwan, Thailand, Laos, Belize and Myanmar (Burma), where he tries to protect jaguars, clouded leopards, tigers, Sumatran rhinos and all sorts of large mammals from encroaching humans. He even found an animal — the leaf deer-- previously unknown to science.
So, he's gone from the streets to the forest and he's recorded his adventures in several books: Jaguar, Chasing the Dragon's Tail, and more recently, Beyond the Last Village.
The last title describes a visit Rabinowitz made to the Burmese/ China border back in 1997, where he met a man about his age, an Asian pygmy named Dawi.
It wasn't an accidental meeting.
Alan, like the rest of us, knew of pygmies in Africa. But one day in a Burmese bookstore, he happened upon a book about a pygmy tribe called the Taron. They'd been described by some British anthropologists in the 1950s: 150 families of small-statured Asians who lived together in a remote village in an almost inaccessible Himalayan valley.
Alan looked up the village on a Burmese map and decided he wanted to find out what happened to those families. And so, on his way up to the Chinese border, he decided to make a short detour and visit the village. When he got there, he discovered that instead of 150 families, there were only a handful of Taron left. The others, all the others, had disappeared.
Where had they gone?
There was one man, a pygmy hunter named Dawi, who could tell him the answer. Alan found Dawi (or maybe Dawi found Alan) in the forest. The two became, in their way, friends, and as you will hear when you listen to our story, Dawi told Alan the terrible secret that explained why there were so few Taron. And then Alan told Dawi a secret of his own, a secret that once told, changed Alan's life.
This is the story of a very improbable friendship with very improbable consequences.André Prager has sold many things in his life. First he tried his hand at fruit and vegetables, later switching to hawk sweets as a salesman for an Italian chocolate company. Then he discovered the Berlin Wall and its business potential.
Sitting in his sales office, Prager, 39, is beaming from ear to ear. His company's "Trabi Safaris" are a huge hit, with tourists from around the world touring the route of the former Berlin Wall in Trabants, East German-made cars with rattling two-stroke engines. "Discover the last relics of real-life socialism," he promises his customers.
With their unwieldy gearshifts and smelly exhaust fumes, the 120 Trabants in Prager's fleet provoke loud outbursts of laughter from his international guests already at the beginning of the tour. Guides try their best to recreate the odd world behind the Wall. "Safari" guests are subjected to traffic checks by men dressed as officers of the former East German police force. A now they are also forced to exchange their euros for East German marks, which they can spend on such classic Socialist fare such as "Solyanka," a Russian soup, or an Eastern European version of ragoût fin.
But are businesses like this trivializing East German history?
Gazing out from under a baseball cap emblazoned with the image of a skull, the businessman looks surprised when he hears the question. "The Trabi isn't a symbol of oppression," Prager, who was an East German citizen before he became an entrepreneur, says. Instead, it represents "deceleration" and the yearning for a simpler world, he adds. "Anyone who can make money with it should give it a go."
Kitsch and Memorials, Side-by-Side
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall, a date the city is commemorating in extremes. Creative entrepreneurs and senior government officials are addressing the Wall and its consequences in very different ways, with kitsch and serious remembrances often featured side-by-side.
On Aug. 13, the president, the chancellor and other top politicians will attend a ceremony at the Berlin Wall memorial on Bernauer Strasse. There will be serious speeches, and once again there will be much talk of how, where and from which perspective the state and German society should commemorate the 136 Berlin residents who died at the Wall, along with German partition in general and the injustices of the East German dictatorship.
Meanwhile business is booming for entrepreneurs seeking to capitalize on the anniversary. East Germany is being reborn as a tourist attraction. In a number of central locations, its former capital has the feel of a big amusement park, like some tongue-in-cheek Haunted Mansion in which the ghosts of the past entertain the tourist audience -- with the friendly support of people who dress up as Mickey Mouse, Indian chiefs and Darth Vader from the "Star Wars" saga and routinely pose for photographs in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
Business is so brisk that politicians and conservators are seriously discussing whether Berlin is turning into a Cold War Disneyland. Some are even calling it a "Venice effect." They worry that a Berlin that succumbs to hordes of tourists could ossify into scenery of the country's East German and Nazi past -- a museum of the 20th century.
The developments are creating a competition in the German capital between business and commemoration of sensitive events, tourist entertainment and a public culture of remembrance. At issue is who gets to tell the story of Germany's division -- and which original locations in the city are used to convey it.
Fragments of History
For years, most Berliners wanted nothing more than to see the Wall disappear. They objected to what they saw as a badge of shame, and they wanted the city to grow together. They were more interested in starting the reconstruction of an imperial palace that was destroyed long ago than in preserving anything more than just a few fragments of a still extant monument to world history.
The Germans, in keeping with their reputation for thoroughness, removed 99 percent of the border facilities. In doing so, they also dismantled a concrete memory of the horrors of German division and discarded what could have been a memorial for future generations.
What remained were remnants for historic preservationists, including half-destroyed concrete sections of the wall that recently underwent a so-called "stress test" to assess their risk of collapse.
Thus the Wall, which the East Germans had officially dubbed an anti-fascist protective barrier, finally became a wall in people's minds, an imaginary place that various players from the federal and state governments now seek to occupy. Some prefer to emphasize the victory of freedom and the market economy, while others would rather draw attention to the policy of détente and the East German civil rights movement.
These differing visions have led to years of intensive debate over suitable forms of commemoration. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs and private citizens have already co-opted the most prominent sites of German partition, imposing their own concept and business ideas.European Commission
The European Commission has opened an antitrust case involving licensing agreements between US film studios that can preclude European TV broadcasters in one country from showing movies in another.
The investigation involves licensing agreement provisions in contracts between Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, NBCUniversal, and Paramount Pictures on the one hand, and on the other "the largest European pay-TV broadcasters, such as BSkyB of the UK, Canal Plus of France, Sky Italia of Italy, Sky Deutschland of Germany, and DTS of Spain," the commission said Monday in a statement. At issue is whether such contracts hobble broadcasters' efforts to operate in different European countries. It said:
The commission will in particular investigate whether these provisions prevent broadcasters from providing their services across borders, for example, by refusing potential subscribers from other member states or blocking cross-border access to their services.... The provisions granting "absolute territorial protection" ensure that the films licensed by the US studios are shown exclusively in the member state where each broadcaster operates via satellite and the Internet. These films cannot be made available outside that Member State, even in response to unsolicited requests from potential subscribers in other Member States.
Countries in the European Union have a lot of independence, but they're also linked by a common currency, unified employment pool, shared court proceedings, and some EC regulations. Commissioner Neelie Kroes also has been pushing hard to lower European borders by trying to unify Europe's telecommunications service market.
Language barriers can hamper cross-border expansion, but the broadcasting industry is changing dramatically as distribution moves from over-the-air radio to Internet-based streaming that's much less tied to one geographic region or another.
The EU Court of Justice frowned on contracts that granted territorial exclusivity in a 2011 case involving broadcast of Premiere League soccer matches. "The clauses of an exclusive license agreement concluded between a holder of intellectual property rights and a broadcaster constitute a restriction on competition prohibited by Article 101 TFEU [Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union], where they oblige the broadcaster not to supply decoding devices enabling access to that right holder's protected subject-matter with a view to their use outside the territory covered by that license agreement," the court said in its judgment.
The EC's action involving the studios comes after a fact-finding investigation in 2012, but there's no deadline for future stages of the new antitrust investigation.-
The Syrian Peoples Protection Units (YPG) have announced that they have extended westward from the Euphrates River in their fight against Islamic State (ISIS).
The spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Servan Derwes criticized repeated Turkish threats to crush the SDF-YPG (while the SDF consists of various non-Kurdish tribal elements the YPG is still the primary backbone of that group) were it to cross Turkey's "red-line" in their fight against ISIS, which still occupies areas in a 60-mile wide strip of northwestern Syrian border territory west of the Euphrates, by pointing out that they are already west of that river.
"Anyone who doesn't believe can come and see," he told the Aksiyon weekly according to Todays Zaman. "Turkey is helping ISIL," he continued, "Turkey is crossing the border [into Syria] at Jarablus and allowing ISIL to breathe."
"Whoever helps the terrorists is a terrorist to us, and we will fight them," he said in |
, with a promise of freedom for service. The idea had been suggested years earlier, but Davis did not act upon it until late in the war, and very few slaves were enlisted.[125]
On April 3, with Union troops under Ulysses S. Grant poised to capture Richmond, Davis escaped to Danville, Virginia, together with the Confederate Cabinet, leaving on the Richmond and Danville Railroad. Lincoln was in Davis's Richmond office just 40 hours later. William T. Sutherlin turned over his mansion, which served as Davis's temporary residence from April 3 to April 10, 1865.[126] On about April 12, Davis received Robert E. Lee's letter announcing surrender.[127] He issued his last official proclamation as president of the Confederacy, and then went south to Greensboro, North Carolina.[128]
After Lee's surrender, a public meeting was held in Shreveport, Louisiana, at which many speakers supported continuation of the war. Plans were developed for the Davis government to flee to Havana, Cuba. There, the leaders would regroup and head to the Confederate-controlled Trans-Mississippi area by way of the Rio Grande.[129] None of these plans were put into practice.
On April 14, Lincoln was shot, dying the next day. Davis expressed regret at his death. He later said that he believed Lincoln would have been less harsh with the South than his successor, Andrew Johnson.[130] In the aftermath, Johnson issued a $100,000 reward for the capture of Davis and accused him of helping to plan the assassination. As the Confederate military structure fell into disarray, the search for Davis by Union forces intensified.[131]
President Davis met with his Confederate Cabinet for the last time on May 5, 1865, in Washington, Georgia, and officially dissolved the Confederate government.[132] The meeting took place at the Heard house, the Georgia Branch Bank Building, with 14 officials present. Along with their hand-picked escort led by Given Campbell, Davis and his wife Varina Davis were captured by Union forces on May 10 at Irwinville in Irwin County, Georgia.[133]
Capture of Jefferson Davis – Illustration in New York Daily News May 15, 1865
Mrs. Davis recounted the circumstances of her husband's capture as described below: "Just before day the enemy charged our camp yelling like demons... I pleaded with him to let me throw over him a large waterproof wrap which had often served him in sickness during the summer season for a dressing gown and which I hoped might so cover his person that in the grey of the morning he would not be recognized. As he strode off I threw over his head a little black shawl which was around my own shoulders, saying that he could not find his hat and after he started sent my colored woman after him with a bucket for water hoping that he would pass unobserved."[134]:172
It was reported in the media that Davis put his wife's overcoat over his shoulders while fleeing. This led to the persistent rumor that he attempted to flee in women's clothes, inspiring caricatures that portrayed him as such.[135] Over 40 years later, an article in the Washington Herald claimed that Mrs. Davis's heavy shawl had been placed on Davis who was "always extremely sensitive to cold air", to protect him from the "chilly atmosphere of the early hour of the morning" by the slave James Henry Jones, Davis's valet who served Davis and his family during and after the Civil War.[136] Meanwhile, Davis's belongings continued on the train bound for Cedar Key, Florida. They were first hidden at Senator David Levy Yulee's plantation in Florida, then placed in the care of a railroad agent in Waldo. On June 15, 1865, Union soldiers seized Davis's personal baggage from the agent, together with some of the Confederate government's records. A historical marker was erected at this site.[137][138][139] In 1939, Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site was opened to mark the place where Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured.
Imprisonment
Illustration of Jefferson Davis in prison
On May 19, 1865, Davis was imprisoned in a casemate at Fortress Monroe on the coast of Virginia. Irons were riveted to his ankles at the order of General Nelson Miles who was in charge of the fort. Davis was allowed no visitors, and no books except the Bible. He became sicker, and the attending physician warned that his life was in danger, but this treatment continued for some months until late autumn when he was finally given better quarters. General Miles was transferred in mid-1866, and Davis's treatment continued to improve.[140]
House of Representatives vote for a trial of Jefferson Davis, June 11, 1866
Pope Pius IX (see Pope Pius IX and the United States), after learning that Davis was a prisoner, sent him a portrait inscribed with the Latin words "Venite ad me omnes qui laboratis, et ego reficiam vos, dicit Dominus", which correspond to Matthew 11:28,[141][142] "Come to me, all you that labor, and are burdened, and I will refresh you, sayeth the Lord". A hand-woven crown of thorns associated with the portrait is often said to have been made by the Pope[143][144] but may have been woven by Davis's wife Varina.[145]
Varina and their young daughter Winnie were allowed to join Davis, and the family was eventually given an apartment in the officers' quarters. Davis was indicted for treason while imprisoned; one of his attorneys was ex-Governor Thomas Pratt of Maryland.[146] There was a great deal of discussion in 1865 about bringing treason trials, especially against Jefferson Davis. While there was no consensus in President Johnson's cabinet to do so, on June 11, 1866 the House of Representatives voted, 105-19, to support such a trial against Davis. Although Davis wanted such a trial for himself, there were no treason trials against anyone, as it was felt they would probably not succeed and would impede reconciliation. There was also a concern at the time that such action could result in a judicial decision that would validate the constitutionality of secession (later removed by the Supreme Court ruling in Texas v. White (1869) declaring secession unconstitutional).[147][148][149][150]
The 24 members of the petit jury impaneled by the United States Circuit Court for Virginia in Richmond for Davis's trial for treason in May 1867. Contemporary composite image from two glass plate negatives.
A jury of 12 black and 12 white men was recruited by United States Circuit Court judge John Curtiss Underwood in preparation for the trial.[151]
After two years of imprisonment, Davis was released on bail of $100,000, which was posted by prominent citizens including Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Gerrit Smith.[152] (Smith was a former member of the Secret Six who had supported abolitionist John Brown.) Davis went to Montreal, Quebec to join his family which had fled there earlier, and lived in Lennoxville, Quebec until 1868,[153] also visiting Cuba and Europe in search of work.[154] At one stage he stayed as a guest of James Smith, a foundry owner in Glasgow, who had struck up a friendship with Davis when he toured the Southern States promoting his foundry business.[155] Davis remained under indictment until Andrew Johnson issued on Christmas Day of 1868 a presidential "pardon and amnesty" for the offense of treason to "every person who directly or indirectly participated in the late insurrection or rebellion" and after a federal circuit court on February 15, 1869, dismissed the case against Davis after the government's attorney informed the court that he would no longer continue to prosecute Davis.[147][148][149]
Later years
Jefferson Davis at his home, c. 1885
After his release from prison and pardon, Davis faced continued financial pressures, as well as an unsettled family life. His elder brother Joseph died in 1870, his son William Howell Davis in 1872 and Jefferson Davis Jr. in 1878. His wife Varina was often ill or abroad, and for a time refused to live with him in Memphis, Tennessee. Davis resented having to resort to charity, and would only accept jobs befitting his former positions as U.S. Senator and Confederate President; several that he accepted proved financial failures.[156]
On one of his many trips to England,[157] Davis sought a mercantile position in Liverpool. However, British companies were wary, both because Britons were not interested in Canadian mines, and because Mississippi defaulted on debts in the 1840s, and Judah Benjamin cautioned him against countering former wartime propaganda by Robert J. Walker.[158] Davis also refused positions as head of Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia and the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee for financial reasons.[159]
In 1869, Davis became president of the Carolina Life Insurance Company in Memphis, Tennessee, at an annual salary of $12,000, plus travel expenses, and resided at the Peabody Hotel. He recruited former Confederate officers as agents, and the board ratified his position in 1870.[160] By 1873, he suggested that the company have boards of trustees at its various branches, and that qualification for such be that the trustee either take out a policy of at least $5,000 or own at least $1,000 in the company's stock.[161] By midyear the Panic of 1873 affected the company, and Davis resigned when it merged with another firm over his objections.[162] He also planned a "Davis Land Company" in which investors would pay $10 per share for 5,700 acres Davis owned in Arkansas. He drafted a prospectus that stated he owed more than $40,000 and his income did not amount to $200.[163]
Upon General Lee's death, Davis agreed to preside over the Presbyterian memorial in Richmond on November 3, 1870. That speech prompted further invitations, although he declined them until July 1871, when he was commencement speaker at the University of the South. Two years later Davis addressed the Virginia Historical Society at White Sulpher Springs, where Davis proclaimed southerners were "cheated not conquered" and would never have surrendered if they had foreseen Congressional Reconstruction.[164] In the summer of 1875, Davis agreed to speak at 17 agricultural fairs in the Midwest. He received criticism from the Chicago Tribune and threats to his life in Indiana, but crowds in Kansas City, Missouri and Fairview, Kentucky received him well. During the next two years Davis began writing his books about the Confederacy, but only addressed fellow former soldiers: first veterans of the Mexican War (before which he attacked Congressional Reconstruction), then Confederate veterans (where he promoted reconciliation).[164]
Early in Reconstruction, Davis publicly remained silent on his opinions, but privately condemned federal military rule and believed Republican authority over former Confederate states unjustified. Mississippi had elected Hiram Rhodes Revels, an African-American, as a U.S. Senator in 1870 to finish the term of Albert G. Brown. Furthermore, during the war, after Joseph Davis's departure from his plantations at Davis Bend and the Union capture of Vicksburg and the surrounding area, General Grant had continued Joseph Davis's utopian experiment and ordered that the land be leased to the freedman and black refugees allowed to settle in the area. Although Joseph Davis ultimately received the land back, many black leaders came from the plantation, which had its own political system, including elected black judges and sheriffs. After the 1867 floods changed the course of the Mississippi River, Joseph Davis sold the plantation to the former slave who had operated a store and handled the white brothers' cotton transaction, Ben Montgomery. Ben's son Isaiah Thornton Montgomery became the first black to hold office in Mississippi when General E.O.C. Ord appointed him Davis Bend's postmaster in 1867. Ben himself was elected justice of the peace. Other black leaders during Mississippi Reconstruction with Davis Bend ties included Israel Shadd, who became speaker of the state's House of Representatives, and legislator Albert Johnson (who also served in the state's constitutional convention).[165]
Jefferson Davis considered "Yankee and Negroe" rule in the South oppressive, and said so in 1871 and especially after 1873.[166] Like most of his white contemporaries, Davis believed that blacks were inferior to whites. One recent biographer believes Davis favored a Southern social order that included a "democratic white polity based firmly on dominance of a controlled and excluded black caste".[167]
While seeking to reclaim Davis Bend ("Hurricane" and "Brierfield" plantations) in 1865, Joseph Davis had filed documents with the Freedmans Bureau insisting that he had intentionally never given Jefferson Davis title to the latter. After receiving first a pardon, and then the lands back, he sold both plantations to former slave Ben Montgomery and his sons, taking back a mortgage for $300,000 at 6% interest, with payments due each January 1 beginning in 1867.[168] While Joseph Davis recognized he could not farm successfully without his 375 enslaved people, he expected the Montgomerys could better manage the labor situation, since in 1865 they had raised nearly 2000 bales of cotton and earned $160,000 in profits.[169] However, when the Mississippi River flooded in spring 1867, it also changed course, ruining many acres and creating "Davis Island". After Joseph Davis died two years later, his 1869 will left property to his two orphaned grandchildren, as well as to his brother's children, and named Jefferson Davis one of three executors (with Dr. J. H. D. Bowmar and nephew Joseph Smith). After the Montgomery men entertained the three executors in May 1870, and he suffered losses in the Panic of 1873, Jefferson Davis decided the black men could never fulfill the land purchase contract, and filed suit against the other trustees on June 15, 1874.[170] Jefferson Davis argued his late brother had an oral agreement with Ben Montgomery that allowed Jefferson Davis to rescind the deal and that an unassigned $70,000 from the land sale represented Brierfield's value (the orphaned Hamer grandchildren said it represented declining land values). The local Chancery Court (which then had a Republican judge, and two of the three Hamer lawyers were former Confederates) dismissed Davis's lawsuit in January 1876, citing estoppel, because Davis had been acting as executor for four years despite this claim based on alleged actions in the 1840s.[171] In April 1878 (months after Ben Montgomery had died), the Mississippi Supreme Court overruled the Warren County chancery court, deciding that Jefferson Davis properly claimed the Brierfield land by adverse possession, since he had cleared and farmed it from the 1840s until the outbreak of the Civil War (more than the ten years the statute required). By that time, two of the Republicans on that appellate court had been replaced by Democrats, both former Confederate officers,[172] To actually gain possession of Brierfield, Davis needed to convince the Warren County chancery court to foreclose the mortgage, which happened on June 1, 1880, and all appeals were rejected by December 1, 1881, allowing Jefferson Davis (for the first time in his life), to gain legal title.[173]
While pursuing the Brierfield litigation, Davis took another business trip to Liverpool. This time he sought employment from the Royal Insurance Company (a fire and marine insurer) which refused him, citing Northern animosity toward the former Confederate President. Other insurers also rejected him both directly and through intermediaries. He then visited former Confederate ambassador John Slidell in Paris, but was unable to associate with a land company, either to aid the southern people or encourage emigration to the South.[174] Davis returned to the United States and blamed race as the heart of what he called "the night of despotism" enveloping the South, citing Republicans who gave political rights to blacks that made them "more idle and ungovernable than before."[175] Davis also investigated mine properties in Arkansas and backed an ice-making machine venture, which failed.[176] He was invited to Texas, but turned down the opportunity to become the first president of the Agriculture and Mechanical College of Texas (now Texas A&M University) in 1876, citing the financial sacrifice (the offered salary was only $4,000/yr).[177] The Mississippi Valley Society, based in England, sought to spur European immigration and English investment, but Davis declined to accept that presidency until salary details had been settled, though he took a speaking tour of the area to drum up public support.[178]
Author
Joseph Davis had encouraged his brother to write his memoirs just after his release from prison, but Davis had responded that he was not capable of doing so, either physically nor emotionally. His wartime assistant Preston Johnston had also encouraged Davis three years later. As Davis began to seriously consider the memoir endeavor in 1869, his early working title became "Our Cause," for he believed he could convert others to the rightness of the Confederacy's actions.[179] In 1875, unable to come to terms with Preston Johnston, Davis authorized William T. Walthall, a former Confederate officer and Carolina Life agent in Mobile, Alabama to look for a publisher for the proposed book. Walthall contacted D. Appleton & Company in New York City, and editor Joseph C. Derby agreed to pay Walthall $250/month as an advance until the manuscript's completion, with the final product not to exceed two volumes of 800 pages each. Davis made minor changes and Appleton agreed.[180]
In 1877, Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey, a wealthy widow and writer whom he and Varina had known from childhood and who supported the Lost Cause, invited Davis to stay at her estate and plantation house, "Beauvoir", which faced the Gulf of Mexico in Biloxi, Mississippi. Her husband, Maryland-born Samuel Dorsey had bought Beauvoir in 1873, and died there two years later.[181] Mrs. Dorsey wanted to provide Davis with a refuge in which he could write his memoirs per the Appleton contract. She provided him a cabin for his own use as well as helped him with his writing through organization, dictation, editing and encouragement. Davis refused to accept overt charity, but agreed to purchase the property at a modest price ($5,500, payable in installments over three years).[182] In January 1878 Dorsey, knowing she too was ill (with breast cancer), made over her will with Walthall's assistance in order to leave her remaining three small Louisiana plantations and financial assets of $50,000 (equivalent to $1,270,000 in 2017) to Davis and (acknowledging his still-precarious health) if he predeceased her, to his beloved daughter, Winnie Davis.[183][184][164] Dorsey died in 1879, by which time both the Davises and Winnie were living at Beauvoir. Her relatives came to contest that last will, which excluded them and gave everything to Davis in fee simple. They argued Davis exerted undue influence over the widow. The court dismissed their lawsuit without comment in March 1880, and they filed no appeal.[185]
Upon receiving the Appleton contract, Davis had sent letters to his former associates, seeking supporting documentation. When Walthall sent two proposed chapters to New York in 1878, Appleton returned them, cautioning that it did not want a long rehash of constitutional history, but rather an account of Davis's actions as the Confederacy's president. The publisher then sent William J. Tenney, a states-rights Democrat and staff member, to visit Beauvoir to get the problematic manuscript into publishable shape. When it still failed to arrive, Derby personally traveled to Mississippi in February 1880. By this time, Derby had advanced $8,000, but Davis confessed that he had seen few pages, asserting that Walthall had the rest. Since Davis did not want to give up on the book nor return the funds (and had already mortgaged the properties he received from Dorsey), he agreed that Tenney would take up residence in a cottage at Beauvoir. On May 1, 1880, Davis severed all connections with Walthall, who had made little progress in the preceding two years.[186] Davis and Tenney then completed The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881), in two volumes of 700 and 800 pages respectively.[187][188]
Although the first volume still mainly highlighted secession as constitutionally legitimate and contained Davis's speeches among the lengthy appendices, the books restored Davis's reputation among ex-Confederates. Davis downplayed slavery as secession's cause, instead blaming the North for prosecuting a destructive and uncivilized war.[189]
The Southern Historical Society had been formed in 1876 by Rev. J. William Jones (a Baptist minister and former Confederate chaplain) and Gen. Jubal A. Early. Jones became the Society's paid secretary and editor of the Southern Historical Review; Early became President and head of its executive committee. They made Davis a life member and helped him gather material for his book. They had tried to enlist him for a speaking tour in 1882, but Davis declined, citing his health and a yellow fever epidemic near Beauvoir, and only made one address in New Orleans on its behalf before 1882. Early also began visiting Davis when the Virginian visited New Orleans as supervisor in the Louisiana State Lottery Company.[190] Like Judah Benjamin, Early repeatedly advised Davis not to participate publicly in personal vendettas and old battles, despite critical books and articles by former Confederate Generals Pierre Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston. Nonetheless, when asked to speak at dedication of the Lee mausoleum in Lexington, Virginia, Davis declined when he learned Johnston would preside, and also vented in his personal correspondence. Davis also took issue with Gen. William T. Sherman in an address in St. Louis in 1884 and in a lengthy letter to the editor, and also criticized young New York politician Theodore Roosevelt for comparing him to Benedict Arnold.[191]
When touring the South in 1886 and 1887, Davis attended many Lost Cause ceremonies, and large crowds showered him with affection as local leaders presented emotional speeches honoring his sacrifices to the would-be nation. According to the Meriden Daily Journal, at a reception held in New Orleans in May 1887, Davis urged southerners to be loyal to the nation--"United you are now, and if the Union is ever to be broken, let the other side break it." He continued by lauding Confederate men who successfully fought for their own rights despite inferior numbers during the Civil War, and argued that northern historians ignored this view.[192] Davis firmly believed that Confederate secession was constitutional, and was optimistic concerning American prosperity and the next generation.[193]
In the summer of 1888, James Redpath, editor of the North American Review and a former political enemy who became an admirer upon meeting Davis, convinced him to write a series of articles at $250 per article, as well as a book.[194] Davis then completed his final book A Short History of the Confederate States of America in October 1889.
Death and burials
On November 6 1889, Davis left Beauvoir to visit his Brierfield plantation. He embarked a steamboat in New Orleans during sleety rain and fell ill during the trip, so that he initially felt too sick to disembark at his stop, and spent the night upriver in Vicksburg before making his way to the plantation the next day. He refused to send for a doctor for four days before embarking on his return trip. Meanwhile, servants sent Varina a telegram, and she took a train to New Orleans, and then a steamboat upriver, finally reaching the vessel on which her husband was returning. Davis finally received medical care as two doctors came aboard further south and diagnosed acute bronchitis complicated by malaria.[195][196] Upon arriving in New Orleans three days later, Davis was taken to Garden District home of Charles Erasmus Fenner, a former Confederate officer who became an Associate Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court. Fenner was the son-in-law of Davis's old friend J. M. Payne. Davis's doctor Stanford E. Chaille pronounced him too ill to travel to Beauvoir; four medical students who were sons of Confederate veterans and a Catholic nun attended Davis in the Charity Hospital ambulance which took him to the Fenner home. Davis remained bedridden but stable for the next two weeks. He took a turn for the worse in early December. According to Fenner, just when Davis again appeared to be improving, he lost consciousness on the evening of December 5 and died at 12:45 a.m. on Friday, December 6, 1889, holding Varina's hand and in the presence of several friends.[197][198]
His funeral was one of the largest in the South, and New Orleans draped itself in mourning as his body lay in state in the City Hall for several days. An Executive Committee decided to emphasize Davis's ties to the United States, so an American national flag was placed over the Confederate flag during the viewing, and many crossed American and Confederate flags nearby. Davis wore a new suit of Confederate grey fabric Jubal Early had given him, and Varina placed a sword Davis had carried during the Black Hawk War on the bier. A common decoration during the initial funeral was a small American flag in mourning, with a portrait of Davis in the center. The Grand Army of the Republic had a prominent role, even though the Grand Marshall was John G. Glynn, head of the Louisiana National Guard, and Georgia Governor John Gordon (head of the newly organized United Confederate Veterans) was honorary Grand Marshall.[164] While the federal government officially ignored Davis's death, many church bells rang in the south, Confederate veterans held many processions, and Senators and congressmen crossed the Potomac River to join former Confederate officials and generals in eulogizing Davis in Alexandria, Virginia.[199]
Although initially laid to rest in New Orleans in the Army of Northern Virginia tomb at Metairie Cemetery, in 1893 Davis was reinterred in Richmond, Virginia at Hollywood Cemetery, per his widow's request.[200] Before his death, Davis left the location of his burial up to Varina, but within a day of his death The New York Times proclaimed Richmond wanted his body.[201] Varina Davis had refused to accept direct charity, but let it be known that she would accept financial help through the Davis Land Company.[202] Soon, many tourists in New Orleans visited the mausoleum. Several other locations in the South wanted Davis's remains. Louisville, Kentucky offered a site in Cave Hill cemetery, noting that two years earlier Davis had dedicated a church built on the site of his birthplace and claiming that he several times said he wanted to be buried in his native state. Memphis, Tennessee, Montgomery, Alabama, Macon and Atlanta, Georgia and both Jackson and Vicksburg, Mississippi also petitioned for Davis's remains.[203] Richmond mayor and Confederate veteran J. Taylor Ellyson established the Jefferson Davis Monument Association, and on July 12, 1891 Varina revealed in a letter to Confederate Veterans and people of the Southern States that her first choice would be Davis's plantation in Mississippi, but that because she feared flooding, she had decided to urge Richmond as the proper place for his tomb.[204]
After Davis's remains were exhumed in New Orleans, they lay in state for a day at Memorial Hall of the newly organized Louisiana Historical Association.[205] Those paying final respects included Louisiana Governor Murphy J. Foster, Sr.. A continuous cortège, day and night, then accompanied Davis's remains from New Orleans to Richmond.[206] The Louisville and Nashville Railroad car traveled past Beauvoir, then proceeded northeastward toward Richmond, with ceremonies at stops in Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama, Atlanta, Georgia, then Charlotte and Greensboro, North Carolina. The train also detoured to Raleigh, North Carolina for Davis's coffin to lie in state in that capital city, having been driven by James J. Jones, a free black man who had served Davis during the war and become a local businessman and politician. After a stop in Danville, Virginia, the Confederacy's last capital, and another ceremony at the Virginia State Capital, Davis was then interred at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond. Per the association's agreement with Varina, their children's remains were exhumed from Washington, D.C., Memphis and another plot at the Hollywood cemetery, to rest in the new family plot.[207]
A life sized statue of Davis was eventually erected as promised by the Jefferson Davis Monument Association, in cooperation with the Southern Press Davis Monument Association, the United Confederate Veterans and ultimately the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The monument's cornerstone was laid in an 1896 ceremony, and it was dedicated with great pomp and 125,000 spectators on June 3, 1907, the last day of a Confederate reunion.[208] It continues to mark his tomb.[209]
Legacy
Jefferson Davis served in many roles. As a soldier, he was brave and resourceful.[54] As a politician, he served as a United States senator and a Mississippi congressman and was active and accomplished, although he never completed a full term in any elected position. As a plantation owner, he employed slave labor as did most of his peers in the South, and supported slavery.[23] As president of the Confederate States of America, he is widely viewed as an ineffective wartime leader; although the task of defending the Confederacy against the much stronger Union would have been a great challenge for any leader, Davis's performance in this role is considered poor.[124] After the war, he contributed to reconciliation of the South with the North, but remained a symbol for Southern pride.[7]
Some portions of his legacy were created not as memorials, but as contemporary recognition of his service at the time.
Fort Davis National Historic Site began as a frontier military post in October 1854, in the mountains of western Texas. It was named after then-United States Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. That fort gave its name to the surrounding Davis Mountains range, and the town of Fort Davis. The surrounding area was designated Jeff Davis County in 1887, with the town of Fort Davis as the county seat. Other states containing a Jefferson (or Jeff) Davis County/Parish include Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
Jefferson Davis Hospital began operations in 1924 and was the first centralized municipal hospital to treat indigent patients in Houston, Texas.[210] The building was designated as a protected historic landmark on November 13, 2013, by the Houston City Council and is monitored by the Historic Preservation Office of the City of Houston Department of Planning and Development.[211] The hospital was named for Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy, in honor of the Confederate soldiers who had been buried in the cemetery and as a means to console the families of the deceased.[212]
Numerous memorials to Jefferson Davis were created. The largest is the 351-foot (107 m) concrete obelisk located at the Jefferson Davis State Historic Site in Fairview, marking his birthplace. Construction of the monument began in 1917 and finished in 1924 at a cost of about $200,000.[10]
Jefferson Davis
5-cent CSA J. Davis on Stone Mountain
1970 issue
In 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy conceived the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway, a transcontinental highway to be built through the South.[213][214] Portions of the highway's route in Virginia, Alabama and other states still bear the name of Jefferson Davis.[213] However, in Alexandria, Virginia, the city council voted unanimously to rename the highway and has solicited public suggestions for a new name.[215]
Davis appeared on several postage stamps issued by the Confederacy, including its first postage stamp (issued in 1861). In 1995, his portrait appeared on a United States postage stamp, part of a series of 20 stamps commemorating the 130th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.[216][217] Davis was also celebrated on the 6-cent Stone Mountain Memorial Carving commemorative on September 19, 1970, at Stone Mountain, Georgia. The stamp portrayed Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson on horseback. It depicts a replica of the actual memorial, carved into the side of Stone Mountain at 400 feet (120 m) above ground level, the largest high-relief sculpture in the world.[218]
The Jefferson Davis Presidential Library was established at Beauvoir in 1998. For some years, the white-columned Biloxi mansion that was Davis's final home had served as a Confederate Veterans Home. The house and library were damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005; the house reopened in 2008.[219] Bertram Hayes-Davis, Davis's great-great grandson, is the executive director of Beauvoir, which is owned by the Mississippi Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.[220]
Based at Rice University in Houston, Texas, The Papers of Jefferson Davis is an editing project to publish documents related to Davis. Since the early 1960s, it has published 13 volumes, the first in 1971 and the most recent in 2012; two more volumes are planned. The project has roughly 100,000 documents in its archives.[221]
The birthday of Jefferson Davis is commemorated in several states. His actual birthday, June 3, is celebrated in Florida,[222] Kentucky,[223] Louisiana[224] and Tennessee;[225] in Alabama, it is celebrated on the first Monday in June.[226] In Mississippi, the last Monday of May (Memorial Day) is celebrated as "National Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis's Birthday".[227] In Texas, "Confederate Heroes Day" is celebrated on January 19, the birthday of Robert E. Lee;[225] Jefferson Davis's birthday had been officially celebrated on June 3 but was combined with Lee's birthday in 1973.[228]
Robert E. Lee's United States citizenship was posthumously restored in 1975. Davis had been specifically excluded from earlier resolutions restoring rights to other Confederate officials, and a movement arose to restore Davis's citizenship as well. This was accomplished with the passing of Senate Joint Resolution 16 on October 17, 1978. In signing the law, President Jimmy Carter referred to this as the last act of reconciliation in the Civil War.[229]
Screen Portrayals
On film and television Jefferson Davis has been portrayed by,
See also
References
Notes
a b Davis 1996, p. 6, states: "Thus it was with a touch of humor, leavened by wishful thinking, that the boy born to her on June 3, 1808, found himself endowed chicken fighting, testimony to his father's familiarity with Latin and both parents' hope that this baby would be their last." However, Cooper 2000, p. 10, writes: "His parents also gave him a middle name, which by early manhood he dropped completely; only the initial F. survived."; and again Cooper 2000, p. 711 n. 1, writes: "Some have also questioned whether Davis ever had a middle name. He used the initial at West Point, as did his mother in her will. Again, I assume that both would not have invented it... No evidence supports Hudson Strode's claim that the actual middle name was Finis, signaling the final child."
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
Official
OtherI had my tropical mango smoothie featured in my cooking segment on an episode of UConn’s UCTV show, Wake Up UConn!
This smoothie is just in time for spring and the warm weather. Here at school it was spring break time coming up so that inspired this smoothie. So without further ado, here is the recipe for this very easy, quick, fun, tropical smoothie!
Time: 10 minutes
Makes: 2 servings
Here’s what you’ll need:
1 cup of orange juice
1 banana
1 mango
10 strawberries
1 date
Start by washing your mango and strawberries. Peel and cut your mango into big chunks and place in your blender. Then move on and cut the tops off your washed strawberries and also add those to the blender. Add in one banana, one date, and one cup of orange juice to the blender.
Now you have everything you need and can blend up your tropical smoothie. I recommend blending on high for about 45 seconds to a minute because the consistency of the mango requires it to be blended for a little longer so you can avoid having large chunks in your smoothie.
After everything has been blended, you are ready to pour your smoothie into glasses and serve!
On a small little side note…I’d like to point out that this can also be a fun and tropical alcoholic drink if you prefer. You could add in a little vodka or rum, but I personally think that this tropical smoothie would really go well with a coconut rum like Malibu. I have yet to try this but realized this when the anchor was talking to me after we shot the cooking segment. As soon as she had mentioned it would go well with alcohol, I knew she was on to something. Well another adventure for another day.
Regardless of how you end up making your smoothie, this tropical mango smoothie is sure to satisfy. So on to the nutrition facts…
Overall, one serving this smoothie has 189 calories and just one gram of fat. You are getting over 600 milligrams of potassium. This smoothie has lots of vitamins as well. For example, in one serving you are getting almost 20% of your daily vitamin A, almost 30% of daily vitamin B-6, and an overwhelming 128% of your daily vitamin C.
One thing to be aware of though in terms of nutrition for this smoothie is the amount of sugar. One serving has 36 grams of sugar. Obviously too much sugar is not good for your diet, but naturally occurring sugars like the ones found in the fruits and juice used for this smoothie are better for you than most of the processed sugars found in processed foods. So I say enjoy this smoothie like I do every once in a while as a treat!
AdvertisementsBackers abandon $10 million Super School project in Oakland
The Oakland Unified School District Board of Education. The Oakland Unified School District Board of Education. Photo: Eric Kayne / Special To The Chronicle Photo: Eric Kayne / Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 13 Caption Close Backers abandon $10 million Super School project in Oakland 1 / 13 Back to Gallery
Backers of a $10 million plan to reinvent the American high school in Oakland have scrapped the project, saying it’s neither the time nor the place for such an experiment given turnover and turmoil in the city’s school system.
Oakland was among 10 locations across the country selected in September to be part of the Super School Project to revolutionize the high school |
“neo-Nazis” who support “fascist ideas”.
Миша Руненко (@MikeRuney) Nazis attacked the vegan cafe wife and I founded in #Tbilisi this weekend, and it appears cops arrested the server https://t.co/TLLClCijxX
According to the statement, the attackers “pulled out grilled meat, sausages, and fish and started eating them and throwing them at us... they were just trying to provoke our friends and disrespect us.”
The statement also alleged that memberes of group had come to the neighbourhood a month earlier and asked a nearby shopkeeper whether foreigners or members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community frequented the cafe.
Launched a year ago, the cafe has become a popular meeting place for foreigners and had been showing English-language episodes of the animated sci-fi sitcom Rick And Morty when the violence broke out.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Children play atop a tank during Independence Day celebration in Tbilisi at the weekend. Photograph: David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters
Prank or politics?
Coming just three days after a march by right-wing nationalists timed with independence day celebrations, some Tbilisi residents are concerned that the cafe violence could mark the emergence of organised political actions by Georgian ultra-nationalists.
During a march through the capital, a group appeared carrying banners with the slogan “Georgians for Georgia”.
Politics upstages art as Georgia’s writers reflect on 25 years of independence Read more
For locals, the phrase has troubling connotations, bringing back memories of the divisive policies under Georgia’s first post-Soviet president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, that led ethnic minorities to declare independence in the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in the early 1990s.
It remains unclear whether the meat assault was merely a prank that turned violent, or an organised political actions by Georgian nationalists spurred on by the events of the independence day celebrations.
The Kiwi Cafe has pledged to stay open and said it remained “ready to accept all customers regardless of their nationality, race, appearance, age, gender, sexual orientation, or religious views.”
A version of this article first appeared on RFE/RLHello, and good day to everyone.
I shall commence by addressing a point that I will hopefully only have to make once, though I doubt it. This point concerns my writing skills– my “voice,” as it’s called in the show biz. On my last post, there were few comments saying my blog is “senseless drivel, unbearably hard to read, poorly executed and just plain bad writing.” At least a dozen people, maybe more, agreed.
Well, have I got big news for you like minded souls! I pinky promise, cherry on top, that both my writing and my “voice” isn’t going to get much better. A brief history lesson: I barely graduated high school because of my astounding skill at simultaneously flunking classes while excelling in daydreaming. Furthermore, I dropped out of college after four years with a terrible GPA. (Wisdom for high school kids: I strongly suggest trying to get good grades. I know it sucks, but it will make your life a whole lot easier no matter what path you pursue.) Sometimes I am so bad at spelling even Google doesn’t know what I am trying to say; I get really frustrated, yelling curse words for relief. I barely know the difference between your and you’re and I hate the sight of a comma breaking up my nice long sentences and love run on sentences and have no idea what this double period : is for.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I do, in all honesty, try very hard to write well, and I will continue working hard to improve. But I don’t think it’s going to get dramatically better. Sorry. However, there is one wonderful and simple solution to avoid my drivel: don’t read my blog! Think of it like burning your hand on the stove: the first time it’s the stove’s fault and second time it’s your fault. I use this simple trick to avoid things that I know will burn my brain– things like Biddles blog, Nancy Grace, Bill O’Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh. It’s absolutely wonderful: my brain stays sane and if they ever say anything worth mentioning, Jon Stewart will let me know. Bonus wisdom: this technique can be applied to restaurants, music, movies, and even most real life people.
And so the time has come, dear haters, for us to part ways. I wish you all the best in quest for better written blogs. There are probably even some on this very website. To help you all on your merry way, here’s a link to the top ten best written blogs according to some guy.
If that doesn’t quench your desire to escape and you’re still stuck hating, I want you to put your mouse on the back button and give it a nice firm click. And if that doesn’t work, try pouring your coffee or someone else’s coffee on your computer. I will wait.
New Book!
Phew. I think we are safe now. I can get back to dispatching drivel and you, dear reader can get back to that coffee you have yet to pour on your computer. Save some, though– you might need to use it later.
Since those still reading should enjoy the way I write, I have good news: a new book written and illustrated by yours truly! It’s called Eric vs Cancer: The Ultimate Challenge. It’s a short story about Eric, who challenges the cancer monsters to a game of ultimate with the winner getting to keep Eric’s stomach. Everyone should buy this book because it’s a good story and because 100 percent of all proceeds go to E.R.I.C., a non-profit organization that is raising awareness about youth cancer through ultimate. You can peruse a preview of the book here, just scroll down to the bottom click on the picture of the book. Thank you!
Spirit of the Game
Alright, let’s talk Spirit of the Game. It’s touchy subject for sure, but I think one thing people should keep in mind is that all opinions are valid because no one owns Spirit of the Game (that includes you, USA Ultimate), it can mean whatever you want it to. My definition is simple: don’t cheat and respect your opponent.
First, a positive. I am quite proud of our Spirit of the Game and the players and teams who embody it. Compared to other sports, we rarely have flopping, low blows, fisticuffs or fake convulsing on the ground like a sniper took out a leg.
Now, the negative. Some people think cheating is too harsh a word for what transpires on the field. I don’t. Wikipedia’s definition for cheating is spot on: “Getting of reward for ability by dishonest means or finding an easy way out of an unpleasant situation.” I have seen this displayed by many players in ultimate. Losing is very unpleasant, and making a call to try and avoid this is very easy. One simple word like “travel” or “foul” can cancel out an opposing team’s entire effort. I have lost many big games, many of which were my fault. But the ones that hurt the most were the ones where the opposition won by making calls. Back in college, some teams cheated so much that we would have scrimmages where our coach would make terrible calls at every big moment. Man, those were frustrating scrimmages, but they really helped prepare us against the flood of calls we knew we’d encounter. On the flip side, that same college coach refused to promote cheating. He was brash, loud, sometimes downright ruthless and cruel, but he tried to instill a Spirit of the Game in us that I still respect to this day. If you are coach or fancy yourself a warlord, I would strongly encourage you to embody the Spirit of the Game. Your minions will follow your lead just as I did.
The other part of Spirit is respecting your opponent. I think a lot of people get confused on this topic. Respecting does not mean being nice. You can despise, talk trash, glare, pound your chest, spike the disc, yell, or heckle and still respect your opponent. To me, respect is knowing you need your opponent. Without an opponent, you and your team would be just a bunch of dudes standing in field playing catch with a disc. Collisions and accidents happen in our sport, but constantly going after someone with no regard for that person’s safety in not what our sport is about. Neither is biting their head off for having a different take on a play than you, especially in the immediate moment after it happens.
The reason I wanted to explain what Spirit of the Game means to me is because I think it has nothing to do with refs. Either you play with Spirit or you don’t. After playing in my first two AUDL games, I can confirm that the Spirit of the Game is alive and well in the league. As usual there are some who play with more Spirit and some with less; the ones who acted with less are the same players that would be acting that way if there were not refs and vice versa. To those of you who are fortunate enough to play high level ultimate, I implore you to remember that you are shaping the sport for future generations. Don’t leave future players or spectators a sport where cheap fouling and other forms of cheating are acceptable. Lead by example.
Now, I am going to softly tackle USAU. It’s a dangerous course of action, I am well aware– the ultimate community is thick with USAU zealots. To subdue any pitchfork uprising, let me acknowledge that I love USAU the way one loves a overbearing parent, but just because someone raised you does not make them beyond reproach.
I think USAU is being a bit harsh– almost hypocritical– in blasting the use of refs and refusing to work with pro leagues. See, USAU is funny in their stance on refs. They’re like a puppy thats not allowed on the comfy couch, and in this situation, the couch is refs. They absolutely know they are not supposed to get on that couch. Master Spirit has forbid it. But every year, they look around to see who is paying attention and put another paw up there. This puppy-on-couch syndrome– one paw up, two paws up, reverse position, one hind leg up, tail on, reverse position, just head on– has been interesting to watch. The observers we have today are a far cry from what they used to be, and in my opinion, they’re much better. They converse quickly, they make a call, the game goes on, and they even smite cheaters with TMFs. We can thank ESPN for some of these advancements, for no spectator wants to watch two grown men diplomatically discussing the intricacies of a dispute for five minutes.
The AUDL is like the cat on the coach, preening itself and waiting for a golden sunbeam that may never come. It’s sprawled out body language saying “this is a comfy couch and I am content. Humans can love me if they want.”
And so we find ourselves in a typical dog-hate-cat scenario. The dog is upset that the cat gets to be on the couch and the cat keeps saying “look here, dog, don’t hate me just because I climbed up on the couch. You’re the one who is scared of losing the love of Master.” As a lover of both dogs and cats, I can only hope that these two distinct yet similar animals don’t get into a massive fight. I hate cleaning up chunks of hair, and the blood could stain the carpet. That’s what I would say if these animals could understand human language and would listen, anyway.
Lets find common ground and start there, from the ground up. The AUDL wants to promote ultimate for youth in almost exactly the same way that USAU does. Here is the website for Callahan for Kids, the AUDL youth clinics. Notice the line that says, “We are devoted to building character through the promotion of the Spirit of the Game.”
I think youth ultimate should be self-officiated with a high emphasis on Spirit of the Game, and so does the AUDL and USAU. See, that wasn’t that bad. We all agree on something, now lets all work together to make this happen. I would love to promote this sport to the youth of the world, and I believe it’s a sport worthy of being spread to all the corners of the earth. Imagine what could happen if we took the loyalty of the dog and combined it with the suaveness of the cat. We could ignore the couch completely and get some really great things accomplished.
Contest
From my last post, thanks for all the wonderful Biddle definitions. They were quite funny. Ash decided the winner should be this one, from Adam:
Biddle – (verb) 1. An attempt to bid at the disc – displaying effort towards a goal – but ultimately resulting in crushing one’s nuts against the ground/a defender. “Brody tried for the disc, but biddled himself pretty bad on that play.”
Please contact neeley@skydmagazine.com to claim your prize.
This week’s question is to help out the AUDL San Francisco Flamethrowers. I have been listening to their captain, Cassidy, spouting out bad cheers all month. Post a cheer for the Flamethrowers because they need your help. Cass will choose the winner.American service members are confronting a potential haircut. Under a proposal the Pentagon outlined last week, new members of the armed forces would see their guaranteed retirement benefits cut by one-fifth if Congress approves the plan.
But if future veterans are being asked to make do with less, one key constituency stands to capture more: Wall Street.
Under the details of the Pentagon plan, the federal government would divert 3 percent of service members’ pay into a 401(k)-style plan that would be managed largely by BlackRock, a financial firm whose executives helped bankroll President Barack Obama’s election campaigns.
The change could wind up transferring as much as $50 billion from military paychecks to BlackRock, generating tens of millions of dollars in fees for the Wall Street giant. BlackRock employees have donated over $90,000 to Obama’s campaigns directly, and nearly $75,000 to the Democratic National Committee during the course of Obama’s two presidential campaigns, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink was also a prominent supporter of Obama’s election campaigns, and the company in 2013 named Hillary Clinton's former State Department chief of staff to its board of directors.
Under the proposed change, current veterans and service members would have the option to retain their existing benefit scheme and could opt in to the new 401(k)-style plan on a voluntary basis. The change would affect all people who join the military going forward. The Obama administration’s deficit-reduction commission has argued that the cuts are necessary cost-saving measures. The Pentagon has embraced the change as a means of gaining flexibility needed to field necessary levels of troops.
“The department considered all elements of current and potential retirement plans and built a blended system that -- in the military judgment of the Department of Defense -- best enables us to maintain the readiness of the all-volunteer force,” said Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren in a press release about the proposal. Warren asserted said the shift will save the Pentagon some $8.1 billion over the next decade, Reuters reported.
But advocates who track federal spending say future veterans are essentially being asked to swallow cuts to their retirement checks so the Pentagon can maintain spending on costly and dubious pet projects.
“If Congress is looking to save money, we can think of a far bigger fish for them to fry in the Pentagon budget -- namely overpriced and unproven weapons systems,” said Joe Newman, a spokesman for the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. In comparison to the $8.1 billion in projected savings on retirement benefits, Newman cited the Pentagon’s F-35 jet program, which is not cleared for use in combat and which is estimated to cost $1.4 trillion.
An independent audit of the Pentagon has never been completed, despite a long-standing federal law requiring such an exercise. A 2013 report from Reuters found that the Pentagon has a “chronic failure to keep track of its money -- how much it has, how much it pays out and how much is wasted or stolen.”
The proposed changes at issue would bring modern day 401(k)-style retirement investing to one of the last major preserves for old-fashioned pensions in which retirees are guaranteed pre-set amounts of income.
Under the current program, the military invests retirement money exclusively in U.S. Treasury bills, while guaranteeing set levels of benefits for retired veterans. The new initiative would reduce guaranteed benefits while shifting 3 percent of service members’ pay into the federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), with the government financing an additional 1 percent in contributions.
The TSP is a 401(k)-style retirement plan that invests money with private financial firms and does not guarantee a set amount of retirement income. The TSP currently invests more than 55 percent of its assets with BlackRock, according to the system’s financial statements.
While the TSP does allow participants to forgo investing in actively managed funds by enrolling in a lower-risk U.S. Treasury bill option, the system encourages enrollees to “diversify” across asset classes. Over the next 25 years, the Obama plan would, if enacted, shift roughly $91 billion in service members’ compensation into the TSP. Assuming military participants invest in the same way as other TSP participants, that shift could end up funneling up to $50 billion to BlackRock in that time period.
Though the TSP discloses its overall fees, program officials declined to disclose how much it specifically pays to BlackRock, asserting that such information is proprietary. BlackRock did not respond to International Business Times’ questions.
Under the military’s existing pension plan, service members currently pay no annual fees to Wall Street money managers. If the Obama administration’s changes are approved, new service members in the TSP will pay investment management fees -- either to the TSP or to BlackRock, depending on which investment fund they choose.
The proposed changes to the military’s retirement system came from the president’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, headed by former Sen. Alan Simpson and private equity executive Erskine Bowles. That commission was most famous for pushing cuts to Social Security benefits, but also included proposals to slash military retirement benefits.
“Military and civilian pensions are... out of line with pension benefits available to the average worker in the private sector,” the commission’s 2010 report argued.
One of the leading proponents of the Simpson-Bowles proposals was Pete Peterson, President Richard Nixon’s former secretary of commerce and co-founder of the Blackstone Group. BlackRock was seeded by the Blackstone Group, and BlackRock’s original name was Blackstone Financial Management. In addition, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is on the steering committee of a group founded by Simpson and Bowles to champion their commission’s recommendations.Anthony Garnaut is a lecturer at the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies and the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. He wrote his doctorate on the life of the Muslim religious leader Ma Yuanzhang (馬元璋, 1853-1920) under the supervision of Geremie Barmé, at the Division of Pacific and Asian History, The Australian National University. He has worked as a research associate at the University of Melbourne on an ARC-funded project led by Stephen Wheatcroft on the comparative history of modern famines, and as a postdoctoral fellow at the Contemporary China Centre, University of Oxford. Anthony can be contacted at: [email protected] — The Editors
________________
In April 2013, the new party-state leader Xi Jinping announced that, from the middle of the year, his administration would focus on reviving the Mass Line 群众路线, the mode of mass mobilisation that underpinned the political campaigns of the Mao era. In June, Liu Yunshan 刘云山, the Politburo member responsible for propaganda, formally launched what was dubbed the Mass Line Education and Practice Campaign 党的群众路线教育实践活动. Over the following months the movement was promoted in every realm of government and Communist Party activity. In academia and intellectual life, the most striking intervention came in the form of a series of articles published in party ideology journals that questioned the existence of a massive famine during the High-Maoist era of socialism. This ‘revisionism’ regarding what is commonly called ‘The Great Famine’ or ‘The Three Difficult Years’ reached a zenith at an international conference convened in Wuhan in July 2014. It illustrated how the new mass line may well apply to historical scholarship more broadly.
Contra Historical Nihilism
The Xi administration has breathed new life into the old Chinese Communist Party concern with managing its public image and reputation. Ideological Work 思想工作 stands at the centre of the administration’s affairs in a way that has reinvigorated the rote behaviour of party propagandists in the late-Hu-Wen decade (2003-2012). As scholars like Anne-Marie Brady have pointed out, Ideological Work aims to unite the hearts and minds of members of the Party, the Army and the masses around the collective leadership of the Party and, now, the personality of its leader, Xi Jinping.[1] On the one hand, it promotes positive evaluations of the Party’s contribution to China’s national development and on the other, it attacks, undermines and degrades the visibility of worldviews and value systems that are incompatible with those of the Party. The Xi administration seeks in particular to oversee the Internet with the same rigour that the Party has previously applied to traditional media, but without entirely alienating online users. It has entrusted this delicate task to a new generation of Internet content managers and independent scholars, the modern equivalent of the apparatchiki and grass-roots activists who oversaw mass campaigns in the Mao era. Following the inauguration of the new Mass Line Campaign, the propaganda system issued what is known simply as Document Number Nine.[2] As discussed in the China Story Yearbook 2013, this internal communiqué identified seven ‘false ideological trends, positions, and activities’ 错误思潮和主张及活动 that had to be actively countered if the Party was to retain command over the ideological and cultural superstructure of the state. One of the dangers was named as ‘Promoting historical nihilism, negating with ill-intent the history of the Chinese Communist Party and of New China’ 宣扬历史虚无主义，企图否定中国共产党历史和新中国历史. ‘Historical nihilism’ has a long pedigree in Marxist-Leninist cultures and the expression has been routinely used since 1989 to attack ideas, historical works or reinterpretations of the past that challenge party hegemony.
How this would affect historical research was elaborated in a lengthy People’s Daily article compiled by the Central Party History Office which outlined Xi Jinping’s ‘important discourse’ on ‘the two [historical eras] that can not be negated’ 两个不能否定.[3] The message of that article was that mistakes, difficulties and setbacks in party history could and should not be used to negate the overall achievements of the Party, during either the Mao era or the post-Mao Reform era. Rather than dwelling on the material hardships suffered by the Chinese people in the Mao era, it suggested, historians should acknowledge the achievements of the Chinese people in overcoming adversity and extol ‘the spirit of Lei Feng 雷锋, of “Iron Man” Wang Jinxi 王进喜, of the tireless cadre Jiao Yulu 焦裕禄 and the spirit of the Two Bombs and the Satellite’ 雷锋精神、“铁人”精神、焦裕禄精神、“两弹一星”精神等富有时代特色的精神. Each of these ‘spiritual achievements’ of the Mao era, including China’s atomic bomb project, have been the subject of major film or documentary projects in the last three years, although none have performed particularly well at the box office.
The People’s Daily article also called for greater party scrutiny over historical scholarship in general and for those working on the ideological front to take charge of the correct framing of public discussions and debates relating to the Party and to the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The article quoted the famous Qing scholar-official Gong Zizhen (龚自珍 1792-1841): ‘To destroy a state, one must first erase its history’ 灭人之国，必先去其史. The point here was that those engaged in ideological work needed to limit the scope for liberal critiques of the Mao era and radical (neo-Maoist) critiques of the Reform era alike. Discussion of the history of the PRC should focus on the Party’s accomplishments, rather than dwelling in a nihilistic manner on the human suffering and economic crises that occurred on a mass scale during, for example, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution or June Fourth 1989.
A Two-line Struggle over the Famine
Even in formal evaluations of the past, the Party has been coy about publicly acknowledging the extent of the Great Famine or how its own disastrously misguided policies contributed to it. At the time, the international scholarly community had only limited access to reliable statistical information – indeed, the first clear indication of the scale of the crisis came in the form of demographic analysis done by Ansley Coale in 1981 using newly released official statistical data.[4] The prevailing view at the ‘Seven Thousand Cadres’ conference, convened in January 1962 to forge a consensus within the Party about the Great Leap Forward, was that there had been serious agricultural problems and even some deaths from malnutrition in isolated districts; these problems and deaths had been caused primarily by natural disasters, and were aggravated by counter-revolutionary forces within certain local governments.
The 1981 Central Committee ‘Resolution on Party history’ revised this view to describe the period 1959-1961 as one in which ‘the national economy suffered serious difficulties, and both the nation and the people suffered major setbacks’. Emboldened by the critical stance taken by the Party in the early Reform era in regard to the social and economic problems of the Mao era, the State Statistical Bureau (SSB) released previously suppressed data that indicated that a massive demographic crisis had occurred in China in the late 1950s. Relying on the newly released data, including annual crude mortality figures and the detailed results of the first three population censuses conducted in the PRC, several groups of demographers concluded that around twenty-seven to thirty million people had died of famine-related causes between 1957 and 1962.[5] From the mid-1990s, a number of historians and journalists drew on the results of internal party investigations or archival sources not endorsed by the SSB to claim the death toll was considerably higher. The most influential of these was Yang Jisheng 杨继绳 who, in his two-volume chronicle of the famine published in 2008, Tombstone 墓碑, endorsed a figure of thirty-six million deaths.[6] In 2013-2014, the intervention of the Mass Line Education and Practice Campaign in famine research seems to have been set on raising doubts about the accuracy of all of these estimates, with a focus on the work of Yang in particular.
The intervention started with an article by Sun Jingxian 孙经先, a mathematics professor from Jiangsu Normal University, which appeared on 23 August 2013 in the Chinese Social Sciences Weekly produced by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). The timing of the article was significant, coming four days after Xi Jinping convened an internal Party conference to establish the Ideological Work agenda of his administration.[7] As the China Media Project investigative journalist and media analyst Qian Gang 钱钢 has pointed out, this was a peculiar week in PRC media history: while the General Political Department of the PLA and the Central Propaganda Bureau strongly promoted an interpretation of Xi’s speech that emphasised the need for ‘positive propaganda and public opinion struggle’ 正面宣传，舆论斗争, the tone of the official summary of the speech reported in the People’s Daily was far milder. The tone and content of Sun’s article fits squarely within the Central Department of Propaganda’s interpretation of Xi’s speech.
In the opening line of his article, Sun characterised the view that ‘thirty million people starved to death during the Three Difficult Years’ as being nothing more than a ‘massive rumour’ 重大谣言, one disseminated by Yang Jisheng as well as the likes of Cao Shuji 曹树基, Jin Hui 金辉, Ding Shu 丁抒 and Wang Weizhi 王维志, scholars and others who had produced the estimates of famine mortality that Yang Jisheng considered credible. (It should be pointed out that the accusation of ‘spreading rumours’ coincided with a highly publicised, and extremely punitive, official crackdown on rumour-mongering over the Internet.)
Sun argued that claims that there had been thirty million or more famine-related deaths in the Great Leap Forward era were based on statistical fallacies. According to Sun, China’s household registration data had been skewed by large-scale rural-to-urban migration during the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent repatriation of tens of millions of registered urban residents to the countryside. This gave rise to the appearance of mass population loss during those years, whereas in fact the missing people were alive and well and were gradually reintegrated within the household population registers. Sun concluded that in a ‘very few’ districts, such as Xinyang prefecture, fewer than 2.5 million people in total had died of ‘nutritional deaths’. The latter term was a broad morbidity class of Sun’s invention, and included deaths caused by edema and other nutrition-related illnesses as well as a small number of deaths caused directly by starvation. He said he used several different methods of statistical analysis to verify his conclusions, although we must await the publication of his promised book to learn the details. His conclusion is, I’d note, fortuitously consistent with the evaluation of the Great Leap Forward that was determined and then enforced on party history at the Seven Thousand Cadres conference of 1962.
Sun’s article offered little that was new. He had fully elaborated his argument about the effect of migration on the data two years previously in a piece published in Studies in Marxism 马克思主义研究, a journal also published by CASS. In this earlier work Sun had taken aim not at Yang Jisheng but rather at Jiang Zhenghua 蒋正华, a cyberneticist-turned-demographer who, supported by a national research grant, estimated that the Great Famine had caused seventeen million excess deaths, the lowest of the serious estimates of famine mortality.[8] Even though Yang was not mentioned in the 2011 article, he responded to it in great detail on his blog.
What was remarkable about Sun’s more recent article was that the editorial committee of a major official publication had sanctioned the use of the term ‘grand rumour’ to characterise new research on the famine. Sun had used the term ‘grand rumour’ in this way before, at a public forum in 2009 hosted by the neo-Maoist online publisher ‘Utopia’ on the ‘True Face of Population Change in the 1960s’. But for such an inflammatory expression to appear in the Chinese Social Sciences Weekly indicated a high-level of official endorsement. (By contrast, the prominent online campaign run by ‘Utopia’ in 2011 to have the independent economists and thinkers Mao Yushi 茅于轼 and Xin Ziling 辛子陵 tried on rumour-mongering charges never received comparable endorsement.)
With this official stamp of approval, Sun was able to publish an opinion piece in the Global Times on 5 September 2013, and a second article in the Chinese Social Sciences Weekly 中国社会科学报 four days later that listed ten errors he claimed to have found in Yang Jisheng’s Tombstone. Over the following months, he elaborated on various aspects of his population research in a string of articles that appeared in journals managed by the Party’s Central Department of Propaganda, including Red Flag Manuscripts 红旗文稿 and The Observer 观察. Sun’s thesis was also the focal point of a book by an independent scholar affiliated with ‘Utopia’ named Yang Songlin 杨松林 published in August 2013 (though not approved for distribution through retail book stores), and of a collection of papers attacking various ‘rumours’ about party history that appeared in December 2013. The editors of the latter collection were Li Shenming 李慎明, head of the Institute of World Socialism 世界社会主义研究所 at CASS, the home of the journal Studies in Marxism, and Li Jie 李捷, head of the Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies 当代中国研究所, both of whom at the time were serving vice-presidents of CASS.[9]
Colleagues and Patrons
Producing such a large volume of scholarship in such a short period of time requires both collegial support and patronage. In Sun’s case, the Utopia Forum on Population Change provided him with a supportive environment. The online version of the Forum brought together over one hundred research papers debunking particular claims about the Great Famine, or shifting blame for famine deaths from Mao Zedong to Liu Shaoqi, Zhao Ziyang and other leaders associated by neo-Maoists today with the liberal or reformist tradition within the CCP. (The online Forum was discontinued but not ‘harmonised’ when the ‘Utopia’ site was refurbished in the wake of the dismissal of Bo Xilai.) The Forum helped Sun to develop a vocabulary and methodology for denying the historical existence of a massive famine that was effective in the special context of the Chinese-language Internet. The Forum also produced some original contributions that failed to support its overall aim. For example, the ‘Utopia’-affiliated independent scholar Yang Songlin pointed out in the introduction to his recent book There will always be people to give witness to the truth: On the ‘Thirty million starvation deaths’, that there were fewer people over the age of sixty-five recorded in the 1964 census than in the 1953 census across China as a whole, and a lot fewer in the most severely affected provinces such Henan, Anhui, Shandong, Sichuan and Gansu, testifying to the extraordinarily high mortality of the elderly in the Great Leap era.
Among Sun’s patrons was the ninety-three-year-old former head of the Bureau of Statistics, Li Chengrui 李成瑞, whose preface to Sun’s as yet unpublished book was posted on an online forum in September 2013. This endorsement, though qualified (‘It’s a good thing that Professor Sun has raised some new perspectives on many people’s research. After all, comparison brings discernment, and truth is illuminated by debate!’ 孙教授对许多人的研究成果提出不同意见是一件好事。有比较才能鉴别，真理愈辩愈明嘛！), lent considerable weight to Sun’s work, as it came from the person responsible for releasing the statistical data that made demographic research on the famine possible, and whose previous contribution on the famine debate was to argue that the death toll was ten times greater than in Sun’s revisionist account. One clue as to how someone whose career had been dedicated to restoring integrity to Chinese government statistics could become associated with Sun’s work, is that the preface was written while Li Chengrui was a special research fellow at the Institute of World Socialism, CASS.[10]
This Institute is headed by Sun Jingxian’s ultimate patron Li Shenming, mentioned above. Li Shenming’s journal Studies in Marxism gave Sun’s ideas about famine demography their first outing in print, his Institute of World Socialism awarded Sun a fellowship to develop further his research into the famine, and his name can be found amongst the editors of the party ideology journals and books Sun’s ideas were propagated.[11] Li, in turn, has strong patrons within the network of princelings and intellectuals that have led the revival of Maoist rhetoric and organisational forms over the past decade.[12] In an article published in May 2013 that reads like a draft of Xi Jinping’s ‘important discourse’ on PRC history, Li claimed that the notion that Stalin and Mao had each killed thirty million people had been manufactured from falsified statistics and spread by hostile Western forces in order to promote the downfall of socialism. He did not cite any authority for his claims about Stalin, and I am not aware of any other arguments that the famine deaths and extrajudicial killings that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1930s are mere statistical fallacies.[13] On the Chinese side, he backed up his assertion by pointing to Sun’s argument about household registration data.
Yang Jisheng is not without patrons and colleagues of his own, though they tend not to hang out at the ‘Utopia’ bookshop in Beijing. Although the ban on the distribution of Tombstone in mainland China remains in force, the Hong Kong edition continues to sell well there and pirated editions have been sighted in roadside bookstalls from Beijing to rural Sichuan. An abridged English translation made it into paperback and was awarded the 2013 Hayek Prize by the Manhattan Institute. Both Caixin 财新 and The New York Times published articles supportive of Yang within a fortnight of Sun’s first article appearing in the Chinese Social Sciences Weekly.[14] While the Chinese Social Sciences Weekly did not give Yang the opportunity to publish an extended response to Sun (Yang declined the editors’ offer to publish a short rejoinder), he was able to produce a lengthy rebuttal in the December edition of Annals of the Yellow Emperor 炎黄春秋, the liberal party history journal where Yang serves as deputy commissioning editor. The May 2014 edition of the same journal published four articles that challenged the view of the ‘false trend’ of historical nihilism promoted by the Central Propaganda Department, including the argument that the main nihilist trend that had to be countered was the denial of the basic facts of history. As of writing, these articles have not landed the journal in political hot water. It appears that on the question of the scale of famine-related deaths, the administration is willing to allow two schools of thought to contend.
Mass Lies and Statistics
Sun Jingxian and other radical critics of what has become mainstream famine-related scholarship have met with their intellectual adversaries at two scholarly colloquiums. The first was held near Shanghai in November 2013 under the auspices of Open Times 开放时代, the newspaper of the Guangzhou Municipality Academy of Social Sciences, which also published a record of the proceedings. It was attended by Sun Jingxian, but not Yang Jisheng. Sun presented a version of his thesis on household registration data. The population and environmental historian Cao Shuji said in response that Sun’s thesis rested on a series of suppositions and failed to engage with the methods employed by any of the famine historians or demographers. Wang Shaoguang 王绍光, one of the senior figures associated with ‘Utopia’, |
in 2010. New York and Philadelphia’s Chinatowns did not see big change either way by that measure during the same time period, but in all three cities the proportion of homes inhabited by families and the proportion of children in the population dropped considerably. To Li that suggests that multigenerational immigrant homes are breaking up — or moving out.
To figure out the composition of these Chinatowns, volunteers went out and surveyed what types of restaurants, businesses and residential properties were in the area. Restaurants in particular are good barometers for a neighborhood’s service to immigrants. In other words, more Asian restaurants means a more robust Chinatown. But as the survey found, other restaurants and shops are moving in quickly.
The very existence of Chinatowns are a product of discrimination—immigrants created these communities to live in because they were excluded from pre-existing ones. And that tradition continues today, according to Bethany Li, author of the report. But with pressure from condominiums and high-end shops from all sides, many Chinatowns are slowly shrinking. While communities are fighting back, Li’s report says that without help they’ll be pushed out again:
Without the fights against unfettered development led by members from groups like the Chinese Progressive Association in Boston, Chinese Staff & Workers’ Association in New York, and Asian Americans United in Philadelphia, these Chinatowns would likely contain even more high-end and institutional expansion. City governments removed and replaced working-class immigrant residential and commercial land uses in each of these Chinatowns.
Bonnie Tsui at Atlantic Cities breaks down what some of those actions might be:
What’s to be done? Recommendations include allocating public land and funds for low-income housing development and retention at a more reasonable proportion to current high-end development; supporting small, local businesses to offset rising rents, given the symbiotic relationship with residents; prioritizing public green spaces; and engaging community organizations, residents, and the larger satellite communities to maintain Chinatowns as shared cultural history and home to working-class immigrants.
For many, Chinatowns are an attraction to a city, and many cities boast about their robust cultural neighborhoods. But they might not be around for much longer.
More from Smithsonian.com:
The Many Chinatowns of North America
San Francisco’s Chinatown at nightBRUCE LEE’S ONLY SEX SCENE
It is no secret that some mainstream film stars have appeared adult films, perhaps most notably Sylvester Stallone, who as a 24-year-old living in a bus station, starred in ‘Party at Kitty and Stud’s.’
“It was either do that movie or rob someone because I was at the end – at the very end – of my rope,” he explained in a 1978 Playboy interview. “Instead of doing something desperate, I worked two days for $200 and got myself out of the bus station.”
Many people assume this image comes from some similar desperate time on Lee’s career. Others are certain it’s a photoshop.
The stills are in fact real, and coms from a scene in The Big Boss, that was cut from the final release by Hong Kong censors, due to its prurient content.
Cheng Chao-an has thrown all his possessions into the river, and is preparing for a fight to the death, so, owning only the clothes on his back, some cash, and a bag of prawn crackers, he determines to get lucky one last time.
“Bruce and a prostitute make love in bed,” explained the Censor’s Office. “The noise produced is so great that another couple in the adjacent room are disturbed. The girl peeps through a hole into Bruce’s room. The man also wants to see, but the girl will not give way until he pays her some money. The man cannot held himself, he pays.”
Bruce Lee explained the scene in a Hong Kong radio interview with journalist Ted Thomas, shortly after the release of The Big Boss, as archived by Little Dragon.
“The way I look at that is that it was a suggestion of the director, and I accept it in such a way and that is, him being a very simple man, when all of a sudden he made up his mind that he is going to go and either die or kill or be killed, right?” said Lee. “So he walks past and it’s kind of a sudden thing, of human beings, that a thought just occurs – well, doggone it, man… such is the basic need of a human being… I might as well enjoy it, man, before I kick the bucket!”
The full scene is lost to history, except for an NSFW section that appears in a rare Mandarin trailer.
It is Lee’s first on screen kiss.
The role of the courtesan Wu Mang was played by Thai actress Malarin Boonnak, also known as Miss Malarin, Malalene, Marilyn, Marilyn Bautista, and Ma La Lene, who was only 19 at the time. She reportedly shot the three scenes (one at dinner and two with Lee) in just five hours.
She said later that every time she unveiled, Bruce Lee blushed.
Next: The Three Laws of Kung Fu MoviesArab tourists watched the march through a hotel's gates until they were urged by police and bystanders to go inside.
Rally leader Sandro Bregadze (to the right) and an activist carried an icon of King David the Builder at the head of the march.
Carrying crosses, icons and flags, hundreds of Georgians marched through an increasingly Middle Eastern retail district in downtown Tbilisi on July 14 to call for an end to Muslim immigration.
Police, journalists and bystanders urged bewildered Arabs and Iranians to get off the street as a roaring crowd surged down Aghmashenebeli Avenue, a handsome tsarist-era thoroughfare, blasting patriotic songs via massive, car-mounted speakers. “They turned Tbilisi into one big brothel!” shouted activist Lado Sadghobelashvili, one of the leaders of the rally, billed as a “March of Georgians.”
Various ultranationalist groups took party in the rally alongside less demonstrative residents of the district. Despite the worries of many observers, the rally ended peacefully, except for a fistfight between two participants.
The recent arrest of two Indians on charges of sexual violence against minors served to galvanize demonstrators' anger. Additionally at issue were earlier reports of Arabic, English and Latin-letter graffiti found scratched into the walls of the 6th century Jvari monastery and the 2014 arrest of Iraqi citizens on charges of sexually abusing minors.
Previously sotto voce grumbling about Turks, Arabs and Iranians allegedly “taking over” the Aghmashenebili area with restaurants and shops – and about Middle-Eastern-run strip clubs elsewhere – also went full throat at the rally.
“This whole area reeks of fried mutton. They blast their music and act as if they own the place,” complained one middle-aged woman. “I have nothing against tourists and guests, but they should not be coming to stay and should respect our culture... Now I’ve become a tourist in my own city.”
Purportedly at city officials’ urging, owners closed most of the area’s Arab and Turkish cafes, hookah joints and shops for the day. Midway down the avenue, a group of Middle Eastern men with spiky hair and trimmed beards, and women in hijabs peaked through a hotel’s gates with alarm.
“Look how they stand there, frightened. This is so shameful,” one young woman called out to journalists, pointing at the people behind the gates. She, her friends and even a few Georgian reporters went up to reassure the visitors.
None of the protesters confronted foreigners, though police maintained a careful watch. Older residents of the area insisted that they have respect for Muslim culture, but said they felt overwhelmed by the fast-growing Middle Eastern presence in Georgia. Others, however, in the neighborhood belted out racial slurs.
More liberal Tbilisi residents cringed in anger and embarrassment as they watched the march. Some peppered the event’s Facebook page with insults, calling the participants “bigots” and “Nazis.” No to Phobia, a coalition of civil society groups and thinks-tanks, released a statement describing the rally as a deliberate attempt to fan the flames of xenophobia.
The marchers dismissed such descriptions. They insisted that their rally was peaceful and that they are not opposed to diversity per se. Rather, they claimed, the march was meant to push for putting caps on migration and to deport foreign nationals involved in crime. To refute the xenophobia label, they also cited similar causes championed by US President Donald Trump and politicians within the EU.
The march offered a limelight opportunity for its main leader Sandro Bregadze. “Today marks the beginning of a new national movement for freedom,” he declared. Bregadze led the march as he carried an icon of David the Builder, a Georgian king who famously routed Muslim invaders in the 12th century. (The site of the march, Aghmashenebeli Avenue, carries David the Builder’s name. )
Western-leaning political figures, media and think-tanks charged the event was the result of Russian propaganda, citing similarities to the “Russian March” held annually in Moscow. Stirring up ethnic tensions is widely seen as Moscow’s tactic to keep the ex-Soviet republic within its sphere of influence. Bregadze has long faced accusations of serving the Kremlin.
At the rally, Bregadze dismissed these groups as “liberasts,” a combination of the words “liberal” and “pederast.” “We will break down the liberast movement, which is sponsored from abroad and is meant to destroy Georgian traditions,” he said.
Yet, for all the tension, the march had a flair of absurdity to it. A unicorn was inexplicably chosen as its mascot and participants had it printed on their T-shirts. The organizers bickered as music often drowned out the speeches and Bregadze, ploughing fast ahead with the icon, was repeatedly asked to wait up for the rest of the crowd. Several Arabs, oblivious to the goal of the rally, happily waved from the balconies.
With the area closed to traffic, some cyclists seized the opportunity to ride in circles ahead of the marchers. As the crowd gathered at the march’s final stop, Marjanishvili Square, some onlookers at McDonald’s rolled their eyes at the scene.
“In my lifetime, I saw only one cause worth joining and this was April 9,” said David, a man in his early 40s, referring to the 1989 pro-independence rally that Soviet troops brutally stamped out. “Every march we’ve had since then was an exercise in madness.”Image copyright PA Image caption The court said the man should not hold power over his ex-lover by possessing the images
Germany's highest court has ordered a man to destroy intimate photos and videos of his ex-partner because they violate her right to privacy.
The Federal Court said the man, a photographer, should no longer possess naked photos and sex tapes, even if he had no intention of sharing them.
The woman had originally agreed to the images but this consent stopped when the relationship ended, the court said.
Germany has some of the strictest privacy laws in Europe.
The Federal Court was called upon to rule in a dispute between a former couple, who were arguing over whether or not the man should delete intimate photos and videos.
In its ruling (in German), the court said everyone had the right to decide whether to grant insight into their sex life - including to whom they grant permission and in what form.
It said that by retaining the images, the photographer had a certain "manipulative power" over his ex-lover.
He should no longer have rights to the photos and videos once the relationship had ended, it concluded.
It is not clear how the ruling will be enforced.
What counts as 'intimate'?
Recent cases of naked images being leaked online have sparked a debate about victims' rights, with some countries making so-called "revenge porn" a criminal offence.
Commenting on the Federal Court ruling, German lawyer Katja Weber said two important points had to be established in such cases:
Which photos are to be defined as "intimate"
Whether the original consent for having the pictures taken was restricted to the duration of the relationship.
She said "intimate" photos were not exclusively those taken before, during or after sex. However, "that was the type of photo considered in this case", she said.
"One can imagine plenty of situations where, during a relationship, compromising photos might be taken.
"Even, for instance, photos showing one's partner minus some clothes can be categorised as intimate shots, which should therefore be deleted."
Consent for having the pictures taken does not have to be written - it can be verbal, the lawyer added.
If someone maintains that their ex-partner was willing for the photos to be used after the end of the relationship, that consent would still have to be proven, according to the new ruling, Ms Weber argued.The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) will not support GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore Roy Stewart MooreDoug Jones gets challenger in Alabama Senate race Republican state official faces pushback for comments on Sinema's attire Hillicon Valley: Dem blasts groups behind Senate campaign disinformation effort | FCC chief declines to give briefing on location-data sales | Ocasio-Cortez tops lawmakers on social media | Trump officials to ease drone rules MORE in Alabama's special election, even after President Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE stood by him on Tuesday.
Officials with the RNC and the NRSC, the party's Senate campaign arm, told The Associated Press they have no intention of reconsidering their decision to pull support for Moore, who has been accused of pursuing sexual and romantic relationships with teenage girls while he was in his 30s.
The two GOP committees severed ties with the candidate earlier this month, ending their financial and field support for his campaign. Dozens of Republican officials have called on Moore in recent days to withdraw his Senate bid.
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Moore has denied the allegations, though he has acknowledged that he may have dated teenage girls in his 30s. He has so far rebuffed the GOP's pleas to step aside as the party's Alabama Senate candidate.
But while he has faced pressure from many Republicans, Moore received a boost from Trump on Tuesday, when the president, speaking at length about the allegations for the first time, defended him and slammed the notion of letting a Democrat win the Senate seat.
Trump also stressed that Moore had denied the allegations.
“He denies it. He totally denies it," Trump told reporters at the White House. “Roy Moore denies it — that’s all I can say.”
Several women have come forward in recent weeks with allegations that Moore sought sexual and romantic encounters with them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One of his accusers, Leigh Corfman, was 14 years old when an alleged sexual encounter with Moore took place.OTTAWA: Many world leaders paid tribute to Malala Yousufzai on Friday after it was announced that she had been awarded Nobel Peace Prize, but Canadian Prime Minister offered the “ultimate praise” by declaring that she would be granted citizenship of his country.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that Malala would visit Ottawa on Oct 22 and that she would be granted an honorary citizenship of Canada.
She is only the sixth person to receive honorary Canadian citizenship.
For his part, US President Barack Obama hailed the “passion and determination” of Malala.
Know more: Malala Yousafzai, Kailash Satyarthi win Nobel Peace Prize
“At just 17 years old, Malala Yousufzai has inspired people around the world” with her efforts to ensure all girls can get an education, Mr Obama said in a statement.
“When the Taliban tried to silence her, Malala answered their brutality with strength and resolve,” he said, adding that he and his wife Michelle were “awe-struck by her courage” after a meeting in the Oval Office last year.
President Obama said the honour bestowed upon Malala “reminds us of the urgency of their work to protect the rights and freedoms of all our young people”.
The US leader noted that the two laureates come from different countries, religions and generations but “share an unyielding commitment to justice and an unshakeable belief in the basic dignity of every girl and boy”. “Even as we celebrate their achievements, we must recommit ourselves to the world that they seek — one in which our daughters have the right and opportunity to get an education; and in which all children are treated equally,” he said.
Our correspondent adds: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated Malala and described her as “a daughter of the United Nations”.
“Malala is a brave and gentle advocate of peace who through the simple act of going to school became a global teacher. She said one pen can change the world and proved how one young woman can lead the way,” he said in a statement.
“With her courage and determination, Malala has shown what terrorists fear most: a girl with a book,” he added.
“Malala is a daughter of the United Nations, from participating in Unicef events years ago to marking the 500-day countdown to the Millennium Development Goals with us at UN headquarters this summer. The United Nations will continue to stand with her against extremism and for the right of girls everywhere to be free of violence, to go to school and to enjoy their right to education.”
Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2014Well, the most important thing that I'm focused on is how we create a common set of facts. That sounds kind of abstract. Another way of saying it is, how do we create a common story about where we are. The biggest challenge that I think we have right now in terms of this divide is that the country receives information from completely different sources. And it's getting worse. The whole movement away from curated journalism to Facebook pages, in which an article on climate change by a Nobel Prize-winning scientist looks pretty much as credible as an article written by a guy in his underwear in a basement, or worse. Or something written by the Koch brothers. People are no longer talking to each other; they're just occupying their different spheres. And in an Internet era where we still value a free press and we don't want censorship of the Internet, that's a hard problem to solve. I think it's one that requires those who are controlling these media to think carefully about their responsibilities, and [whether there] are ways to create a better conversation. It requires better civics education among our kids so that we can sort through what's true and what's not. It's gonna require those of us who are interested in progressive causes figuring out how do we attract more eyeballs and make it more interesting and more entertaining and more persuasive.Share. Said to be about the evacuation of Dunkirk. Said to be about the evacuation of Dunkirk.
Christopher Nolan may be filming a World War II film inspired by the evacuation of the French seaport Dunkirk. Dunkirk's mayor Patrice Vergiete is said to have announced that a "world famous director" is set to shoot an American blockbuster in the city.
According to local French newspaper La Voix Du Nord, that director is Nolan. Via translation from Indiewire, La Voix Du Nord writes, "Completely incognito during his recent visits to Dunkirk with his brother Jonathan, [Christopher Nolan] absorbed the territory, its past and the consequences of the conflict."
The Dunkirk evacuation is also called the miracle of Dunkirk. When the British Expeditionary Force and other Allied Forces were trapped by German troops, it was expected that many of troops would not be saved.
Miraculously, the troops were able to evacuate across the English Channel and over 330,000 soliders were saved.
Exit Theatre Mode
So is this Nolan's next film set to release on July 21, 2017? There's been no confirmation yet, but we'll keep you posted as more is released.
Nicole is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter.Bloq, the company founded by long-time Bitcoin core developer Jeff Garzik, covers a lot of ground across the public and private blockchain space, including the promise of Turing-complete smart contracts plugged into Bitcoin, written in JavaScript and Python.
The recently unveiled suit of BloqEnterprise applications will serve as a blockchain operating system (BOS) for private and public blockchains, including enterprise-friendly development tools, 24/7 enterprise-grade support, and a network level dashboard and data analytics service. Its BloqRouter component is "the fastest, most secure Bitcoin full node on the planet, with a hardened Bitcoin Core fork and option to switch to Bitcoin Classic (BIP 109)". Bloq is also working with Deloitte on its "digital bank" initiative.
Garzik, who helped provide scalable Linux software solutions to businesses a decade ago with Red Hat, is taking a similar approach with Bloq, which has added Gavin Andresen, Nick Szabo and William Mougayar as advisors.
Bloq's smart contract application is a piece of software called Bloq Ora (short for oracle). It allows users to run their favourite programming language, Java, JavaScript, Python, C++, and write Turing-complete smart contracts on any blockchain.
Garzik told IBTimes: "It's essentially designed as an Ethereum plug-in for Bitcoin. But it has several qualities that make it, in my opinion, better than Ethereum, where you have to learn a new programming language, you have to download a new debugging software, new development tools, everything - sort of the ink is not yet dry.
"This [Bloq Ora] is an example of what I refer to as a 'layer 2 technology'. With Bitcoin you don't necessarily put all the features into the Bitcoin protocol itself."
Garzik agreed that at a high level Bloq Ora functions rather like the Counterparty protocol with Bitcoin. He added that the technology is in a preview stage, and not yet shipping to Bloq enterprise customers. It has been released to developers to experiment with on github.
Garzik has been in close discussion with some other prominent startups in the space about how Bloq Ora could be used. He said he has been very impressed by Argentina-based startup Rootstock.
"Rootstock takes the Ethereum Virtual Machine, the Ethereum environment and uses it on the Bitcoin network, linked to Bitcoin security and Bitcoin technology," said Garzik. "So Rootstock is another example of how Bitcoin can be extended without having to update the Bitcoin protocol itself. And that's another way that Bitcoin governance happens in the free market through companies like Rootstock," he said.
So is Bloq proposing a merged mining solution like Rootstock? Garzik said: "It's a sufficiently generic technology that it can be used with merged mining, yes. It can be used individually, sort of like your own web server, outside of Bitcoin or Litecoin or Ethereum. It can be built into Bitcoin itself and there are some very early stage developments exploring that.
"Merged mining is one security method that we are definitely looking into. A second one is having multiple companies, each one with Bloq Ora software, such as Blockstream, Coinbase, BitPay etc, and then users would contact all of those in a multi-signature type-fashion.
"So you don't have to trust Bloq individually. You contact five companies running Bloq Ora and they each execute the smart contract in exactly the same fashion. Then you verify that at least three of five of those companies' Bloq Ora instances return the same answer.
"That's how you can create trust in a decentralised world; you have to look across organisational boundaries to provide users that full picture of security that they deserve."
Garzik added that Bloq's economics and game theory expert Paul Sztorc has been working with Sergio Demian Lerner, co-founder of Rootstock, to come up with an alternative to merged mining, that is possibly going to be a generic sidechains security mechanism incorporated into Bitcoin itself. "That would allow Bitcoin miners themselves to secure all of these sidechains and you don't have to individually contact a group of miners and say, 'hey, would you add my chain'. That skips that question and process entirely by adding a sort of a sidechain security feature to Bitcoin itself."
For some time Jeff has been front and centre of the on-going governance debate over Bitcoin. He said self-governing decentralised systems are utterly unique, likening the set of consensus rules underpinning Bitcoin to the US Constitution, "the founding documents, as it were; the core foundation of the entire economy".
He said: "The next step in governance is asking the question, how to change consensus rules. It sounds like an almost circular argument: how do you come to consensus on consensus rules?"
Some lessons could be learnt from Ethereum, which seems to be light-years ahead of Bitcoin when it comes to agreeing on changes. Garzik pointed out that when Bitcoin was a little over a year old it too experienced a rapid iteration phase.
"It was when Satoshi was there and, to be frank, Satoshi in the early days was acting just like Vitalik [Buterin, Ethereum inventor] is today. Not a lot of people know this - several hard forking consensus rule changes, Satoshi simply put into the code, published the code, and everyone had to follow.
"But in the very early days when Bitcoin was worth a penny a bitcoin rather than today's $450 a bitcoin, everyone knew that it was an experiment. Everyone knew that it would rapidly iterate, and everyone knew that these sort of quick changes were needed.
"Ethereum will slow over time as more and more people depend on the original Ethereum rules. I would expect Ethereum to follow a similar trajectory as it gets older.
"I agree Ethereum absolutely informs Bitcoin governance and when Vitalik does a hard fork successfully, I might add in 28 days, that's informative to Bitcoin developers.
"The flip side is Bitcoin can take many lessons from Ethereum and develop even better than Ethereum capabilities and add those onto Bitcoin. A specific example is sidechain technology, where you can add experimental features, maybe take a little more risk and if, after six months or a year, those features prove valid in the field, then we can add those to Bitcoin itself."Something that I’m sure a lot of Toonami fans have seen already is the very brazen ask.fm question that Jason DeMarco received asking about Toonami’s show selections. They were not pleased with what Toonami recently aired in Black Clover and wondered why Toonami continues to play divisive shows like Black Clover, Akame ga Kill, and Sword Art Online. This fan stated how Toonami should have looked into airing more widely accepted shows like My Hero Academia, Mob Psycho 100, and The Ancient Magus’ Bride. Of course, Jason DeMarco explained why those shows aren’t even an option, but it leads me to wonder, what’s wrong with Toonami picking “divisive” shows?
https://ask.fm/Clarknova/answers/143922402537
This is a topic I’ve pondered back when Akame ga Kill was getting backlash for a multitude of reasons (real or imaginary) and had me wondering if this the block’s newest Sword Art Online (to which I was ridiculed about makes my said comparison). Of course, I’m not comparing the shows because they are all different, but there is a commonality with both in that they had as many fans as detractors. Black Clover is only the newest in what could be a long line of divisive shows that have aired on Toonami, to which I say, this isn’t the worst thing in the world. Do I think that the three other shows are better than Black Clover? Yes, if I’m honest. But that doesn’t all of a sudden make Black Clover a horrible show since it isn’t the same as My Hero Academia or Mob Psycho 100.
That’s what I find interesting about these so-called divisive shows. Sure, Black Clover has faults (what show doesn’t), but because it has some issues (Asta’s voice, slow pacing, generic feel) doesn’t mean it’s the worst show ever to be produced. It’s the same that you see in sports media when a great player doesn’t play at the same level as a Hall of Fame player. For example, if a baseball hitter doesn’t produce to the degree that Boston Red Sox great David Ortiz did in his career, then the player is horrible and should be traded. Instead of looking at what the player can do well, he is immediately diminished because he didn’t do what another great did. That’s the same treatment I see Black Clover getting because it’s not as good as My Hero Academia.
Which I say is entirely unfair to Black Clover. That’s comparing what could be looked at as the best series/franchise in the past five years to something that is just starting out. How can you say that a show has no redeemable qualities when it’s just getting its feet wet? Instead of looking at this show with a fair view, I think many fans have been influenced by other strong voices who just happen not to like the show. Because every single cast announcement for the fall “Simuldubs” had at least three comments or more asking about Black Clovers’. So clearly people are watching, and people find it entertaining. There’s another audience that’s just as loud who aren’t fans of it. I say we wait to see how this show evolves because of how slow it takes (in both anime AND MANGA) for it to grow more organically. It’ll be tough, considering the monster push it has received, but I think that’s a fair thing to ask for.
This push or “forced” feeling that Toonami fans have about Black Clover is amusing considering it’s the same thing FUNimation and others did for My Hero Academia. I recall many wondering why FUNimation was pushing that series so hard since it was just another shōnen. Heck, there were many criticisms of the first season, when many felt that the show was underwhelming or bad. But FUNimation held their ground, and the series ended up improving on what I felt was a fine first season, to now become the juggernaut that it is. So since FUNimation picked up the rights to another big shōnen like Black Clover, why wouldn’t they try the same thing that made My Hero Academia into the hit it is now? It would be silly for them not to. So instead of Black Clover’s English dub getting locked up on a streaming service, it’s on Toonami, so fans who don’t have a subscription to FUNimationNow can get a taste. I think the setting of Black Clover is more appropriate for Toonami, considering that I think you could have My Hero Academia on any television station and it would perform well enough to stay on. Black Clover, I believe, could only get that kind of a chance on Toonami.
Yes, Black Clover isn’t perfect. But that’s where I ask, does it need to be? I understand that Toonami fans want the best shows on the block, but Black Clover detractors would be amazed at all the love of the series I see. In fact, some people who didn’t like the series at first talked to me saying that they are getting into it more now. People do like this series, but even if you still cannot find any enjoyment in watching the series, you still talk about the show. So instead of just having one audience talk about Black Clover, Toonami gets both sides to voice how they feel, meaning that more fans are engaged with the block. I’m not saying Toonami should pick every polarizing show that is made, but I do think there is a place to have one or two of them on the block. Just to spice things up.
If you cannot stand Black Clover, that’s fine. You do not have to watch. If you want to make more of an impact and make Toonami re-evaluate their series selection that will do a lot more work than just being a jerk to Jason DeMarco on Twitter. However, you have to realize that Toonami builds their block with a broad audience in mind, not a few people. So one show that you may like might be another fan’s least favorite anime ever (and vice versa). I just find it funny that of all shows it’s Black Clover that put this argument more at the forefront when there have been plenty of other shows that aired that people didn’t like. People gave Tokyo Ghoul more of a chance than some have done with Black Clover but I digress. FUNimation is producing a dub that I do think is better to listen to than the subtitled version and merely going away after one or two episodes seems rather silly. Continue complaining about how divisive it is. That still helps Toonami in the grand scheme of things.
C.J Maffris is an editorial writer for Toonamifaithful.com. He thinks that Black Clover being as polarizing as it is, is a good thing for Toonami. Feel free to follow C.J on Twitter @SeaJayMaffrisAfrican leaders are stepping up their response to Boko Haram, with Chadian soldiers chasing the militants from a northern Nigerian town and the African Union calling for a 7,500-member regional force to tackle what it called “a serious threat” to the continent.
A communiqué adopted by the peace and security council of the African Union, which is meeting this week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, calls on Nigerian soldiers and their counterparts from four neighboring countries — Benin, Cameroon, Chad and Niger — to “prevent the expansion of Boko Haram,” search for those abducted by the group and conduct joint patrols at their borders. It does not specifically authorize the most sensitive step: cross-border operations.
According to a Chadian military spokesman, Nigerian news media reports and officials in Niger, Chadian forces took control on Thursday of Malam Fatori, a northern town that Boko Haram had held since October.
If confirmed, the recapturing of the town would indicate a breakthrough in regional military cooperation in the fight against the insurgents, which the Nigerian military has long viewed warily. A Nigerian Army spokesman said his troops had been involved in the operation, too, and another Nigerian official said his country “has never objected to cross-border operations in the fight against Boko Haram.”Edwin Howard Armstrong (December 18, 1890[2] – February 1, 1954[3]) was an American electrical engineer and inventor, best known for developing FM (frequency modulation) radio and the superheterodyne receiver system. He held 42 patents and received numerous awards, including the first Medal of Honor awarded by the Institute of Radio Engineers (now IEEE), the French Legion of Honor, the 1941 Franklin Medal and the 1942 Edison Medal. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and included in the International Telecommunication Union's roster of great inventors.
Early life [ edit ]
Armstrong's boyhood home, 1032 Warburton Avenue, overlooking the Hudson River in Yonkers, New York, c. 1975. It was demolished in November 1982 due to fire damage.
Armstrong was born in the Chelsea district of New York City, the oldest of John and Emily (Smith) Armstrong's three children.[1] His father began working at a young age at the American branch of the Oxford University Press, which published bibles and standard classical works, eventually advancing to the position of vice president.[3] His parents first met at the North Presbyterian Church, located at 31st Street and Ninth Avenue. His mother's family had strong ties to Chelsea, and an active role in church functions.[4] When the church moved north, the Smiths and Armstrongs followed, and in 1895 the Armstrong family moved from their brownstone row house at 347 West 29th Street to a similar house at 26 West 97th Street in the Upper West Side.[5] The family was comfortably middle class.
At the age of eight, Armstrong contracted Sydenham's chorea (then known as St. Vitus' Dance), an infrequent but serious neurological disorder precipitated by rheumatic fever. For the rest of his life, Armstrong was afflicted with a physical tic exacerbated by excitement or stress. Due to this illness, he withdrew from public school and was home-tutored for two years.[6] To improve his health, the Armstrong family moved to a house overlooking the Hudson River, at 1032 Warburton Avenue in Yonkers. The Smith family subsequently moved next door.[7] Armstrong's tic and the time missed from school led him to become socially withdrawn.
From an early age, Armstrong showed an interest in electrical and mechanical devices, particularly trains.[8] He loved heights and constructed a makeshift backyard antenna tower that included a bosun's chair for hoisting himself up and down its length, to the concern of neighbors. Much of his early research was conducted in the attic of his parent's house.[9]
In 1909, Armstrong enrolled at Columbia University in New York City, where he became a member of the Epsilon Chapter of the Theta Xi engineering fraternity, and studied under Professor Michael Pupin at the Hartley Laboratories, a separate research unit at Columbia. Another of his instructors, Professor John H. Morecroft, later remembered Armstrong as being intensely focused on the topics that interested him, but somewhat indifferent to the rest of his studies.[10] He was known for challenging conventional wisdom and being quick to question the opinions of both professors and peers. In one case, he recounted how he tricked an instructor he disliked into receiving a severe electrical shock.[11] He also stressed the practical over the theoretical, stating that progress was more likely the product of experimentation and work based on physical reasoning than on mathematical calculation and formulae (known as part of "mathematical physics").
Armstrong graduated from Columbia in 1913, earning an electrical engineering degree.[12]
During World War I, Armstrong served in the Signal Corps as a captain and later a major.[12]
In 1934, he filled the vacancy left by John H. Morecroft's death, receiving an appointment as a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia, a position he held the remainder of his life.[13]
Following college graduation, he received a $600 one-year appointment as a laboratory assistant at Columbia, after which he nominally worked as a research assistant, for a salary of $1 a year, under Professor Pupin.[14] Unlike most engineers, Armstrong never became a corporate employee. He set up a self-financed independent research and development laboratory at Columbia, and owned his patents outright.
Early work [ edit ]
Regenerative circuit [ edit ]
Radio Broadcast vol. 1 no. 1 1922. Armstrong's "feed back" circuit drawing, fromvol. 1 no. 1 1922.
Armstrong began working on his first major invention while still an undergraduate at Columbia. In late 1906, Lee de Forest had invented the three-element (triode) "grid Audion" vacuum-tube. How vacuum tubes worked was not understood at the time. De Forest's initial Audions did not have a high vacuum and developed a blue glow at modest plate voltages; |
already.
"We now have a number of players in our squad who have come through our academy system, which is very important to the health of the club as a whole."(CNN) — Shorts and flip-flops on the deck. Drinks chilling in the cooler. Ice clinking in your margarita glass.
Then winter hits.
Fear not -- there's another use for large blocks of ice, as you can discover for yourself at some of the world's most dramatic water-walking spots:
1. Tower of London Ice Rink, London
2. Banff Lake Louise, Banff, Canada
3. Eiffel Tower Ice Rink, Paris
4. Evergreen Lake, Colorado
Evergreen Lake ; December 17, 2016 to March 5, 2017 (weather permitting)
5. Red Square Rink, Moscow
Red Square Rink ; November 30, 2016 to March 15, 2017
6. Rideau Canal Skateway, Ottawa
Rideau Canal Skateway ; January to early March (weather permitting)
7. Rockefeller Center, New York
8. Shichahai Lake, Beijing
Shichahai Lake, opposite Beihai Park's North Gate, Di'anmen West Street, Xicheng District; opens late winter
9. Somerset House, London
Skate at Somerset House ; November 17, 2016 to January 15, 2017
10. Vienna Ice Dream, Vienna, Austria
Wiener Eistraum ; December 27, 2016 to March 12, 2017Sehore, Jan 11: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers on Tuesday evening were caught on camera as they threatened the supervisor of toll plaza at Bhopal-Indore Highway in Sehore. The incident created chaos at the toll paza making it a terrible time for other commuters.
#CaughtonCam: BJP workers seen threatening the supervisor of toll plaza at Bhopal-Indore Highway in Sehore (MP) (10.01.2017) pic.twitter.com/bmyZG3Pb9x — ANI (@ANI_news) January 11, 2017
In the video that went viral on social media., BJP workers are seen running behind the supervisor of toll plaza, bashing him and then entering his cabin. The video also showed the plight of other commuters as their journey was delayed.
In another incident, BJP MLA Bharamagouda and 12 others, have been booked for allegedly assaulting a Youth Congress worker on January 10. The youth was accused of posting derogatory comments about them in the social media, police reported. Some of the MLA’s family members have been booked for the assault.The nation's largest residential solar installer is shutting down operations in South Carolina, roughly eight months after entering the state's burgeoning solar market.
Tesla subsidiary SolarCity launched a new residential service in the Palmetto State last October, due in part to the introduction of a new solar loan product earlier in the year. The company hoped to hire around 100 new employees and expand from Charleston to other parts of the state over time.
“Certainly the growth of the market [in Charleston region] makes it attractive,” Leon Keshishian, East Coast regional vice president at SolarCity, told the Post and Courier last year.
Policy changes also made South Carolina an appealing destination for solar companies. In 2014, the state legislature allowed for third-party ownership of solar installations. A year later, regulators approved a settlement agreement between utilities and solar stakeholders that allowed rooftop solar customers to receive net metering credits for the excess energy they export to the grid at the full retail rate, though 2020.
In 2016, South Carolina's residential solar market boomed -- growing from under 1 megawatt of new installation capacity in the fourth quarter of 2015 to more than 9 megawatts in the third quarter of 2016, according to GTM Research. Most of that growth came from four national installation companies: Vivint Solar, Sunrun, Vision Solar and Suncrest Solar. These companies expanded rapidly in the state to take advantage of favorable solar rebates.
FIGURE: Residential Capacity Additions and Market Shares of the Top 4 Installers in South Carolina
SolarCity arrived on the scene a little later than its competitors, possibly because the company was in the midst of being acquired by Tesla. The recent decision to withdraw from South Carolina may also stem from the acquisition, which was approved last fall. According to a Tesla spokesperson, closure of SolarCity's Charleston office is a result of ending the company's door-to-door sales practice -- a strategic move announced this spring.
"As a result of the elimination of our door-to-door sales channel, which we announced in April, we are closing our SolarCity office in Charleston, South Carolina," a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "Those employees have since been reassigned or provided an opportunity to interview for other positions that will help support our expanded retail efforts and the delivery of new solar products and Powerwalls across the country."
"We intend to complete installations [for] all contracted customers, and operations support will continue through other regional offices," according to Tesla. "We look forward to resuming our physical presence in South Carolina in the future.”
Interestingly, SolarCity launched a pilot project available exclusively in South Carolina upon entering the market last year that allowed Charleston area customers to purchase their systems online at a discount. It's unclear how this pilot informed Tesla's sales strategy in the state.
Also, while South Carolina has seen rapid solar growth over the past year and a half, it's unclear how the state's rooftop market will evolve. The Solar Energy Industries Association projects that South Carolina will install 1,888 megawatts of solar across all market segments over next five years, and residential installations are expected to play a meaningful role in that. However, as solar rebates expire and utilities hit their net metering caps, national companies could pull back or even pull out of the market if the economics become less attractive. This could open up new opportunities for local solar installers, GTM Research analyst Allison Mond recently wrote.
In some ways, South Carolina is representative of where the U.S. residential solar sector is headed overall, as new markets emerge and established ones see growth slow.
"[If] South Carolina is any indication, there is still room for success for the large national installation companies," Mond wrote. "If public companies are able to adapt to changing consumer trends, such as increased demand for loan products, then success in emerging state markets could counteract the deceleration of growth in mature markets like California, allowing these companies to maintain their hold on the national market."I’m sitting at my kitchen table in shorts, unshowered, unshaven, and a bit under-rested. Not that this is anything new, but one thing in particular is different this time. For the first time in a week, I have a hot cup of black coffee next to my keyboard, and it’s quite nice.
The past week has been quite the happening; I never thought I would love tea the way I do now, and I’ve felt more balanced and rested than anytime I can remember. So, what in the name of all that is holy am I doing drinking a cup of coffee again? The answer to that brings me to a few questions that came up from readers, and the internet at large, last week.
Is Caffeine inherently a vice?
No. In my opinion, nothing is inherently a vice. It all comes down to user error. In my case, I was drinking 4-5 cups of coffee a day; basically I would have one whenever I was bored. For me, that was too much. I started to feel like my momentary emotional state was just a roller coaster on the tracks of different caffeine levels.
I’m not saying coffee, or caffeine in general, is bad for you, in fact there’s quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. But personally, I needed a break.
As always, One Week Without is about using temporary elimination in order to learn more about moderation. It is my belief that by taking time off of things we take for granted, we learn to appreciate them in a new, less jaded light. This gives us the chance to learn about or habits, and even reset them, if appropriate.
I use One Week Without as a mechanism for discovery. I don’t know what I’m going to learn heading into a challenge, all I can do is stay flexible and attentive, and try to learn all I can from the experience. Sometimes, I find that the thing I’m fasting from should be eliminated entirely, other times it only needs to be enjoyed less frequently.
Regardless, at the end of each challenge I have one less thing I take for granted, which brings me at least one step closer to living an Intentional Life.
Gotcha. But what about coffee?
In a week’s time, some things have changed, others stayed the same. I still love coffee just as much as I did before. I enjoyed the cup of coffee I just finished, and I will very likely enjoy a similar one tomorrow morning. But, after swallowing this last, murky sip, I don’t feel the urge as I once did to have two more cups before I go to work. That, for me, is a small victory.
For this writer, Coffee falls into the latter of the two camps mentioned above, a treat that should not be eliminated entirely, but should also not be over-indulged upon. In arriving at this knowledge, I also learned several things about my relationship with caffeine that seem salient here.
1. The Caffeine rush is 100% about tolerance
As noted in this challenge’s setup, I’ve used tea sparingly to wean off of the caffeine without dropping my habit like a tooth-tied anvil off a cliff. What surprised me the most was that by day two, a small cup of green tea with one third the caffeine of a cup of coffee would deliver the same rush that coffee had only a day earlier.
This is the fastest tolerance adjustment I’ve ever had to date, and I found it quite encouraging. If you’re contemplating replacing coffee with tea, go for it, because it’s really not as hard as it might seem.
2. Consuming less caffeine, earlier in the day helps you sleep better
I noticed this from the very first day of the challenge. Instead of 4 cups of coffee, I just had one cup of tea in the morning, and that was it for the day. By 11pm I was already tired (which is really something, being a bit of a night owl myself). By midnight I was fast asleep, with none of the usual rustling around under the covers for thirty endless, grueling minutes. This continued throughout the challenge, and was perhaps my favorite part of it all.
For this reason, one of my big take-aways from this challenge was that I just can’t have caffeine past the early afternoon, and maybe even that is too generous. I find it well worth the tradeoff to escape the anxiety of lying eternally sleepless in bed each night.
3. Caffeine withdrawal doesn’t have to be so bad, if you wean off gradually
Horror stories abound about the headaches, nausea, and general sufferings that accompany caffeine withdrawal. I can’t shoot these down, because as noted I was terrified of cutting out caffeine entirely from day one. That said, even for a caffeine junkie like myself, gradually dialing down the caffeine levels was painless.
Since there really isn’t much evidence that caffeine is bad for you health-wise, if you find caffeine to be a problem for you, don’t try nixing it from the get-go, just switch to a cup or two of green tea a day. It’s easy, delicious, and it still gives you that bit of a jolt when you need it.
4. Consuming less caffeine leads to a more balanced energy level throughout the day
Before this week without coffee I would slug down cups all through the workday, constantly riding that mile high energy wave–until I fell off. With a slighter schedule of caffeine intake, however, I found myself gliding through the day evenly. 3 o’clock would roll around and I would find myself actually sitting upright in my chair, not cowering under the desk. This was a significant improvement.
...
Altogether, the greatest take-away from this challenge is one that I’ve carried away from all of my week without challenges: power. Silly as it might sound, I now feel that I can make coffee bend to my own will, instead of being locked to my previous schedule of a cup at nine, eleven, one-thirty, and four.
The greatest strength I’ve found through these challenges is in knowing that I am not the sum of my habits, the real me is rooted deep underneath them. Of course I don’t need anything to be me, but every time I remind myself of that through one of these challenges, I feel one week wiser, fitter, and stronger.
may we all get better together.
-s
Start your own One Week With/out challenge! Begin here.The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has just released a massive trove of data collected by its Large Hadron Collider through its Open Data Portal. The information has been released in two main formats: primary datasets that represent the original data CERN scientists would have analyzed, and derived datasets that are simplified to aid in analysis and to make the data a potentially powerful teaching tool. CERN is also providing a “Virtual Machine”, available online to everyone for free, to help users analyze the data, which means that no matter what type of computer you’ve got, you can mess around with the results of one of the grandest experiments in the history of mankind.
Best known for discovering the Higgs Boson particle a few years back, the Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful (and famous) particle accelerator in the world. The data CERN has released from it totals 300 terabytes, representing about half the total LHC data gathered in 2011. Of particular interest to many might be the inclusion of more than 100 terabytes of data on proton collisions at 7 TeV, according to CERN. The last such data release from CERN was in November 2011, but comprised only around 27 terabytes.
Once you’ve installed the VM (just click on “Install your Virtual Machine” and follow the instructions), you can begin analyzing the data from the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) even if you don’t otherwise have access to the specific software that would usually be necessary to process data of this kind — it comes preloaded on the Virtual Machine. You can then choose to work on either a primary dataset or a reduced (derived) dataset.
“Members of the CMS Collaboration put in lots of effort and thousands of person-hours each of service work in order to operate the CMS detector and collect these research data for our analysis,” said Kati Lassila-Perini, a CMS physicist in charge of data-preservation, in a statement. “However, once we’ve exhausted our exploration of the data, we see no reason not to make them available publicly. The benefits are numerous, from inspiring high-school students to the training of the particle physicists of tomorrow. And personally, as CMS’s data-preservation coordinator, this is a crucial part of ensuring the long-term availability of our research data.”
CERN representatives also expressed a desire for fresh eyes on the data, saying that releasing information in such vast quantities helped foster a spirit of collaboration and thus facilitate more discoveries.
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“We are very pleased that we can make all these data publicly available,” Lassila-Perini said in the statement. “We look forward to how they are utilised outside our collaboration, for research as well as for building educational tools.”Reader Keyser Soze had an interesting comment last week that I thought would be a good jump off point for today’s topic:
@Siirtyrion: You said, “Many scientists still go by this notion because it explains the frequent tradeoffs in mating and gives us a more complete picture for sexual selection as a whole. I understand that I uphold physicality as king, but understand that hypergamy isn’t completely about a short-term mating strategy, regardless of what some people may think. Women may be able to fund their our lives currently but rest assure, they still seek out Beta Bucks in other forms aside from monetary or material gain (i.e they still seek out physiological and emotional comfort from less than ideal males).” Question for all: Reading this, I had a thought. We often talk about women hitting the wall at 35ish and their sudden willingness to be me more reasonable with their expectations in a mate as they realize their SMV has decreased. I wonder if the above quote also plays into this. By the time women hit 35ish, historically (without modern methods of assisted conception) they are past their childbearing years. I wonder if their mating strategy changes at this age not only because of diminished SMV, but also because they are no longer looking for prime genetic material for reproduction as much as they are looking for “physiological and emotional comfort”. Perhaps this was implied all along, but I never thought about it this way before.
I hate to think this is going to come off as sympathy for the aging spinsters who had their cake in their youth and now, late in life, are looking to make honest amends for their past decisions, but it probably will.
A few months ago I broke-down Robin Korth’s aging sexual denial and in response we got a glimpse into the rationalization engine (a.k.a. the Hamster) at work in feminine solipsism:
http://twitter.com/RobinKorth/status/486636301207093248
My intent here isn’t to pick on Korth personally or really any woman in the post-Wall demographic in particular, but this self-insight is an excellent illustration of the feminine solipsism I often refer to on this blog. Furthermore, this sense of ego-blamelessness is then combined with the easy rationales and social conventions ready-made by the Feminine Imperative to affirm her self-importance.
Deti comments:
Robin Korth should be reposing in the love of her husband of the past 35 years, give or take. She should be doting on children and grandchildren as the esteemed matriarch of her family. Instead, Ms. Korth is still out there acting as if she’s 25 years old. She’s still trying to navigate the sexual and dating minefields. In the end she’s trying to show everyone (but really herself) that she’s still “got it”; that she can still arouse a man sexually. It is all really about self aggrandizement. It is all about self- validation and affirmation. In the end, it’s all about Robin Korth. It’s pathetic and sad, really. And no, Ms. Korth, your life is not the result of what you think about yourself. You are what you do. You are NOT what you think, read, or write. You are not what you were or what you’d like to be. You are what you do. Period. Full stop.
And from The Difficulty of Gaming Women by Age Brackets by (the old) Roissy:
36 to 38 year olds She is at peace with her spinsterhood and her failure in the dating market. She will acquiesce easily and gratefully to sex with very little game, as long as you don’t look like a grandpa. Her expectations are so low, it will be a challenge to disappoint her. If you are prone to guilt, you might feel it when you inevitably dump a woman in this age range. Don’t. Remind yourself that her past is littered with her insouciant dumping of many beta men before you. You are merely an alpha agent of righteous karma.
Granted, Robin is well past the 38 year old mark by over 20 years, however even at 59 the description is still remarkably apt in light of Deti’s overview, however, the real lesson here is for men.
There comes (or should come) a certain empowerment for men after a point of maturation in life where he grows into an understanding of how the Game is played by women. As I’ve noted in the past month, this game, the former secret of women’s dualistic sexual strategy, is becoming more and more of an open secret amongst a feminine-primary culture becoming increasingly more assured of its primacy. If anything this plan for women’s optimizing hypergamy is just this side of proudly flaunting it to men.
As I pick my way through exactly this ‘plan’ in writing the next book, I’ve actually become less surprised by so many examples I find of this willingness with which women will overtly share their strategy for assuring short-term Alpha sexual desires during their SMV peak, and then consolidation on the security a Beta provider represents as their SMV decays beginning at around 30 years of age.
My purpose in writing this next volume of The Rational Male is to make men aware of just this life-schedule and sexual strategy, but even with my own efforts and the glaring willingness with which women will now confirm it, a larger whole of men simply don’t mature into this overall understanding.
For all the education the Red Pill represents for men, the larger blue pill whole simply don’t want to accept the ugly reality of women’s sexual strategy even when women openly confirm this for them – or when they do it’s too late for anything but pensive self-reproach and then signing the alimony/child support check anyway.
As this understanding becomes more widespread some social change will have to follow. Men will either become so pathetic as to ‘normalize’ it for themselves, and personally identify with what amounts to their open (proactive or reactive) cuckolding under women’s grossly overt championing of their Alpha Fucks / Beta Bucks sexual strategy – or Men will come to the realization (hopefully sooner than later) that the fantasy of monogamous bliss based on a notion of intergender compromise and the ‘give & take’ (but mostly give) they were sold on was never in the best interests of feminine-primacy.
The Feminine Imperative was (and is) only ever concerned with men’s imperatives or male-specific priorities insofar as they align with the superseding, primary imperatives of women. Thus, as open hypergamy becomes more common and the truth of this duplicity and imbalance (really disinterest) of mutual sexual imperatives becomes more evident, men will again (as with Game) evolve methods and mentalities to consolidate on their own imperatives or simply live in denial of it all.
The Long Game
For almost 6 months I’ve had this post from Cail Corishev bookmarked. It’s an excellent driver for exactly this point: prior to the digital age men tended not to play a long game when it came to socio-sexual strategies. The short game is all that matters in the moment, and all that stimulates, but until the advent of digital forums where men could figuratively compare notes, most men were simply unable, and perhaps too distracted to ask the obvious questions about women’s hypergamy and how it plays out over the course of 10-30 years and the roles women expect men to play during those stages of their lives in order to accommodate their strategy.
In Cail’s piece he describes a woman he knew at age 30 and how attractive she was, and his consideration of starting a relationship with her. After a failing interest and 10 years of no contact, she reinitiated with Cail:
But while we were chatting, I saw some of her recent pictures, and whoa! She’s gone from a 7-8 to maybe a 5, and that would be adjusted for age. She hasn’t gotten fat, but that’s about the only positive note. She looks so rough that I found myself wondering what I was thinking ten years ago, but I looked back at some old pictures, and she really was pretty at 30 — not a model or anything, but enough to turn heads. Now she looks like she’s lived 20 hard years in 10. She works nights at a pretty demanding job and has had some serious health problems, so I guess it’s no surprise, but it was really striking: ten years ago I ached for this girl, and now I wouldn’t look twice at her if I passed her in the grocery store. That got me thinking about Rollo’s chart. My own SMV, as far as I can tell, hasn’t changed much from mid-30s to mid-40s, just as his chart would predict. I’m about the same weight, same build, maybe a little less hair, but I’d lost quite a bit of it already back then. I’m not much better-off financially, but at least not worse, and I have more of a sense of direction in my life. I’m certainly more confident, especially with women, and more established in my communities. So some pluses and some minuses, holding steady at about the same level. The amount of interest I get from women seems to support that. She, on the other hand, going from 30 to 40, has gone from fertile to not likely. She’s also a grandmother now, so instead of looking to start a new family, she’s focused (and rightly so) on helping her kids with theirs. (If single moms don’t have much spare attention to give a husband, imagine the single mom of a single mom.) An additional ten years of dating and relationships under her belt certainly doesn’t add to her appeal. On top of those reasons, add the drastic decline in her looks, and now I not only don’t want to marry her, but as we chat I’m mostly thinking, “How soon can I politely say goodnight so I can get to sleep already?” Harsh, but true. Just as Rollo’s chart predicts, her SMV has been on a steady decline since we met — maybe more of a free-fall in her case — and now mine is well above hers.
I had a similar post to this I published back in December of 2011 – Protracted SMV:
It’s a simple matter to tell a guy he’s dodged a bullet in the cosmic scheme of things, but it’s altogether different to provably show him how he’s dodging it. For all the evils of facebook at least it gives him [men] an ability to see the forest for the trees, but the feminine can’t even afford him that. You must stay dumb, you must stay plugged-in for the feminine to maintain primacy. For all the benefits of a globally connected world, the feminine imperative expects you to accept a feminine-centric normalization of it.
What the Feminine Imperative fears is men becoming what Roissy terms Alpha Agents of Righteous Karma. Due to a lifetime of feminine conditioning, men tend to underestimate the leverage their SMV has in the context of women’s biological imperatives.
Pity for Reneé
I have a similar story to Cail’s. When I was a senior in high school I had a ‘friend‘ named Reneé, she was a gorgeous auburn-red head with a fantastic 17-18 year old body. We were good ‘friends‘ in the sense that it was clear I wasn’t ever going to see her naked and she had all of the personality trappings of a girl who knew she was attractive (she did modeling after high school), but also had the beginnings of a very self-important ego-invested feminist mind set.
I never really stayed in touch with her after graduation since by then I had moved on to women who enthusiastically reciprocated my interests and I moved along in life. It wasn’t until 2009 that I got on FaceBook and began having old friends look me up – Reneé was among the first. Very similar to the woman in Cail’s story we started to catch up with what the other had been doing through their 20s, 30s and now 40s.
As it turned out she was still fairly attractive for having had one daughter and never marrying the father, or any other guy for that matter. Most of the predictable single mommy issues and false-empowerment memes were bandied about by her, but the short version is here she was at 41 and her daughter was a year away from leaving for college. She was between jobs, but the one she had and the one she hoped to get were mediocre low to mid-management type, subsistence level employment.
She was and still is single 5 years later. The predictable questions about what my wife was like and how long we’ve been married came up, how we met, and where I’ve travelled in my work, etc. and I can honestly say I felt bad for her just recalling all of the life I’ve lived in the interim and basically forgot about her since high school.
She’s 46 now, and loves FaceBook as much as any aging spinster, but I really don’t want to call her that. In between the many pictures of her 4 cats (no lie) she occasionally posts some lament about how lonely she is now that her daughter has gone away to school and she comes home to an empty apartment these days. She makes not-so-subtle pleas to her FB community friends to set her up with ‘a great guy’ and all the dutiful Betas come out of the woodwork to tell her how pretty she (still) is and to keep her chin up and the right guy will “come along” – not so unlike the advice she gave me and at least half a dozen other guys I knew back in the day.
Reneé still clings to all of the feminist memes and mantras (reposts all the most popular), and complains of not being able to find a “great guy” anymore. This is of course infantile men’s faults for not manning up to her fem-correct standards, or else it’s a complaint about the ‘creepy’ men who really just want to bang her when she out with friends.
Unhappy Feminists
I hadn’t really ever considered using Reneé as a blog post subject until I read this article in Psychology Today:
According to a new survey released this month, your odds of winning the cash would increase if you skipped any 40-something, single female professionals and focused on the middle-aged male managers with one child at home and a wife who works part-time. In its Office Pulse survey, Captivate Network, a media solutions company, says its uncovered “profiles of the happiest and unhappiest workers.” And here it is: Male
39 years old
Married
Household income between $150,000 and $200,000
In a senior management position
1 young child at home
A wife who works part-time And the unhappiest profile?: Female
42 years old
Unmarried (and no children)
Household income under $100,000
In a professional position (doctor, lawyer, etc.)
Minus the professional status, essentially Reneé fits the profile for the most unhappy person in the western world today. Now, return back to Robin Korth’s comment, her life is the result of what she thinks of herself. What does this say about the decision making both she and Reneé have made in their lives?
I can’t say I have any sympathy for the likes of Korth, but for Reneé I do feel a pang of pity (in spite of Roissy’s advice for women of this age). For all of the accusations of red pill “misogyny” I genuinely do like women, and I’m not rooting for them to smash into the Wall. However I can see why my observations make this seem so – hard truths are often warnings that we don’t like to heed.
I often wonder if women of this profile aren’t as much victims of an ideological conditioning as Betatized men are over the course of their lives. Much of what’s resulted in Reneé’s life are the consequences of having (and still subscribing to) a mindset that’s based on equalist individualism, and she’s now beginning to reap what she’s sown – knowingly or not.
I don’t know the father of her daughter, but my red pill instincts (and knowing how hot she used to be) tell me the guy was likely a pump and dump Alpha bad boy. Reneé never struck me as the type to ‘settle’ on a Beta provider because she was too headstrong and independent® for that – she was certainly hot enough to attract the Alphas and independent enough to never consider a Beta for a relationship.
Observations
So my observation is this; while granting that women’s decisions are their own, and they should in all ways be accountable for the consequences that follow from them, how much of those decisions are based on a conditioning that promotes an idealized ideology of feminine, equalist independence?
For the same reason I can’t entirely fault a man with an internalized blue pill mindset over his conditioning, shouldn’t we also consider that women are likewise mislead by a similar influence? Are we (again) giving women too much credit for being rational independent agents under different circumstance?
For men’s part, it’s hardly avoidable that we become Alpha Agents of Righteous Karma by default for women in this cohort. Perhaps not as Alpha as we’re perceived, but as our SMV ascends in our 30s and (sometimes) through our 40s, it’s almost unavoidable that, even with a baseline of ambition, we’re seen as more desirable long term prospects.
In all honesty, were I to find myself single tomorrow, Reneé or women like her would never make my ‘to date’ list. Women love to complain that mature men really aren’t, and all they want is a young girl to fuck and coo for them. I would argue that men in my demo (at least should) have the depth of experience to know what the Feminine Imperative (and its social arm feminism) has bred and conditioned into women, and we honestly don’t want the hassle of dealing with it.
There is precious little reward for a man, and no appreciation, for having a big enough heart to save a woman from the consequences of her past decisions. That’s not meant as a callous punishment, just simple pragmatism.
As I stated in The Threat,
Nothing is more threatening yet simultaneously attractive to a woman than a man who is aware of his own value to women.
When you’ve spent your whole life attempting to ‘have it all’ on your own, perhaps men can’t help but be an agent of Karma when that ‘all’ includes a man’s participation.
Like this: Like Loading...Facebook connections can help first-generation college applicants believe in their abilities to both apply to school and excel once they've enrolled, according to a new study from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.
"We are very excited by these findings, because they suggest that the kinds of interactions supported by Facebook and other social media can play a role in helping young people, especially those who are traditionally less likely to go to college, feel more confident about their ability to get into college and to succeed there," said Nicole Ellison, associate professor at the U-M School of Information.
First-generation applicants might not come into contact on a daily basis with people who support their interest in college or who can answer questions about it, Ellison said.
"Our message to high school students is that even if they are disadvantaged in terms of financial resources or parental support, social media can help them access resources they may already have in their extended social networks," said D. Yvette Wohn, a doctoral student at MSU and first author of the study.
The researchers surveyed more than 500 high school students in lower-income Muskegon County, Mich. They used statistical models to examine how various factors were correlated with the students' confidence in their ability to apply to college and their expectations of success there. The factors they examined include demographics, family history of college attendance, parents' community involvement, and both informational and emotional support by parents, friends and Facebook connections.
To gauge how well the students understood the college application process, the survey asked participants about social media use and to rate how strongly they agreed or disagreed with four statements such as: "I know how to apply for financial aid" and "I know what I need to include in a college application." Of the sample, 12 percent had used social media to get information about how to apply to school.
The researchers found that after controlling for all other factors, first-generation students who "strongly agreed" that they used social media in this way, felt 1.8 times more confident about their understanding of the application process, compared with students who did not use social media for this type of information. This correlation didn't hold true for students whose parents had graduated from college.
To see how well the participants expected to do in school, the researchers had them rate on a scale from 1 for "strongly disagree" to 5 for "strongly agree," statements such as "I am confident that I will fit in socially in college" and "I am confident that I am able to successfully graduate from college." Overall, first-generation students reported much lower expectations, with a mean score of 2.84, compared with 4.01 for the others.
A full 70 percent of all students had a Facebook friend who either was in college or had gone and could answer questions about it. The researchers found that all else being equal, first-generation students who strongly agreed that they had this type of Facebook connection were 2.3 times more confident in their ability to succeed in school, compared with their peers who had no Facebook friend they could talk about college with.
The study authors say more research is needed to figure out why these correlations exist, but they have some initial ideas.
"We think social media may demystify the college experience, because kids are able to see how others like them experience the process," Ellison said. "Also, sites like Facebook make it easier to ask questions of one's network."
The researchers urge guidance counselors and administrators to explore new ways to help juniors and seniors navigate their next steps through social media. Perhaps they could offer application help through Facebook.
Ellison and colleagues from the University of Oxford and MSU are developing a Facebook app designed to help students identify people in their networks who might be good sources of information and support about college. They plan to launch it later this summer.
In this study, the team only examined students' perceptions. The researchers are currently studying how students use social media to seek information about college as well as factors related to actual enrollment.
The study, titled "The role of social media in shaping first-generation high school students' college aspirations: A social capital lens," will be presented June 18 at the International Communication Association conference in London, and was recently published in the journal Computers and Education. The research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.On this date in 1978, actor Gael Garcia Bernal was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. Garcia Bernal became the first Mexican accepted into London's prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama, where he studied to become an actor. Throughout his career Garcia Bernal has starred in many films, and has shaped the Mexican film industry. Garcia Bernal is known for remaining grounded and |
Atlantas, because that will encourage us to change the way we live: walking more, using public transport more, sharing cars, cycling. All of this is important, because ultimately Helm is right. This is not just about carbon taxes. It is not just about R&D. It is not just about divestment. If we really want the fossil fuels to be left in the ground, it is about us.
• Follow the Long Read on Twitter: @gdnlongreadOroville >> What’s new with the relicensing of Oroville Dam now that parts of the dam, mainly the main spillway, look a lot different?
More waiting.
Oroville and the Feather River Recreation and Park District expect to receive tens of millions of dollars over the next 30 to 50 years when the hydroelectric facilities receive a renewed license. Hundreds of millions of dollars in funding is also planned for areas around the dam, like wildlife areas, the state park and the Feather River Fish Hatchery. The money comes from water users who receive water from the lake, which is operated by the state Department of Water Resources.
The original license was approved when the dam was completed in the 1960s, and that license expired in 2007. Since then, DWR has operated the project with temporary permits from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is responsible for licensing hydroelectric projects.
Over the past decades, since even before the license expired, there have been negotiations and delays. In early December, the agencies and local groups involved in the negotiations believed they were near the final step. That’s when a 400-page biological opinion was finalized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
If all had gone as planned, the final license renewal was expected this summer.
Then in February, the spillway began to crumble, people were evacuated and plans are now underway to fix the area where water flows from the dam to the Feather River.
Congressman Doug LaMalfa’s staff person, Laura Page, said she met last month with the acting chair of FERC and asked what happens now.
“She said she really didn’t have an answer,” Page said.
“All of the effort has been directed toward the emergency and recovery center (for Lake Oroville).”
No vote possible
Another major missing piece of the puzzle is that the committee tasked with voting on the FERC relicensing only has two members. Normally there are five commissioners. There needs to be at least three for a vote to take place.
In January, one of the commissioners announced his resignation after President Donald Trump took away his position as chair of the committee. No appointments have been made for replacements. Once those replacements are named, their confirmation is needed by the Senate. See related story at http://tinyurl.com/m4hzoo2
It could take months before new committee members are named and approved, but the process has not even begun.
After so many years to reach this point, Oroville’s mayor said she isn’t interested in delaying the relicensing process any longer.
Mayor Linda Dahlmeier said the impacts from the damaged spillway and the FERC relicensing are separate things. When Trump appoints new members of the FERC committee, the existing agreement for relicensing should move forward, Dahlmeier said.
“I want to see a win-win for everyone,” Dahlmeier said. To her, that means funding for the relicensing should stay separate from repairs of damage because of the spillway crisis.
“Our parks are gone, bike trails are gone, boat ramps are closed,” she said. Roads have been mangled and businesses lost income, she continued. That all needs to be fixed.
When it comes to relicensing, that’s a different “pocket of money,” she said.
“What’s best for my community? The best thing is to try to sit at a table with three to four decision-makers who you can talk honestly with and say, ‘This is a mess-up, but let’s move forward and have the best of everybody’s interests in mind,’” Dahlmeier said.
Ted Craddock of DWR said the process is “in FERC’s hands.” Without a quorum on the FERC committee, it will be months until a final vote on relicensing is possible.
After the damage to the spillway, many community leaders have asked for a federal hearing about what went wrong at the dam. Dave Steindorf, California stewardship director for American Whitewater, said there needs to be a good discussion about “what happened and why,” as well as to factor in the full impacts to the community.
“I still support the settlement (for groups to receive funding and for the relicensing to move forward),” Steindorf said, “but there’s no doubt it’s a different project (after the damage to the spillway), both in physical structure and the impacts that need to be mitigated.”
Butte County did not sign a settlement agreement for the FERC relicensing and has been in legal disputes with FERC for years. The county has argued that the project never adequately compensated the county for related costs of law enforcement, roads and lost property taxes, among other costs. In January, the county’s attorney, Bruce Alpert, said he was watching the relicensing process to decide if renewed legal steps were options.
Supervisor Bill Connelly was not convinced six months ago that the FERC relicensing was nearly complete, and he feels the same way now.
“Every six months since we have been through negotiations (since 2007), they tell us it will be six months,” Connelly said.At Mixpanel performance is particularly important to us and as we begin to scale our data volume to support billions of actions. We’ve found ourselves thinking about how to solve problems better.
We’re currently writing a feature that is going require considerable scale and performance but in order to do it we had to think about how to do it in a time for our users to be happy. Unfortunately, Python is too slow for some types of operations we wish to do where we can get an order of a magnitude of performance out of something lower level like C.
So imagine: You want to stick to Python because it’s so fast to develop in but need the performance of C/C++. Let me introduce you to C extensions in Python.
If you’ve ever used something like cJSON in the past, then you’ve already installed something like this before–it’s likely a lot modules you import in Python are built in C and not just pure-python.
Here’s a quick tutorial on how to do it on Mac OS X (it’s probably a bit easier on linux if you install the python-devel package)
1. You need Python and Python development headers. On Mac OS X it’s likely they are already installed or you may need XCode. (You should be able to find them here: /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.6/)
2. You should also have distutils module for Python (though I believe it comes installed): test via import distutils
3. You should also have g++ or gcc installed (which you may need Xcode installed)
4. Lets get to work by writing a quick C program that just takes a command that it calls to the system (call it spammodule.c):
// Pulls in the Python API #include static PyObject * spam_system(PyObject *self, PyObject *args) { /* PyObject *self: Only be used if building a class method, this would be NULL since it's not a method. PyObject *args: Pointer to a Python tuple object containing the arguments it'll be passed. Python expression to be run: spam.system(string) */ const char *command; int sts; /* PyArg_ParseTuple: Returns true if all arguments have the right type (and raises appropriate exception otherwise) "s": Convert a Python string to a C pointer to a character string. See: http://www.fnal.gov/docs/products/python/v1_5_2/ext/parseTuple.html */ if (! PyArg_ParseTuple(args, "s", &command)) { return NULL; } // C command // See: http://www.thinkage.ca/english/gcos/expl/c/lib/system.html sts = system(command); /* Reverse of ParseTuple, converts it back to something Python "i" is an integer; system() returns an int See: http://www.fnal.gov/docs/products/python/v1_5_2/ext/buildValue.html */ return Py_BuildValue("i", sts); } // Module's method table and initialization function // See: http://docs.python.org/extending/extending.html#the-module-s-method-table-and-initialization-function static PyMethodDef SpamMethods[] = { {"system", spam_system, METH_VARARGS, "Execute a shell command."}, {NULL, NULL, 0, NULL} }; void initspam(void) { // Module's initialization function // Will be called again if you use Python's reload() PyImport_AddModule("spam"); Py_InitModule("spam", SpamMethods); } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { Py_SetProgramName(argv[0]); Py_Initialize(); initspam(); return 0; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 // Pulls in the Python API #include static PyObject * spam_system ( PyObject * self, PyObject * args ) { /* PyObject *self: Only be used if building a class method, this would be NULL since it's not a method. PyObject *args: Pointer to a Python tuple object containing the arguments it'll be passed. Python expression to be run: spam.system(string) */ const char * command ; int sts ; /* PyArg_ParseTuple: Returns true if all arguments have the right type (and raises appropriate exception otherwise) "s": Convert a Python string to a C pointer to a character string. See: http://www.fnal.gov/docs/products/python/v1_5_2/ext/parseTuple.html */ if (! PyArg_ParseTuple ( args, "s", & command ) ) { return NULL ; } // C command // See: http://www.thinkage.ca/english/gcos/expl/c/lib/system.html sts = system ( command ) ; /* Reverse of ParseTuple, converts it back to something Python "i" is an integer; system() returns an int See: http://www.fnal.gov/docs/products/python/v1_5_2/ext/buildValue.html */ return Py_BuildValue ( "i", sts ) ; } // Module's method table and initialization function // See: http://docs.python.org/extending/extending.html#the-module-s-method-table-and-initialization-function static PyMethodDef SpamMethods [ ] = { { "system", spam_system, METH_VARARGS, "Execute a shell command." }, { NULL, NULL, 0, NULL } } ; void initspam ( void ) { // Module's initialization function // Will be called again if you use Python's reload() PyImport_AddModule ( "spam" ) ; Py_InitModule ( "spam", SpamMethods ) ; } int main ( int argc, char * argv [ ] ) { Py_SetProgramName ( argv [ 0 ] ) ; Py_Initialize ( ) ; initspam ( ) ; return 0 ; }
5. Next write a Python program to install this module called setup.py:
from distutils.core import setup, Extension ext = Extension('spam', sources=['spammodule.c']) setup(name='foo', version='1.0', description='Test description', ext_modules=[ext]) 1 2 3 4 5 from distutils.core import setup, Extension ext = Extension ('spam', sources = ['spammodule.c' ] ) setup ( name = 'foo', version = '1.0', description = 'Test description', ext_modules = [ ext ] )
Distutils is simply a way to distribute your Python modules. Running this along with distutils basically builds your extension, compiles it under gcc and creates an object file (.o file), runs gcc with dynamic_lookup and creates a shared object that gets copied into sites-packages where other modules are stored.
6. Almost done, now lets build it and install the module:
python setup.py build
python setup.py install
gcc should compile this file and then install to site-packages just like any other module.
7. Run python and try importing the module:
home ~: python Python 2.6.1 (r261:67515, Feb 11 2010, 15:47:53) [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import spam >>> dir(spam) ['__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__package__','system'] >>> spam.system('pwd') /Users/suhaildoshi 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 home ~ : python Python 2.6.1 ( r261 : 67515, Feb 11 2010, 15 : 47 : 53 ) [ GCC 4.2.1 ( Apple Inc. build 5646 ) ] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import spam >>> dir ( spam ) [ '__doc__', '__file__', '__name__', '__package__','system' ] >>> spam.system ( 'pwd' ) / Users / suhaildoshi 0
Congrats, you just wrote some C code and ran it in Python. There’s also other things like Protobufs and Thrift which allow you run code in a different language (cross-server too) but writing C extensions in Python may be a more interoperable and cleaner way to get a particular task done.
Great references:
http://docs.python.org/extending/extending.html
http://docs.python.org/distutils/Kangaroo meat at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne Kangaroo meat is mostly produced in Australia from wild animals and in 2010 was exported to over 55 countries worldwide.[1] Contents
Production Edit
Currently most kangaroo meat is sourced from wild animals as a byproduct of population control programmes.[2][3] Both the meat and the hides are sold. Although most species of macropod are protected from non-Aboriginal hunting by law, a small number of the large-sized species which exist in high numbers can be hunted by commercial hunters.[4] This policy has been criticised by some animal rights activists.[5] On the other hand, the kangaroo harvest is supported by a wide range of professional ecologists in Australia. Groups such as the Ecological Society of Australia, the Australasian Wildlife Management Society and the Australian Mammal Society have stated their support for kangaroo harvesting. Such groups argue that basing agricultural production systems on native animals rather than introduced livestock like sheep offers considerable ecological advantages to the fragile Australian rangelands and could save greenhouse gas emissions.[6][7] Though it is impossible to determine the exact number, government conservation agencies in each state calculate population estimates each year. Nearly 40 years of refinement has led to the development of sophisticated aerial survey techniques which enable overall populations estimates to be constructed.[8] Current estimates indicate that there may be between 35 and 50 million kangaroos in Australia.[9][10] In 2002 the number of kangaroos allowed to be shot by commercial hunters was increased from 5.5 million to 7 million per year.[11] While animal rights activists protested the move, Australian farmers claimed that kangaroos were a plague after a huge increase in their numbers.[12] A 2002 report studying the grazing pressure caused by kangaroos indicated that scientific evidence is lacking that kangaroos reduce wool production or sheep carrying capacity.[13] In 2007 the national kangaroo culling quota was more than 3.5 million[14] (but significantly down on the figures earlier in the decade). Kangaroos are protected by legislation in Australia, both state and federal. Kangaroos are harvested by licensed shooters in accordance with a strict code of practice. Meat that is exported is inspected by the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS).[3][9] The quotas created in Australia are the responsibility of each state or territory government. For example, in Queensland, only the following breeds (up to 2017) were included in the quota: red kangaroo, eastern grey kangaroo, common wallaroo. "Sustainable use quotas" are typically between 10–20% of the kangaroo estimated population. Culling is only allowed in certain state areas by approved shooters. Total populations are estimated by aerial surveys and a decade of previous data. Quota numbers calculated by government and science organisations to ensure sustainability. Even though quotas are established by each state, very rarely does actual culling reach 35% of the total quotas allowed. For instance, "[i]n the 2015 harvest period, 25.9% of the commercial harvest quota (for Queensland) was utilised".[15] In NSW, private cullers had to "shoot and let lie" the carcasses of kangaroos. Drought relief laws have changed this, allowing farmers to produce kangaroo meat.[16]
Products Edit
Kangaroo meat at an Australian supermarket Kangaroo steak Kangaroo with thyme served in Helsinki, Finland. Smoked kangaroo jerky at a store in Richfield, Wisconsin, United States The kangaroo has been historically a staple source of protein for indigenous Australians. Kangaroo meat is high in protein and low in fat (about 2%). Kangaroo meat has a very high concentration of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) when compared with other foods. CLA has been attributed with a wide range of health benefits including anti-carcinogenic and anti-diabetes properties, in addition to reducing obesity and atherosclerosis.[3][9][17] While Kangaroo meat has enjoyed popularity for its organic nature, little information has been available about its nutrition benefits besides articles dedicated to the value of CLA's. While basic nutritional data (total protein, fats etc.) are published worldwide, little research has been provided about the nature of the kangaroo protein and its composite amino acid profile. Of the 22 amino acids within protein, ten are vital to human and animal well-being because they can't be manufactured in the body. These are called 'essential amino acids' and the primary research on Kangaroo muscle meat nutrition is from a seminal research paper by the primary Australian Government Science organisation CSIRO in 1970.[18] Using this research paper as a primary data source Essential Amino acids have been calculated for dried Kangaroo muscle meat (DM) and compared to various other farmed meat sources such as chicken, pork, beef and lamb.[18] By comparison to these farmed meats, Kangaroo meat is higher in Threonine, Isoleucine and Valine and lower in Arginine and Methionine-cystine amino acids. This information is invaluable in calculating balanced diets or when a subject requires an extra natural source of a specific essential amino acid. Kangaroo meat is stronger in flavour than the meat from commercially raised food animals. It is considered to be tender. Minced (or ground) kangaroo meat may be substituted in dishes where minced beef would normally be used. Kangaroo meat was legalised for human consumption in South Australia in 1980, and in all other Australian states in 1993.[19][dead link] Kangaroo was once limited in availability, although consumption in Australia is becoming more widespread. However, only 14.5% of Australians were reported in 2008 as eating kangaroo meat at least four times per year.[20] Many Australian supermarkets now stock various cuts of kangaroo[3][21] including fillets, steaks, minced meat and 'Kanga Bangas' (kangaroo sausages). Many Australian restaurants serve kangaroo meat.[22] Kangaroo meat has been exported since 1959.[20] Seventy percent of kangaroo meat is exported, particularly to the European market: Germany and France.[19] It is sold in two supermarkets in the United Kingdom[21] and before a suspension on imports of kangaroo meat to Russia in 2009 it was widely used in Russian smallgoods.[23] In 2008, the industry is worth around A$250-270 million a year and provides around 4,000 jobs in Australia.[19][20] The meat is also processed into dog food.[19] The small kangaroo farming community is a more environmentally friendly meat industry than sheep or cattle farming since kangaroos require no processed feed, are well-adapted to drought, and do not destroy the root systems of native grasses.[3] However kangaroo farming is economically unattractive due to the start up costs and inability of the farmed product to compete financially against animals that have been killed by hunters under the government quota system.[24]
Criticism and controversy Edit
The kangaroo meat industry has attracted critical attention in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States from animal welfare organisations. These concerns have centred on the hunting process, in which all kangaroo meat for the global market comes from kangaroos hunted in the wild. Australia's kangaroo hunting programme is the largest annual wildlife hunting programme in the world. A 2009 report from wildlife ecologist Dr Dror Ben-Ami for a University of Technology Sydney think-tank estimated that 440,000 "dependent young kangaroos" are bludgeoned or starved to death each year after their mother has been shot. The report also raised serious public health and sustainability concerns.[25][26] During the 1990s all British supermarkets agreed to stop selling kangaroo meat,[27] however German retailer Lidl and frozen food outlet Iceland have since introduced kangaroo meat once more.
Kangatarianism Edit
Kangatarianism is a recent practice of following a diet which excludes meat except kangaroo on environmental and ethical grounds. Several Australian newspapers wrote about the neologism "kangatarianism" in February 2010, describing eating a vegetarian diet with the addition of kangaroo meat as a choice with environmental benefits because indigenous wild kangaroos require no extra land or water for farming and produce little methane (a greenhouse gas), unlike cattle or other farm animals.[28][29] Advocates of kangatarianism also choose it because Australian kangaroos live natural lives, eat organic food, and are killed "humanely".[30][31] For similar reasons, Australians have discussed eating only the meat of Australian feral camels ("cameltarianism").[32]
Name Edit
There has been recent discussion from the kangaroo meat industry about attempting to introduce a specific culinary name for kangaroo meat, similar to the reference to pig meat as ham and pork, and calling deer meat venison. The motivation is to have diners thinking of the meat rather than the animal and avoiding adverse reactions to the eating of an animal considered to be cute. In 2005 the Food Companion International magazine, with support from the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, ran a competition hoping to find a name that would not put diners off when they saw it on a menu.[citation needed] The three-month competition attracted over 2700 entries from 41 nations, and the name australus was decided in December 2005. The name was penned by university professor Steven West, an American about to be naturalised as an Australian citizen. Other finalists for the name included kangarly, maroo, krou, maleen, kuja, roujoe, rooviande, jurru, ozru, marsu, kep, kangasaurus, marsupan, jumpmeat, and MOM (meat of marsupials).[33] The competition is not binding on the Kangaroo Industry Association, which has not moved to adopt the new name in any official capacity.
Traditional Aboriginal use Edit
Kangaroo formed an important part of many traditional Aboriginal diets. Kangaroo is called Kere aherre by the Arrernte people of Central Australia: You find kangaroos in flat country or mulga country. In the old days, people used to sic their dogs on them and spear them. The milk guts are pulled out and a wooden skewer is used to close up the carcase. Then it is tossed on top of the fire to singe the hair which is scraped off, and then it's [put in a hole and] covered up with hot earth and coals. The tail and both feet are cut off before cooking. These are put in together with the rest of the carcase. The kangaroo is chopped up so that many people can eat it. The warm blood and fluids from the gluteus medius and the hollow of the thoracic cavity are drained of all fluids. People drink these fluids, which studies have shown are quite harmless. Kangaroos are cut in a special way; into the two thighs, the two hips, the two sides of ribs, the stomach, the head, the tail, the two feet, the back and lower back. This is the way the Arrernte people everywhere cut it up.[34] The Anangu, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples of Central Australia call kangaroo "malu". They use malu mainly for meat (kuka) but other uses include materials for spear making. They are an important totem species. The Angas Downs Indigenous Protected Area Rangers are currently undertaking land management activities to increase this important species in the landscape. This process is named Kuka Kanyini – looking after game animals.
See also EditA spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of demographic suicide. Although the consequences of such a turnout could not be more serious, the problem attracts little public attention – indeed, most people may not even be aware of it. And experts can neither explain the cause nor prescribe a reliable remedy. The story is outlined in Population and Public Policy: Essays in Honour of Paul Demeny, published by the New York-based Population Council (2013).
Having too few children is a recent phenomenon. Sixty years ago, people worried about ballooning populations in the developing world resulting from high fertility rates and declining death rates (due to healthcare). The birth rate required to keep the population steady (replacement birth rate) is 2.1 children per woman, and this rate was set as the demographic goal to stabilise population.
War on population
The UN got behind the initiative, Third World governments came on board and contraception was made widely available. Economic development, healthcare and education kicked in and contributed to lower birth rates, but some developing countries implemented drastic measures, such as sterilisation campaigns in India and a one-child policy in China. Although fertility was declining in rich countries, population control really took off.
The goal of achieving global replacement-level fertility is within striking distance. According to UN estimates, the average woman today will have 2.36 children, reduced from 4.95 in the 1950s, and research at the Autonomous University of Madrid indicates that a global average of 2.1 children per woman could be achieved by 2050.
This global 2.1 children per woman is an average figure. Some countries will exceed 2.1 and some will be below. Birth rates in none of the 27 EU countries exceed 2.1. At least 12 EU countries have birth rates less than 1.5 (Spain and Germany are 1.36, and Italy 1.41), although several, including Ireland, are about 2. The rates of childlessness are about 20 per cent among women aged 45 in some European countries. Indeed, more than half the world has fertility rates below replacement level.
Child deficit
The consequences of producing too few children to replace existing adults are extremely serious. Who will do the work, who will pay taxes, who will take care of the elderly, and, eventually, how will the state avoid eclipse? But the real question is this: why is this scenario on the horizon at all? Why would prosperous Europeans not wish to leave a posterity?
This question has stumped the experts and, in the absence of a credible cause, it is extremely difficult to prescribe a solution.
Traditionally, sexual activity, child-rearing and marriage were meshed but the modern pursuit of personal fulfilment and rights has decoupled these activities and it is now socially acceptable to have one without the other two. And traditional marriage, with commitment to a spouse through rough and smooth, coupled with a commitment to sacrifice an easier life for the satisfaction of bearing children, is in serious decline and unlikely to experience a robust revival in Europe anytime soon.
The only suggestions I’ve seen that should make a positive impact on birth rates are measures to encourage women in the workplace to have more children.
Working women
All women in the developed world are encouraged to have careers outside the home. This entails childcare costs that can add up to a large fraction of the mother’s work income. It is also difficult for women to compete with men when so many must interrupt their careers for maybe three or four separate year-long maternity-leave periods. All of this obviously mitigates against working women having babies.
The introduction of pro-natalist policies, such as easily affordable childcare, enhanced parental leave (including paternity leave), career development for working mothers, financial bonuses for children beyond the first child, and the encouragement of fathers to play a more active roles in the home, should all pay off positively in encouraging birth rates. Such policies have had a positive effect in Nordic countries. They are worth trying – look at the consequences of doing nothing.
William Reville is an emeritus professor of biochemistry, and is public awareness of science officer at UCC
understandingscience.ucc.ieThe Guy took out a knife and that's where he got restrained. #losangeles#la#fight#fights#peoplefighting#violence#bus#abc7eyewitness#ktla5#nbc4you#knife#northhollywood#video#news#noticias A video posted by @ojromero88 on May 19, 2016 at 4:59pm PDT
A violent, bloody fight broke out on a Metro Orange Line bus Friday afternoon that included one man pulling out a knife.
According to the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, the fight erupted around 3:25 p.m. as the bus was heading toward the station in North Hollywood.
Orlando Romero captured the fight on his phone and posted the videos to Instagram. He told ABC-7, "I got nervous, my heart started beating, but I was more focused on capturing the moment, the video."
According to witnesses, the man who instigated the fight kept shouting that he was from Chicago and was "acting drunk and disrespectful." After a few other men who were from L.A. confronted him, the man from Chicago pulled out a knife, and a fight broke out.
In the two videos (the second is posted below), we see a jumbled group of men, and it's not really clear who's doing what. "Get your ass out of here with that bullshit and stop disrespecting people," we hear one of the men saying, as he's seen pinning the Chicago man's arms behind his back.
While no one appears to have been stabbed, the man who pulled out the knife was hit at some point during the melee, and had blood all over his face.
"I did kind of freak out when I saw the guy's blood and it was splattered all over the floor and the side of the door," Romero told ABC.
Fight On Bus. Only In LA #fight#fights#peoplefighting#violence#bus#la#losangeles#nbc4you #abc7eyewitness#northhollywood#news#noticias A video posted by @ojromero88 on May 19, 2016 at 4:28pm PDT
According to Romero, the bus driver was frantically honking the horn in an attempt to get police attention while the fight was happening. All of the men involved in the fight got off the bus at the North Hollywood Metro station, and sheriff's deputies arrested the man who pulled out the knife.Following the sale, Premier expects its year end net debt to be just under $2.3 billion. The company said it has significant liquidity with $1.2 billion of cash and undrawn credit facilities and covenant headroom is expected to be in excess of $800 million at the year end.
Premier Oil has completed the sale of its Norwegian subsidiary Premier Oil Norge AS (PONAS) to Det norske oljeselskap ASA for a net cash consideration of $120 million.
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Sport Techie: What was “Raptors Live – Draft Central”?
JM: “Raptors Live” is an initiative we implemented to put emphasis on the live aspect of the sports business. So in other words, we’re making sure that all efforts are concentrated around delivering opportunities for our fans to engage with us “in the now”. Live events can include games, the draft and various team events … This is where we feel we need to live in order to capitalize on the audiences that want to engage with our brands.
Anytime we’re going live with an event we go live with “Raptors Live” mode, which is a web page that aggregates content (Articles, Facebook and Twitter) and wrap around a live video feed. Every once in a while we’ll dress “Live” mode up for events such as the draft (Draft Central).
Sport Techie: How do you manage social media for each team?
JM: Each team has a designated community manager responsible for managing the team’s digital properties including official sites, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and any other content feeds. This person will also curate and create new content.We also have designated video personnel for each team because video is such an important part of our business.
Sport Techie: What led to your philosophy around live events?
JM: Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment owns TV properties that we are in complete unison with as it relates to content production. The basic thing about sports content is that the most audience is created around the live game. So we have decided to focus our resources on initiatives that focus as close as possible to that bull’s eye. The challenge, however, is that once you get that down then you realize there’s not enough events. So we had to start manufacturing events (trade deadline day, the draft, season opening, trades, little nuggets of time). I believe it is really important for teams to understand that concept. We have to put our dollars behind things that have the most impact. That’s why I love Google+ Hangout so much. It’s basically a TV show in-a-box. Live or near-live video content is the core of the sports business and we’re doing everything we can to leverage that.
Sport Techie: Tell us more about Google+ Hangouts. Any best practices to share?
JM: We are one of the early adopters of using the technology for sports. I compare the technology, really, to that of live chats from about five years ago. The value wasn’t necessarily in the live chat, but how many people read it afterwards. Same thing with a Google+ Hangout. The archive has a really long shelf-life. In terms of ease of use, my team has found it really easy to use. We pick a few folks (avid fans, bloggers, etc.) to sit down and have a chat with us or a player. As we get better at them, I expect them to become in-broadcast or in-arena features. It could even be a 30 minute show the day of announcing the signing of a player.
Sport Techie: Thanks, John!Defence arguments in the trial of former Army private Bradley Manning — who stands accused of a number of crimes for handing over classified documents to WikiLeaks, including a charge of “aiding the enemy” — finished Wednesday with testimony from Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler, who faced a number of questions from the judge and the prosecution about whether WikiLeaks is a media entity or not. Benkler’s answers highlighted some of the most contentious aspects of the trial, which in turn raise questions about what journalism and the media consist of in |
the Act was passed, this later became a legal stumbling block for the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he sought to provide military aid to Great Britain before the United States entered World War II.[13]
Amendments [ edit ]
The law was extended on May 16, 1918, by the Sedition Act of 1918, actually a set of amendments to the Espionage Act, which prohibited many forms of speech, including "any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States... or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy".[10]
Because the Sedition Act was an informal name, court cases were brought under the name of the Espionage Act, whether the charges were based on the provisions of the Espionage Act or the provisions of the amendments known informally as the Sedition Act.
On March 3, 1921, the Sedition Act amendments were repealed, but many provisions of the Espionage Act remain, codified under U.S.C. Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 37.[14]
In 1933, after signals intelligence expert Herbert Yardley published a popular book about breaking Japanese codes, the Act was amended to prohibit the disclosure of foreign code or anything sent in code.[15] The Act was amended in 1940 to increase the penalties it imposed, and again in 1970.[16]
In the late 1940s, the U.S. Code was re-organized and much of Title 50 (War) was moved to Title 18 (Crime). The McCarran Internal Security Act added in 1950 and was added the same year.[17]
In 1961, Congressman Richard Poff succeeded after several attempts in removing language that restricted the Act's application to territory "within the jurisdiction of the United States, on the high seas, and within the United States". He said the need for the Act to apply everywhere was prompted by Irvin C. Scarbeck, a State Department official who was charged with yielding to blackmail threats in Poland.[18]
Proposed amendments [ edit ]
In 1989, Congressman James Traficant tried to amend to broaden the application of the death penalty.[19] Senator Arlen Specter proposed a comparable expansion of the use of the death penalty the same year.[20] In 1994, Robert K. Dornan proposed the death penalty for the disclosure of a U.S. agent's identity.[21]
History [ edit ]
World War I [ edit ]
Much of the Act's enforcement was left to the discretion of local United States Attorneys, so enforcement varied widely. For example, Socialist Kate Richards O'Hare gave the same speech in several states, but was convicted and sentenced to a prison term of five years for delivering her speech in North Dakota. Most enforcement activity occurred in the Western states where the Industrial Workers of the World was active.[22] Finally Gregory, a few weeks before the end of the war, instructed the U.S. Attorneys not to act without his approval.
A year after the Act's passage, Eugene V. Debs, Socialist Party presidential candidate in 1904, 1908, and 1912 was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for making a speech that "obstructed recruiting". He ran for president again in 1920 from prison. President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence in December 1921 when he had served nearly five years.[23]
In United States v. Motion Picture Film (1917), a federal court upheld the government's seizure of a film called The Spirit of '76 on the grounds that its depiction of cruelty on the part of British soldiers during the American Revolution would undermine support for America's wartime ally. The producer, Robert Goldstein, a Jew of German origins, was prosecuted under Title XI of the Act, and received a ten-year sentence plus a fine of $5000. The sentence was commuted on appeal to three years.[24]
Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson and those in his department played critical roles in the enforcement of the Act. He held his position because he was a Democratic party loyalist and close to both the President and the Attorney General. At a time when the Department of Justice numbered its investigators in the dozens, the Post Office had a nationwide network in place. The day after the Act became law, Burleson sent a secret memo to all postmasters ordering them to keep "close watch on... matter which is calculated to interfere with the success of... the government in conducting the war".[25] Postmasters in Savannah, Georgia, and Tampa, Florida, refused to mail the Jeffersonian, the mouthpiece of Tom Watson, a southern populist, an opponent of the draft, the war, and minority groups. When Watson sought an injunction against the postmaster, the federal judge who heard the case called his publication "poison" and denied his request. Government censors objected to the headline "Civil Liberty Dead".[26] In New York City, the postmaster refused to mail The Masses, a socialist monthly, citing the publication's "general tenor". The Masses was more successful in the courts, where Judge Learned Hand found the Act was applied so vaguely as to threaten "the tradition of English-speaking freedom". The editors were then prosecuted for obstructing the draft and the publication folded when denied access to the mails again.[27] Eventually, Burleson's energetic enforcement overreached when he targeted supporters of the administration. The President warned him to exercise "the utmost caution" and the dispute proved the end of their political friendship.[28]
In May 1918, sedition charges were laid under the Espionage Act against Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society president "Judge" Joseph Rutherford and seven other Watch Tower directors and officers over statements made in the society's book, The Finished Mystery, published a year earlier. The book had claimed that patriotism was a delusion and murder, so the officers were charged with attempting to cause insubordination, disloyalty, refusal of duty in the armed forces and obstructing the recruitment and enlistment service of the U.S. while it was at war.[29] The book had been banned in Canada since February 1918 for what a Winnipeg newspaper described as "seditious and antiwar statements"[30] and described by Attorney General Gregory as dangerous propaganda.[31] On June 21 seven of the directors, including Rutherford, were sentenced to the maximum 20 years' imprisonment for each of four charges, to be served concurrently. They served nine months in the Atlanta Penitentiary before being released on bail at the order of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. In April 1919 an appeal court ruled they had not had the "intemperate and impartial trial of which they were entitled" and reversed their conviction.[32] In May 1920 the government announced that all charges had been dropped.[33]
Red Scare, Palmer Raids, mass arrests, deportations [ edit ]
The house of Attorney General Palmer after being bombed by anarchists in 1919; Palmer was not injured, although his housekeeper was
During the Red Scare of 1918–19, in response to the 1919 anarchist bombings aimed at prominent government officials and businessmen, U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, supported by J. Edgar Hoover, then head of the Justice Department's Enemy Aliens Registration Section, prosecuted several hundred foreign-born known and suspected activists in the United States under the Sedition Act of 1918. This extended the Espionage Act to cover a broader range of offenses. After being convicted, persons including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were deported to the Soviet Union on a ship the press called the "Soviet Ark".[3][34][35]
A version of Chafee's "Free Speech in War Times", the work that helped change Justice Holmes' mind
Many of the jailed had appealed their convictions based on the U.S. constitutional right to the freedom of speech. The Supreme Court disagreed. The Espionage Act limits on free speech were ruled constitutional in the U.S. Supreme Court case Schenck v. United States (1919).[36] Schenck, an anti-war Socialist, had been convicted of violating the Act when he sent anti-draft pamphlets to men eligible for the draft. Although Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes joined the Court majority in upholding Schenck's conviction in 1919, he also introduced the theory that punishment in such cases must be limited to such political expression that constitutes a "clear and present danger" to the government action at issue. Holmes' opinion is the origin of the notion that speech equivalent to "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater" is not protected by the First Amendment.
Justice Holmes began to doubt his decision due to criticism from free speech advocates. He also met the Harvard Law professor Zechariah Chafee and discussed his criticism of Schenck.[35][37]
Later in 1919, in Abrams v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man who distributed circulars in opposition to American intervention in Russia following the Russian Revolution. The concept of bad tendency was used to justify the restriction of speech. The defendant was deported. Justices Holmes and Brandeis, however, dissented, with Holmes arguing that "nobody can suppose that the surreptitious publishing of a silly leaflet by an unknown man, without more, would present any immediate danger that its opinions would hinder the success of the government arms or have any appreciable tendency to do so."[35][38]
In March 1919, President Wilson, at the suggestion of Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory, pardoned or commuted the sentences of some 200 prisoners convicted under the Espionage Act or the Sedition Act.[39] By early 1921, the Red Scare had faded, Palmer left government, and the Espionage Act fell into relative disuse.
World War II [ edit ]
Prosecutions under the Act were much less numerous during World War II than they had been during World War I. Associate Justice Frank Murphy noted in 1944 in Hartzel v. United States that "For the first time during the course of the present war, we are confronted with a prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917." Hartzel, a World War I veteran, had distributed anti-war pamphlets to associations and business groups. The court's majority found that his materials, though comprising "vicious and unreasoning attacks on one of our military allies, flagrant appeals to false and sinister racial theories, and gross libels of the President", did not urge mutiny or any of the other specific actions detailed in the Act, and that he had targeted molders of public opinion, not members of the armed forces or potential military recruits. The court overturned his conviction in a 5–4 decision. The four dissenting justices declined to "intrude on the historic function of the jury" and would have upheld the conviction.[40] In Gorin v. United States (early 1941), the Supreme Court ruled on many constitutional questions surrounding the act.[41]
The Act was used in 1942 to deny a mailing permit to Father Charles Coughlin's weekly Social Justice, effectively ending its distribution to subscribers. It was part of Attorney General Francis Biddle's attempt to close down what he called "vermin publications". Coughlin had been criticized for virulently anti-Semitic writings.[42][43][44]
The same year, a June front page story by Stanley Johnston in the Chicago Tribune, headlined "Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea", implied that the Americans had broken the Japanese codes before the Battle of Midway. The story resulted in the Japanese changing their codebooks and callsign systems. The newspaper publishers were brought before a grand jury for possible indictment, but proceedings were halted because of government reluctance to present a jury with the highly secret information necessary to prosecute the publishers, as well as concern that a trial would attract more attention to the case.[45][46]
In 1945, six associates of Amerasia magazine, a journal of Far Eastern affairs, came under suspicion after publishing articles that bore similarity to Office of Strategic Services reports. The government proposed using the Espionage Act against them but later softened its approach, changing the charges to Embezzlement of Government Property (now ). A grand jury cleared three of the associates, two associates paid small fines, and charges against the sixth man were dropped. Senator Joseph McCarthy said the failure to aggressively prosecute the defendants was a communist conspiracy. According to Kleht and Radosh, the case helped build his later notoriety.[47]
Mid-20th century Soviet spies [ edit ]
Navy employee Hafis Salich sold Soviet agent Mihail Gorin information regarding Japanese activities in the late 1930s. Gorin v. United States (1941) was cited in many later espionage cases for its discussion of the charge of "vagueness", an argument made against the terminology used in certain portions of the law, such as what constitutes "national defense" information.
Later in the 1940s, several incidents prompted the government to increase its investigations into Soviet espionage. These included the Venona project decryptions, the Elizabeth Bentley case, the atomic spies cases, the First Lightning Soviet nuclear test, and others. Many suspects were surveilled, but never prosecuted. These investigations were dropped, as can be seen in the FBI Silvermaster Files. There were also many successful prosecutions and convictions under the Act.
In August 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted under Title 50, sections 32a and 34, in connection with giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Anatoli Yakovlev was indicted as well. In 1951, Morton Sobell and David Greenglass were indicted. After a controversial trial in 1951, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. They were executed in 1953, making their two sons orphans. The boys were adopted by another family.[48][49][50] In the late 1950s, several members of the Soble spy ring, including Robert Soblen, and Jack and Myra Soble, were prosecuted for espionage. In the mid-1960s, the act was used against James Mintkenbaugh and Robert Lee Johnson, who sold information to the Soviets while working for the U.S. Army in Berlin.[51][52]
1948 code revision [ edit ]
In 1948, some portions of the United States Code were reorganized. Much of Title 50 (War and National Defense) was moved to Title 18 (Crimes and Criminal Procedure). Thus Title 50 Chapter 4, Espionage, (Sections 31–39), became Title 18, 794 and following. As a result, certain older cases, such as the Rosenberg case, are now listed under Title 50, while newer cases are often listed under Title 18.[48][53]
1950 McCarran Internal Security Act [ edit ]
In 1950, during the McCarthy Period, Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act over President Harry S. Truman's veto. It modified a large body of law, including espionage law. One addition was, which had almost exactly the same language as. According to Edgar and Schmidt, the added section potentially removes the "intent" to harm or aid requirement and may make "mere retention" of information a crime no matter what the intent, covering even former government officials writing their memoirs. They also describe McCarran saying that this portion was intended directly to respond to the case of Alger Hiss and the "Pumpkin Papers".[17][54][55]
Judicial review, 1960s and 1970s [ edit ]
Brandenburg [ edit ]
Court decisions of this era changed the standard for enforcing some provisions of the Espionage Act. Though not a case involving charges under the Act, Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) changed the "clear and present danger" test derived from Schenck to the "imminent lawless action" test, a considerably stricter test of the inflammatory nature of speech.[56]
Pentagon Papers [ edit ]
In June 1971, Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo were charged with a felony under the Espionage Act of 1917, because they lacked legal authority to publish classified documents that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.[57] The Supreme Court in New York Times Co. v. United States found that the government had not made a successful case for prior restraint of Free Speech, but a majority of the justices ruled that the government could still prosecute the Times and the Post for violating the Espionage Act in publishing the documents. Ellsberg and Russo were not acquitted of violating the Espionage Act, but were freed due to a mistrial based on irregularities in the government's case.[58]
The divided Supreme Court had denied the government's request to restrain the press. In their opinions the justices expressed varying degrees of support for the First Amendment claims of the press against the government's "heavy burden of proof" in establishing that the publisher "has reason to believe" the material published "could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation".[citation needed]
The case prompted Harold Edgar and Benno C. Schmidt Jr. to write an article on espionage law in the 1973 Columbia Law Review. Their article was entitled "The Espionage Statutes and Publication of Defense Information". Essentially they found the law to be poorly written and vague, with parts of it probably unconstitutional. Their article became widely cited in books and in future court arguments on Espionage cases.[59]
United States v. Dedeyan in 1978 was the first prosecution under (Dedeyan 'failed to report' that information had been disclosed). The courts relied on Gorin v. United States (1941) for precedent. The ruling touched on several constitutional questions including vagueness of the law and whether the information was "related to national defense". The defendant received a 3-year sentence.[60][61]
In 1979–80, Truong Dinh Hung (aka David Truong) and Ronald Louis Humphrey were convicted under 793(a), (c), and (e) as well as several other laws. The ruling discussed several constitutional questions regarding espionage law, "vagueness", the difference between classified information and "national defense information", wiretapping and the Fourth Amendment. It also commented on the notion of bad faith (scienter) being a requirement for conviction even under 793(e); an "honest mistake" was said not to be a violation.[61][62]
1980s [ edit ]
Alfred Zehe, a scientist from East Germany, was arrested in Boston in 1983 after being caught in a government-run sting operation in which he had reviewed classified U.S. government documents in Mexico and East Germany. His attorneys contended without success that the indictment was invalid, arguing that the Espionage Act does not cover the activities of a foreign citizen outside the United States.[63][64] Zehe then pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 8 years in prison. He was released in June 1985 as part of an exchange of four East Europeans held by the U.S. for 25 people held in Poland and East Germany, none of them American.[65]
One of Zehe's defense attorneys claimed his client was prosecuted as part of "the perpetuation of the 'national-security state' by over-classifying documents that there is no reason to keep secret, other than devotion to the cult of secrecy for its own sake".[66]
The media dubbed 1985 "Year of the Spy". U.S. Navy civilian Jonathan Pollard was charged with, for selling classified information to Israel. His 1986 plea bargain did not get him out of a life sentence, after a 'victim impact statement' including a statement by Caspar Weinberger.[67] Larry Wu-Tai Chin, at CIA, was charged with for selling info to China.[68] Ronald Pelton was dinged for,, &, for selling out to the Soviets, and ruining Operation Ivy Bells.[69] Edward Lee Howard was an ex-Peace Corps and ex-CIA agent charged with for allegedly dealing with the Soviets. The FBI's website says the 1980s was the "decade of the spy", with dozens of arrests.[70]
Seymour Hersh wrote an article entitled "The Traitor" arguing against Pollard's release.[71]
Morison [ edit ]
Samuel Loring Morison was a government security analyst who worked on the side for Jane's, a British military and defense publisher. He was arrested on October 1, 1984,[72] though investigators never demonstrated any intent to provide information to a hostile intelligence service. Morison told investigators that he sent classified satellite photographs to Jane's because the "public should be aware of what was going on on the other side", meaning that the Soviets' new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier would transform the USSR's military capabilities. He said that "if the American people knew what the Soviets were doing, they would increase the defense budget." British intelligence sources thought his motives were patriotic, but American prosecutors emphasized Morison's personal economic gain and complaints about his government job.[73]
The prosecution of Morison was used as part of a wider campaign against leaks of information as a "test case" for applying the Act to cover the disclosure of information to the press. A March 1984 government report had noted that "the unauthorized publication of classified information is a routine daily occurrence in the U.S." but that the applicability of the Espionage Act to such disclosures "is not entirely clear".[74] Time said that the administration, if it failed to convict Morison, would seek additional legislation and described the ongoing conflict: "The Government does need to protect military secrets, the public does need information to judge defense policies, and the line between the two is surpassingly difficult to draw."[74]
On October 17, 1985, Morison was convicted in Federal Court on two counts of espionage and two counts of theft of government property.[74] He was sentenced to two years in prison on December 4, 1985.[75] The Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in 1988.[76] Morison became "the only [American] government official ever convicted for giving classified information to the press" up to that time.[77] Following Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1998 appeal for a pardon for Morison, President Bill Clinton pardoned him on January 20, 2001, the last day of his presidency,[77] despite the CIA's opposition to the pardon.[76]
The successful prosecution of Morison was used to warn against the publication of leaked information. In May 1986, CIA Director William J. Casey, without citing specific violations of law, threatened to prosecute five news organizations–The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The New York Times, Time and Newsweek.[78]
Soviet spies, late 20th century [ edit ]
Christopher John Boyce of TRW, and his accomplice Andrew Daulton Lee, sold out to the Soviets and went to prison in the 1970s. (Their activities were the subject of the movie The Falcon & The Snowman.)
In the 1980s, several members of the Walker spy ring were prosecuted and convicted of espionage for the Soviets.
In 1980, David Henry Barnett was the first active CIA officer to be convicted under the act.
In 1994, CIA officer Aldrich Ames was convicted under of spying for the Soviets; Ames had revealed the identities of several U.S. sources in the USSR to the KGB, who were then executed.[79]
FBI agent Earl Edwin Pitts was arrested in 1996 under and of spying for the Soviet Union and later for the Russian Federation.[80][81][82][83]
In 1997, senior CIA officer Harold James Nicholson was convicted of espionage for the Russians.
In 1998, NSA contractor David Sheldon Boone was charged with having handed over a 600-page technical manual to the Soviets c. 1988-1991 ( ).
In 2000, FBI agent Robert Hanssen was convicted under the Act of spying for the Soviets in the 1980s and Russia in the 1990s.
Other spies of the 1990s [ edit ]
*Name Agency Foreign party.[84] Brown, Joseph Garfiel former Airman Selling info to the Philippines Carney, Jeffrey M Air Force East Germany Clark, James Michael, Kurt Allen Stand and Therese Marie Squillacot Govt contractors East Germany Charlton, John Douglas Lockheed Sold info to an undercover FBI agent posing as a foreign agent Gregory, Jeffery Eugen Army Hungary and Czechoslovakia Groat, Douglas Frederick CIA Original espionage charges dropped to avoid disclosure at trial. Faget, Mariano INS Cuba The Cuban Five (Hernández, Guerrero, Labañino, González, and González) Cuba Hamilton, Frederick Christopher DIA Ecuador. Jenott, Eric Army charged with Espionage but acquitted. Jones, Geneva State Department passing classified info to West African journalist Dominic Ntube Kim, Robert Chaegu Navy South Korea Lalas, Steven John State Greece Lee, Peter LANL China (discussing hohlraums) Lessenthien, Kurt Navy Russia
1990s critiques [ edit ]
In the 1990s, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan deplored the "culture of secrecy" made possible by the Espionage Act, noting the tendency of bureaucracies to enlarge their powers by increasing the scope of what is held "secret".[85]
In the late 1990s, Wen Ho Lee of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) was indicted under the Act. He and other national security professionals later said he was a "scapegoat"[This quote needs a citation] in the government's quest to determine if information about the W88 nuclear warhead had been transferred to China. Lee had made backup copies at LANL of his nuclear weapons simulations code to protect it in case of a system crash. The code was marked PARD, sensitive but not classified. As part of a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to one count under the Espionage Act. The judge apologized to him for having believed the government.[citation needed] Lee later won more than a million dollars in a lawsuit against the government and several newspapers for their mistreatment of him.[86]
21st century [ edit ]
In 2001, retired Army Reserve Colonel George Trofimoff, the most senior U.S. military officer to be indicted under the Act, was convicted of conducting espionage for the Soviets in the 1970s–1990s.[87]
Kenneth Wayne Ford Jr. was indicted under for allegedly having a box of documents in his house after he left NSA employment around 2004. He was sentenced to six years in prison in 2006.[88]
In 2005, Pentagon Iran expert Lawrence Franklin, along with AIPAC lobbyists Rosen and Weissman were indicted under the Act. Franklin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to disclose national defense information to the lobbyists and an Israeli government official.[89] Franklin was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, but the sentence was later reduced to 10 months of home confinement.[90]
Under the Obama administration, seven Espionage Act prosecutions have been related not to traditional espionage but to either withholding information or communicating with members of the media. Out of a total eleven prosecutions under the Espionage Act against government officials accused of providing classified information to the media, seven have occurred since Obama took office.[91] "Leaks related to national security can put people at risk," the President said at a news conference in 2013. "They can put men and women in uniform that I've sent into the battlefield at risk. I don't think the American people would expect me, as commander in chief, not to be concerned about information that might compromise their missions or might get them killed."[92]
Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, a former CIA agent was indicted under the Act in January 2011 for alleged unauthorized disclosure of national defense information to James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times, in 2003 regarding his book State of War. The indictment described his motive as revenge for the CIA's refusal to allow him to publish his memoirs and its refusal to settle his racial discrimination lawsuit against the Agency. Others have described him as telling Risen about a backfired CIA plot against Iran in the 1990s.[93]
In April 2010, Thomas Andrews Drake, an official with the NSA, was indicted under for alleged willful retention of national defense information. The case arose from investigations into his communications with Siobhan Gorman of The Baltimore Sun and Diane Roark of the House Intelligence Committee as part of his attempt to blow the whistle on several issues, including the NSA's Trailblazer project.[94][95][96][97][98] Considering the prosecution of Drake, investigative journalist Jane Mayer wrote that "Because reporters often retain unauthorized defense documents, Drake's conviction would establish a legal precedent making it possible to prosecute journalists as spies."[99]
[100] Chelsea (Formerly Bradley) Manning, US Army Private First Class convicted in July 2013 on six counts of violating the Espionage Act.
In May 2010, Shamai K. Leibowitz, a translator for the FBI, admitted sharing information with a blogger and pleaded guilty under to one count of disclosure of classified information. As part of a plea bargain, he was sentenced to 20 months in prison.[101][102]
In August 2010, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a contractor for the State Department and a specialist in nuclear proliferation, was indicted under for alleged disclosure in June 2009 of national defense information to reporter James Rosen of Fox News Channel, related to North Korea's plans to test a nuclear weapon.[103][104]
In 2010, Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, the United States Army Private First Class accused of the largest leak of state secrets in U.S. history, was charged under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which incorporates parts of the Espionage Act. At the time, critics worried that the broad language of the Act could make news organizations, and anyone who reported, printed or disseminated information from WikiLeaks, subject to prosecution, although former prosecutors pushed back, citing Supreme Court precedent expanding First Amendment protections.[105] On July 30, 2013, following a judge-only trial by court-martial lasting eight weeks, Army judge Colonel Denise Lind convicted Manning on six counts of violating the Espionage Act, among other infractions.[100] She was sentenced to serve a 35-year sentence at the maximum-security U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.[106][107] On January 17, 2017, President Barack Obama commuted Manning's sentence to nearly seven years of confinement dating from her arrest on May 27, 2010.[108][109]
In January 2012, John Kiriakou, former CIA officer and later Democratic staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged under the Act with leaking information to journalists about the identity of undercover agents, including one who was allegedly involved in waterboarding interrogations of al-Qaeda logistics chief Abu Zubaydah.[110][111] Kiriakou is alleged to have also disclosed an investigative technique used to capture Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002.[112]
In June 2013, Edward Snowden was charged under the Espionage Act after releasing documents exposing the NSA's PRISM Surveillance Program. Specifically, he was charged with "unauthorized communication of national defense information" and "willful communication of classified intelligence with an unauthorized person".[113]
In June 2017, Reality Leigh Winner was arrested and charged with "willful retention and transmission of national defense information," a felony under the Espionage Act.[114] Her arrest was announced on June 5 after The Intercept published an article describing Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, based on classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents leaked to them anonymously.[115][116] On June 8, 2017, she pleaded not guilty and was denied bail.[114]
On June 21, 2018, Winner asked the court to allow her to change her plea to guilty[117] and on June 26 she pleaded guilty to one count of felony transmission of national defense information.[118][119] Winner's plea agreement with prosecutors called for her to serve five years and three months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.[120]
On August 23, 2018, at a federal court in Georgia, Winner was sentenced to the agreed-upon length of time for violating the Espionage Act. Prosecutors said her sentence was the longest ever imposed in federal court for an unauthorized release of government information to the media.[121]
Criticism [ edit ]
Numerous people have criticized the use of the Espionage Act against national security leakers. A 2015 study by the PEN American Center found that almost all of the non-government representatives they interviewed, including activists, lawyers, journalists and whistleblowers, "thought the Espionage Act had been used inappropriately in leak cases that have a public interest component." PEN wrote, "experts described it as 'too blunt an instrument,' 'aggressive, broad and suppressive,' a 'tool of intimidation,' 'chilling of free speech,' and a 'poor vehicle for prosecuting leakers and whistleblowers.'"[122]
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, "the current state of whistleblowing prosecutions under the Espionage Act makes a truly fair trial wholly unavailable to an American who has exposed classified wrongdoing," and that "legal scholars have strongly argued that the US Supreme Court – which has never yet addressed the constitutionality of applying the Espionage Act to leaks to the American public – should find the use of it overbroad and unconstitutional in the absence of a public interest defense."[123] Professor at American University Washington College of Law and national security law expert Stephen Vladeck has said that the law “lacks the hallmarks of a carefully and precisely defined statutory restriction on speech.”[122] Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said, “basically any information the whistleblower or source would want to bring up at trial to show that they are not guilty of violating the Espionage Act the jury would never hear. It’s almost a certainty that because the law is so broadly written that they would be convicted no matter what.”[122] Attorney and former whistleblower Jesselyn Radack notes that the law was enacted "35 years before the word 'classification' entered the government's lexicon" and believes that "under the Espionage Act, no prosecution of a non-spy can be fair or just."[124] She added that mounting a legal defense to the Espionage Act is estimated to "cost $1 million to $3 million."[124]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Are these the world's coolest tree houses? Stunning hideaways in a Canadian forest where you can trade city lights for starry nights
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A five-star eco-friendly resort in Canada has unveiled their latest concept for a high-scale retreat that's suspended entirely in trees.
The 12 tree house villas -- E’terra Samara resort's latest villa models that match luxurious comfort and futuristic style with the great outdoors -- are proposed to hang in the tranquil Bruce Peninsula forest, just northwest of Toronto.
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New kind of luxury: Located about four hours northwest of Toronto, five-star resort E'terra Samara plans to soon offer these 12 eco-friendly tree house villas
Inspiration: The villa's design is said to be inspired by the samara seed, pictured, that's commonly known as the maple key
The one-bedroom villas, whose design is inspired by the samara seed -- commonly known as the maple key -- features a bedroom area, front furnished living space, composting toilet and an eco-friendly shower.
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For those guests who prefer to stay comfortably inside, however, the villas' sheltering fabric bonnets are not only self-cleaning but actively neutralize airborne pollutants and odors.
Living arrangements: An artist's rendering of a villa's interior shows the front open-aired living space followed by the beginning of the bedroom in the foreground
View from above: Seen looking down on the tree house, the protecting fabric bonnet is said to be not only self-cleaning but to actively neutralize airborne pollutants and odours
Explaining the process, the resort credits the fabric's coating of PTFE fiberglass and titanium dioxide - that's non-toxic and flame resistant - which activates the sun's UV rays, oxygen and water vapour to break down dirt and any other organic materials.
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After its construction, E'terra Samara plans to reopen in mid February with a calendar of available reservations for their 2013 season.
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This collection from other amazing tree-top hotspots from around the world - from South Africa to Washington State to China - may be just a short flight or drive away.
SOUTH AFRICA: The Tsala Treetop Lodge in Plettenberg Bay places its guests among 10 stone and glass lodges high above the Tsitsikamma Forest
Comforts: Each treehouse in South Africa, accessed by wooden walkways, features floor-to-ceiling bedroom windows, a log fireplace in the living room, a private deck and an infinity-edge pool.Omni Military Loans Blog: Jimi Hendrix was Denied a Guitar Loan
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Omni Financial was created after World War II so that U.S. service members could easily and quickly get the personal loans they need. Unfortunately, historically speaking, other businesses and financial institutions often turn down service members since military personnel are often young and do not have a credit history. One such young man who was not approved for a loan was none other than legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix.
Hendrix Military History
Hendrix enlisted in the Army in 1961 and was stationed at Fort Campbell. While he was at Fort Campbell, he frequented a local music store, Collins Music, and liked to pick up and |
uriel get thrown out of the Trump University case, Trump said: “Well, I may do that now—We’re finding things out now that we didn’t know before.” “Because of his Mexican heritage though?” Dickerson pressed. “No, but because of other things,” Trump responded. “I mean because of other things.”
Hmmm. He wants Curiel tossed off the case, but not because of his Mexican heritage. Why is that? A reader points me toward a piece by Garrett Epps in the Atlantic this morning about a 1998 case overseen by federal judge Denny Chin:
Eventually, Chin dismissed Klayman’s client’s case….Not long after, the judge got a letter from Klayman and his co-counsel, Paul Orfanedes, asking a few “questions” about the judge’s Asian American background….In a written response, Chin…lowered the boom. Klayman and Orfanedes were required to withdraw as counsel from the case and would not be permitted to appear in Chin’s court on any matter ever again. They would be required to show his opinion to any other judge in the district in any future case. The court clerk would also report the sanctions to every court where they held bar membership. ….The Second Circuit briskly affirmed Chin’s order. “Courts have repeatedly held that matters such as race or ethnicity are improper bases for challenging a judge’s impartiality,” wrote the chief judge, Ralph Winter, a Reagan appointee.
In public, Trump can rant about anything he wants. But in court, if his lawyers so much as mention Curiel’s Mexican heritage in a recusal motion they risk nuclear sanctions. Even for Trump, they aren’t willing to do that.
Still, there are always those “other things.” My own guess is that this is a blustery Trumpian fiction, just like all the evidence of Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth that Trump insisted his private investigators had been digging up back in 2011. We’ll see.
Bottom line: Donald Trump apparently believes that the only judge qualified to try his case is a white Christian. I guess this is the new, more presidential Trump that his backers keep insisting will show up any day now for the general election.Review: 'Seth Avett & Jessica Lea Mayfield Sing Elliott Smith'
toggle caption Courtesy of the artist
Working as a music journalist means that some days you get to tell people, in breathless prose, about an incredible new record you've discovered. On other days, you have to tell people that an artist you've followed and respected for years is no longer living. That part is never any fun. Listening to the hushed, elegantly spare Seth Avett & Jessica Lea Mayfield Sing Elliott Smith, I found myself transported back to the period right after Smith died, of apparently self-inflicted stab wounds, in 2003.
Even knowing Smith's general state — he'd struggled with depression, as well as alcohol and drug dependence — the news hit hard. This was, after all, the most erudite, sophisticated songwriter of his generation. And, though he'd attracted some attention (including an Oscar nomination for "Miss Misery," from Good Will Hunting), it was already clear that his work would only grow in significance over time. His songs deserve to become "standards" of a sort, studied by future generations, enduring while the songs of more famous contemporaries fade.
Over the years, many earnest interpretations of Smith's songs have surfaced, and while they diverge stylistically, they all share one key trait: respect for the precise detail Smith brought to his craft. It's impossible to fully inhabit an Elliott Smith song without attending to the tiny stuff at the circuit-board level — structures that veer from pop templates in clever ways; chord sequences steeped in a warm bath of melancholy that transcends language; melodies that weave teenage yearning and an elder's hard-won wisdom into the same beautiful, troubled breath.
Smith was particular about these (and other) elements. His songs are like carefully appointed rooms: He didn't just outline the arrangement of the furniture. His prescriptions included instructions about the temperature and the level of the lighting, the ambiance, the feeling in the air. That's where Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield start: Though the accompaniment is sparse, each of these 12 covers dwells in an atmosphere that's somehow linked to (or at least glances in the direction of) the Smith original.
Mayfield and Avett didn't seek to reinvent Smith's songs. They simply want to honor them, and this collection is governed, from one whispered note to the next, by humility. At times, the vocal harmonies are cribbed directly from Smith's hushed recordings, but not always: The highlight of "Angel In The Snow" (a song from the Either/Or sessions that appeared on Smith's posthumous New Moon) is a stretch of plaintive, widely spaced vocal harmony that showcases Mayfield's steadiness and poise. The two take turns singing lead, and no matter who has the top line, the emphasis is on the blend; on the overall effect. In more than a few places, Avett and Mayfield evoke the meditative Simon & Garfunkel serenity that Smith achieved through multitracking. Elsewhere, particularly in "Ballad Of Big Nothing," the presence of contrasting male and female voices deepens the intent. Mayfield knows exactly how to maximize the impact of her voice — she sings with almost superhuman restraint that allows each phrase to hang in the air, in shrugging suspended animation.
Avett and Mayfield selected pieces from all over Smith's catalog, dipping into the skeletal early acoustic-guitar-and-voice period ("Roman Candle"), as well as the more ornate post-Beatle pop productions that followed ("Angeles" from Either/Or, "Baby Britain" from XO). That shows considerable confidence, because Smith covered some serious territory in his short career.
Hearing this examination of Smith's songbook, you start by appreciating his discipline, then the way Avett and Mayfield conjure and extend the extreme intimacy of the originals, then the little ways the two shine new light into the songs. Smith's accounts of dependence (on substances, on people) were sometimes delivered as pop rhapsodies, or woozy old-time waltzes, or snarled rock-guitar harangues. And, though sometimes these styles fall outside of Avett and Mayfield's comfort zones, the duo renders each faithfully and gently.
Some of the most intense material here — "Fond Farewell," "Twilight" — is drawn from the collection Smith was assembling when he died, From A Basement On The Hill. These are among his most wrenching compositions: sly juxtapositions of calm against chaos, setting breezy melodies against intense, often brutally blunt lyrics. Smith hit on a compelling balance of heart and head: His accounts of despair hit you with the visceral energy of great rock, while at the same time communicating in a musical language defined by nuance, discipline, order. Smith's music often assaulted the senses with giddy gorgeousness and uplift, even when lurking between the lines was a despondent cry for help.
Avett and Mayfield make good choices here, but inevitably, many who love the music of Elliott Smith will wish to hear the duo tackle other pieces from the catalog. (Maybe in a sequel?) That's a testament to Smith as a tunesmith: Sure, his discography is limited — he made seven solo albums in all, including two posthumous releases — but each of his records contains an abundance of small, perfectly formed gems. There are too many to pick from, and really, just about any would shine anew under this type of respectful reinterpretation.CLOSE Muhammad Ali's childhood home has been renovated as a museum and was open to neighbors, elected officials, and other guests for the first time on Sunday, May 1, 2016.
Buy Photo Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., later renamed Muhammad Ali; and his younger brother Rudolph "Rudy" Clay, later renamed Rahman Ali, grew up in this home on 3302 Grand Avenue. The newly renovated museum was dedicated Sunday afternoon. May 1, 2016. (Photo: Photo by Jacob Zimmer, special to the C-J)Buy Photo
The Muhammad Ali Childhood Home Museum shut down this week, less than two years after opening, one of the owners confirmed Friday.
The restored home in western Louisville where Muhammad Ali was raised as Cassius Clay opened for tours to the general public for the first time in May 2016, just a few days before Ali died at the age of 74. The news of its closure was first reported Friday by WAVE 3 News.
Owners made the decision in the last week, said George Bochetto, a Philadelphia lawyer who opened it along with fellow Ali fan Jared Weiss.
"We're absolutely heartbroken the city does not want to join in the effort in preserving this not just national, but international, historic landmark," Bochetto said Friday. "Our goal has always been to share this museum with as many people as possible because it truly offers so much, particularly to the disadvantaged. So much learning, so much optimism, so much opportunity."
Chris Poynter, spokesman for Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, called the museum's closing "unfortunate" but said the city had previously contributed $50,000 to the project the investment group had never picked up.
"We thought $50,000 showed we were an important partner and willing to put some city money behind it," he said. "It's not sustainable to have the city funding it every year. It would not be a wise use of tax dollars."
The owners plan to start entertaining offers to move the home and museum to another city, Bochetto said. He declined to elaborate on the "several cities" that are interested but said his hometown Philadelphia was among them.
Related: Ali boyhood home opens for tours on Saturday
More: Muhammad Ali Center hosts memorial service honoring Ali on anniversary of his death
Earlier this year, days before the city's six-week celebration of Ali, the owners of the restored home said they could be forced to close the museum unless they got an infusion of cash.
Bochetto and Weiss, a Nevada real estate investor, spent more than $250,000 on the home's restoration. Weiss originally purchased the boyhood home, then rundown and vacant, for $70,000 in 2012.
Weiss declined a request for comment Friday evening through a spokeswoman at Motion Properties, his Nevada real estate company.
In mid-July, Bochetto said owners were asking the city and Mayor Greg Fischer for financial assistance to improve the facility and better market it as a tourist attraction. He said then that more than 10,000 people had already toured the home.
Bochetto would not go into the details about what they were seeking from city officials, other than to say they had "beseeched the city to join with us to celebrate this home and this museum."
"The city would not step up and preserve what is probably the crown jewel of Louisville," he said, "and it astonishes me, and we're heartbroken about it."
Poynter also declined to elaborate on the private discussions, but said officials had been hopeful there would be other local, private investors.
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He thanked Bochetto and the other investors on behalf of the city, adding that the museum owners had a "great vision."
"We think it was an important asset for the city, for tourism, for telling Ali's full story of the neighborhood he grew up in," Poynter said. "... At the end of the day, you have to have people coming through the door to make the numbers work."
And, as for moving the museum: "Muhammad Ali's boyhood home will be only at 3302 Grand Avenue in Louisville," Poynter said.
Reach reporter Darcy Costello at 502-582-4834 or dcostello@courier-journal.com.
Read or Share this story: http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2017/09/22/report-muhammad-ali-boyhood-home-museum-shuts-down/694607001/Mr. Peskov’s interview on Dozhd TV, a cheeky Web-based news channel, made this much clear: Mr. Putin is returning to the presidency in a country that has changed greatly since 2008, when he last held that post. After showy efforts to elevate his popularity, he appears to have stopped a slow decline in his approval ratings — now at 68 percent, their lowest point since 2005, according to the Levada Center.
But he has few levers to pull with influential urban elites, who are increasingly immune from the persuasive effects of social programs and government-controlled television.
Mr. Peskov knows the grumbling that is going on in the capital city, and he confronted it directly in his rare interview, saying, “We have some explaining to do.” Over all, though, his response boiled down to a hard demographic truth: Moscow may not like Mr. Putin’s return, but Russia does, and Russia is bigger.
“In Moscow we are often hearing the words, ‘Why is he coming back?’ ” Mr. Peskov said. “We frequently travel around Russia, and find the problems there are different than for those who live inside the Garden Ring,” which encircles the city center, “and who can allow themselves to spend two or three hours a day to write on blogs and social networks.”
“Sitting in Moscow, you might say: ‘It’s hard for me to breathe here; it’s stifling. I’m going to the banks of the Thames,’ ” he said later. “And there are people who are sitting concretely and saying, ‘Listen, if my taxes were three points lower, everything would work out for me and my dairy.’ This is what I mean — there are different levels of problems.”
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The Kremlin has navigated between these audiences for more than a century. Lenin dismissed Moscow’s intelligentsia as “not the brain of the nation,” but “the feces of the nation,” whereas others have argued that Russia cannot be ruled without the consent of Moscow’s elite. Mr. Putin chose one thesis over the other in displacing President Dmitri A. Medvedev, who had soothed Moscow’s liberals with the hope that their ideas would take hold.
With that hope snuffed out, many have leapt to the image of Mr. Putin as a repeat of the Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, whose 18 years in power became known as the Era of Stagnation. Mr. Peskov, who was clearly teed up for that question, said Tuesday that he saw the early part of the Brezhnev era as a positive model.
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“People really are talking about the Brezhnevization of Putin, though this is being said by people who know absolutely nothing about Brezhnev,” Mr. Peskov said. “You know, Brezhnev is not some sort of minus for the history of our country; it is a huge plus. He laid the foundation of our economy, agriculture and so forth.”
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His remarks rippled through Russian Web sites in the morning. By afternoon the editors of Gazeta.ru, an online newspaper frequently critical of the government, said they would be on the lookout for glowing television retrospectives on Brezhnev, whose leadership, they wrote, would be associated not with turgid ideology but with “stable, peaceful, gradual growth.”
“Putin returns to power as president of an essentially Soviet majority, living within commercial and political coordinates which differ little from the Brezhnev days,” they wrote in an unsigned editorial. “For this apolitical, paternalistically oriented post-Soviet crowd, the general secretary, president or leader of the nation (this must be underlined) — is the single hope and buttress.”
In the interview, Mr. Peskov gave little sign that his boss planned to change his personalized and secretive style. He said that the president and the prime minister were the only people who knew that the reshuffle would be made public on Sept. 24, and that he personally was “dumbfounded” to hear the announcement, having expected the leaders to wait longer.
“If anyone tells you he knew about it in advance, he’s lying to you,” he said.
Asked if Mr. Putin showed emotion after firing his longtime friend and adviser, Finance Minister Aleksei L. Kudrin, Mr. Peskov said no, “not a single muscle moved in his face.” Asked if Mr. Putin had started to use the Internet, he said “rarely.” Asked if Mr. Putin would allow media access to his two adult daughters, who have virtually never been sighted in public, he said no.
“He is the same,” Mr. Peskov said. “In some cases he has become more tolerant, in some less tolerant.”
Mr. Peskov’s comments come on the heels of a televised interview with Mr. Medvedev, who said he agreed to forgo a second term because Mr. Putin was more popular. Geared toward the narrow demographic slice that looks to the Internet for news, Mr. Peskov’s comments suggest that the Kremlin has serious concern about the frustration felt by urban elites, though he could not help sounding a little irritated as he cataloged Mr. Putin’s achievements to his interviewers.
“Was there a banking panic? There was not,” he said. “Was there a default? There was not. Did we pass our strategic industries over to the ownership of foreign capital? We did not. And did we lose our sovereignty, even a little? We did not.”
“We very much want to explain it to that group of people, for whom the most interesting thing is to sit in expensive restaurants, where there is not one free table left, eat expensive Italian food costing 1,200 rubles per plate and fret about the fate of their country,” he said.Rockaway Woman Charged With Liability For Fentanyl, Heroin Death A Rockaway woman initially arrested on a minor drug charge is facing much more severe consequences for providing the heroin and fentanyl that...
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Man died of suspected overdose day after he got $83K settlement: Cops RALEIGH, N.C. — A North Carolina sheriff's office says a man who sued after being beaten by officers last year received an $83,000 settlement just...Ted Dintersmith is a highly successful venture capitalist and father of two who is devoting most of his time, energy and part of of his personal fortune to education-related initiatives that call for a radical remaking of what and how students learn. He organized, funded and produced the documentary “Most Likely To Succeed,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015. He, along with co-author Tony Wagner, recently released a book titled “Most Likely To Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era.” And he is conducting a 50-state tour to encourage communities all over the country to re-think the purpose of school.
By Ted Dintersmith
Once in a blue moon, our nation focuses a modest amount of attention on our schools, and their purpose. Last year, William Deresiewicz’ excellently titled book “Excellent Sheep” triggered a flurry of discussion, as he argued that education should help students in “building a soul” after “teaching kids to think.” The Obama administration’s recent College Scorecard included information on the financial success of graduates, sparking a discussion among folks who don’t think college is about getting a big paycheck.
With a presidential election looming, we might have expected a bit of national discussion on the topic of education. But, in the first few debates, our array of potential next presidents hardly no time on the topic of our schools, well behind Syria, the Keystone pipeline, or the candidates’ biggest weaknesses.
[Not Bill Gates: Meet Ted Dintersmith. A philanthropist with a different education agenda]
The purpose of school did manage to creep onto the national radar screen when The New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about the Sundance-selection “Most Likely To Succeed” film, positing that the ultimate goal of school is to erect “cathedrals of knowledge and wisdom... based on the foundations of factual acquisition and cultural literacy.” And once again, we saw passionate views ranging from the incoherent to the eloquent about what our schools should be doing for our kids.
In a 2013 video produced by UNICEF, venture capitalist Ted Dintersmith talks how bringing education, innovation and technology together will help children learn better. (UNICEF/YouTube)
A decade ago, I hadn’t given any of this much thought. I finished my formal education in 1981, which included degrees from a public high school and a state college. My family was poor, but education back then was cheap. I finished school debt-free with solid credentials, and set out on a successful career in innovation — six years with a semiconductor start-up and two decades in venture capital. During those years, if someone had asked me about education’s purpose, my response would have been superficial. The system worked for me, and I assumed it was on solid footing.
As my career progressed, I became increasingly concerned with issues beyond my portfolio of start-ups. Immersed in innovation, I worked with driven entrepreneurs who aspired to do amazing things, and often did. But their breakthroughs were systematically eliminating jobs, and reshaping the skills needed to plug into society. I realized that our country’s big challenges — the shrinking middle class, stagnant median wages, and rampant malemployment for our graduates — are the by-product of this economic disruption.
Something else nagged at me over my career. As a senior partner with a top-tier venture firm, I was approached frequently by people seeking career advice or position. Unable to field all requests, I gravitated toward those with exceptional academic backgrounds, which seemed like the right priority. They had stellar resumes, early career success (often in consulting, investment banking, or corporate America), and were driven to succeed. Yet such patently qualified people often proved hopeless in the world of innovation, and I couldn’t quite figure out why. Fortunately for my investing track record, I hired very few of them.
Those concerns weren’t life-changing for me, just perplexing. After retiring at an early age, I planned to travel, get good at golf, and be an involved parent with my young children. Two seemingly inconsequential experiences, though, changed my plans.
Early Wake-Up Call: When my son was in third grade, his science class was studying simple machines. With twenty bucks and a quick trip to Home Depot, we got everything needed to set up shop in the basement, and started playing around with boards, screws, and pulleys. One evening, we set out to design something that would let him lift a cinder block with his little finger. We came up with an approach that, I remarked in passing, he could use to lift his 250 lb. basketball coach. We laughed.
The next week, he came home from school discouraged: “I guess I’m not good at science.” He showed me his simple-machine test, which had blobs of red ink over the question “What simple machine would you use to lift a grown man?” His response was “a six-pulley system,” and included a sketch with pulleys, rope, and stick figures of a man and a child. While the design looked sound, there was a big red X across his answer with the terse note: “ -17. LEVER!! ”
After putting my Tiger Dad response behind me, I approached the teacher with a constructive suggestion: “Instead of asking which simple machine to use, why not ask students to come up with as many designs as possible?” The answer floored me. “Throughout school, these kids will need to take standardized tests. We need to prepare them properly. Open-ended questions can confuse them.”
Decisive Wake-Up Call: When my kids were in middle school, parents received a brief e-mail inviting us to a brown-bag lunch about a “new initiative to teach your kids life skills.” In anticipation, I began jotting down ideas I thought they might cover: essential skills (e.g., inventive problem solving, teamwork, communication, figuring out complicated things), character traits (determined, resourceful, resilient, bold), and important capabilities (learning how to learn, making good decisions, setting and accomplishing ambitious goals, learning how to make your world better). With list in hand, I came to the session prepared.
Well, it didn’t go as I expected. The transformational initiative? A mandatory monthly session with gym teachers showing young teens gruesome images to scare them away from the vice of the month. For example, to dissuade kids from smoking cigarettes, show them an assortment of tar-ridden lungs and cancer-ravaged mouths. I doubt if this initiative had permanent impact on the students, but it did on me.
As I drove home, I found myself locked in. What is the purpose of school? How does school prepare kids for life? When the question refused to go away, I developed a plan. Historically, I focused on how my kids were doing in school, and how hard they were working. Now, I would start tracking what my kids were doing, and what skills they were developing. I ditched my golf clubs (a relief), and started reading books, watching documentaries, interviewing experts, and meeting teachers and students across all demographics and geographies. In an attempt to be systematic, I decided to categorize what I observed in schools. One column for things that helped prepare kids for life. And one column for things that were irrelevant. I expected both columns to fill up quickly.
Irrelevant: The “Irrelevant” column filled within days, spilling onto additional pages. You will immediately associate these entries with school — factoring polynomials, memorizing the definition of mitosis, past participles, conjugating French verbs, facts about the Mesopotamians. And on and on. Things important in school, but never used in life. To prepare for exams, students had to cram bucketfuls of this easily-tested material into short-term memory. The “better” the school or the faster the track, the more to be memorized. Try as I might, though, I couldn’t connect any of this with something important in life.
Preparing Kids for Life: For sure, students have many experiences during their school years that prepare them for life. Grades K-6 help kids learn to read, write, and perform core math operations — all of vital import. But in higher grades, only an occasional school assignment — such as writing an essay — helps build an important life skill. For the most part, life preparation occurs through experiences outside the classroom. Kids learn social skills by being around other kids. They develop passions and competencies through an after-school club or program. They learn the value of teamwork and dedication through athletics. Or they get encouragement from an adult who believes in them, and elevates their aspirations. But in the context of curriculum, the “Preparing Kids for Life” column was close to empty.
So mountains of irrelevance and molehills of consequence. But that wasn’t the worst of it. I had to add a third column.
Impairing Life Prospects: To my surprise, I observed a lot in school that I knew would hurt their prospects in a world of innovation. A form of anti-preparation, if you will. From my 30-year career, I was clear about what young adults will need in the 21st Century. Yet, I kept seeing variants of that darn 3rd grade simple-machines lesson. Creative expansive thinking turning into narrow, prescriptive “right answers,”. Inquisitiveness shriveling up into “Will this be on the test?” A joy for learning worn down into time-efficient hoop-jumping. A willingness to take intellectual risks morphing into formulaic responses without risk of embarrassment. Making your world better becoming a dreary requirement to pick up trash.
And then it hit me, full force. The most innovative country on the planet is blowing it. As we move full swing into an era of innovation, the United States should be educating to our creative strengths, but instead we’re eroding the very characteristics that will enable our kids to thrive. We’re setting kids up for a life without passion, purpose, or meaningful employment. Absent profound change, our country is a decade away from having 50 million chronically-unemployed young adults, adrift in life and awash in debt.
I was now fully consumed with this cause. I stepped up my pace, criss-crossing the country to visit schools and gain perspective. I was in hot pursuit of the right answer to the question: “What is the purpose of school?” Everywhere I looked — mission statements, meetings with school leaders, websites — I’d find sensible, even inspiring, purposes:
teach students cognitive and social skills
teach students to think
build character and soul
help students in a process of self-discovery
prepare students to be responsible, contributing citizens
inspire students through the study of humanity’s great works
prepare students for productive careers
I probed educators on these alternatives, trying to determine the purpose of school, as though answering an SAT question. But I gradually came to realize that this choice was poorly framed. For starters, each of these goals have merit. If some classrooms prepare students for productive careers, and others prioritize on character development, that’s a good thing. And shouldn’t we celebrate an educator who accomplishes one of these goals — not snipe over whether an alternative purpose is superior?
But what came across loud and clear in my journeys is that schools don’t have the luxury of striving for any meaningful purpose. We’ve somehow imposed a system on our educators that requires them to:
cover volumes of bureaucratically-prescribed content
boost scores on increasingly-pervasive standardized tests
get kids through this year’s vacuous hoops to prepare for next year’s vacuous hoops
produce acceptable graduation rates and college placements
deal with parents who are either obsessive micro-managers or missing in action.
How did we get here? A deep dive into the history of education helped me appreciate that our school model was brilliantly designed. Over a century ago. In 1893, Charles Eliot of Harvard and the Committee of Ten anticipated a surge of manufacturing jobs as our country moved beyond agriculture. They re-imagined the U.S. education model, ushering in a factory school model to replace the one-room school house. This path-breaking system of universal public education trained students to perform rote tasks rapidly without errors or creative variation — perfect for assembly-line jobs. The system worked spectacularly, a robust middle class emerged, and America became the world’s most powerful country.
Somewhat incredibly, we still utilize this covered-wagon-era education model. Warning signs about its faltering effectiveness go back for decades. In 1983, the blue-ribbon report titled “A Nation At Risk” concluded that if our education system had been imposed on us by a foreign country, we’d declare it an act of war. Yet instead of reinventing the model (as the Committee of Ten did in 1893), we chose to muddle along with short-term, often counter-productive, tweaks. Teachers and students described to me endless additions to content, baffling new standards, and relentless high-stakes standardized tests of low-level cognitive skills. Our nation is hellbent on catching Singapore and South Korea on test scores — a goal those very countries have concluded is nonsensical. We’re betting millions of futures on No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top — our twin orbiting black holes of education — with annual reports on par with the season run-down for the Washington Generals.
And how much are our kids really learning? If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that they’re not learning. Practically anything.
In my travels, I visited the Lawrenceville School, rated as one of the very best high schools in the United States. To its credit, Lawrenceville conducted a fascinating experiment a decade ago. After summer vacation, returning students retook the final exams they had completed in June for their science courses. Actually, they retook simplified versions of these exams, after faculty removed low-level “forgettable” questions The results were stunning. The average grade in June was a B+ (87 percent). When the simplified test was taken in September, the average grade plummeted to an F (58 percent). Not one student retained mastery of all key concepts they appear to have learned in June. The obvious question: if what was “learned” vanishes so quickly, was anything learned in the first place?
The holy grail in our high schools is the Advanced Placement (AP) track. Pioneered 50 years ago by elite private schools to demonstrate the superior student progress, AP courses now pervade mainstream public schools. Over and over, well-intentioned people call for improving U.S. education by getting more of our kids — especially in poor communities — into AP courses. But do our kids learn in AP courses? In an experiment conducted by Dartmouth College, entering students with a 5 on their AP Psychology exam took the final exam from the college’s introductory Psych course. A pitiful 10 percent passed. Worse, when the AP superstars did enroll in intro Psych, they performed no better than classmates with no prior coursework in the subject area. It’s as though the AP students had learned nothing about psychology. And that’s the point.
Along the way, I met Eric Mazur, Area Dean for Applied Physics at Harvard University, and was surprised to discover that many of our country’s most innovative ideas about education come from this one physics professor. Over a decade ago, Eric realized that even his top students (800 on SAT’s, 5 on AP Physics, A in first-year Physics at Harvard) were learning almost no real science. When asked simple questions about how the world works (e.g., what’s the flight path of a pallet of bricks dropped from the cargo hatch of a plane flying overhead?), their responses were little better than guessing. He abandoned his traditional course format (centered on memorizing formulas and definitions), and re-invented his classroom experience. His students debate each other in engaged Socratic discussion, collaborate and critique, and develop real insights into their physical universe. While his results are superb, almost all other U.S. high-school and college science classes, even at top-rated institutions, remain locked into a broken pedagogy whose main purpose is weeding kids out of these career paths..
Systematic studies, such as the findings of Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s groundbreaking book “Academically Adrift,” reach similar conclusions about how little our students are learning, even at the college level. They report that “gains in student performance are disturbingly low; a pattern of limited learning is prevalent on contemporary college campuses.” Richard Keeling and Richard Hersh, in “We’re Losing Our Minds,” conclude that far too many college graduates can’t “think critically and creatively, speak and write cogently and clearly, solve problems, comprehend complex issues, accept responsibility and accountability, take the perspective of others, or meet the expectations of employers.”
The debate about the purpose of education ignores the elephant in the classroom. We have wrapped up our schools in rote memorization, low-level testing, and misguided accountability — preventing them from achieving any real purpose. It’s a fool’s errand to debate whether students are better off memorizing and forgetting Plato’s categorization of the three parts of a human’s soul, the quadratic equation, or the definition of the Cost of Goods Sold. If classroom “learning” is a mirage, it doesn’t matter whether it’s based on “The Odyssey,” a biology textbook, AP History flashcards, or a phone book.
At this point, a part of me felt like declaring education to be our domestic equivalent of Iraq. Maybe I’d be better off going back to my original travel-and-bad-golf plan. But, actually, I was inspired. Why? I was finding the most amazing rays of hope — schools offering powerful learning experiences. I realized moving our schools forward can happen, since we know what to do. Greatness is happening daily across our country, often in schools with scant financial resources. Our challenge is that these innovations are isolated, when they need to be ubiquitous.
The United States now has more than 500 “Deeper Learning” schools, most in our nation’s poorest communities. Clustered into a dozen networks, these schools aren’t “cookie-cutter” replicas of each other. But in their own creative ways, they deliver exceptional learning based on shared principles:
self-directed learning
a sense of purpose and authenticity in student experiences
trust in teachers to teach to their passions and expertise
a focus on essential skills (collaboration, communication, creativity, critical analysis)
teachers as coaches, mentors, and advisers, not as lecturers
lots of project-based challenges and learning
public display of meaningful student work
Many focus on project-based |
nar participant’ during 1996 and 1997.
Note that Atta’s German sponsorship may have dated to 1992 (when the elder George Bush was in office, the Project for a New American Century’s blueprint for US control of the Middle East was formulated by Paul Wolfowitz in 1992, when he was working for the elder Bush. The possibility that the 1992 sponsorship of Atta by his mysterious German benefactors and Wolfowitz’s 1992 projections are connected is not one to be too readily dismissed.
Moreover Atta’s financial relationship with the U.S.-German government effort may even have extended back to his initial move from Egypt to Germany in 1992, after being ‘recruited’ in Cairo by a mysterious German couple dubbed the ‘hijacker’s sponsors’ in a recent news account in the Chicago Tribune. In the years before he became a ‘terrorist ringleader,’ Atta was enjoying the patronage of a government initiative overseen by the U.S. State Department and the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, the German equivalent of the U.S. Agency currently supervising the secretive bidding race for tens of billions of dollars of post-war reconstruction contracts in Iraq, the Agency for International Development.”
The organization that apparently sponsored Atta’s travels was the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft (its American component is the Carl Duisberg Society)—named for one of the principal figures in the founding of I.G. Farben.
News that Mohamed Atta had been on the payroll of an elite international program known as the ‘Congress-Bundestag Program first surfaced a month after the 9/11 attack in a brief seven-line report by German newspaper Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on 10/18/2001 under the headline ‘Atta was Tutor for Scholarship Holders.’ The story quoted a spokesman for ‘Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft,’ described as a ‘German international further education organization,’ as having admitted paying Hamburg cadre principal Atta as a ‘scholarship holder’ and ‘tutor,’ as the spokesman put it, between 1995 and 1997.”
But the shocking revelation that Atta had therefore been on the payroll of a joint U.S.-German government program was concealed by the newspaper through the simple expedient of neglecting to mention that the ‘Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft’ was merely a private entity set up to administer an official U.S. and German government initiative. The U.S. end of the program is run out of an address at United Nations Plaza in New York by CDS International. The letters stand for Carl Duisberg Society, which is also the name of its German counterpart in Cologne, the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft. Both are named for Carl Duisberg, a German chemist and industrialist who headed the Bayer Corporation during the 1920’s.
CDS International, states the organization’s literature, provides opportunities for young German professionals. ‘These young German engineers earn real world experience and are given assignments to contribute from the start,’ a program spokesman enthused in a newspaper interview...”
Having powerful friends in such high places may also explain the curious omissions in a second story about Mohamed Atta’s time in Germany which appeared in The Chicago Tribune, headlined ‘9/11 Haunts Hijacker’s Sponsors; German Couple Talks, of Living with Pilot Atta.’ The March 7, 2003 article describes the 1992 meeting in Cairo which led Mohamed Atta to move to Hamburg, between Atta and a German couple, which the paper does not name, who ran an international student exchange program, which the paper also leaves anonymous.
During a visit to the Egyptian capital in fall 1991, said the Tribune, the German couple had stayed with friends who knew Atta’s father, a Cairo lawyer, and his father’s friends had then introduced the German couple to Atta. ‘Atta who had recently graduated with a degree in architectural engineering from the University of Cairo, told the couple he wanted to study architecture in Germany, but he had no particular idea where he should go,’ the paper reported...”
In this first conversation, we suggested he continue his studies in Hamburg and offered him a place to live at our house,’ the paper quotes the German wife telling investigators from the BKA, the German equivalent of the FBI. Atta, she states, accepted their offer right away. Why did an (unnamed) German couple, running an (unnamed) international exchange program leap at the chance to engage a young man who was not even considered promising enough to gain entrance to a local Cairo graduate school? The Tribune doesn’t say.”
After studying German in Cairo, Atta arrived in the country on July 24, 1992, according to investigators’ records, and then lived rent-free for at least the next six months in the couple’s home in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood. It is more than curious that although Tribune correspondent Stevenson Swanson cites the German couple for ‘having played such an important role in Atta’s move to Germany,’ he never gives their names, nor that of the organization they worked for. But since just two years later, Atta was on the payroll of the ‘Congress-Bundestag Program,’ it is reasonable to conclude that this same government-funded program was responsible for bringing him to Germany in the first place, under the aegis of an unnamed German couple. His elite sponsors are apparently powerful enough to keep the organization’s name out of the newspapers, or at any rate, out of the Chicago Tribune.”
(Credit Jeff Pragger)
AdvertisementsAs a new business owner there is always a mountain of work to be done, and often times every decision is going to you directly. How do you choose wisely and avoid pitfalls if you’ve never done it before? Today I’ll tell you a couple of secrets that I’ve learned over the years so that you can completely skip over some of the traps and quicksand that awaits.
These are all seriously juicy bites of business acumen that experience will teach you, whether you want them to or not. So get ahead of the bus, and don’t let it hit you! I want you to have every advantage and go in strong. Here are five things that will change your life and your business if you apply them.
A Laser Focused Sense of Business Perspective
Bias. Whatever your background and experiences, they lead you to have your own unique biases and subconscious patterns. Sometimes this can totally derail your business, your budget, and timelines if you don’t recognize it immediately and rein it in. This is problematic and if you’ve ever seen an entrepreneur “chasing their tail” over something that wasn’t critical, you know it is a vicious cycle. This might look like the design company who is endlessly tweaking their design (and can’t launch), the email marketing campaign that never gets off the ground because its owner can’t stop revising it, and the startup who runs out of runway (aka dollars) because they can’t stop going back to square one as the leader has epiphanies. Yikes.
Start Project Managing Effectively
What you really want to do is create a skeleton for the entire process, and step through the “limbs” to flesh them out one by one. Make the key decisions early on, and everything else will be filling in the details. Too often I see folks trying to skip out on the foundation laying part of the project (you can see all the steps to a successful web project here) and ending up totally exasperated at their team and their custom website agency. Whose fault was it really? If you are serious about leadership (and I myself am make-or-break serious) then you will know that the leader always takes the hit. So the question really becomes, who was leading the project? More often than not, you will find that the project management on these failed endeavours was weak, and there was little or no project skeleton on which to build.
Fix The Perfectionism You Are Biased Towards
If you find yourself ever saying one of these, do a quick business perspective check-in and make sure you are on the right side of the fence:
The _______ (UI, message, layout, cta, etc) has to be perfect. Reality Check: It needs to be really good, but rarely is the time and effort justified to chase perfection.
What about _____ (small niche use case, minority of users, etc)? Things won’t be perfect for these users. Reality Check: Do not chase outliers to your business model endlessly. This includes the 1/1000 customer, the hypothetical circumstance customer that no one has ever met, and IE6 users. Your time is too valuable to use this way.
Things won’t be perfect for these users. But will it appeal to ______ (blind au pairs in Michigan, stay at home cheesemakers, underwater basket weavers)? Reality Check: If you are hunting deer, don’t get stuck tracking a mouse.
(blind au pairs in Michigan, stay at home cheesemakers, underwater basket weavers)?
Your time and resources are finite. There are always going to be things to pick apart over even the most seemingly perfect of launches. Point a professional hater at any target, and they will find something to nitpick. At some point you will always need to decide what is good enough and abandon perfection.
The big takeaway: Don’t major on minors!
Appropriately Estimate Your Technologies
Though I have been building websites since before all of the mobile browsers we have now, the excuse to avoid mobile got ever harder to justify as smartphones entered (and eventually halved) the web browsing market. While we used to have a handful of desktop screen sizes to pinpoint (800×600 anyone?) that ship has long sailed and now the way forward is through responsive design, where a website looks respectable at just about any configuration you throw at it. I had to evolve!
Why does this matter? Well, you have to be open to new things but also have an appropriate process to gauge what things are going to be important. Look at how fast the tech market moves: even the iPod has almost gone the way of the minidisc player, as users simply switch to smartphones for the same function. So many of us are taking pictures with our phones as well instead of carting around a separate camera, and these are not even the tip of the iceberg of web development tech trends.
Which Tech Trends Matter?
Just like how fashion comes and goes, there are so many buzzwords and titles out there that savvy entrepreneurs want you to get on board with. Which ones are important though, and which ones can you safely ignore or table for later? You will have to make choices even if you don’t want to do the heavy reading.
It’s so easy for a custom website builder (or any business really) to fluff up their service list and make it look like the world is going to be delivered on a platter. When in doubt, ask.
Some of these things really will be important! There will be key service tie-ins (like to your favorite CRM for example), responsive or mobile first design, seo ready content, and accessibility features – these are very legitimate. There will be many others that would be helpful but alas, they do not apply to your actual business. You will need to mentally weed them out. If you find later down the line that something you paused on has really taken off (like I did with responsive design and mobile), you can get back on the horse at any time.
Consider at each juncture the value that each technology is going to bring to your organization. Do not let your budget get squeezed for things that don’t add real value to your customer base.
Pay Attention to Psychographics
This one is so huge and also such a departure from the marketing meetings of old. At first it will seem a little scary to cut huge swathes of folks out of your marketing endeavours in one fell swoop, but once you see the benefits there will be no turning back.
I’ve written before about how if you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. It’s like a bowl of Cream of Wheat, bland and recognizable as food but nobody really wants it. Prove me wrong right now, go order a bowl of plain Cream of Wheat at your favorite restaurant, and completely ignore the rest of the menu! Now write to me and tell me how much you enjoyed it. Mmmm, blandiness.
But Are We Not Ignoring Lots of Potential Customers?
The thing is, you won’t be completely cutting out those other people from your message. But you will be tailoring your message to match exactly with a much smaller, more carefully selected crowd. It is better to be the saving grace for ten people than to hard-sell and deliver to fifteen people who aren’t even excited to receive what they bought from you. Guess which crowd is going to give you more good press, repeat business, and referrals. But how did you find those people?
Marketing After Demographics
The answer is psychographics, also sometimes called avatar marketing. Instead of targeting a group defined by their physical characteristics and geography — which we used to do as standard practice — like “housewives in their 60’s who like rap music in South Dakota”, you make your criteria based more on mental state and motivations. So start targeting “the forever young who still want to stick it to the establishment in the midwest”. Do you see the critical difference there?
A Different Approach to Marketing
Focus on behavior and what drives it, and use that as your platform to serve. Think about Pinterest and why it is so successful. If you really think it’s because all humans like pretty pictures, guess again. I’d venture to say that a key demographic to the Pinterest service is secretly (probably even to themselves) motivated to be a Super Mom, to have it all in life, and keep up with the Joneses. This is just one of many profiles, but you can bet it is the one that keeps some women (who I know in real life) pinning recipes and home decorating tips on a daily basis so that they may curate their home life and get a gold star on their forehead. Chances are good that if you are reading this, you are not one of those people. You may have a Pinterest account (heck even I signed up for one recently) but if you are starting a business, you won’t have time to master Ten Ways to Prepare Elegant Hotdogs for The Fourth of July.
Everyone has a Psychographic, Multiple Even
You and I are changemakers, not neighborhood domestic goddesses. And guess what? There are so many companies who know this and market right to us. So you do the same! Identify 2-6 of your very best customer types, and focus on what they really want out of life. Is it a legacy in their community, an unbreakable circle of friends, an incredible sense of family, or to build a successful business empire?
We all want a lot of the same things in life. But if you say just the right words, I’ll turn my head and listen intently to what you have to say.
MVP: How Business Fortunes Are Made
This MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product, and it is also your most valuable player. We’re touching back a little on point #1 here (a sense of perspective), and also building on years of successful business practices written down in thick memoirs.
Do you know what a lot of successful CEOs recount about their early days in business? They talk about what incredible results they got for their customers and the companies they built, all while knowing that there product wasn’t perfect. Some products were downright flimsy or terrible, and they only got patched up and fixed as time went on. You’ll hear this one a lot for software products, where the initial release was heavy on the graphics and user experience, and the underlying code was “cautiously optimistic” at best — later to be patched with updates so long as sales rolled in.
Don’t Mistake a Lean Initial Offering for Shoddiness
I’m not saying that you should build some claptrap and sell it off to customers as the golden fleece. Not in the slightest. What we’re talking about here though is Minimum Viable Product, and it’s becoming a staple in the startup world. Ask yourself, what is the slimmest set of features that could get this business off the ground?
In the early stages you need to get the business up and running and start generating some revenue, right? So if you can figure out what the essential pieces of the mousetrap are, and delay the rest, you can get your ideas to market and start the wheels of progress turning. Then once the business itself is viable and has some traction, you put your R&D team back to work for the next phase of improvements.
This Makes Your Business Launches Easier
This used to be a lot harder when software was sold on discs and the internet wasn’t readily available for updates, but those days are long gone. If your product is delivered through a website, then you are perfectly set up to take advantage of Continuous Integration, which is a way to build and deploy software updates on a micro scale. Many of your favorite websites are using CI to introduce new features (and fix bugs) on an almost daily basis. Etsy is famous for their Continuous Integration. Most other giants are doing this as well.
When you see the product development process as a long string of improvements over time, it frees you up to get started faster and really identify the essentials of your product. Physical product lines have been doing this for a long time. Have you ever bought a blender or a food processor? It comes with a couple of things right out of the box, and so many more attachments are available as a second purchase. The company didn’t have to come to market with everything ready to go in one box. They just needed the blender (here I go again waxing on poetically about blenders) and everything else followed in time.
Get a New Way of Thinking: Websites As Evolving Creatures
My clients are quickly encouraged to get into the mindset of “initial build, second build” on all website projects. This alleviates so many headaches as well, when new ideas come up in the middle of the project and need to be slotted somewhere. The answer is always, Lets stick with our MVP and begin the second phase (next version) right after launch. This way they are never held back from launch. It is so important to get out there and capitalize on time in the market. There are also big SEO gains to be made over the weeks until the second phase build is ready to go.
First get Barbie, then later you can get the Malibu dream house and all her friends. Minimum Viable Product for the win.
You Need to Believe In Your Idea & Business
This last one is so important and I’m ending on it so that you can marry it with all the ideas we’ve discussed above. You need to believe strongly in your idea, and use this enthusiasm/firm resolve mixture to steer the ship. No one else can be as excited about this venture as you can. Well, except investors if you’ve promised them the moon and the stars. But you know what I’m talking about here, you will be the unshakeable pillar of the whole enterprise, so you better feel it!
Case Study: She Didn’t Go For It
Just recently I consulted with a woman with a new startup idea, and I was delighted with her enthusiasm and preparedness for the venture. She had the resources, education, and opportunity for this business. She had already invested real time and dollars into fleshing out and legally protecting her ideas. When I followed up with her two weeks later, I was surprised and dismayed to find that after all the time and effort she had invested into the venture, she had made the choice not to pursue it any longer.
Why not? Well ultimately (and in hindsight), she did not truly believe in her idea. She laid the ground work and met with prospective professionals (myself included), getting estimates and direction. In the end though, the green lights clearly did not appear for her, because she chose not to continue. This is what happens when there is a lack of belief in your idea and yourself, and possibly an insurmountable level of fear.
The Truth About Fear for Business Owners
Who said entrepreneurs don’t get afraid? Of course they do! If anything, they are trying to become adept at squashing all our normal human fears on a minute-by-minutes basis. We won’t get into the Playing It Safe lecture today, but I trust you know where that would lead if we did get into it.
To meet someone who had the right marketing direction, a solid service model, the time, the money, and the groundwork laid who then dropped it all, this was a wakeup call for me. Had I been a career salesperson, I could have told this person that “everything would be okay” and “you just stick with me and I’ll lead you to the promised land.” This is what was missing from the equation all along, an iron-clad promise of success on the other side. This client wanted to be told in no uncertain terms that it would all work out, and probably that it would also chug along with very little effort on her part once it was going.
Where Safety Really Originates
While I completely understand the Playing It Safe mindset, you have to understand as an entrepreneur that YOU are the security in your business. If you aren’t a quitter, then the game isn’t over. To get the reward you have to take the leap. It’s going to involve betting on yourself and everything that drives you. And if you go back and read those same CEO memoirs, you’ll find that there will be failures on the road, and it’s what you do next that matters. You must keep steering the ship.
Remember, you must be the unshakeable core of your business.Share. Fight for the strap this Thursday. Fight for the strap this Thursday.
Killer Instinct isn’t even on store shelves yet, but its competitive life begins this Thursday night. A story running this morning on majornelson.com reports that Microsoft will be running the Killer Instinct Ultra Fighter Tournament at MS retail stores around the country on the evening of the 21st, with the top player in each store heading to the grand finals in Jacksonville, FL on the 23rd where they’ll play for an Xbox One, every launch, and a one year subscription to Xbox Live. Oh and this:
Major Nelson will be on hand to present this blinged out belt to whoever proves themselves most worthy. Participating locations include:
Though it’s being announced on short notice, there’s still a chance for the competitive fighting game scene to come out in force. Houston has a strong scene, Orlando hosts CEO, one of the biggest and most beloved annual tournaments, and San Diego, along with the rest of Southern California is in many ways the capital of the US competitive scene.
In-store registration begins on November 21st at 6pm, and is totally free. Click away on the store closest to you for details if you think you’ve got what it takes.
Vincent Ingenito is IGN's third newest recruit, and third biggest MOBA fan. He also doesn't suck at fighting games. To hear him nerd out about them and other games, follow him on Twitter.House Republicans incomprehensibly are blowing it. They’re blowing their opportunity to repeal Obamacare, but there’s much more at stake.
My friend Chip Roy writes, “Congressional leaders are choosing not to do so and have abandoned their constituents in a series of negotiations – most recently for state “waivers” and other crumbs of liberty – that have little actual hope of meaningfully honoring their campaign commitments to fully repeal ObamaCare and reform health care markets.”
I love that — crumbs of liberty. Is that where we are now? Happy to accept the crumbs that our so-called political leaders drop on the floor for us? Well, I know I’m speaking for millions of Americans who are not going to be satisfied by mere crumbs. We want the real thing. Roy explains exactly how the politicians are blowing it:
First, Congress is turning away from the free market. Second, Congress is continuing the trend of ceding its Article I legislating powers to others, in particular the administrative state. Third, the health care debate today centers almost entirely on the word “repeal,” and while it has been a rallying cry for conservatives, it is too much now an end to itself. GOP leaders are missing their chance to win the minds and hearts of the American people.
This last one is not to be overlooked. Roy writes:
They are denying a new generation of Americans the ability to understand and embrace constitutionally limited government, federalism, free markets and the opportunities those ideals create.” “Congressional leaders are defining the debate in terms of tax reductions and supposed out-year cost savings instead of how to increase the supply of high quality health care that is available and affordable to actual human beings.”
Which is exactly right. We have a moment. Republicans, we’re not settling for crumbs.
Don't settle. Get involved with the Convention of States Project today!Man of Steel has premiered a new behind-the-scenes clip exclusively through Digital Spy.
The minute-long video, which will appear on the upcoming Man of Steel DVD and Blu-ray release, looks at how director Zack Snyder and his visual effects team made Henry Cavill take flight.
The British actor is shown being suspended from wire and gimbal rigs in front of a green screen as a starting point for the comic book hero's supersonic flight.
"In the film, you're going to see Superman flying faster than he's ever flown before," said stuntman Ryan Watson. "It's hard to come up with those speeds."
Man of Steel will debut on DVD, Blu-ray and download on November 12 in the US and December 2 in the UK.
Photo gallery - Man of Steel in pictures:
Superman Man of Steel galleryPhoto: Maya Robinson and Photos by Charles Sykes/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images and Harper Collins
When we say “Ramona,” who do you think of — the spunky tomboy from Beverly Cleary’s young-adult novels, or the shit-stirring socialite from The Real Housewives of New York City? The answer probably depends on your age (or the amount of pinot grigio in your bloodstream), but the two ladies have more in common than you might think. Both balance outrageous antics with moments of real poignancy, and with the release on Tuesday of her new memoir Life on the Ramona Coaster, Ramona Singer is finally joining Ramona Quimby on bookshelves everywhere. We couldn’t help but ask ourselves, then: If presented with quotes from Cleary’s timeless books and Singer’s memoir, would we be able to differentiate between the two outspoken and fearless females? It might be more difficult than you think.
!+[quiz]({ "type": "5050", "subtype": "photo-txt", "gid": "pod982x", "header": { "title": "Which Ramona said it?" }, "slides": [ { "question" : "“I am too a Merry Sunshine.”", "answer": "Quimby", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“I tell myself that I can handle this. After all, it’s just hair. It will grow back … eventually.”", "answer": "Singer", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“I think Chevrolet is the most beautiful name in the world.”", "answer": "Quimby", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“This is my party! They’re supposed to eat the refreshments!”", "answer": "Quimby", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“I just have an overactive imagination, which does come in handy. It makes the fun parts funner, and it makes the scary parts scarier. And frankly, it’s good to scare yourself once in a while.”", "answer": "Quimby", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“I am not acting like a wounded tiger.”", "answer": "Quimby", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“I wanted to be entertaining, so I pushed the envelope of being a little over the top.”", "answer": "Singer", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“I was hurt that she didn’t invite me, partly because I felt like she was acting like she hasn’t done it intentionally to hurt my feelings when it seemed obvious to me that she had.”", "answer": "Singer", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“Who pays teachers?”", "answer": "Quimby", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“He drones on, and on, and on. I’m not even listening to the words coming out of his mouth.”", "answer": "Singer", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“But I wasn’t showing off that day. How could I be showing off when I was doing what everyone else was doing?”", "answer": "Quimby", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“I can’t remember the name, but it sounds like a fairy tale and has camels.”", "answer": "Quimby", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“I’m Ramotional. There is nothing wishy-washy about me.”", "answer": "Singer", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring … except me.”", "answer": "Singer", "options" :[ { "title": "Singer", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-singer.w600.h600.jpg" }, { "title": "Quimby", "img": "http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2015/07/29/ramona/ramona-quimby.w600.h600.jpg" } ] }, { "question" : "“The difference is that I actually did do my homework; I just don’t want to sound like I’m bragging about my creations.”", "answer": " |
halted work in 1947.
After the 1949 Communist takeover, Mao Zedong supported the project, but began the Gezhouba Dam project nearby first, and economic problems including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution slowed progress. After the 1954 Yangtze River Floods, in 1956, Mao Zedong authored "Swimming", a poem about his fascination with a dam on the Yangtze River. In 1958, after the Hundred Flowers Campaign, some engineers who spoke out against the project were imprisoned.[25]
During the 1980s, the idea of a dam reemerged. The National People's Congress approved the dam in 1992: out of 2,633 delegates, 1,767 voted in favour, 177 voted against, 664 abstained, and 25 members did not vote.[26] Construction started on December 14, 1994.[27] The dam was expected to be fully operational in 2009, but additional projects, such as the underground power plant with six additional generators, delayed full operation until May 2012.[verification needed][14][25] The ship lift was completed in 2015.[10][28] The dam had raised the water level in the reservoir to 172.5 m (566 ft) above sea level by the end of 2008 and the designed maximum level of 175 m (574 ft) by October 2010.[29][30]
Composition and dimensions [ edit ]
Model of the Three Gorges Dam looking upstream, showing the dam body (middle left), the spillway (middle of the dam body) and the ship lift (to the right). Model of the Three Gorges Dam showing the ship lift and the ship lock. The ship lift is to the right of the dam body with its own designated waterway. The ship locks are to the right (northeast) of the ship lift. Earthfill south dam in foreground with view along main dam. The wall beyond is to separate spillway and turbine flows from the lock and ship lift upstream approach channel. A similar separation is used on the downstream side, seen partially in the preceding image.
Made of concrete and steel, the dam is 2,335 m (7,661 ft) long and the top of the dam is 185 m (607 ft) above sea level. The project used 27.2×10 ^ 6 m3 (35.6×10 ^ 6 cu yd) of concrete (mainly for the dam wall), used 463,000 T of steel (enough to build 63 Eiffel Towers), and moved about 102.6×10 ^ 6 m3 (134.2×10 ^ 6 cu yd) of earth.[31] The concrete dam wall is 181 m (594 ft) high above the rock basis.
When the water level is at its maximum of 175 m (574 ft) above sea level, 110 m (361 ft) higher than the river level downstream, the dam reservoir is on average about 660 km (410 mi) in length and 1.12 km (3,675 ft) in width. It contains 39.3 km3 (31,900,000 acre⋅ft) of water and has a total surface area of 1,045 km2 (403 sq mi). On completion, the reservoir flooded a total area of 632 km2 (244 sq mi) of land, compared to the 1,350 km2 (520 sq mi) of reservoir created by the Itaipu Dam.[32]
Economics [ edit ]
The government estimated that the Three Gorges Dam project would cost 180 billion yuan (US$22.5 billion).[33] By the end of 2008, spending had reached 148.365 billion yuan, among which 64.613 billion yuan was spent on construction, 68.557 billion yuan on relocating affected residents, and 15.195 billion yuan on financing.[34] It was estimated in 2009 that the construction cost would be recovered when the dam had generated 1,000 terawatt-hours (3,600 PJ) of electricity, yielding 250 billion yuan. Full cost recovery was thus expected to occur ten years after the dam started full operation,[33] but the full cost of the Three Gorges Dam was recovered by December 20, 2013.[35]
Funding sources include the Three Gorges Dam Construction Fund, profits from the Gezhouba Dam, loans from the China Development Bank, loans from domestic and foreign commercial banks, corporate bonds, and revenue from both before and after the dam is fully operational. Additional charges were assessed as follows: Every province receiving power from the Three Gorges Dam had to pay ¥7.00 per MWh extra. Other provinces had to pay an additional charge of ¥4.00 per MWh. The Tibet Autonomous Region pays no surcharge.[36]
Panorama of the Three Gorges Dam
Power generation and distribution [ edit ]
Generating capacity [ edit ]
Electricity production in China by source. Compare: The fully completed Three Gorges dam will contribute about 100 TWh of generation per year.
Power generation is managed by China Yangtze Power, a listed subsidiary of China Three Gorges Corporation (CTGC)—a Central Enterprise SOE administered by SASAC. The Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest capacity hydroelectric power station with 34 generators: 32 main generators, each with a capacity of 700 MW, and two plant power generators, each with capacity of 50 MW, making a total capacity of 22,500 MW.[11] Among those 32 main generators, 14 are installed in the north side of the dam, 12 in the south side, and the remaining six in the underground power plant in the mountain south of the dam. Annual electricity generation in 2015 was 87 TWh.[37]
Generators [ edit ]
The main generators weigh about 6,000 tonnes each and are designed to produce more than 700 MW of power. The designed head of the generator is 80.6 meters (264 ft). The flow rate varies between 600–950 cubic metres per second (21,000–34,000 cu ft/s) depending on the head available. The greater the head, the less water needed to reach full power. Three Gorges uses Francis turbines. Turbine diameter is 9.7/10.4 m (VGS design/Alstom's design) and rotation speed is 75 revolutions per minute. This means that in order to generate power at 50 Hz, the generator rotors have 80 poles. Rated power is 778 MVA, with a maximum of 840 MVA and a power factor of 0.9. The generator produces electrical power at 20 kV. The electricity generated is then stepped-up to 500 kV for transmission at 50 Hz. The outer diameter of the generator stator is 21.4/20.9 m. The inner diameter is 18.5/18.8 m. The stator, the biggest of its kind, is 3.1/3 m in height. Bearing load is 5050/5500 tonnes. Average efficiency is over 94%, and reaches 96.5%.[38][39]
The generators were manufactured by two joint ventures: one of them Alstom, ABB Group, Kvaerner, and the Chinese company Haerbin Motor; the other Voith, General Electric, Siemens (abbreviated as VGS), and the Chinese company Oriental Motor. The technology transfer agreement was signed together with the contract. Most of the generators are water-cooled. Some newer ones are air-cooled, which are simpler in design and manufacture and are easier to maintain.[40]
Generator installation progress [ edit ]
The 14 north side main generators are in operation. The first (No. 2) started on July 10, 2003. The north side became completely operational September 7, 2005, with the implementation of generator No. 9. Full power (9,800 MW) was only reached on October 18, 2006, after the water level reached 156 m.[41]
The 12 south side main generators are also in operation. No. 22 began operation on June 11, 2007, and No. 15 started up on October 30, 2008.[12] The sixth (No. 17) began operation on December 18, 2007, raising capacity to 14.1 GW, finally surpassing Itaipu (14.0 GW), to become the world's largest hydro power plant by capacity.[42][43][44][45]
As of May 23, 2012, when the last main generator, No. 27, finished its final test, the six underground main generators are also in operation, raising capacity to 22.5 GW.[8] After nine years of construction, installation and testing, the power plant is now fully operational.[14][46][47][48]
Output milestones [ edit ]
Three Gorges Dam annual power output
Yangtze River flow rate comparing to the dam intake capacity
By August 16, 2011, the plant had generated 500 TWh of electricity.[49][50] In July 2008 it generated 10.3 TWh of electricity, its first month over 10 TWh.[51] On June 30, 2009, after the river flow rate increased to over 24,000 m3, all 28 generators were switched on, producing only 16,100 MW because the head available during flood season is insufficient.[52] During an August 2009 flood, the plant first reached its maximum output for a short period.[53]
During the November to May dry season, power output is limited by the river's flow rate, as seen in the diagrams on the right. When there is enough flow, power output is limited by plant generating capacity. The maximum power-output curves were calculated based on the average flow rate at the dam site, assuming the water level is 175 m and the plant gross efficiency is 90.15%. The actual power output in 2008 was obtained based on the monthly electricity sent to the grid.[54][55]
The Three Gorges Dam reached its design-maximum reservoir water level of 175 m (574 ft) for the first time on October 26, 2010, in which the intended annual power-generation capacity of 84.7 TWh was realized.[29] In 2012, the dam's 32 generating units generated a record 98.1 TWh of electricity, which accounts for 14% of China's total hydro generation.[56]
Annual Production of Electricity Year Number of
installed units TWh 2003 6 8.607 2004 11 39.155 2005 14 49.090 2006 14 49.250 2007 21 61.600 2008 26 80.812 [57] 2009 26 79.470 [58] 2010 26 84.370 [59] 2011 29 78.290 [60] 2012 32 98.100 [61] 2013 32 83.270 [62] 2014 32 98.800 [63] 2015 32 87.000 [64] 2016 32 93.500 [65] 2017 32 97.600 [66]
Distribution [ edit ]
The State Grid Corporation and China Southern Power Grid paid a flat rate of ¥250 per MWh (US$35.7) until July 2, 2008. Since then, the price has varied by province, from ¥228.7–401.8 per MWh. Higher-paying customers, such as Shanghai, receive priority.[67] Nine provinces and two cities consume power from the dam.[68]
Power distribution and transmission infrastructure cost about 34.387 billion Yuan. Construction was completed in December 2007, one year ahead of schedule.[69]
Power is distributed over multiple 500 kilovolt (kV) transmission lines. Three direct current (DC) lines to the East China Grid carry 7,200 MW: Three Gorges – Shanghai (3,000 MW), HVDC Three Gorges – Changzhou (3,000 MW), and HVDC Gezhouba – Shanghai (1,200 MW). The alternating current (AC) lines to the Central China Grid have a total capacity of 12,000 MW. The DC transmission line HVDC Three Gorges – Guangdong to the South China Grid has a capacity of 3,000 MW.[70]
The dam was expected to provide 10% of China's power. However, electricity demand has increased more quickly than previously projected. Even fully operational, on average, it supports only about 1.7% of electricity demand in China in the year of 2011, when the Chinese electricity demand reached 4692.8 TWh.[71][72]
Environmental impact [ edit ]
Satellite map showing areas flooded by the Three Gorges reservoir. Compare November 7, 2006 (above) with April 17, 1987 (below)
Flood mark on Yangtze river
Emissions [ edit ]
According to the National Development and Reform Commission of China, 366 grams of coal would produce 1 kWh of electricity during 2006.[73] At full power, Three Gorges reduces coal consumption by 31 million tonnes per year, avoiding 100 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions,[74] millions of tonnes of dust, one million tonnes of sulfur dioxide, 370,000 tonnes of nitric oxide, 10,000 tonnes of carbon monoxide, and a significant amount of mercury.[75] Hydropower saves the energy needed to mine, wash, and transport the coal from northern China.
From 2003 to 2007, power production equaled that of 84 million tonnes of standard coal, reducing carbon dioxide by 190 million tonnes, sulfur dioxide by 2.29 million tonnes, and nitrogen oxides by 980,000 tonnes.[76]
The dam increased the Yangtze's barge capacity sixfold, reducing carbon dioxide emission by 630,000 tonnes. From 2004 to 2007, a total of 198 million tonnes of goods passed through the ship locks. Compared to using trucking, barges reduced carbon dioxide emission by ten million tonnes and lowered costs by 25%.[76]
Erosion and sedimentation [ edit ]
Two hazards are uniquely identified with the dam.[77] One is that sedimentation projections are not agreed upon, and the other is that the dam sits on a seismic fault. At current levels, 80% of the land in the area is experiencing erosion, depositing about 40 million tons of sediment into the Yangtze annually.[78] Because the flow is slower above the dam, much of this sediment will now settle there instead of flowing downstream, and there will be less sediment downstream.
The absence of silt downstream has three effects:
Some hydrologists expect downstream riverbanks to become more vulnerable to flooding. [79]
Shanghai, more than 1,600 km (990 mi) away, rests on a massive sedimentary plain. The "arriving silt—so long as it does arrive—strengthens the bed on which Shanghai is built... the less the tonnage of arriving sediment the more vulnerable is this biggest of Chinese cities to inundation..." [80]
Benthic sediment buildup causes biological damage and reduces aquatic biodiversity.[81]
Earthquakes and landslides [ edit ]
Erosion in the reservoir, induced by rising water, causes frequent major landslides that have led to noticeable disturbance in the reservoir surface, including two incidents in May 2009 when somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 cubic metres (26,000 and 65,000 cu yd) of material plunged into the flooded Wuxia Gorge of the Wu River.[82] Also, in the first four months of 2010, there were 97 significant landslides.[83]
Waste management [ edit ]
Collecting garbage at the Dam's southeast corner
The dam catalyzed improved upstream wastewater treatment around Chongqing and its suburban areas. According to the Ministry of Environmental Protection, as of April 2007, more than 50 new plants could treat 1.84 million tonnes per day, 65% of the total need. About 32 landfills were added, which could handle 7,664.5 tonnes of solid waste every day.[84] Over one billion tons of wastewater are released annually into the river,[78] which was more likely to be swept away before the reservoir was created. This has left the water looking stagnant, polluted and murky.[83]
Forest cover [ edit ]
In 1997, the Three Gorges area had 10% forestation, down from 20% in the 1950s.[78]
Research by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization research suggested that the Asia-Pacific region would, overall, gain about 6,000 km2 (2,300 sq mi) of forest by 2008. That is a significant change from the 13,000 km2 (5,000 sq mi) net loss of forest each year in the 1990s. This is largely due to China's large reforestation effort. This accelerated after the 1998 Yangtze River floods convinced the government that it must restore tree cover, especially in the Yangtze's basin upstream of the Three Gorges Dam.[85]
Wildlife [ edit ]
Concerns about the potential wildlife impact of the dam predate the National People's Congress's approval in 1992.[86] This region has long been known for its rich biodiversity. It is home to 6,388 species of plants, which belong to 238 families and 1508 genera. Of these plant species, 57 percent are endangered.[87] These rare species are also used as ingredients in traditional Chinese medicines.[88] Already, the percentage of forested area in the region surrounding the Three Gorges Dam has dropped from twenty percent in 1950 to less than ten percent as of 2002,[89] negatively affecting all plant species in this locality. The region also provides habitats to hundreds of freshwater and terrestrial animal species.[87] Freshwater fish are especially affected by dams due to changes in the water temperature and flow regime. Many other fish are hurt in the turbine blades of the hydroelectric plants as well. This is particularly detrimental to the ecosystem of the region because the Yangtze River basin is home to 361 different fish species and accounts for twenty-seven percent of all endangered freshwater fish species in China.[90] Other aquatic species have been endangered by the dam, particularly the baiji, or Chinese river dolphin,[78] now extinct. In fact, Government Chinese scholars even claim that the Three Gorges Dam directly caused the extinction of the baiji.[91]
Of the 3,000 to 4,000 remaining critically endangered Siberian crane, a large number currently spend the winter in wetlands that will be destroyed by the Three Gorges Dam.[92] The dam contributed to the functional extinction of the baiji Yangtze river dolphin. Though it was close to this level even at the start of construction, the dam further decreased its habitat and increased ship travel, which are among the factors causing what will be its ultimate demise. In addition, populations of the Yangtze sturgeon are guaranteed to be "negatively affected" by the dam.[93]
Floods, agriculture, industry [ edit ]
An important function of the dam is to control flooding, which is a major problem for the seasonal river of the Yangtze. Millions of people live downstream of the dam, with many large, important cities like Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai situated adjacent to the river. Plenty of farm land and China's most important industrial area are built beside the river.
The reservoir's flood storage capacity is 22 cubic kilometres (5.3 cu mi; 18,000,000 acre⋅ft). This capacity will reduce the frequency of major downstream flooding from once every 10 years to once every 100 years. The dam is expected to minimize the effect of even a "super" flood.[94][95] In 1954, the river flooded 193,000 km2 (74,500 sq mi), killing 33,169 people and forcing 18,884,000 people to move. The flood covered Wuhan, a city of eight million people, for over three months, and the Jingguang Railway was out of service for more than 100 days.[96] The 1954 flood carried 50 cubic kilometres (12 cu mi) of water. The dam could only divert the water above Chenglingji, leaving 30 to 40 km3 (7.2 to 9.6 cu mi) to be diverted.[97] Also, the dam cannot protect against some of the large tributaries downstream, including the Xiang, Zishui, Yuanshui, Lishui, Hanshui, and the Gan.
In 1998, a flood in the same area caused billions of dollars in damage; 2,039 km2 (787 sq mi) of farm land were flooded. The flood affected more than 2.3 million people, killing 1,526.[98] In early August 2009, the largest flood in five years passed through the dam site. The dam limited the water flow to less than 40,000 cubic metres (1,400,000 cu ft) per second, raising the upstream water level from 145.13 m (476.1 ft) on August 1, 2009, to 152.88 m (501.6 ft) on August 8, 2009. A full 4.27 km3 (1.02 cu mi) of flood water was captured and the river flow was cut by as much as 15,000 m3 (530,000 cu ft) per second.[53]
The dam discharges its reservoir during the dry season between December and March every year.[99] This increases the flow rate of the river downstream, and provides fresh water for agricultural and industrial usage. It also improves shipping conditions. The water level upstream drops from 175 to 145 m (574 to 476 ft),[100] preparing for the rainy season. The water also powers the Gezhouba Dam downstream.
Since the filling of the reservoir in 2003, the Three Gorges Dam has supplied an extra 11 km3 (2.6 cu mi) of fresh water to downstream cities and farms during the dry season.[101]
During the 2010 South China floods in July, inflows at the Three Gorges Dam reached a peak of 70,000 m3/s (2,500,000 cu ft/s), exceeding the peak during the 1998 Yangtze River Floods. The dam's reservoir rose nearly 3 m (9.8 ft) in 24 hours and reduced the outflow to 40,000 m3/s (1,400,000 cu ft/s) in discharges downstream, effectively alleviating serious impacts on the middle and lower river.[102][103]
Terrestrial impact [ edit ]
In 2010, NASA scientists calculated that shift of water mass stored by the dams would increase the length of the earth's day by 0.06 microseconds and make the earth slightly more round in the middle and flat on the poles. [104]
Navigating the dam [ edit ]
Locks [ edit ]
Ship locks for river traffic to bypass the Three Gorges Dam, May 2004
The other end of Three gorges dam lock, note the Bridge in the background
The installation of ship locks is intended to increase river shipping from ten million to 100 million tonnes annually, as a result transportation costs will be cut between 30 and 37%. Shipping will become safer, since the gorges are notoriously dangerous to navigate.[76] Ships with much deeper draft will be able to navigate 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi) upstream from Shanghai all the way to Chongqing. It is expected that shipping to Chongqing will increase fivefold.[105][106]
There are two series of ship locks installed near the dam ( ). Each of them is made up of five stages, with transit time at around four hours. Maximum vessel size is 10,000 tons.[107] The locks are 280 m long, 35 m wide, and 5 m deep (918 × 114 × 16.4 ft).[108][109] That is 30 m (98 ft) longer than those on the St Lawrence Seaway, but half as deep. Before the dam was constructed, the maximum freight capacity at the Three Gorges site was 18.0 million tonnes per year. From 2004 to 2007, a total of 198 million tonnes of freight passed through the locks. The freight capacity of the river increased six times and the cost of shipping was reduced by 25%. The total capacity of the ship locks is expected to reach 100 million tonnes per year.[76]
These locks are staircase locks, whereby inner lock gate pairs serve as both the upper gate and lower gate. The gates are the vulnerable hinged type, which, if damaged, could temporarily render the entire flight unusable. As there are separate sets of locks for upstream and downstream traffic, this system is more water efficient than bi-directional staircase locks.
Ship lift [ edit ]
shiplift, a kind of elevator, can lift vessels of up to 3,000 tonnes, at a fraction of the time to transit the staircase locks. The, a kind of elevator, can lift vessels of up to 3,000 tonnes, at a fraction of the time to transit the staircase locks.
In addition to the canal locks, there is a ship lift, a kind of elevator for vessels. The ship lift can lift ships of up to 3,000 tons.[10][110] The vertical distance traveled is 113 m (371 ft),[111] and the size of the ship lift's basin is 120 m × 18 m × 3.5 m (394 ft × 59 ft × 11 ft). The ship lift takes 30 to 40 minutes to transit, as opposed to the three to four hours for stepping through the locks.[112] One complicating factor is that the water level can vary dramatically. The ship lift must work even if water levels vary by 12 meters (39 ft) on the lower side, and 30 m (98 ft) on the upper side.
The ship lift's design uses a helical gear system, to climb or descend a toothed rack.[113]
The ship lift was not yet complete when the rest of the project was officially opened on May 20, 2006.[114][115] In November 2007, it was reported in the local media that construction of the ship lift started in October 2007.[28]
In February 2012, Xinhua reported that the four towers that are to support the ship lift had almost been completed.[116]
The report said the towers had reached 189 m (620 ft) of the anticipated 195 m (640 ft), the towers would be completed by June 2012 and the entire shiplift in 2015.
As of May 2014, the ship lift was expected to be completed by July 2015.[117] It was tested in December 2015 and announced complete in January 2016.[10][118] Lahmeyer, the German firm that designed the ship lift, said it will take a vessel less than an hour to transit the lift.[113] An article in Steel Construction says the actual time of the lift will be 21 minutes.[119] It says that the expected dimensions of the 3,000 tonnes (3,000,000 kg) passenger vessels the ship lift's basin was designed to carry will be 84.5 by 17.2 by 2.65 metres (277.2 ft × 56.4 ft × 8.7 ft). The moving mass (including counterweights) is 34,000 tonnes.
The trials of elevator finished in July 2016, the first cargo ship was lifted in July 15, the lift time comprised 8 minutes.[120] Shanghai Daily reported that the first operational use of the lift was on September 18, 2016, when limited "operational testing" of the lift began.[121]
Portage railways [ edit ]
Plans also exist for the construction of short portage railways bypassing the dam area altogether. Two short rail lines, one on each side of the river, are to be constructed. The 88-kilometre (55 mi) long northern portage railway (北岸翻坝铁路) will run from the Taipingxi port facility (太平溪港) on the northern side of the Yangtze, just upstream from the dam, via Yichang East Railway Station to the Baiyang Tianjiahe port facility in Baiyang Town (白洋镇), below Yichang.[122] The 95-kilometre (59 mi) long southern portage railway (南岸翻坝铁路) will run from Maoping (upstream of the dam) via Yichang South Railway Station to Zhicheng (on the Jiaozuo–Liuzhou Railway).[122]
In late 2012, preliminary work started along both future railway routes.[123]
Relocation of residents [ edit ]
Though the large size of the reservoir caused huge relocation upstream, it was considered justified by the flood protection it provides for communities downstream.[124] As of June 2008, China relocated 1.24 million residents (ending with Gaoyang in Hubei Province) as 13 cities, 140 towns and 1350 villages either flooded or were partially flooded by the reservoir [A_2-M:CR3-1HP:S-15],[125][126][127] about 1.5% of the province's 60.3 million and Chongqing Municipality's 31.44 million population.[128] About 140,000 residents were relocated to other provinces.[129]
Relocation was completed on July 22, 2008.[126] Some 2007 reports claimed that Chongqing Municipality will encourage an additional four million people to move away from the dam to the main urban area of Chongqing by 2020.[130][131][132] However, the municipal government explained that the relocation is due to urbanization, rather than the dam, and people involved included other areas of the municipality.[133]
Allegedly, funds for relocating 13,000 farmers around Gaoyang disappeared after being sent to the local government, leaving residents without compensation.[134]
Other effects [ edit ]
Culture and aesthetics [ edit ]
The 600 km (370 mi) long reservoir flooded some 1,300 archaeological sites and altered the appearance of the Three Gorges as the water level rose over 91 m (300 ft).[135] Cultural and historical relics are being moved to higher ground as they are discovered, but the flooding inevitably covered undiscovered relics. Some sites could not be moved because of their location, size, or design. For example, the hanging coffins site high in the Shen Nong Gorge is part of the cliffs.[136]
National security [ edit ]
The United States Department of Defense reported that in Taiwan, "proponents of strikes against the mainland apparently hope that merely presenting credible threats to China's urban population or high-value targets, such as the Three Gorges Dam, will deter Chinese military coercion."[137]
The notion that the military in Taiwan would seek to destroy the dam provoked an angry response from the mainland Chinese media. People's Liberation Army General Liu Yuan was quoted in the China Youth Daily saying that the People's Republic of China would be "seriously on guard against threats from Taiwan independence terrorists."[138]
The Three Gorges Dam is a steel-concrete gravity dam. The water is held back by the innate mass of the individual dam sections. As a result, damage to an individual section should not affect other parts of the dam. Due to the sheer size of the dam, it is expected to withstand tactical nuclear strikes.[citation needed]
Structural integrity [ edit ]
Days after the first filling of the reservoir, around 80 hairline cracks were observed in the dam's structure.[139][140][141] The submerged spillway gates of the dam might pose a risk of cavitation, similar to that which severely damaged the poorly designed and cavitating spillways of the Glen Canyon Dam in the US state of Arizona, which was unable to properly withstand the Colorado river floods of 1983.[142] However, 163,000 concrete units of the Three Gorges dam all passed quality testing and the deformation was within design limits. An experts group gave the project overall a good quality rating.[143]
Upstream dams [ edit ]
Longitudinal profile of upstream Yangtze River
In order to maximize the utility of the Three Gorges Dam and cut down on sedimentation from the Jinsha River, the upper course of the Yangtze River, authorities plan to build a series of dams on the Jinsha, including Wudongde Dam, Baihetan Dam, along with the now completed Xiluodu and Xiangjiaba dams. The total capacity of those four dams is 38,500 MW,[144] almost double the capacity of the Three Gorges.[145] Baihetan is preparing for construction and Wudongde is seeking government approval. Another eight dams are in the midstream of the Jinsha and eight more upstream of it.[146]
See also [ edit ]Lionel Messi needs just two more goals to become La Liga's all-time top scorer
The prospect of watching Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo has failed to persuade fans to buy tickets for Argentina's friendly against Portugal at Old Trafford on Tuesday.
Argentina's Messi, 27, and Portugal's former Manchester United forward Ronaldo, 29, are due to go head-to-head but just 15,000 tickets have been sold.
Tickets for the match cost £40.
"I don't know why we haven't had more sales," match organiser Leo Morales told Bloomberg.
Manchester United's stadium's capacity is 75,731.
Real Madrid forward Ronaldo is the reigning World Player of the Year, an award Messi, who plays for Spanish rivals Barcelona has won a record four times.
On Wednesday, Ronaldo denied claims he has an obscene nickname for Messi.Many of us look up to professional athletes as personal heroes and living testaments to the benefits of hard work. And while it would be a dream come true to have Michael Jordan filing TPS reports at your company or Derek Jeter presenting sales decks, neither of those things is going to happen. I mean, maybe you can get Adam Morrison, but do you really want him? Definitely not if you're in the defense industry--he's about as effective as a rusty barn door at keeping guards from driving the lane.
The thing about college athletes is that not all will play professionally. In fact, with 82% of colleges categorized outside of Division 1, the vast majority will “go pro in something other than sports,” as the commercial states. For example, only 1.7% of college football players go on to play professionally, but even then the average NFL career is 3.3 years. This leaves many former “student-athletes” searching for gainful employment in other industries.
With that in mind, it is worth examining the multiple reasons why recruiting and hiring student-athletes should be an easy decision for organizations looking to grow their business.
Incredible Work Ethic
I don’t know how many of you reading this played sports in college, but the amount of time that student-athletes invest in perfecting their craft, whether it be a curveball, a button hook, or the 100 meter dash, is staggering. Many times, these individuals put in over 40 hours of work in a week devoted to their respective team. Only 1% of high school athletes receive full-ride scholarships for athletics, however. The vast majority of student-athletes are either on partial scholarships or no scholarships at all, and they are required to maintain a minimum GPA to stay eligible. That is a significant amount of schoolwork and sports that needs to be balanced, and four years of perfecting that balancing act inculcates strong work ethics and good time management in many student-athletes.
Great Teammates
At RecruitiFi, some of our best employees participated in college athletics. The reason for this is that they know how to be team players. They worked with their teammates and coaches to help their respective units deliver the best possible outcomes. Great student-athletes will put the team before individual statistics because they know that they are stronger when working in conjunction with others. Considering that 95% of people who have ever worked on a team believe that teamwork serves a critical function in the workplace, finding people who function well in teams, not just individually, should be central to recruiting.
Confident and Competitive
Depending on their sport, student-athletes compete multiple times per week. They are driven by that competition, and know how to rise to the occasion when it matters. This translates to the workplace in a variety of ways. For one, student-athletes will compete for leadership positions within your company. They will work hard and compete to work their way up the corporate ladder, no matter if the odds are against them or not. Additionally, if they’re on the sales team, they’ll compete to make sales and be resilient enough to bounce back when something does not go their way. Student-athletes will also be confident enough to make presentations or pitch investors when the time comes. Anyone confident enough to want that final shot down 1 or be up to bat with bases loaded and two outs will likely be confident enough to thrive in the office.
Athletics may seem like something used to pad a resume, but the implications of participating in them are meaningful. The skills that people learn and the experiences that they gain can go a long way towards excelling in an office, and you’ll most likely find that some of the most team-oriented employees were once student-athletes. Plus, it never hurts to have another ringer on the company softball team. Going 0-11 every year can't be good for company morale.More than 7 million acres of Pinyon Juniper forests in the United States are slated for destruction via chemical sprays, “chaining”, and clearcutting.
These destructive projects are funded by public money, take place mostly on public land, and are justified by a series of lies and distortions claiming that destroying the forest improves the health of the land.
The Pinyon-Juniper Alliance is comprised of indigenous people and tribes, environmental groups, policy experts, scientists, and community members. We work to protect pinyon pine and juniper forests in the Western States and to change destructive BLM and Forest Service policy. Our methods include lobbying, public education, political pressure, and non-violent direct action.
“For half a century, Great Basin resource managers, blinded by a discredited ideology |
for selfies with the employees and directed them to the caucus location. “I need your help this morning, in the show room. 11 a.m.,” she repeated as she walked around. “I need your help. The showroom.”
Clinton surrogates toured the state, including America Ferrera and her husband, President Bill Clinton and duaghter Chelsea in the days before the caucus. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a representative of Texas, nd twin brother to talked-about vice presidential pick Julian Castro, greeted caucus-goers in the New York New York Hotel. “We need you,” Castro told them.
Meanwhile, the National Nurses United, a union that has thrown its support behind Bernie Sanders, sent 200 red-clad nurses to Nevada, and they patrolled caucus places and pitched their candidate. Just feet away from Castro, nurses lobbied Clinton supporters. “He’s not bought and paid for,” one nurse, Maria Bell, told a woman with a Clinton sticker.
This article was originally published on Time.comThe original intent of this blog was to explore the representation of sexuality and gender on YouTube; until now I have concentrated mostly on gender and the negative impacts of YouTube. However, YouTube is also a place that creates unique ways for oppressed communities to express themselves.
Only in the last few years with shows such as Modern Family (ABC), Glee (FOX), Pretty Little Liars (ABC), and a few others have prominent queer characters really begun to be an important part of television shows, since the groundbreaking— but still problematic — Will and Grace (NBC). However, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), in 2011 only five gay or bisexual characters on broadcast television are a leading character, two of those are from Modern Family, and four of the five are on the same network, ABC (GLAAD, 2011). Smash on NBC, was the fifth show, but it has since been cancelled. Despite Orange is the New Black, which features multiple lesbian characters, exploding in popularity on streaming site Netflix, broadcast television has been slow to incorporate non-stereotypical and complex gay characters. In other words, when a show has a gay character, their defining quality and storyline on the show is their sexuality — a token gay character. As Sayantan Deb puts it in their article, Homosexuality on TV: Not There Yet, “very few shows actually explore gay relationships or give them equal screen time and emotional depth as their heterosexual counterparts” (Deb, 2012).
Most television shows uphold heteronormativity, that is treating being straight as the norm and any other sexuality as a deviance from normality. Deb notes that even the show, fittingly titled The New Normal (NBC), actually exacerbates this issue (Deb, 2012). The show is centered on a gay couple living in Los Angeles who decide to have a child through a surrogate mother. The title is meant to be representative, like Modern Family, of how families are more diverse now and the mom, dad, two-and-a-half kids, a dog, and a white picket fence is no longer the norm. However, by calling this the new normal, it reinforces the idea that there is a “normal” and if you deviate from it, you are other. The time has come for people who don’t feel fully represented on television to take matters into their own hands — and that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Perhaps it is out of this lack of compelling queer storylines, that viewers have turned to YouTube to get what they want out of shows. Through what Frederik Dhaenens calls “queer cutting” and what people whom actually create and watch these call slash vidding, fans of shows re-edit their favorite shows to create gay storylines between canonically straight characters (Dhaenens 442). There are hundreds of these videos available to watch on YouTube for nearly any popular television series, both in the U.S. and internationally. Apart from taking straight characters and making them appear to be in a relationship, it is also commonplace for actual queer storylines to be cut out of larger episodes and be uploaded to YouTube (Yeung 4). In this case by isolating the relationship of a gay couple outside of the context of the show, it “[makes] them the most complex and layered characters in the fan-produced text” (Dhaenens 449).
For your enjoyment, here is a Dean/Castiel (Destiel) slash vid music video with scenes cut from Supernatural (WB):
(Source: lilacwest)
Television can be an incredibly powerful tool and is largely how young people begin learning about the world — it can be very impactful in a young person’s formative years, but particularly for gay and lesbian youth. Queer youth “often seek out these images for validation during their ‘coming out’ process” (Evans 3). Thus, these alternate versions of television shows, with storylines crafted by people more comfortable with their sexuality, can be very important for gay youth. Television must either realize this need for true diversity in their shows, or continue losing viewership to streaming sites like Netflix and cable television networks like HBO. Until then, YouTube will continue serving as a resource for more realistic queer storylines.
P.S. The writers of Supernatural are well aware of slash fans.
~~~~~~~
Works Cited
Dhaenens, Frederik “Queer Cuttings on YouTube: Re-editing Soap Operas as a Form of Fan-produced Queer Resistance.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 15.4 (2012): 442-56.
Deb, Sayantan. “Homosexuality on TV: Not There Yet.” The Harvard Independent. N.p., 26 Sept. 2012. Web. 29 Nov. 2014. <http://www.harvardindependent.com/2012/09/homosexuality-on-tv-not-there-yet/>.
Evans, Victor D. “Curved TV: The Impact of Televisual Images on Gay Youth.” American Communication Journal 9.3 (2007): 1-3.
GLAAD. “Where We Are On TV: 2011.” GLAAD. N.p., 2011. Web. 29 Nov. 2014. <http://www.glaad.org/publications/whereweareontv11/characters>.
Yeung, Stephanie M. “YouTube as De Facto Lesbian Archive: Global Fandom, Online Viewership and Vulnerability.” Spectator – The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television 34.2 (2014): 43-51. ProQuest. Web. 29 Nov. 2014.
AdvertisementsA high school teacher in British Columbia's far north may have gotten more than what he bargained for.
School District 81, which covers elementary and secondary schools in Fort Nelson, B.C., confirms a student has been suspended — accused of a culinary concoction — lacing a home-made muffin with marijuana.
"I heard about it through the high school administration [last Friday]," said school district superintendent Diana Samchuck.
"The teacher had approached them — that he was not feeling well," noted Samchuck.
The teacher who ate a home-made muffin laced with marijuana, works in Fort Nelson, B.C., a community of about 3,300 people. (Fort Nelson Chamber of Commerce)
Administrators called the local police department after speaking with students who were believed to be "around the incident."
Staff came up with what's likely to have happened: "... a student putting marijuana in a muffin that a teacher ingested," Samchuck said.
The teacher who ate the muffin sought medical attention and is now back at work.
Samchuck says the student will remain suspended until the RCMP completes its investigation.
For more stories from Northern B.C., follow and like Daybreak North.Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei denounced Israel and castigated the United States in a message to Hajj pilgrims on Wednesday.
Khamenei called Israeli activities at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem an “insult” to the holy site and among the “foremost” problems for Muslims.
There have been a series of violent clashes at the mount — the holiest site in Judaism, and the third holiest in Islam — in recent days. Israeli forces found pipe bombs and other weaponry in the site last Sunday, where they said their intervention prevented a planned attack. Palestinian officials claim Israel is allowing more Jewish visitors and plans to permit Jewish prayer at the site, which Israel denies.
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Khamenei accused Israel of “trampling the lives and properties of the oppressed Palestinians.”
As for the United States, he said its “evil policies” in the region “have resulted in war, bloodshed, destruction and displacement as well as poverty, backwardness and sectarian and religious rifts,” according to Iran’s Fars news agency.
Facing these problems, said Khamenei, Muslims “should think and understand your divine responsibility.”
Khamenei’s bellicose message followed a stream of hostile rhetoric Tuesday by several Iranian military chiefs.
Iran’s chief of staff derided US Republican opposition to the recent US-backed nuclear agreement, and accused the US and Israel of sponsoring terrorism, while another Iranian military chief scoffed that Tehran had intimidated the US into abandoning the idea of using military force in the region.
The anti-US statements came as Iran held a military parade outside Tehran to showcase weapons including surface-to-surface missiles such as the solid-fuel Sejjil and the liquid-fuel Ghadr, both with a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles). Also on display at the annual parade were Russian-made S-200 and Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile systems designed primarily to track, target, and destroy aircraft and cruise missiles.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
The number of cannabis farms found in Belfast is rising – with 50 discovered in the past year.
Police found 50 cannabis farms in 2014/15, up from 37, which was the highest number found in a year since 2011/12, when 24 were found, according to figures revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.
The number of cannabis farms found in East Belfast jumped from six in 2013/14 to 20 in 2014/15, the highest number found in any part of the city, while finds in North Belfast rose from 16 to 19.
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The lowest number of cannabis farms found was in West Belfast, where there were five in 2013/14, down from seven the year before.
Commercial cultivation of cannabis or a cannabis farm is defined as 25 or more plants, at any stage of growth, or any premises that has been adapted for the production of cannabis, with things like hydroponics systems, high intensity lighting, ventilation and with electricity meters bypassed.
In comparison, in 2014/15 officers at the 18 English and Welsh police forces that were able to provide figures said they found 1,252 cannabis farms. However, this was down more than a quarter (28.6%) from 1,825 in 2013/14 and more than two-fifths (43.3%) from their peak of 2,208 in 2011/12.
Across the forces that provided information, there were 6.8 cannabis farms for every 100,000 people in 2014/15.
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Figures from ACPO and those released under FOI suggest for these forces the numbers of cannabis farms found peaked in 2011/12, at 2,208 and numbers have been falling ever since, with the 2014/15 figures the lowest since 1,185 in 2008/09.
Other forces were able to provide information about the number of offences of producing cannabis they have recorded, which suggests a similar pattern of falling numbers.
The 24 forces providing information recorded 6,099 production of cannabis offences in 2014/15, down 12.3% from 6,958 in 2013/14 and a fifth (22%) from 7,828 in 2012/13.The Baseball America top-100 list is out! And the Giants … well, huh. This isn't good. Kyle Crick is #66 on the list, and he's also the only Giant to make the list. This is the worst showing for a top Giants prospect on the list since 1996, when Shawn Estes was the #72 prospect in baseball. And considering the Giants had two prospects on the '96 list, you could make the argument that this is the worst prospect showing since BA started doing the list in 1990.
Because we can, here's the full list of the Giants prospects to place in the top 100 of BA's annual list:
Year - No. of Giants prospects on the list - Name (overall rank)
2013 - 1 - Kyle Crick (66)
2012 - 1 - Gary Brown (38)
2011 - 2 - Brandon Belt (23); Zack Wheeler (55)
2010 - 4 - Buster Posey (7); Madison Bumgarner (14); Wheeler (49); Thomas Neal (96)
2009 - 4 - Bumgarner (9); Posey (14); Angel Villalona (44); Tim Alderson (45)
2008 - 2 - Villalona (33); Alderson (84)
2007 - 2 - Tim Lincecum (11); Jonathan Sanchez (69)
2006 - 2 - Matt Cain (10, just behind Lastings Milledge!); Marcus Sanders (65)
2005 - 3 - Cain (13); Merkin Valdez (58); Fred Lewis (78)
2004 - 2 - Valdez (40); Cain (91)
2003 - 5 - Jesse Foppert (5); Jerome Williams (50); Kurt Ainsworth (64); Todd Linden (82); Francisco Liriano (83)
2002 - 4 - Williams (19); Boof Bonser (29); Ainsworth (58); Tony Torcato (83)
2001 - 4 - Williams (19); Ainsworth (30); Torcato (60); Niekro, (85)
2000 - 1 - Ainsworth (58)
1999 - 1 - Jason Grilli (44)
1998 - 1 - Grilli (54)
1997 - 2 - Joe Fontenot (45); Dante Powell (92)
1996 - 2 - Shawn Estes (72); Fontenot (96)
1995 - 2 - J.R. Phillips (73); Powell (90)
1994 - 2 - Salomon Torres (22); Phillips (83)
1993 - 4 - Calvin Murray (33); Kevin Rogers (50); Joe Rosselli (65); Steve Hosey (83)
1992 - 4 - Royce Clayton (6); Torres (30); Hosey (61); Derek Reid (95)
1991 - 5 - Clayton (23); Steve Decker (52); Johnny Ard (77); Hosey (83); Rogers (89)
1990 - 2 - Hosey (52); Eric Gunderson (85)
The first thing you can do is print out all of the years before Matt Cain. Print them out in a real big font, so there are a lot of pages. Then roll up the pages, and keep them in your back pocket. And if people ever suggest to you that the Giants don't deserve Matt Cain or Buster Posey, take the pages out and hit them on the nose. Repeatedly. Don't draw blood, but come close. Because those names at the bottom are depressing.
While this might be the worst showing of the two dozen different top-100 lists over the years, there's a silver lining. Let's see if I can point it out without falling back on the "two titles in three years" point. And … no. No, I can't. Turns out that I just did it right there. But it's not just that the Giants won titles, it's the relative youth with which they won them. Over half the lineup last season was 25 or younger -- that's somewhat crazy. The last championship team to do that was the '71 Pirates, who broke the Giants' hearts so many years ago.
So would you feel better about the Giants if all of the under-30 players were five years younger and just starting to come into the majors? Of course not. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be cool if the Giants had nine prospects in the top 15 of the BA list, but it's a gentle reminder not to look at the Giants' poor showing and think, "Gawrsh, the future is sure bleak."
Besides, this is the year that Panik! breaks out and becomes a Human Centipede that combines Dustin Pedroia and David Eckstein, so don't worry so much.I wrote most of this Mailbag on Tuesday, so if you’re reading this, good news. We made it past Election Day without society crumbling.
Notre Dame’s football program, on the other hand …
Stewart, As a Notre Dame alum/emotionally-over-invested fan, I am surprised you and more of the credible national sports media have not focused your writing on the pitiful seven-year performance of Brian Kelly and the need to remove him as coach. Keeping this to strictly Kelly’s on-field shortcomings:
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ZERO major bowl wins – and blowout losses in two appearances; a minimum of four losses in five out of seven seasons; and “accomplishing” all this during a period when Stanford has proven that an academics-first school can compete among the elite in college football.
Signed,
Mr. E. (Apoplectic Notre Dame alum in the Chicago ‘burbs)
No one could dispute that Kelly has done a terrible job this season, not just because he’s 3-6, but because several of those losses (including last week’s to Navy) swung in part on his own strategic blunders. However, I could throw out a few selective nuggets of my own that would frame his larger tenure much differently.
* Two double-digit win seasons, becoming the first Notre Dame coach since Lou Holtz in the early ‘90s to achieve that.
* A.667 winning percentage (.705 prior to this season). No coach since Holtz managed to reach.600.
* “Accomplishing” all this during a period when Notre Dame played one of the nation’s 25 toughest schedules four times, per Sagarin.
Notre Dame fans have every right to be frustrated by this season’s debacle, especially since it absolutely cannot be blamed on the schedule. None of its six losses have come to currently ranked teams. With Virginia Tech and USC still to come, a final record of 4-8 may be the best-case scenario. That’s awful.
But it’s revisionist history to now paint his entire tenure as a failure.
So my question to Mr. E and any other Irish fan ready to put Kelly out to pasture is this: Who are you going to hire that’s an obvious upgrade? Ara Parseghian isn’t walking through that door. Neither is Urban Meyer, Chip Kelly, Bob Stoops, David Shaw or any number of other fantasy names. There’s plenty of good coaches out there, but none who will wave a magic wand and return Notre Dame to the glory days of old.
Prior to this season, Kelly had come closer than most could.
Serious question: What is the difference between Texas A&M and the Vols to this point? Each got pummeled by ‘Bama. Each has a bad loss on the road (Mississippi State and South Carolina, respectively). A&M beat the Vols in double OT at home and you could argue the Vols were the better team (seven turnovers). Why all of the love for A&M in the rankings and the Vols can't sniff #25? Or, why the hell is A&M ranked at all, much less in the top 10?
— Tyler Brown, somewhere
I don’t have much sympathy for your Vols. They’re a three-loss team that’s clearly trending in the wrong direction. But I share your bewilderment over the committee’s continued adulation for No. 8 Texas A&M. It’s almost as if Kevin Sumlin himself holds a vote.
That being said, analytics love A&M. Both before and after last Tuesday’s show, A&M fans touted ESPN’s Strength of Record metric, which essentially decreed it harder to go 7-1 against the Aggies’ schedule than 8-0 against Washington’s. A week later, even after that loss to 4-5 Mississippi State, A&M’s Strength of Record is … No. 8. That can’t be a coincidence. Nor the fact Washington is No. 4, Ohio State No. 5.
To be clear, the committee does NOT use ESPN’s or any other media site’s metrics, but its own provider, SportSource Analytics, provides similar numbers. And if committee chairman Kirby Hocutt had come on Tuesday night and cited some such statistic, I’d say – fair enough. I don’t agree that A&M is the eighth-best team in the country, but at least that’s a reasonable justification.
But to say the Aggies had to be No. 8 to respect their head-to-head win over No. 9 Auburn – c’mon. That game was played almost two months ago. They are not the same teams. As of this week, A&M no longer has its quarterback from that game. And this is not like TCU-Baylor in 2014, where nearly every other part of their resumes was identical.
Head-to-head should be a tiebreaker when the teams are close enough to be tied. A&M’s profile at this point is not particularly close to Auburn’s. But it’s still better than Tennessee’s. Sorry.
Hello Stewart. I read about the Big Ten starting Friday night games next year. Many of those opposed to this move cite protecting high school football as an important reason not to play them. I also read a few articles about NFL ratings being down this season. They have Thursday night games now and play on a few Saturdays after the end of the college regular season. What stops the NFL from having Saturday games throughout the season?
— Caleb Wilkes, Glen Cove, New York
First of all, I’ve been having some fun on Twitter with the Big Ten fan alarmists who seem to think six Friday night games are going to be the death of both the conference and high school football in the Midwest. While I get that it’s non-traditional and perhaps disruptive for fans attending the games, other leagues have been doing it for 15 years with no reports of disastrous consequences. And it’s a great exposure opportunity for lower-profile programs. As I tweeted Tuesday:
Believe it or not, college football’s Saturday exclusivity is written into law. In 1961 Congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act, which allowed the NFL and other pro leagues to pool their teams’ broadcast rights without violating antirust law. It specifically states that NFL games cannot be aired locally on a Friday night or Saturday when local high schools and colleges are playing. So the 49ers could play on a Saturday, but if Stanford or Cal had a game that day, no one in the Bay Area could watch it. It’s an effective deterrent.
The law does not apply to college broadcasts, so while the NFL cannot play games on a high school Friday night, the Big Ten can. High school associations obviously aren’t pleased, but they’ll likely find the impact to be minimal.
In February, you beat into our heads the importance of recruiting rankings. So you shouldn't be “baffled” by TCU, Oregon and Michigan State regressing to the mean. In the short term, second-tier programs can strike gold at QB, have a couple three-stars turn into early draft picks and get lucky in close games, but it's not sustainable.
— Matt, Las Vegas
I agree to some extent. Nearly every program eventually regresses to their historical mean, whether it’s Alabama burying 15 years of irrelevance upon Nick Saban’s arrival or Mississippi State returning to a.500-ish team after two great seasons with Dak Prescott. Notre Dame, as discussed above, is either an exception at this point or it managed to play well above its mean for seven decades.
But of the schools you mentioned, Oregon and Michigan State are far below their mean this year. Neither are 4-8 programs. At worst they’re 8-4 programs. And both had been well above that for so long that you can hardly chalk up that success either to luck or one great quarterback. But there’s also no denying that they overachieved relative to their recruiting rankings.
Oregon fans will eventually realize the Chip Kelly era is going to be extremely difficult to replicate with Mark Helfrich or anyone else. Mark Dantonio’s nightmare season will likely prove an aberration, but it’s going to be harder for him going forward to win Big Ten titles with Ohio State, Michigan and perhaps soon Penn State all at full strength.
TCU is an interesting one, because at this point Gary Patterson has defied recruiting rankings for going on two decades. At this point it’s fair to conclude he reset the mean for that program, much like Bill Snyder did at Kansas State. Whether TCU finishes 8-4, 7-5 or 6-6 this year, I’d expect the Frogs to be right back in 10-win territory soon enough.
What is your favorite rivalry trophy? Also, if you could make one up like the Minnesota Gopher and @FauxPelini did just a couple of years ago in creating the Nebraska-Minnesota Broken Chair Trophy, which would it be and why?
— Collin Lacher, Sioux Falls, South Dakota
First of all, how amazing is it that the Broken Chair went from Twitter exchange to actual thing exchanged between schools last year? FauxPelini may be the most revered figure in college football right now outside of Verne Lundquist.
My favorite trophy also involves the Gophers – the Floyd of Rosedale. Everyone else can go play for their Waterford crystals; Iowa and Minnesota play for a bronzed pig, and nothing can top that. Though the Broken Chair comes close.
As for the second part, it’s so hard to come up with a new trophy that doesn’t seem completely contrived. You don’t want something so lame that the winning team leaves it behind. But for such a highly-watched game every year, LSU-Alabama doesn’t have a trophy. Given how the most recent edition as well as several others played out, the most fitting form of swag might be a Brick Wall.
Is Rich Rodriguez in trouble at Arizona? I don't know the specifics of his contract but he's gone from Fiesta Bowl to New Mexico Bowl to potential 3-9 season. That kind of trend is difficult to ignore. And his flirtation with South Carolina last year would seem to indicate he wanted out ahead of what he knew would be a tough year.
— Chris, Charleston, West Virginia
He should be all right, but man what an implosion. You can’t go losing conference games 69-7.
AD Greg Byrne is one of the last guys in the business to have a quick trigger finger. He knows well the limitations you’re up against in basketball-centric Tucson. He does not take for granted Rodriguez reaching four straight bowls, winning 10 games in 2014 and reaching that year’s Pac-12 championship game. All of that, plus his penchant for viral marketing campaigns, entitle him to at least one mulligan.
What’s interesting is that the Wildcats’ on-field implosion comes at a time when the program is enjoying a notable spike in recruiting. Rodriguez shook up his staff over the offseason with the specific intent of bringing in better recruiters and it’s paid off with a class currently ranked in the Top 20 nationally. Arizona finished in the 40s the two years before that. But now, fans must wonder whether he sacrificed the quality of his staff’s on-field coaching in doing that.
Barring something unforeseen, he’ll be back in 2017. But if he doesn’t turn things around quickly, then it may be someone else who winds up benefitting from those recruits.
Vanderbilt’s Zach Cunningham is one of the best linebackers in the country, but if it wasn’t for the fourth down stop he made against Georgia and the insane field goal block last week against Auburn that both made all the highlight shows, the general public would never have heard of him. Who else is out there that we should know about?
— Jeff Segal, Atlanta
Cunningham has certainly made a name for himself and should be a prime Butkus Award candidate with his 94 tackles, 13.5 TFLs and three fumbles forced or recovered. The only reason he hasn’t gotten more attention obviously is that he plays for Vandy.
Some other stud defenders getting similarly overlooked include Colorado LB Kenneth Olugbode and CB Chidobe Awuzie, both key figures in the Buffs’ defensive resurgence; UCLA DE Tak McKinley, Illinois DE Carroll Phillips; and Kansas DE Dorance Armstrong Jr., all of them stud pass-rushers stuck on bad teams. Louisville CB Jaire Alexander has also been completely overshadowed by a certain other Cardinal, but Pro Football Focus has him as the nation’s top-graded cornerback.
Offensively, I’m guessing not many fans outside of the Big Ten realize how dominant Northwestern WR Austin Carr has become; his 70 catches for 1,010 yards far outpace any other receiver in the conference. Western Michigan’s Corey Davis (61 for 1,011) is a projected first-rounder. Wyoming RB Brian Hill (1,298 yards) is the nation’s third-leading rusher but overshadowed in his own conference by San Diego State’s Donnel Pumphrey and Boise’s Jeremy McNichols. And you’ve got to love Kentucky RB Boom Williams, who’s averaging 6.8 yards per carry in SEC play.
Hi Stewart, I heard on a different podcast that Colorado has the eighth-ranked defense by S& P+, but their offense is only 32nd. I remember last summer that Davis Webb was debating whether to transfer to Cal or Colorado. Webb has led an elite offense (10th in S&P+) at Cal. Had he showed up in Boulder instead would this already successful Colorado team be a legitimate playoff contender?
— Bobby in West Lafayette
Webb, a Texas Tech grad transfer, had been committed to Colorado for months before opting for Cal. He’s certainly been productive for the Bears, ranking third nationally in passing yards (352.9 per game). But is he necessarily performing better than Colorado’s Steven Montez and Sefo Liufau? They rank 30th and 36th respectively in pass efficiency; Webb is 56th. And both are averaging 8.0 yards per attempt to Webb’s 6.9.
Granted, it’s not an entirely fair comparison in large part due to their respective circumstances. Colorado plays largely low-scoring games. Its stout defense puts its offense in positions where the quarterbacks can afford to play conservatively. Webb is not only in a gun-slinging offense to begin with, but he’s been in quite a few games where the Bears get behind big and he has to start chucking.
QB had not necessarily been a weakness for the Buffs up until last week’s turnover-fest against UCLA, but Webb has more upside than Liufau (who’s reclaimed the starting job) and may have impacted how Mike MacIntyre uses his playbook. He probably wouldn’t have made the difference in a 17-point loss at Michigan, but could he have helped the Buffs reach the end zone once more in a 21-17 loss at USC? Possibly. In which case they’d be 7-1 and very much in the discussion.
Finally, I got a lot of responses this week to the question from a couple of weeks ago about teams that have faced a Murderer’s Row of opposing QBs in one season. I narrowed it down to these few.
Texas Tech 2003: Eli Manning, Ole Miss; Phillip Rivers, NC State; Vince Young, Texas; Jason White, Oklahoma; Brad Smith, Missouri; Joel Klatt, Colorado.
— Ted, Lubbock, Texas
This is the first and last time anyone will include Fox Sports’ Joel Klatt on the same list as a Heisman winner, Heisman runner-up and Super Bowl MVP.
Mr. Mandel,
In regards to a QB Murderer's Row, how about 1982 Notre Dame in just 11 games?
Jim Kelly (Miami): 1st round draft pick in 1983 and Hall of Famer
Dan Marino (Pitt): 1st round draft pick in 1983 and Hall of Famer
Todd Blackledge (PSU): 1st round draft pick in 1983
— Brian Ritchie, somewhere
Three first-rounders in the same year? Goodness.
Keep in mind in the early 1980s, the Miami Hurricanes defense faced Vinny Testaverde, Bernie Kosar and Jim Kelly in practice.
— Crawford Clay, somewhere
The world’s scariest scout team.
Hi Stewart, to continue with your QB Murderer's Row Challenge, Arizona in 2004 faced Utah’s Alex Smith, Cal’s Aaron Rodgers, USC’s Matt Leinart, Oregon’s Kellen Clemens and Oregon State’s Derek Anderson.
— McKenzie, Toronto, Ontario
That’s a whole bunch of future NFL starters. And Fox Sports’ Matt Leinart.TORONTO -- While the decision was made long ago, the timing could not have been better.
There were smiles galore on the faces of the San Jose Sharks players Wednesday as they practiced at the old Maple Leaf Gardens -- or the refurbished version of it now called the Mattamy Athletic Centre.
It's rare for visiting NHL teams to skate in this rink, but on this day it provided a little mental solace after another tough loss wrapped within an emotional past five days.
It was as if they had forgotten all their troubles once on the Gardens ice. At one point Joe Thornton and Marc-Edouard Vlasic were among four or five teammates hugging for joy in a mock goal celebration; letting loose as it were.
"You have to have fun," observed center Logan Couture after practice. "You can't come to the rink and be down on yourself every single day. That gets old. You got to come to the rink and still enjoy the game. You have to put it in perspective, you're playing in the NHL. You have to go out and compete every night and if you're not having fun playing hockey, things aren't going to go so well. We have to stay as upbeat as possible in this room."
Despite losing the captain's "C" before the season started, Joe Thornton has not lost the respect of his teammates in the locker room. Don Smith/NHLI/Getty Images
These days that's harder than normal for a Sharks team that has made the playoffs 10 straight years, but before Wednesday's games was six points out of the last wild-card spot in the Western Conference and five points from third place in the Pacific Division.
The on-ice challenge for a Sharks team in transition this season was daunting enough without last Friday's public spat featuring Thornton and GM Doug Wilson added to the mix.
Wilson told reporters at the GMs meeting in Boca Raton, Florida, on Tuesday that things had been quickly patched up between him and Thornton, that it was already behind them.
To which Thornton responded Wednesday: "Yeah, it's all good. We're just focused on hockey now, it's all we can do."
Fair or not, people will look at how San Jose has fared since the Wilson/Thornton headliner -- a 6-2 loss at home to Chicago and then Tuesday night's 5-2 loss at Winnipeg, a team the Sharks are trying to catch in the standings -- as proof that the team is distracted.
"Our play is our play. I don't think the outside incident affects what goes on in here," Sharks head coach Todd McLellan said Wednesday. "In fact, it should galvanize the group. They should play for Joe and Joe should play for them. We've all got a job to do."
Certainly if there was one clear and identifiable emotion expressed by Sharks players Wednesday, it's that they're solidly behind Thornton in what appears to be a close-knit dressing room.
"We all support Jumbo," Couture said. "He's worked as hard as anyone on this team for a long time. It's my sixth season with Jumbo, I respect him so much as a person and as a player. Whatever happened, happened. We're moving past it. But every player in this room supports Jumbo."
Echoed Vlasic: "The room is very tight. Jumbo is one of our leaders as are a number of other guys. This is a tight group."
The fact is, Thornton has held up his end of the bargain this season, playing his butt off, once again one of the NHL's premier and consistent performers, tied for fourth in the NHL with 46 assists before Wednesday's games.
Last spring's playoff meltdown to the Kings and the subsequent stripping of the captaincy in the summer must have created some residual, emotional baggage no matter what anyone says.
Overcoming all the events of last spring and summer as an organization -- from top to bottom -- has certainly been part of this season's adversity.
"It's been a challenge, but it's our job to just play and try to park all distractions," said veteran winger Patrick Marleau. "I think for the most part we've been pretty good at it this year."
It just so happens that last week's flare-up came just before the team headed off for a seven-game trip, which included stops in Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, strong hockey media centers.
So the Sharks knew they'd have to answer these questions on this trip. The ability to tune out the white noise is what every pro athlete has to deal with, and the Sharks are no different, said McLellan.
"No matter what happens, we all have issues at home at some point, we have issues within the family, we have issues at work at the rink, you're still evaluated on your performance and that's what's important," said the Sharks coach. "We know we're going to get asked all these questions. We know we have to face and answer the media. But when the clock starts tomorrow [Thursday], it's about performance. And sometimes your performance can help alleviate those situations. We haven't performed well enough to alleviate it yet."
Winning cures all, this is forever true.
A win over the ailing Maple Leafs here on Thursday night is step No. 1 for the Sharks.
"I believe we have a team in here that can knock off a lot of wins in a row. Get one and get rolling and feel good," said Couture.
"Right now we have two battles: the mental battle and the physical battle," added McLellan. "The physical one I think we'll overcome with |
space to lessen the distractions. He also says that it would be helpful if his supervisor gave him more structured assignments with more deadlines to focus his attention.
The supervisor consults with the HR director, telling her that he thinks there is a special medication that could control the restlessness. The HR director appropriately rejects the supervisor’s suggestion and recommends that the supervisor begin providing more structured assignments while she requests medical documentation from the employee confirming the side effect. Once confirmed, the HR director finds a vacant cubicle in a quiet part of the office which, together with the more structured assignments, resolves the issue.
13. Should an employer mention an employee’s disability during a discussion about a performance or conduct problem if the employee does not do so?
Generally, it is inappropriate for the employer to focus discussion about a performance or conduct problem on an employee’s disability. The point of the employer’s comments should be a clear explanation of the employee’s performance deficiencies or misconduct and what he expects the employee to do to improve. Moreover, emphasizing the disability risks distracting from the focus on performance or conduct, and in some cases could result in a claim under the ADA that the employer “regarded” (or treated) the individual as having a disability.
Practical Guidance: It is generally preferable that the employee initiate any discussion on the role of the disability. Ideally, employers should discuss problems before they become too serious in order to give the employee an opportunity as soon as possible to address the employer’s concerns.
Practical Guidance: An employee who is on notice about a performance or conduct problem and who believes the disability is contributing to the problem should evaluate whether a reasonable accommodation would be helpful. An employee should not assume that an employer knows about a disability based on certain behaviors or symptoms.56 Nor should an employee expect an employer to raise the issue of the possible need for reasonable accommodation, even when a disability is known or obvious.57
14. When discussing performance or conduct problems with an employee who has a known disability, may an employer ask if the employee needs a reasonable accommodation?
Yes. An employer may ask an employee with a known disability who is having performance or conduct problems if he needs a reasonable accommodation.58 Alternatively, an employer may prefer to ask if some step(s) can be taken to enable the employee to improve his performance or conduct without mentioning accommodation or the employee’s disability.
Practical Guidance: In order to have a productive discussion about whether reasonable accommodation might be needed, it may be helpful if the employer first is clear with the employee about the performance or conduct issue and what the employee needs to do to improve.
Example 25 : A supervisor knows that an employee has failing eyesight due to macular degeneration. The employee does not want to acknowledge his vision problem, even though the supervisor points out mounting errors that seem connected to the deteriorating vision. The supervisor enjoys working with the employee and knows he is capable of good work, but is uncertain how to handle this situation.
The supervisor may ask the employee if there is anything she can do to assist him. Because the supervisor knows about the deteriorating eyesight, she may (but is not required to) ask if the employee needs a reasonable accommodation, such as magnifying equipment, software that reads material from a computer screen, or large print. However, the supervisor cannot force the employee to accept an accommodation. If the employee refuses to discuss a reasonable accommodation, the supervisor may continue to address the performance problem in the same manner that she would with any other employee.
15. Does an employer have to provide a reasonable accommodation to an employee with a disability who needs one to discuss a performance or conduct problem?
Yes. An employer might have to provide a reasonable accommodation to enable an employee with a disability to understand the exact nature of any performance or conduct problem and to have a meaningful discussion with the employer about it.59
Example 26 : A supervisor knows that a deaf employee who has previously requested reasonable accommodation cannot lip read. Nonetheless, the supervisor approaches the employee and begins verbally discussing mistakes she has been making. The supervisor has violated the ADA by not providing an effective reasonable accommodation to have a meaningful discussion with the employee.60 Possible accommodations include a written exchange ( e.g., e-mails) if the mistakes are simple ones to address and the discussion is likely to be short and straightforward, or a sign language interpreter if the discussion is likely to be lengthy and complex.
Similarly, an employer may need to provide reasonable accommodation to enable an employee with a disability to participate in a performance review. Even if there are no performance problems, the employee is entitled to the same opportunity as a non-disabled employee to discuss his performance.
Example 27 : A blind employee asks for her performance review in Braille. Her supervisor would prefer to read the review aloud instead. All other employees get a written copy of their review. The supervisor’s suggestion is not an effective accommodation because it would not permit the blind employee to read the performance review when she wants like other employees. The employer must provide a reasonable accommodation (absent undue hardship) that allows the employee to read the review, and this may include a Braille copy or a version in another format that the employee is capable of reading on her own ( e.g., an electronic version).
An employer also may need to provide a reasonable accommodation to enable an employee with a disability to participate in an investigation into misconduct, whether as the subject of the investigation or a witness, to ensure the employee understands what is happening and can provide meaningful input.
Example 28 : A deaf employee at a federal agency is involved in an altercation with a coworker. Because of the uncertainty about each employee’s role in the altercation, agency officials initiate an investigation but deny the employee’s request for a sign language interpreter when they come to interview him and instead rely on an exchange of notes. Although there were some answers the employee gave that the officials would have followed up on if the communication was oral, they did not do so because of the difficulty of exchanging handwritten notes. Thus, the accommodation is not effective because it hampers the ability of the parties to communicate fully with each other. Effective communication is especially critical given the seriousness of the situation and the potentially high stakes (disciplinary action may be imposed on this employee or the coworker). The agency should have postponed the interview until it could get an interpreter.61
Some employers want to ask for medical information in response to an employee’s performance or conduct problem because they believe it might help them to understand why the problem exists and what might be an appropriate response.
16. May an employer require an employee who is having performance or conduct problems to provide medical information or undergo a medical examination?
Sometimes. The ADA permits an employer to request medical information or order a medical examination when it is job-related and consistent with business necessity.62 Generally, this means that the employer has a reasonable belief, based on objective evidence, that an employee is unable to perform an essential function or will pose a “direct threat” because of a medical condition.63 The scope and manner of any inquiries or medical examinations must be limited to information necessary to determine whether the employee is able to perform the essential functions of the job or can work without posing a direct threat.64
An employer must have objective evidence suggesting that a medical reason is a likely cause of the problem to justify seeking medical information or ordering a medical examination. In limited circumstances, the nature of an employee’s performance problems or unacceptable conduct may provide objective evidence that leads an employer to a reasonable belief that a medical condition may be the cause.65
Example 29 : An employee with no history of performance or conduct problems suddenly develops both. Over the course of several weeks, her work becomes sloppy and she repeatedly misses deadlines. She becomes withdrawn and surly, and in meetings she is distracted and becomes belligerent when asked a question. When her supervisor starts asking her about her behavior, she responds with answers that make no sense.
The sudden, marked change in performance and conduct, the nonsensical answers, and the belligerent behavior all reasonably suggest that a medical condition may be the cause of the employee’s performance and conduct problems. This employer may ask the employee medical questions ( e.g., are you ill, have you seen a doctor, is there a medical reason for the sudden, serious change in your behavior). The employer also may, as appropriate, require the employee
(1) to go to an Employee Assistance Program (EAP);
(2) to produce medical documentation that she is fit to continue working (including the ability to meet minimum performance requirements and exhibit appropriate behavior); and/or
(3) to undergo an appropriate medical examination related to the performance and conduct issues.
The employer also may take a number of actions while it awaits medical documentation on whether she is able to continue performing her job, including placing the employee on leave.
Not all performance problems or misconduct will justify an employer’s request for medical information or a medical examination. An employer cannot require a medical examination solely because an employee’s behavior is annoying, inefficient, or otherwise unacceptable. 66 In fact, there may be other reasons that an employee experiences performance or conduct problems that are unrelated to any medical condition, such as insufficient knowledge, conflict with a supervisor or coworker, lack of motivation or skills, a poor attitude, or personal problems (such as a divorce or other family problems).
Example 30 : A supervisor finds an employee asleep at his desk. She wants to send the employee for a medical examination. However, there could be many reasons the employee is asleep. The employee may work a second job, stay up late at night, or have family problems that are causing him to lose sleep. Because there is insufficient evidence to focus on a medical cause for this behavior, requiring the employee to produce medical documentation or to undergo a medical examination would not be justified. However, if the employee when asked to explain his behavior reveals that the cause is a medical problem ( e.g., sleep apnea), then the employer would have sufficient objective evidence to justify requesting additional medical information or a medical examination.
Example 31 : An employee with Parkinson’s disease has constant run-ins with his supervisor, including ignoring instructions, taking extra breaks, and using disrespectful language. Although the employer may discipline the employee for these acts of insubordination, no evidence suggests that this behavior stems from his Parkinson’s disease. Therefore, the employer may not ask the employee for medical information or order him to have a medical examination.
17. Must an employer who has a sufficient basis for requesting medical information or requiring a medical examination take such steps instead of imposing discipline for poor performance or conduct?
No. The ADA permits but does not require an employer to seek medical information. An employer may choose to focus solely on the performance or conduct problems and take appropriate steps to address them.67
Practical Guidance: Even when the ADA permits an employer to seek medical information or require a medical examination, it still may be difficult to determine if that is an appropriate course of action. It is advisable for employers to determine whether simply addressing the problem without such information will be effective.
Employers generally have attendance requirements. Many employers recognize that employees need time off and therefore provide paid leave in the form of vacation or annual leave, personal days, and sick days. Some employers also offer opportunities to use advance or unpaid leave, as well as leave donated by coworkers. Certain laws may require employers to extend leave, such as the ADA (as a reasonable accommodation) and the Family and Medical Leave Act.68
18. Must employees with disabilities be granted the same access to an employer’s existing leave program as all other employees?
Yes. Employees with disabilities are entitled to whatever forms of leave the employer generally provides to its employees. This means that when an employee with a disability seeks leave under an employer’s regular leave policies, she must meet any eligibility requirements for the leave that are imposed on all employees ( e.g., only employees who have completed a probation program can be granted advance leave). Similarly, employers must provide employees with disabilities with equal access to programs granting flexible work schedules and modified schedules.69
Example 32 : An employee requests a nine-month leave of absence because of a disability. The employer has a policy of granting unpaid medical leave for one year but it refuses this employee’s request and terminates her instead. If the employer’s policy is to grant employees up to one year of medical leave, with no other conditions, denying this benefit because an employee has a disability would violate the ADA.70
If an employee with a disability needs leave or a modified schedule beyond that provided for under an employer’s benefits program, the employer may have to grant the request as a reasonable accommodation if there is no undue hardship.
19. Does the ADA require employers to modify attendance policies as a reasonable accommodation, absent undue hardship?
Yes. If requested, employers may have to modify attendance policies as a reasonable accommodation, absent undue hardship.71 Modifications may include allowing an employee to use accrued paid leave or unpaid leave, adjusting arrival or departure times ( e.g., allowing an employee to work from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. rather than the usual 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule required of all other employees), and providing periodic breaks.72
20. Does the ADA require that employers exempt an employee with a disability from time and attendance requirements?
Although the ADA may require an employer to modify its time and attendance requirements as a reasonable accommodation (absent undue hardship), employers need not completely exempt an employee from time and attendance requirements, grant open-ended schedules ( e.g., the ability to arrive or leave whenever the employee’s disability necessitates), or accept irregular, unreliable attendance. Employers generally do not have to accommodate repeated instances of tardiness or absenteeism that occur with some frequency, over an extended period of time and often without advance notice. 73 The chronic, frequent, and unpredictable nature of such absences may put a strain on the employer’s operations for a variety of reasons, such as the following:
an inability to ensure a sufficient number of employees to accomplish the work required;
a failure to meet work goals or to serve customers/clients adequately;
a need to shift work to other employees, thus preventing them from doing their own work or imposing significant additional burdens on them; 74
incurring significant additional costs when other employees work overtime or when temporary workers must be hired.
Under these or similar circumstances, an employee who is chronically, frequently, and unpredictably absent may not be able to perform one or more essential functions of the job, or the employer may be able to demonstrate that any accommodation would impose an undue hardship, thus rendering the employee unqualified.75
Example 33 : An employee with asthma who is ineligible for FMLA leave works on an assembly line shift that begins at 7 a.m. Recently, his illness has worsened and his doctor has been unable to control the employee’s increasing breathing difficulties. As a result of these difficulties, the employee has taken 12 days of leave during the past two months, usually in one- or two-day increments. The severe symptoms generally occur at night, thus requiring the employee to call in sick early the next morning. The lack of notice puts a strain on the employer because the assembly line cannot function well without all line employees present and there is no time to plan for a replacement. The employer seeks medical documentation from the employee’s doctor about his absences and the doctor’s assessment of whether the employee will continue to have a frequent need for intermittent leave. The doctor responds that various treatments have not controlled the asthmatic symptoms, there is no way to predict when the more serious symptoms will suddenly flare up, and he does not expect any change in this situation for the foreseeable future. Given the employee’s job and the consequences of being unable to plan for his absences, the employer determines that he cannot keep the employee on this shift. Assuming no position is available for reassignment, the employer does not have to retain the employee.
Practical Guidance: It is best if an employee requests accommodation once he is aware that he will be violating an attendance policy or requiring intermittent leave due to a disability. Otherwise, an employer is entitled to continue holding the employee accountable for such absences without any obligation to consider if there is a reasonable accommodation that might address the problem. Moreover, prompt requests for accommodation may enable an employer to better plan for schedule modifications or absences, thus permitting an employee to get the accommodation.
Example 34 : An office worker with epilepsy who is ineligible for FMLA leave has two seizures at work in a three-month period. In both instances, the after-effects of the seizure required the individual to leave work for the remainder of the day, although she was able to return to work on the following day. To determine whether the seizures will continue and their impact on attendance and job performance, the employer requests documentation from the employee’s doctor. The doctor responds that the employee may experience similar seizures once every two to four months, that there is no way to predict exactly when a seizure will occur, and that the employee will need to take the rest of the day off when one does occur. The doctor sees no reason why the employee would need more than a day’s leave for each seizure. Although the employee’s need for leave is unpredictable, the employee will require only one day of leave every few months (or approximately six time a year). The employer determines that it is appropriate to grant the employee the reasonable accommodation of intermittent leave, as needed, because there will be no undue hardship and this accommodation will permit the employee to recover from a seizure.
Example 35 : An employee works as an event coordinator. She has exhausted her FMLA leave due to a disability and now requests additional intermittent leave as a reasonable accommodation. The employee can never predict when the leave will be needed or exactly how much leave she will need on each occasion, but she always needs from one to three days of leave at a time. The employer initially agrees to her request and the employee takes 14 days of leave over the next two months. Documentation from the employee’s doctor shows that the employee will continue to need similar amounts of intermittent leave for at least the next six months. Event planning requires staff to meet strict deadlines and the employee’s sudden absences create significant problems. Given the employee’s prognosis of requiring unpredictable intermittent leave, the employer cannot plan work around these absences. The employer has already had to move coworkers around to cover the employee’s absences and delay certain work. The on-going, frequent, and unpredictable nature of the absences makes additional leave an undue hardship, and thus the employer is not required to provide it as a reasonable accommodation. If the employer cannot reassign the employee to a vacant position that can accommodate her need for intermittent leave, it is not required to retain her.
Example 36 : An employee with multiple sclerosis works as a bookkeeper for a small medical practice that is not covered under the FMLA but is covered under the ADA. He requests intermittent leave as a reasonable accommodation. The employee has already taken five days of sick leave for the disability when he makes the request (a two-day and a three-day leave of absence). Documentation from the employee’s doctor shows that the employee will continue to need intermittent leave for at least several months. The doctor cannot predict when or how much leave will be needed, but based on the employee’s treatment and the current situation, the doctor believes that each leave of absence would be from one to three days. The employer determines that no undue hardship exists at this time and grants the employee intermittent leave for the disability consistent with the doctor’s letter. The employer explains that it will reassess the accommodation in six months or sooner if the employee’s use of leave begins to have a negative impact on its operations. During the next six months, the employee takes 12 days of medical leave. While the employee’s unpredictable absences cause some problems, the employer has managed to adjust to the situation without burdening other employees or falling behind in the workload, the employee has made up work where he could, and the employee has always notified his supervisor immediately when he realizes he needs to take leave. Because there is no undue hardship at this time, the employer agrees to continue the reasonable accommodation of intermittent leave under the same conditions as before.
21. Do employers have to grant indefinite leave as a reasonable accommodation to employees with disabilities?
No. Although employers may have to grant extended medical leave as a reasonable accommodation, they have no obligation to provide leave of indefinite duration. Granting indefinite leave, like frequent and unpredictable requests for leave, can impose an undue hardship on an employer’s operations.76 Indefinite leave is different from leave requests that give an approximate date of return ( e.g., a doctor’s note says that the employee is expected to return around the beginning of March) or give a time period for return ( e.g., a doctor’s note says that the employee will return some time between March 1 and April 1). If the approximate date of return or the estimated time period turns out to be incorrect, the employer may seek medical documentation to determine whether it can continue providing leave without undue hardship or whether the request for leave has become one for leave of indefinite duration.
Example 37 : An employer’s policy allows employees one year of medical leave but then requires either that they return (with or without reasonable accommodation, if appropriate) or be terminated. An employee with a disability who has been on medical leave for almost one year informs her employer that she will need a total of 13 months of leave for treatment of her disability and then she will be able to return to work. She provides detailed medical documentation in support of her request. This request is not for indefinite leave because the employee provides a specific date on which she can return; the employer must provide the additional month of leave as a reasonable accommodation unless it would cause an undue hardship. The employer may consider the impact on its operations caused by the initial 12-month absence, along with other undue hardship factors. 77 The mere fact that granting the requested accommodation requires the employer to modify its leave policy for this employee does not constitute undue hardship.78
Example 38 : The employer has the same leave policy described in Example 37. An employee with a disability has been on medical leave for one year when he informs his employer that he will never be able to return to his old job due to his disability, and he is unable to provide information on whether and when he could return to another job that he could perform. The employer may terminate this worker because the ADA does not require the employer to provide indefinite leave.79
Example 39 : An employer grants 12 weeks of medical leave at the request of an employee with a disability. At the end of this period, the employee submits a note from his doctor requesting six additional weeks, which the employer grants. At the conclusion of this period, the employee submits a new note seeking another six weeks of leave, which would bring the employee’s total leave to 24 weeks. The employer is concerned about the requests for extensions and whether they signal a pattern. Although the employer has been able to cope with the extended absence to date, it foresees a more serious impact on its operations if the employee requires more than a few additional weeks of leave. The employer requests information from the employee’s doctor about the two extensions, including the reason why the doctor’s earlier predictions on return turned out to be wrong, a clear description of the employee’s current condition, and the basis for the doctor’s conclusion that only another six weeks of leave are required. The doctor explains that there have been complications and that the employee is not responding to treatment as expected. The doctor states that the current request for an additional six weeks may not be sufficient and that more leave, maybe up to several months, may be needed. The doctor states that the employee’s current condition does not permit a clear answer as to when he will be able to return to work. This information supports a conclusion that the employee’s request has become one for indefinite leave. This poses an undue hardship and therefore the employer may deny the request.
22. Does an employer have to grant a reasonable accommodation to an employee with a disability who waited until after attendance problems developed to request it?
An employer may impose disciplinary action, consistent with its policies as applied to other employees, for attendance problems that occurred prior to a request for reasonable accommodation. However, if the employee’s infraction does not merit termination but some lesser disciplinary action ( e.g., a warning), and the employee then requests reasonable accommodation, the employer must consider the request and determine if it can provide a reasonable accommodation without causing undue hardship.
Example 40 : An employee with diabetes is given a written warning for excessive absenteeism. After receiving the warning, the employee notifies his employer that his absences were related to his diabetes which is not well controlled. The employee asks that the employer withdraw the written warning and provide him with leave when needed due to complications from his diabetes. The employee’s doctor has changed his treatment and states that he expects the employee’s diabetes to be well controlled within the next one to two months. The doctor also states that there might still be a need for leave during this transitional period, but expects the employee would be out of work no more than three or four days.
The employer does not have to withdraw the written warning, but it must grant the requested accommodation unless it would pose an undue hardship.
Example 41 : A bank manager’s starting time is 8 a.m., but due to the serious side effects of medication she takes for her disability she cannot get to work until 9 a.m. The manager’s late arrival results in a verbal warning, prompting her to request that she be allowed to arrive at 9 a.m. because of the side effects of medication she takes for her disability. The manager’s modified arrival time would not affect customer service or the ability of other employees to do their jobs, and she has no duties that require her to be at the bank before 9 a.m. The bank denies this request for reasonable accommodation, saying that as a manager she must set a good example for other employees about the importance of punctuality. Because the manager’s later arrival time would not affect the manager’s performance or the operation of the bank, denial of this request for reasonable accommodation is a violation of the ADA.80
Employers may require employees to wear certain articles of clothing to protect themselves, coworkers, or the public ( e.g., construction workers are required to wear certain head gear to prevent injury; health care workers wear gloves to prevent transmission of disease from or to patients). Sometimes employers impose dress codes to make employees easily identifiable to customers and clients, or to promote a certain image ( e.g., a movie theater requires its staff to wear a uniform; a store requires all sales associates to dress in black). A dress code also may prohibit employees from wearing certain items either as a form of protection or to promote a certain image ( e.g., prohibitions on wearing jewelry or baseball caps, or requirements that workers wear business attire).81
23. May an employer require that an employee with a disability follow the dress code imposed on all workers in the same job?
An employer may require an employee with a disability to observe a dress code imposed on other employees in the same job. For example, a professional office may require its employees to wear appropriate business attire because the nature of the jobs could bring them into contact with clients, customers, and the public.
Where an employee’s disability makes it difficult for him to comply fully with a dress code, an employer may be able to provide a reasonable accommodation.
Example 42 : An employer requires all of its employees to wear a uniform provided by the employer. An employee with quadriplegia cannot wear this uniform because he cannot use zippers and buttons and because the shape of the uniform causes discomfort when he sits in a wheelchair. The employee tells the employer about these difficulties and informs the employer about manufacturers that specialize in making clothes for persons with disabilities. The individual shows the employer a catalogue and together they are able to choose items that approximate the uniform, thus meeting the needs of both the employer and the individual. As a reasonable accommodation, the employer provides the employee with the specified uniform.
Example 43 : An employee is undergoing radiation therapy for cancer which has caused sores to develop. The employee cannot wear her usual uniform because it is causing severe irritation as it constantly rubs against the sores. The employee seeks an exemption from the uniform requirement until the radiation treatment ends and the sores have disappeared or are less irritating. The employer agrees, and working with the employee, decides on acceptable clothes that the employee can wear as a reasonable accommodation that meet the medical needs of the employee, easily identify the individual as an employee, and enable the individual to present a professional appearance.
Example 44 : A professional office requires that its employees wear business dress at all times. Due to diabetes, Carlos has developed foot ulcers making it very painful to wear dress shoes. Also, dress shoes make the ulcers worse. Carlos asks to wear sneakers instead. The supervisor is concerned about Carlos’s appearance when meeting with clients. These meetings usually occur once a week and last about an hour or two. Carlos and his doctor agree that Carlos can probably manage to wear dress shoes for this limited time. Carlos also tells his supervisor that he will purchase black leather sneakers to wear at all other times. The supervisor permits Carlos to wear black sneakers except when he meets with clients.
If the employee cannot meet the dress code because of a disability, the employer may still require compliance if the dress code is job-related and consistent with business necessity. An employer also may require that an employee with a disability meet dress standards required by federal law. If an individual with a disability cannot comply with a dress code that meets the “business necessity” standard or is mandated by federal law, even with a reasonable accommodation, he will not be considered “qualified.”
Example 45 : An employer, pursuant to an OSHA regulation, requires employees to wear steel-toed boots. An employee has severe burns on his feet and legs that prevent him from wearing these types of boots, no accommodation is possible, and so he asks for an exemption. The ADA does not prevent employers from complying with other federal laws, including the Occupational Safety and Health Act which requires employees working in certain jobs, industries, or positions to wear particular items of clothing or protective gear. Under these circumstances, the employer may insist that the employee wear steel-toed boots, and because the employee cannot comply with this rule he is not “qualified.”
24. Does the ADA protect employees with substance abuse problems?
The ADA may protect a “qualified” alcoholic who can meet the definition of “disability.” The ADA does not protect an individual who currently engages in the illegal use of drugs,82 but may protect a recovered drug addict who is no longer engaging in the illegal use of drugs, who can meet the other requirements of the definition of “disability,”83 and who is “qualified.” As explained in the following questions, the ADA has specific provisions stating that individuals who are alcoholics or who are currently engaging in the illegal use of drugs may be held to the same performance and conduct standards as all other employees.
25. May an employer require an employee who is an alcoholic or who illegally uses drugs to meet the same standards of performance and conduct applied to other employees?
Yes. The ADA specifically provides that employers may require an employee who is an alcoholic or who engages in the illegal use of drugs to meet the same standards of performance and behavior as other employees.84 This means that poor job performance or unsatisfactory behavior � such as absenteeism, tardiness, insubordination, or on-the-job accidents � related to an employee’s alcoholism or illegal use of drugs need not be tolerated if similar performance or conduct would not be acceptable for other employees.
Example 46 : A federal police officer is involved in an accident on agency property for which he is charged with driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). Approximately one month later, the employee receives a termination notice stating that his conduct makes it inappropriate for him to continue in his job. The employee states that this incident made him realize he is an alcoholic and that he is obtaining treatment, and he seeks to remain in his job. The employer may proceed with the termination.85
Example 47 : An employer has a lax attitude about employees arriving at work on time. One day a supervisor sees an employee he knows to be a recovered alcoholic come in late. Although the employee’s tardiness is no worse than other workers and there is no evidence to suggest the tardiness is related to drinking, the supervisor believes such conduct may signal that the employee is drinking again. Thus, the employer reprimands the employee for being tardy. The supervisor’s actions violate the ADA because the employer is holding an employee with a disability to a higher standard than similarly situated workers.
26. May an employer discipline an employee who violates a workplace policy that prohibits the use of alcohol or the illegal use of drugs in the workplace?
Yes. The ADA specifically permits employers to prohibit the use of alcohol or the illegal use of drugs in the workplace.86 Consequently, an employee who violates such policies, even if the conduct stems from alcoholism or drug addiction, may face the same discipline as any other employee. The ADA also permits employers to require that employees not be under the influence of alcohol or the illegal use of drugs in the workplace.
Employers may comply with other federal laws and regulations concerning the use of drugs and alcohol, including: (1) the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988; (2) regulations applicable to particular types of employment, such as law enforcement positions; (3) regulations of the Department of Transportation for airline employees, interstate motor carrier drivers and railroad engineers; and (4) the regulations for safety sensitive positions established by the Department of Defense and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.87
27. May an employer suggest that an employee who has engaged in misconduct due to alcoholism or the illegal use of drugs go to its Employee Assistance Program (EAP) in lieu of discipline?
Yes. The employer may discipline the employee, suggest that the employee seek help from the EAP, or do both. An employer will always be entitled to discipline an employee for poor performance or misconduct that result from alcoholism or drug addiction. But, an employer may choose instead to refer an employee to an EAP or to make such a referral in addition to imposing discipline. However, the ADA does not require employers to establish employee assistance programs or to provide employees with an opportunity for rehabilitation in lieu of discipline.
28. What should an employer do if an employee mentions drug addiction or alcoholism, or requests accommodation, for the first time in response to discipline for unacceptable performance or conduct?
The employer may impose the same discipline that it would for any other employee who fails to meet its performance standard or who violates a uniformly-applied conduct rule. If the appropriate disciplinary action is termination, the ADA would not require further discussion about the employee’s disability or request for accommodation.
An employee whose poor performance or conduct is attributable to the current illegal use of drugs is not covered under the ADA.88 Therefore, the employer has no legal obligation to provide a reasonable accommodation and may take whatever disciplinary actions it deems appropriate, although nothing in the ADA would limit an employer’s ability to offer leave or other assistance that may enable the employee to receive treatment.
By contrast, an employee whose poor performance or conduct is attributable to alcoholism may be entitled to a reasonable accommodation, separate from any disciplinary action the employer chooses to impose and assuming the discipline for the infraction is not termination. If the employee only mentions the alcoholism but makes no request for accommodation, the employer may ask if the employee believes an accommodation would prevent further problems with performance or conduct. If the employee requests an accommodation, the employer should begin an “interactive process” to determine if an accommodation is needed to correct the problem. This discussion may include questions about the connection between the alcoholism and the performance or conduct problem. The employer should seek input from the employee on what accommodations may be needed and also may offer its own suggestions. Possible reasonable accommodations may include a modified work schedule to permit the employee to attend an on-going self-help program.
Example 48 : An employer has warned an employee several times about her tardiness. The next time the employee is tardy, the employer issues her a written warning stating one more late arrival will result in termination. The employee tells the employer that she is an alcoholic, her late arrivals are due to drinking on the previous night, and she recognizes that she needs treatment. The employer does not have to rescind the written warning and does not have to grant an accommodation that supports the employee’s drinking, such as a modified work schedule that allows her to arrive late in the morning due to the effects of drinking on the previous night. However, absent undue hardship, the employer must grant the employee’s request to take leave for the next month to enter a rehabilitation program.
29. Must an employer provide a “firm choice” or “last chance agreement” to an employee who otherwise could be terminated for poor performance or misconduct resulting from alcoholism or drug addiction?
An employer may choose, but is not required by the ADA, to offer a “firm choice” or “last chance agreement” to an employee who otherwise could be terminated for poor performance or misconduct that results from alcoholism or drug addiction. Generally, under a “firm choice” or “last chance agreement” an employer agrees not to terminate the employee in exchange for an employee’s agreement to receive substance abuse treatment, refrain from further use of alcohol or drugs, and avoid further workplace problems. A violation of such an agreement usually warrants termination because the employee failed to meet the conditions for continued employment.89
30. May an employer tell a coworker that an employee is receiving a reasonable accommodation?
No. The ADA’s confidentiality provisions do not permit employers to tell coworkers that an employee with a disability is receiving a reasonable accommodation.
Practical Guidance: It is imperative that managers be trained about how to respond to such questions because it is reasonable to assume they may be asked questions by an employee’s coworkers where the accommodation involves modification of a work schedule or dress code, or any other change in the workplace that a coworker may perceive as holding the employee with a disability to a different performance or conduct standard. Employers already keep many types of information confidential despite inquiries from their workers, such as personnel decisions like the reason an employee left a job or was transferred. This situation should be treated in similar fashion. An employer could respond that she does not discuss one employee’s situation with another in order to protect the privacy of all employees, but she could assure the coworker that the employee is meeting the employer’s work requirements.
Private Sector/State and Local Governments
An individual who believes that his employment rights have been violated on the basis of disability and wants to make a claim against an employer must file a “charge of discrimination” with the EEOC. The charge must be filed by mail or in person with a local EEOC office within 180 days from the date of the alleged violation. The 180-day filing deadline is extended to 300 days if a state or local anti-discrimination law also covers the charge.90
The EEOC will notify the employer of the charge and will ask for a response and supporting information. Before a formal investigation, the EEOC may select the charge for its mediation program. Participation in mediation is free, voluntary, and confidential. Mediation may provide the parties with a quicker resolution of the case.
For a detailed description of the charge process, please refer to the EEOC website at http://www.eeoc.gov/employees/charge.cfm.
Federal Government
An individual who believes that his employment rights have been violated on the basis of disability and wants to make a claim against a federal agency must file a complaint with that agency. The first step is to contact an EEO Counselor at the agency within 45 days of the alleged discriminatory action. The individual may choose to participate in either counseling or in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) if the agency offers this alternative. Ordinarily, counseling must be completed within 30 days and ADR within 90 days.
At the end of counseling, or if ADR is |
sites offering illegal goods like tiger bone or ivory, though doing so is challenging because it’s hard to identify even where a suspect site is based. A couple years ago, the International Tiger Coalition partnered with Ebay to make sure the site was not illegally advertising wildlife products.
Awareness is always an issue. Many people, both consumers and authorities, don’t even realize it’s illegal to possess ivory, Bennett says, or that elephants must be killed to attain ivory.
If the cultural mindset of Asian consumers is to change, that shift will probably have to come from within rather than be imposed by foreign conservationists, Bennett said. It’s going to take an advertising and awareness campaign of the right tone and nuance to reach an Asian audience, Milliken added. TRAFFIC recently aired a story in Chinese discouraging wildlife trade on the Chinese national radio station in Africa, and ads by Jackie Chan and the retired basketball player Yao Ming protesting shark fin soup and wildlife trade have begun popping up in Asia. The educated middle class in China and Vietnam—the equivalent to the Facebook generation—are beginning to challenge traditional Chinese medicine and wildmeat consumption. They are “our real hope,” said Bennett.
In the west, Bennett encourages lobbying to make sure agencies like Interpol, CITES, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continue to receive funding and training for international species protection. Current budget cuts impact U.S. multinational species funds, yet the U.S. is one of the key funders and providers of technical support to overseas conservation initiatives. Only a tiny proportion of federal funds go to conservation, Bennett said, but it’s crucially important for many conservation organizations in Africa and Asia.
Private donors can also help. The Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation, for example, supports conservation and plays a prominent role in trying to fight for grassroots species protection in Africa. “Honestly, if it wasn’t for people like them, so many of us wouldn’t be able to do half the things we do,” Milliken said.
When all of these factors come together, things can work out. In western India, the Wildlife Conservation Society and local government collaborated to designate a tiger reserve that had long term monitoring, enforcement, science, and community involvement. Although the reserve is located in an area with high human populations, tiger numbers have increased by about 400 percent in the past 20 years. “This is not rocket science,” Bennett said, “It’s just a question of having enough resources, awareness, and political will for people to just actually do it.”
Overall, conservationists hope the rest of the world will become more engaged with these issues. “If one country has weapons of mass destruction, everyone makes sure they are destroyed,” Kikoti said. “Why can’t we do the same for poaching?” Kikoti calls for influential nations, like the U.S., to put pressure on China and Vietnam to clamp down, or even threaten them with sanctions if wildlife trade is not adequately addressed.
“A lot of people come to Africa to see our wildlife,” he said, “If these animals are killed, we’re finished.” Tourism currently contributes about 14 percent of Tanzania’s GDP, though the government hopes to increase it to about 30 percent in coming years.
When asked what the feeling is on the ground, Milliken pauses, then quietly reflects, “As I get older and older, I just keep wondering if we’re winning, if we can really defeat global demographics.” His son—now 21—is studying wildlife management. While Milliken is proud to pass on the torch, he worries about a more complicated, less-wildlife rich future. “I don’t know, I guess ultimately I have to be optimistic and just hope that we can do it,” he said.This Ferrari F12 crash happened on the supposed temple of high speed public roads driving, Germany's Autobahn.
Regional German news site inFranken.de reports that the crash on Saturday started when an overtaking maneuver when a car ahead did not see the speeding Ferrari behind. The F12 driver slammed on the brakes, lost control, and then crashed into a guardrail. Amazingly no one was hurt and nothing caught on fire.
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The 730 horsepower Ferrari was just three weeks old.
You can see the rest of the pictures of the crash on inFranken.de.
UPDATE: We erroneously reported that this Autobahn crash was the first wreck of a Ferrari F12 in private hands. It appears that this very destructive wreck in the Middle East last week was indeed the first crash, not counting this fender bender in China in January.
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(Hat tip to Automatch and Zero 2 Turbo!)
Photo Credit: News5/GrundmannNorthwestern University’s student government passed a divestment resolution early Thursday morning after more than five hours of hearing and debate. The resolution calls on the university to pull its investments from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation.
Twenty-four student senators voted in favor of the resolution, twenty-two voted against and three abstained. Campus paper The Daily Northwestern reported that the 400-seat auditorium was filled to capacity. Others live-streamed the hearing on YouTube.
Since Northwestern is a private institution, the university’s investment portfolio is kept secret. The resolution demands transparency from the university administration regarding the billions of dollars it holds in assets. Student campaigners say these assets likely include investments in at least six US or multinational corporations which contract with the Israeli military.
Student senator Noah Whinston, who co-authored the divestment resolution, told The Daily Northwestern, ”It’s a validation of so much work we’ve done. It’s just a culmination of all of the marginalized voices that we heard here speak tonight.”
Wide support
Divestment campaigners were subjected to “vigilante censorship” of Palestine activism as flyers and materials have been torn down or destroyed, Moira Geary of the Northwestern chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine told The Electronic Intifada last month.
But activists also gained a lot of support from campus allies.
During last night’s divestment hearing, activists from a variety of student groups spoke in favor of divestment, including representatives of For Members Only, which describes itself as “the voice of the Black student community at Northwestern.”
After with Stanford University, Northwestern is the second university this week to pass a divestment resolution in the student government. The University of California at Davis and the UC Students Association also passed divestment resolutions in the last month.
Snapshot: reactions in the crowd moments after the #NUDivest resolution passes ASG Senate by photographer Amal Ahmed pic.twitter.com/iQI9CCIH6p — NorthbyNorthwestern (@nbn_tweets) February 19, 2015
Congrats to #NUDivest! The Chicagoland elite can't be happy, which is a great sign for everybody else. — Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) February 19, 2015
By my count, @NUDivest is the 25th American university to pass a divestment vote: http://t.co/5U8KUydDBz. — Palestine Today (@PalestineToday) February 19, 2015
We shall not be silenced. We will not remain complicit in human rights violations anywhere in the world. #NUDivest — Sara Jo سارة (@HelloSaraJo) February 19, 2015Fans had feared the worst for a while now, and earlier this week those fears were confirmed: 2017 is the final year for Peter Capaldi's tenure as the star of Doctor Who, the much-loved British TV show about an eccentric alien time traveler. Veteran Who fans are used to this changing of the Tardis guard—bringing in new Time Lords is essential to the show's appeal—but Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor had something special, something Whovians will miss with a mad intensity.
For one thing, I was looking forward to seeing more of how Capaldi's portrayal would grow and deepen over a few more years in the role—not to mention, getting to see more of his Doctor interacting with companions other than Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman), who departed last season. (Pearl Mackie's Bill is set to debut when the show returns in April.) But that's just the surface stuff. What Capaldi brought to the Twelfth Doctor was a mix of depth, humor, and vulnerability that captured the best of his predecessors' performances—but also added something new and radically brilliant.
The Doctor with a Thousand Faces
The ever-changing image of Doctor Who embodies a wild paradox: The Doctor is one of the most recognizable characters in all of pop culture, but he's also one of the most versatile. (Though up to now, he's always been a white guy.) The Doctor can be a grumpy old codger, a Harpo Marx-faced bohemian, or a youthful college professor—and if you don't like one Time Lord, just wait a few years, and everything will be different again.
Peter Capaldi's approach to playing the Doctor felt brand new in vey crucial ways. And whoever takes over the role after Capaldi, he or she will be able to explore the new territory he found.
But even as the Doctor has transformed over the years, every actor has left something of himself behind in the character. The mercurial Patrick Troughton was the first actor to create a new version of the Time Lord after original star William Hartnell, and Troughton's performance has proved something of a touchstone for several Doctors, especially Peter Davison and Matt Smith. But you can see every Doctor drawing on his predecessors, while adding brand new grace notes for his successors to pick up on. That's certainly what recent Doctors Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and Matt Smith did as they built a new 21st century template for the Gallifreyan hero.
Who in the Time of Capaldi
And yet, Capaldi's approach to playing the Doctor felt brand new in vey crucial ways. Sure, he conspicuously channeled 1970s mainstays Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker at times, along with his immediate predecessor Smith. But he also seemed to find new places to take the character, new avenues in both time and space. And whoever takes over the role after Capaldi, he or she (a woman Doctor, wouldn't that be nice?) will be able to explore the new territory they found.
Let's take time first—Capaldi's reign as the Doctor has famously seen a different rhythm than either of his predecessors. Capaldi preferred longer scenes, and fewer quick, breathless sequences, which head writer Steven Moffat seemed happy to accommodate. This culminated in stories like 2015's "Zygon Inversion" and "Heaven Sent," in which Capaldi carried long stretches of time with dramatic monologues. The lengthy anti-war speech in "Zygon" stands out, even amongst all the other great speeches the Doctor has given over the years, for its weight and emotional range.
Add to that the comic timing that the Twelfth Doctor displayed, which was markedly different than Smith's amiable slapstick. Capaldi's Doctor was more willing to be the butt of an extended joke, marinating in wounded vanity when confronted with the real-life Robin Hood (in "Robot of Sherwood") and a River Song who mocks him behind his back ("The Husbands of River Song"). And yet, his Doctor's laughable amour-propre was capable of flipping to a deep vulnerability and a deep tenderness. Seriously, watch the scene where the Twelfth Doctor finally shows his true identity to River Song, in the middle of one of her tirades—it'll rip your heart from your chest.
(And just as Capaldi's Doctor is able to be the butt of running jokes to a greater extent than his predecessors, he's also able to be on the receiving end of more sustained and harsher criticism, particularly from Clara's boyfriend Danny Pink, without forcing the audience to take sides.)
And then there's space. Going into the role, Capaldi had a couple of major advantages—first, he was getting to play a version of the Doctor who'd been freed of the guilt of the Time War, which had weighed down all three of his predecessors in the new version of the show. But also, he had a fine template for how to play a version of the Doctor who had lost too much and yet kept up an impossible bravado in spite of everything—thanks to Matt Smith's wounded-and-spritely turn. But nevertheless, Capaldi turned everything I expected from Doctor Who on its head. To Smith's brooding whimsy, Capaldi added a whole host of mannerisms: twitchy eyes, a slight hesitation before making any bold statements, a thin smile, and too many others to name.
Capaldi's Doctor not only seems ancient and emotionally damaged, but also aware of his own contradictions. He's still utterly perplexed by human beings and our baffling emotions—but you can also see him calculating his next move and manipulating situations, all with more low cunning than we've seen since Sylvester McCoy's version in the late 1980s.
The Twelfth Doctor's Final Year
Most of all, Capaldi's Doctor has evolved and revealed more layers as his long-running relationship with Clara has deepened. The main arc of Capaldi's first two seasons involved not a villainous scheme or a cosmic mystery, but rather a human, character-based storyline. We saw the Doctor attempting to convince Clara that he wasn't a monster—and in the process, turning her into a bit of one. For this storyline to work as well as it did required a whole battery of subtle cues from Capaldi about the stew of arrogance and self-doubt that the Doctor marinates in.
It's looking as though Capaldi's final year as the Doctor will see lighter storylines and less gloom, thanks to his new companion, Bill. That's probably a good thing after the intense darkness of stories like "Face the Raven" and "Heaven Sent." Based on what Capaldi and Moffat have said in interviews, Capaldi's final set of episodes will show just how funny his adventures can be. The Twelfth Doctor now has 12 episodes (and a Christmas special) with which to add every last bit of dramatic flair he can, giving his successor a wealth of traits and ticks to inherit. But no matter what Season 10 brings, Capaldi will have taken the Time Lord to places he had never gone before—and no amount of regeneration will be able to change that.Ig Nobel Winner Shows Knuckle Cracking Won’t Cause Arthritis
“Mother, I know you can hear me. Mother, you were wrong! And now that I have your attention, can I stop eating my broccoli, please?” Donald L. Unger raised his hands in mock rebellion. He had defied his mother’s words for three quarters of his life systematically cracking the knuckles on his left hand and leaving his right knuckles free for 60 years, demonstrating (if only anecdotally) that knuckle cracking does not cause arthritis. For this achievement, he won himself the Ig Nobel Award in Medicine, presented last night at the 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony yesterday evening.
The event, which was held at the Sanders Theater on Harvard Campus, awarded Unger and nine other scientists in various fields for their scientific creativity. In the words of Marc Abrahams, Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded to scientists for “achievements that first make people laugh, then think.”
Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded in all the same categories as the higher-profile Nobels — physics, chemistry, medicine, economics, peace and literature — as well as four additional categories: public health, biology, mathematics, and veterinary medicine.
Unlike the Nobel Prizes, Ig Nobel festivities allow prizewinners to show the audience their inventions and discoveries. Elena N. Bodnar, recipient of the Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health, demonstrated her brainchild: a brassiere that can be converted into a pair of gas masks. Using Nobel Laureates Wolfgang Ketterle, Paul Krugman, and Frank Wilczek as her volunteers, Bodnar drew two brassieres and converted them into one pair of hot pink gas masks and another pair of more subdued, black gas masks.
To those skeptics who believe alcohol to be a useless substance, Javier Morales, Miguel Apatiga, and Victor M. Castano of Mexico proved that diamond films could be grown from Tequila, for which they received this year’s Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In their acceptance speech, the team explained one exciting aspect of their research: “Do you need a scanning electron microscope to see nanoparticles of diamonds? Of course not! Does Tequila have special properties that lend themselves to the creation of diamonds? Definitely no. Why? When you drink tequila you start seeing all sorts of things anyways.”
While the Ig Nobel Ceremony drew a full house and most of the awardees attended, some winners of the honor were conspicuously absent. Of them, the winners of the Economics, Literature, and Mathematics Prizes were “unavailable for the occasion,” and perhaps understandably so: The winners of the Ig Nobel prize for Economics were authority figures of four Icelandic banks who demonstrated that “tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa” and “similar things can be done to an entire national economy.”
The winner of the mathematics prize, Gideon Gono of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank, was recognized for giving people an efficient way to cope with a wide gamut of numbers, by printing notes with denominations that ranged from one cent to one hundred trillion dollars. He too, was unable to make the ceremony.
The Ig Nobel ceremony’s organizers tried their best to keep attendees from getting bored: Its opening and closing speeches consisted of two words each, “welcome, welcome,” and “goodbye, goodbye,” leaving plenty of time for acts more thrilling than speeches.
In keeping with this year’s theme of “risk,” Dan Meyer, a 2007 Ig Nobel Laureate for his study entitled “Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects,” asked ten Nobel Laureates to extricate swords from his throat using a whip without injuring him. Meyer finished the demonstration unhurt to uproarious applause from the audience.
There were breaks throughout the night, during which the audience could practice recycling by throwing hundreds of paper airplanes at a person on stage for a minute. On four occasions, the Big Bank Opera, a duet who musically parodied the timeline of the recent economic downturn, regaled the audience.
And in keeping with the “academic” tone of the ceremony, Nobel and Ig Nobel laureates alike educated the audience about their projects with 24-second explanations of their work and seven word generalized summaries of their topic. Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in economics, concisely described his research as, “greedy people competing make the world go round.”A CHRONOLOGY:
Thursday night: Special occasion dinner for two at a restaurant. (which boasts a chef’s hat in the Good Food Guide – the Melbourne equivalent of a Michelin star.)
Friday: Peking Duck at a Peking Duck restaurant in the suburbs.
Late Friday night: My partner engages in copious vomiting.
Saturday: She spends the day in bed, speculating about the possible effects of so much Peking Duck.
Saturday night: I discover that I too have a ticket on the vomit comet. I suppose that I also ate an excess of Peking Duck.
Sunday: I spend the day in bed.
Mid-week: Our housemate also falls violently ill. Speculation about the role of the Peking Duck falters and wanes. No decent alternative theories emerge.
Time passes. All recover.
A week later: A missed call from the Victorian Government Department of Health Communicable Diseases Unit. (A frightening voice message if ever there was one).
The lady on the end of the phone is duty-bound to provide no information and engage in no speculation. She’s a bug detective, not a news service. But the questions she asks tell the story.
“I got your telephone number from the booking sheet at Easy Tiger. Did you eat there on the night of April 17?”
“I did,” I said, having an aha! moment.
She then goes on to ask a range of questions about symptoms. She also reads out the whole menu, in a seeming attempt to isolate the cause. She tells me not to go to work if I work in the food industry.
Now. It’s very nice to know that the Victorian Department of Health is out there fighting the good fight. But the fact they are involved suggests a certain level of seriousness. I wouldn’t, for example, report a quick spew to the government. But hospital emergency departments are obliged to.
The fact that we passed the bug on suggests it was not your standard food poisoning, but either norovirus or Salmonella, and the fact the government cares enough to investigate may, perhaps, imply it is Salmonella, which is potentially fatal.
The end point of this, and the part where economics comes in, is what we did next.
The Victorian Government has not published anything about any outbreak. Of course the restaurant may be innocent.
But Google suggests we are not alone in harbouring suspicions:
Clicking on that link leads here:
Kudos to you if you noticed they don’t match. It seems to be policy to remove accusations of food poisoning from review websites, due to legal issues.
We considered the possible ramifications for the restaurant of writing a review linking them to food poisoning. On the one hand, there remains a chance they are not guilty.
On the other hand, making such a review could do a lot of good. If it prevents somebody with a compromised immune system from eating infected food, it could save their life.
But the long-run effect is also important. If restaurants know they can’t poison their diners without facing the consequences, their food safety standards will improve. (It could be the fault of their supplier, but shaming the restaurant will have an effect back up the supply chain.)
So we left a story on Urbanspoon (a restaurant review website) that delivered the facts, as I did above. A chronology of eating, spewing and taking calls from the Communicable Diseases Unit. Nothing definitive, nothing defamatory.
That has since been removed from the restaurant’s Urbanspoon page (while remaining visible via the users page, which nobody would visit).
Meanwhile, crap like this remains:
“My friend ordered the coconut braised wagyu beef in a soupy broth, which the waitress said, came with a “complimentary” serve of rice. And she never got to taste the broth/gravy, because the waitress took her plate away before she could touch it! My friend had finished removing the beef and putting it onto her plate with some rice. She was going to take a spoonful of broth/gravy, but suddenly a waitress appeared, and without asking if she was finished, the waitress whisked the broth-full plate away!”
If you can’t communicate assertively with your waiter, you get to rant and rave. But if something genuinely serious happens, you can’t write about it.
The quality of food is what marketers call an unobservable product characteristic. You can’t know everything about it before you buy. Firms use signals to try to tell you about these unobservable characteristics. For example, they may set prices high (check), or make very public the awards they have won (check).
But with food, quality has an important dimension. Will it make you sick? This dimension is one which the restaurant won’t signal, and consumers are currently blocked from signalling in the most obvious place.
This blog post is therefore designed to stand in place of all those deleted reviews. I do not know for sure what made us sick, but I do know for sure that I’d like to hear about people’s reasonable suspicions before I make my next booking.Updated A Windows 10 feature, Wi-Fi Sense, smells like a security risk: it can share access to private Wi-Fi networks with the user's friends.
Wi-Fi Sense has been on Windows Phone since 8.1
Those friends include their Outlook.com (nee Hotmail) contacts, Skype contacts and, with an opt-in, their Facebook friends. There is method in the Microsoft madness – it saves having to shout across the office or house “what’s the Wi-Fi password?” – but ease of use has to be teamed with security. If you wander close to a wireless network, and your friend knows the password, and you both have Wi-Fi Sense, you can log into that network.
Wi-Fi Sense doesn’t reveal the plaintext password to your family, friends, acquaintances, and the chap at the takeaway who's an Outlook.com contact, but it does allow them, if they are also running Wi-Fi Sense, to log in to your Wi-Fi. The password must be stored centrally by Microsoft, and is copied to a device for it to work; Microsoft just tries to stop you looking at it. How successful that will be isn't yet known.
"For networks you choose to share access to, the password is sent over an encrypted connection and stored in an encrypted file on a Microsoft server, and then sent over a secure connection to your contacts' phone if they use Wi-Fi Sense and they're in range of the Wi-Fi network you shared," the Wi-Fi Sense FAQ states.
Microsoft also adds that Wi-Fi Sense will only provide internet access, and block connections to other things on the wireless LAN: "When you share network access, your contacts get internet access only. For example, if you share your home Wi-Fi network, your contacts won't have access to other computers, devices, or files stored on your home network."
That sounds wise – but we're not convinced how it will be practically enforced: if a computer is connected to a protected Wi-Fi network, it must know the key. And if the computer knows the key, a determined user or hacker will be able to find it within the system and use it to log into the network with full access.
In theory, someone who wanted access to your small biz network could befriend an employee or two, and drive into the office car park to be in range, and then gain access to the wireless network. Some basic protections, specifically ones that safeguard against people sharing their passwords, should prevent this.
The feature has been on Windows Phones since version 8.1. If you type the password into your Lumia, you won’t then need to type it into your laptop, because you are a friend of yourself. Given the meagre installed base of Windows Phones it's not been much of a threat – until now.
With every laptop running Windows 10 in the business radiating access, the security risk is significant. A second issue is that by giving Wi-Fi Sense access to your Facebook contacts, you are giving Microsoft a list of your Facebook friends, as well as your wireless passwords.
In an attempt to address the security hole it has created, Microsoft offers a kludge of a workaround: you must add _optout to the SSID (the name of your network) to prevent it from working with Wi-Fi Sense.
(So if you want to opt out of Google Maps and Wi-Fi Sense at the same time, you must change your SSID of, say, myhouse to myhouse_optout_nomap. Technology is great.)
Microsoft enables Windows 10's Wi-Fi Sense by default if it is a clean install of the operating system, and if it is a particular edition. If the feature is enabled, access to password-protected networks is shared with a person's contacts if that user checks a set of boxes when they first connect to a network.
Regardless of whether it's on by default for you, ensuring it is switched off will make it a lot less useful, but will make for a more secure IT environment.
Yes, wireless passwords can be written down and trivially passed along to others: we know network security shouldn't end at the Wi-Fi login prompt. But there's nothing like an operating system automating the practice of blabbing passphrases to strangers. ®
Updated to add
A Microsoft PR rep has been in touch about the headline, pointing out that when you share access to your network via Wi-Fi Sense, your contacts cannot share that access to other people. We know this.
The headline still stands because: imagine you and I are friends, and you visit my house. I tell you the Wi-Fi password, or you read it off the fridge. You type it into your Windows 10 device, and share access to my network via Wi-Fi Sense with your Windows 10 friends. Your friends now have access to my network, or in other words, my friend's friends now have access to the network.
And that's not good.On a good day, transgender people can expect entirely well-meaning journalists and commentators to screw up what pronoun to use when describing one of their own in the news. (The Times and Associated Press are at least trying.) But Fox & Friends leaped into the lead this morning for the most bigoted and insensitive handling of Chelsea Manning by a major news organization when it played the Aerosmith song "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" to tease a segment. In case you didn’t catch the subtle reference, the song’s title was displayed in the upper left corner of the screen. "That’s Chelsea on the right," host Gretchen Carlson explained in the clip, highlighted by TPM. What she failed to grasp is that’s Chelsea on the left too.
But Fox News is far from the only network to handle the story offensively.
CNN host Fredricka Whitfield, who regularly leads a legal debate with contributors Avery Friedman and Richard B. Herman during her noon hour, brought the duo on over the weekend, first to preview a discussion about whether or not the government should pay for gender-reassignment hormone therapy for Manning. Friedman, the supposed liberal of the two, promptly restated the question rhetorically as, "Can Bradley Manning get the army to make him Bradley Womanning?"
Herman, in deriding the notion of government-funded transgender treatments, put on an actual SNL Church Lady impersonation and said of Manning’s request, "Isn’t that special?" Whitfield segued from the shtick not with an admonishment that those remarks were disrespectful and inappropriate but by muttering, "Okay, comedy hour. We’ll be taking it seriously."
Except they didn’t. When the chuckleheads returned for the actual four-minute segment, they were tittering and smirking from the start. Herman yammered about how his clients can’t get basic heart meds in the clink — maybe not the best advertisement for his services as an attorney — and went on with this:
“Sometimes we have to step back and say, ‘Y’know, some of these cases we cover, this is beyond insanity.’ There’s no way that taxpayers are going to pay $100,000 for a gender transformation for this guy while he’s in prison. If he wants to be Chelsea, he can practice all he wants in Fort Leavenworth ‘cause those guys are there for a long time so he can get good practice. When he gets out, he can have the operation and he can pay for it.”
In other words, prison rape is good practice for being female. (CNN acknowledged receiving questions from Daily Intelligencer about the remarks but has not provided any response.) The segment, as noted by Media Matters, ended with Whitfield giving Friedman the chance for one last unfunny gag:
“Although, when he put that wig and lipstick on, the guy’s a dead ringer for Tonya Harding, isn’t he? Wow!”
MSNBC had its own trouble with acceptance when Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law, insisted on Sunday that Manning not be babied. "I don’t think we need to coddle criminals. Whatever you want to call yourself, that’s fine. Here’s your suit, here’s your jail cell, have a nice day," he said. "This is outrageous, that we should coddle this individual, that we should make the military a social engineering product like this administration has tried to do and other administrations in the past. The job of the military is not to engage in this type of supercilious activity." (Federal courts, meanwhile, have ruled that refusing sex-change operations to inmates is cruel and unusual punishment.)
Addicott went on to suggest that Manning is faking it. "He’s still a male. He has the male genitalia. He’s going in to serve with males," he said. "I mean, what a great idea. If I’m convicted, I can say, ‘I’m now a female, throw me in with the female prisons.’"
And then there was RedState editor and Fox News contributor Erick Erickson’s reaction when Chelsea Manning first made her announcement:
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA https://t.co/vNGTfaD1Gw — Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 22, 2013
Right back at you, man.The cost of the Gallipoli campaign in terms of human life was enormous, with the estimated loss through action or diseases contracted while on the peninsula being around 130,000. Within that total are approximately 4,000 Irish men who never returned home but their sacrifice until recent years largely went unnoticed.
In Ireland the Gallipoli sacrifice was largely forgotten in the wake of the political changes on the island brought about by the 1916 Easter Rising and the ensuing revolutionary period. The geographical, political and religious makeup of the 10th (Irish) Division did nothing to help this amnesia. In Gallipoli the legacy of the campaign is very clear and the landscape still bears the scars. The Helles Memorial and the 44 cemeteries in Gallipoli like on the Western Front honour the dead of all the nations that fought there. The Irish soldiers are remembered at various sites across Gallipoli, with the cemetery at V Beach listing the names of the majority of Irishmen who died.
In March 2010 the Somme Association achieved one of its aims by unveiling a new Memorial in Gallipoli, to commemorate the contribution made by the 10th (Irish) Division in that campaign. Services were held, attended by HRH The Duke of Gloucester and HE Mary McAleese, The President of Ireland along with representatives from throughout Ireland and members of the Royal Irish Regiment. So it is a fitting tribute to the sacrifice these men made for our freedom, that on the 100th Anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign that we made a pilgrimage back to Gallipoli to carry on the legacy.
On the 6th October 2015, a Service of Commemoration was held by the Somme Association, at Green Hill Cemetery attended by our President HRH The Duke of Gloucester, KG, GCVO, Irish Minister of State, Mr. Aodhan O'Riordan, TD, His Excellency Mr Richard Moore, British Ambassador to Turkey, His Excellency Mr Brendan Ward, Irish Ambassador to Turkey, Governor of Canakkale, Hamza Erkal, Naval and Air Attaché, Wing Commodore Bryan Hunt, David Campbell, CBE, Honorary Consul, Turkey and the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment.Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you’re probably familiar with LensRentals.com, which is one of the most popular camera gear rental shops in the world, if not the most popular. We recently had the chance to sit down with the LensRentals team and learn everything about what just might be photography’s most fascinating company.
In 2007, Roger Cicala was, like most of us, into photography in a big way. A practicing doctor, he would often take pictures of family, friends, landscapes, and whatever crossed his path. And yet again, like many of us, his small hobby transformed into purchasing multi-thousand dollar camera bodies and 500mm telephoto lenses in pursuit of the perfect image.
And nobody in their wildest dreams could have predicted what would happen next.
His Son, Drew, who also works for the company, was kind enough to tolerate my questions for the better part of two hours on a Tuesday morning. Here’s what transpired.
Mike Kelley With Fstoppers.com: Hi, Drew. So let’s start with the obvious: how does one get into the business of renting lenses?
LR: I'm not sure if you are aware, but Roger is actually a medical doctor. Most people assume he was some sort of professional photographer before this actually got started, but he wasn't. He has always picked up hobbies very intensely, and in 2004 or 2005, the photography bug bit him. Hard. A few years later, he bought a Canon 500mm supertele for a trip to Alaska, came back home with it, and watched it accumulate dust in the closet. It was then that he realized there was a ton of potential in the market for amateur photographers like himself that need a special lens for a special trip, but didn’t necessarily want to deal with the hassle of purchasing it outright.
FS: Can you tell me a little bit about the early days of the company?
After a couple of years, Roger had accrued a pretty good selection of lenses, so he took what he already owned, emptied his savings account, and started the company. At first, it was just him, but after a few months he realized he need a couple more helping hands. By early 2007, the company consisted of myself and two of our other first employees (who are both still with the company), working about 2 hours a day, answering emails, and processing the orders.
Later in the day, Roger would come home from working at the hospital accompanied by a couple of his nurses who he had enlisted to help. They’d help pack the boxes in our garage in the brutal Memphis heat and humidity. We’ve come quite a long way since then!
Oh look, I found a picture of Roger Cicala.
The first two years, the growth was actually incredible. At first we were renting anywhere from zero to five lenses a day, then after awhile, 20 lenses a day, and now we average about 500 shipments per day. In the busier summer months, I’d expect the most we’ll do is somewhere in the neighborhood of 800-1000 individual shipments per day.
FS: OMG.
But the past couple of years have shown pretty consistent growth, despite the huge number of lenses that we’re renting. After the first couple of months, the only limit to the growth of our company was how fast we could buy lenses. There were times when we had trouble finding lenses to buy in order to fulfill orders.
FS:What about the staff? I’d imagine you have had to expand dramatically to keep up with orders.
When I left for law school in late 2007, we had four very part-time employees. At this point Roger was trying to decide if we should move the operation out of the house. When I came back from school in mid-2010, there were twelve full-time employees. And today, we have 30 full-time employees.
FS: That’s incredible.
And we should probably have more employees. The problem is that the business tends to be seasonal, and we hate the idea of having to hire temporary employees so we try get by on the least amount of staff possible. This means we work extra hard in the summer, but winters tend to be a bit more relaxed.
The man, the myth, the legend: Roger Cicala himself |
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