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which we translate into adequate English by "a king can kill a man." One could also count among the passives a special construction with wéi 為 : this is discussed in the chapter on wéi. Yě 也 Yě functions as the verb "to be." It is employed as often as one wishes to say that something is something else. It is placed at the end of the phrase ("Noodles delicious are.") Though frequently omitted, it is usually expressed. Yě is also employed after a verb, with a result very much like adding an "-ing" to an English verb. It extends the action of the verb out over time, and suggests that the action is not yet complete (in contrast to yǐ 矣 which shows that the action is fully realized.) The use of yě after a verb is entirely optional. The meaning desired, not a formal necessity, dictates its employment. These are the primary uses of yě, on which all others depend: As the Verb "to be" Yě is used whenever we want to say that something is something else. For example, "Socrates is a man" would be expressed: Sū-gé-lā-dǐ rén yě. 蘇格拉底人也。 To negate a noun, one uses yě with fēi (and never bu 不 ). Thus, if Socrates were not a man, we would say: Sū-gé-lā-dǐ fēi rén yě. 蘇格拉底非人也。 Fēi is also used to negate yě when the latter makes a gerund ("-ing") construction with a verb, Zǐ yuē, Cì yě, fēi ěr suǒ jí yě. 子曰 , 賜也 , 非爾所及也 . The master said, as for [you] Tsi, [this] is not your attaining. (That is, you haven't accomplished this yet.) (LY 5:12) In this example, the yě does double duty as "is" and as the gerund-ending. The use of suǒ is discussed below under "Relative Clauses." Yě may be placed after a noun to introduce it as the subject. Lǐ yě, sǐ, yǒu guān ér wú guǒ. 鯉也﹐死﹐有棺而無槨。 As for Li, [when he] died, [he] had a coffin but didn't have a coffin case. (LY 11/8) Literally, Lǐ yě means "[It] being Li." As usual in Classical Chinese, the subject ("it") is not expressed when it is impersonal. (see Basic Principles, Omissions, above.) A single yě at the end of a sentence may serve as the verb "to be" for several preceding phrases as well. In this way it helps mark the end of the clause. Rán ér zhì cǐ jí zhě, mìng yě fú? 然而至此極者﹐命也﹐夫﹖ Thus [that I am] a reacher of this extremity, it's fate, isn't it? (Zhuāng 6: 97) Yě may combine with other particles. For example, when a sentence ending in yě adds on the emphatic particle hū 乎 , the two particles to form yú 與 . (For other cases of yě in combination, see the glossary.) Fú fēi jìn rén zhī zǐ yú (= yě hū)? 夫非盡人之子與 (= 也乎 ) ﹖ Aren't we all (some) far-offman's sons? (Mèng 7A/36) Omission of Yě with Adjectives and Numbers A standard use of Chinese adjectives is, quite simply, as adjectives. They come immediately before a noun to modify it. For example, "high mountain" is gāo shān 高山 . A predicate nominative is a statement that something is something else, like "a bear is an animal" or "death is inevitable." In a predicate nominative where the predicate is an adjective, Classical Chinese does not require yě. The phrase "The mountain is high" is expressed: shān gāo 山高 . (Literally "the mountain highs.") Here the Chinese adjectives behave like verbs, and indeed, in this use the adjective is negated, as a verb would be, by bu 不 , not fēi 菲 . Classical Chinese also omits the yě with numbers, which in English require the predicate nominative form. (For example, "The profits were fifty dollars.") This is because numbers are adjectives in all languages, and Chinese treats them as it does all the other adjectives. Bú kè sòng, guī ér bū qí yì, rén sān bǎi hù. 不克訟 , 歸而逋其邑 , 人三百戶 . [If one can] not bear the controversy, he goes home [and] returns [to] his town, [its] population [is] three hundred households. (Yì Jīng 6) Yě is omitted where it is clearly implied. Certain words create the anticipation of the verb "to be" at the end of the sentence. In such cases, the yě may be omitted. This is frequently the case with exclamations and questions. The merest hint of special emphasis suffices to suggest the verb "to be." Thus yě is often omitted with the common exclamatory particle zāi 哉 , and also with wéi 唯 "only:" Zhī qí zuì zhě wéi Kǒng Jù Xīn. 知其罪者唯孔踞心。 The only knower of his faults is Kong Ju Sheen. (Mèng 1B/4) Yě is also omitted after yóu 猶 "yet, still, even, especially" (for which yóu 由 is often used), and after qǐ 豈 , which makes questions expecting a negative answer. Shì qǐ shuǐ zhī xìng zāi? 實豈水之性哉﹖ [In] reality, surely this isn't the nature of water? (Mèng 6A: 2) Yě also tends to be omitted when the verb has any sort of an emphatic future sense. For example, after jiāng 將 "about to" and bì 必 , "certainly, must, will, necessarily": Wàn shèng zhī guó, shì qí jūn zhě, bì qiān shèng zhī jiā. 萬剩之國﹐弒其君者﹐必千剩之家。 [As for] a country of ten thousand chariots, a murderer of its monarch will [be the head of] a family of one thousand chariots. (Mèng 1A: 1) In a conditional sentence this is also often the case. Neither yě nor yǐ are ever used with imperatives. Yě Used with Verbs Ongoing Action The most common, and probably the most basic use of yě 也 , is to show ongoing, uncompleted action, as English does by prefacing the verb with "is" and adding to the verb the ending "-ing." (for example, "is walking.") Yě after several verbs modifies them all and indicates the conclusion of the sentence. Ordinarily a verb with yě is negated by bu, but it may also be negated by wèi, 未 "not yet," which produces the sense "never." Wèi yǒu rén yì ér yí qí qīn zhě yě. 未有仁義而遺其親者也 . There never was (literally, "there not yet was existing") one who was benevolent and righteous [yet] abandoned his parents. (Mèng 1A/1) However, yě is to be taken with the modal verb where there is one, and not with the verb that follows the modal Thus yě serves to bracket the entire modal verb phrase, and helps define the units of meaning in a sentence. Yuē, Wú dùn zhī jiān, wù, mò néng xiàn yě. Yòu yù qí máo, yuē, Wú máo zhī lì, yú wù, wú bú xiàn yě. 曰 , 吾盾之堅 , 物﹐莫能陷也 . 又譽其矛 , 曰 , 吾矛之利 , 於物 , 無不陷也 . [He] said, My shield's thickness [is such that among] things, [there is] nothing [that] can ever pierce [it]. Further, [he] praised his spears, saying, My spears' sharpness [is such that] among things there is not [a thing it couldn't] ever pierce. (Hán Fēi Zǐ, 15:2B) In the first half of this sentence, the yě goes with the néng, and emphasizes that the impenetrability of the shield is an ongoing condition ("ever pierce."). It does not serve as the verb "to be"! The non-existence of a thing that could pierce the shield is taken care of by the mò, "[there is] nothing." And mò cannot take a yě. In the second half of the sentence, the final yě goes with a néng implied between the bú and the xiàn. Not with wú, which cannot take a yě. Gerund A gerund is a noun formed from a verb (for example: "writing.") It may still act as a verb (for example, by taking a direct object: "writing a book.") In English, a gerund ends in "-ing" and the "-ing" ending provides the best way of translating this use of yě. The gerund is frequently used in Classical Chinese to create an abstract noun. For example, the phrase wéi yě 為也 , by itself, means "doing" and may be translated "activity." A gerund is an abstract noun. Do not confuse this use of yě with zhě 者 , which makes a concrete noun out of a verb. Wéi zhě 為者﹐ means "doer", not "doing." No second yě is added when a final yě forms a gerund which is also a predicate. Shì bù-wéi yě, fēi bù-néng yě. 是不為也﹐非不能也。 This [is] not-doing, [it is] not not-being-able. (Mèng 7A: 36) In both of its appearances in this sentence, the final yě both makes the gerund and supplies the "is." Note that use of fēi shows that "not-being-able" is a verbal noun. If it were a verb, it would be negated by bu 不 . The gerund may be the direct object of a verb. Hé yóu zhī wú kě yě? 何由知吾可也﹖ Through what do [you] know my being able? (Mèng 1B: 7) Often the gerund will produce what amounts to a relative clause. See the chapter below, "Relative Clauses." I have not yet determined whether the gerund may be the direct object of a preposition. The gerund may take a direct object. Jí bù rěn qī hú-sù, ruò wú zuì ér jiù sǐ dì, gù yǐ yáng yì zhí yě. 即不忍其觳觫﹐若無罪而就死地﹐故以羊易之也。 Now I could not bear its fearful trembling, like a guiltless man approaching the execution ground, [and] therefore my exchanging it for a sheep. (Mèng 1A: 7) Note that here the gerund yì... yě takes the direct object zhī, which comes as expected after the verb, but precedes the yě. The yě always goes to the end of a gerund phrase, and so helps mark the end of a clause. A gerund may occur after a possessive like zhī 之 or qí 其 . Yǐ shì zhī qí tiān yě. 以是知其天也。 [I] know that it was heaven that was doing it. (Literally, "By this [I] know its being heaven.") (Zhuāng 3: 13) In the literal rendering we can see clearly how yě does double duty as the verb "to be" (in "its") and as the gerund ("being.") But the presence of the possessive before the gerund may make it it clear enough that a gerund is required and so the yě may not actually be expressed. The logic here is this: since a possessive introduces a thing, if the word following the possessive is a verb, it would have to be a gerund, that is, a verbal noun. The following example is instructive: Huò wèn dì zhī shuō. Zǐ yuē, Bù zhī yě. Zhī qí shuō zhě zhī yú tiān xià yě, qí rú shì zhū sī hū, zhǐ qí zhǎng. 或問禘之說 . 子曰 , 不知也 . 知其說者之於天下也 , 其如示諸斯乎 , 指其掌 . Someone asked the imperial ancestor sacrifice's meaning. Confucius said ﹐ "[I] am not knowing it. A knower-of-its-meaning's relation (literally, "being related to") [all] beneath sky, surely it's like [if one should] show all this," [he] pointed to his palm. (LY 3: 11) The idea is that the imperial ritual is so profound and rich in meaning that one who understood it would also understand all else, and be able to reveal it as easily as one shows one's palm. Now the yě which one would expect after zhī shuō is unexpressed because the zhī requires a noun and so implies it. Next we have a yě which is given because Confucius wants to stress that his ignorance of the meaning is an ongoing condition. He does not know it, and he does not expect to. The last yě makes a gerund ("being related") out of the preposition yú. Note that Chinese prepositions behave like verbs in many ways, which is why Sinologist call them (horribly enough) "co-verbs." Adverbs and Adverbial Yě Virtually anything placed immediately before a verb may serve as an adverb. A noun, 人立 rén lì [he] stood up [like] a man a place-word 水死 shuǐ sǐ he died [in] the river (literally, [in] water) This last usage is usually explained, perhaps unnecessarily, as the omission of a yú 於 : [yú] shuǐ sǐ [ 於 ] 水死 . [in] water he died But we might with equal justice read it as (literally) "wetly he died," that is, "his was a watery death." A part of the body may also appear adverbially Zǐ yù shǒu yuán tiān xià hū? 子欲手援天下乎﹖ Do you want me to rescue the world [with] my hand? (Mèng Zǐ, 4A: 18) Adjectives (which include numbers!) and verbs may also function as adverbs, but the above examples with nouns should adequately prepare the student to cope with this. Yě may make an adjective into an adverb, Bì yě, lín shì ér jù, hào móu ér chéng zhě yě. 必也﹐臨事而懼，好謀而成者也。 Necessarily, one who watches over an affair and is cautious, one who likes to plan in advance and follows through, [him I would be taking as my partner.] (LY 7: 11) Bì yě, literally "[it] necessarily being", is rendered into decent English by "necessarily." In such an adverbial yě phrase, the yě acts rather like a comma, separating the adverb from the individual parts of the sentence and indicating its application all of its clauses. The final yě in the above quote goes with the verbs, suggesting one who habitually acts thus. The bracketed words at the end of the translation are implied by the foregoing context, not the grammar. Yě may also be combined with a preposition to form an adverb. Bù wǒ yǔ; qí, hòu yě, chǔ. 不我與﹔其﹐後也﹐處。 She [wouldn't bring us] along, but afterwards, [she] would have us dwell [with her.] (Shī Jīng 22) Another example: Zǐ yuē, zhōng rén, yǐ shàng, kě yǐ yǔ, shàng yě; zhōng rén yǐ xià, bù kě yǐ yǔ, shàng yě. 子曰﹐中人以上，可以語﹐ 上也﹔中人以下，不可以語﹐上也。 The master said, A mediocre man, [who is striving to raise himself] upwards, [one] can always speak [to him], improvingly; a mediocre man, [who is striving to bring himself] downwards, [one] can never speak [to him], improvingly. (LY 6: 21) The second half of each side of this sentence ends with shàng yě, giving the adverb "improvingly." There are a few other matters worth clarifying in this passage. With reference to the phrases yǐ shàng and yǐ xià, note that yǐ often combines with prepositions to (for example, yǐ qián miàn 以前面 means "in front of"). Thus yǐ shàng means, literally, "upwards" and yǐ xià downwards." There is also a play on words here. Yǐ shàng can also be an idiom meaning "in order to be taught," and yǐ xià may be taken to mean "to be made more ignorant." The two yě that conclude the halves of the saying should also be taken with the preceding modal kě (see above, "Ongoing Action.") I have expressed this ongoing aspect of the modal with the words "always" and "never" In both halves of the sentence the object (the mediocre man) is fronted for emphasis. This object ("the mediocre man") is in both cases followed by a relative clause (who is striving, who tends) which is only implied by the phrases yǐ shàng and yǐ xià. For this elliptical method of making a relative clause, see below the chapter on "Relative Clauses." Wéi 為 Temporary State Wéi is used instead of yě where one is describing a temporary rather than a permanent state. (Consider estar as opposed to ser in Spanish). One might literally translate it, as I shall, with the phrase "acts as." This overstates the case slightly, but has the virtue of making the difference very clear. Mèng Zǐ wéi qīng yú Qí. 孟子為卿於齊。 Mencius acted as a minister of state in Qing. (Mèng 2B: 6) In the Analects we find Zǐ wéi shuí? 子為誰﹖ Sir acts now as who? (LY 18: 6) The question here is directed at finding out what the man's role is in the business, his right and reason to be there. We could capture the flavor of this pert inquiry by translating it, very idiomatically, "What's it to you?" or "Who wants to know?" Were the speaker really interested in finding out the other man's identity, he would have asked shuí yě 誰也﹖ "Who are [you]?" The above examples emphasize how wéi can suggest role or function, but the basic meaning is a condition which is only temporary in contrast to a truly permanent state. Xiào dì yě zhě, qí wéi rén zhī běn yǔ ﹖ 孝弟也者，其為仁之本與 ﹖ One who is filial and brotherly, surely he would act as the root of goodness? (LY 1: 2) The contrast here is between what one is (which is permanent) and what one does (which is temporary.) With Complementary infinitive Zài shàng, wéi wū yuān shí; zài xià, wéi lóu yǐ shí 在上, 為烏鳶食 ; 在下, 為螻蟻食. Above, [I will] be [for] crows and kites to eat; below, [I will] be [for] mole-crickets and ants to eat. (Zhuāng 32: 51) This isn't really indirect discourse, nor is it really a passive construction (though it is generally so translated, thus: "I will be eaten by..."). What we really have is wéi introducing a phrase with a complementary infinitive and an unexpressed yú 於 "for" in front of the nouns. Perhaps the construction is most easily understood by the similar English usage one sees in phrases like: "It's for me to know, and for you to find out." In later (Han) Literary Chinese this construction will be enriched with the addition of suǒ 所, without making any change in the basic syntax. Thus the phrase from Chuang Tzu given above would become Zài shàng, wéi wū yuān suǒ shí; zài xià, wéi lóu yǐ suǒ shí. 在上﹐為烏鳶所食﹔在下﹐為螻蟻所食。 Above, [I will] be [for] crows and kites what to eat; below, [I will] be [for] mole-crickets and ants what to eat. Yǐ 矣 To Indicate Completion Yǐ is the converse of yě. Whereas yě makes the action of a verb ongoing, yǐ makes it complete. It is really a marker of the perfect tense ("did, has done") as opposed to the present ("does, is doing") or imperfect ("was doing.") In a logical extension of its completion meaning, yǐ may also give an emphatic sense to a verb. The notion is, the action is not only complete but completely done. Suī yuē wèi xué, wú bì wèi zhī xué yǐ. 雖曰未學，吾必謂之學矣 Though one might say [he] hadn't yet learned, I would surely say he had indeed learned. (LY 1: 7) At times yǐ is used purely to intensify some word which has no real verbal meaning: Qiǎo yán lìng sè, xiān yǐ rén! 巧言令色，鮮矣仁！ [One who has] a skillful tongue and a goodly appearance [is] very very rarely virtuous! (LY 1:3) If the yǐ had gone in its normal place, at the end of the sentence, we would have translated it with one "very." Putting the yǐ after the xiān puts extra emphasis on that word. Just like yě 也 , yǐ is to be taken with the modal where there is one, and not with the following verb. Zǐ yuē, wēn gù ér zhī xīn kě yǐ wéi shī yǐ. 子曰﹕ 溫故而知新，可以為師矣。 The master said, One who warms (brings life to) the past knows the fresh (the present) really can act as a teacher. (LY 2: 11) The idiom kě yǐ means "it is possible." Obviously the final yǐ 矣 can only be taken with a conjugated verb like kě and not with the infinitive complement like wéi. (The terms "conjugated verb" and "infinitive complement" here describe the functions of the verbs, not their unchanging forms.) Yě Yǐ Yǐ 也已矣 Though yǐ 矣 never follows yě immediately, it does combine with yě in the formula yě yǐ yǐ 也已矣 , often abbreviated as 已 or 也已 or 已矣 . The yě is for ongoing action, the yǐ 已 is a particle meaning "already," and the final yǐ signifies completed action. Thus the formula yě yǐ yǐ creates a present perfect tense. It describes a new ongoing condition that has come fully into being,and should be literally translated with the formula "has become." For example "It has become quite late." Even though this structure is often used to express something one has just become aware of ("Look at the clock, how late it has become!") it does not necessarily indicate a change in awareness only, as Pulleyblank would have it. Zǐ yuē, Jūn zǐ shí, wú qiú bǎo; jū, wú qiú ān; mǐn yú shì ér shèn yú yán, jiù yǒu dào ér zhèng yān. Kě wèi hǎo xué yě yǐ. 子曰 : 君子食 , 無求飽 ; 居 , 無求安 ; 敏於事而慎於言 , 就有道而正焉 . 可謂 , 好學也已 . The master said, [When] a gentleman eats let him not seek satiety; [when he] settles in a place, let him not seek ease; [let him be] quick to work and cautious in speech, follow [those who] have the Way and be corrected by them. [Then] it is possible to say, He has become [one who] loves learning. (LY 1: 14.) Zhě 者 The particle zhě makes a concrete noun out of an adjective or a verb. One will translate it with "one" when it is applied to a person, and "thing" when it is applied to a thing. Note also that zhě may be used for both singular and plural. Here two adjectives become nouns to describe an inkeeper's two wives. `E zhě guì ér měi zhě jiàn. 惡者貴而美者賤。 The ugly one was prized [while] the beautiful one was held cheap. (Zhuāng Zǐ 7: bB) Here is an example of zhě in the sense of "thing:" Zǐ yuē, sān rén xíng, bì yǒu wǒ shī yān: zé qí shàn zhě ér cóng zhī, qí bú shàn zhě ér gǎi zhī. 子曰 , 三人行，必有我師焉 : 擇其善者而從之 , 其不善者而改之 . The master said, [when with] three men [I] walk, necessarily I will have my instructor among them: I take their good qualities (literally, "their good things") and follow them, their bad qualities ("things") and alter them [in myself.] (LY 7: 22) In a logical extension of its vague concretizing nature, zhě may be combined with a noun or noun-like phrase to make it less distinct. Added to a name, for example,Qiū zhě 丘者 , it means "a certain [Mr.] Chu." (Literally "a Chu one.") Here is an instance of it being applied in this sense to a thing: Yú suǒ pǐ zhě, tiān yàn zhī! 予所否者 , 天厭之 ! "My whatever [I have done] badly, may Heaven loathe it! (LY 6: 28) Suǒ pǐ by itself means "what [I have done] badly." The addition of zhě makes it, literally, "the-what-I-have-done-badly thing." In decent English, "whatever I have done badly." In this next example zhě is combined with a time expression 昔者﹐吾友嘗從事於斯矣。 Xī zhě, wú yǒu cháng cóng shì yú sī yǐ. [In] former times (literally, "old things,") my friend always unfailingly conducted [his] affairs according to this [principle.] (Lún Yú 8: 5) Zhě may be combined with yě in ways that require precise understanding of both particles, as is clear from the following Xiào dì yě zhě, qí wéi rén zhī běn hū ﹖ 孝弟也者，其為仁之本乎 ﹖ Ongoingly filial [and] brotherly [ones], would [they] constitute the root of goodness? (LY 1:2) Here "Filial-[and]-brotherly" are two adjectives being used as verbs: their meaning is extended over time ("ongoingly") by the yě. The zhě makes the gerund expression concrete, and we express this in English here with the word "ones." Here is an example of zhě producing a relative-clause-like construction, Wú yǒu bù rú jǐ zhě. 無友不如己者。 Don't have [as] a friend one who does not resemble yourself (literally, "a not-resemble-self one.") (LY 1: 8) The classical Chinese relative clause will be examined in detail in the following now. Relative Clauses Chinese has only one relative pronoun, suǒ 所 , "which." (It is not used for who or whom!) But the classical language is so accustomed to merely implying a relative clause, that the suǒ 所 is often as not omitted. Since there are no otherrealitve pronouns, Chinese has difficulty making relative clauses like "the man who came to dinner." Chinese supplied its lack of relative pronouns in a number of ways. One can make a verb or and adjective into a substantive (a noun or noun equivalent) by adding zhě 者 , as discussed at the end of the last chapter --- that is, one can say in Chinese "a reader" in place of the inexpressible "a man who reads," but there are other means as well. Zhī 之 We can also make a relative clause using zhī 之 . In his Chapter VII, Noun phrases and Nominalization, Pulleyblank makes a very complicated business out of the two very simple structures used for this purpose. He derives the phrases from supposed proto-phrases and represents it all in algebraic style. This is the very madness of linguistics. Here's how matters actually stand. Take a phrase like shā rén zhī wáng 殺人之王 Shā rén means "kills a man" and wáng is "king," but the zhī is not readily translatable. It no longer has its ordinary meaning, to show possession, like an apostrophe plus an "s" in English. Rather, the zhī shows that what comes before it is subordinated to what follows it. To render the phrase analytically, we could have to say something like "kills-a-man: this describes the king." (The subordinating role is in fact an extension of the possessive meaning of zhī: possession shows syntactical subordination. When we say, for example, "Robert's book," Robert, regardless of the dominant role his ownership gives him in the real world, is syntactically only there in a subordinate role, to give more information about the book. In Chinese the subordinating quality of the possessive was developed in a way nothing in English approximates.) Because the phrase "kills a man" shā rén is subordinated to word after the zhī, we must render it in a way that expresses that subordination, so we will have to render it as a gerundive (a verbal adjective), yielding the phrase "a man-killing king." There is a variant of this structure in which it is a noun that is subordinated to a verbal phrase: wáng zhī shā rén zhě 王之殺人者 Very analytically, this means "king: this describes a man-killer." Because the noun "king," wáng, is subordinated to verbal phrase after the zhī, we must render it in a way that expresses that subordination, so we will have to render it as an adjective, yielding the phrase a royal man-killer." To recapitulate: we can subordinate a verb-phrase with zhī to say "a man-killing king," Or, we can subordinate a noun with zhī, to say "a royal man-killer." The two formulations are interchangeable. The only difference is that one ("a man-killing king") emphasizes the fact that he's a king, and the other ("a royal killer") that he's a killer. The examples about the homicidal king given above are unusually simple. The following instance shows the elaborate use this structures often enjoys: Yáng Zǐ yuē, Dì zǐ, jì zhī: xíng xián ér qù zì xián zhī xīn, ān wǎng ér bú ài zāi? 陽子曰﹐弟子﹐記之﹐ 行賢而去自賢之心﹐ 安往而不愛哉 ? Yang Zi said, [My] disciples, remember this, [a man with a] worthy-doing self-praise-setting-aside heart, where could [he] go and not be loved? (Zhuāng Zǐ 7:bB) The two verb phrases "do-worthy" and "set aside self praise" are subordinated to "heart" by the zhī. Note the reflexive pronoun zì has the peculiarity of always preceding the verb that takes it as an object. Implied Relative Clauses Another way Classical Chinese can supply its want of relative pronouns is to employ the particle yě 也 , Zǐ yuē, jiàn xián, sī qí yān; jiàn bù xián, ér nèi zì shěng yě. 子曰 , 見賢 , 思齊焉﹔見不賢 , 而內自省也。 The master said, Seeing a worthy [person], [one] considers [how to] emulate him; seeing an unworthy person, one examines oneself inwardly (for similar faults). (LY 4: 17) The yě ("-ing") applies to both jiàn's, ("see") and in effect implies as subject the impersonal "one who." We could fairly translate the sentence "One who sees a worthy person considers how to emulate him; one who sees an unworthy person..." English, unlike Chinese, allows us to give the relative "who" explicitly. Confucius uses this structure because to say "When you see a worthy person... " might carry the impolite implication that the person he is addressing is particularly beset with faults
with Plup fatigued, and Hungrybox getting help from Luis “Liquid`Crunch” Rosias, the second set of Grand Finals became a one-sided match. It’s not the first time we’ve seen Plup challenge Hungrybox, but the potential to win a major held promise that was exciting throughout. CEO 2017 Smash Melee – Tempo \| Axe (Pikachu) vs PG \| Plup (Sheik) Melee LF Jeffery “Axe” Williamson Axe turned heads at CEO, having been one of a few who pushed Hungrybox to his limits. Their set in Winner’s Semifinals was down to the wire. Had Axe pulled through, it would have been the biggest upset of the tournament. As it stood, Hungrybox was just a step ahead of Ace along the way. Still, Axe came through with a strong third place finish, showing everybody he is not to be counted out. CEO 2017 Smash Melee – Tempo \| Axe (Pikachu) Vs. Liquid \| Hungrybox (Jigglypuff) SSBM WS Colin “Colbol” Green At fourth was Colbol, who has been on a streak over the past few tournaments. After being sent to Loser’s bracket by Johnny “S2J” Kim, he made an impressive run to Loser’s Semifinals. His CEO loser’s run consisted of eliminating Crim, iBDW, Shroomed, King Momo, and Wizzrobe. His performance at CEO, and other recent majors, has shown that Colbol is back as a threat to take seriously. CEO 2017 Smash Melee – SS \| Colbol (Fox) vs MVG \| King Momo (Falco) Melee L7ths Michael “King Momo” Morales Finally, one of the most impressive runs at CEO was the performance by King Momo. Overcoming The Moon in pools, he made an explosive showing of his skills. Sending Vro to Loser’s, and eliminating DJ Nintendo, he met Colbol in the first match of Top 8. What followed was the most high-octane match of the tournament. An all-out brawl, the set was a trade back-and-forth for dominance. Unfortunately, the set ended with an SD by King Momo, putting a stop to his journey upward. CEO 2017 – King Momo (Falco) vs The Moon (Marth) – Pools Conclusion With so many good sets to watch, and watch again, CEO was a spectator’s dream. Seeing so many players pushed to their limits is exactly what viewers ask for, and this tournament delivered. Some of these sets may just be talked about for years, and many players will want to analyze them for their own improvement. We certainly hope to see more of these players in the future, and hope that this is only the beginning of their breaking through barriers. Top 8 Highlights by VGBootCamp⇦ Episode #631 - The Neglected Genius of John Taylor Gatto (Extended Childhood and Western Spirituality) ⇨ John Taylor Gatto a few weeks before his crippling strokes of 2011 ⌚ Sat 24 November 2012 ☻ John Taylor Gatto Download Hour1 Download Hour2 This week, exceptionally, we hear two pieces from a single speaker, John Taylor Gatto. He is in poor health having been slow to recover from a stroke last year, so we reflect on his genius with two classic talks: "Bianca, You Animal, Shut Up!" and "The Neglected Genius of American Spirituality". In episode 608 we heard a little about John Taylor Gatto's childhood from his Underground History of American Education. That has been the only time he has appeared on for over a year since I hoped that episodes 562 566 had clarified the perniciousness of certified schooling. The depth of Gatto's scholarship is such that he has a lot more to contribute to understanding the state of modern US (and global) society, and he is unflinching in his instruction to have no truck whatever with the idea that institutionsbe in charge of individuals. In our first hour we hear a somewhat cut down version of Bianca, You Animal, Shut Up!, the keynote talk at the 20th Anniversary Conference of Growing Without Schooling. In this beautiful and sensitive talk, Gatto describes the effects on children of mass confinement schooling and how this serves the interests of a hierarchically directed, society that is directed by corporations. In our second hour, we hear The Neglected Genius of American Spirituality, which Gatto gave at the Conference on Spirituality in Boulder, Colorado. Gatto examines the project of the great industrialists of the late 19th and early 20th century, the establishment of what Illich termed the 'The New World Religion'. Again, he is unequivocal in his damnation of the massification and Dumbing Down of the population so that they can be rendered predictable, unimaginative and perpetually childish in order to smooth the machinery of Social Control so that the top dogs can stay that way for ever. Some of this episode's content is repeated in episode 681. We conclude the show with a brief update on Gatto's condition and a pointer to http://www.thejohntaylorgattomedicalfund.com Login Required)COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio's rainy day fund, which serves as a reserve for hard times, grew by nearly $30 million Wednesday to a record $2.034 billion. State budget Director Timothy Keen announced the $29.5 million deposit into the account -- formally known as the Budget Stability Fund -- was possible because of a stronger-than-expected balance from the 2016 budget year, which ended June 30. "The fiscal condition of the state is strong," Keen said in a statement. "We finished the year with a larger ending balance than planned due to state spending that came in below projections, making possible the fifth deposit to our rainy day account in six years." The rainy day fund is a reserve that the state can tap in the event of a budget crisis. It became a symbol of Ohio's budget woes as the great recession whacked the state's economy and hit tax revenues. Gov. Ted Strickland tapped the fund for about $1 billion to balance the books for the 2010-2011 budget, which the state enacted in mid 2009. Kasich, when talking about Ohio and economic recovery, has often cited the rebuilding of the fund as evidence of how far the state has come. The state dropped $200 million plus into the fund in each of Kasich's first two years in office. In 2013 it deposited nearly $1 billion. Another $500 million went into the fund in 2015, lifting the total above $2 billion. Those deposits come in part because of cuts in state aid to local governments - counties, cities, villages, and townships. Some local governments are raising taxes to make up for state aid Kasich's budgets have cut. Database: Ohio tax changes leave cities scrambling to cope with less By state law, the rainy day fund is limited to an amount equal to 8.5 percent of the previous year's general fund revenue. With Wednesday's deposit, the total is up to about 6 percent of last year's revenue. While the state was able to boost the rainy day fund Wednesday, Keen also downgraded the amount of revenue the state expects to take in for the next year by nearly $270 million. Most of that is due to lower projections for income tax collections. In the grand scheme of things, the amount is just a small piece of the total revenue projected from taxes - which tops $22.7 billion for 2017. Proportionally the reduction is about 1.2 cents on the dollar. "This revision is consistent with the Kasich administration practice of being conservative in both our forecasting and our budgeting practices," Keen said. "Notwithstanding the downward revision of tax revenues, the... budget remains balanced with sufficient ongoing revenues to cover expected ongoing expenditures."When I came across the original coverage of the Stonewall Riots, I expected it all to be absolutely terrible. Utterly horrendous. And it pretty much is. The New York Daily News piece isn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, and surprisingly, isn't terribly worse than many pieces I report on now in 2014. That says more about us now than it says about 1969. The headline is pretty awful, but unlikely to have been chosen by the piece's author, Jerry Lisker (you can read the piece in its entirety on the PBS website). Although it's possible he did write it, even today, it is fairly standard for headlines to be part of an editor's job. No, I won't pin that on Lisker. The problem with Lisker's writing, which could have been much worse, admittedly, is in the way he speaks about the identifiable members of the riot: those who are clearly gender variant. One with which he opens up his piece. She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn't bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street. "She was a he." How sensationalist. How purile. And how possibly wrong. Yes, I'm going to be presentist, because presentism is how we learn from the past. By pointing out the failings of those who came before us, that is how we learn from history and avoid repeating it. Presentism is how we counter excuses that a behavior was valid then, so it could be valid now. It wasn't valid then, and it isn't valid now. Advertisement Now, some of those identifiably gender variant individuals involved in Stonewall would have been drag queens, who we would now identify as cisgender gay men using drag for social commentary. But we also know there were transgender men and women, specifically women, who were very much involved in the riot right from the beginning, but we also know that neither Lisker nor the raiding police would have recognised any difference. Almost half a century on, we have the obligation to recognise that difference now. We probably all know Sylvia Rivera, but we should know the others, too, and a blogger known as Zagria has kept us aware of who these trans women were. Tammy Novak, who had lived with Tony and Chuck, was admitted in female clothing. Désirée, a natural beauty who easily passed as female, spent time at the Stonewall, and took up there with Petey, a free-lance gangster. They moved to the suburbs to live as a heterosexual couple, until Petey, in a fit of jealousy, shot and killed her. Other trans women mentioned at the Stonewall were Tiffany and Spanola Jerry. Barbara Eden, who worked in the coat check, would turn up in full drag every now and then. Street queens who could not afford the entry fee in the Stonewall Inn were often found in the parkette across the street, which turned out to be an ideal place to join in the riot. But back to Lisker's report, which does have a very taunting aspect. This is not just homophobia (a concept which did not even recognisably exist at the time), but is, in fact, something more. This is the intersection of misogyny and a hatred of gender transgression. The entire Lisker piece is full of what we call transmisogyny today. Throughout Lisker's writing is an overt distaste if not hatred for the femininity being expressed by drag queens, trans women, and who Zagria reports were called the "flash queens" (young gay men who dressed in male clothing but still styled themselves in overtly feminine ways). Although Zagria points out that trans men and drag kings were not uncommon, not to mention plenty of cisgender gay men, these masculine individuals never show up in Lisker's piece. Gee, I wonder why. Advertisement Perhaps because the image of drag queens and trans women is ever so much more humorous (and ever so much more threatening) to a world run by heterosexual cisgender men than the idea of trans men and drag kings showing up to the riot in three piece suits. Lisker is hoping to make a mockery of the riot, and having masculine individuals be part of that undermines the message he is trying to convey: these gay people aren't really a threat, they're silly, and we should laugh at them. However, by doing so, it only underscores the very clear insecurity caused by "men" who willingly live as "women." Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village. Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. "We may have lost the battle, sweets, but the war is far from over," lisped an unofficial lady-in-waiting from the court of the Queens. "We've had all we can take from the Gestapo," the spokesman, or spokeswoman, continued. "We're putting our foot down once and for all." The foot wore a spiked heel. According to reports, the Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure with a sand painted brick and opaque glass facade, was a mecca for the homosexual element in the village who wanted nothing but a private little place where they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together. Advertisement Lisker's mockery is apparent in the way he refers to the feminine presenting individual as a "lady-in-waiting," making sure to mention her stereotypical "lisp," after defining her as part of a group "standing bra strap to bra strap." And again with the comment "congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together." It's as offensive to cisgender women as it is to transgender women. Lisker sought not only to denigrate the femininity of the individuals present, but also femininity in general, making sure to use the juxtaposition of presumed male individuals with feminine behavior to mock interests, behavior, or expression normally associated with women. The whole proceeding took on the aura of a homosexual Academy Awards Night. The Queens pranced out to the street blowing kisses and waving to the crowd. A beauty of a specimen named Stella wailed uncontrollably while being led to the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall by a cop. She later confessed that she didn't protest the manhandling by the officer, it was just that her hair was in curlers and she was afraid her new beau might be in the crowd and spot her. She didn't want him to see her this way, she wept. You can well imagine that Lisker probably wasn't a big supporter of women's issues in general. In addition to his mockery of femininity, be it by who we would now term trans women or by cis women, he also sought to legitimise the raid on the Stonewall Inn in legal terms as well as moral terms. Last Friday the privacy of the Stonewall was invaded by police from the First Division. It was a raid. They had a warrant. After two years, police said they had been informed that liquor was being served on the premises. Since the Stonewall was without a license, the place was being closed. It was the law....The police are sure of one thing. They haven't heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street. Advertisement Both the police and Lisker were right about the Stonewall Riots. It wasn't the end. It marked a beginning of the modern American gay rights movement, and although obscured for decades, it was also the beginning of the fight for transgender recognition. Trans women were there, and although they went unrecognised, even by the very reporters who chose to mock them. We recognise them now, and we should not forget that a major objection to gay culture in the 1960s was the existence of the trans women who challenged their notions of what made a man and what made a woman. Image and Quotes via New York Daily News/PBS.The railroad through Livonia (now CSX) started as the Detroit & Northwestern in 1876. (Photo: Gene Scott) Update: Authorities say they've recovered the fireworks. Federal agents are interviewing people in southwest Detroit about 32 cases of commercial grade explosives that were stolen from a CSX freight train. CSX workers realized about 500 pounds of the explosives were missing when the train arrived on Wednesday near Central Avenue, said Donald Dawkins, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Dawkins compared the aerial shells — between 2 1/2 to 5 inches in length — to commercial fireworks that a municipality might set off at a fireworks show. But he stressed they are not for consumers, are filled with pyrotechnic explosives and can be dangerous. “There is nothing to indicate any acts of terrorism at this time,” Dawkins said. Details about the theft still are unknown. Dawkins said the train was not hijacked; it appears the explosives were stolen during one of the train's several stops since its departure from Chicago. “We’re not sure where the theft occurred, when it occurred,” Dawkins said. "We’re leaning toward Detroit probably where the theft occurred but we’re not sure.” Detroit police and CSX are helping with the ATF's investigation, Dawkins said. A message was left for Detroit police seeking comment. The explosives likely were among various types of freight, including consumer products and raw materials, on a train with about 100 boxcars, CSX spokesman Rob Doolittle said, adding that CSX is cooperating with the investigation. It is possible the stolen explosives could be sold off for profit, Dawkins said. “This is not for regular consumer use," he said. "We see facial injuries every year from these... they’re loaded with pyrotechnic explosives.” Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call ATF's Detroit offices at 313-202-3400. Contact Joe Guillen: 313-222-6678, jguillen@freepress.com or on Twitter @joeguillen. Staff writer Niraj Warikoo contributed. Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1Wi8Dn0Venus in 1887 is no paradise. Hardy colonists eke out a meager living cultivating blue Kosh root to ship back to Earth via aether transit, and traders and explorers brave the deadly foliage and even deadlier fauna of the Aphrodite continent's inner forests in search of riches. Lieutenant Albo Collins has just come to Venus straight from graduating West Point, and the young officer craves more to do than cleaning drunks off the streets of New Philadelphia. When the governor orders the First Venusian Colonial Infantry to the northern border of the colony Collins gets his wish, but as he marches into the unexplored wilderness hot on the trail of Federalist raiders, he has little idea what horrors await him, in the shade of the Ishtar trees. In the Shade of the Ishtar Trees is a 10,000 word (40 pages) steampunk novella.As I'm sure we all know by now, ppv1 has been deprecated in favor of ppv2. Many of us are unhappy, for very good reasons. A lot of very good or decent players (and not just farmers!) have had their ranks tanked due to this new ranking system. The time we have spent polishing our ranks and beating our friends has been completely invalidated and replaced by a system that is just plain NOT RIGHT. When you tell us to calm down and that the ranking system is incomplete, we understand that. But it's very difficult for us to do so when EVERY NEW VERSION OF PPV2 that comes up is practically the same as the last! Your disclaimers do nothing to assure us that the ranking system will be accurate. It makes us feel like we wasted our time with ppv1. It even discourages us from wanting to play. Seeing no tangible changes in each new version of ppv2 makes us want to complain. And that's exactly why I wrote this thread. I'm astonished at how you continue to ruin the game for people who spend hours playing it and trying to improve themselves and their ranks, and instead cater to casuals and the select minority that loves to farm accuracy/ score. Ppv1 did its job, for what it's worth. All things considered, I think most people would agree ppv1 was an OKAY metric. While it may still be far from accurate, it's definitely better than ppv2 right now. If you're willing to listen to the people who actually know what they're talking about and the community as a whole, then maybe you could make some positive progress on a ranking system (and even appease the competitive community!). (It seems like you're always clashing horns with competitive players, for whatever reason) You seem to dislike the way people complain. Why not cater towards what the community wants, then? Why not make a ranking system that is closer to what the community wants, instead of your idea of what measures skill? I understand that you can't make every player happy. I also understand you want to make a new ranking system. But you could do a MUCH MUCH MUUUUUUUCH better job at making a ranking system. If you at the very least established that you did not want this ranking system to be centered around player skill (like the ladder system is supposed to be, when it is released), then I think that would address some of the complaints. If skill is still an objective of your ranking system, please consider this: When the community agrees that X player is better than Y player, but Y player's rank is higher than X player's rank, there's something wrong. While it may not be their own rank, the WHOLE COMMUNITY agrees that particular rank should not be that way. I could cite a TON of examples of ranking imblances off the top of my head, but I'm not going to be rude and call names. The point is, people will generally agree on who are top players and who aren't. If you could try using the top 25 players of 2012/ 2013 videos as examples to base your ranking system off of, maybe the ranking system could make some positive progress towards measuring skill and ultimately satisfying the player base. But until the top ranks start looking better, I don't think anyone will accept this new ranking system as a reflection of skill. It will instead come down to another farming race of time invested into the game, which may eventually end up as being a repeat of ppv1. Since changes like these will probably never go through and peppy keeps deciding to make his game worse, I'm quitting. P.S.: I think a ladder system is a fun idea. It would have been nice to keep ppv1 and implement that ladder system separately from ppv1. TL;DR: Peppy broke rankings and doesn't know what he's doing. He's ruining the game/ making people quit. cyaIn 2013, the Freedom Project went to Cambodia with Oscar-winning actress and UNODC Goodwill Ambassador against Human Trafficking Mira Sorvino. The result was "Every Day in Cambodia: A CNN Freedom Project Documentary" - which looked at child sex trafficking in the country. Just this month, it was named "outstanding documentary" by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation, winning a Gracie Allen award. Sorvino says the film has raised awareness of the issue, helping to raise funds to build a school that, when completed, will offer hope for more than 1,000 children in the region. “Primary and especially secondary education is extremely important in preventing trafficking,” she says. “It allows children to develop critical thinking skills to be able to defend themselves from traffickers and to have the skills that will enable them to have gainful employment to be able to support their families in other ways than being sexually exploited.” But Sorvino adds that it’s not just about helping the victims. “The demand side really needs to be addressed,” she says. “If people weren’t trying to buy child sex it wouldn’t be being sold.”Charisma Magazine news editor Jennifer LeClaire is upset that programs such as “Transparent” and “Orange Is The New Black,” along with upcoming shows “All that Jazz” and “Becoming Us,” prominently feature transgender people. LeClaire writes in BarbWire today that these programs, along with Bruce Jenner’s recent announcement and the Girl Scouts’ decision to let troops include trans scouts, signal that “the floodgates are now officially open.” And, according to LeClaire, Satan is to blame. The “devilish prince is strategically pushing perversion to new heights in the name of equality” and “seducing people into a lifestyle of perversion that ultimately separates them from God,” she warns. About this time last year, TIME magazine put Cox on its cover. I proclaimed at that point that this was the tipping point of perversion. Sadly, it looks like I was right. Just four months later, Amazon came out with an original series called Transparent in which “an LA family with serious boundary issues have their past and future unravel when a dramatic admission causes everyone’s secrets to spill out.” The mainstream media tested the waters, it seems, and discovered the temperature was just right to push a little further up the mainstream. In April, Bruce Jenner wowed 17 million viewers in a two-hour interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC. He offered intimate details of his journey from a male Olympic athlete to a woman. The floodgates are now officially open. … ABC Family will soon broadcast Becoming Us, about a teen who works through his father’s transition from male to female. Jenner is producing his own E! docuseries that will debut on July 26. Oh, and the Wachowski siblings, one of whom was the first Hollywood director to come out as transgender, will premier a new Netflix original program called Sense8. On top of all that, TLC is rolling out All that Jazz, which focuses on a 14-year-old named Jazz Jennings who decided he was a girl at a young age. His parents let him live as a girl and gave him hormone treatments from age 11. There’s more but we’ll stop there. Battling the Prince of the Power of the Air Satan is the prince of the power of the air (see Eph. 2:2). We’ve long seen all manner of perversion coming out of Hollywood, including the glamorization of adultery, fornication, idolatry, thievery, greed, drugs and more. Clearly, though, this devilish prince is strategically pushing perversion to new heights in the name of equality. … Our war is against a demonic agenda to call evil good and good evil (see Is. 5:20). This agenda is seducing people into a lifestyle of perversion that ultimately separates them from God. This agenda is working to mainstream a way of life that leaves people in bondage. And, ultimately, this agenda is demonizing anyone who won’t embrace this new “civil rights” issue. The Agenda Goes Beyond Hollywood Mind you, this is not just an issue in Hollywood—the agenda is creeping into other aspects of society. The Girl Scouts are now allowing boys who identify as girls to join their ranks. Franklin Graham is calling out schools for teaching lies about transgenderism, as new class curriculum will teach gender fluidity as normative.Mourinho Bluntly Hits Back at Eden Hazard’s Criticism of Chelsea Jose Mourinho has responded to Eden Hazard's criticisms of Chelsea's performance in their 3-1 Champion's League defeat to Atletico Madrid in particularly blunt fashion. Hazard stated on French TV that Chelsea “are not made to play football, we are good on the counter-attack”. adding: “Often, I'm asked to do it all by myself and it's not easy." However, Chelsea boss Mourinho has shot down Hazard after listening to a transcript of the interview, questioning the Belgium winger's commitment to the team. Mourinho stated that Hazard's comments “were normal from players like him”. He continued: “He's not the kind of player ready to sacrifice himself 100 per cent for the team and his mates. Normally you get this kind of comment from players like him: from players who can't resolve a problem like we had with the first goal." Chelsea came undone from Atletico's stellar counter-attacking play, even after Fernando Torres had put his side ahead just before the half-time interval. Mourinho went on to suggest Hazard was partially to blame for Atletico's first goal, saying: “Against Atletico in Madrid, Willian played on the left side and Ashley Cole was protected all game. Against Liverpool, Andre Schurrle played on the left and a dangerous player like Glen Johnson was completely under control. Eden is the kind of player who is not so mentally ready to look back at his left-back and live his life for him. If you see Atletico's first goal, you understand where the mistake was and why we conceded that goal." He concluded that "when the comments come from a player like Eden, it's normal.” Photo: Getty ImagesWashington (CNN) Indications that ISIS or an affiliated terror group took down a Russian airliner over Egypt don't just raise the possibility of one of the worst terror attacks since September 11, 2001. They also represent a possible turning point in what is now a generational battle against terrorism: ISIS may have made the decision to escalate from military operations aimed at creating a caliphate in Iraq and Syria and inspiring followers to stage isolated terror attacks on the West to attacking soft, civilian targets in mass casualty strikes. President Barack Obama said Thursday it's possible a terrorist bomb brought the plane down. "I think there's a possibility that there was a bomb on board," Obama said in an interview with Dave Ross of CBS News affiliate KIRO in Seattle. He said the current intelligence isn't definitive enough to say exactly what felled the aircraft and noted that security procedures in place in the region were different than in the United States. "We're going to spend a lot of time just making sure our own investigators and own intelligence community find out what's going on before we make any definitive pronouncements," he said. "But it's certainly possible that there was a bomb on board." The disaster, which killed more than 200 mainly Russian civilians on a flight from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, also presents the United States with a new flurry of complicated security, diplomatic and political questions. JUST WATCHED Tourist: I would go back to Egypt 'without a doubt' Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Tourist: I would go back to Egypt 'without a doubt' 03:29 Security The U.S. government has largely kept American civilians safe from terrorism during the 14 years since 9/11, and President Barack Obama has claimed that record and the crushing of core al Qaeda under his watch of one of his top achievements. But the possibility that ISIS is behind the plane crash raises the specter of a new potential for devastating attacks on Americans. If another Islamist group has acquired the motivation and the capacity to attack civilian airliners, a future target could be U.S. jets. "It is a long war and you we have just seen maybe a very significant turn and escalation in that war," said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. Middle East peace negotiator now with the Wilson Center in Washington. JUST WATCHED Egypt tightens airport security after jet bombing fears Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Egypt tightens airport security after jet bombing fears 01:29 "We haven't yet found a way -- and I think it's going to be extremely difficult to hermetically seal the nation, abroad or here at home, against these kinds of attacks," he said on CNN's "New Day." How to respond to the possibility of an expanded ISIS threat -- if confirmed by investigators -- will likely vex the administration and increase pressure on U.S. intelligence agencies to forestall a similar strike against a U.S. target. An expanded and potentially more lethal threat from ISIS to Americans could also scramble the assumptions that are currently underpinning Obama's policy towards the region. Guided by his desire to extricate the United States from costly, intractable foreign wars, he has been loath to jump into new ones. JUST WATCHED Inside a forensic bomb lab Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Inside a forensic bomb lab 02:38 Initially, he ridiculed the idea that ISIS would evolve into the same kind of global threat as al Qaeda, once referring to the group as a junior varsity organization. The President has also argued that the events of the last decade prove that Washington has a limited capacity to dictate outcomes in a Middle East torn by conflict, where traditional borders and ideas of nationhood are being ripped apart in a tide of sectarianism. So his decision to deploy troops back to Iraq after ending the war, firstly to train and assist Iraqi forces and then to use air power to target ISIS, were taken reluctantly. And the President's decision last week to send 50 Special Operations forces to help U.S.-backed rebels in Syria -- putting boots on the ground, as he eventually did in Iraq as well -- was a step that he had previously told Americans he would never take. Now, the White House might be forced into yet another exhaustive review of its goals and strategies in the region. Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt The militant group ISIS published this image of what it claims is the bomb that brought down Metrojet Flight 9268 on Saturday, October 31. The photograph shows a soft-drink can and two components that appear to be a detonator and a switch. Flight 9268 crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula en route to the Russian city of St. Petersburg. All 224 people on board were killed. Hide Caption 1 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt The wreckage of Flight 9268 is seen in this image provided on Tuesday, November 3. Hide Caption 2 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt People visit a makeshift memorial at the airport in St. Petersburg on November 3. Hide Caption 3 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Trucks in St. Petersburg carry victims' bodies on Monday, November 2. Hide Caption 4 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Russian emergency personnel collect personal belongings of victims at the crash site in Hassana, Egypt, on November 2. Hide Caption 5 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Egyptian military personnel stand near the tail of the jet in Hassana on Sunday, November 1. Hide Caption 6 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt A piece of the engine sits on the ground at the crash site on November 1. Hide Caption 7 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Egyptian army soldiers guard the luggage and other belongings of passengers piled up at the site of the crash on November 1. Hide Caption 8 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Debris belonging to the Russian airliner is shown at the site of the crash on November 1. Hide Caption 9 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt More debris is shown on November 1. The crash site is in a remote area of a region plagued by a violent Islamic insurgency. Hide Caption 10 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Debris from the airliner is seen on November 1. Hide Caption 11 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Debris at the crash site on November 1. Hide Caption 12 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Candles, toys, flowers and portraits are left at Pulkovo International Airport outside St. Petersburg on November 1. Hide Caption 13 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt People place flowers and messages in front of the Russian Embassy in Cairo on November 1. Hide Caption 14 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Egyptian paramedics load the bodies of victims into a military plane at a military air base by the Suez Canal on Saturday, October 31. Hide Caption 15 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, third from right, visits the site of the plane crash with military and government officials on October 31. Hide Caption 16 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Ismail, center, and other officials visit the site of the plane crash on October 31. Hide Caption 17 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt An item of clothing lies at the site where the plane crashed on October 31. Hide Caption 18 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt The tail of the jet sits in a field on October 31. Hide Caption 19 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Villagers watch an ambulance as it drives to unload bodies on October 31. Hide Caption 20 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt People light candles and leave flowers at the Russian Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, on October 31. Hide Caption 21 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt A relative reacts to news at Pulkovo International Airport on October 31. Hide Caption 22 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Employees with the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations wait in Moscow for their flight to Egypt on October 31. Hide Caption 23 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt Journalists and spectators wait for ambulances to arrive at the Zeinhom morgue in Cairo on October 31. Hide Caption 24 of 25 Photos: Russian plane crashes in Egypt An Egyptian soldier prays as emergency workers prepare to unload bodies of victims at a military airport north of Suez, Egypt, on October 31. Hide Caption 25 of 25 Diplomacy Any confirmation that the plane was downed by ISIS in retaliation for Russia's intervention in Syria to prop up the group's enemy President Bashar al-Assad will bring its own complications for Moscow -- and for Washington. A confirmed attack by ISIS would place tremendous political pressure on President Vladimir Putin, just weeks into his military intervention in Syria, if ISIS or another group has already been able to make Russian civilians pay a heavy price. Putin is trying to protect a Russian client in the most sweeping action in the Middle East by Moscow since the end of the Cold War, but he might face blowback if the upstart terror group has landed such a crushing blow. In the past, Putin has reacted to domestic political pressure by stoking nationalism and by acting decisively abroad, often in conflict with U.S. interests. So it's very difficult for the United States to predict exactly how he will react. One option for Putin might be to double down on his policy toward Syria and in support of Assad, raising the possibility of new conflicts with U.S. operations in the country. JUST
40 points (10g-30a) and 169 minutes in penalties. During the 2013-14 season, Morrison was a member of the Prince Albert Mintos who he helped capture the 2014 Telus Cup as National Midget AAA Champions. Morrison tallied four points (2g-2a) in seven tournament games with the Mintos. The 6-1, 193 lb defender was selected by Calgary in the seventh round, 149th overall in the 2012 WHL Bantam Draft. Brayden Pachal A native of Estevan, SK, Pachal has suited up in 34 games for the Royals this season and has recorded three assists and 44 minutes in penalties. The 6-0, 195 lb blueliner has tallied one goal and eight assists to go along with 73 penalty minutes in 74 career regular season games with Victoria. The Royals selected Pachal in the second round, 40th overall in the 2014 WHL Bantam Draft. Victoria returns home this week to play the Kelowna Rockets on Wednesday and Friday, and the Moose Jaw Warriors on Saturday. Puck drop for all three games is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. Tickets can be purchased in person at the Select Your Tickets Box Office, over the phone by calling 250-220-7889, or by visiting www.selectyourtickets.com. Group together and save big. Ask about the benefits and savings on our great ticket packages for groups of 10 or more. Call 250-220-7889 or email at tickets@victoriaroyals.com for more details. -30-THE FILIPINOS’ favorite quote from the late Lee Kuan Yew remains: “What a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy.” Singapore supposedly traded its freedoms for strong governance and economic progress, while post-Edsa Philippines was built on the opposite choice. Judging from its first elections without founding prime minister LKY last Friday, the evolved Singapore has both discipline and democracy. Our aimless banana republic still has neither. ADVERTISEMENT I was walking by Singapore’s riverfront noon last Tuesday when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, LKY’s son, spoke at an election rally. The stage was a stone’s throw away from Singapore’s old post office square, where LKY often spoke from the 1950s to the 1980s. I was stunned. The folksier junior Lee spoke for an hour about healthcare and pension policy, financial management, housing affordability and the parties’ track records, plus jokes about his Facebook likes. Even more stunning, the crowd listened intently. It was heart-wrenching to see a leader from another Southeast Asian country exude statesmanship and intellect in a rally because we never see a Philippine leader talk about actual policies (not in a rally at least). Three days later, Lee’s People’s Action Party (PAP) decisively beat the budding opposition, winning 70 percent of votes nationwide and all but one of the main electoral districts—the opposition bailiwick where the opposition won with only 50.95 percent. Pundits explain that in the 2011 elections, the opposition pounded on disenchantment over numerous (by Singapore standards!) subway breakdowns, overcrowding due to liberal immigration and the worryingly high cost of living. However, the PAP silently responded with new programs, down to pictures at each subway station of engineers doing night work on tracks, and made competence the headline issue for 2015. What I saw on Facebook and Channel News Asia was completely alien. Rallies became the new rock concerts, except that entertainers were legally banned. Speeches, which all discussed policies, were publicly rated. The beloved Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Tharman Shanmugaratnam gave professorial critiques of how fiscally irresponsible the opposition proposals were. He was cheered the way we would Manny Pacquiao. Shanmugaratnam is a senior adviser to the International Monetary Fund and has degrees from Harvard, Cambridge and the London School of Economics. The opposing Worker’s Party (WP) has Chen Show Mao, who led multibillion Chinese IPOs while in a top international law firm and he has degrees from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford. Taxi drivers in Singapore can recite these credentials, yet they would be scoffed at in the Philippines. The WP’s young face was 32-year-old Cambridge-educated He Ting Ru, also from a top international law firm. She could never be a serious Philippine candidate unless she was a scion of a political dynasty. Most heart-wrenching of all was watching my friends become politically empowered. A Harvard-educated Silicon Valley returnee decided to run as an opposition candidate. A Stanford-educated private equity manager asked me to review her first column for a popular opinion website, and note that Singapore’s alleged state control over media cannot extend to the Internet. The cream of Singapore’s youth volunteered as poll watchers. Everyone publicly dissected the parties’ manifestos. A candidate who practically told his opponent to stay home and take care of her newborn received a near-zero vote. Finally, Singapore being Singapore, indicative results from ballot sampling were released right when polling stations closed at 8 p.m. All results were available by midnight, except for one district where a recount was conducted due to the tiny margin. This was done by 3 a.m. There was absolutely no doubt about the results’ integrity. Filipinos grew up taught to poke fun at Singaporeans as brainwashed drones living in an Orwellian police state, who have everything in life except the Philippines’ most prized possession: democracy. We had better review the videos from Channel News Asia because Singaporean democracy after LKY appears far more meaningful than the superficial Philippine version. ADVERTISEMENT LKY himself criticized that the freest press in Southeast Asia has not fully checked corruption. We use our rambunctious US-style free speech mainly to complain about everything else we lack to little effect. In Singapore, Muslim women would never be told to take off their hijabs to “look more Filipino,” and F. Sionil José would be jailed for race-baiting. Accountability to the majority is a joke. Manila traffic costs billions daily and affects people from all walks of life, yet it will never be an election issue even if it has become so ridiculous that we are now deploying the same commandos we send into jungles to kill terrorists to help manage traffic. The recent Iglesia ni Cristo protests that sent Manila into gridlock are a stark reminder of minorities’ wildly disproportional influence and how Filipinos dance to invisible strings. We simply do not choose our leaders based on how they will defend our territory from China’s incursions, effect peace in Mindanao, or create employment for 100 million citizens. We would rather judge how they smile on TV and mouth empty platitudes, then go back to AlDub. Lee Hsien Loong’s most powerful appeal was to vote for leaders who would build a Singapore that could be passed on to the next generation with pride. He cautioned that anyone can get elected by writing checks for his children to pay. Our parents proudly stood at Edsa in 1986, but after seeing Singapore of all countries conduct its elections, we should be ashamed to pass this embarrassment we call democracy to their grandchildren without drastically fixing it. * * * React: oscarfranklin.tan@yahoo.com.ph, Twitter @oscarfbtan, facebook.com/OscarFranklinTan. Read Next LATEST STORIES MOST READMore than 1000 infringement notices and warnings have been handed out to freedom campers caught flouting council bylaws in the Coromandel Peninsula this year - with some of the worst offenders caught lighting illegal fires and defecating on public property. The data has been released just as the Thames-Coromandel District Council is launching a major review of the rules governing freedom camping in the area. It is also preparing for a legal challenge to its existing bylaw from the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association. Council deputy chief executive Benjamin Day said the infringement notices were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to bad behaviour, and the council was doing its best to accommodate campers as well as protect the environment. But the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association said the bylaw was illegal and negotiations with the council had broken down numerous times. There were 810 infringement notices and 333 warnings issued to campers between January and November, with most notices issued over the summer months. The worst problems were with campers lighting illegal fires, defecating outside and leaving their toilet paper and waste behind, Mr Day said. In a recent incident, a van converted into a camper was fined for staying in a prohibited area outside the council's Whitianga office, with one of its occupants urinating in a public place. Mr Day said a new wave of certified "self-contained" vans, which effectively had only a potty in them, were part of the problem. "We're finding all these campervans have the sticker saying they're self-contained, but they are not. The big campervans with a lot of storage and water, they will generally use their own toilet." The present bylaw makes it illegal to camp in a public place outside of designated areas. Mr Day said he thought the current bylaw was working, but the council had initiated a review to get feedback on how the legislation was working two years after it was first implemented. However, the association has set down a legal challenge of the council's current bylaw because it believes it contravenes the Freedom Camping Act and the Bill of Rights. "If they are going to have a bylaw it has to be consistent with the act," association president Bruce Stranger said. The freedom camping legislation pushed through Parliament in August 2011 allowed freedom camping in all local council areas, except in some restricted locations. Mr Stranger said the act allowed for areas of special significance but did not allow a total ban. But Mr Day said the Freedom Camping Act did not unlock land covered by other pieces of legislation, like the Resource Management Act. "We've tried to find as many places as we can where freedom camping will be allowed. "But the community have created reserve management plans and they have overwhelmingly said no freedom camping in our parks and reserves." He said the act had created a "legislative nightmare" and the judicial review was a "big waste of money" for ratepayers and for caravan association members. "We've told them the bylaw is under review and we'll have a new policy in place by the time the judicial review is finished." Feedback on the council's freedom camping bylaw is open until February next year and the council expects to adopt new rules in June. CAMPERS TO COUNCIL: DON'T LOCK US DOWN For Katy and Phil Legget, freedom camping is a luxury and an opportunity to be "like gypsies". "I've done the tent and I love that, but when it's just the two of you, you can rock up to a campsite [in a campervan] and you're ready in a few minutes," Mr Legget said. Mrs Legget said it was a great way to get to know people and it offered them the opportunity to stop wherever they liked. The Auckland couple, who are a few days into a nine-day holiday around the Coromandel Peninsula, were parked up near the mouth of Whangamata estuary when they spoke with the Waikato Times. The pair had spent the previous night at a designated camping area nearby, which they found in the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association guidebook, and had left by 8am - as required. Although the couple stayed in approved areas or campsites each night, the council's stance towards freedom camping drew a lukewarm response. Mr Legget said he could understand restrictions, but the council had to give people access. "If they lock it all down, then it won't help promote tourism." He said he did not see the harm in parking in non-designated areas in a self-contained campervan and, as was usually the case, one person could spoil it for everybody. "It's different if you're camping." Mrs Legget said educating people there were restrictions would help prevent incidents.CTVNews.ca Staff Montrealers are sharing information about how much they pay to rent their apartments on a new website -- and some landlords in the city are upset about it. The website, myrent.quebec, was launched in April with the goal of having tenants share information about the apartments they rent. That information, along with details about the number of bedrooms they have and what’s included in the rental price, is then put on a searchable online map. "Any common people like me would like to know what is the price, like when they travel around Montreal would like to know what is the average here for a 4 1/2 or a 5 1/2?" Luis Nobre, one of the site's founders, told CTV Montreal. Having that information, Nobre added, gives prospective renters a better idea of whether or not a landlord’s rates are reasonable for the neighbourhood that an apartment is in. So far, it has received about 1,500 entries. Landlords in the city, however, maintain that the website is illegal -- and unnecessary. Rental costs are always included in ads for apartments, Quebec Landlords Corporation spokesperson Hans Brouillette told CTV Montreal. Brouillette also believes that publicly collecting and sharing rental information is against the law. "It provides personal and confidential information about our leases, our rents, our incomes," Brouillette said. "Nobody wants to have his income being provided on a public website." Landlords, Brouillette added, are also concerned that there is no way to verify the accuracy of the information on the site. Nobre counters that his team tries to verify as much data as they can. Brouillette said that landlords have the right to charge whatever the market will bear, and that it’s only natural for rents to increase after renovations. "In some cases there were renovations, in other cases the rent was much too low compared to the market," Brouillette said of the website. Quebec’s rental board makes suggestions to landlords about rent increases and tenants can even apply for a decrease if they find out that a rent increase was too high. "Even though he already signed his lease, he has 10 days to apply to the Regie [du logement] to fix maybe a new rent," the board’s spokesperson, Denis Miron, told CTV Montreal. Lawyers for the Quebec Landlords Corporation, Brouillette said, are tracking data that’s been posted to the website. They have yet to decide what, if any, action will be taken, Brouillette said. With files from CTV MontrealLast week, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to vacate lower-court injunctions against the president’s executive order which, for a 90-day period, would ban travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, in upholding an injunction last month, said President 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’s executive order “in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination,” and therefore violates the First Amendment guarantee that government will treat all religions even-handedly. With Saturday’s attack in London attributed to Islamist terrorists, the focus on the case can only increase. ADVERTISEMENT These developments raise a question: will Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse herself and decline to participate in the case? The question arises, of course, from Ginsburg’s extraordinary, even shocking interventions in the last election campaign. In July of last year, smack dab in the middle of the election, Ginsburg decided, for reasons known only to herself, to vent her political opinions. When asked by an interviewer about a possible Trump presidency and how it might affect the Supreme Court, she said: “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs.” She was only warming up. Days after that first interview, Ginsburg told a second interviewer: “I can’t imagine what this place would be—I can’t imagine what the country would be—with Donald Trump as our president.” The prospect of a Trump presidency reminded her of something her late husband would have said: “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.” Predictably enough, then-candidate Trump retaliated with a tweet calling for her resignation. After another few days had passed, and having had time to judiciously consider the propriety of her behavior, Ginsburg decided to leap into the fray yet again. She confided to a third interviewer: “[Trump] is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.” (Talk about saying whatever comes into one’s head.) The last barrage drew a chorus of criticism from venues that would ordinarily be vociferous cheering sections for the semi-cult heroine also known as “the Notorious R.B.G.” Even the editorial page of the New York Times (not a reliable booster of Donald Trump in July of 2016 or today) opined that “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg needs to drop the political punditry and the name-calling.” Many other voices echoed those sentiments. The Times editorial appeared on July 13th. The next day, Ginsburg released a written statement: “On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised, and I regret making them. Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect.” There have been no further public outbursts from Ginsburg, but is her prior behavior itself sufficient to disqualify her from participating in the review of Trump’s proposed temporary travel ban? It says here that it is. Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, because they stand at the very pinnacle of the federal judiciary, are technically not bound by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. But there is no good reason why, technicalities aside, they should not adhere to the minimum standards set forth in the Code. Those relevant standards require, first of all, that a judge should not “publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office[.]” That’s one canon Justice Ginsburg has violated. The Code of Conduct also states that “[a] judge … should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” Will Justice Ginsburg’s participation in the pending travel-ban case promote “public confidence in the… impartiality of the judiciary”? I think not. It is not merely Ginsburg’s very public antipathy towards Trump that arguably disqualifies her, although even taken alone that might be enough. Rather, it is the particular nature of the pending case that would make her participation flagrantly inappropriate. The Fourth Circuit’s majority opinion that the Supreme Court will be reviewing turns on a finding that Trump’s stated reason for issuing the travel-ban “was provided in bad faith, as a pretext for its religious purpose.” The majority found that, although Trump said he was acting to protect the public, his true motive was to punish Muslims. So, one issue before the Supreme Court will be whether or not Trump’s reason for the travel ban was provided “in bad faith.” Justice Ginsburg has publicly labeled then-candidate Trump a “faker” who “says whatever comes into his head at the moment.” With that history, no rational person could have a shred of confidence that she will be an impartial judge of whether Pres. Trump acted in good or bad faith in stating his reason for the ban. No one can force Justice Ginsburg to recuse herself from the travel-ban case; it is entirely her own decision. But, if she truly understands how disastrously “ill-advised” her attacks on Trump were, she would step aside. David E. Weisberg is an attorney, and a member of the New York state bar. His writing has appeared in the Social Science Research Network and in The Times of Israel. The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.Image copyright Rex Features Image caption Emma Lundh joined Liverpool Ladies from Norwegian champions Lillestrom SK Former Liverpool Ladies striker Emma Lundh has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. MS causes the immune system to attack the protective coating of nerves in the brain and spinal cord, and can affect vision, walking and balance. Lundh, 27, was diagnosed in February, after years of struggling with fatigue. She joined Liverpool Ladies in January 2016 but left after 10 months, with a year still to run on her deal, to return to her native Sweden. "I began to be questioned," Lundh told Swedish news outlet SVT Sport, about her time in the Women's Super League. "The coach really believed me, but was annoyed when he realised that my performance varied so much. My only focus, most days, was to keep myself awake. I did not hurry anything else." Lundh, a Sweden international, was suffering with chronic symptoms of the incurable disease during the World Cup in Toronto in 2015. "I slept through the entire World Cup," she said. "Kosse [team-mate Kosovare Asllani] brought me coffee in the mornings because she thought I was so tired. "There was not a friend who did not comment on my fatigue." After leaving Liverpool, Lundh went on to sign for Vittsjo, who play in the women's top tier in her home country, and her contract with the club expires at the end of the season in November. She says she felt "destroyed" by her diagnosis but hopes she can continue playing. "When I felt like I did, my football became the only thing in life to focus on and the only thing that made me actually happy with myself," Lundh said. "When I was diagnosed, the first thing I thought was that I had to stop playing, the only thing I could always fall back on. "That's probably why my image of myself was destroyed. I was angry with myself and my body, the one that was my tool for what I love. "In February, I could not get up the stairs and in September I played football again. You never know what's happening in life and I cannot walk around and worry. "And who knows, maybe there will be a cure in a few years." You can now add WSL 1 notifications for line-ups, goals, kick-off, half-time and results in the BBC Sport app. Visit this page to find out how to sign-up.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nick Buckles, G4S: "We delivered a significant portion of the contract" The head of security firm G4S has said he expects the firm to be paid the full £235m contract for the Olympics despite the problems over staffing. Nick Buckles told MPs that he expected Games organisers to pay "exactly in line with the contract". Locog chief Paul Deighton earlier said it had paid G4S £90m up to 13 July, but nothing since the firm had said it could not deliver all the staff needed. He said the remaining part of the £235m contract was now "up for negotiation". G4S admitted last month that the Olympic contract had cost it £50m after it failed to deliver the 10,400 Olympic security guards needed in time. The government was forced to turn to the military for the extra staff, for which G4S confirmed it would pay. At a previous appearance before MPs, Mr Buckles apologised for the debacle. It had also been revealed that the company's interim results showed half-year pre-tax profits fell from £151m to £61m. Analysis Some £145m of tax payers money is sitting in the London Olympics bank account with G4S's name on it. But it's going nowhere. These are toxic times for the UK-based global security firm, and the Home Affairs Select Committee session showed how little sympathy there is for the company. Negotiations are on-going over how much of its £235m contract G4S should receive. The firm's CEO, Nick Buckles, was combative in his appearance - he wants all of it. His firm needs all the money it can get. Its failure on the Olympics could now threaten a far bigger slice of its business on public sector contracts. Remember, Nick Buckles said G4S took on the Olympics contract mainly for reputational gain. The commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was quick to warn against a more significant role for firms like G4S. Giving evidence earlier, Bernard Hogan-Howe said they should not be involved in "investigation, patrol... and the use of warranted powers". Even if G4S does not get all its money, Nick Buckles reminded the politicians just how much of a player his firm is, in both public and private life. Its staff deliver your money, read your meters, "we run your prisons, we run your hospitals", he said. When he appeared before the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday, Mr Buckles reiterated his pledge to meet the extra costs incurred by the police and armed forces to fill the gap. He also said there had been significant extra costs and the firm expected to incur penalties. He added there would be no profit from the Olympic Games contract and repeated that G4S expected to see a £50m loss on it. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Locog chief Paul Deighton: "We wouldn't intend to be paying them for anything they didn't do" Speaking about G4S, Mr Deighton told the committee: "We stopped paying them just after they told us they weren't delivering, so we didn't pay them again after 13 July." The Locog chief executive said all the money that had been paid to G4S so far was public money. Mr Deighton said G4S had told Locog on 11 July that it would not be able to provide enough security staff for the Olympics. That was just over two weeks before the Games started. He said G4S staff shortages during the Games had been 4% at best and 35% at worst. Lord Coe, London 2012 chairman, told the committee: "It is difficult to look beyond their inability to deliver on the contracted number of security personnel that we were consistently assured by them that they would be able to deliver." Lord Coe said he did not believe that G4S had deliberately misled Locog. Charles Farr, head of security and counter-terrorism at the Home Office, was more critical of the firm, saying that before 11 July it had given no clue it would struggle to meet the contract. "We were given sets of data which gave no indication whatever, even as late as 1 July, that there was going to be a problem fulfilling that contract. That data was what G4S relied upon to explain the progress of their programme," he told the committee. G4S has said in a statement that it had had 8,000 staff on the ground over the course of the Olympics and it had delivered 83% of contracted shifts. It added that in many cases, the military were able to be taken off duties at some Olympic sites as more security staff became available. Mr Buckles told MPs at a previous appearance that the staffing crisis had been a "humiliating shambles".Adam Chelstowski, AFP \| Protesters raise candles during a protest on July 18, 2017 in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw, as they urge the Polish President to reject a bill changing the judiciary system U.S. President Donald Trump described Poland as an exemplary ally in building defences to counter Russian “destabilising behaviour”, while appearing to encourage Polish defiance towards the European Union. ADVERTISING Read more Trump, en route to a potentially fractious G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, urged western NATO allies in Europe to spend more on defence, drawing a comparison with Poland which meets the agreed target of two percent of annual economic output. The brief visit to Warsaw was billed as an opportunity for him to patch up relations with European allies after a tense alliance summit in May. Trump said the United States and Poland shared similar values. “We’ve discussed our mutual commitment to safeguarding the values at the heart of our alliance: freedom, sovereignty and the rule of law,” he said in a joint press conference after meeting Polish President Andrzej Duda. “We are working with Poland in response to Russia’s actions and destabilizing behaviour. And we are grateful for the example Poland has set … by being one of the few nations that actually meets its (NATO’s) financial obligations.” The Kremlin said it disagreed with U.S. President Donald Trump’s assessment of Russia’s behaviour as destabilising. Trump is due to meet President Vladimir Putin for the first time on the sidelines of the Hamburg meeting. Poland and east European allies have expressed deep concern at Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine, as well as Russian military activity around its borders. Russia argues that this is a response to Western buildup. Since winning an election in 2015, Poland’s eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party has faced criticism from its western European peers over what some call an authoritarian tilt and its opposition to accepting Muslim migrants. It shares views with Trump on issues such as migration, climate change and coal mining, and has long said Brussels institutions should give back some power to national governments. European Union Later on Thursday, Trump was slated to condemn “the steady creep of government bureaucracy” and praise the sovereignty of nations in a speech at a Warsaw square, according to excerpts released by the White House. “The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies,” he will say, according to the White House. Trump did not mention the EU by name in this context but he has been critical of the EU in the past. “We must work together to counter forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.” The White House had said Trump would use the stopover in Warsaw to showcase his commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which he once called “obsolete”, bemoaning allies’ repeated failure to meet the two percent target. He had unnerved allies in May, not least those in the east concerned about Russia’s more assertive military posture, by failing to explicitly endorse the principle of collective defence enshrined in the NATO treaty. He made no explicit reference to that article in his comments. Duda for his part said he believed Trump took Poland’s security seriously. In Warsaw, Trump was also meeting other central European leaders as well as heads of state from the Balkans and Baltic states, gathered for a so-called Three Seas summit of countries on the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas. (REUTERS)Garcia has returned to England after a spell managing Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv Watford boss Oscar Garcia is expected to leave hospital on Friday but will not attend Saturday's home match with Bournemouth. The 41-year-old Spaniard was admitted to hospital on Sunday with minor chest pains and has undergone tests since. Assistant coach Ruben Martinez told BBC Three Counties Radio: "He is much better. I was with him on Thursday and he was very good. "He will be with us I think in a few days. He needs rest." Former Brighton boss Garcia oversaw a 1-0 Championship defeat at Charlton last week in his first game in charge since taking over from Beppe Sannino. But he went into hospital a day later and missed Tuesday's 1-0 win at Blackpool, a result which put the Hornets up to third in the table heading into the weekend's fixtures. The club have not confirmed a date for Garcia's return, but Martinez, who worked under the former Barcelona player at Brighton, has been in contact with the Watford boss. "We spoke about his problem, a few players, and that's it," he said. "He told me he knew the result when it finished because he had texts to congratulate him. "But he is concentrating on himself. We hope next week the cub can give you information on when he can come back."Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson: We love, value Romanians in the UK Romanians living in the UK “should not be worried” about their situation after Brexit because they are “extremely valuable members of our society,” UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in a interview with Agerpres. Johnson made a short visit to Bucharest on September 25 to meet with the Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Teodor Melescanu. The visit was meant to “show how the UK intends to deepen the bilateral relationship it has with its friends across Europe, notwithstanding our departure from the EU.” “I don’t think they should be worried at all. They shouldn’t worry because they are extremely valuable members of our society. We love them. They make an enormous contribution to the economy of the United Kingdom, to the British culture,” Johnson told Agerpres, when asked about how worried Romanians living in the UK should be after Brexit. “I was the mayor of London. When you walk through London, you see many Romanian stores, Romanians working in all areas. We think there are a half of million Romanians in the United Kingdom. We would be crazy to let them go back to Romania. We want to keep them, we want to make sure they feel safe and their rights are protected,” Johnson said. He reiterated the message in a video he posted on his Facebook page at the end of the visit. The UK Foreign Secretary also argued that the United Kingdom will not close after Brexit for “people of talent, ambition and determination,” but the country will be the one controlling its immigration system and not Brussels. editor@romania-insider.comA Brony goes to Ponyville and Scares Everyone p13Brownie creaked open his door and looked down the halls on either side of him. The moonlight streaked in through the open windows all the way down the hall, the addition of the flowing white net curtains and the deafening silence made the view all the more eerily beautiful. He heard the sound of a muffled cough to the right of him, he let out a gleeful squeaky fart as he knew it was Cadence. He could hold the temptation no longer, he left his room and stood outside the neighbouring room, just looking at the closed door that stood before him. Listening. Cadence started to hum a tune, She was looking in her mirror with her back facing the door, taking off her make-up and getting ready for a bath, the humming turned into muffled singing The kind of day of which I dreamed since I was small....", suddenly the door burst open, Cadence jolted in her seat slightly and stared open eyed into the mirror, too frightened to turn around and yet unable to take her eyes off the silhouetted intA A OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Washington now has the dubious distinction of being the whooping cough capitol of the nation, and the state is now hitting numbers not seen since the 1940s. According to Washington State Secretary of Health Mary Selecky, there have been 2,000 reported cases of whooping cough in Washington so far this year. "Two thousand cases is twelve times more than we had just a year ago," Selecky said. That's 2,000 cases despite all the crying babies and the 82,000 adults who've been inoculated. The counties hit the hardest are Skagit, Kittitas and Cowlitz, but Selecky said residents all over the state are vulnerable. "We are making the vaccine available for adults at no cost," she said. "We are sending vaccine to every local health department. They are working with providers so they should call their health department to see where they can get a free shot." The shots normally cost as much as $80, but the state isn't asking if residents can afford to pay for it. "We are more interested in getting the vaccine into your arm, rather than going through any means test. If you need it, we want to give it to you," Selecky said. Most adults don't get sick with whooping cough, but they can pass it to a child, which is the real problem. "Actually, our little babies are in the most danger," Selecky said. "When they get a coughing fit, their throats close up on them, which is why they turn blue." Selecky wants everyone to get vaccinated. Most insurance plans will pay for it, and those without insurance can call their local health department for information about getting a free shot.SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea fired three ballistic missiles on Tuesday which flew between 500 and 600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s military said, the latest in a series of provocative moves by the isolated country. The U.S. military said it detected launches of what it believed were two Scud missiles and one Rodong, a home-grown missile based on Soviet-era Scud technology. North Korea has fired both types numerous times in recent years, an indication that unlike recent launches that were seen as efforts by the North to improve its missile capability, Tuesday’s were meant as a show of force. “This smells political rather than technical to me,” said Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the U.S.-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California. “I think the number and distance of the missiles lets them remind the ROK (Republic of Korea) of what they are up against,” she said, referring to South Korea by its official name. North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the Japan, South Korea and the South’s main ally, the United States. The launches came nearly a week after South Korea and the United States chose a site in the South to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter threats from the North, which had prompted Pyongyang to threaten a “physical response”. “Our assessment is that it was done as a show of force,” a South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff official said at a briefing. The missiles were launched from an area in the North’s western region called Hwangju between 5:45 a.m. South Korea time (04:45 p.m. EDT Monday) and 6:40 a.m., the South’s military said, an indication that the North was confident they would not crash on its own territory. “The ballistic missiles’ flight went from 500 km to 600 km, which is a distance far enough to strike all of South Korea, including Busan,” the South’s military said in a statement. Busan is a South Korean port city in the south. North Korea has test-fired a series of ballistic missiles in recent months, in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, including intermediate-range missiles in June and a submarine-launched missile this month. “In addition to the basic
#NFA was a 100% FAN-BASED movement Gratefully Deadicated to organizing deadheads around the world in massive expressions of gratitude to the Grateful Dead during their 50th Anniversary Fare Thee Well shows. During the run-up to the Fare Thee Well shows in 2015, deadheads around the world came together through social media to share their joy, frustrations, excitement, and love. Out of this, #NFA was born from a single person’s post “Has anyone considered doing something to thank the band?” Of course we had. Individually, we had daydreamed of showering the band with thousands of roses, hanging banners from the rafters, renting planes to display sky banners, flooding their mailboxes with hundreds of thousands of thank you notes, raining tons of red-white-and-blue balloons down on the floor from the stands, and of course chanting “Know our love will not fade away” at the top of our lungs for forever and a day. The source of these sunshine daydreams is obvious to any deadhead. In the words of Phil Lesh, it was “The love we have for each other.” This one voice asking a single question created a focal point for these day dreams and we shared them with each other. A few of us started a Facebook group (#NFA) to focus the discussion, and discuss we did. The discussion attracted more than 1,000 group members. Poll after poll, post after post, we shared our dreams and we shared our love for the band and for each other. We came up with even more silly ways of showing our love — flash mobs with tens of thousands of black pocket t-shirts. Thousands of men wearing cutoffs that were just a little too short. Hilarity ensued. Haynes and Fruit of the Loom were both contacted, to no avail (some people have NO sense of humor). The logistics and expense of delivering 10s of thousands of roses to Soldier Field seemed staggering. Another group had already been formed to fly a sky banner. So we settled on a few goals: 1) Contributing to a massive collective donation to the Rex Foundation on behalf of all fans 2) Uploading thank you videos directed at the band 3) Starting the Not Fade Away chant all 5 nights of Fare Thee Well, right at the end of the set break. Not all of those things happened, at least not the way we had planned. We were thinking really big, and took some chances in the hopes of creating something beautiful. That’s something we learned from the Grateful Dead, who made a career out of taking really big chances. Some of those chances didn’t pan out so well. But as we all know, it’s the act of taking those big chances that creates miracles. And we did create miracles. When we got to Santa Clara, and then Chicago, some pretty incredible things did happen. People who had never met in person raced through the crowds to meet up with each other. Friendships were born. Others were strengthened. Strangers stopping strangers, not just to shake their hands, but to make things happen — to share a movement of 1,000 Facebook members with more than 100,000 fellow deadheads. We handed out cards, we held up signs, we talked to the media, we smiled for 3 days straight. Love ruled the day. And that love was carried into the stands, along with all of the love everyone else brought with them, and we know without a doubt that the band felt that love. Because they soaked up all of that love, magnified it, and then sent it right back to us. And we felt more deeply than anyone could possibly imagine. And the band. God bless the Grateful Dead. You know what else they did? They handed out tens of thousands of roses. They raised $526,000 dollars split among 17 charitites, including the Rex Foundation, by auctioning off a single guitar. They hired planes to fly over Soldier Field displaying all sorts of messages on sky banners. They hung banners from the rafters. They played Not Fade Away at the end of the 3rd show in Chicago, and the crowd joined in with the loudest chant anyone can remember. That chant lasted for what seemed forever in a tunnel in Grant Park as fans exited the stadium. It was exhilarating. In short, the band had taken the ideas discussed in #NFA and other Facebook groups and made them happen. We don’t suppose that the band was lurking on Facebook, listening to all their fans’ ideas. Still it warms our hearts to think that maybe, just maybe, they heard about some of this stuff and decided to make damned sure the really good ideas happened. More likely, though, we were ALL sharing the same dream, band and fans alike. And, as the song goes, we should not be surprised to find that they dream with us. In the end, we raised about $2,000 for the Rex Foundation, a mere 7% of their cut of the guitar auction. We got a handful of thank-you videos from fans directed at the band, and we hope the band members watch them here. We didn’t really start the NFA chant, although there were rumblings. In the end, the band started the chant. But the deadheads at the show sure as hell finished it! If you weren’t in the tunnel and haven’t seen the footage, you need to check out this video. Even though we didn’t do everything we set out to do, we did manage to do the most important thing of all. We served as one mechanism that channeled and focused the love we have for each other onto that stage. And that was the whole point. The Facebook Group #NFA will cease to exist on September 4, 2015, nearly 2 months after the close the Fare Thee Well shows. The shows are over, and our work is done. This page will remain on the web as long as that continues to make sense. We are not fading away, nor is our love. We are simply moving on to new expressions of that love, at new shows, with old band members and new, with old fans and new, with old family and new. And we will take the feeling we created with each other in Chicago, take it home, and do some good with it. After all, we are Forever Grateful. We are Forever Dead. We are Forever Family. Thank you, Bob, Phil, Billy, and Mickey. Thank you, Trey, Jeff and Bruce. We love you more than words can tell. See you all again real soon.If you have an itch, you have to scratch it. But that’s a problem for people with a condition called “chronic intractable itch,” where that itchy sensation never goes away–a difficult-to-treat condition closely associated with dialysis and renal failure. In a new study, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) describe a class of compounds with the potential to stop chronic itch without the adverse side effects normally associated with medicating the condition. “Our lab has been working on compounds that preserve the good properties of opioids and eliminate many of the side effects,” said TSRI Professor Laura Bohn. “The new paper describes how we have refined an aspect of signaling underlying how the drugs work at the receptor so they still suppress itch and do not induce sedation. Developing compounds that activate the receptors in this way may serve as a means to improve their therapeutic potential.” The study, which was published recently in the journal Neuropharmacology, used a compound called isoquinolinone 2.1 to target the kappa opioid receptor, which is widely expressed in the central nervous system and serves to moderate pain perception and stress responses. The compound was effective in stopping irritant-induced itch, without causing sedation, in mouse models of the condition. Bohn noted isoquinolinone 2.1 is one example of a new class of “biased” kappa agonists that avoid many central nervous system side effects by preferentially activating a G protein-mediated signaling cascade without involving another system based on β-arrestin protein interactions. About this neuropharmacology research The first author of the study, “Investigation of the Role of Beta Arrestin2 in Kappa Opioid Receptor Modulation in a Mouse Model of Pruritus,” was Jenny Morgenweck. Other authors include Kevin J. Frankowski, Thomas E. Prisinzano and Jeffrey Aubé of The University of Kansas and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Funding: The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (grant R01DA031927). Source: Scripps Research Institute Image Source: The image is credited to Orrling and Tomer S and is licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 Original Research: Abstract for “Investigation of the role of βarrestin2 in kappa opioid receptor modulation in a mouse model of pruritus” by Jenny Morgenweck, Kevin J. Frankowski, Thomas E. Prisinzano, Jeffrey Aubé, and Laura M. Bohn in Neuropharmacology. Published online August 25 2015 doi:10.1016/j.neuropharm.2015.08.027 Abstract Investigation of the role of βarrestin2 in kappa opioid receptor modulation in a mouse model of pruritus The kappa opioid receptor (KOR) is involved in mediating pruritus; agonists targeting this receptor have been used to treat chronic intractable itch. Conversely, antagonists induce an itch response at the site of injection. As a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR), the KOR has potential for signaling via G proteins and βarrestins, however, it is not clear which of these pathways are involved in the KOR modulation of itch. In this study asked whether the actions of KOR in pruritus involve βarrestins by using βarrestin2 knockout (βarr2-KO) mice as well as a recently described biased KOR agonist that biases receptor signaling toward G protein pathways over βarrestin2 recruitment. We find that the KOR antagonists nor-binaltorphimine (NorBNI) and 5′-guanidinonaltrindole (5′GNTI) induce acute pruritus in C57BL/6J mice, with reduced effects in KOR-KO mice. βArr2-KO mice display less of a response to KOR antagonist-induced itch compared to wild types, however no genotype differences are observed from chloroquine phosphate (CP)-induced itch, suggesting that the antagonists may utilize a KOR-βarrestin2 dependent mechanism. The KOR agonist U50,488H was equally effective in both WT and βarr2-KO mice in suppressing CP-induced itch. Furthermore, the G protein biased agonist, Isoquinolinone 2.1 was as effective as U50,488H in suppressing the itch response induced by KOR antagonist NorBNI or CP in C57BL/6J mice. Together these data suggest that the antipruritic effects of KOR agonists may not require βarrestins. “Investigation of the role of βarrestin2 in kappa opioid receptor modulation in a mouse model of pruritus” by Jenny Morgenweck, Kevin J. Frankowski, Thomas E. Prisinzano, Jeffrey Aubé, and Laura M. Bohn in Neuropharmacology. Published online August 25 2015 doi:10.1016/j.neuropharm.2015.08.027 Feel free to share this Neuroscience News.organized as a U.S. territory 1819, admitted as a state 1836; it was named for the Arkansas River, which was named for a Siouan tribe. The spelling of the term represents a French plural, Arcansas, of a name applied to the Quapaw people who lived on the Arkansas River; their name was also written in early times as Akancea, Acansea, Acansa (Dickinson, 1995). This was not the name used by the Quapaws themselves, however. The term /akansa/ was applied to them by Algonquian speakers; this consists of /a-/, an Algonquian prefix found in the names of ethnic groups, plus /kká:ze, a Siouan term refering to members of the Dhegiha branch of the Siouan family. This stem is also the origin for the name of the Kansa tribe and of the state of Kansas; thus the placenames Arkansas and Kansas indirectly have the same origin. [William Bright, "Native American Placenames of the United States," 2004]Telstra outage: Company apologises for internet service disruption with $25 credit Posted Telstra has announced it will be providing a $25 credit to thousands of its internet customers who were offline for an extended period of time due to its most recent network outage. On Friday, Telstra executives finally spoke out about the mass ADSL and NBN internet outage that began on May 19 with Telstra's chief operations officer Kate McKenzie publicly apologising to affected customers. "We'll be contacting customers directly who were offline for an extended period to apologise and offer them a credit," Telstra tweeted this morning in response to a customer query about the $25 credit that would be automatically provided to their account. The company acknowledged on Friday that the outage had, at one stage, affected 10 per cent of their internet customers — roughly 370,000 people. But Telstra could not confirm the exact number of those eligible for compensation, with Telstra's James Kelly saying it would be in the "single digit thousands". This is despite Ms McKenzie confirming on Friday that roughly 15,000 people were still unable to connect to the network last week. "Customers can have conversations with us if they want other forms of compensation," Mr Kelly told the ABC. Mr Kelly also confirmed the company was having "separate conversations with businesses about compensation and what their needs are". Some took to social media following Telstra's email, with one user speculating the company "may have learnt" from their previous free data days. "[In] April they gave a Sunday of unlimited data. I smashed it with music and audible books. They may have learnt from that," they tweeted. Telstra was widely criticised this week for twice publicly announcing online everything was fixed when some customers were still affected. The company announced in early May it would spend an additional $50 million on its mobile network in a bid to prevent ongoing outages. The first big outage in February was caused by what Telstra at the time called an "embarrassing human error". There were more problems in March after a failed international cable affected domestic operations, again bringing down the national mobile network. Experts have said the way the company has handled this latest major outage — the fourth of 2016 — has seriously damaged the brand. Topics: telecommunications, australiaDrivers can have their pick of license plates in Rhode Island, including vanity plates supporting the Red Sox, Plum Beach Lighthouse and cancer research. Those are all pretty neutral causes. The House and the Senate approved a "Choose Life" anti-abortion license plate this week, but it wasn't enough to end the debate. Officials at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England want Gov. Lincoln Chafee to veto the plates. "Our feeling is if we're going to use a motor vehicle for a way to get the message out, bumper stickers are a perfectly good way of doing that. But if you're looking for a license plate that is actually sponsored by the state, you're actually trying for a different kind of political statement by getting the state involved," said Susan Yolen of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. But lawmakers who voted on it and Rhode Island Right to Life said they hope the governor stays out of it. "If you don't want it, don't buy it. Nobody's forcing you to buy this. It's your decision. Again, it's your choice," said state Rep. Doreen Costa, who represents Exeter and North Kingstown. More than 29 states offer "Choose Life" plates, including Massachusetts and Connecticut. Supporters want Rhode Island drivers to decide if the plates hit the road. If 900 people order the license plate, the money raised will help CareNet Pregnancy Center of Rhode Island. CareNet would get half of the $40 drivers will spend on the plates. The faith-based group said it would use the money to help women who go through with their pregnancies. It provides parenting classes, counseling and goods, including diapers, formula and other necessities to new mothers. A spokeswoman said it also offers counseling for women who choose to abort. Chafee said he is "very concerned" about legislation to authorize a "Choose Life" license plate. The Democratic governor stopped short of vowing to veto the measure, but said Wednesday that he's opposed to using state license plates to support a religious organization. The Associated Press contributed to this report."THE CASE FOR CHRIST is a wonderful and important film. It... offers much to the atheist, agnostic, and believer alike. Bravo!" Dennis J. Trittin, Author and President, LifeSmart Publishing, LLC "Realistic, pitch-perfect, and powerful. … so needed in our time." Beverly Lewis, New York Times bestselling author "… a must-see, incredibly well made, entertaining, and thought-provoking film. I was truly blown away! Go see it!" Stephen Kendrick, Producer, War Room "WOW! Two thumbs up. So powerful and very well done. Great story. Great acting. Great cinematography.... Go see this true story and take your family and friends!" Jon Erwin, Director, Woodlawn, Moms’ Night Out "I was completely impressed.... I loved the ‘realness’ of Lee's journey that didn't sugarcoat his pursuit of truth. Thanks for being an open book Lee Strobel!" Stephen Dervan, Preaching and Prayer Pastor, Sherwood Baptist Church "THE CASE FOR CHRIST is superbly made with a powerful message.... See it early and take a friend!" Alex Kendrick, Director, War Room "THE CASE FOR CHRIST is just wow … so, so good. I could watch it again … an A+." Kevin Downes, Producer, I Can Only Imagine "I loved this movie! It was personal, profound and poignant. … Well done!" Brady Boyd, Pastor of New Life Church "This is the best faith film I’ve ever seen. An absolutely captivating story that fills you with hope." Jason Romano, former senior producer at ESPN, host of Sports Spectrum podcast "I absolutely loved THE CASE FOR CHRIST.... What set the movie apart for me was the storytelling. … What a well-made film! I can't wait to watch it again." Clayton King, Pastor at Newspring Church "This is one of the most powerful evangelistic movies I have ever seen! It connects on every level." Pastor Greg Laurie "This movie is the real deal … don't miss it." Santiago “Jimmy” Mellado, President and CEO, Compassion International "… a must-see movie for both Christians AND atheists." MovieGuide® "… a marvelous film. Well acted, well written, and a very powerful story!" Kerry Livgren, Founding member of KANSAS "It is honest and real, and I highly recommend it" Kathie Lee Gifford "It is such a powerful redemptive story! A must see!" Steve Carter, Teaching Pastor, Willow Creek Community Church "… one of the most important films of the past decade." Patrick Novecosky, Editor-in-Chief, Legatus magazine "It was so good that I was sorry when it was over. Just awesome, from beginning to end." David Limbaugh, author of Jesus on Trial and The True Jesus "You’ll be blessed, encouraged, and inspired to act by this movie." Ed Stetzer, Billy Graham Distinguished Chair, Wheaton College "Warning to skeptics: this movie could be hazardous to your unbelief!" Dr. Rice Broocks, Author, God’s Not Dead book "It was simply profound!" Jeff Farmer, President, Pentecostal Charismatic Churches of North America "… Extremely well done—I highly recommend it. Go see it!" Phil Ehart, Drummer for KANSAS "The quintessential outreach film of our time!" Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, President, NHCLC "…an engaging, beautiful story …" Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Philadelphia "This movie is a must see." Sheila Walsh, Bestselling Author "From one of my favorite books of all time to an incredible movie." Steve Green, President of Hobby Lobby, Inc. "It triggered both cheers and tears. It’s a good movie!" Greg Stier, CEO and Founder of Dare 2 Share Ministries "An outstanding movie." Dr. George Wood, General Superintendent The General Council of the Assemblies of God "I encourage you to take your family and friends …" Pastor John Hagee, Cornerstone Church "Unbelievably well done, extremely powerful love story—compelling and convicting!" Matt Roberson, Lead Pastor, Metropolitan Baptist Church, Houston "‘A’ for the script. ‘A’ for the props. ‘A+’ for the acting. A must-see film …" Fr. Francis "Rocky" Hoffman Executive Director, Relevant Radio Network "Objective minds will be challenged." Matthew Pinto, Publisher, Ascension PressSars says those identified include shareholders, directors and beneficiaries of offshore companies. CAPE TOWN - The South African Revenue Service(Sars) says it has identified about 1,700 South African residents named in information contained in the Panama Papers. Briefing a joint meeting of three parliamentary oversight committees earlier today, Sars official Vlok Symington told Members of Parliament (MP) Sars downloaded data made available two weeks ago by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The Consortium (ICIJ) was involved in the leak of millions of the Panama law firm's internal files. The revenue service's Symington says those identified include shareholders, directors and beneficiaries of offshore companies that Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca helped set up. "We've identified roughly 1,700 individual South African residents' names. That's after we removed the duplicates. Their roles vary from shareholders, directors, beneficiaries. We've identified 56 South African intermediaries" Symington says running the data against Sars' database has so far allowed them to identify 79 out of a total of 560 offshore companies - to which 81 South African residents have now been linked.San Diego Comic Con ticket registrations are coming up! The official date is Saturday February 16th, 2013 at 9am Pacific time. I have made a few posts about this subject, but this is a stressful time so I’ll give you guys my advice/input on the matter of scoring tickets to SDCC 2013! Also, I can give you an awesome trick that helped me out last year, so stick around. Preparation So, let’s talk about prep. I know I talk about the Con like it’s some monstrosity. I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating and that I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but this ticket buying part is literally the headache and heartbreak that everyone gears up for. So first thing is first, register for a Member Id. It’s what let’s you buy the tickets and last year they closed up registration as the date for buying tickets got closer, so the best thing you can do is get the account RIGHT NOW. The date that the member id registrations will close will be February 12th, so get on it! Fill out all your information and make an id that is easy to remember. I suggest doing first name initial and last name because you’ll need your last name to log in anyways and if your friend is buying tickets, then it’s that much easier to remember. If you are buying with someone else’s credit card, make sure you have an email and a billing address for registration. Cost is the next beast to conquer. The cost for an adult four day ticket with the preview night ticket is $175 and without preview night is $150. Now I’ve had people ask me if the preview night is worth it, and personally I don’t think so. The reasoning for my response is because I don’t think it’s worth the additional $25. It’s content that I will eventually see anyways, either online or when it is released, and that could mean another hotel night which is a hefty price to pay. Now, if you are going to be there either way on Wednesday, and you don’t mind spending the extra money, it’s a good day to get into the groove of the con. There are not as many people and you can get your badges earlier to beat the rush on Thursday. I screencapped the prices below for the admission, but you can find all of the information on the badge registration page. Now the price for four day tickets and single days are the same, and personally I’d say if you are going to SDCC and you can, get the four day one. But this is only if you intend to attend all four days. I sucks when people get tickets for four day and only attend a Thursday afternoon. The tickets can’t be duplicated, resold, or given away, so that is money and space wasted. Another thing to tag onto cost is just a general thing for our less-than-frugal readers. I always think I have all the time in the world to save up money for the Con until I realize suddenly it’s July and I have barely enough money in my account. So start saving! It’s never fun to decide whether you want a collectible or food for the night. Finally, read through the official website. I’m really glad that they remodeled it because it used to be confusing as hell and I had no idea where to go, but they are pretty well organized this year and everything is laid out. So read up! Registration Day As I’ve mentioned several times before, being connected to things like twitter and facebook will help you out a lot. Some helpful twitter accounts are @comic_con, @SDCCnerdsattack, and @SD_Comic_Con, also check out the #SDCC tag for information on registration day. The best facebook to check is Comi-Con International and to look in the “Recent Posts by Others on Comic-Con International” which will have all the people’s wall posts that aren’t from the administrator of the page. If you run into problems, check these sources, but also remember to never stop refreshing the registration page. Sometimes things are just slow and everything is lagging. Keep up with these on your phone instead of lagging your computer down by checking it in your browser. The best way to be ready is to wake up before it starts. Like I stated in my article about early hotel sales, get up early. I woke up late one year to my friends calling me on my cell phone numerous times and cursing my name for not helping them. Get your game face on, because time is of the essence. If you do not live in pacific time zone, check to see when is the relative time for you. Here’s the basic run down of what’s going to happen so you have a good idea of what is going on. 48 hours before that Saturday morning, you’ll have the link to the registration sent to your email. Sometimes the link is defunct, like it was last year, and it’ll redirect you incorrectly, so type in the url just to be safe. Copy and paste it and reopen the page in a new window. On the day of, you’ll notice like 20 mins before 9am that the site is starting to lag, even if nothing is on the page. These first few seconds are crucial, because when the page loads for you, that’s when you’ll get your ticket number. The ticket number is a lot like when you go to those offices that make you pull a ticket from those red dispensers that look like Laughing Cow cheese wheels. You get a number when you enter the room and it counts down. Sometimes, first time buyers are shocked by how many people are on at a time and when they finally get a ticket number, it’s something like 10972. Don’t be alarmed, and stick by it. I’ve known people we were 15,000th place in line and got tickets. You might not get 4-day passes or the ones you want, and when the time comes and you are called up and something you want is gone, you better have a contingency plan. Make sure to check twitter in this case, as people will announce when certain ticket groups are sold out. If you are buying tickets with other people, have their member ids, last name, first name all ready on the side, you’ll need it. If you are going as a group, have multiple people online trying to get in line. The more people playing on your team the better. Last year, for hotel sales, I worked with two other girls, and my cousin ended up getting like 110th in line because her boyfriend had set up a batch file (more on that later) that had gotten her in. Where as my ticket number was something in the 10,000s and my friend got something like 4,000. The more people you have, the better. Once they get in, stay in line just in case until they confirm the tickets are bought. The waiting and lag on the site can be the worst. If you are coordinating with friends it’s probably best to have a messenger up or something so you can talk to each other and see who is where. As far as browsers go, it seems to have made a difference for me. In the past, Safari has been the fastest, in my opinion. Chrome is the slowest, Firefox is ok, but I think maybe the lack of plug-ins and extras speeds up Safari. The Trick So I mentioned that my cousin’s boyfriend got us in a really good spot while attempting to get tickets, and he taught me a trick that I’m going to share with you. Note: This only works for Windows, sadly. It can be transfered over to Mac with Automator, but it has around a 10 second delay which can put you in a bad spot. If anyone finds a way to work it on Mac during this run on the 16th, they should comment down below on how they did it. Anyways, here is what you can do. Open Notepad, type this in: @echo off :run IF %time% GTR 9:00:00.00 (START firefox.exe http://reg13b.cloudapp.net/doorstep.html wait 10 EXIT) echo %time% IF %time% LEQ 9:00:00.00 ( goto :run) Save as All Files, enter name.bat Now just double click that file and watch it countdown. It should open in command prompt and start counting down. The time, in italics, should be set to whenever 9 PST is for you. When the countdown reaches the time, then it will open the webpage. Obviously the “firefox” can change to “chrome.exe” or anything else. There is no guarantee this will be faster, since there are obviously a bunch of other factors, but it’s a strong security net to have running on the side. Closing Words Hopefully, you got something useful from this article and it helps you when the day comes. The best thing to remember is that shit happens, and things get fucked up. A lot of the time, things just get bogged down, but don’t get discouraged! A few years ago, there were so many errors and retrials that everyone was on edge, but they have vastly improved their system since then and hopefully their server capacity can now handle the massive amounts of traffic that go through. Just get together with your friends, and be ready on that morning. You can feel free to shoot questions to my personal twitter @bamfpire the morning of, with questions. I will also be helping my friends get tickets, so I will keep it updated and tag all of my updates with #SDCC. Good luck, fellow nerds, and may the odds be ever in your favor! Share this: Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr Pinterest Like this: Like Loading...American service members in Afghanistan have relatively recently been officially required to report when U.S. taxpayer-funded Afghan security forces sexually abuse young boys, but they are “not obligated” to intervene and may be criminally punished for doing so, according to an audit by the Pentagon inspector general (IG). Moreover, one American service member told that the IG U.S. troops were told to “ignore” the ancient pedophilic Afghan custom known as bacha bazi, or “playing with boys,” confirming the findings of a New York Times (NYT) article issued in September 2015. The IG notes that reporting the incidents is necessary when a soldier actually observes child rape, and the soldier can intervene at that moment. Any action taken outside of actually witnessing the crime could result in disciplinary action. “There’s no recourse to stop them from bacha bazi. Soldiers told to ignore it and drive on,” said the service member.While popularly known for his piercing and relentless critiques of U.S. foreign policy and economic neoliberalism, Noam Chomsky made his career as a researcher and professor of linguistics and cognitive science. In his 50 years at MIT he earned the appellation “the father of modern linguistics” and—after overturning B.F. Skinner’s behaviorist paradigm—founder of the “cognitive revolution.” But these are labels the self-effacing Chomsky rejects, in his characteristically understated way, as he rejects all triumphalist narratives that seem to promise more than they deliver. Such is the case with Artificial Intelligence. The term, coined in 1956 by computer scientist John McCarthy, once described the optimism with which the scientific community pursued the secrets of human cognition in order to map those features onto machines. Optimism has turned to puzzlement, ambivalence, or in Chomsky’s case outright skepticism about the models and methodologies embraced by the field of AI. Never particularly sanguine about the prospects of unlocking the “black box” of human cognition through so-called “associationist” theories, Chomsky has recently become even more critical of the statistical models that have come to dominate so many of the sciences, though he is not without his critics. At an MIT symposium in May of last year, Chomsky expressed his doubts of a methodology Nobel-winning biologist Sydney Brenner has called “low input, high throughput, no output science.” Recently Yarden Katz, an MIT graduate student in Cognitive Sciences, sat down with Chomsky to discuss the problems with AI as Chomsky sees them. Katz’s complete interview appeared this month in The Atlantic. He also videotaped the interview and posted clips to his Youtube channel. In the clip above, Katz asks Chomsky about “forgotten methodologies in artificial intelligence.” Chomsky discusses the shift toward practical application in engineering and computing technology, which “directed people away from the original questions.” He also expresses the opinion that the original work was “way too optimistic” and assumed too much from the little data available, and he describes how “throwing a sophisticated machine” at the problem leads to a “self-reinforcing” definition of success that is at odds with scientific discovery. In the clip below, Chomsky discusses a new field in systems biology called “Connectomics,” an attempt to map the wiring of all the neurons in the brain—an endeavor prickly biologist Sydney Brenner calls “a form of insanity.” Katz asks if the “wiring diagram” of the brain would provide “the right level of abstraction” for understanding its workings. The interview is worth reading, or watching, in full, especially for students of neuroscience or psychology. Chomsky discusses the work of his onetime colleague David Marr, whose posthumously published book Vision has had an enormous influence on the field of cognitive science. Chomsky also praises the work of Randy Gallistel, who argues that developments in cognitive and information science will transform the field of neuroscience and overturn the paradigms embraced by early researchers in AI. While this is an exciting time to be a cognitive scientist, it seems, perhaps, a difficult time to be a proponent of Artificial Intelligence, given the complexities and challenges the field has yet to meet successfully. Related Content: Noam Chomsky Spells Out the Purpose of Education Noam Chomsky & Michel Foucault Debate Human Nature & Power (1971) Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.This blog post describes a model that we found useful for talking about CPAN dependencies and reverse dependencies at the QA Hackathon. At the head of the river is Perl itself with the core modules. The river flows into the sea, which contains all distributions that aren't used by any other distribution. Other distributions sit somewhere along the river, their position determined by their reverse dependencies. This post introduces the core concepts, but nothing more. The following picture illustrates the zones in the river model: The sea contains distributions that aren't used by any other distributions. Currently the best we can do is to say that they're not used by any other distributions on CPAN. When we have a service for tracking DarkPAN dependencies, then some of the distributions in the sea will start moving leftwards in the diagram. Just between the river and the sea we have the estuary: this contains distributions that are depended on by one or more distributions by the same author. Many services in the CPAN ecosystem make this same distinction. Moving upstream As soon as a distribution is depended on by someone else's distribution, it starts to move upriver. The very end of the river, just before the estuary, is where you find distributions that are used by exactly one other distribution, which is itself not relied on by any other distributions. Now if you release a broken version of your distribution to CPAN, you don't only break your distribution, you break the downstream distribution as well. But if you're maintaining a distribution, you need to be aware not just of the distributions that are using your distribution directly, but all distributions that are "downstream". Consider this situation: The distributions A and P both have 2 distributions downstream, but if the author of A looks at the reverse dependencies on MetaCPAN, (s)he might think they only have 1 downstream. Note also as well that considering only this part of the picture, C is more fragile than either Q or R: the author of C might think she's only relying on one module, but either of A or B breaking might break C. Upstream and downstream Now let's consider a distribution in the middle of the river: Distribution A is used by a number of distributions, which have varying number of distributions downstream themselves. All distributions used by A are upstream, by definition. The
would hang out in the lunchroom on a different floor, and just sit in there all day drawing. And I kind of discovered, there’s this kind of cute girl upstairs in the break room, and she’s sitting there by herself kind of mumbling and drawing really great girls. And you know that “John K. style” of drawing girls? Eh-eh. It’s the “Lynne Naylor style” of drawing girls. And all of us, me, him, Don Shank, everyone who draws those Ren & Stimpy, post-Ren & Stimpy girls, we’re all copying Lynne Naylor. She took Betty and Veronica and made them sexy. She really understood that way to draw girl characters. But she was a great layout artist, really talented animator. She still is. BW: She gave credit to John training her, but she also is a very modest person. She definitely brought a lot to the table. I always thought her drawings were the sexiest and John’s would do kind of a version of that was this hybrid style they kind of co-invented. But his stuff was always a little more masculine for some reason. But hers had a feminine, sexy quality to it. TK: Speaking of all these sexy girls, you guys pushed the envelope quite a bit on the show. How‘d you get away with it? BW: They didn’t really notice completely. They did start to see some things… BC: They were pretty naïve! BW: Part of it was that they didn’t have dirty minds. They weren’t sitting around looking for stuff to find a problem with. They were just happy that we were all doing cartoons and this whole thing seemed to be working out. BC: And to Vanessa’s credit, she stood her ground, said, “No, you’ve gotta let these guys do this stuff,” she fought for the jokes. BW: I did a cartoon over at Games called “Sammy and Me”, which was not shown, because I drew [Stimpy] as Sammy Davis Jr. with a glass eye. Stimpy had a glass eye to emulate him, he gouges his own eye out to have a glass eye just like his idol. BC: See, that’s children’s entertainment! BW: It somehow in the storyboard wasn’t noticed and after production was done, “You’re gonna have to change the whole cartoon.” And at that point, honestly, I expected Vanessa to cave, but she said, “Nope. Not changing it.” So what happened was is they didn’t show it for a little while, but in the process of repeating it, and putting it here, and putting it there, they just forgot. So it’s back in the collections and everything else. BC: Any production company, anybody that makes cartoons, they have a department within called “broadcast standards and practices”. And it’s their job to in-house police their own comment, to make sure the FCC doesn’t shut them down for indecency or whatever. I called it “double-standard and practices.” Because one week you could say “crap”, and the next week you couldn’t say “crap.” Things would change. But we would put in red herring jokes that we’d hope they would cut out. Because you have someone sitting in an office and it’s their job to find something wrong, right? So, why let them pick what’s wrong with the cartoon? We’ll pick what’s wrong with the cartoon. BW: And they’d miss some of those jokes and they’d get through. BC: And they got through! They would miss the red herring jokes which we were surprised about, but then they’d cut plot points out. I tell this all the time, my favorite thing is, there’s a cartoon called “Prehistoric Stimpy”, which is just full of innuendo, just jam-packed with off-color humor. But the note I got was, “Please remove the marijuana trees from the background.” [Audience laughter] BW: They were just stylized palm trees. BC: They were ferns! We had a good laugh about it. I was like, “Well those imbeciles, those morons, I’ll show them a thing or two!” I forget who said it, it might’ve been you, Bill, “No, Bob, you tell ‘em, ‘Oh you caught us! You’re smart! You tricky you!’” It was just kind of a game. I’ve got to admit, at first, Bill will back me up on this, I was kind of John’s dog. John would say, “Sic ‘em!” And I’d turn into a maniac and scream at people. BW: But you were a bit of a natural at that, it wasn’t so… BC: No, no, I can’t blame that on John. But it certainly helped. I had to deal with broadcast standards and practices all the time on the phone, it was my job. And it’s not because I’m qualified or tactful, or have any social skills. No, it’s because nobody else would do it, and I’m stupid enough to say I’ll do it. BW: Well it’s better not to have the creator be the asshole. It’s better to have somebody else like Bob be the asshole for him. BC: Like I said, it came naturally. TK: And on that subject… the infamous split. There’s a lot of misinformation about it out there… Tell us some of the things leading up to it and how it all went down. BC: We were way behind schedule, we were way over budget, and we were in trouble. We were making a cartoon… what was that cartoon called with George Liquor? BW: “Man’s Best Friend”. It’s actually my fault, I pitched the idea to John. And he fell in love with it and turned it into a cartoon they wouldn’t show. BC: The network was complaining, “We want you to cut this cartoon,” and John refused and he locked himself in his office and wouldn’t come out. BW: Well, he took bathroom breaks. BC: He did take bathroom breaks. I never actually saw him do that, but we assume he did. The cartoon was kind of brutal, and so the network said, “We don’t want to play this cartoon.” And he refused to cut it, and said he couldn’t be held responsible budgets or deadlines any more. So, he got fired. It was terrible. It was terrible, the idea that somebody who created something this wonderful was fired from their own show. It happens. They asked me to continue the show, I said, “No, I can’t, ‘till I talk to John.” I went and talked to John, and I said, “Look, they want me to finish the show.” He said, “Do it with my blessing because I got us fired again.” I said, “I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna finish your cartoons.” How many of his cartoons were in production, like five? TK: More than that. BC: Yeah, he had a bunch of cartoons that were in various stages of incompletion. “I’m gonna finish your cartoons first, I’m gonna work on them personally, I’m gonna put the best guys on it, we’re gonna do 100 percent layout, and I want to make them the best of the series. And I want you to be proud of me and I want you to know I’m gonna protect your vision.” I said that to him, and he thanked me. Then we went on and made the show. It’s so funny, as angry as we were at John, however mad he was at us, whatever bad blood was there… we all, and Bill will back me up on this, we all fought for John’s vision still. Throughout the rest of the series, we said, “Is this something John would like?” “No, this isn’t right, this isn’t the way the show was designed, this isn’t his vision, so we’re not gonna do it.” We’re gonna try and do shows that he’d be proud of, whether we wanted to strangle him or not. BW: There was a little period of time when he was first fired where… he came in the room and he told us, and he cried. We were all destroyed by it, because we had all really pinned so much hope on this, and we knew what it was. And, here we go again. It’s like, something that could be great is going to be stopped in its tracks. I can’t tell you how many projects that I worked on that were too good for networks so to speak, because the creators were too wild. He told me, he confided in me, I went in his room later, like, “Oh my god, what are we gonna do…” blah, blah blah. And it’s just like, “Don’t sweat it, I’m relieved. This thing was killing me.” I’m like, “What?” Really, he had put himself under so much strain that this was a relief. But what happened, when he had some time to get away from it, he started to realize what he had lost. And what’s difficult for him is to take personal responsibility for a difficult personality. It’s very difficult for him, if possible at all. He couldn’t blame himself, so he had to blame a fall guy. And that’s what happened, in my opinion. I told him, “Well, I’m probably going to work for Bob.” And he said, “Couldn’t you get a job somewhere else?” And I said, “Not on a show like this. You know what I’m talking about.” And he goes, “I know exactly what you’re talking about. You can have my blessing.” I got the blessing, too, the pope signed off on the two of us. But he would never admit that. TK: You both directed on the show. Can you describe making a cartoon on Ren & Stimpy, and what was important to you? BC: To me, it’s all about the funny. You’re sitting around with a bunch of the funniest guys in the studio, Bill was always there, we would throw ideas out. Then we’d go off in our separate corners and we’d make storyboards from one or two page outlines. We had the freedom to write the dialogue to make it as funny as we wanted. And the one thing that we did, is we didn’t have a script, which was written in stone. And that’s what everyone does now in animation. And you’re not allowed to deviate from the script, because the writer in a cartoon is more important than a cartoonist in a cartoon. BW: More important than God. BC: And they get producer’s credits. But we’re not bitter, are we Bill? BW: Not bitter at all! BC: We’re just telling it like it is. BW: Who could be bitter at God? BC: So we could make the cartoon better at every stage. We weren’t slaves to that original piece of paper where those ideas were written down. BW: Although down in the recording booth, we would modify if Billy said some really funny line that was different. BC: God bless Billy West. He was like Mel Blanc times three. You could bring him in and say, “What’ve ya got for us today, Billy?” And he’d just make us pee our pants laughing, taking our jokes and making them twice as funny. And he could do anything. BW: And at the beginning it looked like he was going to do both voices. Maybe you know the story better than me, but I’d heard it was something along the lines that Nickelodeon was concerned it would be too much power in the hands of one artist, or some variation on that, and that John had a desire to do voices. But later when Billy did Ren, he’d already perfected it a long time before that. BC: We all did some voices on the show. I was directing on the top-rated show on TV, I was like, “Hell yeah, I’ll do some voices.” I get to pay myself? I get a SAG card? Yay! BW: And the only royalty in the business. BC: We did a cartoon called “Reverend Jack”, which was about John K., a love letter to John. BW: Love letter. BC: It really was. You ever have a bunch of friends that you hang around with… think of Howard Stern… where everybody’s funny and everybody’s fair game… if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. So you make fun at each others’ expense, and you’re always funny. That’s what it’s like being in our world. And John’s not a kind person, he’s not the kind of person who worries whether or not he’s hurting anybody’s feelings. And I figure he’s fair game. I don’t mean to brag, but I can be just as mean as John! He’s seen me do it! You don’t wanna get on my wrong side, ‘cause you’ll be dead. I’ll be so funny you’ll kill yourself. BW: Or yelling as loudly as he was. BC: Or yelling as loudly as I was. So I got to get Frank Gorshin to do the voice of John. The Riddler! And to this day it’s the high point of my life. I remember trying to feed him a line, and he went, “Nooooooooo!” He nailed it. He started off as Burt Lancaster and slowly turned into Kirk Douglas. If you haven’t seen “Reverend Jack”, you should see it. It doesn’t make any sense at all, but it’s still funny. But to somebody who knows John, you’ll go, “Ohhh…..” BW: Let me tell the cheese story… The main joke in that cartoon was them putting cheese and lunchmeat on his head, like they were anointing him in a religious ritual. That actually happened at a party of John’s when we were all so drunk we couldn’t walk. And Bob Jaques, the animation director on most of the better Ren & Stimpy cartoons, walked over to John, and he had a big platter for the party… And he put a piece of cheese or meat on John’s head. And John was too proud and too drunk, he couldn’t even lift this arms. He said, “I’m sure you think that’s funny.” BC: “I’m sure you want to waste perfectly good lunchmeat like that!” BW: And he built a sandwich on his head. BC: So it ended up in a cartoon. BW: So it was a true-to-life cartoon. TK: So “Reverend Jack” is obviously a favorite, what are some of your other favorite Ren & Stimpy episodes? Not necessarily ones you directed. BC: Certainly, because those are the best. I didn’t direct it, but I’ve got to say “Stimpy’s Invention”. It was my idea, I storyboarded it, except for the beaver scene. I wrote it and I’m proud of it. We threw a big party for that cartoon when we premiered it at the studio. And everybody from Hollywood showed up, a lot of famous comedians…. And we showed “Stimpy’s Invention”. And I’m sitting on the floor in front of the screen, looking around. And people are laughing, doubled over with tears running down their faces. I was like, “Holy cow, I’ve never seen anyone actually laugh at a cartoon before!” BW: You might be onto something. BC: People were bursting out uncontrolled laughter! What’ve I done? I was like, “Okay, I can die now, because this is the high point of my life. I’ve made a cartoon that makes people laugh this hard.” It’s like the Super Bowl of being an animator or cartoonist. But I want to say a couple of other cartoons… Tom McGrath, he’s a brilliant animation director, makes big-budget movies now. But he started working on Ren & Stimpy, and he made a cartoon called “I Was a Teen-Age Stimpy”. And I think it’s a perfect cartoon. It’s about Stimpy hitting puberty. “Space Madness” too. What do you think, Bill? BW: I think you hit the high points, I have to agree. Tom was so modest, he used to come in my office and ask for advice. And it was the first cartoon he ever directed and it was a homerun. And he was an example of why we were so unhappy that the show ended when it did. Bob already had it down, and John did his brilliant cartoons. But guys like me who were getting their first shot, we’d only done it for a year, we were still too green. You can watch my cartoons and you see promising notes in them. But truly none of them were great. I might’ve done great cartoons in a second year, and Tom certainly would’ve. Chris Reccardi’s cartoons tended to look the coolest in a way, didn’t they? They had a certain graphic quality. I kind of have a fondness for “Hermit Ren” because I wrote on that. There’s lots of great ones, lots of stinkers too… BC: Well, Thad, what do you think? Hey, if you’re here, clearly you like Ren & Stimpy. Thad wrote a book about The Ren & Stimpy Show, from the very first, earliest stories of us getting together to the Adult Party Cartoon. And he interviewed everybody except a few grumpy people…. BW: That would be me. [laughter] I apologized to him already, because at the time I didn’t really want to talk about Ren & Stimpy ever again. I’m over it now. BC: And John wouldn’t be interviewed of course. But I’ve gotta say, it’s a pretty objective, and fair, and true book about how it went down. You know, it’s not all easy to read, and having been there, I was telling him today… I learned stuff reading it, and I was there. “Wow, I didn’t know that! I said that?” If you really like the show and want to know what’s going on, please go and buy a copy of Thad’s book, because it’s really well-written. And in the back, he’s got a list of all the episodes, breaks them down, and his reviews of them—which I don’t always agree with, Thad. But I appreciate his criticism because at least he’s honest. BW: One thing I wanted to say, because we talked some shit up here today… And I truly believe this… One of the reasons the breakup of this crew was so bitter, and certain people are still bitter, bitter, bitter angry about it…. BC: I used to be… BW: Let me finish… I’m sentimental today or something…. We all loved each other and it was really like a family breaking apart. So that’s why the betrayal on all sides was so bitter and still is today. BC: I remember the day that they fired everybody and they closed down the studio, we all felt like we were dying. And then when they asked me to finish the show, I went and hid in my studio behind my house for like a couple of weeks, and didn’t talk to anybody, didn’t answer the phone. And just thought, “Okay, am I going to finish the highest-rated show on cable TV that I love more than anything and thrown my heart into and betray my best friend? Am I gonna do that?” And it wasn’t easy. And I have friends to this day who I consider mentors, dear friends, who still won’t talk to me. Because they’re convinced I stabbed John in the back. Bill, did I stab John in the back? BW: Hollywood is more complicated than that. And when a studio fires you, they fire you. Bob not going to work for them wouldn’t have made them hire John back, I promise you that. That was an opportunity that they took, and they were smart, that’s what they should’ve done. What else would you do but hire the second-in-command if you had a show that was a success? Did that enable them to be tougher with John? They fired John before they talked to Bob. So that’s just not part of the equation. BC: So the fact that lifelong friendships were torn asunder by it, that says something to the passion that we all felt for making the show, and for what we had done together. It’s something we all still share. And the real sad part is that I run into people who were in the same kind of work situation as us, working for this person. That we all feel like we need psychological help, like we’re all crazy. We’re good crazy though, but also bad crazy, you know? BW: Most comedians are out of their minds. BC: Yeah, yeah. But, I have a table here, and I’m doing prints and stuff, sketching for people. And I’m not doing that because I need the money or have to do this to make a living. Well, yeah, that’s why. But, I do it because I love Ren & Stimpy. With all my heart. And I’m not gonna make pornographic cartoons starring Ren and Stimpy, because it’s wrong. I’m here to protect the characters and their vision, and who they and what they mean to people. The one thing I hear most, and I know you hear it too, Bill. Some of you have said it to me today: “Thank you for my childhood.” BW: Actually, the most common one is, “Thank you for not having me go crazy.” Because it was like an outlet for nutty people. BC: It is, because Ren & Stimpy is about a dysfunctional couple. BW: That’s kind of what we all are, in one way or another. BC: And that’s the thing, I think, Thad, you’ll agree with me, that the thing that makes Ren & Stimpy important to people is that it’s relatable. Because it reflects relationships they’ve had, dynamics they have with members of their family…. BW: The anger. BC: The anger. I want to tell you a funny story. One time we were in a hamburger joint in Beverly Hills, across where Games Animation was. BW: You would see Dean Martin and Slash in there every day. Nice combination. BC: Yeah, yeah, and we’re sitting there, and Bill says to me, “Bob, Bob, look, it’s Kirk Douglas.” And I look over, and sure enough, sitting across the room is Kirk Douglas. And Bill tells me, “Bob, go talk to him.” BW: He was up at the highest point in the restaurant, and he was sitting there eating, and he looks like he’s surveying the room, “Why don’t you recognize me?” BC: “I can’t talk to Kirk Douglas, what’re you nuts?” And Bill says, “Screw it!” And he stands up and he kind of storms over to him… “What’s he gonna do? Leave him alone, Bill, he’s an old man!” So he goes across the room, and he says something to him, and I can’t hear what he’s saying… And Kirk Douglas goes… “Yes. The anger!” [Audience laughter] What did you say to him? BW: I think I briefly set up kind of what who we were and what we were doing. And just how much we admired him because he was the angriest actor ever. And he embraced that. BC: How many of you guys know Sid Caesar? He had a show, Show of Shows, and a guy on it named Howard Morris. And he’s known for being a character on The Andy Griffith Show. He’s a little-bitty guy and kind of a funny voice… Remember Abner and Ewalt on Ren & Stimpy? Ewalt is me doing an impersonation of Howard Morris. So me and Bill and Jim Gomez were sitting in that restaurant, gagging up a cartoon. And there’s an old man sitting behind us, and we could just see the top of his head, and two ladies who were clearly his daughters, they were saying, “Pop, you okay, you get enough to eat?” And they say, “Okay, pop time to go,” and they get up… And he says, “I’ll be right with you.” So he gets up, and he’s walking by, and he’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye. And I go, “Oh… Howard Morris!” And I go, “Hi, we’re…” And he goes, “I know who you are. Y’know… You boys say the word ‘fuck’ an awful lot.” And I’m like, “Oh, I’m really sorry…” “No, it’s okay. I kinda like it. Y’know, sometimes I say it too, and my wife makes me go stand in the backyard.” And he walked out. [Audience laughter] BW: Sid Cesar ate there too. Yeah, Hamburger Hamlet was like the hot-spot of has-beens. TK: So how would you sum up the legacy of Ren & Stimpy? BW: It starts to sound self-aggrandizing after a while, but we were just part of a team that brought cartoons back. It brought funny, irreverent ones where characters had emotions and relationships and character development. BC: I gotta say thanks to Nickelodeon for allowing us to make the cartoon. Some people like to complain that a lot of jokes were cut out. Well, they’re businessmen and they make cartoons for television. They don’t always agree with your vision. But they were really great. BW: At the time we would freak out, but I came to know, and I now counsel younger show runners when they happen to talk to me, don’t be married to a joke that the network asks you to change. Because what we would do is change the joke and make it more subversive. We just made it a little harder to understand. BC: I’ve got to tell you the best example of that. We made a cartoon called “Prehistoric Stimpy”, and there’s ton of innuendo and barely hidden off-color stuff. But there’s a scene… Jack Carter did the voice of Wilbur Cobb. I love Wilbur Cobb. BW: Well, you created him. [Audience laughter] BC: No! You and Jim Gomez did! BW: We did? BC: Yeah, because you were making fun of Will McRobb! BW: Oh, right. Well, you did the drawing. BC: Will McRobb was the story editor for Nickelodeon. And he had the dubious job of having to rein us in. And God bless him for even trying, because we were such a bunch of jerks. So there was a line in it where Wilbur Cobb is telling Ren and Stimpy, he’s the tour guide, why the dinosaurs died out. He goes, “Well, I’ll tell ya why the dinosaurs died! They were runnin’ with scissors! No, no, they went swimming too soon after they ate! No! No! It was jock itch! Really bad jock itch!” [Audience laughter] Well, we loved that, that’s really funny, right? So Nickelodeon said, “No. You can’t say ‘jock itch.’” What!? “All right, I’ll call you back.” So I’m sitting in my office, I’m stewing, and I thought, “What the hell, I’m gonna try it.” So I call up, “Hi, it’s Bob! How ya doin’? I got an idea for that joke! Can we say hemorrhoids?’” “Oh, sure, you can say ‘hemorrhoids!’” I nearly lost my mind! And so I call Jack Carter and say, “Get over here fast. We may have a really important moment in your career!” [Audience laughter] BW: And remember, bleeding assholes are a lot better than clothing for penises. The most fun I had directing was with was Tommy Davidson [doing Sammy Davis Jr. in Sammy and Me]. That was just an unlimited riot. You could tell he was pleasantly surprised that he was allowed to go as far as he was allowed to go, and we kept encouraging him. BC: And Bill got to direct Dom DeLuise. We told the people, “Okay, you’ve got to bring a lot of food in, Dom DeLuise likes to eat.” So we had a huge table, a banquet… And Dom DeLuise comes in, and I said, “Dom! We have a little time before we starting recording, would you like something to eat?” He goes, “Oh no. I couldn’t.” [Audience laughter] So we’re wetting ourselves, it’s Dom DeLuise doing Marlon Brando. And so when he came out, he ate everything. And we’re just sitting there laughing. Because it was like we get dinner and a show. BW: There was actually one point where I tried to direct him, which was a mistake. “I’ve been doing Marlon Brando since before you were conceived!” After the whole thing was done, he came to me and apologized to me privately. [We took questions from the audience, and someone asked if there was something behind the “Happy Happy Joy Joy” song.] BC: When I came up with that cartoon, I wanted there to be a song sequence. And were playing around with this character Stinky Whizzleteats. Burl Ives, because we were all obsessed with Burl Ives. Because Burl Ives is this interesting character, he did two really cool things in life. One is he played huge, murderous bullies in movies, and he made children’s records. And if you listen to his children’s records, “Oh, that’s kind of cute.” And then, “Oh my god, what did he just say there? That’s twisted.” I can’t take credit for the song. I storyboarded it, “Here’s where they sing the ‘Happy Happy Joy Joy’ song.” But you gotta credit John, Jim Smith, and Chris Reccardi. BW: And you’ve got to credit me, because my room was directly across from the recording studio. And it took them all day to record that song. You have to credit me for not going in there and killing them. [Audience laughter] But I’ve learned to like it. [Someone asked if they’d bring the characters back.] BW: Well, this is the news of the day, because it looks like John is doing a cartoon for the next SpongeBob movie. So, I hope he finishes it and I hope it’s great, but we won’t be working on it. BC: We’re not invited to that party. BW: I can’t speak for Bob because he’s got more issues with John, I mean I’ve got mine. But I actually would, because I love the characters more than the feud. But he’s not going to have me. He likes to work with young, inexperienced kids and train them, that’s his thing. But a new Ren and Stimpy cartoon is still cool, and it’ll be cool in some way if he gets it finished. BC: And it means there’s still some life in that franchise. A new Ren & Stimpy short has not been formally announced or confirmed by Nickelodeon, but Bill was not the first person I heard this news from. At Annecy this year, John K. screened an animatic of a R&S short that would have opened the last SpongeBob movie, Sponge Out of Water, but was never produced. It’s been posted on social media that he’s starting a new studio for a “big project”—word is that it’s indeed a new Ren & Stimpy short. As with anything in this particular world, buzz and animatics may be all we ever hear and see. Regardless, it’s clear the Sick Little Monkeys‘ story is far from over.Actor, wrestler, comedian and all-around charismatic guy Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has been quite the supporter of the scene lately. Not only did he tweet back Of Mice & Men's Aaron Pauley to keep kicking ass, he also had an amazing Twitter conversation with the Word Alive's Tells Smith the other day. Read more: Turns out rapper Machine Gun Kelly loves Blink-182 just as much as the rest of us It turns out, according to a new interview with GQ, we may have a scene supporter in the White House at some point. In the extensive profile, writer Caity Weaver asked Johnson if he would actually “give up his life as the highest-paid movie star on earth—which is unquestionably easier, more fun, and more lucrative than being president of the United States—in order to run for office.” Johnson replies, “I think that it's a real possibility.” The article goes on to discuss how Johnson didn't give his support to either presidential campaign last year even though both reached out to him for endorsement. “I feel like I'm in a position now where my word carries a lot of weight and influence, which of course is why they want the endorsement,” he says. “But I also have a tremendous amount of respect for the process and felt like if I did share my political views publicly, a few things would happen—and these are all conversations I have with myself, in the gym at four o'clock in the morning—I felt like it would either (a) make people unhappy with the thought of whatever my political view was. And, also, it might sway an opinion, which I didn't want to do.” NBCUniversal vice chairman Ron Meyer says, “If [becoming the president] is something he focused on, he probably would accomplish it. I think there's nothing that he couldn't do.” As Uproxx points out, back in 2016, The Washington Post published an article titled “Dwayne Johnson says he might want to run for president. He could actually win.” Johnson posted the article on his Instagram, saying, “I care DEEPLY about our county… and the idea of one day becoming President to create real positive impact and global change is very alluring.” The Word Alive and Of Mice & Men blasting in the Oval Office? Maybe. Give us your thoughts in the comments.After offering prayers in the Dome’s inner sanctum, Ibrahim, my guide, led me up the steps. We were careful not to bang our heads on the low ceiling. Turning around at the top, Ibrahim pointed to the glass-enclosed roof of the cave, the Rock, showing me it remained intact. All I saw was a mass of electrical wiring. The sanctity of the stone was lost amid a spaghetti of cables and energy-saving bulbs. I paused to snap the fractured blue tiles bearing the Shahadah, quickly moving on with diminishing hopes of capturing some architectural beauty. Upstairs, a maze of scaffolding interrupted the crude fans discrediting every edifice – so many barnacles pock-marking a long sunken ship. Discouraged, I suddenly missed my architect father. He would have known each and every principle of the Dome’s construction. In, naming every feature, he would have put language to the beauty of a magnificent past which, even if obscured by the ramshackle present, surely lingered here. Still, I did what I could. I walked around the Dome craning my neck, one hand on my scarf, the other on the shutter. Relying on the zoom of my camera, slowly, I spied detail amid debris. In the dim light alternating between the flickering glare of fluorescent tubes and the insipid beam of mismatched chandeliers once donated by vainglorious leaders but now devoid of light bulbs, I began to see. Shyly, the fading beauty of the shrine peered back at me. I felt newly small below her vastness. Despite her mummification in slipshod scaffolding and swathes of canvas, the dowager Dome was still regal. As I followed Ibrahim, his detailed narration fell from my ears and soon I found myself in a labyrinth of childhood memories. As we walked in circles, I revisited my girlhood filled with the mosques. Now, I walked in my father’s footfall surrounded by the striped arches of Cordoba, now I scurried in my mother’s shadow in Qum. In the stillness of the Dome, the sound of fountains returns. In the whispers of the worshipers, the embers of a Granada breeze stir against my cheek, the fragrant Generalife suddenly near. I am a tiny child gamboling on the green lawns of Jalalabad. I am a wide-eyed munchkin captured by bustling Tehran. In the stripes above, a gorgeous layer cake- the precision of a 16th century Mughal mosque in Thatta returns. There are so many memories. As I circle the octagon, I traverse Islamic civilization, from Anadalus to Agra, from Muslim girlhood to Muslim womanhood. Mesmerizing, the Dome revolves, or could it be me? I glimpse now the Hagia Sophia of Istanbul, now the Blue Mosque of Isfahan, now the Baad Shaahi Masjid of Lahore, now the mausoleum of Mumtaz Mahal on the languid Jumna. Technicolor ceilings merge with the geometry of Mughal memory echoing the Lahore Fort. Mosques of my memory are vibrant blues and peacock greens, their terracotta meticulously striped, their calligraphy gorgeously mosaic-ed. In my memory, mosques had once been churches and churches had once been mosques. They unify into a dancing kaleidoscope. Empires had risen. Empires had fallen. Always their buildings remained, sole, authentic historians. And in my reverie, in my every memory palace: my architect aesthete father. Guide to his impish daughter of seven, he leads her this way, and that, as he unveiled to her the divine beauty only man can forge in earthly stone. Inscribing deeply in me the beauty intended by long dead authors, thirty-eight years on, because of my father, in this fading shrine I could still inhabit the painstaking glory of Islamic civilization at its long-past ascendancy. I know the beauty at the center of Islamic expression. Grown, I have acquired my father’s habit of amassing buildings in my mind. The memories find me here on the Temple Mount, submerging my sorrow for the neglected elegy with tender hope. In this Dome, I relish my father’s legacy: his special attachment for the romanticism of crumbling architectures, which now to both of us communicate the peerless medium of enshrined beauty, a daughter’s most precious inheritance. The ancient architects of Islam had possessed expansive imaginations, such appetites for beauty, but today, here, all that remained were the sun-bleached bones, the fading mosaics, the bald gardens, and unseeing visitors, few of whom could understand the beauty enfolding us. Leaving the Dome, we walked South, on to Al Aqsa. It was hotter still. At the doorway, four men gently chatting took in the scene of the American tourist and her guide. Patiently, they waited for the Asr prayer
, so whom is he going to inform? Instead, he’s picked up extra money by writing publicity releases and selling ads for the newspaper. But he knows, “The hardest part of the job is survive on the salary. That is why the sobres exist.” It has been years since he completely trusted anyone he works with. He goes inside and makes machaca with eggs for his boy. He tells his son that he is going to his office and that he should keep an eye on the house. He reads the papers at his desk, then goes three blocks to the police station to talk to a drunk the police have arrested, the usual small moments of a small-town newspaper. Outside, the green pickup is back. He leaves his office around noon and stops by a friend’s welding shop. This time a white vehicle is trailing him. Now he is worried, so he and his friend go to a bodega, buy some beers, and return to the shop. There is a place nearby where people buy cocaine and he sees a soldier from the green pickup go in there and then come out. Emilio goes home, takes his son to church, and returns to his friend’s shop. After a while he goes out to the bodega again and now the white car is back. Upset, he calls his friend, and tells him to come around to the back of the bodega. He escapes and his friend takes him back to his house. After church, his son heads to the plaza with friends. Emilio stays at his friend’s and around eight o’clock a woman calls and says, “Emilio, I have to see you right now. Where are you? I can’t talk over the phone.” She comes over and tells him she is dating a soldier and the military people all talk about how they are going to kill him. She is crying. She says, “Emilio, you have to leave now. They are going to kill you.” Emilio and the woman go to collect his son, then flee to a small ranch about six miles west of Ascensión. He is terrified. Later that night a friend takes him to his house. He wears a big straw hat, slips low in the seat. He sneaks into the house and gets vital documents. All day Sunday Emilio tries to think of a way to save his life and comes up with only one answer: flight. No matter where he goes in Mexico he will have to find a job and use his identity cards and the Army will track him down. He now knows they will never forgive his stories from 2005, that he cannot be redeemed. He tells his boy, “We are not going back to our house. The soldiers may kill me and I don’t want to leave you alone.” Monday morning he drives north very fast. He takes all his legal papers so that he can prove who he is. He expects asylum from the government of the United States. WHAT HE GETS is this: He is immediately jailed, as is his son. They are separated. He is taken to El Paso and placed in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center run by Deco, Inc. He is deloused, given a blue jumpsuit, and set to work scrubbing floors for a dollar a day. He is denied bond, and no hearing is scheduled. Had he entered the United States illegally and then asked for asylum, he would be eligible for bond. But since he entered legally and asked for asylum at the port of entry he is kept in prison because the Department of Homeland Security declares that Emilio has failed to prove that he “would not pose a danger to the community.” He remembers those moments he loved: making his son’s breakfast, washing his son’s clothes. Now he can do nothing for him. Emilio cries a lot. He remembers all those bribes, all those sobres, he refused for years. He thinks, “If I had taken bribes I wouldn’t be here in prison.” Instead, he is surrounded by 800 prisoners—Africans, Middle Eastern people, Indians, Russians, and of course Central Americans and Mexicans, swept up in the increasing ICE raids. “The Mexicans,” he says, “are treated the worst. The staff curses us and calls us rats, narcos, and criminals. The work of the prison is done by the Mexicans and Central Americans. It is ironic—the illegals are arrested for working at real jobs in the US and then they get put in prison and are made to work for nothing.” For a month, he cannot speak to his son. He is tormented by the fear that older boys might molest him. The prison officials refuse to tell him anything. Finally, he gets a 10-minute phone call. The boy says he is doing okay. Emilio tells him they will not be able to go back to Mexico. He can sense his son is bitter; he has lost his home, his friends, even his dog. Emilio wants to hug him and kiss him as he did each day at home. The prison is haunted by a Cuban ghost. Twenty years before, it is said, the man hung himself with a bedsheet. And now at night, sometimes all the showers come on, or the toilets are emptied of water. Prisoners say that security cameras see the Cuban in the library in the middle of the night reading. There are sounds of a guitar playing. The ghost is a message that tells Emilio what the prison can do to a man. Emilio’s lawyer explains that asylum will be difficult, but allowing himself to be deported back to Mexico will be fatal. The lawyer says, “Maybe the United States does not want you but we know Mexico does not want you. Think of your son.” He does. And after a few months, Emilio’s son is released to friends in El Paso. He tells his father not to give up. He tells the press, “I really miss him and I miss my home too, but for me, my dad is more important. Because if something happens to him, I think that I would die. Because he is the only person I have and I love him more than anyone in the world.” At the end of January 2009, nine days after President Obama is sworn in, Emilio Gutiérrez Soto is suddenly released. When they call him to the office, he assumes he is being shipped to another prison in the American gulag. His lawyer also had no indication of the release. He is reunited with his son. His first hearing is postponed, and it could be again, because the US government loves postponing such hearings in the hope that migrants will give up and go back home. Emilio cannot work because the US government has yet to give him a work permit. But Emilio is a creature of hope. He has faith in the new administration because “the race Obama belongs to has been enslaved. I think he shares this history of discrimination with Latinos. And he will realize the huge human rights abuses in Mexico. There are thousands of people like me here. There are thousands of abandoned homes in Juárez alone. If I am sent back to Mexico, I might live a day or a few years. The Army may kill me immediately or wait for my case to grow cold.” In the meantime, Emilio sits in the sun and tries to teach me Mexico as it is today. “Mexicans,” he explains, “know the Army is a bunch of brutes. But what is going on now is a coup d’etat by the Army. The president is illegitimate. The Army has installed itself. They have become the government. They are installed in all the state governments. They control the municipal police. They are everywhere but the ministry of education—after all, they are too illiterate to run that. The president has his hands tied and he has tied them.” But there is another way of looking at the facts on that ground that is un-Mexican with its fetish of a pyramid of power going back to the Aztec emperors, and un-American with our conviction that every place is kind of like our nation only with unsafe water and spicy food. Maybe, the center no longer holds. In the last 10 years, since the death of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, head of the Juárez cartel and first among equals in the drug world, the industry has fragmented into independent baronies and smaller outlaw bands. Since the collapse of the PRI, the ruling party that lasted more than 70 years, Mexico’s civil society has also fragmented, with power leaving the capital and recombining with the narcogangs. The Army, the largest gang, is not attempting to seize the bankrupt and withering state, but grabbing market share in a place whose two largest industries are supplying American drug habits and exporting millions of people. Cartels once imposed constraint of trade. But like soda-pop CEOs, the generals now angle to increase their share of the skyrocketing domestic drug market. And of course, the United States finances this move, via the Mérida Initiative, in the delusion that it is shoring up a republic south of the Rio Grande. We are staring into the future but using old prescription glasses. Murderous cholos on the corner in Juárez and troops marauding and robbing in the disguise of a Mexican drug war may be writing the future while President Obama and President Calderón wander in their bunkers of power, and cling to the fantasies of the ancien régime. CARLOS SPECTOR, Emilio’s lawyer, is a man on fire. He is 55, red haired, big, El Paso born, a Mexican American Jew. He has built an immigration practice. His childhood was divided between El Paso and Juárez. In his 20s, he moved to Israel under the Law of Return and lived on a kibbutz. But eventually, the border claimed him. He has been looking for a case like Emilio’s for years, a case of a clean Mexican reporter seeking political asylum from the government of the United States. Now he thinks he has it and that he can make American law face the reality of Mexico. To gain political asylum, applicants must prove they have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution because of their political opinion or an “immutable characteristic” such as race, religion, or nationality. When it comes to people fleeing Mexico, the United States has quibbled with claims of immutability, telling Mexican cops running from the cartels that they should just stop being a cop, move to another part of Mexico, become a plumber. But Emilio can’t hide from the Army. Those three stories he filed in 2005, the opinions therein, they created an immutable impression on the Army. After that he apologized. He ceased writing anything bad about the Army even when he witnessed them killing people in his town in February 2008. None of this helped. When the Army swept the area again a few months later, they came after him. Spector says, “The concept of revenge is part of the Mexican political system. Emilio has insulted the institution and it has an incredible memory. The only thing worse he could do, he has done also—to leave the country and denounce it from the US side of the border.” Almost a month after his release, on February 20, 2009, Emilio held a press conference at the University of Texas-El Paso with Jorge Luis Aguirre, the creator of a website of gossip and news in Juárez who has also fled for his life, and Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, the supervising attorney for the State Committee of Human Rights in Chihuahua. They are forming an organization, Periodistas Mexicanos en Exilio, Mexican Journalists in Exile (PEMEXX—a play on PEMEX, the national oil company). They all say the same thing: that the Mexican Army is terrorizing the nation and killing people out of hand. Aguirre was on his way to the funeral of a reporter murdered in Juárez when he received a call on his cell phone saying he would be next. He promptly fled to El Paso. One reporter at the press conference asks him if he will also apply for asylum, and he answers that he has to think carefully about it since Emilio was jailed for seven months for doing so. And then Spector says, “This is precisely the reason we formed this organization. Jorge’s fear is legitimate. This was part of the Bush administration’s Guantanamization of the refugee process. By locking people up, especially Mexican asylum applicants, and making them, through a war of attrition, give up their claims. I’ve represented ten cops seeking asylum and not one of them lasted longer than two months. Emilio lasted seven months. On the basis of he had his son, and he knew he was going to be killed. There was nowhere that he could go.” EMILIO GUTIÉRREZ SOTO and his attorney Carlos Spector sit inside the sanctuary of the United States but the violence of Mexico never lets up. On Tuesday, March 3, four Mexican soldiers visit a friend of Carlos’ in Juárez and hand him a photograph. He does not yet know it, but at that instant, Carlos moves from knowing Mexico to feeling its breath on the back of his neck. In the photo, Carlos is wearing a blue suit and entering the El Paso County Courthouse. The photograph was taken the previous Thursday. The soldiers say, “Your friend is a criminal and we are looking for him. Tell him to get ahold of us.” Outside, more men wait in a Hummer. Carlos gets the call from his friend and falls into his new life. He spent half his childhood living in Juárez. He moves freely and easily in two worlds. And now this seamless web is slashed in half. He must think, he decides. So he drives to one of El Paso’s many Starbucks and has a cup of coffee. He looks out the window and notices two Ford Expeditions full of men and then he remembers them behind him in traffic as he drove over. He leaves and in his rearview mirror he sees the men in the Expeditions. He executes a sharp U and suddenly he is behind the Fords. They bolt but not before he sees the Chihuahua license plates. He is learning new facts. His problem is representing Emilio Gutiérrez Soto. And his problem is real. His friend in Juárez flees with his family to a distant part of Mexico. And Carlos can no longer have the life he once enjoyed. He fortifies his house; he starts his car by remote control, standing at a distance. “It feels like an out-of-body experience,” he says. He has joined his client and they live in a place beyond courts and laws and the illusions of the United States of America. He has become a Mexican, body and soul. Emilio says, “Carlos is now an exile, also.”Full transcript of correspondence with CEX.io. For more details, see Reporting a Vulnerability to CEX.io. Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 14:49:31 -0400 Subject: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: webmaster@cex.io Hi CEX Folks, Do you have a bug bounty program for ethical security researchers to report security vulnerabilities to your site? Thanks, Michael Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 18:59:59 +0000 From: "CEX.IO" <webmaster@cex.io> To: Michael Subject: [CEX.IO] Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program ##- Please type your reply above this line -## [CEX.IO] Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program Your request (199) has been solved. To reopen this request, reply to this email. ---------------------------------------------- Jeffrey, Oct 13 18:59 (UTC) We can discuss this matter. Please send us an email with your proposal to [redacted] Thank you. Yours Truly, Jeffrey Smith Head of Customer Service Department Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 16:01:19 -0400 Subject: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: Jeffrey Smith Hi Jeffrey, I'm a software security consultant in the US as my main profession, but I enjoy participating in bug bounty programs in my spare time, especially within the Bitcoin community. I reported a bug to Bitmit a few months ago and they rewarded me with a bounty. Coinbase has a published bounty program: https://coinbase.com/whitehat http://donncha.is/2013/06/coinbase-owning-a-bitcoin-exchange-bug-bounty-program/ And outside of the Bitcoin community, Google has a pretty well respected bounty program: https://www.google.com/about/appsecurity/reward-program/ Can you tell me if CEX already has a system in place, or if, not, what you would pay as rewards for different kinds of vulnerabilities? Thanks, Michael Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 23:33:26 -0400 Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: Jeffrey Smith Hi Jeffrey, Is CEX interested in paying a bounty for vulnerability information? Thanks, Michael Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 16:09:50 +0300 From: Jeffrey Smith To: Michael Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program Hey Michael, Lets get back to this conversation in a couple of days. Thanks. Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 09:45:06 -0400 Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: Jeffrey Smith Hi Jeffrey, Is there someone else at CEX I should reach out to? I'd like to get these issues on your radar as soon as possible. I'm really excited about CEX and think it's a great idea, but I've had to withdraw all funds from my account because of the site's security issues. Thanks, Michael Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 10:11:56 -0400 Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: Jeffrey Smith Hi Jeffrey, Any updates on this? Thanks, Michael Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 19:04:10 +0300 From: Jeffrey Smith To: Michael Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program Hi Michael, We are willing to provide you free GH/s for bug reports. Please tell me if you have found any. Thank you. -- Yours Truly, Jeffrey Smith CEX.IO Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:18:03 -0400 Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: Jeffrey Smith Hi Jeffrey, Do you have a PGP key or should I just use normal email? Thanks, Michael Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 19:18:58 +0300 From: Jeffrey Smith To: Michael Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program Hi Michael, I don't have a PGP key. Lets use normal mail for now. Yours Truly, Jeffrey Smith CEX.IO Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 20:16:35 -0400 Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: Jeffrey Smith Hi Jeffrey, CEX is vulnerable to CSRF attacks. This occurs when sites on other domains can force users to take actions on the CEX domain without the user's consent. An attacker can construct a malicious page (e.g. evil.com) and entice a victim CEX user to visit the evil page. The evil page then uses JavaScript to force the user's browser to make a request to CEX. Specifically, they could force the user to sell GHS at a very low price / buy at a very high price. The attacker can also force victim users to withdraw to a Bitcoin wallet of the attacker's choosing, though the risk there is somewhat limited by the fact that your withdrawals require email confirmation. I have created two proof of concept pages. Please be aware that visiting these sites will cause you to perform actions in your CEX account without your consent (though I have made efforts to make these actions as harmless as possible for demonstration). https://[removed] If a CEX user visits this page while logged into CEX, it will cause them to place a buy order for 1 GHS at a price of 0.00001 BTC. Note that I deliberately chose a low buy price to make the proof of concept safe to test, as a buy order at 0.00001 BTC is unlikely to be fulfilled, but I could just as easily have set the price to 100 BTC in order to force victim users to purchase GHS at very high rates. https://[removed] If a CEX user visits this page while logged into CEX, it will cause them to make a withdrawal request for.01 BTC to my personal Bitcoin wallet. As mentioned above, this risk is somewhat reduced by the fact that the user must also confirm the withdrawal via email, but seeing unauthorized withdrawal requests would likely alarm your users. The solution is to use CSRF tokens. These are unpredictable values that are included in every authorized request that causes a change in state (e.g. buy orders, sell orders, withdrawal, logout). The server must validate that all such requests include the correct CSRF token or the request is dropped. CEX appears to already be using a web framework that includes CSRF tokens, as the HTTP requests include a parameter called "_csrf" but it is currently empty and has no effect on requests. CEX needs to enforce CSRF protections in order to mitigate this vulnerability. More information about CSRF attacks is available through OWASP<https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery_(CSRF)>. Please let me know if there is any additional information that I can provide to help you in remediating this issue. Thanks, Michael Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 12:23:01 +0300 From: Jeffrey Smith To: Michael Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program Hey Michael, Thank you for your email. We will investigate this vulnerability as well as negotiate about a bonus for your work. Will get back to you ASAP. -- Yours Truly, Jeffrey Smith CEX.IO Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 21:02:41 -0500 Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: Jeffrey Smith Hi Jeffrey, I see that CEX has remediated the CSRF vulnerability that I reported. When can I expect CEX to pay the bounty for reporting this issue? Thanks, Michael Date: Sat, 9 Nov 2013 13:16:30 -0500 Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: Jeffrey Smith Cc: webmaster@cex.io Hi Jeffrey, It has now been almost 3 weeks since I reported the CEX's CSRF vulnerability to you. I have not received payment, and you are not responding to emails. I'm becoming concerned that you may not honor our agreement. Please respond with details of when I can expect payment for reporting CEX's security vulnerability. Thanks, Michael Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 14:07:48 +0200 From: Jeffrey Smith To: Michael Hey Michael, Thank you for your email. I apologise for the delay in our communication, as we were busy with processing all feature requests. I talked to the upper management about the vulnerability you have found. Their response was that they were aware of this vulnerability, but it was not in our priority list. However it is now, and I've negotiated a bounty in the amount: 0.2BTC. Please tell me if its ok with you and I will transfer funds to your account. Yours Truly, Jeffrey Smith Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 09:03:29 -0500 Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Michael To: Jeffrey Smith Hi Jeffrey, That's a very low bounty, but since we never negotiated a price, I'll take what you offer. At that rate, it is not worth my time to report other vulnerabilities to CEX. For comparison, take a look at Coinbase's rates (keeping in mind that at the time of publication, 1 BTC was ~$100 USD). Please send payment to 1NcLF2FVewJmeuNsRc5vxmNc9ysXN9xyr4 Please also pass along my feedback to your upper management: - Many customers will not be comfortable trusting their money to a company that knowingly exposes them to serious security vulnerabilities - Security researchers will not be interested in responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities to CEX if the company pays very low bounties and fails to communicate with researchers in a timely fashion. Thanks, Michael Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 16:26:55 +0200 Subject: Re: White Hat Bug Bounty Program From: Jeffrey Smith To: Michael Hey Michael, Thank you, I will forward your message to the upper management. I will also leave your contacts in case they need you. Yours Truly, Jeffrey Smith AdvertisementsIn Batman Begins, Bruce flees an opera that features dancers masquerading as bats, which frighten him. The concept of Batman as a symbol of fear is shot through the whole movie—Nolan (who scripted the film with David S. Goyer) works hard to have the audience understand why Wayne might be drawn to the bizarre idea of dressing as a giant bat to intimidate Gotham's criminals, drawing inspiration from the theatrics of the ninjas who train him and the creatures that haunt the caves below his family mansion. Most comic-book films assume the audience will roll with the hero donning a colorful uniform because it's such recognizable imagery, but Batman Begins wants the first appearance of the Batsuit to feel genuinely shocking to both Gotham’s criminals and the audience. Not all of this thinking originated with Nolan. A Batman film centered around intimidation had been in the works years before he came on board: Before the 1997 release of Batman & Robin, its director Joel Schumacher was already at work on the next entry, tentatively titled Batman Triumphant, which featured the fearmongering Scarecrow as the villain. That element bounced through several undeveloped Batman concepts before making it into the Begins script. Cillian Murphy plays Nolan's take on Jonathan Crane, a psychiatrist who poisons his patients with a fear toxin and controls them through the monstrous avatar of "Scarecrow." While the primary villains in the film are the League of Shadows, evil vigilantes led by Ra's Al Ghul (Liam Neeson), Crane's fear toxin is their weapon of choice, and a simple and effective way for Nolan to demonstrate Batman's terrifying status among the gangsters he's trying to wipe out. Bale's performance goes a long way towards making this super-serious, super-scary Batman relatable. He doesn't deploy the cartoonishly gravelly voice he adopted for 2008 sequel The Dark Knight, which inspired a thousand parody videos, but nor does he lean into the idea that Bruce Wayne might just be a lunatic, which is the angle Michael Keaton (very successfully) worked in his two Tim Burton-directed Batman films. Bale's Bruce is barely clinging to his humanity, and is still haunted and driven by the death of his parents. But he's not liberated when he puts on the suit—above all, he's giving a performance, typified by his brutal interrogation of the corrupt Detective Flass, where Batman roars questions in his face while dangling him upside down by his feet. For Nolan's Batman, this is a means to an end, rather than a pure state of being. That theme recurs through his two sequels—The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises—which end in Batman’s retirement, seen as a necessary step for Bruce Wayne to live a normal, human life. After the completion of his Dark Knight trilogy, Nolan was asked to help set the tone for a new slate of Warner Bros. films inspired by the DC Comics universe. That decision makes sense, but it feels somewhat curious when you consider that Nolan's Batman ended his journey with The Dark Knight Rises and very definitively will never return to the big screen. After Marvel Studios' first film— Iron Man (released in 2008)—ended with a post-credits teaser mentioning Nick Fury and the Avengers, the interconnected universe became en vogue, and once Nolan's films ran their course, Warner Bros. needed a new slew of heroes to keep up. Nolan and his Batman Begins co-scripter Goyer wrote the story to Man of Steel, a Superman reboot planned as a franchise-starter, then hired Zack Snyder to direct. Snyder is now firmly at the helm of the series Man of Steel launched, but Nolan is an executive producer on its sequel Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice and reportedly had a hand in the hiring of Ben Affleck as the big screen's newest Batman.The TAG Heuer Autavia “reissue” that launched this year has been a hit, and today a limited edition variant of the timepiece comes out which is intended to celebrate the 85th birthday of Jack Heuer. Today’s TAG has been keen to promote the legacy value of Mr. Jack Heuer as much as possible, and for good reason. The charming former head of TAG Heuer is also part of the original Heuer family that started the brand. In the 1960s, he famously launched the very popular Carrera collection, as well as the first wrist watch version of the Autavia. According to TAG Heuer, In 1933 (a year after Jack Heuer’s birth) the Heuer company penned the “Autavia” name which was a combination of the words “automotive” and “aviation.” The notion was to have a timepiece that was suited to both purposes. It wasn’t until about 30 years later in 1962 that the Autavia name was bestowed upon a wristwatch, which Jack Heuer claims was the first watch he designed while at the company. Jack also seems to suggest that this limited edition version of the modern Autavia Heuer 02 is the “last watch that I have created,” which may imply that he could be done with having timepieces associated with him. That could be so, but my instinct tells me that there are likely to be occasional Jack Heuer limited edition timepieces so long as there is a Jack Heuer around (and may he live well past 85 years old). I recently reviewed the TAG Heuer Autavia Calibre Heuer 02 watch on aBlogtoWatch here. The limited edition Jack Heuer version is similar, but with a few key differences aside from the obvious dial colors, though these differences can be difficult to spot if you don’t know what you are looking for. Of course, unlike the non-limited edition reference CBE2110.FC8226 version of the Autavia Heuer 02, this reference CBE 2111.BA0687 Jack Heuer version of the Autavia is limited to 1,932 pieces (because of Jack’s birth year). The watch is due to be released on or around Jack’s 85th birthday which is on November 17th. I recommend that anyone who is interested in this watch, and who may have missed my above linked-to review – reference it after reading this article. For the most part, everything I said about the non-limited edition applies to this limited edition model ranging from the caliber Heuer 02 in-house automatic chronograph movement, slick vintage looks, and good value for the money. The major difference in the Jack Heuer Autavia versus the other model is the dial color – which, in this instance, is silver with black-colored sub-dials. While I only have the brand’s images of this watch handy for this article, I have handled and worn this watch a few times and can attest to its desirability. One thing I want to mention is that unlike how the images seem to portray the hands, the dial is for the most part just as legible as on the black-dialed Autavia, if my memory serves me correctly. The silver-colored dial contrasts very nicely with the black sub-dials, making for a very authentic panda-dial look that I happen to find attractive. In my opinion, it actually edges out the non-limited edition Autavia as being the more attractive of the two – but in reality, they are both good-looking timepieces. Another difference in the limited edition is the design of the numeral scale in the bi-directional rotating bezel. The non-limited edition Autavia has a 12 hour scale on the bezel, whereas the Jack Heuer model has a more traditional 60 minute counter. Both are on a black anodized aluminum bezel insert. Again, I’ll point out that what would make the Autavia a more perfect watch is a ceramic versus aluminum bezel insert (again, in my opinion). Which of the two bezels is more attractive or useful? That is a good question and really a matter of personal taste. With fewer markers, the 12-hour scale is a bit more on the elegant side. Though, the 60-minute counter is a bit more common, and arguably useful in more situations as a timing device, and also a bit busy with all the markers. I really can’t say that one bezel choice is better than the other – outside of saying that they are merely different. A somewhat strange design decision in the Autavia Heuer 02 Jack Heuer is the choice of caseback. The non-limited edition model had a sapphire crystal display caseback that offered a view of the excellent and nice-to-look-at TAG Heuer Caliber Heuer 02 automatic movement. The Jack Heuer model has a solid caseback, that is engraved with Jack’s family seal and signature. It also says “Jack Heuer 85th Birthday Edition,” as though you needed to attend his birthday party in order to get one. Or does it look as though you are wearing Jack Heuer’s personal watch? I’m not sure… I actually told TAG Heuer that if I get one of these, I’d like to get the caseback of the non-limited edition Autavia and screw it on the Jack Heuer edition – simply because I like looking at the movement so much. What should I do with the Jack heuer signature/seal caseback? Maybe turn it into some type of a pendant? TAG Heuer offers the standard (non-limited) Autavia Heuer 02 on either a leather strap or a matching steel metal bracelet. The Autavia Jack Heuer comes exclusively on the metal bracelet option, which I don’t have any complaints about. Though, I have to say that I feel this watch would look rather handsome on a thick aviation-style black leather strap with silver-colored contrast stitching. Other than the above mentioned differences, the Autavia Heuer 02 Jack Heuer watch is the same as the non-limited edition (again, that I discuss at length in the review article linked-to above). I’ll quickly remind you of the overall specs. The polished steel case is 42mm wide, a bit on the thicker side, and water resistant to 100m. The calibre Heuer 02 movement is an automatic with a column wheel and vertical clutch-based 12-hour chronograph system. The movement features a neatly integrated date window within the sub-dial located at 6 o’clock, and the 4Hz (28,800bph) movement has a long power reserve of 80 hours. I’ve been an outspoken fan of the new TAG Heuer Autavia collection, and that includes this Jack Heuer limited edition. I think what makes the story of it that much more interesting is that it wasn’t imagined after the first Autavia “re-issue” from earlier this year, but that it was developed at the same time (and only debuted now). It’s a very handsome and practical high-end sport watch that you can wear on a daily basis. It has enough high-quality guts and provenance to satisfy watch nerds, but it also has a refined look which lends itself well to casual, daily wear for anyone. The reference CBE 2111.BA0687 TAG Heuer Autavia Jack Heuer is a limited edition of 1,932 pieces and costs $600 more than the non-limited model at a price of $5,900 USD. tagheuer.comIt has long been rumored that Samsung could be working on a Google Glass rival of its own even though Google has discontinued that wearable device itself. Some patent filings by Samsung were discovered a couple of years ago which hinted at the Gear Glass – a possible Google Glass competitor – and it was even rumored at one point that this wearable device could launch alongside the Galaxy Note 4. Samsung is yet to come out with such a product but a new trademark application from the company has been spotted which suggests that Samsung could call its Google Glass rival Samsung Ahead. Samsung has filed a trademark application from an as yet unannounced product called Ahead, the patent filing includes a logo and describes it as a wearable computer “in the shape of a helmet.” The patent filing also details that this product will an operating software for wearable digital electronic devices, an electronic display module, MP3 functions, and more. Granted that these descriptions have just been added to offer protection to the trademarked product again products with similar features that some company might want to call Ahead as well, if approved, the trademark filing will protect the product against that. Obviously it doesn’t confirm if and when a Samsung-made Google Glass rival is going to hit the market even though we have been hearing about it for years now.I just got done reading the latest effort by the LDS faith to get people to doubt their doubts. It’s titled Overcoming the Danger of Doubt and comes from Elder Hugo Montoya. I don’t know if it was the Fridge inspiring me, but I kept hearing this line from Princess Bride as I read it. Doubt is certainly the thing religions fear most. In fact you pretty much have to doubt you are in the right religion to convert to another one. I know as a missionary for the church I saw more than 100 people doubt their previous faith enough to be baptized into the Mormon one. I only realize that in hindsight now though. At the time I was 100% sure I had the truth that I was offering to them. Never once did I think that doubt was something to be feared. After all truth doesn’t fear doubt right? In this article I noticed that as usual there are personal stories that illustrate the principle. In this case how you ‘shouldn’t doubt.’ But aren’t those kind of stories in all religions? If a scientologist gets help from sea org, does that really mean you should not doubt the commitment you made to scientology? Doubt is a wonderful thing, it’s not dangerous at all. But it is scary. Truth doesn’t fear doubt, but humans do. I was afraid to doubt my faith because of the ramifications if those doubts were realized. To me it meant a loss of hope, a loss of community and potentially the loss of family. But I found new ways to hope and new communities to belong to. My family didn’t survive the faith crisis without scars though. It could have been better but it also could have been much worse. I count myself lucky for the most part. So yeah, to be totally honest, doubts can cause some pain if realized. But they also serve a useful
woman. At the High Court in Edinburgh, judge Lord Doherty told Dick: "These offences demonstrated deviousness, dishonesty and depravity on your part." DVD cache The judge said the former financial adviser had been motivated by his own sexual gratification when he filmed women posing and taking part in sex acts. His victims thought they were auditioning for roles as glamour models or adult movie actresses. Lord Doherty said Dick had subjected the rape victim to "a painful and terrifying experience to impose your will on her and satisfy your own desires". Dick's cache of DVDs were uncovered after the rape victim told police she had been attacked by him at the address in Fleming Way, Burntisland. Andrew Girdwood, of Fife Constabulary, said: "This conviction is testament to the commitment and focus that we give to these allegations and the sentence reflects the serious nature of the offences committed. "I cannot overstate the impact that the accused actions has had on the victims and their families and I would like to thank them for their cooperation throughout the inquiry."Chicken Ramen at Kubo’s – A Sneak Peek So Stef and I had the honor of attending a sneak peek Ramen tasting. As members of Houston’s Ramen in Common club, our good friend, Carl Rosa, graciously invited us to partake in this exclusive event. Carl is also the founder of the largest sushi club in the United States (and probably beyond), The Sushi Club of Houston. Tonight, the event was focused around a chicken ramen at Kubo’s. If you are any part of the Houston sushi scene, Kubo’s needs no introduction. A long time favorite of the club, we gathered this evening at Kubo’s Cafe in China Town. For credibility, I have had ramen from the most “hole-in-the-wall” places of Asakusa, Tokyo to the most trendy places of Houston. My first thought on the ramen this evening was, “wow, this place can definitely school the rest of Houston on how to do noodles right.” They were cooked to perfection where 30 seconds makes a difference. Too long, they are too soft – fall apart and ruin the broth. To short, and they are too hard or chewy. These noodles were at the point of perfection that I had yet to experience in Houston. Think about a noodle soup you are used too – where the noodles easily fall apart and mix with the broth. These noodles kept its own firm integrity and remained a separate, yet critical, part of the ramen. Kubo’s management and chef team greet us like family and instill the passion of what they are creating. This is why I love Kubo’s and many Japanese restaurants, the passion and honor in their food! You don’t get that in most restaurants. You can count on this meaning that it’s surely going to be good. A lost art in most restaurants today. So what did I think? Let me set my stage, I am an American who grew up on chicken noodle but in-turn has come to love Japanese cuisine. I found the noodles to be in perfect quantity and prepared at that perfect firmness. I haven’t had better in Houston as far as noodles go. The broth was conservative, yet flavorful, with the perfect amount of saltiness. Keeping in mind, this was open to us (the club) for initial opinions, and I think Kubo’s hit the chicken ramen spot on. With that said, I prefer other ramens more bold pending the primary ingredients, but for chicken? They hit a bulls eye in my book. People are easily quick to judge, but forget how everything is relative… For a beef, pork, black bean, or any other type of ramen, I would expect the broth to be more bold. For a chicken ramen, thinking of enhancing our age old American cure-all, this chicken ramen takes it up many notches. It was almost perfect. What was missing? Well, in American cuisine – nothing. In Japanese cuisine, where umami is so important, I think a dried mushroom would add that extra kick to the tastebuds to bring it all together. I let the gracious chef know my thoughts, though I almost felt as if I needed to respect how THEY prepared it. So continues a chapter of the American-Japenese fusion. I love ramen, and I love Kubo’s. Food is a life pleasure, and that ramen was American soul mixed with Japanese passion and meticulousness. Can you get better than that? Stay hungry, Houston – and let’s progress from chicken noodle from being the all American cure-all to chicken ramen. -AdamBuy Photo Oscar Robertson's lawsuit against the NBA opened the door to modern day free agency. (Photo: Rob Goebel / IndyStar)Buy Photo INDIANAPOLIS — It will rain money soon, more than a billion dollars heading toward NBA players during the 2016 free agency period that begins Friday at 12:01 a.m. The genesis of this deluge of dollars, earmarked for Kevin Durant and Eric Gordon and Mike Conley and scores more, can be traced to 1970 and to a man from Indianapolis, a man whose role in the liberation of the NBA free agent is not widely known. His name is Oscar Robertson. Robertson, who led Crispus Attucks to state championships in 1955 and ’56, never did and never will get the money that the NBA’s best free agents — even the NBA’s worst free agents — will get over the next several weeks. He came to grips with that long ago. Robertson used that business degree he earned from Cincinnati in 1960 to start several companies after his playing days ended. Those companies did fine. Oscar Robertson doesn’t need anyone’s money, thank you very much. Here’s what he’d like, and it’s such a small thing. He’d like one of the NBA’s millionaires today, just one of them, to say this: Thank you. * * * Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson believes he's been blackballed by the NBA following his 1970 lawsuit. (Photo: MIchael E. Keating / Cincinnati Enquirer) Back in Oscar Robertson’s day, a player made what his team’s NBA owner said he would make. Along came the upstart American Basketball Association in 1967, bidding against the NBA for top free agents — giving players leverage in contract negotiations — and the NBA decided this could not be. It approached the ABA about a merger. The ABA was listening. Oscar Robertson was saying: No. This was 1970. Robertson wasn’t the player he’d been earlier, averaging a triple-double for the 1961-62 season and winning MVP in 1964, but he was still formidable. He was one year removed from being All-Star Game MVP in 1969. He was one year away from winning the 1971 NBA title with Lew Alcindor and the Milwaukee Bucks. In 1970 Robertson averaged 25.3 ppg, but now he was doing some of his best work off the court. He was president of the NBA players’ union, a role he’d held since 1965, one year after leading a boycott of the 1964 All-Star Game. Players wanted a pension, medical benefits and pay for preseason exhibition games. The game started 10 minutes late, but only after Robertson and Co. won those concessions. Oscar Robertson as a Milwaukee Buck. (Photo: File photo) So, about 1970. The NBA and ABA were trying to merge. Oscar Robertson sued the NBA. He was backed by the union, but on a public island against 22 franchises in both leagues — 14 in the NBA, eight in the ABA, including the Indiana Pacers — and eventually against Congress, which unsuccessfully tried to settle the antitrust suit Robertson vs. National Basketball Association. The lawsuit continued, as did both leagues. Robertson made his final All-Star game in 1972 and averaged 12.7 points, 4.0 rebounds and 6.4 assists in 1974 before retiring. The lawsuit continued. In 1976 the NBA absorbed six ABA teams and settled Robertson’s lawsuit. Free agency was born. Forty years later, Oscar Robertson is pretty sure he was blackballed from the league. * * * Buy Photo Oscar Robertson (right) and Jumpin' Johnny Wilson (left), present Eugene German as the Indiana All-Stars Player of the Game, June 11, 2016 at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. (Photo: Matt Kryger / IndyStar) Robertson was at Bankers Life Fieldhouse a few weeks ago. It was the Indiana-Kentucky All-Star game, Robertson was a guest of the IndyStar Indiana All-Stars, and we were talking about the money NBA free agents were about to get. Oscar was sitting with a friend from the 1950s, former Crispus Attucks player Ronald Crowe. I tell them the average NBA salary this past season was close to $4 million. Crowe looked at Robertson. “You didn’t make a million in a year,” Crowe said. “I didn’t make a million in 14 years,” Oscar replied. I tell Robertson that I’ve asked various players if they know who opened the door to NBA free agency. None had any idea. “I don’t know if anybody today knows,” Oscar said. Has a player ever thanked you? “Some older guys have,” he said. “Rick Barry, Bill Walton, maybe a couple other guys, but those two more than any other. I really don’t think a lot of the guys today, black or white, know about the history.” LeBron James, I tell Oscar, often invokes his appreciation for the history of the game, and he seems … Robertson cuts me off. “LeBron doesn’t know anything about that,” he says of the 1970 lawsuit. “He might, but I doubt he does. If he does, he’s never said anything to me about it.” Now we’re in territory that rubs Robertson the wrong way. He believes he sacrificed so much for the union. Despite his acumen and desire to coach or work in an NBA front office, no team has hired him. His first plan after retirement was to be a TV analyst, but hasn’t worked in an NBA booth since the 1976 settlement of a lawsuit that eliminated the reserve clause and is referenced today as the “Oscar Robertson rule.” You could believe all of that is a coincidence — all-time great player stands up to league, retires, doesn’t work again in the NBA — but Robertson does not. “There’s no doubt about it,” he’s saying. I think to myself: When MLB free agency pioneer Curt Flood died decades ago, not one active MLB player attended his funeral. And so I say to Robertson: Not one current NBA player has ever acknowledged your role in free agency? “Not to me,” he says. “Guys that come from nothing and make $20 million, they didn’t grow up like that. They didn’t read anything about it. They’ll get a $2 million house and put one of those — what are those little games?” Video games? NEWSLETTERS Get the IndyStar Motor Sports newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong The latest news in IndyCar and the world of motor sports. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-357-7827. Delivery: Sun - Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for IndyStar Motor Sports Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters “Video games, right,” he says. He’s salty, Oscar Robertson. Earlier this season he blamed the Stephen Curry-led 3-point explosion on poor coaching and indifferent defense, a “get off my lawn” moment mocked around the NBA. Perhaps his feelings on today’s players not knowing the history of free agency will be seen the same way. Perhaps nobody in the NBA owes him a debt of gratitude. Even if a “thank you” is free. Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.Marquee is a family of two fonts, containing both faceted and solid characters which can be layered to effect 3D, dimensional and translucent marquee-style typography, allowing for the creation of headlines reminiscent of classic theater and motion picture marquee signage. As a huge fan of Movie Posters I am often taken aback by some of the truly amazing typography the designers spurn out. All typography starts with a font (most of the time anyway). That’s why we have compiled top 10 film Marquee font styles to inspire you and leave any suggestions or feedback in the comments below. History has shown us that there are certain font styles that give us an image of an old movie house marquee. If you are looking for an old school twist on your own theater or are simply decorating your basement to resemble a filmic atmosphere, check out some of these designs. This one is great because it literally looks like the abstract patterns of asphalt. Road movies are one of the most beloved forms of cinema because they exuded complete abandonment from conformity. This linotype institutes a blocky text weight along with double stripes for the H and O, something that could have easily been found on posters advertising for RKO pictures in the ’30s. There are some basic flares with this serif font, but not-so-basic ones with select letters like B and R. This typeface shows remnants of the silent era of film and is very elegant in its curvature and thickness. It’s probably best used sparingly because of its randomly encased compartments, especially those of the A and E. This one would fit in well with film noir as a kind of back-alley grittiness. Dick Tracy would be proud. This is the type of font you might see at Arkham Aslyum in Gotham City. The letters are tall and shadowed, a reflection of a metropolis that knows Download Fonts: buenosaires A true opening premiere font, Buenos Aires NF has the power to subconsciously excite filmgoers everywhere. Proper spacing should be acknowledged so that words are easily distinguishable, but once you’ve figured that out, it’s a recipe for box office gold. Like so many sci-fi films and production companies before it, this font’s slash-through lines gives it a whooshy feeling. It is definitely built for speed, not comfort, and will have Trekkie nerds rejoicing. Straight out of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles era, this font selection caters to samurai and martial arts films. Jagged and ancient, you might find this on everything from Bruce Lee movies to parodic updates of more classic films. Many a film marquee had this type of sans serif font to chalk up the movie-going experience, especially in the 1930s and ’40s. You are more likely to see this one illuminated on old marquees the most. The letters are embossed with bubbles and the shadows grow darker near the bottom corners. This is what was made for movies.Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Here’s one more reason to worry about the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, which allowed the arts and crafts chain to block insurance coverage of contraception for female employees because of the owners’ religious objections: It could screw up corporate law. This gets complicated, but bear with us. Basically, what you need to know is that if you and some friends start a company that makes a lot of money, you’ll be rich, but if it incurs a lot of debt and fails, you won’t be left to pay its bills. The Supreme Court affirmed this arrangement in a 2001 case, Cedric Kushner Promotions vs. Don King: linguistically speaking, the employee and the corporation are different “persons,” even where the employee is the corporation’s sole owner. After all, incorporation’s basic purpose is to create a distinct legal entity, with legal rights, obligations, powers, and privileges different from those of the natural individuals who created it, who own it, or whom it employs. That separation is what legal and business scholars call the “corporate veil,” and it’s fundamental to the entire operation. Now, thanks to the Hobby Lobby case, it’s in question. By letting Hobby Lobby’s owners assert their personal religious rights over an entire corporation, the Supreme Court has poked a major hole in the veil. In other words, if a company is not truly separate from its owners, the owners could be made responsible for its debts and other burdens. “If religious shareholders can do it, why can’t creditors and government regulators pierce the corporate veil in the other direction?” Burt Neuborne, a law professor at New York University, asked in an email. That’s a question raised by 44 other law professors, who filed a friends-of-the-court brief that implored the Court to reject Hobby Lobby’s argument and hold the veil in place. Here’s what they argued: Allowing a corporation, through either shareholder vote or board resolution, to take on and assert the religious beliefs of its shareholders in order to avoid having to comply with a generally-applicable law with a secular purpose is fundamentally at odds with the entire concept of incorporation. Creating such an unprecedented and idiosyncratic tear in the corporate veil would also carry with it unintended consequences, many of which are not easily foreseen. In his opinion for Hobby Lobby, Justice Samuel Alito’s insisted the decision should be narrowly applied to the peculiarities of the case. But as my colleague Pat Caldwell writes, the logic of the argument is likely to invite a tide of new lawsuits, all with their own unintended consequences. Small wonder, then, that despite congressional Republicans defending the Hobby Lobby decision as a victory for American business against the nanny state, the US Chamber of Commerce—the country’s main big business lobby—was quiet on the issue. Even more telling: Despite a record tide of friends-of-the-court briefs, not one Fortune 500 weighed in on the case. In fact, as David H. Gans at Slate pointed out in March, about the only sizeable business-friendly groups that did file briefs with the court were the US Women’s Chamber of Commerce and the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Both sided against Hobby Lobby.Just 14 years after state regulators took over the Oakland Unified School District and used taxpayer cash to bail it out, the school district has managed to land itself in another huge financial crisis. The district’s current annual deficit is $30 million, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Back in 2003, state officials stepped in because the school district had accumulated a $37 million budget deficit. The state of California loaned Oakland’s schools $100 million in emergency funds — a record amount at the time. State bureaucrats also seized control of the district for six years. Oakland Unified superintendent Antwan Wilson — who will soon be leaving for an exciting new gig as the superintendent of the Washington, D.C. public system — swears the situation in 2017 is totally different than it was in 2003. Last time, the district was caught unaware because of some alleged $100 million accounting blunder. This time, the true facts are known, Wilson said. “This is all in front of us,” the superintendent told the Chronicle. “This is all preventable.” The problem facing the Oakland school district is — wait for it — a bloated and expensive spending plan that laughably exceeds the amount of money actually available. As the Chronicle notes, there are some eerie similarities between the school district’s economic implosion in 2003 and its current economic status. Prior to the 2003 disaster, for example, then-superintendent Dennis Chaconas gave teachers a generous 24 percent pay raise. Also, a surprise drop in enrollment caused the district to receive less money from the state than expected. This time around, the school board has generously given teachers a 14 percent pay raise. Also, enrollment declined by 850 students this year. The current median salary for a public school teacher in Oakland, California is $60,536 per year, according to data from Salary.com. The district has a problem with exploding special education costs, too. It spends $5.3 million per year to send 175 special education students to outside vendors for services. By way of comparison, the nearby San Francisco Unified School District sends just 130 kids to outside special education providers — but enrolls 20,000 more students. A multitude of programs on the Oakland Unified chopping block includes an $800,000 plan for expanded preschool services. Despite declining enrollment, school district officials admit that they probably can’t close any individual schools because of intense community opposition. “If you don’t want to repeat history, you’re going to have to make decisions,” school board president James Harris told the Chronicle. “It’s a come-to-Jesus moment that’s got to happen.” Oakland teachers union president Trish Gorman described the district’s woes as “a panic, run-on-the-bank kind of situation.” A California Department of Education-appointed trustee still oversees district finances and will do so until the $100 million emergency loan from 2003 is paid off. The expected payoff date is sometime in 2026. The last time the Oakland Unified School District made national news was back in 2015 when school board members voted to phase out suspensions for students if they swear at teachers — or ignore teachers’ instructions, or tell teachers off or decide to spend time texting instead of paying attention in class. The move came in response to an Obama administration push to limit student punishments out of fears that the penalties are racially disproportionate. (RELATED: Oakland Kids Who Cuss Teachers Out No Longer Need To Fret About Getting Suspended) Follow Eric on Twitter. Like Eric on Facebook. Send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.Playing an instrument is like playing a sport. Muscles and joints need to be trained and kept moving. So, Every day, in addition to keep my legs in moving, I try to keep my hands in training, regardless of the time I can dedicate to the study of the repertoire. I try to carve out a small window of free time dedicated to a series of exercises designed primarily to train the muscles of the hands and improve coordination. First step: WarmUp! Muscle warming is important, even in musical instrument practice. So, before starting every exercise, i make a brief series of warming exercises focused on muscular awakening and coordination improvement. In this exercise, is very important to follow the instructions regarding the fingering: its purpose is just what to make work equally all fingers of both hands. Second step: Chromatic exercise! Simple chromatic pattern, and 2 variations with string skipping: Third step: Spiders! Now that we have warmed the fingers, we execute two short sequences focused to develop coordination between the two hands, the famous ‘spiders’: Final step: Scales! At this point, a creative approach: a nice refresher of diatonic scales (major and minor) and pentatonic concludes the daily training. And now we begin to study the repertoire! Download all workouts in a single PDF file from this LINK Like this: Like Loading...The Obama administration is using a taxpayer-funded program to award business grants to Salvadoran migrants deported from the United States. Run by the nonprofit Instituto Salvadorno Del Migrante and funded through a $50,000 grant from the taxpayer-backed Inter-American Foundation, the program “facilitates [deportees’] reintegration into their communities and supports their enterprises by offering financial education, technical advice, and assistance with business plans.” “So, if you break the rules and get deported, we’ll help you start a business back in your home country. How absurd,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. The program was included in a report on government waste by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management, chaired by Paul. The Inter-American Foundation sought to clarify that the Salvadoran grants are not “intended” for criminal deportees, but the subcommittee had no confirmation that criminal deportees are prohibited from receiving funds. No specific award criteria were provided. “What we do know is that about 30 percent of the returning deportees were deported due to violent or other crimes beyond undocumented presence,” Paul stated. Program supporters argue that negative impressions about deportees hamper their chances to get loans in El Salvador. That’s unfair, they said, given that most criminal deportees’ crimes involve “assault, drunk driving, and drug possession.” To which Paul responded: “So while banks justifiably hesitate to take on such a risk, it is apparently perfectly reasonable to pass that risk on to the American taxpayer.” Jessica Vaughn, policy analyst at the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies, said that while many things could go wrong, “It’s in our interest to ensure that people who are deported don’t turn around and come back again.” “In concept, it may not be that bad of an idea,” she told Watchdog in an interview. While asserting that border deterrence is “the only thing that will work in the long run,” Vaughn added, “People have to have a reason to stay in their country.” But she shared Paul’s concerns about rewarding criminal immigrants, noting that the bulk of deportees in the Obama era were convicted of crimes in the U.S. If and when border security is tightened, Vaughn said, “I can see a program like this when we get back to deporting people who are caught working and not necessarily criminals.” This article was originally published by Watchdog.A Seattle Police Officer is one of four people arrested May 6, 2017, in connection with a ring smuggling hundreds of pounds of marijuana from the Seattle area to Baltimore, Maryland, announced U.S. Attorney Annette L. Hayes. ALEX CHAPACKDEE, 44, of Seattle, is a 16-year veteran of SPD and is the brother-in-law of alleged ringleader TUAN VAN LE, 42, of Maple Valley, Washington. The other two men arrested are 32-year-old PHI NGUYEN, and 38-year-old SAMATH KHANHPHONGPHANE. All four men will make their initial appearances in U.S. District Court in Seattle at 2:00 p.m. today. “The trafficking of hundreds of pounds of marijuana from Washington to the streets of Baltimore will not be tolerated,” said U.S. Attorney Annette L. Hayes. “Drug trafficking organizations that ignore federal and state laws have always been and will continue to be targeted and held to account. The fact that a police officer was involved in this is obviously of particular concern.” An investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Seattle Police Department, Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad revealed that on multiple occasions between June 2013, and April 2017, LE made trips between Seattle and Baltimore. While LE often flew one way or roundtrip, other members of the conspiracy made the trip by driving virtually non-stop. The vehicles allegedly carried marijuana to the Baltimore area and the cash proceeds back to Seattle. CHAPACKDEE participated in multiple trips driving his RV one or both ways in September, October and November, 2016. CHAPACKDEE, LE and the other conspirators linked up at both ends of the trip, apparently distributing drugs and the cash proceeds. Bank records indicate CHAPACKDEE deposited cash in his account in amounts just under $10,000 thereby avoiding reports to law enforcement. The charges contained in the criminal complaint are only allegations. A person is presumed innocent unless and until he or she is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Conspiracy to distribute marijuana in these quantities is punishable by a mandatory minimum five years in prison and up to 40 years in prison. This was an Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) investigation, providing supplemental federal funding to the federal and state agencies involved. The case was investigated by the FBI, DEA, Seattle Police Department and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Multiple agencies assisted with the arrests and the serving of search warrants including the Port of Seattle Police Department. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Vince Lombardi.A New York Times reporter admitted Monday at least two things that President Donald Trump is better at than his predecessor, former President Barack Obama — and they have to do with the media. Despite constantly railing against the mainstream media, fake news and more often than not the Times itself, Trump is better at news conferences and reaching out to individual reporters even in organizations that he dislikes, said Glenn Thrush, a White House reporter for the Times. Thrush’s comments Thrush’s comments came Monday during a panel discussion with two other reporters on “A Front Row Seat to Spin.” “I do want to give Trump credit on things, ” Thrush said. “I think one of the things that I think he’s doing better than Barack Obama are these press conferences and his outreach to individual reporters, even for organizations, like my own, that he criticizes.” Thrush explained the media has fallen into a “trap” of depicting the Obama administration of being some “golden era” for press freedom. But when Obama held a news conference, he only answered prescreened questions from news outlets that favored him, Thrush said. “When Obama had press conferences, he had a single piece of white paper and he had six or seven organizations that he had preselected to call upon, and a lot of them were pretty favorable to him, too,” he explained. But because Trump holds “free-ranging” press conferences, typically calling on reporters without preselecting them, Thrush said the Republican president’s meetings with the media are a lot more “democratic” than under Obama.We’ve been talking to Florida attorney Richard Celler about the religious discrimination lawsuit he filed on behalf of a man name David Bunting who is suing a Tampa medical services CEO, Vick Tipnes, for allegedly forcing Scientology courses on him, and firing him when Bunting refused. We told Celler how much Tipnes reminded us of another colorful businessman, motivational speaker Grant Cardone, who is also a Scientologist and is someone Tipnes cites as a mentor. What a coincidence, Celler told us. He had clients who were also making religious discrimination claims against Cardone. Celler sent us copies of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints he’s made on behalf of three clients who submitted discrimination claims after being fired by Cardone’s Miami Beach business. Donald Bradley was fired on June 10, 2015. Pedro Orozco on January 4 of this year. And Michelle Ceglarek four days later. All three worked for Cardone’s Miami Beach business, at 300 71st St, and each of them has filed claims that they were let go because they refused to submit to Scientology training. “They are sneaky. They call it the L. Ron Hubbard training, but go out of their way not to use the term ‘Scientology’,” Celler tells us. “We all know what it really is though.” In Bunting’s case, Celler prepared a lengthy report that he submitted to the EEOC, and attorney Hunter Chamberlin responded with a lengthy counterargument on behalf of Vick Tipnes. The EEOC then gave Bunting permission to sue. Celler tells us that he hasn’t submitted lengthy reports for the former Cardone employees yet, and he hasn’t seen any responses from Cardone. We called Cardone Training Technologies yesterday and spoke to a helpful employee who put us through to someone he said could help us. We left a detailed message with that person, but haven’t yet received a response. When we do, we’ll let you know. Grant Cardone is a very familiar name to Scientology watchers. He first came to our attention when he starred in a short-lived National Geographic Channel series, Turnaround King. Former Scientology executive Marty Rathbun told us that Cardone had also done some dirty work on behalf of church leader David Miscavige, sliming well known acting coach Milton Katselas, who had begun to pull away from Scientology. Since then, Cardone has provided us years of entertainment as one of Scientology’s more colorful characters. We’ll leave it up to our commenters to nominate their favorite Cardone moments. But is he forcing Scientology on his employees? We’d love to get his side of the story. Hey, Grant, give us a call. We left our number with your helper Katie. EEOC Claims Donald Bradley Pedro Orozco ——————– Posted by Tony Ortega on August 12, 2016 at 07:00 E-mail tips and story ideas to tonyo94 AT gmail DOT com or follow us on Twitter. We post behind-the-scenes updates at our Facebook author page. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page. Our book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information about the book, and our 2015 book tour, can also be found at the book’s dedicated page. Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts… BLOGGING DIANETICS: We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of L.A. attorney and former church member Vance Woodward UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts Other links: Shelly Miscavige, ten years gone \| The Lisa McPherson story told in real time \| The Cathriona White stories \| The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ \| Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication \| Scientology’s little day care of horrors \| Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? \| Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam \| Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert \| PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” \| Scientology’s Master Spies \| Scientology’s Private Dancer \| The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons \| Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill \| Scientology boasts about assistance from Google \| The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song \| The Underground Bunker FAQ Our Guide to Alex Gibney’s film ‘Going Clear,’ and our pages about its principal figures… Jason Beghe \| Tom DeVocht \| Sara Goldberg \| Paul Haggis \| Mark “Marty” Rathbun \| Mike Rinder \| Spanky Taylor \| Hana WhitfieldA U.K. survey found that journalists consumed the most amount of coffee, but that's only the tip of the coffee-related statistics iceberg. SHOW TRANSCRIPT When you think of which professionals drink more coffee than anyone else...what comes to mind? Would it be police officers? Plumbers? Or maybe... sips coffee Journalists? Yup. Well, at least according to a survey by press release distributor Pressat. Journalists and media staff apparently consumed more cups of joe than any other profession. The survey covered 10,000 people in the United Kingdom, 85 percent of which said they drink at least three cups of coffee a day. So what’s the cause of this coffee-fueled workday for journalists? Maybe, as The Huffington Post points out, its the fact that CareerCast found being a newspaper reporter was the worst job in 2013 because of the low pay and high amounts of stress. Or maybe it's that in 2013 TV and Newspaper reporters were seen as some of the least ethical or honest professions, ranking just below local politicians. At least they came out above members of Congress. It’s worth noting that Pressat is a press release distributor, so they may have had a pretty large journalist demographic in their survey. That, and their results only covered the U.K. A 2012 survey by Dunkin’ Donuts and CareerBuilder found that, out of 4,100 U.S. workers surveyed, food prep employees were at the top of the coffee-drinking ladder with journalists down at number six. A more recent survey by the duo didn’t mention any specifics about professions, but did find 34 percent of U.S. workers felt less productive without coffee — which is quite a big jump from Pressat’s 70 percent who answered the same thing. While there’s not much data out there to suggest which profession drinks the most coffee worldwide, Quartz collected data in 2014 showing the Netherlands in the lead for actual coffee consumption per person at just under two and a half cups a day. The U.S. ranked way down at number 16. Regardless of whether its journalists or the Dutch who drink the most coffee, a study done last year by the University of South Carolina found the daily recommended dose of caffeine shouldn’t exceed four cups of coffee a day. But, sips coffee coffee has been linked to more than a couple health benefits such as decreasing the risks of some cancers, possibly protecting against Alzheimer’s disease, and lowering the risk of Type 2 diabetes. This video includes images from Getty Images.smoking pot istockphoto (CBS) Marijuana smokers may want to put down the pipe before picking up their car keys. A new study shows smoking a doobie nearly doubles your risk of crashing your car. PICTURES: Drugged driving: 20 states with highest rates What's more, the drivers in the study were not necessarily baking behind the wheel. The study found using marijuana within three hours of driving raised risks for accidents 1.75 times, compared with crash rates among sober drivers. "Despite being regulated in many jurisdictions, cannabis (marijuana) is the most widely used illicit substance in the world," the authors write in the study, published in the Feb. 9 issue of the British Medical Journal. These results suggest, "that cannabis impairs performance of the cognitive and motor tasks necessary for safe driving, increasing the risk of collision." In the first large-scale review of its kind, researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada looked at nine studies involving nearly 50,000 people to determine whether consuming cannabis caused motor vehicle collisions. After looking at the accidents and examining blood test results and self-reports, the researchers determined the elevated risk among stoned drivers. What's more, the risk appears to be even higher for drivers over 35. The type of vehicle also did not matter, whether it was a motorcycle, SUV, or even a bus. PICTURES: 17 stoner states: Where's marijuana use highest? The study didn't look at what amount of marijuana raised crash risk, but the researchers found that people with higher levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in the blood - which may be from smoking pot shortly before a crash or smoking a lot of it hours before - were more likely to suffer a fatal car crash. "Our findings provide clarity to the large body of research on cannabis and collision risk," study author Mark Asbridge, associate professor at the department of community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie University, told BBC News. "They also offer support to existing policies, in many jurisdictions, that restrict driving under the influence of cannabis, and direct public health officials to devote
Soldiers & Sailors Monument at Midnight. Click here for more information about the event. New Year's Eve Dance Party at Allentown Brew Works The best of 80’s and 90’s Alternative and Post Punk, current Tech House, Hip Hop, Coldwave, and Electronic! No club music, no playlists, all live mixing, always a good time! 10 pm - 2 am The Allentown Brew Works is also hosting a Kids NYE Party from 5-9 pm in the High Gravity Lounge. Movies and music will be on the big screen with sparkling cider after the big countdown to "midnight" (7:00 pm). We'll have our regular menus available as well as the bar open for parents. Reservations Required, please call 610-433-7777 Bell Hall's New Year's Eve Celebration Copper Fields LIVE 9pm - 1am Champagne Toast at Midnight Ring in the New Year at Centro There will be a late night menu starting at 11pm and continue until 12:30am! Perfect for something quick as you warm up next to the fireplace and toast in the anno nuovo. Seafood Feast at Chickie's & Pete's Ring in the New Year with a seafood feast, right here in downtown Allentown with Chickie's & Pete's. DJ, Dancing, Champagne Toast, Drink Specials, and $10.00 Mussels. Call for reservation information. 484.273.4507. Celebrate at The Dime Make your reservations now for a very speciald inner at The Dime. There will be live music from 10:30 - 1:30 as you enjoy the best seats in Center City Allentown for the NYE Fireworks at Midnight. grain. This Saturday Grain is transforming "JUST FOR THE COUNTDOWN!" Party starts at 10:30pm, dress to impress, NO COVER, light buffet, party favors, and champagne toast provided. DJ Skitzo will be turning the clock back and playing all the 90's early 2000's dance hits to bring in the new year. New Year's Eve with Pip the Mouse! Help us celebrate the last performances of the puppet show for the season. Come and talk with the puppeteers, take pictures, reminisce about Pip and enjoy refreshments. Performances of Pip: The Mouse Before Christmas are at 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m., and 2:30 p.m. We will have a countdown to “midnight” at Noon for the children so they can celebrate the New Year without staying up late. New Year's Eve Celebration at The Hamilton Kitchen Live Entertainment from the Groove Merchants 9pm-1am, champagne toast at midnight, and downtown’s best view of the fireworks from our heated patio! Halo Nightclub NYE Celebration Celebrate NYE with Power 99 DJ Alamo and local favorite DJ Menace. For $10, enjoy drink specials and $120 pricing on top shelf bottles (including gratuity). View live footage of the NYC ball drop, leading up to a balloon drop at midnight. Call 610-435-3540 to reserve VIP sections. Hook Seafood and Grill NYE buffet from 5 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. for $49.95. Call ahead for a reservation. Queen City BBQ with The BC Combo Ring in the New Year at Queen City BBQ with special menu items and live music by The BC Combo. Sugar Hill Jazz House Enjoy live music by Nancy Coletti starting at 9 p.m. Don't forget to keep the following locations in mind while you're exploring downtown - Studio 740 - Visit Studio 740 for a pre-fireworks display get-together beginning at 6 p.m. This will be a celebration of friends and family - bring your instruments, Ann will supply the baby grand, accordions, electric, six string and acoustic twelve string guitars! Gallery 724 99 Bottles Center Ice - This Saturday, Dec. 31st is the last day Center Ice will be open before they close for the season to focus on parties and private events! Roar Social House Johnny's Bagels Tim Horton's Starbuck's Wok Box“The Republicans’ Food Stamp Fraud”: Telling Poor Children The Fourth Box Of Macaroni And Cheese Is Excessive Is Indecent What’s the single worst thing the Obama-era Republicans have done? Tough one, I know. But spare me a moment here—plus a thousand words down the page—and I think maybe you’ll agree with me that the single worst thing the Obama-era Republicans have done is try to push through a $40 billion cut to the food-stamps program. It’s just unspeakably cruel. They usually say publicly that it’s about saving money. But sometimes someone—one congressman in particular—lets slip the real reason: They want to punish poor people. The farm bill, which includes the food-stamp program, goes to conference committee next week. That’s where, the cliché has it, the two sides are supposed to “iron out their differences.” The only thing the Democrats on this committee should do with an iron is run it across the Republicans’ scowling faces. The basic facts on the program. Its size fluctuates with the economy—when more people are working, the number of those on food stamps goes down. This, of course, isn’t one of those times. So right now the SNAP program, as it’s called, is serving nearly 48 million people in 23 million households. The average monthly individual benefit is $133, or about $4.50 a day. In 2011, 45 percent of recipients were children. Forty-one percent live in households where at least one person works. More than 900,000 are veterans. Large numbers are elderly or disabled or both. It’s costing about $80 billion a year. Senate Democrats proposed a cut to the program. A small cut, but a cut all the same: $4 billion over 10 years. The Republicans in the House sought a cut of $20.5 billion over 10 years. But then the farm bill failed to pass. Remember that? When John Boehner didn’t have enough votes to pass his own bill? After that debacle, the House took the farm bill and split it into two parts—the subsidies for the large growers of rice and cotton and so forth, and the food-stamp program. Two separate bills. And this time, Eric Cantor doubled the cut: $40 billion over 10 years. This number, if it became law, would boot 3.8 million people—presumably, nearly half of them children—off the program in 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office. These would come on top of cuts to the program that kick in Nov. 1. The 2009 stimulus bill included extra food-stamp money because unemployment was so high after the financial meltdown that legislators knew more people would be applying for SNAP assistance. So there was a “stimulus bump” in food-stamp spending, but that is now ending. A family of four would see a $46 cut each month. The proposed GOP cut is such a piddling amount of money, in terms of the whole federal budget and especially when spread out over 10 years. But nearly half of it is quite literally taking food out of the mouths of children. What’s the point? The point really is that Tea Party Republicans think these people don’t deserve the help. That’s some fascinating logic. The economy melts down because of something a bunch of crooked bankers do. The people at the bottom quarter of the economy, who’ve been getting jobbed for 30 years anyway and who always suffer the most in a downturn, start getting laid off in huge numbers. They have children to feed. Probably with no small amount of shame, they go in and sign up for food stamps. And what do they get? Lectures about being lazy. You may have seen the now-infamous video of Tennessee Congressman Steve Fincher, who told a crowd over the summer that “the Bible says ‘If you don’t work, you don’t eat.’” This while Fincher, a cotton farmer, has enjoyed $3.5 million in federal farm subsidies. This year’s House bill ends “direct payments” to farmers whether they grow any crops or not—except for one kind: cotton farmers. Religious bloggers have noted that Fincher got his theology wrong and that the relevant passage, from Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, wasn’t remotely about punishing people too lazy to work. It was about punishing people who’d stopped working because they thought Jesus was returning any day now. So: mean bastard, hypocrite, and Scripture-mangling idiot to boot. Nice trifecta. The other argument one sometimes hears concerns the dreadful curse of food-stamp fraud. The actual rate of food-stamp fraud—people selling their coupons for cash—is 1.3 percent, but this of course doesn’t prevent the right from finding a couple of garish anecdotes and making it seem as if they’re the norm. Voter fraud, Medicaid fraud, food-stamp fraud…Somehow, in Republican America, only poor people and blacks commit fraud. This cut is the fraud, because it’s not really about fraud or austerity. It’s entirely about punishing the alleged 47 percent. The bottom half or third of the alleged 47 percent. It’s absolutely appalling. These folks have done a lot of miserable things in the past four years. But this—the morality of this is so repulsively backward, the indecency so operatically and ostentatiously broadcast, I think it takes the gold going away. The conference process starts next Wednesday and is going to take maybe a few months. Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow has taken the lead on this issue and has been terrific. Ditto Pat Leahy. Max Baucus, I’m told, is a good get to go a little wobbly (surprise). But this is one where the Democrats have to say this won’t stand. It’s one thing to shut down the government for two weeks and take quixotic stabs at Obamacare. Telling poor children that that fourth box of macaroni and cheese is excessive is something very different. By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, October 26, 2013"How was camping with Ruby?" It was an innocent question with a far too non-innocent tone accompanying it. Not that I would expect less from Yang. "It was quite fun." Blake merely replied. If there was one thing Blake had learned to do when talking to Yang and really didn't want to be teased, was to keep it short. Limit the amount of ammunition that Yang had to throw back at her. The blonde was having none of it, however. "Sooo what'd you two do for three days?" Yang glanced down at her cards before looking back up. "There isn't a whole lot out there after all. You're turn." Yang put a card face down before focusing her gaze on Blake's hand. "Stargazing." It WAS the reason for the camping trip after all. "Ruby promised to show me what the stars looked like at night during the break." Blake did a few moves before ending her turn. "Aww, I liked that card." The blonde discarded it before starting her turn. "Haven't you seen the stars before? It's not like they are going anywhere…" "I… not really?" Blake gave a small shrug. "I guess I never really took the time to look at them, y'know?" The memory of both nights were engraved into her mind's eye; the twinkling points out in the sky, Ruby and her sharing a sleeping bag. "It was just… really nice." "Well it sounds like you had fun." Yang favoured her with a genuine smile only for it to morph into a cheeky one that gave cause for concern. Yang flipped over her card eliciting a groan from Blake. "I do believe, my dear partner, that you are dead." "Best nine out of fifteen?" "As much as I'd like to keep kicking your butt, Zwei needs to go for a walk." Blake groaned. As much as she liked staying in Yang and Ruby's house, the dog was the one thing she couldn't stand, with its beady little eyes and deceive- "Remnant to Blake, you there?" A hand was waving in front of her face brought Blake back to the present. "Sure." "How come you don't like dogs?" "I just don't." Blake could hear the unasked question. Might as well nip it in the bud. "No, it's not because I'm a feline Faunus." "Oh. Well if you say so." The two continued their walk, Blake lagging slightly behind Yang and Zwei. Minutes passed. "So what'd you guys do during the day?" "Hm?" Blake thought for a moment. "Remember that time Ruby tried to use Gambol Shroud?" "Yup!" Yang suppressed her snickering. "I still got pictures of it too! Wanna see?" The blonde didn't give Blake a chance to say anything before tossing her scroll at her, the pictures already pulled up. Blake fought off a blush as she looked at the picture of her and Ruby caught in the ribbon's hold together. A repeat happened during the camping trip, not that Blake was complaining. It had been an excuse to be close to Ruby after all. "Yang, why do you still have these?" Yang pouted. "Because you two looked cute, that's why." She shook her head, her long yellow mane swishing. "But enough of that, what does that have to do with camping?" Lilac eyes looked questioningly at her own amber ones. "Ruby wanted to learn how to use Gambol Shroud properly." Blake shrugged. "So I taught her." "Aww that's so cute!" The big sister within Yang had clearly taken over. "Rubes really does love her weapons. I tried to show her how to use Ember Celica… but they sent her flying heh heh heh…" Blake could just imagine the force from the gauntlets sending the teen flying, Ruby is pretty light in all fairness. Not that I would know from her sleeping on top of me, nope. Blake found herself going through the photos as the two walked in silence, the occasional bark from Zwei being the only noise. These are actually kinda… cute. It was nice to see evidence that she had friends, even if it was because her partner was holding it as blackmail material. Probably. "You like Ruby a lot don't you?" "Huh?" Act natural Blake, be a cool cat. If Blake wasn't trying to act natural, she would have groaned at her own pun. "Ruby is a good friend and team leader, yes." "I think it goes a bit beyond being a friend." When Blake raised an eyebrow to that, Yang pointed to the scroll. "You've been staring at it for like… a minute." Deny everything. "No I haven't, it's only been a couple of sec-" "Your face is redder than Ruby's cape." "…" "Am I that obvious?" "To me, yeah you are." The two walked in silence, a very awkward silence air to it compared to before. "I know it's between you and Ruby, so I really don't have a say with it but…" Yang's voice took on a tone that Blake seldom heard directed at her. "If you two like each other, go for it." "Thanks. It means a lot to me." Blake breathed a sigh of relief; this is going better than expected. "I don't know if Ruby feels the same about me…" "I think she does." There was no hesitation in Yang's voice when she responded, no uncertainty. No hint of deception. That sent Blake's mind into a whirlwind. "I've known Ruby since she was born…" Yang stopped walking, turning around to look at Blake, lilac eyes focusing on her again. "I know Ruby pretty well Blake, she likes you too." Blake couldn't think of what to say, or was there anything even to say to that? When it was clear Blake was at a loss for words, Yang continued. "I'm not saying that you should ask her out right now or anything, or even that it'd be a smart thing to do… just that Ruby cares for you. She really does." "I just don't want to ruin what we have." Blake replied in a small voice. The thought of losing what she had now was terrifying. "I'm happy with how it is now, having a team and friends." Blake looked down at her feet. "With being friends with Ruby." Blake felt herself pulled into a gentle hug, unlike the normal bone shattering ones that Yang gave. "Then forget I said anything… Just know that if anything does happen, I'll be happy for you both." With that, Yang went on as if nothing had happened. Yet the idea persisted in Blake's head as the day went on. Ruby feels the same about me. AU: What? You thought Yang was going to be disapproving or something? Nah, she is all for it if it happens. Blake is just a scared kitty cat when it comes to change. It's always been bad for her in the past. Yang is a big nut when it comes to board games and cards for that matter in my head, hence the card game haha. SO HOW ABOUT THAT EPISODE?! Yes, I did see it, it was quite good! I do have the sponsorship. I'm not spoiling anything but I have to say the animation has improved immensely compared to the first volume and even the second. For those who read Acceptance; it should be done on time! My editor and I are hard at work on it! :P I might try and do a Spoon Equality chapter tomorrow as well. Might being the keyword! Anywho, have a great day everyone and thanks for reading! :DSomeone in the crowd shot the video: Arms tied behind his back, Mohammed Riyaz sways before Vivek Premi, a muscular bearded young man with a leather belt wrapped around his fist. It is an overcast afternoon in June 2015 in Shamli, a provincial town in western Uttar Pradesh. Down by Shiv Chowk, the white metal grillwork of wrought iron Oms and swastikas around the Shiv-ling on the street corner offers a striking backdrop for the action to follow. For a moment, Premi appears lost, a hunter confounded by his prey. Then his arm coils, the belt swings through the air and strikes Riyaz across his chest, across his legs, about his head; all that can be heard is the sound of leather hitting flesh and Premi’s hoarse shouting, “This is cow slaughter, cow slaughter, cow slaughter, cow slaughter. This is cow slaughter.” Within hours, the footage was everywhere: local newsrooms put it on their front pages; Gau Raksha (cow-protection) WhatsApp groups across the country circulated it amongst their friends, it racked up hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. In the year that followed, the video of a Hindu flogging a Muslim in a town square would imbue Premi’s young life with power, diminish Riyaz to helplessness, and put a riot-prone, communally-sensitive region on edge. It would reveal the newest route to Rajneeti or politics – that time honoured destination for the young and ambitious in small-town India. But at that moment, Premi recalled as we drove through his hometown last week, he was consumed by the desire to make an example of Riyaz.I wish I could take credit for having such a deep understanding of Italian culture that the meaning behind Rossi’s Mugello helmet was self-evident, but the credit belongs to Ducati Corse’s PR man, Chris Jonnum. After seeing Alex Brigg’s tweet that featured Rossi’s new helmet design, CJ was kind enough to connect the dots for us on the meaning behind the special Mugello helmet. And let me tell you, as non-Italian, the trail would not have been easy to follow without his help. Get the inside scoop on Rossi’s lid after the jump. Featured on the top of the helmet is Italian singer, actor, and television host Gianni Morandi. Morandi is something of big deal in the country shaped like a boot, having sold 49 million records worldwide and generally putting light Italian music on the map, so to speak. Circumscribing the photo of Morandi is a ring of flowers, which hail from the city of Sanremo, which CJ tells us is also known as the City of Flowers, since it has been in the business of selling flower year-round since the late 9th century. Known for the Sanremo Festival, the city hosts one of Italy’s major musical events, and is unsurprisingly characterized by the flowers, which as we have said, the city is also famous for growing. During the 2012 Sanremo Festival, Gianni Morandi was ordering around his work crew and serendipitously coined the now famous motto “restiamo uniti” (also seen on the helmet), which literally translates into “let’s stick together” in Italian. While this is where CJ leaves us to conclude the meaning of the helmet as it relates to Valentino Rossi, we think it speaks pretty loudly for itself. With Rossi talking very favorably this week about his meeting with Audi’s executives, it seems increasingly likely that the nine-time World Champion will stay on with Ducati Corse for at least another season, despite all the trouble he and his team have had with the GP11 & GP12 race bikes. The bigger question now is whom will be his teammate, Cal or Nicky. For that, only time will tell. Source: Ducati CorseTears flowing, makeup running, hearts breaking, cats watching their owner make a fool of themselves on TV? Must be bachelor season. I had some trouble capturing my feelings from the premiere. It was good but not great, awkward but not over the top, humorous but not hilarious. Maybe it’s more my fault for having such high expectations. I just couldn’t help but feel something was missing. In case you haven’t heard, Ben Higgins is our bachelor this year. He is visited by the 3 duds (ghosts) of Bachelor’s past: Shawn (got married to Catherine), Jason (picked one girl and then changed his mind and married the runner up), and Chris (picked the girl he didn’t want because the one he did (she’s in this episode) didn’t want him). Not necessarily the 3 people you want giving you advice, but at least they have all Ben (last one I swear) in the same position. The only thing I can remember is that Chris told him to make out with as many as you can. How did that go for you Chris? After they finish bro ing out Ben and Chris Harrison are at the bachelor house ready to get things started. Harrison gives him a few words of encouragement/freaks him out and here come the limos. The limo intros (Limtros) are one of the biggest highlights of the entire season. Each girl gets out trying to look like a million bucks, some bring weird props, the bachelor always turns around and says things like how lucky they are and can’t believe how many came here just for him. I won’t cover them all because a lot are hi my name is desperate hoe number X, I can’t wait to see you inside. But some are more memorable. The first one of note is Mandi. She has a giant rose on her head and claims that she is the first impression rose. That might have been the most normal thing she did all night. Next up is is Caila. She runs and jumps in his arms. Nothing out of the ordinary, but earlier in the episode they always highlight a couple of girls and show them working or hanging out at home. Caila was one of those girls, and she said something along the lines of her breaking up with her boyfriend when she found out Ben was the bachelor. How much puss is at your disposal if girls will break up with their boyfriend just because you announce that you’re single? Ben was also presented with a pair of twins that emerged from the limo. Just about everyone had one of two things go through their head; I wonder if they are into 3 ways, does anyone else remember that twins commercial: Jami is Canadian and mentions that she knows last year’s bachelorette Kaitlyn. She jokes that it’s because all Canadians know each other. Since you not only come to the blog for entertainment purposes I will throw in some trivia in that 90% of all Canadians live within 100 miles of the US/Canadian border. Lace is up next and Lace is not one we will soon forget. If you look back at my initial preview for these chicks you’ll see that I wrote this about Lace: ‘ I’m really getting a Kelsey vibe from this one. You remember Kelsey, the girl that needed to share her dead husband’s story. If Lace could be anyone she answered herself, only richer. I’m willing to bet that Lace doesn’t have very many girl friends and just can’t figure out why.’ If Kelsey didn’t kill her husband my money is on Lace. She tells Ben to close his eyes and she kisses him. Lace is very pretty and might be psychotic but she mumbles when she talks. I think it might be because her teeth get in the way: More on her as the night unfolds. Next up is Lauren R, but only the audience is privy to that information. In her haste in telling Ben she is a stalker she forgets to say her name. He asks several times and she either ignores him, doesn’t hear him, or is too busy wondering how many grandkids they are going to have. Other than the bachelor when else is it ok to let someone that won’t tell you their name and knows everything about you into a house? The next girl spoke entirely in Russian. We didn’t hear one word of English from her the entire episode. Never thought that strategy would work but she somehow ended up with a rose at the end of the night. I bet she would have been real impressed had he hit her up with this: Будете ли вы принять этот розу? As many people know, the bachelor franchise usually gets criticized for not having enough people of culture on this show, and those that are brought on usually don’t make it very far. This season ended up being no different as we saw yet another walk out the door far too soon. I am of course talking about the ginger: All jokes aside I was pulling for Laura. She was one of the few that seemed down to earth and possibly a little funny. But seeing a ginger make it past the first night is about as likely as having a unicorn show up. Speaking of: That would be Jo-Jo. She made some awful fairy tale joke after freaking Ben out. Megan brought a mini horse. Hope she returned it to Rob and Big after the show: Rachel came in on what the kids are calling a hover board. It went a little better than Gob trying to get around at the Bluth construction site: By they way, can we think of a different name for “hoverboard”? We all know it’s not hovering. It has wheels. It will now be known as wheelieboard (working title). That sums up the entrances. After the last girl headed in, Ben decided to try and make himself even more endearing and called up his parents and tell them he thinks he has a great group of girls. He is later joined by Becca who finished second on Chris Soules season and Amber who finished it doesn’t matter. Girls get upset and it’s just kind of whatever. These two will be addressed in future posts. When Ben arrives the ladies applaud and complement him profusely. He starts to give his little speech about finding love and can’t wait to take this journey and before he finishes Mandi the flower girl grabs him and takes off. She isn’t messing around. Mandi is a dentist and therefore has no choice but to give Ben an oral examination. She tells him to open wide and all I can think about are how wide apart her tits are from the cast photo. Mandi also look like a certain celebrity. If they had several surgeries botched: (I love how much Heather Graham hates bras) You can’t really tell from just this picture, but you’ll notice it right away when you watch, if you haven’t already. So we need to hand out the first impression rose. This is both a blessing and a curse. Sure, you are likely to be around for a while if chosen to get that coveted flower, but I don’t think anyone has ever won after getting it. It’s kind of like the Par 3 tournament they have at the Masters each year. Yeah it’s cool to win, but no one has ever gone on to win the Masters after winning the Par 3. This year our (un)lucky golfer is Olivia. She told Ben that she quit her job as a news anchor to come find love. I’ve got some late breaking news to Olivia: That was retarded Rose ceremony time. Most of whom you’d expect to get a rose got one. We get down to the last one and our good friend Lace is freaking out. She ends up getting the last rose, but she isn’t happy. Immediately afterwards she pulls Ben aside and tells him she did not get enough eye contact at the ceremony. Lace is one of those that needs constant affirmation. Ben, as nicely as you possibly can asks her what the fuck she is talking about. If I’m Ben I ask to see her rose and I snap it in half over my knee like Bo fucking Jackson does to baseball bats: There you have it. Another premiere in the books. I’m still 50/50 on how good this season is going to play out. They showed some previews on what to expect this season but I don’t like speculating. So for all those girls that didn’t get a rose: See you next week - NickThis is the statement that the Presidential Transition Team posted not to long ago on social media regarding the phone conference president-elect Donald Trump had with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Similarly, the en.Kremlin.ru website had this to say about today’s phone conversation. It should be noted that this conversation was planned in advance to ensure the fluid nature of US-Russian relation transitions smoothly and without any surprises. It appears that after 4-8 years of ruinous Neo-con foreign policy, the two world powers will finally be working closer with each other to resolve a wide range of issues and abandoned disputes. The US and Russia have many things to try and make right such as the situation in Syria, bilateral sanctions, and the Ukrainian situation. Only time will tell if and how these two countries will plan on working with each other, but this bit of news is a good sign pointing to things going to the right direction.Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. For many years: Virtually every country in the world has condemned Israel’s settlements in the West Bank. They have all repeatedly voted to say so in the UN. The US has also opposed Israel’s settlements, but hasn’t officially said so in the UN. And Israel has said very clearly that the UN is virulently anti-Israel (true) and they pay it no mind. A few days ago one small part of this formula finally changed when the US abstained from a UN vote condemning Israel’s settlements on the West Bank. It was a parting blow from a lame-duck president who has been treated appallingly by Bibi Netanyahu, and the only surprising thing about it is that President Obama managed to hold his temper this long. In any case, it’s entirely meaningless: Donald Trump will take office soon and Netanyahu claims to consider the UN illegitimate on this subject anyway. So why has everyone gone ballistic over it? Sure, there’s now an “official” UN resolution condemning the West Bank settlements, but what difference does that make? An “official” UN resolution is barely worth the minute or two it takes to read it. Even as a PR coup it doesn’t amount to much. The whole Israel charade long ago ceased to interest me. I can hardly pretend to be any kind of expert, but my take is that the last chance for any kind of peace deal ended in the 90s. The huge influx of conservative Jews from Russia after the fall of the Iron Curtain, followed by the Second Intifada, turned Israel permanently against any kind of settlement with the Palestinians. Because of this, I never blamed George Bush for not trying to broker a peace deal and never blamed Obama for not succeeding. Even people who are sympathetic toward Obama often say that he handled the Middle East badly—and the Israel relationship particularly badly—but I simply don’t see how he could have done any better. Netanyahu treated him with unconcealed contempt; was unapologetic about publicly undermining him; decided to ditch bipartisanship and openly team up with the Republican Party; and very plainly was never open to any kind of settlement at all. There is absolutely nothing Obama could have done to change that. In any case, the following things are indisputably true: Israeli leaders will never* stop building in the West Bank. It would be electoral suicide. Israeli leaders will never give up the West Bank. It would be electoral suicide. Israeli leaders will never formally annex the West Bank. It would be electoral suicide. In other words, nothing is going to happen. Period. Israel is going to keep things as they are, fight off world opinion forever, and hope that maybe over the course of several decades they can slowly get all the Palestinians in the West Bank to emigrate elsewhere. It’s sort of like Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” on steroids. And just in case you think this puts me on the side of the Arabs and Palestinians, forget it. To the extent that I stay even marginally on Israel’s side, it’s because the Arabs have acted even more abominably. They tried to invade Israel twice. They never cared a fig for the Palestinians except as a convenient poster child. (Jordan must have been the first country in history to lose territory in a war and be happy about it.) They never accepted Israel as legitimate, but for decades they’ve tacitly tolerated its existence because it gives them an easy way of stirring up demagogic hatreds that help prop up their own vicious regimes. The PLO was a murderous terrorist organization, and Hamas is worse. The intifadas were depraved and ruinous. And despite the fact that the Palestinians were clearly on the losing end of a war and needed to accept the best deal they could get, they remained delusional to the end. I’ve never bought into the revisionist history that Bill Clinton’s Wye River/Camp David/Taba negotiations were unfair to the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat was right to turn down the final proposal. He needed to accept it, and he probably knew it. He was just too cowardly to do it and too convinced that his own leadership was dependent on opposition to Israel. Even in theory, there is literally no settlement that either the Israelis or the Palestinians would accept right now. This isn’t necessarily true forever, but it will be true for a good long time. We should all stop wasting our time on the fantasy that peace talks have any value. *All uses of never in this post are figurative. Never is a long time. But in this case, it means many decades at a minimum.Paul Revere monument, by Cyrus Dalin in 1940, located in Boston's North End. Image online courtesy Wikimedia Commons. For unsoldierlike behavour [behavior], During the whole expedition to Penobscot, which tends to Courdice [cowardice]. Most folks know about Paul Revere, the American Revolutionary War hero. He was the guy who rode through the Massachusetts countryside on April 18, 1775 warning residents that the British were coming. His plan was to hang a light - one if by land two if by sea - in the North Church tower in Boston. People remember him and not his companions, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. Because the British captured him, Revere never reached Concord that fateful night when the war began. Thanks to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, though, American school children - for more than a hundred years - memorized the poem which made Revere famous. But there is another, virtually unknown story that substantially diminished Paul Revere's standing as a soldier. He stood trial on charges of cowardice and insubordination in a military court martial.Story highlights En Marche! predicted to succeed in first round of legislative elections Macron aiming for majority in French Parliament (CNN) After that famous handshake with President Donald Trump and a Sicilian "bromance," this week just got even better for new French President Emmanuel Macron. JUST WATCHED 'Political bromance' brews at G-7 summit Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH 'Political bromance' brews at G-7 summit 00:55 He is hoping to secure a majority in the first round ballot on June 11. According to two polls, Macron's new centrist party, En Marche! is in first place, followed by the center-right Republicans and the far-right National Front of Marine Le Pen in a close race for second and third. The leftist party of Jean-Luc Melenchon trails in a distant fourth. Read MoreQ. Romain, first of all, tell us about your experience of the Monaco circuit. Romain GROSJEAN: Well, first of all, different feelings in Monaco: special track; special grand prix. For sure for us is a little bit home because we are close to France, so very happy to race in front of the fans, hopefully a lot of blue, white and red flags in the tribune. But Monaco is a special track, good experience that I won here in GP2 in 2009 and last year I did a really good race starting 26th and finishing P4 but then I've had some crashes as well. Let's see what it gives in a Formula One car – I'm sure even better and we're really looking forward to driving here. Q. There have been some circuits where you have performed, perhaps, better than others. Is this one where you feel it is going to be good for you? RG: I like the track, let's see what we can achieve. But you know, Monaco is a little bit different to the other ones: normally if you are good in a fast corner you know that more or less every fast corner you are going to be good – but here it's bumpy, it's in the street, the track is improving a lot during the weekend. There is a lot to learn and it goes really quickly in between the race, so it will be interesting to see how it goes. We are trying to set up the car as good as we can, achieve another strong result for the team and for myself as well and score some good points, and why not more. Q. I'm sure there's
because there are only a few trading houses in the provincial capital, Bukavu, due to the limited supply of tagged minerals and delays in providing government licenses to buy them, miners and community leaders said. The houses fix the price, they added. “The law of Obama is like a weight on us,” said Michel Mushagalusa, 30, vice president of the mining cooperative in Nzibira. Some activists and researchers say that minerals aren’t the core cause of Congo’s war — that there are other, more powerful factors, such as political and ethnic struggles and conflicts over land. And regulating the minerals, they say, does little to thwart the militias. Supporters of the American law say the plundering of minerals is a key stimulant of the conflict. They say the legislation has spurred measures by corporations and African governments to help end the illegal trade. But even some of the law’s biggest proponents say the Obama administration and tech companies should have provided aid as the legislation was being implemented “Four years went by with almost no support for Congolese miners,” wrote the Enough Project, a powerful activist group, in an open letter published Oct. 30. It added that American and other donors had only recently set up aid programs, “but they have yet to be felt by mining communities.” Thriving from gold In a report published this past summer, the Enough Project found that armed groups were no longer present at two-thirds of tin, tungsten and coltan mines in three eastern Congo provinces and cited the law as the reason. Nonetheless, some of the most brutal militias are still thriving in those provinces and others. In some areas outside of Luntukulu and in Shabunda territory, the Raia Mutomboki are the lords. The militia, whose name means “outraged citizens” in Swahili, sells diggers access to mining pits and takes a percentage of the minerals unearthed, a large portion of which are smuggled out through neighboring countries. The fighters also exact taxes at checkpoints. “Almost all our mines are controlled by Raia Mutomboki,” said Mozart Manigua, 42, president of a cooperative that oversees 20 mines in Kimbli, a vast area within Shabunda. Local people “have no choice but to work for the militia.” In other areas, militias have switched to selling palm oil, charcoal, marijuana, cattle and soap, said community leaders, activists and U.N. monitors. Their income is hardly as much as they earned from minerals, but it’s enough to continue destabilizing eastern Congo. Gold, though, remains a lucrative financial pipeline for armed groups, according to U.N. investigators. By some estimates, $400 million in gold from artisanal mines was smuggled out last year, most of it fueling armed actors and tainting the global gold supply. Increasingly, Congo’s army is becoming a major player in the conflict-minerals trade. Soldiers help smuggle untagged minerals out through Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, according to U.N. experts and Congolese government and law enforcement officials. “It’s some of the big commanders,” said Mubalama, the mining minister.The November/December issue of acmqueue is out now Subscribers and ACM Professional members login here PDF August 8, 2016 Volume 14, issue 4 10 Optimizations on Linear Search The operations side of the story Thomas A. Limoncelli A friend was asked the following question during a job interview: What is the fastest algorithm to find the largest number in an unsorted array? The catch, of course, is that the data is unsorted. Because of that, each item must be examined; thus, the best algorithm would require O(N) comparisons, where N is the number of elements. Any computer scientist knows this. For that reason, the fastest algorithm will be a linear search through the list. End of story. All the computer scientists may leave the room now. (looks around) Are all the computer scientists gone? Good! Now let's talk about the operational answer to this question. System administrators (DevOps engineers or SREs or whatever your title) must deal with the operational aspects of computation, not just the theoretical aspects. Operations is where the rubber hits the road. As a result, operations people see things from a different perspective and can realize opportunities outside of the basic O() analysis. Let's look at the operational aspects of the problem of trying to improve something that is theoretically optimal already. 1. Don't optimize code that is fast enough The first optimization comes from deciding to optimize time and not the algorithm itself. First, ask whether the code is fast enough already. If it is, you can optimize your time by not optimizing this code at all. This requires a definition of fast enough. Suppose 200 ms and under is fast enough. Anything that takes less than 200 ms is perceived to be instantaneous by the human brain. Therefore, any algorithm that can complete the task in less than 200 ms is usually good enough for interactive software. Donald Knuth famously wrote that premature optimization is the root of all evil. Optimized solutions are usually more complex than the solutions they replace; therefore, you risk introducing bugs into the system. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Why add complexity when you don't have to? My biggest concern with premature optimization is that it is a distraction from other, more important work. Your time is precious and finite. Time spent on a premature optimization is time that could be spent on more important work. Prioritizing your work is not about deciding in what order you will do the items on your to-do list. Rather, it is deciding which items on your to-do list will be intentionally dropped on the floor. I have 100 things I would like to do this week. I am going to complete only about 10 of them. How I prioritize my work determines which 90 tasks won't get done. I repeat this process every week. One of the best time-management skills you can develop is to learn to let go of that 90 percent. In the case of the interview question, whether optimizing is worthwhile relates to the number of data items. It isn't worth optimizing if only a small amount of data is involved. I imagine that if, during the interview, my friend had asked, "How many elements in the list?" the interviewer would have told him that it doesn't matter. From a theoretical point of view, it doesn't; from an operational point of view, however, it makes all the difference. Deciding if an optimization is worth your time requires a quick back-of-the-envelope estimate to determine what kinds of improvements are possible, how long they might take to be achieved, and if the optimization will result in a return on investment. The ability to use rough estimates to decide whether or not an engineering task is worthwhile may be one of the most important tools in a system administrator's toolbox. If small is defined to mean any amount of data that can be processed in under 200 ms, then you would be surprised at how big small can be. I conducted some simple benchmarks in Go to find how much data can be processed in 200 ms. A linear search can scan 13 million elements in less than 200 ms on a three-year-old MacBook laptop, and 13 million is no small feat. This linear search might be buggy, however. It is five lines long and, not to brag, but I can pack a lot of bugs into five lines. What if I were to leverage code that has been heavily tested instead? Most languages have a built-in sort function that has been tested far more than any code I've ever written. I could find the max by sorting the list and picking the last element. That would be lazy and execute more slowly than a linear search, but it would be very reliable. A few simple benchmarks found that on the same old laptop, this "lazy algorithm" could sort 700,000 elements and still be under the 200-ms mark. What about smaller values of N? If N=16,000, then the entire dataset fits in the L1 cache of the CPU, assuming the CPU was made in this decade. This means the CPU can scan the data so fast it will make your hair flip. If N=64,000, then the data will fit in a modern L2 cache, and your hair may still do interesting things. If the computer wasn't made in this decade, I would recommend that my friend reconsider working for this company. If N is less than 100, then the lazy algorithm runs imperceptibly fast. In fact, you could repeat the search on demand rather than storing the value, and unless you were running the algorithm thousands of times, the perceived time would be negligible. The algorithms mentioned so far are satisfactory until N=700,000 if we are lazy and N=13,000,000 if we aren't; 13 million 32-bit integers (about 52 MB) is hardly small by some standards. Yet, in terms of human perception, it can be searched instantly. If my friend had known these benchmark numbers, he could have had some fun during the interview, asking the interviewer to suggest a large value of N, and replying, "What? I don't get out of bed for less than 13 million integers!" (Of course, this would probably have cost him the job.) 2. Use SIMD instructions Most modern CPUs have SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) instructions that let you repeat the same operation over a large swath of memory. They are able to do this very quickly because they benefit from more efficient memory access and parallel operations. According to one simple benchmark (http://stackoverflow.com/a/2743040/71978), a 2.67-GHz Core i7 saw a 7-8x improvement by using SIMD instructions where N = 100,000. If the amount of data exceeded the CPU's cache size, the benefit dropped to 3.5x. With SIMD, small becomes about 45 million elements, or about 180 MB. 3. Work in parallel Even if N is larger than the small quantity, you can keep within your 200-ms time budget by using multiple CPUs. Each CPU core can search a shard of the data. With four CPU cores, small becomes 4N, or nearly 200 million items. When I was in college, the study of parallel programming was hypothetical because we didn't have access to computers with more than one CPU. In fact, I didn't think I would ever be lucky enough to access a machine with such a fancy architecture. Boy, was I wrong! Now I have a phone with eight CPU cores, one of which, I believe, is dedicated exclusively to crushing candy. Parallel processing is now the norm, not the exception. Code should be written to take advantage of this. 4. Hide calculation in another function The search for the max value can be hidden in other work. For example, earlier in the process the data is loaded into memory. Why not have that code also track the max value as it iterates through the data? If the data is being loaded from disk, the time spent waiting for I/O will dominate, and the additional comparison will be, essentially, free. If the data is being read from a text file, the work to convert ASCII digits to 32-bit integers is considerably more than tracking the largest value seen so far. Adding max-value tracking would be "error in the noise" of any benchmarks. Therefore, it is essentially free. You might point out that this violates the SoC (separation of concerns) principle. The method that loads data from the file should just load data from a file. Nothing else. Having it also track the maximum value along the way adds complexity. True, but we've already decided that the added complexity is worth the benefit. Where will this end? If the LoadDataFromFile() method also calculates the max value, what's to stop us from adding other calculations? Should it also calculate the min, count, total, and average? Obviously not. If you have the count and total, then you can calculate the average yourself. 5. Maintain the max along the way What if the max value cannot be tracked as part of loading the dataset? Perhaps you don't control the method that loads the data. If you are using an off-the-shelf JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) parser, adding the ability to track the max value would be very difficult. Perhaps the data is modified after being loaded, or it is generated in place. In such situations I would ask why the data structure holding the data isn't doing the tracking itself. If data is only added, never removed or changed, the data structure can easily track the largest value seen so far. The need for a linear search has been avoided altogether. If items are being removed and changed, more sophisticated data structures are required. A heap makes the highest value accessible in O(1) time. The data can be kept in the original order but in a heap or other index on the side. You will then always have fast access to the highest value, though you will suffer from additional overhead maintaining the indexes. 6. Hide long calculations from users Maybe the process can't be made any faster, but the delay can be hidden from the user. One good place to hide the calculation is when waiting for user input. You don't need the entire processing power of the computer to ask "Are you sure?" and then wait for a response. Instead, you can use that time to perform calculations, and no one will be the wiser. One video-game console manufacturer requires games to have some kind of user interaction within a few seconds of starting. Sadly, most games need more time than that to load and initialize. To meet the vendor's requirement, most games first load and display a title screen, then ask users to click a button to start the game. What users don't realize is that while they are sitting in awe of the amazing title screen, the game is finishing its preparations. Get out of your silo Before discussing the remaining optimizations, let's discuss the value of thinking more globally about the problem. Many optimizations come from end-to-end thinking. Rather than optimizing the code itself, we should look at the entire system for inspiration. To do this requires something scary: talking to people. Now, I understand that a lot of us go into this business because we like machines more than people, but the reality is that operations is a team sport. Sadly, often the operations team is put in a silo, expected to work issues out on their own without the benefit of talking to the people who created the system. This stems from the days when one company created software and sold it on floppy disk. The operations people were in a different silo from the developers because they were literally in a different company. System administrators' only access to developers at the other company was through customer support, whose job it was to insulate developers from talking to customers directly. If that ever did happen, it was called an escalation, an industry term that means that a customer accidentally got the support he or she paid for. It is something that the software industry tries to prevent at all costs. Most (or at least a growing proportion of) IT operations, however, deal with software that is developed in-house. In that situation there is very little excuse to have developers and operations in separate silos. In fact, they should talk to each other and collaborate. There should be a name for this kind of collaboration between developers and operations... and there is: DevOps. If your developers and operations teams are still siloed away from each other, then your business model hasn't changed since software was sold on floppy disk. This is ironic since your company probably didn't exist when floppy disks were in use. What's wrong with this picture? Get out of your silo and talk to people. Take a walk down the hallway and introduce yourself to the developers in your company. Have lunch with them. Indulge in your favorite after-work beverage together. If you are a manager who requires operations and developers to communicate only through "proper channels" involving committees and product management chains, get out of their way. Once operations has forged a relationship with developers, it is easier to ask important questions, such as How is the data used? What is it needed for and why? This kind of social collaboration is required to develop the end-to-end thinking that makes it possible to optimize code, processes, and organizations. Every system has a bottleneck. If you optimize upstream of the bottleneck, you are simply increasing the size of the backlog waiting at the bottleneck. If you optimize downstream of the bottleneck, you are adding capacity to part of a system that is starved for work. If you stay within your silo, you'll never know enough to identify the actual bottleneck. Getting out of your silo opens the door to optimizations such as our last four examples. 7. Use a "good enough" value instead Is the maximum value specifically needed, or is an estimate good enough? Perhaps the calculation can be avoided entirely. Often an estimate is sufficient, and there are many creative ways to calculate one. Perhaps the max value from the previous dataset is good enough. Perhaps the max value is being used to preallocate memory or other resources. Does this process really need to be fine-tuned every time the program runs? Might it be sufficient to adjust the allocations only occasionally—perhaps in response to resource monitoring or performance statistics? If you are dealing with a small amount of data (using the earlier definition of small), perhaps preallocating resources is overkill. If you are dealing with large amounts of data, perhaps preallocating resources is unsustainable and needs to be reengineered before it becomes dangerous. 8. Seek inspiration from the upstream processes Sometimes we can get a different perspective by examining the inputs. Where is the data coming from? I once observed a situation where a developer was complaining that an operation was very slow. His solution was to demand a faster machine. The sysadmin who investigated the issue found that the code was downloading millions of data points from a database on another continent. The network between the two hosts was very slow. A faster computer would not improve performance. The solution, however, was not to build a faster network, either. Instead, we moved the calculation to be closer to the data. Rather than download the data and do the calculation, the sysadmin recommended changing the SQL query to perform the calculation at the database server. Instead of downloading millions of data points, now we were downloading the single answer. This solution seems obvious but eluded the otherwise smart developer. How did that happen? Originally, the data was downloaded because it was processed and manipulated many different ways for many different purposes. Over time, however, these other purposes were eliminated until only one purpose remained. In this case the issue was not calculating the max value, but simply counting the number of data points, which SQL is very good at doing for you. 9. Seek inspiration from the downstream processes Another solution is to look at what is done with the data later in the process. Does some other processing step sort the data? If so, the max value doesn't need to be calculated. You can simply sort the data earlier in the process and take the last value. You wouldn't know this was possible unless you took the time to talk with people and understand the end-to-end flow of the system. Once I was on a project where data flowed through five different stages, controlled by five different teams. Each stage took the original data and sorted it. The data didn't change between stages, but each team made a private copy of the entire dataset so they could sort it. Because they hadn't looked outside their silos, they didn't realize how much wasted effort this entailed. By sorting the data earlier in the flow, the entire process became much faster. One sort is faster than five. 10. Question the question When preparing this column I walked around the New York office of stackoverflow.com and asked my coworkers if they had ever been in a situation where calculating the max value was a bottleneck worth optimizing. The answer I got was a resounding no. One developer pointed out that calculating the max is usually something done infrequently, often once per program run. Optimization effort should be spent on tasks done many times. A developer with a statistics background stated that the max is useless. For most datasets it is an outlier and should be ignored. What are useful to him are the top N items, which presents an entirely different algorithmic challenge. Another developer pointed out that anyone dealing with large amounts of data usually stores it in a database, and databases can find the max value very efficiently. In fact, he asserted, maintaining such data in a homegrown system is a waste of effort at best and negligent at worst. Thinking you can maintain a large dataset safely with homegrown databases is hubris. Most database systems can determine the max value very quickly because of the indexes they maintain. If the system cannot, it isn't the system administrator's responsibility to rewrite the database software, but to understand the situation well enough to facilitate a discussion among the developers, vendors, and whoever else is required to find a better solution. Conclusion: Find another question This brings me to my final point. Maybe the interview question posed at the beginning of this column should be retired. It might be a good logic problem for a beginning programmer, but it is not a good question to use when interviewing system administrators because it is not a realistic situation. A better question would be to ask job candidates to describe a situation where they optimized an algorithm. You can then listen to their story for signs of operational brilliance. I would like to know that the candidates determined ahead of time what would be considered good enough. Did they talk with stakeholders to determine whether the improvement was needed, how much improvement was needed, and how they would know if the optimization was achieved? Did they determine how much time and money were worth expending on the optimization? Optimizations that require an infinite budget are not nearly as useful as one would think. I would look to see if they benchmarked the system before and after, not just one or the other or not at all. I would like to see that they identified a specific problem, rather than just randomly tuning parts until they got better results. I would like to see that they determined the theoretical optimum as a yardstick against which all results were measured. I would pay careful attention to the size of the improvement. Was the improvement measured, or did it simply "feel faster"? Did the candidates enhance performance greatly or just squeeze a few additional percentage points out of the existing system? I would be impressed if they researched academic papers to find better algorithms. I would be most impressed, however, if they looked at the bigger picture and found a way to avoid doing the calculation entirely. In operations, often the best improvements come not from adding complexity, but by eliminating processes altogether. Thomas A. Limoncelli is a site reliability engineer at Stack Overflow Inc. in New York City. His books include The Practice of Cloud Administration (http://the-cloud-book.com), The Practice of System and Network Administration (http://the-sysadmin-book.com), and Time Management for System Administrators. He blogs at EverythingSysadmin.com and tweets at @YesThatTom. He holds a B.A. in computer science from Drew University. Related articles You're Doing It Wrong Think you've mastered the art of server performance? Think again. Poul-Henning Kamp Error Messages: What's the Problem? Real-world tales of woe shed some light Paul P. Maglio and Eser Kandogan Thinking Methodically about Performance The USE method addresses shortcomings in other commonly used methodologies. Brendan Gregg How Fast is Your Web Site? Web site performance data has never been more readily available. 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Comments (newest first) Leave this field empty Post a Comment: Comment: (Required - 4,000 character limit - HTML syntax is not allowed and will be removed) © 2018 ACM, Inc. All Rights Reserved.A Halifax organization that committed to donating to a scholarship in honour of a murdered Inuk woman and university student issued an apology Monday after discovering four years worth of donations weren't delivered. South House Sexual & Gender Resource Centre, located on Dalhousie University's campus, calls itself a student-funded gender justice centre. Its board of directors announced Monday it was taking responsibility for the group's failure to issue four $1,000 cheques to the Loretta Saunders Community Scholarship. "Our current board has discovered that though this money was allocated to the scholarship fund, it was never distributed and as a result has sat untouched for the last four years," the statement said. The scholarship, devoted to Indigenous women in Atlantic Canada, is named for Loretta Saunders, a Saint Mary's University student who was murdered in 2014. Scholarship awards can be anywhere between $500 and $2,000. According to its website, South House — formerly known as the Dalhousie Women's Centre — advocates for people struggling with oppression on the basis of sexuality and gender. 'A strange thing to miss' The error was discovered last fall after "a bit of digging," according to current board member Jennifer Allott. "I was really surprised. It's just a strange thing to miss," Allott said. "I don't know what past boards were focused on or how they did their accounting and treasury work in order to miss [it], so I was a little curious about that." That curiosity will not take them down a path of placing blame, she said. Instead, she says the group has retroactively paid the $4,000 in a lump sum to the fund's stewards, the Community Foundation of Nova Scotia. Angela Bishop, the foundation's executive director, said the foundation was not aware of any previous commitment from South House to donate to the Saunders scholarship. Preventing future oversights Allott said she wasn't sure what relationship previous boards of directors had established with the foundation. She said the current board wanted to nonetheless acknowledge the mistake, especially since theirs is a feminism-based organization advocating for marginalized people. "This has been a failure to uphold our mandate and our values," she said. "This specific situation just reaffirms the board's intent to really remember who we're trying to centre in our work." Allott says their upcoming budget needs to be approved by its student membership, but it does have $1,000 earmarked for the fund going forward. She says documents preventing future oversights will be prepared in time for the next board of directors rollover coming at the end of April.Turning Down Billions: Grading 15 Tech Companies that Declined Big Takeover Offers Share Share Reddit Email Shares 809 Turning Down Billions: Grading 15 Tech Companies that Declined Big Takeover Offers If you were to ask legendary investor Peter Thiel about the most important moment in Facebook history, he would point to an exchange in July 2006. Yahoo had made the lucrative offer of $1 billion for Facebook, and Peter Thiel as well as board member Jim Breyer got called into a meeting about the deal with Mark Zuckerberg. “Both Breyer and myself on balance thought we probably should take the money,” recalls Thiel. “But Zuckerberg started the meeting like, ‘This is kind of a formality, just a quick board meeting, it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. We’re obviously not going to sell here’.” Thiel and Breyer thought Facebook should take the money. Zuckerberg, who was 22 years old at the time, had so much conviction that Yahoo did not understand the value of the company, that he dismissed the meeting as just a formality. Thiel and Breyer eventually backed Zuckerberg based on this, and the decision paid giant dividends. Facebook’s market capitalization is now $288 billion, or 288x the amount offered by Yahoo in 2006. Today’s infographic recalls 15 offers to emerging tech companies that were declined. Then, looking back in retrospect, it shows whether the deal was a “win” or a “fail” based on the current value of the company. Original graphic by: Empire Flippers Embed This Image On Your Site (copy code below): Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist RelatedA human pin cushion, that’s what Badrilal Meena of Rajasthan has turned into. The 56-year-old railway employee has 75 stationery pins embedded deep under the skin of his neck, forearms and legs, a case doctors are finding it hard to pin down. There are no visible marks to suggest the inch-long pins were pierced into his skin; either by him or someone else. And the man from Barda village in Bundi district doesn’t know how he got them. “There are no pins or perforations visible in the stomach, oesophagus or intestines to suggest he swallowed them,” said B Panda, the surgeon treating Meena at Kota railway hospital. Meena’s condition was detected at a private hospital in Kota this April when he went there to treat his aching right foot and diabetes. First Published: May 19, 2017 09:19 ISTGannett will shut its Nashville design studio and move the production work of its Southeast newspapers to other hubs around the country. It’s the second studio closed by the company in recent months after an Asbury Park facility was shuttered in April. The move will affect 88 people. Managers at the studio, located in the same building at The Tennessean at 1100 Broadway, were told today that Gannett expects to transition all of the work from Nashville by Oct. 1. Studio staffers were told at 4 p.m. today. The design and page editing work for The Tennessean and other Tennessee papers — Commercial Appeal, Knoxville News-Sentinel, Jackson Sun, Daily News Journal, Leaf Chronicle and other, smaller titles — will now move out of state. Studio staff were said to be shocked by the move. Shuttering the hub leaves the nation’s largest newspaper publisher with three studios — Louisville, Des Moines and Phoenix — to produce more than 100 newspapers. Gannett began transferring production and design work from individual newspapers to the five hubs in 2010 as a way to control costs. It is unclear how many, if any, of the Nashville staff will be offered positions in other hubs. Staff were told that some jobs may be done remotely. Some Tennessean staffers survived newsroom cuts in recent years by moving over to the studio. For example, Mike Jones, a longtime editor in the sports department, was spared in a recent round of layoffs by taking a job in the studio. That escape hatch is now closing.The vulnerability, originally discovered in May by researcher Masashi Kikuchi, could allow for an attacker to lower the security of the communication between a client and a server using OpenSSL. In fact, this point is key: the package has to be present on both ends and then the attacker has to use what's known as a "man-in-the-middle" attack, something not necessarily easy to do. For the uninitiated, a man in the middle attack could be accomplished through a bit of compromised hardware -- like, say a router in your local coffee shop -- that strips the encryption from the information. The bug affects all client versions of OpenSSL and servers on version 1.0.1 or 1.0.2-beta1, though it is recommended to update earlier versions as a precaution. The biggest problem is that we don't really know how many of our applications are using this security package, as this information is not normally disclosed. That said, Adam Langley, a security engineer from Google, confirmed that desktop browsers such as "IE, Firefox, Chrome on Desktop and iOS, Safari, etc." are not vulnerable, as they don't use OpenSSL. The problem is serious if all the required variables are in place, but you shouldn't worry about it too much. That is, if you're not a systems administrator. And you shouldn't even worry about using software with OpenSSL in general. You may be surprised to hear this after the Heartbleed issue and this new problem, but the fact is that this latest exploit was discovered because there are more eyes reviewing the OpenSSL code, which means that the software is getting even better and safer.Mailer’s meditation on violence and evil will not be everyone’s idea of a good novel to read on the beach, but An American Dream is a fully realized male fantasy wherein one set-upon, white, alcoholic, protagonist berserks himself into sequential delirium fueled rages to rid himself of the crushing banality of the culture that he feels is killing him by the inch. To do this, he commits a series of violent and insane acts, in an alcoholic haze; challenges sent him by the moon (really) whose successful completion might give him a hint of the freedom he dreams is beyond the neon-lit tarp of the Manhattan skyline. This pilgrim’s progress is nothing short of an obscene fantasy, wherein our hero, a decorated war hero, former congressman and talk show host, strangles his maddening estranged wife, buggers the German maid, steals a Mafia Don’s girlfriend, and proceeds, in 24 hours, to lie and deceive the New York City Police Department, the Mob, with intimations that the FBI and CIA are involved invisibly in the mess he created. The plot, of course, is lurid, absurd and the product of a particular time, but Mailer’s novel comes at a time when the Hemingway cult of quiet, a manly stoicism managed through a singular, privately held code of honor, was exhausted of compelling narrative potential. Mailer’s idea was to see what would happen if the man who might have been the Hemingway hero, suffering his hurts in some poetic privacy, have instead a psychotic break. Gone, we see, is the hard-carved minimalism of the Hemingway style, with Mailer offering a delirious metaphorical ride through the ugly side of individual realization. His character, Stephen Rozack, is akin to King Lear in the rain, gone insane precisely because he no longer has the staging guiding his eye and thinking. In the clutch of his tantrums, the world finally seems to pull back its shroud and reveal the shape and purring function of its true nature; Rozack sees cities of diamonds, rains of falling stars, he smells and tastes those things never served on a plate. Mailer’s great chains of metaphors deliver a dissolving sensibility that sees, fleetingly, the way everything is connected, the hand of an anonymous God directing His actors in ways unannounced and never explained. Rid of the props and storylines, there is nothing left, an emptiness that can only be filled with increasing amounts of destruction. This is a riveting, wild, and enthralling exploration into the romanticizing of prescriptive violence. Troubling, agitated, problematic for a great many, a brilliant novel despite its flaws. It may be even because of the flaws—the unreal dialogue, the haphazard cramming of a week’s worth of events into a single 24 hour period—that bring the long runs of sentences shriek and burn so splendidly, as there is the sense Rojack’s state is a dream within which he must confront and conquer every blatant and disguised dread. The crash and slam of the plot dynamics—bear in mind that there is very little slack space here where one is allowed to rest and gather their wits in the midst of this ludicrous plot—get an intensity of feeling just right, that the world and the things in it are crushing down upon you, and your only option in the delirium is to obey the first fleeting voice that commands to respond, attack, destroy that which is killing you by the psychic inch. Mailer had written in his infamous essay “The White Negro” that it was one’s moral responsibility to “encourage the psychopath within oneself” so to be able to experience greater and more expansive perceptions, to generate a new knowledge violently dislodged from murderous conformism. In An American Dream, he conducts a fictional field study of his theory by setting it loose in the plot of a novel, and the results are exhilarating as they are nearly unspeakable. Tom Wolfe, I remember, was not a fan of the novel, suggesting in a review that Mailer “lards up” his prose with too many allusions, superhumanly extended metaphors, and smiles when he ought to have taken a hint from James M. Cain and fashioned a terser, blunter style. He used Mailer’s running metaphor of boxing and compared him to a fighter who needed to get out of his corner faster. I differ with Wolfe’s conclusions and tend to agree with the late critic Richard Poirier’s reading of the novel, which considered An American Dream a compelling delirium of language styles fused together, the elegant, the surreal, the jazzy and slang-infested, the terse and the verbose, in a spectacular, intoxicating sweep. The point of the novel was to reveal Stephen Rojack’s festering self-doubt despite his nominal accomplishments as both war hero and media figure, and his deranged attempts to save what he considers his soul. Mailer’s novel is an interior view of a breakdown, an interiorized version of Lear’s final speech. A reader who might be intrigued by Mailer’s fictional realization of his existential anti-hero/hipster/White Negro wouldn’t be wrong to think that the author himself is disturbed by the furthest reach of his imaginative takes on the purgative value of sudden and decisive violence. Indeed, from this point on, Mailer’s ideas about violence and power come with more caution, nuance, and in a brilliant turn to begin his moral argument about the cause of aggression in the culture, he penned his brief, obscene and fantastically incandescent novel Why Are We In Vietnam: if Stephen Rojack was the result of a psychically emasculated man given in to floating voices and lunar impulses in the wan hope of being delivered from what is killing him by the inch, only to become only a more complicated expression of those mechanisms that generate the larger, global evil, Why Are We in Vietnam? takes the more expansive view. The question isn’t answered, nor is Viet Nam even mentioned until the last page of the book, yet by the time you reach the end of this brief and ingeniously offered account of an Alaskan bear hunt, we’ve gone through something primordial, a cultural conditioning that produces a need for violence at the most rudimentary level of the culture. Mailer’s habit of romanticizing violence and macho performances end with this
your music career to a higher level than you could reach on your own. To get a record deal, you must know exactly what record labels, music producers, and artist management companies are looking for when seeking out new artists. Do You Have What The Music Industry Looks For In You? 2-Minute Music Industry Quiz 2-Minute Music Industry Quiz Take It Now You also must know how to acquire the things record companies look for…and give them what they want. This makes the difference between you becoming hugely successful or giving up on your dreams and getting a non-music related day job. Most musicians never get a record deal because they don’t think at all about what record companies want from them. Imagine you are in a band, trying to get a record deal. Obviously you know what you want from this record deal. You want access to the record label’s resources. These resources are used to propel your music career forward, attract new fans, sell more records, make more money and go on bigger tours. But have you thought about what the record label wants? (Hint: think beyond your music.) Answer: record companies want to make money. A record company is no different from a venture capitalist who provides funds to startup businesses. An investor invests money into a business only if he believe the business has the potential to become profitable and pay back the investment (with interest). Record labels, managers, and successful bands are looking for artists who think in terms of mutual benefit. You must think in this way before any company in the music industry will want to work with you and invest their money and resources into your music career. To become a successful business partner of any record company, you must first grab their attention. This quick test tells you what things you need to acquire to get record companies interested in you. Key Mindsets You Need To Acquire: Don’t seek to be merely an employee of a record label. Think in terms of a win/win, value-added partnership. You and the record company add value to each other to reach your respective goals. You get access to record company’s resources that grow your music career, fan base and income. Record company gets a portion of your growing music career income in exchange for taking the risk of investing in you. Do not feel like you are entitled to receive money or opportunities simply because you are talented. It is not the record label's job to reward you for your music. It’s their job to reward you for the value you bring to them (beyond the music). This video shows how adding value ensures success in your music career: Make it easy for the record company to work with you. You do this by learning as much as possible about how the music industry works before you seek a record deal. How These Mindsets Help You: Record company executives expect you to know how the music industry functions BEFORE they begin to work with you. They don’t want to answer basic questions about the music industry, general business, mental attitudes, image, stage presence, logistics, etc. They also don’t want to waste time and money teaching you things you can and should learn on your own. You May Also Like: How To Make Big Money In Music Learn the top 5 ways to make big money as a professional musician. How To Get Many More Loyal Fans Take this test to learn how to get Take this test to learn how to get a lot more serious and loyal fans. What Music Companies Want Most Learn what music companies want from you & how to give it to them. When you get training on how the music business works, you show initiative, commitment and a strong mindset. These attitudes set you apart from thousands of other musicians who compete with you for a record deal. You also help reduce the risk record companies have to take by agreeing to work with you. Example: Imagine that your band was put on tour by a record label, but the management believes that your band does not know how to conduct yourselves on and off stage. They will require you to be coached in these areas. (This is very common for new and inexperienced bands.) Rehearsals take an additional week (at the rate of thousands of dollars per day). Money spent on extra rehearsals is subtracted from the rest of the budget allocated for your tour, record promotion and music career. That said, this extra money must be paid back to the record label first before your band sees any profits from the tour OR your record. Win/Win Alternative: You can easily get music business, career and mindset coaching before you work with a record company. Then make this fact known to the record company when you contact them. This positions you as a win-win partner with much lower risk and avoids unnecessary waste of the company’s money and resources. You become a much more likely candidate for a record deal. Adopting the success-focused mindsets helps you build the thriving music career you want much faster and easier. This quick test tells you what things hold you back from massive success in the music industry. Industry Looks For In You? Do You Have What The MusicIndustry Looks For In You? FREE ASSESSMENT take it nowOk so this is my first tutorial on this blog and I chose a pretty simple craft for it. I give you the Saucy Lamp 😉 You will need: – cereal box – pin or sharp needle – glue gun – paper glue – print out of your design – some kind of light source ( I used red Xmas tree lights) – scissors or craft knife Step One First what you need to do is decide what kind of design you want to put on your lamp. I chose a vintage tattoo design of a naked lady. Then you need to blow up your picture in photoshop or any other image editing software to roughly the size of an A4 sheet of paper, that’s 21 × 29,7cm or 8.3 × 11.7in, or you could use a Letter size sheet of paper that will do just fine as well. If you’re using letters on your design you need to flip the image before you print it. Once you get the size right print that baby out. Step Two So now you have your image printed you need to roughly cut it out and set it aside for a minute. Now take your cereal box and carefully open it up at the seams(where it’s glued shut). Lay it out, printed side facing you and use the paper glue to stick your image on the box where you would like it to be. It doesn’t necessarily need to be in the middle, depending on your design you could place it anywhere on the box. Step Three Now, take your pin/needle and carefully start pushing it through the outline of your design. You might want to put some holes inside the design too, to highlight shading or depth. Step Four Once your design is all punched out, take your scissors or craft knife and cut a small rectangle or square on one of the bottom side corners of the box. This is where your light source cable will come out from, so you can plug it in. Step Five Take your glue gun and stick the box back together only you’re going to put the printed side on the inside, leaving the gray side showing. Don’t glue the top opening shut, you need this open to put your light source in the box! Step Six Place your light source in the box, plug it in and enjoy your new lamp! Hope you find this tutorial useful and if you have any questions leave a comment, and if you make one then I’d love to see it!The Indian government has stated that the Koh-i-Noor diamond – now part of the Crown Jewels – was given to the British in the 19th century, and not stolen. In a Supreme Court hearing, the Solicitor General for India, Ranjit Kumar, said the maharajah at the time gave the diamond away, and that it was not taken under British occupation. “It was given voluntarily by Ranjit Singh to the British as compensation for help in the Sikh wars. The Koh-i-Noor is not a stolen object,” he said. The East India Trading Company, and in turn Queen Victoria, were given the stone in 1850. Singh had taken it from an Afghan King seeking refuge in India. The diamond now forms a spectacular centre to The Queen Mother’s coronation crown, worn in 1938; the crown features another 2,800 diamonds. Last year, a legal battle was launched to return the 108 carat stone to its homeland, claiming the diamond was stolen and should be returned. It is the All India Human Rights and Social Justice Front that wants the Kohinoor and other famous antiques – including the ring and sword of Tipu Sultan – to be returned to India by the United Kingdom. A similar bid in 1976 was refused, citing the terms of the war’s treaty. Prime Minister Jim Callaghan said at the time: “I could not advise Her Majesty The Queen that it [the Koh-i-Noor] should be surrendered.” David Cameron was also against the move: “If you say yes to one, you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty. It is going to have to stay put.”94 percent of death row convicts are Dalits or from the minorities : Varun Gandhi (FILES) In this file picture taken on November 20, 2004 Grandson of late former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member Varun Gandhi delivers his speech during a rally to protest against the arrest of Hindu religious leader Jayendra Saraswathi in New Delhi. The grandson of late Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi came under fire on March 17, 2009 for allegedly inciting violence against Muslims in comments that highlighted the country's religious tensions. Varun Gandhi, who is campaigning for next month's general elections, reportedly told a rally that his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would "cut the head of Muslims." AFP PHOTO/Tekee TANWAR (Photo credit should read TEKEE TANWAR/AFP/Getty Images) New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party MP Varun Gandhi on Saturday came out against the death penalty, noting most of the death row convicts are Dalits or from the minorities. In an article titled “The Noose Casts A Shameful Shadow,” he said: “75 percent of the convicts on death row belong to the socially and economically marginalised classes; 94 percent of death row convicts are Dalits or from the minorities. “The poor consistently get the short end of the legal stick. The death penalty is a consequence of poor legal representation and institutional bias. The gallows remain a poor man’s trap,” he added. Pitching for abolition of death penalty, Gandhi, an MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur, contended that “society can be protected from miscreants, criminals and terrorists through less disproportionate means that preserve our dignity, values and institutions”. He also termed the hangman a disgrace to any civilized society. “Beyond its ethics, a basic unpredictability makes capital punishment a social evil,” he said, stressing that India, as one of the 58-odd countries where death penalty is retained, needs to recognise the changing global scenario. “The death penalty is not just a remedy available at the disposal of the law, but a human rights issue, beyond the pale of law. For the largest democracy, the death penalty is an anomaly. It needs correction. Many that live do deserve death. And some that die deserve life. One must not be too eager to deal out death in judgement,” he said. —-IANSAfter a night out, the only thing worse than waking up with a bad hangover would be waking up to discover that your night out has gone viral on the Internet. And then getting arrested three days later. Brewer’s Cabinet, a bar in Reno, Nevada, uploaded a photo of a man to its Facebook page, urging the public to call the police if they saw him because he left without paying his $100 tab Tuesday night. “Bailing is pretty uncool… pathetic, really. Get a life, man,” the post reads. More than 817 users have shared the bar’s public service announcement, which boasts 114 comments, including links to the personal Facebook profile of the culprit – identified as Saul Zelaznog. At least three other bar owners told KRNV he has a pattern of forgetting his wallet and slipping out. Zelaznog told the Reno Gazette-Journal on Wednesday that the incident was a “useful disaster.” He also claimed he just didn’t bring enough money to pay the bill Tuesday night and that his family was sending it to him: “They’re acting like I ran out of there; I was going to be back to take care of my tab.” He said something similar happened to him at another bar, and he left a “nice watch” as “collateral.” By Friday, the Associated Press reported that the man is in jail at Washoe County Detention Center in northern Nevada because of an “unspecified probation violation.” Brewer’s Cabinet updated its Facebook to share the news and said it hopes Zelaznog makes “wiser decisions in the future.” MORE: Study Finds Facebook Holds Most Social Media Power Among Luxury Brands MORE: At Long Last, a Bar at the Supermarket – With $1 Bottles During Happy Hour!Posted November 17, 2018 at 12:55 pm ASMR IS SUCH A WEIRD PHENOMENON For those who experience it, ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) is a euphoric sensation that at times is overwhelming. For those who don't, it's usually "that cringy, awkward, creepy stuff". Little research has been done on ASMR and the world still doesn't really know why it happens. I'm not a neurologist or a scientist, but I've spent more than 40 years experiencing and contemplating ASMR and I have some theories that I think genuinely explain what ASMR really is and why it happens. I believe ASMR has a purpose and played an important role in our species' evolution and survival. And while I didn't name it ASMR, I'm partly responsible for why we call it that today. I'll explain that in a bit. WHAT DOES ASMR ACTUALLY FEEL LIKE? Once it's triggered, ASMR creates a very pleasurable, tingly feeling that glides across the scalp in friendly waves and can even seem as though it's being felt deep under the scalp. The feeling can sometimes travel down the neck, shoulders and back. This feeling varies in intensity and promotes a euphoric sense of calm, relaxation and well being. The person experiencing ASMR is usually filled with a strong desire to simply remain still and enjoy the sensation until it fades (usually in 2 to 10 minutes, given the circumstances and the person). As someone who has battled an opioid addiction, I can tell you that strength and intensity of ASMR is easily comparable to the strength of a drug like euphoria. The ASMR feeling does not hinder a person's judgement by making them feel high or drunk. The subject remains clear headed and aware (though usually very relaxed). IS ASMR SEXUAL? COME ON, IS IT? BE REAL WITH ME. No. Not in the least. ASMR is often mistaken by people without it, as a kink or fetish. This is in no way true. The pleasurable feelings ASMR brings do not induce sexual feelings or urges. "But Tarol," I hear you saying, "I know people online who say they DO find it sexual". Yes. And there are people with a kink for combining food with sexual arousal, but this does not mean that the pleasure we get from yummy foods is sexual in nature. Some people are turned on by bondage, yet this doesn't make ropes innately sexual. Lots of people enjoy incorporating otherwise nonsexual aspects of the world around them into an erotic experience. The pleasure experienced by ASMR is no more sexual that the pleasure experienced from eating our favourite foods. AFTER HEARING ABOUT THIS ASMR THING, I THINK I MIGHT ALSO HAVE IT. I hear this a lot. It's an understandable reaction to something that is often so poorly and vaguely explained. "Oh it's a good feeling? Hey, I've felt good feelings before! Maybe I have it too". Let me sum this up. If, after hearing/reading about ASMR, you're saying "I think I have that", then you don't. If you're not completely sure if you have ASMR, then you don't have it. The ASMR sensation is so hard to explain, because it's so different than almost any other feeling. We try to compare it to other sensations like "tingly goosebumps" etc, but this hardly covers the actual feeling. ASMR is unique and impossible to miss, when it happens. It's like if I told you that massive dinosaurs were stampeding through my living room every morning and your response is "Hmmmm. Now that you mention it, I think dinosaurs might be stampeding through my living room too". If you actually have dinosaurs charging through your living room, you absolutely know it. If you have to think about whether or not dinosaurs charge through your home, it's definitely not happening to you. ASMR TRIGGERS Triggers are the events or experiences that can create the ASMR sensation. These triggers can vary a bit from person to person, but they all follow specific rules that give away the whole purpose of ASMR. Common triggers include whispering, chewing, gentle touching or close up focus on the ASMR subject (like a doctor shining a light in your ear or quietly listening to your heartbeat with a stethoscope). When looking at the pleasure that the ASMR subject feels and the apparent intimacy of some of these triggers, it's easy to see why non-ASMR folks might think that it's a sexual thing. What's worse, it's very common to see someone with an actual sexual kink, swearing up and down that "It's not sexual! Really". So an ASMR subject promising that it's not sexual, can leave their friend rolling their eyes and thinking "Oh yeah, this stuff is TOTALLY sexual" MY LIFE WITH ASMR I know that this blog isn't about me, but I think that recounting my discovery and gradual understanding of ASMR might help a bit to explain exactly what it is. I'll mark these bits with a "TL;DR" so you can skip them if you like. I WAS NOT A SMART KID (TL;DR... I didn't know where the tingles were coming from, I just accepted it) I was born in 1973. It was in the late 70s that I started to experience the ASMR 'tingles', usually at school. I had no idea what was triggering it, I just knew that it was this wonderful feeling that happened sometimes and I didn't consider the reason or cause. Kids are very good at just accepting the world for what it is. To make my point, here are some things that I actually believed as a small child... - I had no idea that elevators were meant to go up and down, I thought they always stayed still. I calmly and thoroughly believed that when the elevator doors closed with me and my Mom inside, the world outside the elevator was morphed into something different. I remember standing in an elevator and as the doors closed, I noticed a man standing in the hall just outside. When the doors opened again, an old lady was standing more or less where the man was. I thought the elevator had turned him into the old lady. - I thought that if I smashed my family's TV screen, the cartoon characters would come out of it and play with me. I remember grabbing my 12 inch Spider-Man doll and hitting the screen over and over as hard as I could, during an episode of Tom & Jerry. Lucky I was not a strong kid and I failed to break the screen. - I thought that the scuba divers I'd seen on TV were stupid for lugging around those big, heavy tanks on their backs. I thought "If I ever get to go scuba diving, I'm gonna cut the mouth piece off of the tube attached to the tank so I can breathe through that without needing the tank. They're dummies for not thinking of that." - I once asked my Mom where babies come from. She told me "The man puts a seed inside the woman and that grows into a baby". That afternoon I stole a big box of sunflower seeds from our cupboard and went to the playground. I handed out sunflower seeds to all the girls to eat. I was excited about all the babies I was going to have. So as you can see, it's no surprise that as a kid, I shrugged and accepted that the tingly sensations just... happened. DISCOVERING MY TRIGGERS (TL;DR... I discovered that certain things trigger the sensation) I kept the tingly feeling to myself and never told anyone else. For a lot of my childhood, I thought that I was the only person in the world feeling those tingles. I started to learn what the triggers were and I became more familiar with what caused the sensation. - At one school I went to, we'd eat our lunches at our desks. As we all sat at our desks, eating out of our paper bags and Scooby-Doo lunchboxes, the girl in front of me happened to be a rather loud chewer. I sat eating my lunch and enjoying a session of tingles. - At another school, the classroom was very silent as we all focused on an important math test. The girl in the desk next to me was breathing kinda loudly through her nose. This also set off the sensation. - As a kid, we had a cool button stamp. We'd put the little metal disks into the device and pull the lever, creating a wearable button that showed off whatever picture we put inside. During the Christmas season, I used to draw dozens of colourful Christmas pictures and create tons of buttons. I'd then set up a table near the mall and sell them to people passing by. Many times, I'd get those tingles while watching someone slowly looking over my button display. - I remember sitting at my desk at school and the boy sitting next to me didn't have a pencil, so he asked if I had one I could lend him. I opened up my pencil case and handed him my extra pencil. As I watched him concentrate on his schoolwork, using my pencil, I started to get the tingly feeling. YOU MEAN I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE?! (TL;DR... I discovered that another kid also had ASMR) One of my favourite triggers was a lice check. See, if a kid at school was sent home with lice, they'd get nurses to go from classroom to classroom, carefully checking each kid's hair for lice. They'd gently search through your hair with what appeared to be chopsticks. This was possibly the strongest trigger for me. I secretly loved lice checks. One day, two ladies came into our classroom to do a check. I inwardly cheered. Then suddenly a boy near the front of the class yelled out "Oh boy! I love when they do this! It makes my head feel all tingly!". What?!? No one could tell, but in my mind I was freaking out. What I thought to be something that only I experienced, suddenly became something others can have too. From then on, I looked at the phenomenon very differently. If it happens to others, then there must be a reason for it. Suddenly I was immensely curious about it all. I would have gone and talked to that kid about it, but... I hated him so much. He once asked for a bite of my doughnut and then shoved the whole thing in his mouth, grinning at me. Damn, I hated that kid. THE INTERNET CHANGED EVERYTHING Years later, this weird internet thing was suddenly exploding everywhere. I remember being at a friend's house while he showed me a few others, how it worked. We entered the word "vampire" (it was the 90s. Vampires were the most popular thing in the universe) into the pre-Google search engine and gasped as literally DOZENS of websites about vampires popped up! I quickly realised what I could do with something like this! I could type "boobs"! Later I realised that I could finally learn about these weird tingles. That's when I found that searching for info on something that has no name and is nigh impossible to describe, was really hard. I found nothing. Every year or so, I would get curious about the sensation and try another internet search. I don't remember the actual year that I finally found a forum on the subject, but I remember it was the computer set up that I had on 9/11, so it was somewhere around then (no disrespect intended, that was just a time we all remember clearly). WE CALL IT ASMR PARTLY BECAUSE OF ME....SORT OF. I was excited to jump into a group (I think it was on Yahoo or MSN or something) where I could finally talk to other people about this! We regulars in the group would talk about triggers, theories about why it exists and many, many complaints of trying (and failing) to convince others that this was in no way sexual. A thread eventually popped up, discussing how this thing needs a name. We started suggesting ideas for what we could call it. I don't remember my suggestions but I'm sure they were awful. The name everyone settled on was... "Brain Orgasm". The new, official name was quickly used by the group. When I discovered that Brain Orgasm had been chosen, I wrote a thread arguing that we really shouldn't use that name. I explained that if we want to convince others that this is not sexual, we really should avoid the word "orgasm" in the title. Everyone agreed and so the naming process started again. This time a lady (I vaguely remember her being a doctor but I might be wrong about that) suggested that we call it "Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response" or ASMR. I immediately hated the name and declared that it was "worse than Brain Orgasm". I argued that it was hard to remember, hard to say and even the initials didn't roll off the tongue. I was sure the name wouldn't stick. But everyone except me loved it and so that became the official name for it. Obviously I was very wrong about the name and I'm glad everyone had the sense to disagree with me. WHY DOES ASMR EXIST AND WHAT IS IT FOR? Okay. Remember that while I honestly think I'm right about this and have spent four decades coming to this conclusion, this is just the opinion of one person familiar with the subject matter. As far as I know, there have been no proper studies to back up what I'm about to say. We've all seen creatures like apes grooming each other, picking bugs, etc out of each other's fur. The ape being groomed always seems to be sitting still and calmly enjoying the attention. For those apes, grooming each other is a great way to keep clean and more likely to avoid diseases or infections. It's also a great way for creatures with simpler communication practices to bond socially. This bond encourages the animals to stick together for safety, share food and even defend each other when attacked. So grooming each other makes sense as an important instinct that would evolve over time. Dogs and cats have a form of this that has developed from our symbiotic relationship. They enjoy being pet or scratched which seems less about grooming and more about creating or strengthening a social bond (though I once found a tick on my dog while I was scratching her belly). Cats even purr, which honestly, if I had to attribute a sound to the feeling of ASMR, purring fits it perfectly. So it's possible that the ape being groomed or the cat being pet, is feeling some form of ASMR. And it's just as possible that our hunter-gatherer ancestors who groomed each other in similar ways, also felt a kind of ASMR. In a harsh world of survival of the fittest, those who evolve the ability to feel pleasure from it are more likely to gain more benefits from the higher amount of cleanliness and social bounds. Consider what the ASMR sensation encourages the subject to do. Keep still, quiet and not interrupt the person triggering the feeling. Sometimes relaxing enough to fall asleep if the situation warrants it. All these tendencies brought on by ASMR aid the grooming process. Now let's look at the triggers. If what I'm saying is true, then that explains the ASMR from something like a lice check, but what about those other triggers? They all seem to play a part in the grooming process as well. - Whispering: The sound of someone whispering suggests physical closeness. The kind of personal space sharing required for ape-like grooming. Look at the ASMR videos on YouTube. They all whisper as close to the microphone as possible, creating a sense of intense closeness. Whispering is only heard if the person doing it is positioned very close to you. So it fits the grooming theory. - Chewing, breathing and mouth sounds: Like whispering these sounds are almost always heard if the person making them is close to you. During those classroom lice checks, I'd hear the nurse breathing right into my ear, as she was very close. The tiniest movement of her lips or mouth was easily heard. It seems logical to me that as we evolve to adhere to being groomed, we'd respond to the sounds and sensations that would commonly be heard during each grooming. - Borrowing my pencil or studying the buttons I made: The two important details here are focus and the subject's sense of self. The ape doing the grooming is going to be focused intently on what they're doing and that focus is completely on the subject being groomed. I thought of my pencil as'mine'. An extension of my person. The same can be said for my buttons. I drew each one of those pictures by hand and so they were very much mine. When the kid focused on his schoolwork and therefore on my pencil or those people quietly studied my little pictures, it triggered the ASMR as if a groomer was focusing intently on me. I've never been into the YouTube ASMR roleplay videos, but look at the themes used to trigger people's ASMR. Roleplays about someone shaving you, cleaning your ears, doing your hair, etc. Those all point directly at grooming. Every trigger seems to be either a sound that's usually only heard close up, intense focus on the subject, gentle touching or something that mimics a feeling of isolated intimacy. So to put it bluntly, I believe that ASMR is essentially a largely redundant grooming instinct left over from our times as hunter-gatherers, when grooming was far more important and vital. -Tarol Twitter: https://twitter.com/Thunt_Goblins?lang=en My comic: http://www.goblinscomic.org/ (anyone is welcome to repost this blog anywhere they like. I only ask that you credit me and include those links. Thank you.)As anyone reading this blog would guess, my “Masonic Jewel” would be Truth. But what about others? Surely not every Mason is (or even should be!) a student of the esoteric, or of comparative religion, or of ancient language, etc. That sort of homogeneous fraternity would either crash and burn, or would flounder and get nothing accomplished. So, what of the other two Principal Tenets of Freemasonry? And what of those who desire them? How do these fit together? Those are questions I would like to explore. Botticelli’s Three Graces (pictured above) represents, to us as Masons: Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth. Though these three are termed “Principal Tenets” of Freemasonry, I would like to refer to them in this post as “jewels”. Whatever aspect or tenet of Masonry that you represent with your life, it should be something that is cherished, displayed, and greatly valued – just as any jewel should be. In my experience with Masonry, most men are drawn to the craft by one of these three aspects. For that matter, some men change which tenet is important to them after some years. But what can also be said, is that if that aspect that the candidate is searching for with his very being is not fulfilled, then he will leave the lodge and have no desire to return. Some men, like myself, desire the light of Truth. The lessons of Freemasonry contain deep-seated human truths, displayed in symbols, allegory, and obscure wording. Entire lives can (and have) been spent studying the degrees, the rituals, the words, the symbols, the lessons, etc. But why is this important? Because, much as any triangle is incomplete without one of its sides, the Masonic lodge cannot be complete without education. Our moral lessons separate us from any other given fraternity in the world. Our degrees are ancient and invaluable to us. Any brother who has been through any degree – from 1st to 3rd and through the high degrees – can affirm that. The light of Truth, given by Deity but absorbed through hard work and study, is a lamp to our feet and a light upon our paths; it is the torch of Heraclitus and the lamp of Trismegistus. Others desire to shed the light of Relief. One of the most common things attributed to Freemasonry (truly one of the few truthful ones!) is that we are a charitable organization. We are charged, by the penalties of our obligations, to help our Brothers, their widows, and orphans. But that’s not all! We don’t solely help our own. All Masonic bodies around the world contribute untold sums of money to charities, and go so far as to start their own organizations. To name only a few, there is the Scottish Rite’s Rite Care, the Royal Arch Research Assistance, the Cryptic Masons Medical Research Foundation, the Knights Templar Eye Foundation, the many children’s hospitals run by Shrine bodies, and the list goes on and on. The light of Relief is a warm reminder that the world is not a cruel place, that there is goodness inherent in our species, and exists to drive away the darknesses of life, even if momentarily. Finally, nearly all of the brethren desire the light of Brotherly Love. Everything we do, both in and out of the lodge, inculcates this value. Whether it’s a BBQ cook-out on a Saturday morning, or a simple meal before Lodge on a weeknight, we all deeply value the time we get to spend together. To once again borrow an old axiom, “it takes a village to raise a child.” While I’m certainly not using this to refer to a literal child, it does in this case refer to the fact that it takes a group of like-minded and well-intentioned men, to improve one another. “Steel tempers steel,” just as the moral and just man improves his brother. The light of Brotherly Love increases the radius of our light exponentially – it is the light of inspiration, of motivation, and of the greatest of all of these: love. So, my Brothers, you will see that some Masons may be more interested in ham suppers, or perhaps breakfasts at the Masonic Home, and may not be interested in reading philosophy or history – their pursuit is no less noble, for they are receiving the light that they need in their lives. Some Masons may be primarily interested in fundraisers to promote charities – they are providing our Masonic light to the world. And, of course, some Masons may be primarily interested in the study of the Divine, or of philosophy, or of history – they too are providing light, to the rest of the Craft that they may spread it to the world. Brothers, it has been long contested and hotly argued that some of our lodges may not provide sufficient educational programs, or may not provide adequate charitable contributions, or may not be welcoming and loving enough of new Brethren. My charge to you, today, is to recognize your own strengths, and decide which Jewel it is that you possess, and let it shine in your own community in whatever way you know how. Every man in the Craft, perhaps every man in the world, has a unique gift. Use that gift; do not let it languish. Our Fraternity cannot stand without its three legs – Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth. Which of these is YOUR jewel? Which of these can YOU use to help your own community? AdvertisementsTomb Raider Makes It’s Way To Android as a SHIELD TV Exclusive Tomb Raider the series responsible for bringing the original girl video game star Lara Croft is making its way to Android as a SHIELD TV exclusive from NVIDIA Lightspeed Studios doing the porting work. Now if you’re a GeForce Now member you may have noticed it’s also been on that service too making it the first if not one of the first to be on both GeForce Now and Android. For those unfamiliar with the plot of this game it’s a 2013 reboot of the series which explores the intense and gritty origin story of Lara Croft and her ascent from a young woman to a hardened survivor. Armed only with raw instincts and the ability to push beyond the limits of human endurance, Lara must fight to unravel the dark history of a forgotten island to escape its relentless hold. The game runs at 720p but still looks very beautiful and runs very smooth, similar to the Xbox/PS4 versions and requires 5.5 gigs of storage to be installed. This version supports Google Play Achievements and cloud saves with Google Play Games sign-in. As of now Co-op and Multiplayer aren’t supported. Available via Google Play for $14.99, gamers can see how this fantastic action game has improved on the already stellar franchise formula. Better still, the SHIELD TV version bundles in the Tomb of the Lost Adventurer DLC, which includes extra outfits, skills, and weapon upgrades! Anthony Garera Anthony is usually tinkering with everything and anything because there's always one more thing to do, reviewing games and apps and complaining about things normal people don't think about. More Posts - Website Follow Me:1.) RPDR is your bible and you try to convert people to it harder than a Jehova’s Witness at a subway station. Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and motha RuPaul? 2.) 90% of what you say is just direct quotes from the show that you have somehow managed to slip into conversation. Me tripping and slamming my head into the concrete EMT: How’s your head? Me: Fine. 3.) At least one song in your iTunes Top 25 Most Played is by a drag race alum, and roughly 30% of your entire library consists of songs by the queens; even songs by Manila Luzon that aren’t Hot Couture. Hey, I have a really great album you should listen to; it’s called ANUS. Now hear me out…. 4.) Your free time is spent lurking on Drag Race Reddit searching for potential spoilers and any and all conspiracy theories about the show. Tyra told everyone to kill themselves again? SHOW ME THE RECEIPTS! 5.) You know Tullegate is more
joined the team in January of 2015 along with Cutler and hazed. In recent times CLG has been on a bit of a downward slope, ending tied for last at ESL One Cologne 2016 and 4th at the Global eSports Cup. With this came the announcement that Tarik will be taking a break from perofessional CS:GO to spend time with his family as well as stream from home until the end of his contract. Headline image courtesy of Dreamhack Flickr/Alex MaxwellMonitors of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM) have recorded a considerable increase in the number of ceasefire violations in the anti-terrorist operation zone in Donbas over the past week. OSCE SMM monitors recorded around 20,000 truce breaches in the past week, a 25% increase over the week before, OSCE SMM Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug said during a press conference via Skype on Friday. From 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, the OSCE SMM observed some 3,000 violations, half of which were explosions, Hug said. Around 1,000 violations were recorded near Avdiivka and Popasna over this period, he said. Hug said the OSCE SMM had warned that such an escalation could occur. OSCE monitors recorded some 500 explosions in the vicinity of Popasna in the course of one night and on December 2 observed 3,000 violations, half of which were near Yasynuvata and Avdiyivka, he said. Hug called on the sides in the conflict to abide by their commitments under the Minsk Agreements.Rohingya Activist: 'Rohingya Are Not Safe Anywhere' Enlarge this image toggle caption ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution last week condemning "the ethnic cleansing" of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar by that country's military. The move, which is the first step to what could eventually lead to targeted sanctions against the Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar, came a day after Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, suggested that the Myanmar military may be guilty of genocide against the Muslim minority group. Since August, more than 600,000 Rohingya have crossed into neighboring Bangladesh, where they live in squalid refugee camps. This exodus follows an army crackdown sparked by an Aug. 24 attack on Myanmar police posts and an army base by Rohingya insurgents. The military insists its operations in Rakhine State are in response to a serious threat of insurgency. Myanmar's de-facto leader, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has defended the campaign. A deal was struck last month between Myanmar and Bangladesh to repatriate the Rohingya who've fled since August. But Yangon-based human rights defender Abdul Rasheed, 54, says repatriation must be done safely, securely and with dignity. Enlarge this image toggle caption Claire Harbage/NPR Claire Harbage/NPR "The government has to demonstrate their willingness and their honesty with the repatriation, that when the people repatriate, their citizenship has been guaranteed," he says. Abdul Rasheed, who goes by both names, is himself Rohingya and has been working on behalf of his people for the past several years. He's the founder of the Rohingya Foundation, a human rights organization based in Yangon, and serves as an adviser to Fortify Rights, a human-rights organization that specializes in Rohingya issues. The activist was in the U.S. last week, meeting with U.N. officials in New York and lawmakers including Vice President Pence's team in Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about the plight of his people. Abdul Rasheed previously worked with the National League for Democracy, Suu Kyi's party, but in 2012, after violence erupted in Rakhine, he decided to devote himself full-time to Rohingya issues. For decades, they have been subject to periodic crackdowns by the government. Today, some 2 million Rohingya live overseas. While numbers are hard to confirm, it's estimated only about 800,000 Rohingya remain in Myanmar, where they face heavy restrictions on their movements and limited access to education, health care and business opportunities. The government doesn't recognize them as citizens, insisting they're illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though many Rohingya — including Abdul Rasheed's family — have lived in Myanmar since before the country gained independence from Great Britain in 1948. The situation needs to "be addressed urgently because people are suffering," Abdul Rasheed tells NPR. "Our people are suffering greatly." This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS On Rohingya conditions before a 1978 crackdown that resulted in some 300,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh We never faced any kind of discrimination at that time. Life was quite good and normal, everything. We were very friendly with the [Buddhist-majority] Rakhine community. Enlarge this image toggle caption Ed Wray/Getty Images Ed Wray/Getty Images Rohingya start fleeing Myanmar in 1978, and they've never had the opportunity to come back. People get arrest[ed], people get [tortured] and people start leaving in 1978. Since then, things are growing worse and worse and never changed to a better way. On discrimination against minorities in Myanmar It's not only the Muslim, not only the Rohingya. Religious discrimination in Myanmar is practic[ed] for many years, many decades. The categories are very different. Discrimination with the Christian community, the level is different. Discrimination with the other [non-Rohingya] Muslim, the level is different. The discrimination with the Rohingya is higher than other communities as well because Rohingya are a huge community in Rakhine State... they [the government] don't want Rohingya to be a political power, to claim political partnership. This is the main issue. That's why the government is promoting a discriminatory policy and they're weakening the Rohingya community. So this is mostly political, because they don't want Rohingya to be a political power. On the Rohingya diaspora Many [Rohingya] people are living in Malaysia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia... I have met families in Malaysia who are living [there] for 20 years and they never had the opportunity to go back to home to meet their families. They don't have any kind of protection in terms of citizenship or national protection. So now, around 2 million Rohingya [are] living outside Myanmar. The Rohingya left in the country is about 700,000 to 800,000. So Rohingya are not safe anywhere, not in their own country, not in diaspora. A majority of the people in Pakistan, Saudi [Arabia] and Malaysia, they're integrated. But a few people are living in Malaysia in camps, Thailand, Indonesia and India as well. On the possibility of repatriation Rohingya are facing a severe situation in Bangladesh because there are about 1 million people in the camps. They don't have anything, even they don't have a roof, they're using plastic sheets as a roof. They're willing to go back home, but they're scared the situation is not safe for them, so many people say, "We prefer to die in Bangladesh rather than go back home." But some people say, "If we can live in our country with the safety, security and dignity, we prefer to live back [in] our country." The current situation in Rakhine State, it's not a situation where they can come back soon. There's more than 100,000 people living in IDP [internally displaced people] camps around Sittwe [the capital of Rakhine State]. So the government has to demonstrate their willingness and their honesty with the repatriation, that when the people repatriate to Myanmar, their citizenship has been guaranteed. [The] government has to dismantle all the IDP camps and resettle those people to their original place, original land. It's a very awful situation, so the international community must take serious implementation, swift and urgent. And one thing, people should not be put again in the camp when they're repatriated. What we want, people should be repatriated with dignity and should be repatriated in their own, original home, rather than to put in the camp. We are wondering [if], when the people come back, they might be put in the camp again. The international community must take care of this.President Obama said Saturday that his upcoming budget will force Washington to “live within our means” at a time when American families are having to make difficult economic decisions every day. In his weekly address, Obama outlined his fiscal year 2012 budget request, which he will send to Congress on Monday. Obama’s budget comes as Republicans in Congress are railing against government spending. House Republicans just unveiled a bill to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year that, at the prodding of Tea Party freshmen, cuts current spending by $58 billion. ADVERTISEMENT Obama, in the address, compared the budget-making process to a family having to make sacrifices in order to get by.Obama told the story of Brenda Breece, a special-ed teacher in Missouri, and her family. The Breece family has tightened their food budget, started watching movies on TV instead of going to the movie theater and even cuts each other’s hair.“[I]t’s time Washington acted as responsibly as our families do,” Obama said. “And on Monday, I’m proposing a new budget that will help us live within our means while investing in our future.”Obama said he had to make tough choices on his budget. The budget will call for a five-year spending freeze on all domestic spending, a move that will reduce the deficit by $400 million during the next 10 years, Obama said.The budget targets wasteful spending, Obama said.“We’re getting rid of thousands of government-owned buildings that sit empty because they aren’t needed,” he said. “I’ve also proposed freezing salaries for hard-working government employees, because everyone has to do their part.”Obama also railed against earmarks. “I’m going to make sure politics doesn’t add to our deficit by vetoing any bill that contains earmarks,” he said.But Obama stressed that there are a number of policies that are worth investing in. He pointed to investments in infrastructure like roads and high-speed rail, clean energy and education.Here’s what the White House has offered as talking points to defend collecting (DiFi has confirmed) all the call data from all Americans since 2006. Interspersed is my commentary. The article discusses what purports to be an order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court under a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes the production of business records. Orders of the FISA Court are classified. As they’ve done with drone strikes and, especially, WikiLeaks cables before, the Administration refuses to confirm that this is, in fact, what several members of Congress have made it clear it is: an authentic FISA Order that (as Dianne Feinstein revealed) is just the quarterly renewal of a program that goes back to the PATRIOT Act renewal in March 2006. In other words, with its “talking points,” the Administration is recommitting to keeping this program legally secret, even though it’s not secret. Everything that say after they set up that information asymmetry should be regarded with the knowledge that the White House refuses to permit you to check its claims. The talking points go on. On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the Government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls. The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to metadata, such as a telephone number or the length of a call. Here, the White House does two things. With its “exclusively metadata” comment, it tries to minimize how much metadata really provides. Here’s how Shane Harris, in a superb explainer, describes what metadata can really provide. What can you learn with metadata but no content? A lot. In fact, telephone metadata can be more useful than the words spoken on the phone call. Starting with just one target’s phone number, analysts construct a social network. They can see who the target talks to most often. They can discern if he’s trying to obscure who he knows in the way he makes a call; the target calls one number, say, hangs up, and then within second someone calls the target from a different number. With metadata, you can also determine someone’s location, both through physical landlines or, more often, by collecting cell phone tower data to locate and track him. Metadata is also useful for trying to track suspects that use multiple phones or disposable phones. For more on how instructive metadata can be, read this. Note the White House fails to mention the forms of some metadata, such as geolocation, that are particularly invasive. But the other thing this White House bullshit talking point does is precisely the same thing the Bush White House did when, in 2005 after James Risen and Eric Lichtblau exposed the illegal wiretap program, it dubbed a subpart of the program the Terrorist Surveillance Program and talked about how innocuous it was taken in solitary. The White House is segregating one part of the government’s interdependent surveillance system and preening about how harmless that isolated part is in isolation. What the White House doesn’t mention is how the government uses this data, among other ways, to identify possible terrorists who they can conduct more investigation of, including accessing their content using this data mining to establish probable cause. What the White House is trying to hide, in other words, is that this collection is part of a massive collection program that uses algorithms and other data analysis to invent people to investigate as terrorists. And then the bullshit White House talking points contradict themselves. Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States. Wait, what? Just one talking point ago, the White House told us that, “The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber.” But here we are, a mere talking point later, and the White House is claiming that it is used to discover whether known terrorists are in contact with other persons? Uh, so it does involve the known identities of both existing suspects and those gleaned from this massive collection of data, huh? But don’t worry. Because a court has rubber stamped this. As we have publicly stated before, all three branches of government are involved in reviewing and authorizing intelligence collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress passed that act and is regularly and fully briefed on how it is used, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizes such collection. How does the separation of powers work again? Congress passes the law, the Executive enforces the law, and Courts review the law? Only, in its bold claim that all three branches of government support this, the Court’s role is to “authorize such collection.” There’s a reason for that word, authorize. The only thing the courts are permitted to review are whether the government has provided, (A) a statement of facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation (other than a threat assessment) conducted in accordance with subsection (a)(2) to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, such things being presumptively relevant to an authorized investigation if the applicant shows in the statement of the facts that they pertain to— (i) a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power; (ii) the activities of a suspected agent of a foreign power who is the subject of such authorized investigation; or (iii) an individual in contact with, or known to, a suspected agent of a foreign power who is the subject of such authorized investigation; and (B) an enumeration of the minimization procedures adopted by the Attorney General under subsection (g) that are applicable to the retention and dissemination by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of any tangible things to be made available to the Federal Bureau of Investigation based on the order requested in such application. That is, the government just has to make a “reasonable” argument that this stuff is “relevant” to an investigation geared toward protecting against international terror or foreign clandestine activities. And if they can point to any number of foreign types (a foreign power, a suspected agent of a foreign power, or someone in contact with a suspected agent of a foreign power), the judge is instructed to presume it is related even if that seems like a stretch. This is not a robust review of the claims the government is making. On the contrary, it is designed not to be a robust review of those claims. Which brings us to Congress, that other branch the White House touts. It is utterly and embarrassingly true that they have repeatedly bought off on this, even if James Sensenbrenner, among others, is suckering journalists claiming that he didn’t. Indeed, oversight committees shot down efforts to limit Section 215 orders to people who actually had a tie to a suspected terrorist or foreign spy in 2006, 2009, and 2011. Such language was shot down each time. So, too, were efforts in 2011 and 2012 to reveal what was really going on in Section 215 collection; oversight committees shot that down too. So here, in a rarity for national security overreach, the White House is absolutely right. Congress repeatedly bought off on this program, including its unbelievably broad standard for “relevance.” Except … except … when Ron Wyden tried to get the government to tell him how many Americans’ records had been reviewed (by using this front-end collection to identify the back-end collection) the Inspectors General in question professed to be helpless to do that (later hints suggested they had done that study, but refused to share it with the Intelligence Committees). So while it is true that Congress, with a few exceptions, have been completely complicit in this, it is also true that the Executive Branch has withheld the information Congress needs to understand what is happening with US person data. I wonder why? Never you worry, though, because it’s all constitutional. There is a robust legal regime in place governing all activities conducted pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That regime has been briefed to and approved by the Court. Activities authorized under the Act are subject to strict controls and procedures under oversight of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the FISA Court, to ensure that they comply with the Constitution and laws of the United States and appropriately protect privacy and civil liberties. Don’t worry, the White House concludes. The legal review designed not to be robust is robust. And to be fair, the FISA Court has, on at least one occasion, told the Administration they were violating the Fourth Amendment. Though apparently DOJ and ODNI thought this Fourth Amendment violative collection was kosher, as they had to be slapped down by the court, so I’m not sure what purpose their purported oversight serves. But as I pointed out this morning, there’s a flaw to this argument that is grounded in the Administration’s refusal to admit this is a real FISA Court order. Standing. The government, over and over and over and over, assures us this is all very Constitutional. Even while the government, over and over and over and over, goes to great lengths to ensure citizens don’t learn how they’re being surveilled, which would (in addition to pissing them off) give them the ability to sue. Until the Americans who have been surveilled are permitted to challenge this in a court — precisely what the government has gone to great lengths to prevent — White House claims to constitutionality ring hollow. The government doesn’t have the confidence to let us test these claims in court. That ought to tell you what they really think about its constitutionality.WASHINGTON, July 23, 2014 —As per usual, political elites throughout Washington DC (on both sides of the aisle), continue to host prestigious Ramadhan Iftar dinners during Islam’s holy month of fasting. This year, however, some of the iftars have become politically charged. The White House invited controversy this year, when participants felt the program was insensitive to the crisis in Palestine. Other issues, such as the recently revealed spying of high profile Muslims in the United States, were left unmentioned. The news world erupted with stories both lambasting the iftar and defending it. The 2014 Congressional Iftar, hosted by the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association (CMSA), went off without a hitch, however organizers intentionally pursued a low profile for the event. Once boasting 1,000 attendees, this year’s event was a much more sober event, with less than two hundred participants. CMSA has taken a low profile after being attacked by anti-Islam media groups. The State Department cancelled its iftar this year, citing Secretary Kerry’s focus on resolving Palestine (A post Ramadhan “Eid” dinner is being planned). On the bright side, however, this year saw the first ever iftar in Washington DC held by a Shia Muslim organization. The Universal Muslim Association of America (UMAA) held its “Grand Iftar “at its national headquarters, drawing more than a hundred attendees, including staff from the White House, State Department, and a plethora of other federal agencies. Elsewhere in DC, USAID held a well-regarded iftar, devoting special attention to the plight of schoolgirls in the Muslim world. The tradition of government held iftars dates back to 1805, where then President Thomas Jefferson invited Muslim delegates from Tunisia to the White House for an Iftar dinner. Nearly two hundred years later the tradition was revived, when the White House started holding Iftar dinners hosted by President Clinton, President Bush, and President Obama. Far from a unique event in the nation’s capital, Iftar events are held throughout the city. Last year, the Pentagon held its fifteenth annual Iftar and the State Department continued its annual dinner dating back to 1996. During the month of Ramadhan, Muslims are required to avoid any food or drink (including water and medicine), from dawn until sunset. At sunset, Muslims may make conclude their fast with a meal called Iftar. More than a month dedicated to restricting food, Ramadhan is intended to be a time of spiritual and social advancement, as discussed in BBC’s “Why Ramadan brings us closer together” Washington DC based embassies from countries in the Middle East or with significant Muslim populations also hold extravagant Iftar celebrations, and invitations to the grand events are highly sought after. Such events occur across the country, and are often effective tools for politicians to reach out to Muslim constituents. New York State Senator Eric Adams for example, attended the Arab Muslim American Foundation’s 16th Annual Iftar last year and Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s 2013 Iftar sold out days before the event itself. Iftar dinners apparently serve as a bipartisan event, with high profile Republican and Democratic Governors regularly hosting the events. In 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger, a Republican, co-hosted an Iftar with dozens of other state legislators. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, a Democrat, is set to host his seventh annual Ramadhan Iftar this year. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, also a Republican, linked his own 2012 Iftar to the NYPD spying scandal, a program he vehemently opposes. “With the appearance of the crescent moon, Muslim families across the nation mark the beginning of Ramadan. As millions of Americans participate in this holy month of fasting, they will grow in their faith and strengthen the bonds within their families. … We recognize our Muslim American communities this month and are especially mindful of the many ways they enrich our country and culture with their faith, customs and traditions. We wish all who are fasting a blessed Ramadan” said Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus and Co-Chairman Sharon Day in a released statement. UMAA Advocacy Director Ali Tehrani says “It’s great to see that politicians from both sides of the aisle can come together to host these types of events. That so many communities across the country are welcoming Muslims with these Iftar dinners is a testimony to the American dream.” Iftar dinners have also been used as an interfaith tool, with the noted “Iftar in a Synagogue” series, boasting an attendance of nine hundred at its annual program. In Missouri last year, local Churches came together to support the Muslim community with an Iftar dinner after a mysterious fire at the Joplin Mosque construction site. The United States uses Iftar receptions as a diplomatic tool around the world, with American embassies hosting their on Iftar functions in countries as Singapore and others. Disclaimer: The author of this article is affiliated with UMAA.PBS' Frontline recently aired a documentary titled "Climate of Doubt," examining how conservative groups, frequently funded by the fossil fuel industry, have pushed Republicans to reject the scientific consensus on manmade global warming. Here, Media Matters looks back at how Fox News has contributed to that "Climate of Doubt," often teaming up with industry to misrepresent science and attack all efforts to address this threat. 2005-2006: Fox News Airs Special On Reality Of Climate Change, Experiences Exxon-Fueled Backlash Fox News Aired A Special Explaining The Science Of Climate Change With No False Balance. In 2005, Fox News aired a special titled "The Heat Is On: The Case of Global Warming," which reportedly did not dispute the science. Fox News' preview of the special stated that "producers traveled to Alaska's Glacier Bay to see evidence of climate change and to speak with scientists who have studied this phenomenon for more than 30 years." In addition to scientists, Fox News interviewed President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, and climate activists who are "committed to teaching everyday Americans and the rest of the world about what can be done to cut down on greenhouse gasses that threaten our children's future." Fox News unequivocally stated the threat of climate change: Drastic climate changes during the last 100 years have experts worried about the effects of greenhouse gasses. [...] Increasingly, as you will see in this special, scientists and government officials alike are agreeing that man's impact on climate has been extreme and the air that we breathe may hold a degenerating quality of life for our children. [FoxNews.com, 11/11/05] [FoxNews.com, 11/14/05] [Grist, 11/12/05] Fox News' Senior Vice President Called Global Warming One Of The Top 10 Issues We Face. The Los Angeles Times reported on the special: Bill Shine, the network's senior vice president for programming, said Fox decided to do the special because global warming is a significant news story. "There are at least 10 big issues out there today, and that's one of them," Shine said. [...] Shine said that the network sees the program as fitting squarely in its mission to deliver the news. Fox has not devoted substantial time to global warming in the past, he said, and felt it was a good time to do so. [The Los Angeles Times, 11/12/05] Exxon-Funded Groups Lashed Out At Fox News For Running The Special. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which in 2005 received $90,000 from oil giant ExxonMobil, criticized Fox's special before it aired because a producer told them that "Fox intends to run a disclaimer revealing that the network ignored alternative views" on the science of climate change. [Competitive Enterprise Institute, 11/9/05] [ExxonSecrets.org, accessed 10/23/12] The Center for Sound Science and Public Policy issued a press release after the special aired saying that Fox's special was a "transparent form of deception" that "advance[ed] alarming claims which have little to no basis in fact." The Center was founded with funds from ExxonMobil as a project of Frontiers of Freedom, which received $140,000 from the corporation in 2005. [PR Newswire, 11/21/05] [SourceWatch.org, 10/23/12] Several conservative media outlets also criticized Fox. [CNSNews.com, 7/7/08] [Investor's Business Daily, 11/15/05] Fox News Responded By Airing A Special That Featured Only Climate "Skeptics" And Did Not Acknowledge The Consensus. After the backlash from the right against the 2005 special, Fox News capitulated by airing a special that Fox News host Neil Cavuto called the "definitive piece" on climate change. In it, host David Asman said "almost all scientists agree that there is global warming," but claimed "but there is no scientific consensus about what causes global warming or how it will affect our lives." The special dedicated significant time to Rep. James Inhofe (R-OK) who said that global warming is a "total hoax," "an outrageous lie and they know it." The special also featured some of the very few scientists who dispute the extent of manmade global warming -- John Christy, Roy Spencer, and Patrick Michaels. [Fox News, "Global Warming: The Debate Continues," 5/21/06, via Media Matters] 2006 - 2007: Fox Goes On The Attack Against Gore's Climate Campaign Fox News Launched Pre-Emptive Attack Against Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Before the documentary An Inconvenient Truth featuring former Vice President Al Gore even aired, Fox News said that it was "alarmist," pointing to a poster for the movie. [Fox News, The Big Story, 5/19/06, via Nexis] Immediately after An Inconvenient Truth premiered, Fox News hosted Sterling Burnett, a fellow at the ExxonMobil funded National Center for Policy Analysis, who said of the movie, "why go see propaganda? You don't go see Joseph Goebbels' films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don't go see Al Gore's films to see the truth about global warming." [Think Progress, 5/23/06] [The New York Times, 5/23/06] The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes acknowledged on Fox News that global temperatures "have gone up a little, we have to do some things," but in calling Gore "hysterical" said that it's not "anywhere near certain" that "the small increase in temperature over the last hundred years is caused by man or not." [Fox News, Special Report, 5/23/06, via Media Matters] Fox News reportedly asked, "Al Gore's global warming movie: could it destroy the economy?" [The New York Times, 5/26/06] Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer said that The Wall Street Journal's Pete Du Pont made a "convincing" argument that global warming is primarily caused by solar radiation rather than human activity. Sean Hannity claimed that if "you go back to the first Earth Day" liberals "were holding up signs that said 'The Coming Ice Age.' If you look at the history of temepratures, there's a natural ebb and flow to all of this. And I think Al Gore is unhinged." [Fox News, Hannity and Colmes, 8/4/06] Hannity Became Obsessed With Attacking Al Gore For Supposed Hypocrisy. Sean Hannity called Gore's supposedly high energy usage and travel in private jets "pure, Class A hypocritical living." Hannity's claims about Gore's energy usage ignored that one reason that the price was high was because Gore was purchasing clean energy and that he had taken several steps to reduce energy usage in his home. [Fox News, Hannity & Colmes, 2/27/07, via Media Matters] Hannity repeatedly attacked Gore for using carbon offsets, calling Gore a "hypocrite" for using "a crock" like carbon offsets. [Fox News, Hannity's America, 3/25/07, via Media Matters] As PBS noted, Hannity filmed Gore exiting a private jet, using the video to attack him for his carbon footprint. [Fox News, Hannity's America, 9/9/07, via PBS] 2007: News Corp. Pledges To Educate Its Audiences About Climate Change -- But Fox Has Continued Its Annual Snow Job Feb. 2007: Fox News Called It "Ironic" That A Climate Change Hearing Was Cancelled Due To A Winter Storm. On February 14, Fox News' Megyn Kelly and Brit Hume reported on the cancellation of a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing on climate change due to severe winter weather conditions in Washington, D.C. Kelly deemed the turn of events "ironic," suggesting that cold weather and snow in February cast doubt on the existence of global warming. [Media Matters, 2/15/07] April 2007: News Corp. Announced Climate Initiative, Pledged To Educate Its Audiences About Reducing Their Carbon Footprint. From a May 9, 2007 speech by Rupert Murdoch announcing News Corp.'s Global Energy Initiative to address climate change -- an effort that is appealing to advertisers: Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction. [...] We can do something that's unique, different from just any other company. We can set an example, and we can reach our audiences. Our audience's carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours. That's the carbon footprint we want to conquer. [Media Matters, 4/21/11] But Fox Has Continued Its Annual Snow Job. A Media Matters compilation video shows that every winter since at least 2007, Fox has used snow to cast doubt on climate change: But a single winter storm in one city on earth does not cast doubt on the extensive science showing global temperatures have risen. While there will still be natural weather variation, global warming increases the risk of certain extreme weather events. [Media Matters, 12/21/11] 2008-2009: Fox Scares Senate Into Inaction On Cap-And-Trade Fox Reporter Campaigned Against Cap-And-Trade Before Obama Was Even Inaugurated. A Fox News reporter claimed that "economists say" that the "economy right now can't handle" putting a price on carbon, citing a Heritage Foundation fellow. A variation of the segment ran on several Fox News shows, including this segment from American's News Headquarters: GRETCHEN CARLSON: The cost of going green. President-elect Obama meeting today with former Vice President Al Gore reportedly to talk about energy and climate change. Obama has promised to develop alternate energy and green technologies. But given the current economic crisis at hand, can he stick to his plan of saving the planet? FOX's William La Jeunesse is live in Santa Monica, California. William, do you have the answer? WILLIAM LA JEUNESSE: The short answer is no, Gretchen, you cannot do both, and I'll tell you why. Alternative energy still costs more than conventional energy. [...] Now, economists say, however, for every green job you create with those revenues, $15 billion a year, you're going to kill another job. DAVID KREUTZER, HERITAGE FOUNDATION (VIDEO CLIP): Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the vast majority of our energy is going to come from fossil fuels. So if you cut down on CO2 emissions, you're going to cut down on energy. It's going to raise prices. It's going to raise electric rates. The EPA calculated by 2030 that electric rates would go up by 80 percent. LA JEUNESSE: And because of that economic hit, many analysts say Obama will not be able to keep his campaign promise, angering some environmentalists who say the impact of global warming far outweighs a few jobs. EILEEN CLAUSSEN, PEW CENTER (VIDEO CLIP): We have to do it. We are seriously changing the climate. The repercussions of that are enormous and will be felt over a long period of time. LA JEUNESSE: So the bottom line is, Gretchen, you're going to hear a lot about green jobs in the stimulus bill, but do not expect to see a hefty carbon tax right away because the economy right now can't handle it. [Fox News, America's News Headquarters, 12/9/08, via Nexis] Fox Fearmongered About Costs Of House Cap-And-Trade Bill. On Fox & Friends, Glenn Beck warned that passing cap-and-trade legislation would be "national suicide." On his program, he aired a graphic calling Republicans who voted for it "traitor[s]." Meanwhile, he and his colleagues at Fox misrepresented a Treasury Department memo to claim that the cap-and-trade bill passed by the House could cost American households an extra "1,761 bucks a year in taxes." Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade suggested it could "double the unemployment numbers." And Fox Nation called it a "direct assault on industrial base of America." In fact, a 2009 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis estimated that the net impact to households from the bill in 2020 would range between a benefit of $40 per year and a cost of $340 per year, for an average cost of $165 per year. The same report concluded total employment would be "only modestly affected" by cap-and-trade, a change that is "small compared with the normal rate of job turnover in the economy." [Media Matters, 7/21/09] [Media Matters, 6/29/09] [Media Matters, 9/17/09] [Media Matters, 6/26/09] [Media Matters, 6/26/09] [CBO, 6/23/09, via Media Matters] [CBO, 6/26/09, via Media Matters] Sen. Graham Urged Senate To Act On Cap-And-Trade "Before Fox News Got Wind." The New Yorker reported that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) urged Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Kerry to advance climate bill negotiations as much as possible before Fox News could find out about it: Graham warned Lieberman and Kerry that they needed to get as far as they could in negotiating the bill "before Fox News got wind of the fact that this was a serious process," one of the people involved in the negotiations said. "He would say, 'The second they focus on us, it's gonna be all cap-and-tax all the time, and it's gonna become just a disaster for me on the airwaves. We have to move this along as quickly as possible.'" Graham later walked away from negotiations over cap-and-trade and stated that he doesn't believe human-caused emissions "are contributing overwhelmingly to global climate change."
many calories, you will gain fat. It won't matter what nutrient those calories came from (fat, protein or carbs), too much of anything will cause weight gain. Of course, not all fat is equal. Certain types (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated) should comprise the majority of your fat intake (sources of these "healthy" fats are listed in the right column). These "good" fats have been shown to lower blood cholesterol levels and the risk of heart disease. One specific polyunsaturated fat, the omega-3 fatty acid (found in fish, fish oil and walnuts), may be the most beneficial of all. On the other hand, there are certain types of fat that do the complete opposite (cause rather than prevent) and should be limited or even avoided completely. More on them below. The USDA recommends that a maximum of 30% of your total daily calorie intake comes from fat. Most other sources/experts recommend something in a similar range, typically somewhere between 20-30 percent. So, if an example person eats 2000 calories per day, 20-30 percent of that would be 400-600 calories. And, since 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories, this works out to be about 44-66 grams of fat per day for this example person. Almonds, walnuts, peanuts, other nuts and seeds, salmon, sardines, mackerel, other fish and fish oil, olive oil, canola oil, avocados. Saturated Fat This is one of the so-called "bad" fats. Despite there being some debate as to exactly what degree saturated fats negatively affect us (it seems less evil than it was originally made out to be), it still appears as though saturated fat should be limited to SOME extent in most people's diets. The USDA recommends limiting your saturated fat intake to a maximum of 10% of your total calorie intake, or a maximum of 1/3 of your total fat intake (which is basically the same thing if you follow the above recommendation for total fat). The American Heart Association's saturated fat recommendations are a bit lower, suggesting a maximum of 7% of your total calorie intake. Animal and poultry fat. Milk, cheese, butter and other dairy products. Most typical junk food (candy bars, chips and similar snack foods, pastries, cookies, desserts, etc.) and fast food items. Trans Fat Trans fat is bad. In fact, it just may be as bad as it gets. Trans fat has been shown to raise your bad (LDL) cholesterol levels and lower your good (HDL) cholesterol levels. A diet containing a significant amount of trans fat increases your risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and possibly even more. Long story short, avoid it. I will also mention that there are two different ways you could consume trans fat. One is in the small amounts found naturally in certain meat and dairy products. The second and much more common way is in the man-made form that is found in a variety of other foods. The reason for its usage in these foods is that it is cheap to use, has a longer shelf life, and tastes good. Food companies have no problem focusing on those 3 reasons and ignoring the fact that it's probably the worst thing you could possibly eat. The American Heart Association recommends a maximum of 2 grams of trans fat per day. The keyword there is maximum. There is a ton of research proving that this stuff is borderline poison, which is why you really want to shoot for an even 0 grams. Out of all the stuff in your diet that should be kept on the low side (saturated fat, sodium, cholesterol), trans fat appears to be the only one that should be eliminated completely. Something else to keep in mind when avoiding trans fat is that due to some idiotic labeling rules, food companies only need to list trans fat content if the food contains 0.5 grams or more per serving. So, if a food contains 0.4999 grams of trans fat in one serving, it will say "Trans Fat: 0 grams" on the label. Stupid? Very. On the bright side, you can spot the foods that do this (and there are MANY of them). Check the ingredients for the words "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" (usually followed by an oil of some sort). If it shows up, then you know that food contains some amount of trans fat no matter what the label says. Most fast food and common junk food items contain the largest amounts of trans fat. However, small amounts can still be found in foods ranging from breakfast cereals to certain brands of whole wheat bread to everything in between. Be sure to check the ingredients (as mentioned in the middle column) to know for sure if your food legitimately contains any. Cholesterol Cholesterol isn't entirely a bad thing. It's actually required by the body to build and maintain cell membranes and is used for many other important functions as well. There are two ways that we get cholesterol. One is by the body itself, which the liver actually produces. The other way is through our diet. The amount produced by the body is usually all that we require, which means the amount we get through our diet should be kept within a certain limit (more on that in the middle column). As you probably already know, high blood cholesterol levels, which are a major risk factor for heart disease, would be a very bad thing. This is another important reason why we try to keep our dietary cholesterol intake to a safe level. I will also mention that dietary cholesterol is only one small part of the cause of high blood cholesterol. Trans fat and saturated fat intake play an even larger role. Your weight (another reason calorie intake is important), age, activity level, and genetics also play a role. The American Heart Association recommends that we consume less than 300 milligrams of cholesterol per day. They also recommend shooting for less than 200mg if you have any heart related issues, although you should of course check that with your doctor. For the average healthy adult however, less than 300mg of cholesterol per day is about the amount I've seen most often recommended. Egg yolks, dairy products, meat, chicken, turkey and fish. Sodium Sodium is another nutrient that's viewed as "bad" even though a certain amount is actually required by the body to help maintain proper fluid balance, help with the function of nerves and muscles, and more. It's when sodium intake is too high that the negative effects (most notably high blood pressure) occur. This makes sodium another nutrient that should be limited in our diet. The USDA, AHA and many other sources all recommend keeping your sodium intake under 2300 milligrams per day. The AHA also recommends that African Americans, middle-aged and older adults, and those with high blood pressure should try to consume less than 1,500 mg of sodium per day. Salted snack foods (pretzels, chips, etc.), many fast food items, many canned foods, ham, bacon, corned beef, hot dogs and other similar meats, certain frozen foods, and certain dressings. And of course, any food you add salt to. Carbohydrates Carbohydrates (AKA carbs) are a major source of energy for the body. The older, simpler explanation of carbs goes something like this. There are two different types; simple and complex. Of the two, simple carbs should be avoided due to the speed at which they are digested. Simple carbs digest quickly, and this has a negative effect on our blood insulin levels. Diets high in simple carbs have been shown to increase our risk of diabetes and heart disease, while complex carbs have been shown to do the opposite. For this reason, you should try to greatly limit typical junk foods like candy and dessert items, soda, and really any other sugary foods. Complex carbs on the other hand digest slower and should therefore comprise the majority of your carb intake. (See right column for examples of these foods.) But, the "complex" and "simple" label only tells part of the story, which brings us to the usefulness of the glycemic index. The glycemic index classifies carbs based on how quickly and how high they boost blood sugar when compared to pure glucose (sugar). This is useful for figuring out that a food like white bread, which actually fits the "complex carb" label, will in reality cause a rapid spike in our blood sugar levels. For this reason, in addition to the simple carbs mentioned above, you should also greatly limit other high glycemic foods such as white bread, white rice, crackers, many cereals and other highly processed foods. The amount of carbohydrates most often recommended per day is typically in the area of 50% of your total calorie intake (most recommendations range from 40-60 percent). 1 gram of carbs contains 4 calories. So, let's say an example person is consuming 2000 calories per day. 50% of 2000 is 1000 calories. And, since 1 gram of carbs contains 4 calories, you'd divide 1000 by 4 and get 250 grams of carbs per day for this example person. Fruits and vegetables, beans, oatmeal, brown rice, and other whole wheat/whole grain foods Fiber Fiber plays a key role in the health of the digestive system. There are two types, soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber has been associated with reducing LDL cholesterol and an overall decreased risk of cardiovascular disease. Insoluble fiber is also associated with decreasing cardiovascular risk as well as slowing the progression of cardiovascular disease in those who may already have it to some degree. In addition, foods high in fiber (see the right column for examples) are typically also low in saturated and trans fat and high in a variety of important nutrients. The USDA recommends that we consume 14 grams of fiber for every 1000 calories we consume. So, if your daily total calorie intake was 2000 calories, your recommended fiber intake would be 28 grams per day (a 3000 calorie diet would be 42 grams, etc.). Most other fiber recommendations fall in the range of 25-35 grams per day for most people, which is pretty similar to the first recommendation assuming a fairly average calorie intake is present. Fruits and vegetables, oatmeal, beans, bran and most whole grain/whole wheat products. Protein Protein plays an important role in muscle, cell and organ function and is necessary for building and repairing the body's tissues. It is present in muscle, hair, skin, bone, and nearly every other body part, which makes protein a very important part of a healthy diet. Pretty much every resource I've come across recommends that we consume a minimum of 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. To figure this out in pounds, just divide your weight by 2.2 and then multiply your answer by 0.8. (For example, a 200lb person would divide 200 by 2.2 and get about 91. They'd then multiply 91 by 0.8 and get about 73. So, this example 200lb person would require a minimum of 73 grams of protein per day.) Of course, the keyword there is minimum, as 0.8g of protein for every kg of body weight is what's required to keep the body from breaking down its own tissues. The USDA recommends that about 15-20 percent of your total calorie intake comes from protein. (This fits with their recommendations of about 50% carbs and 30% fat, which leaves 20% for protein.) 1 gram of protein contains 4 calories. So, let's say an example person is consuming 2000 calories per day. 15-20 percent of 2000 is 300-400 calories. And, since 1 gram of protein contains 4 calories, you'd divide 300-400 by 4 and get 75-100 grams of protein per day for this example person. I will also mention that for those who do some form of intense exercise on a regular basis, there is some research showing the need for a higher protein intake. A recommendation I've seen for these individuals is 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. Many other resources recommend as much as 1-1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight for those doing intense weight training regularly. However, for the average healthy adult who won't be doing any form of intense exercise regularly, I like the the USDA's 15-20% of your total calorie intake recommendation, or perhaps my own "average person" recommendation of 0.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight (a 200lb person would do 200 x 0.5 = 100g of protein per day). Anywhere in the range of these two suggestions would be pretty good. Chicken, turkey, meat (the leaner the better), fish, eggs, egg whites and, to a somewhat lesser extent, nuts and beans. *All recommendations given are based on the average healthy adult. Part 2: Putting It All Together Now that you've learned the basics of nutrition, it's time to put it all together and make a healthy diet out of it. In the most general terms, it's really pretty simple. Basically, once you've figured out what your total daily calorie intake should be, it's just a matter of making sure these calories come from good sources that provide the things your body needs and limits the things that it doesn't. Let's break that down step-by-step: Calories This is the starting point of diet creation, figuring out the number of calories you should be consuming each day in order for your weight to do what you want it to do. Your choices here are weight loss, weight gain or weight maintenance. As you learned earlier, in order to lose weight, you must consume less calories than your body needs. In order to gain weight, you must consume more calories than your body needs. And, if you just want to keep your weight right where it is, you need to consume the same number of calories that your body needs. For a much better explanation of this and to figure out how many calories your body needs (and therefore how many you need to eat per day) check out my Guide To Calories & Weight Control. It will explain everything. When you're done, come back here and move on to #2. Fat, Carbs and Protein Now that you've figured out what your total daily calorie intake should be, it's time to figure out where those calories are going to come from. As you learned above, fat, carbs and protein will supply these calories. Now it's just a matter of eating the right amount of each. So, just go back up and remind yourself of those recommendations. And no, it doesn't have to be exact. Anywhere within range of those recommendations is perfectly fine. Food Selection Alright, so you got your calorie intake nailed down, and now you know how much of each nutrient (fat, carbs and protein) will supply those calories. Now you just need to select the foods that will supply these nutrients while at the same time ensuring that you avoid and/or limit the things you should not be eating. To do this, just go back through the food sources recommended for fat, carbs and protein, and pick your favorites. Simple enough. Organization Once you have all of the quantities figured out and have made sure the quality is what it should be, all that's left to do is organize it. This could mean coming up with a rough idea of what your daily diet should be and then just improvising, or it could mean writing up a complete daily or weekly meal plan with everything planned and figured out in advance. I can't tell you which you you should do, but I can tell you that the more planning you do, the easier it will be to not end up in a situation where you're eating something you shouldn't, or just eating more/less than you should. I will also mention that the times you eat (early or late) and the amount of meals you eat (3 meals or 6 meals) doesn't matter at all. As long as you're eating the right total amount of calories, protein, fat and carbs per day and getting those nutrients from mostly higher quality sources, you should organize it all in whatever way makes you most likely to consistently stick to it. The specifics are insignificant, so do whatever is most enjoyable and convenient for you. Consistency A healthy diet is useless if you aren't consistent with it. Remember, this isn't a temporary thing. Unless you only want the results to be temporary and the benefits to be nearly nonexistent, this has to become your new permanent way of eating. So, be as consistent as you can and make a healthy diet a regular part of your life. An Example Of A Healthy Diet Just in case any of the above confused you at all, relax. Towards the end of The Ultimate Weight Loss Guide, I put together a complete example diet for an example person by going through each of the above steps one-by-one to show exactly how to do it for yourself. While that specific diet is tailored for weight loss, it could just as easily be for weight gain or weight maintenance if the total calorie intake was adjusted accordingly. Everything else however (the fat, carb and protein intake, the food choices, the setup and layout of the meals, etc.) would still be figured out the exact same way. So, to see an example of how it's done, feel free to check out the example weight loss diet. Ready For The Bigger, Better, More Advanced Diet Guide? If so, you can check out my new step-by-step guide to creating the best diet possible for your goal of losing fat, building muscle, or just being healthy right here: The Best Diet Plan Beginner's Guide FAQ Just in case you were left with any questions after reading this, here's my attempt at guessing what they might be and answering them for you. How do I figure out how many calories are in my food? Or how much fat, carbs, protein, sodium, cholesterol, trans fat, saturated fat, fiber and everything else? The first obvious answer is to check the "nutrition facts" label on your food's package. The second slightly less obvious answer is to use this very site to look up this information. All you need to do is search for a food and see it's full nutritional content instantly (and for free, by the way). Sound good? Cool. So, go search a Calorie Counter. What about drinks? I now know what to eat, but what should I drink? Water, water and more water. With the exception of something like green tea, there is no other drink I can really recommend. Water is what your body needs and it doesn't come with anything your body doesn't need. It's perfect. Soda, as you know, is pure garbage and should be eliminated completely. And fruit juices and sports drinks aren't that different. If you want the healthy things that are in fruit juices, eat the actual fruit. Limiting alcohol would also be a good idea. But really, for the most part, your drink of choice should be water. What about vitamins and minerals and all that stuff? Did you leave this out because it's not important? Nope, it definitely is important, but I left that stuff out for two reasons. First, by following all of the above guidelines you will end up consuming all sorts of important vitamins and minerals by default. That's just how a healthy diet works out by design. Second, I called this a "beginner's" guide for a reason. It's meant to be an easy to understand crash course in diet, nutrition and healthy eating. Basically, it's here to take someone from "I want to lose weight" or "I want to eat better" or "I want to improve my diet and health" to "Alright, now I know what I need to do" and "Now I know how to set up a diet." Everything beyond the basics belongs in its own separate article. I was just wondering... what does your diet look like? For anyone interested, here's a meal-by-meal break down of my diet. While it definitely meets all of the above recommendations, there are a few other adjustments tailored specifically to my needs/goals, most of which wouldn't be too important for the average person just looking to become healthier and/or improve their weight. Just figured I'd mention that. Have you written anything else that would be useful to someone looking to improve their diet and overall health? You bet I have. I'd recommend checking out my 8 Steps To A Healthy Diet and the previously mentioned Ultimate Weight Loss Guide. Even if losing weight isn't your specific goal, there is still a ton of useful information in that guide. Speaking of weight, the also already mentioned Guide To Calories & Weight Control would be a good idea to read as well. After that, you can learn more about Reading Food Labels and Diet Myths. Of course, you could just as easily look through all of the articles on this site as well as the a Calorie Counter Blog.This month achieved yet another milestone for the global mobile industry as the total number of unique mobile subscribers worldwide has crossed the 5 billion mark. This means that nearly 67% of the world’s population is now connected via mobile. This is yet another tremendous achievement for the mobile, which has taken over the entire world. Despite being only a few decades old, the mobile industry is now raking in revenues of nearly $1,100 billion yearly. It has become a cornerstone of economic growth and development in the modern era. Let us have a deeper look at the data at hand, and reveal the status of various countries and analyse the avenues and trends of future growth. Asia-Pacific Dominates the Subscriber Count If we look at the global subscriber count for Q2 2017, the Asia-Pacific region leads by a landslide. With over 2,765 million unique subscribers, this region accounts for around 55% of unique global mobile subscriber base! This incredible user base is mostly made up by China and India, which are the world’s largest and second-largest mobile markets, respectively. China has claimed to over 1,081 million unique subscribers, while India follows behind at 730 million unique subscribers. Europe is trailing behind APAC, with around 465 million unique mobile subscribers. They are followed by Latin America (459 million unique subscribers), Sub-Saharan Africa (436 million subscribers), Middle East & North Africa (391 million subscribers), North America (292 million unique subscribers) and CIS (227 million unique subscribers). The industry as a whole has been growing at an extremely rapid pace over more than a decade. From 2 billion mobile subscribers worldwide in Q1 2007, the number has risen to 5 billion in Q2 2017, representing a YoY growth of 4.76%. This represents an increase of around 150% over a period of just 10 years.This growth is set to continue, with an estimated 5.7 billion unique subscribers by 2020. In the last years, the penetration levels have also more than doubled from 30% in Q1 2007 to 67% Q2 2017. Subscriber penetration is increased almost 7 times from the mere 10% during the turn of the century. This data, however, does not give us any information about growth potential. For that, we must look at the subscriber penetration levels in these respective regions. APAC To Drive Future Growth As NA and Europe Stagnate Mature markets like North America, Europe and CIS already feature high subscriber penetration levels of 80%, 86% and 79% respectively, despite having lower subscriber counts. This is due to the significantly lower population levels in these countries compared to other regions. What this means is that the potential for acquiring unique subscribers from these regions is low, and growth is stagnant. In contrast, penetration levels in the emerging economies remain quite low, despite their massive already existing user base. APAC has penetration levels of 68%, whereas the Middle East & North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa are even further behind with 63% and 44% penetration, respectively. At first glance, it would seem like the Sub-Saharan African region is best suited for explosive growth in the coming years. However, growth estimates for 2020 by GSMA Intelligence is quite poor. This is due to issues such as poor infrastructure, poverty, lack of education and political instability, which have crippled progress in these regions. The situation is also similar in the MENA region. While there is significant potential in these regions, it is not likely to be realised in the near future. This leaves the APAC region, and it is indeed primed for explosive growth. With its tremendous population levels and only 68% subscriber penetration, APAC is going to drive mobile industry growth in the near future. The single biggest growth driver will be India. The country is going through a mobile revolution at the moment, with rising mobile penetration and subscriber growth due to the proliferation of 4G networks. India is expected to account for over 30% of all new unique mobile subscribers by 2020. The case of China is a bit more peculiar. It has a relatively high subscriber penetration level of 78%. Despite this, there is a considerable margin for growth in this market simply due to the sheer population size. TRAI Subscription Data: Conflicting Information? There is a bit of ambiguity regarding India’s subscriber base if we look at TRAI’s official data. According to TRAI’s report for 30th April 2017, India’s total wireless subscribers has reached to 1174.6 million. This is a long way off from GSMA Intelligence’s estimate of 730 million. So does this mean that India lost over 400 million subscribers in a matter of mere months? Not quite. TRAI’s data accounts for total mobile subscriptions across India, whereas GSMA’s data accounts for unique subscribers only. This means that around 444 million mobile subscriptions are non-unique. This would suggest that there is a prevailing culture among Indian users to have multiple mobile subscriptions. This fact is also reflected in the popularity of dual sim phones in this market. Actionable Insights The APAC region is a goldmine for the mobile industry. Due to stagnation in elite markets hardware and software/network service providers must both turn their attention towards APAC region to enjoy sustained growth. While the MENA and Sub-Saharan regions may seem lucrative opportunities, they simply lack the infrastructure and circumstances to provide a decent ROI in the next few years.Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press The World Umpires Association, which represents MLB umpires, issued a statement Saturday saying its members will wear white wristbands "to protest escalating verbal attacks on umpires and their strong objection to the Office of the Commissioner's response to the verbal attacks." The complete statement can be viewed below: The WUA also relayed a photo of umpire Joe West donning the white wristband: Comments from both umpires and players have forced Major League Baseball to take disciplinary action in recent weeks. The first incident involved West, who was suspended three games for calling Texas Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre the game's biggest complainer. "Every pitch you call that's a strike, he says, 'Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!'" West told USA Today. "I had a game with him recently and the pitch was right down the middle. He tells me, 'That ball is outside.'" The second incident involved Detroit Tigers second baseman Ian Kinsler and umpire Angel Hernandez. Still fuming after he was ejected from Monday's game against the Rangers in the fifth inning for arguing balls and strikes, Kinsler unloaded during a postgame meeting with reporters. "No, I'm surprised at how bad an umpire he is," Kinsler said, per the Detroit News' Chris McCosky. "I don't know how, for as many years he's been in the league, that he can be that bad. He needs to re-evaluate his career choice, he really does. Bottom line. "If I get fined for saying the truth, then so be it. He's messing with baseball games, blatantly." Kinsler was subsequently fined by Major League Baseball but avoided a suspension. Kinsler spoke about the umpires' protest after the Tigers lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday, per ESPN.com: "I really don't think too deeply into it. I hope they wear the white wristbands for the rest of their careers. I don't care. I said what I felt and what I thought. If they take offense to that, that's their problem.''The alleged abuse of the temporary foreign worker program by a McDonald's restaurant franchisee is by no means an isolated case, says the B.C. Federation of Labour. President Jim Sinclair says the program was designed to bring in skilled workers for short term jobs like the specialized work of boring a tunnel for the Canada Line, not flipping burgers in a fast food restaurant. "The program is being abused by employers who don't want to pay the going rate and don't want to hire Canadians to do the job," said Sinclair. "How can you justify bringing in temp foreign employees to a job that isn't temporary when we have 160,000 people that are unemployed and people are lined up to get those jobs," he added. "This makes no sense." Sinclair is calling for a complete overhaul of the program, calling the rules "too lax". The Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training says there are about 74,000 temporary foreign workers employed in the province. The majority are from Australia, the United States, Mexico and the United Kingdom. About 39 per cent of them are young people working in B.C. as part of International Experience Canada, gaining experience on a 'working holiday', doing temporary jobs like those on ski hills. The reciprocal agreement also allows Canadian youth to work abroad.@AndréBorie is correct. Compilers and the corresponding configuration will not be well vetted for security issues, so generally speaking you should not compile untrusted code. The risk is that a buffer overflow or some type of library execution vulnerability is exploited, and the attacker gains access to the (hopefully non- root!) user account that ran the compiler. Even a non- root hack is serious in most cases. This could be elaborated on in a separate question. Creating a VM is a good solution, to contain any potential exploits so they cannot harm the rest of your application. It is best to have a template Linux VM you can launch as needed with a clean slate compiler environment. Ideally you would throw it away after every use, but this may not be strictly necessary. If you isolate the VM well enough, and properly sanitize response data from the VM, which you should be doing anyway; then the worst a hack could do is DoS or create false compile times. These are not serious issues on their own; at least not nearly as serious as accessing the rest of your application. However, resetting the VM after every use (i.e. instead of daily) does provide for a more stable environment overall and can improve security in certain edge cases. Some OSes provide Containers as an alternative to VMs. This may be a leaner approach, but the same principles apply.I’m a big Macklemore fan. I don’t know if it’s the fact that we both have red hair or that he’s Irish (American). But, from the first time I heard “Irish Celebration,” it’s been a love affair. His first album is was an absolutely firestorm, from start to finish. Every song on that album could have been a single. His follow up sophomore album was a conscious decision to avoid a pop hit and showcase his hip hop fundamentals. The album was socially conscious, and minus the song about the scooters, it didn’t get much main stream attention. You know I’m back like I never left Another sprint, another step Another day, another breath Been chasing dreams, but I never slept I got a new attitude and a lease on life And some peace of mind “Glorious” is amazing… it’s glorious, if you will. World, I present you Skylar Grey. She KILLS the chorus on this song. Macklemore always has bars. I think that gets overlooked by his style and flow. But, I’m just so happy he didn’t come out with a trap song. That would be an easy way to cash in right now. He’s a big name. Put out a song that sounds like Migos and cash a check. He stayed true. I’m stoked. You know I’m a sports guy, but i’m THE music guy. So, turn up your radio and enjoy your ride home from work. Blast this song. You’ll feel glorious, glorious. My grandma smiling down on me like woo, that boy got bars Okay, okay, yes I do I said amen and hallelujah, let me testify too Another morning, a morning, don’t let self get in my way I got my breath, I got my faith and I remember why I came Macklemore’s officially back with Glorious. P.S. He never went anywhere. Comments commentsJuly 24, 2016 By Bruce Anderson & David Coletto In our recent nationwide survey, we asked Canadians to tell us whether they thought a series of scenarios were likely or unlikely to transpire over the next 10 or 20 years. We are releasing the results over the next few days, grouping some items together for ease of presentation. When it comes to our media and political life: • The majority (56%) think it’s likely that Canada will have a gay Prime Minister within the next ten years. Almost as many (44%) say its likely that a Muslim will lead one of our major political parties. • Half (51%) think there will be no more printed newspapers and 22% think there will be no more national news broadcasts on TV. • 7% think Alberta will separate from Canada (11% in Alberta), and 18% think Quebec will separate (20% among Quebecers). • 46% believe that women will have more power and influence than men in Canada, slightly higher among men (49%) than among women (44%). Comparing views across political lines, a few observations: • New Democrats are more likely to believe that there will be a gay PM and a Muslim leader • Liberals are more likey to believe women will have more influence than men. • 62% of Liberals foresee no printed newspapers, compared to 51% among Conservatives. When it comes to global affairs: • Two out of three (66%) think Canada will play a more important role in the world. • 42% think the US will play a smaller role in the world. • 41% think the EU will break up. • 23% think China will be a democracy. • 11% expect there will be a durable peace in the Middle East. • 9% think Canada and the US will be one country. • 7% think a tunnel will connect North America and China. Again, looking at results across party lines: • Liberals are most likely (83%) to say Canada will play a more important role, but majorities of each parties’ supporters feel this way. • There were fewer differences across party lines on the other questions. Comparing Outlook for 10 years and 20 years Half our sample was asked the likelihood that certain events would occur in 10 years while the other was asked about a longer time horizon of 20 years. Some findings: • 62% thought it was likely that there would be no printed news papers in Canada in 20 years compared to 51% in a 10 year period. • 54% thought there would be a Muslim major party leader in 20 years compared to 44% who said that would happen in 10. • 75% believed Canada will play a more important role in the world 20 years from now, 65% felt the same in 10 years. THE UPSHOT Bruce Anderson: “The numbers tend to speak to an optimism about the country and a comfort with our values. We don’t expect our country to break up, or merge with the US, and we do expect it will have more influence in the world. There is uncertainty about the course of global geopolitics, including the future of China, the US, and the EU, but pessimism about peace in the Middle East. In terms of our own domestic politics, the numbers signal at least some confidence that bias-based barriers to high office are limited and possibly reducing over time.” Our next release will explore our expectations about health, life, and technology. METHODOLOGY Our survey was conducted online with 1,500 Canadians aged 18 and over from June 14 to 16, 2016. A random sample of panelists was invited to complete the survey from a large representative panel of over 500,000 Canadians. The Marketing Research and Intelligence Association policy limits statements about margins of sampling error for most online surveys. The margin of error for a comparable probability-based random sample of 1,500 is +/- 2.6%, 19 times out of 20. The data were weighted according to census data to ensure that the sample matched Canada’s population according to age, gender, educational attainment, and region. Totals may not add up to 100 due to rounding. Abacus Data Inc. We offer global research capacity with a strong focus on customer service, attention to detail and value added insight. Our team combines the experience of our Chairman Bruce Anderson, one of Canada’s leading research executives for two decades, with the energy, creativity and research expertise of CEO David Coletto, PhD.In 1991, the smell of Nabisco saturated the air in Pittsburgh’s eastern neighborhoods. The cookie factory was still just that, years away from its second act as a Google anchor. Sears was closed, but its big blue shell sat fading in the parking lot on Highland Avenue. Peabody wasn’t Obama and Bush I was in the White House. Phones were anchored to landlines, reading was done on paper, and twitter was the sound of birds. I was a broke 25-year-old, and though I didn’t know it, I was about to become a whistleblower. New to Pittsburgh, I was anxious to finish night school at Duquesne University. After stints on the seventh floor of Kaufmann’s, a lot of waitressing and gofer gigs on movie productions, I needed a steady job. My fingers were perpetually smudged black from a long newspaper classified job search. Finally, I found the “rental assistant” ad listed by National Apartment Leasing Company (NALCO) and rode my bike to drop off my typewritten resume. The largest apartment rental company in the city hired me a week later. I was thrilled. NALCO’s main office was a beehive of rooms in the basement of one of their vintage properties at the corner of Negley and Penn avenues in East Liberty. Half a dozen girls like me were peppered among the fast-talking, jewel-drenched ladies who wielded their Realtor licenses like swords. We existed to facilitate the NALCO system of getting renters in and out of properties as seamlessly as possible to keep the inventory full. In 1991 Pittsburgh, banks were banks and factories were factories. There wasn’t much cool loft living in converted spaces. With more than 1,000 rental units across
never thank her for it. She just wanted to protect you." Ruby opened and closed her mouth, apparently lost for words. "What if our places had been reversed?" I continued. "If I had pulled you out to protect you, but it prevented you from saving Weiss." She frowned and thought for a few seconds before replying. "That's not the same thing, you're my sister—" "Would you have been mad at me?" "Yang, this isn't fair—" "Would you have been mad?" "Yang, this is stupid—" "Would you?" "Yes! Alright? Yes. I would have been mad." "See?" I grinned triumphantly. "You do care about her." "Of course I do!" Ruby said. I could hear her almost starting to choke up. "But, I don't know if I can fix things. I punched her, Yang. I was so angry and… I didn't think. I hit her." Well, that was surprising. I didn't think she'd ever go that far. "So? Just go and apologise. I know she cares about you; just as much as you care for her, if not more." "Can I really just apologise for that though? She doesn't even want to talk to me." "Ruby, she's only ignoring you because she thinks you don't want to talk to her. If you go and make the first move, she'll come around. Just apologise." "How can I just apologise for something like that?" "She's your friend, Ruby. She's your best friend. You can't let something like an angry punch thrown in the heat of the moment—which I know she's already forgiven you for—come between you two. You worked hard to make her your friend, do you really want to have to talk to more people and make another best friend?" I threw the last bit in as a joke, but Ruby blanched at my words. But then she smiled, realising I was right, and looked over at Weiss again. Weiss cast a glance towards us and whipped her head back around when she noticed Ruby looking at her. "Okay," Ruby said. "I'll go and talk to her." "That's my girl." I said with a smile, patting her on the shoulder. Ruby grinned back, got to her feet and began crossing the wide hall, towards Weiss. Blake sat down on the spot that Ruby had just left, watching her too. "Oh," I said. "There you are." "Here I am." She said with a smile. "You're getting very serious and supportive today. It's not like you to go that long without making a quip." "Yeah, well… The two of them fighting was annoying me. I wanted to fix it. Ruby needs Weiss, I just had to make her remember that." "Looks like you did a good job, Big Sis." Blake said with a smirk. I shot a glare her way and flicked her ear. The yelp she let out afterwards made me burst into laughter. "Yeah, I did." I bragged. "But enough of that, I hate getting that serious." Blake returned my smile and we sat back and watched Ruby as she approached Weiss. Ruby was about halfway across the hall, and taking in a breath to call out Weiss' name, when the ground trembled. I shared a concerned look with Blake and got to my feet. We looked around the hall, but nothing seemed amiss. Ruby was looking back at me; she looked concerned as well. I shrugged at her, to say that I didn't know what it was either. I turned to look through the hole in the wall, maybe something was in the courtyard again. A rippling mass of black fur rocketed through the doorway. My eyes could barely follow it, it was so fast. Before Ruby had time to draw Crescent Rose, or even react at all, it slammed into her with full force, sending her flying backwards. I watched in horror as Ruby crashed into the wall at the far side of the room, slid to the ground and lay still.Williamsburg’s BARC animal shelter all started with a store. In 1986, a time when there were no hip restaurants, waterfront condos and bike lanes, Williamsburg, Brooklyn was a very different place. It was gritty and cheap and the rise of art and culture was just forming. In a time before developers took over and rents began to soar, Vinny Spinola saw a market and a need for a pet food store and coalition focused on helping stray animals. He chose to locate at 253 Wythe Avenue. “We started it out as a rescue group first, because the neighborhood was a burnt out area and there were a lot of stray and abandoned animals,” says Spinola, the co-founder and vice president of the rescue group Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition, or BARC. Related: Animal Lover Bernadette Peters Comes Out to Support BARC Shelter at Art Show To get their dream off the ground, Spinola and co-founder Tony Spoto bought a building — a huge investment and saving grace to the animals due to today’s soaring Williamsburg rent prices — and turned it into BQE Pet Foods. In a growing artist community, it was the only pet food and supply store in the area. Soon after the store opened neighborhood residents started bringing stray cats and dogs into the store. “So we formed a group and then shortly after that we opened an animal shelter and it grew into what became BARC,” said Spinola. “It’s a different scene now,” said Spinola. In the span of three decades, since the neighborhood has undergone a re-gentrification, the animals that come through the door have changed. “Before it was mostly mixed shepherds and pit bulls and what have you, now we see more small pedigree dogs come in,” he said. The shelter has also started to rescue more purebreds and “designer” mixed breed dogs from puppy mills in need, many who have issues stemming from inbreeding. BARC relies on private donations and the proceeds that come from its BQE Pet Food Store, which is next to the shelter. While both the BQE Pet Food and BARC’s staff is small, the community of volunteers at the shelter is very diverse. People from all varying industries–finance, media, art, music, and education, among others –come together to work with the animals at BARC. “It helps to have many different skill sets because you never know what will be needed in order to support the shelter better,” said Julie Argent, a Long Island City resident and 12-year BARC volunteer. What Argent loves about BARC is its uniqueness and people’s dedication and involvement with the animals. “The people adopting don’t just adopt and disappear, they come back to shop at the pet store, get advice from the BARC people and use the vet that is right next door,” she said. The best part of this is that it’s a nice way of keeping track of the dogs and cats that get adopted, said Argent. “It feels great knowing that they went to amazing homes.” Related: This New York City Store Is the First to Stock Hemp-Derived Dog Treats The setup of being connected to the shelter not only helps customers see exactly how their purchase is helping animals but also is convenient for those new adopters needing to stock up on supplies. He couldn’t say exactly but Spinola estimates that about 80 percent of the store’s sales go back to the shelter. The store offers specialty foods and prescription diets — including grain-free, holistic and grass fed – toys, beds, pet clothing, cat litter and other pet necessities. Although there is a good popularity within the local community and the shelter is never empty, there is are always financial challenges one of which has to do with overcrowding because BARC is a no-kill shelter, said Spinola. The BARC facility holds about 35 dogs and 100 cats but overall the organizations cares for about 75 dogs and 250 cats at any time — animals not at the shelter are housed in foster homes until they are adopted. “We hardly ever have an empty cage and as soon as one comes up, we take up an animal from the city pound off their euthanasia list,” he said. Another obstacle the shelter faces is providing adequate medical care on its budget. “We have a vet on premise but a lot of time the animals we get in need surgery for dentistry or something else which, we don’t have the capability of doing here on premise, so we have to send them out,” said Spinola. In its 28 years open, regardless of BARC’s everyday challenges, the rescue has saved the lives of thousands of animals, and it all started with a pet food store looking to help the local strays in the neighborhood. Related: Williamsburg’s Eclectic Cafe Colette Has Something for Everyone — Including Your Begging Dog Images via Colby BlountFamily of murdered DNC employee Seth Rich speaks out on 'Crime Watch' (ABC7) WASHINGTON (ABC7) - The family of Seth Rich, the 27-year-old Democratic Party employee who was gunned down in July, is speaking out. They appeared on the syndicated program "Crime Watch". Rich's girlfriend says she is still waiting for answers. She believes whoever shot Rich did so out of anger. The family also appears to be playing down conspiracy theories surrounding the killing. It happened July 10, shortly before Wikileaks released a trove of emails which sparked the resignation of several party leaders on the eve of the Democratic Convention. Since nothing of Rich's was stolen during the shooting conspiracy theorists began circulating Rich may have been the leaker. Then Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, offered a reward in the case. Investigators initially speculated Rich was killed in a failed robbery attempt. His girlfriend said Rich is the kind of guy who wouldn't cross a street until the light changed. Apparently countering speculation he would have betrayed the Democratic Party.Content + distribution = money. That's the basic equation behind Thursday's news that movie and TV studio Lions Gate acquired subscription channel Starz for $4.4 billion. The deal, a combination of stock and cash, merges the company that made "The Hunger Games" series with one of the biggest pay-for cable channels. SEE ALSO: Hulu confirms it will offer live TV in 2017 In Starz, Lions Gate now has a way to directly make money from its hits as opposed to going to other distributors, as it does now with Orange is the New Black. In Lions Gate, Starz gains access to a pipeline of high-quality shows and an existing library that will make its subscription services more enticing. Jon Feltheimer, CEO of Lions Gate, said on a call with analysts that the combined company would be able to compete better. He didn't call out Netflix and HBO, but he might as well have. "This acquisition unites Lions Gate and Starz in a global content power house that invests nearly $2 billion a year in new content with the increased scale to compete even more effectively and capitalize on growth opportunities in a fast changing marketplace," Feltheimer said. The combination might seem like a no-brainer as direct-to-consumer streaming platforms have become the hot new thing among consumers and investors, but the combination is far from a sure thing. Both companies have struggled in the past year, with their respective share prices reflecting such. The combined Lions Gate/Starz also faces stiff and diverse competition from some of the biggest tech and media companies in the world that have a distinct head start. "As a content 'arms merchant' we are unconvinced that Lions Gate will be better owning a lower-tier SVOD network. We think this is a deal that happened because management needed a deal to happen given poor recent financial performance and a declining share price," Doug Creutz, a media industry analyst for Cowen & Co., said in a note. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.Police Violated Free Speech and Free Press Rights During Unlawful Search and Detention of Live Streamer February 11, 2015 - Carrie Medina firmly believes that police should always act as they would if they knew there was a camera on them. She made it a point to film police encounters she witnessed. In February 2013, while riding the bus home from work, she heard someone exclaim, “Ooh, that must’ve hurt!” and looked outside to see two police officers arresting a young man. She got off the bus to observe the police activity and started a livestream video with her phone. Watch the video. Medina was no stranger to livestreaming. She got her start during the Occupy Portland protests and had soon gathered a group of dedicated viewers. With donations from her supporters to help cover expenses, she had also traveled to protests in D.C. and Chicago to livestream video. “Livestreamers” have played an important role in recent protests both by attracting large audiences in real time and also by capturing moments that can go “viral” afterwards. For example, over 750,000 viewers tuned in live to see the violent eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protestors. And recently in Ferguson, Missouri, livestreaming journalists shared video of the militarized police response toward protestors that shocked the nation. By the time Carrie Medina was off the bus and in place to video, the young man being arrested was already in handcuffs. She stood several yards away broadcasting and narrating the events. She started to feel that the police were paying her a lot of attention and she backed even further away. That’s when Officer Letsis walked up to her and asked to see her video. Medina explained that the she did not want to show her phone. She further explained that the video was streaming live and would be available on the internet for review. The police officer told her again that she must show him her recording and then snatched the phone away and twisted her arm. She was detained while the officer searched her phone, but luckily the video was also uploaded and saved on the livestream site. Medina was scared and appalled by the officer’s actions that day, but the incident only fueled her belief in the importance of filming police. She shared her story with other media outlets and filed a formal complaint against the officer. Medina also cofounded a group dedicated to standing up for the right to video police called Film the Police Portland. On Tuesday, we filed a lawsuit arguing the police violated Medina’s free speech and free press rights when they stopped her recording and broadcasting of the police activity. Additionally, we maintain that her rights against unreasonable search and seizure were violated when the officer seized and then searched her phone without her consent or a search warrant, and that the officer also unlawfully detained her that day. Representing Medina in cooperation with the ACLU Foundation of Oregon are Charles Paternoster of Parsons, Farnell & Grein LLP and Gregory Chaimov, Alan Galloway, and Tim Cunningham of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. Photo of Carrie Medina by Lindsay Beaumont.Loopholes for foreigners buying Shanghai property When a decade-long restriction on foreigners making property purchases in the Chinese mainland ended last month, expats across the country rejoiced. But for non-mainlanders in Shanghai, the news was nothing to pop the cork over. Despite being home to one-fourth of China's foreign population, Shanghai upheld its restrictions against selling its golden real estate to outsiders. China's contentious attitude toward property-purchasing expats dates back a decade, when overseas investors began buying up properties across the country in response to the PRC's economic growth. Noticing that valuable land was being sold off to wealthy Westerners, the government ruled in 2006 that only foreigners who had worked or studied for more than a year in China - in other words, expats who actually cared about the country - could have property. This, however, did not stop foreign firms from sending in stooges to buy land on their behalf, so further provisions were added in 2011 limiting foreigners to owning just one piece of property in China. With speculation subsiding as a result of these policies, China witnessed the largest property boom in its history, maybe even in the world. Commercial and residential real estate purchases soared throughout the decade, with a majority of the land being bought up by the country's own rising middle class. Willing to finally give the country's ever-growing foreign population a stronger sense of inclusion in Chinese society, in August of this year the State Council agreed to loosen restrictions on foreign investment in the real estate sector as long as it meets "real needs," meaning non-speculative. Except in Shanghai, where 173,000 foreigners continue to be literally locked out of the most valuable land in all of Asia. Shanghai issued its first restrictions on property purchasing back in 2011, which stated that non-Shanghai hukou (household registration) families, including foreigners, have to provide proof of income tax or social insurance to the local government. But most foreign employees here don't have social insurances, and just because one is working in Shanghai doesn't mean their company is contributing to taxation; many firms are actually registered with the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Local Taxation. And don't overlook exclusionary keywords in the provisions, namely "families," legalese designed to keep away single foreigners no matter how long they might have worked here or how much taxes they have paid. But all is not hopeless. At the posh Lianyang community in Pudong New Area, where up to 20 percent of residents are foreigners, Home Link real estate agent Li Guanqiu told the Global Times that foreigners who are new to Shanghai can easily purchase property. "The only document that they have to provide is a one-year job contract with a local employer, which is easy to fake," winked the man, who further explained that if a potential foreign buyer has the cash and does not require a bank loan, the entire transaction process takes only a few days, whereas it usually takes two months for Chinese. "Local restrictions exist, but only on paper," Li said. According to him, 40 percent of Lianyang's foreign residents actually own their apartments. In the nearby Biyun community, another popular residential area for upper-class expats, property agent Wu Xiaoling echoed what Li had said. "The only so-called restriction on foreigners purchasing a property in Shanghai is that they need to have a one-year job contract," she explained, adding that foreign families cannot access any mortgages for the second property they purchase here - they have to pay in full and upfront. This may all seem like a startling revelation for those foreigners who blindly trust in official policy statements. But for those long-term expats who know how China really works, it is just business as usual. For a city whose infrastructure and economy were built by an international community, not letting a foreigner have a home seems xenophobic. Why shouldn't foreigners who contribute to Shanghai be able to own their own home here? That said, as history has shown, the tide can turn any moment against China's foreign populous. Even if you are wealthy or clever enough to skirt the laws of the land, be prepared to face the music should any legal violations be reported to the authorities. Your 6 million yuan ($942,359) Pudong apartment will be seized quicker than you can say zaijian!Heres another view below with a better sight of the Alcove. Again I went with the Shipbuilders description that the Alcove was slightly raised on the Titanic. So there. Also it's hard to tell but I even installed those mini windows in the circle decor of the Alcove...that was a pain. There arm chairs below are the most recent ones I've built. They have sister chairs with closed off arms I still have to make. Please note the teeny tiny fringe. hehe I think it's so cute. Thank God for good sewing scissors. Trim is in Velvet which doesn't constantly fall apart and get all over your actual furniture at all. I promise. Making Chandeliers! Yay! These will be installed with the top of the light fixtures I made once I paint the ceiling and add the embellishments. The circles in the left hand side are failed first attempts at those circle windows. I decided the "frame" needed to be wider to not like a screen and more like a window frame. Here's our lovely passenger again for scale, but also a better shot of the mirror, clock and fireplace. The fireplace, btw, lights up as an electric coal fire which is accurate to both period and Titanic. :) So update for the end of June! I'm getting pretty close as you can see. I only have the ceiling to paint and install and add the embellishments and flourishes and then install the chandeliers you'll see below. All color choices etc were based off my research of passenger testimony, her sister ship the Olympic and historical books like Voices of the Carpathia, being an account of wreck sighted, and Shipbuilder which is basically a descriptive book for ships of the time.So tables built, planters and plants done, clock done, mirror done, carpeting installed and almost all the furniture is built besides the armchairs which will be coming. As you will see below I just finished the arm chairs with exposed arms. It's funny while putting in this furniture you really realize what a floating palace this was. Being one of the smaller and simpler rooms on the ship, it's still massively beautiful to me. I always just imagined the Reading & Writing room as such a peaceful and quiet place.Here's the dining room chairs with the special custom ordered fabric I got to upholster them. These are a huge beaming pride for me as, again, I am just coming into my own really with this whole thing and they actually look nice and like real furniture! Or...so I think?And a fun little peaking shot. Lady Mary Lynn Katherine as I've named her is chilling out and enjoying that she finally has some furniture and carpet.Thanks so much for reading and can't wait to share more! Stay tuned for armchairs and ceilings! O' my!The Oakland teen who set a gender non-conforming high school student's skirt on fire on an AC Bus last year pleaded no contest Thursday to charges of felony assault and inflicting great bodily injury, and agreed to serve seven years in prison. Christie Smith reports. (Published Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014) The Oakland teen who set a gender non-conforming high school student's skirt on fire on an AC Bus last year pleaded no contest Thursday to charges of felony assault and inflicting great bodily injury, and agreed to serve seven years in prison. Richard Thomas, now 17, will be sentenced on Nov. 14 in Alameda County Superior Court, after being charged as an adult in the case, according to the District Attorney's Office. The hate crime and aggravated mayhem charges, which carried a sentence of up to life in prison, were dropped. The parents of Sasha Fleischman, who identifies as agender rather than as male or female, said in a statement that they had "mixed emotions" about the prison sentence. They have long fought to have Thomas tried in juvenile court, not as an adult. "On the one hand, we are relieved that Sasha will not need to relive the events of past November in court. They are well on the road to recover and have moved to to the next chapter of their life," Fleischman's mother Debbie Crandall wrote. RAW VIDEO: Sasha Fleischman Interview, Part 1 For the first time, Sasha Fleischman is talking publicly about being set on fire aboard an AC Transit bus, describing the moments of panic after seeing and feeling the flames. (Published Thursday, Nov. 28, 2013) "At the same time, our hearts go out to Richard and his family. Because of what seems to have been a childish, impulsive, tragic lack of judgement on the part of Richard, his and his family's lives have been altered even more severely than ours. We have stated before, and continue to believe, that a 16-year-old's actions, however severe the results, have no place in an adult judicial system." Thomas had set Fleischman's skirt, and subsequently legs, on fire while riding AC Transit bus No. 57 in Oakland on Nov. 4, 2013. Fleischman, who was 18 at the time and a student at Maybeck High School in Berkeley, suffered second- and third-degree leg burns and spent nearly three weeks in the hospital. Surveillance video from the bus led to Thomas' arrest a few days after the attack. District Attorney Nancy O'Malley charged the then-16-year-old with a hate crime, aggravated mayhem and felony assault. She also took the unusual step of charging the teen as an adult, a move Fleischman's family opposed. Thomas' family told reporters at one of his court hearings that he intended the act as "a joke." Many in the Bay Area rallied around the agender teen, lining the streets with rainbows and wearing skirts to school, to show their support for Fleischman and the spectrum of gender identities. Shortly after the arrest, Thomas' attorney William DuBois told NBC Bay Area that the teen hurt Fleischman as a prank, but he was not filled with hate. "As a matter of fact, he doesn't even know how to spell homophobic, let alone be homophobic," DuBois said at the time."There are members of his family who are gay. He has absolutely not a homophobic bone in his body." RAW VIDEO: Sasha Fleischman Interview, Part 2 Sasha Fleischman talks about enduring a terrifying ordeal, the decision whether to continue wearing a skirt, and riding public transit alone. (Published Thursday, Nov. 28, 2013) Just before Thomas turns 18 in July, a judge will be able to modify his sentence to five years if he has behaved well in prison, under the terms of the agreement with prosecutors. NBC Bay Area legal analyst Steven Clark said Thomas should feel lucky. “He was facing a life sentence because they first charged him with aggravated mayhem and a hate crime," Clark said. "He should be grateful for both the sentence and Sasha’s forgiveness.”More than the basics of CQC We stole the instruction manual when we rented Metal Gear Solid from Blockbuster. It's the one and only time we ever did that. Normally we were fine upstanding rental citizens who held manual-thieves in smug contempt. But in this one case we made the exception and became the very thing we hated. Which is kind of a Metal Gear thing if you think about it. My brother and I managed to rent Metal Gear Solid the very first weekend our local store got it. Of course we did. We'd damn near worn out the demo disk featuring the first 20 minutes of Snake infiltrating the Shadow Moses nuclear disposal site in the months before release, there was no way we weren't picking it up at launch. We wanted to buy it but there was no money, so renting it was. We played with purpose, knowing there was no way we were going to return the game without seeing the mission through to its end. Metal Gear was something we hadn't seen before. It was cold, and sleek, and dangerous. It was a war game where you were better off never killing anybody. It was a sophisticated espionage thriller where if you moved fast enough and got good with your binoculars, you could peep on half dressed polygon ladies and watch their butts wiggle. It was a game with a guy who pissed himself in one cutscene and almost made me cry in another. Suffice to say, it was an experience. I remember the entire route through Shadow Moses. I remember the area with electrified tiles inset in the floor and steering a tiny rocket over them. I remember resenting not being able to use my guns in the nuke disposal area. The cave with all of Sniper Wolf's wolves running loose -- one of them pissed on my cardboard box. I'll sometimes forget the best way to get downtown, but the map of Shadow Moses is burned into my memory. The bosses were legendary, both for their design and the surreal conversations you'd have before, during, and afterward. One-on-one with an old west gunfighter, circling each other around a hostage in the middle of a room rigged up with C4. He showed off his fancy carnival trick-spinning and made comments that distinctly implied that he wanted to make love to his pistol, or that gun fighting was an allegory for sex to him. I don't know, he was a weird dude. There was that shaman who you'd fight twice, once in a literal tank and once while he carried around a gun the size of a small tank. He discussed ear-pulling competitions and the futility of struggling against fate. He was eaten by his own ravens. Then there was the suffocating tension and isolation of dueling a single sniper hundreds of yards away. The battle with Sniper Wolf would be eclipsed in every way six years later by Naked Snake's duel against The End, but at the time it was one of the most intense fights I'd ever experienced. I feel like there has probably been enough ink spilled on how crazy the fight with Psycho Mantis was, but holy fucking shit. How did any of that happen? It was like stepping into some alternate reality where Andy Kaufman had been a game designer and somebody cut him a blank check. Memes of plugging the controller into the second slot, or the infamous “HIDEO” error screen are well worn now. But I don't think secondary accounts can do justice to just how crazy and bizarre that fight, and the rest of Metal Gear Solid, truly was. All of that weird fourth wall breaking shit -- holding the controller to your arm for a massage, having the Colonel explain combat maneuvers to Snake directly referencing the DualShock and a bunch of video game jargon, it was something that had to be lived in the moment. It felt like Kojima was peeling back our skulls and attaching electrodes to areas of the brain that were previously entirely unstimulated. He was showing us a new way of making and thinking about games. I remember taking that instruction book with me while on a short shopping errand that Saturday afternoon in a calculated move to ensure I wouldn't have to stop thinking about Metal Gear. It had its hooks in me, and once I was in that world of spies, rogue special ops groups, and shadowy conspiracies, I never wanted to leave. We were supposed to visit our grandparents that Sunday, but stopping wasn't an option. So we took the PlayStation with us, hooking it up to an ancient TV in their dusty basement where we could continue to save the world from nuclear disaster and learn more dubious information about genetic engineering. I know, it was a scumbag move. But in our defense, we'd just finished the torture scene, found the corpse of the real DARPA chief, and escaped a jail cell using a bottle of ketchup -- neither of us were in the best head space to make positive decisions. It was a weekend I'll never forget. My brother and I tackled Shadow Moses together, experiencing the entire mission as a single unit. It was was a battle march, a do-or-die suicide mission to finish it in a single weekend. Even if it meant wearing out our welcome at our grandparents with multiple pleas of “just 15 more minutes!” as we pummeled Liquid Snake to death and tried to watch the hour-long ending without completely alienating the rest of the family. So yeah, we kept the stupid manual. Call it a battle trophy, or a war memento. My brother still has it buried in some desk drawer. Besides, we did Blockbuster and the next person to rent the game a solid. When we returned the game, we taped an index card with Meryl's codec number to the inside of the sterile white and blue plastic box. We had to crack that puzzle with brute force after we couldn't convince our mom to drive us back out just before midnight to look at the back of the CD case on the shelf. Kojima never accounted for us rental kids with his fourth wall shattering puzzle, but I forgive him. How could I not? He made some of my favorite memories. The best moments I had with Sons of Liberty all happened years after the game first hit the shelves. Nowadays, I consider Sons of Liberty to be one of the most important and subversive games of all time. When we picked it up on day one though, I thought Raiden was a turd and Kojima was playing a mean spirited prank on us. You want to talk about memories? I remember thinking “boy, I hope this is just a joke and Snake takes over again reallll soon” about a million times during the first few hours with it. That's not to say I didn't like Sons of Liberty or that it was a bad game or anything, it was just frustrating. It seemed to exist only to validate every criticism of the original. That it was a bunch of nonsense for the sake of nonsense, or that it was a nice movie with some neat game bits in between. I wanted to love it, but it didn't seem to care one way or the other for me. Subliminally, I was picking up on the entire meaning of the game. But it'd be a long time before I could fully appreciate it. Sons of Liberty isn't a game you tackle in a single weekend of obsessive dead-eye play. It's an intricate and nuanced criticism of the industry, players, and power fantasies that you revisit every few years with a scalpel and a fresh set of eyes. It's a game that was so prescient that only now, with games like Spec Ops: The Line and Hotline Miami, are other titles even attempting the same kind of criticism it levied. It's a game that I've enjoyed reading about more than I enjoyed playing. And I've enjoyed playing it a lot. It would be easy to dismiss Sons of Liberty's message as postmodern gobbledygook, or its criticisms of Raiden, and by extension the players, as overly impressionable rubes playing pretend at being a super solider as a creator taking a shot at his audience. But I remember a time in high school when I skipped Mr. Hogarth's class in the morning and couldn't afford to be caught. How the blood in my veins began to pump as I saw him looming just in front of the door of one of my afternoon classes having a conversation with Mr. Jones. How I slipped seamlessly, without consciously thinking about it into STEALTH MODE, creeping up just behind him, turning with him as he turned, like I was staying just outside of the vision cone of any of Metal Gear's hapless guards, slipping in just past him to take my seat, no alarms activated. The S3 plan worked better than Kojima could have dreamed. Even a pudgy high school nerd could have his own Solid Snake moment with the kind of training he provided us with. The Substance Edition on the Xbox was where I really came to love Sons of Liberty. The VR missions more than made up for the intractable cinematics and radio conversations of the main game, finally letting me feel like I played Sons of Liberty rather than watched it. With a few years to get over the shock of playing as Raiden and absorb the message of the game's screwy third act, I was able to enjoy the story and characters. It's one of the few games I can think of that benefited from a remaster in a way that was more meaningful than just a graphical update. But when it's all said and done, I think my favorite memory of Sons of Liberty has to be slipping on bird shit and falling to my death. I don't know why, but that's the moment that crystallized Sons of Liberty to me. Snake Eater is one of my favorite games of all time. I've completed it maybe ten or so times give or take. Certainly more times than any other game I've ever owned. The reason I played through it so many times is simple -- it kept giving me something new every time I did. I'm not sure how many people appreciate how incredibly dense and rich Snake Eater is. If you just want to mainline the game on normal mode, stick to dependable tactics, and don't care too much if you get spotted or have to drop a few extra people, it can be a fairly straightforward affair. If you want to dig deep though, if you want to get weird, that's when Snake Eater really shows you what it's really made of. I did all of the normal things. A regular playthrough where I slit every throat I saw, blundered into enemies and tripped off alarms, and was admonished by The Sorrow who seemed very cross with the number of Russians I set on fire. I did the professional thing, where I snuck in like a shadow over Groznyj Grad, with no alarms and no surprises. Then I did the goofy stuff -- theme runs where I would try and see if I could complete the game as a North Vietnamese regular (all black camo, unsilenced pistol, AK-47, grenades, and SVD only). I did runs where I would only eat fresh killed food, no Calorie Mates or insta-noodles. Runs where I tried to kill as many people indirectly as I could, to see how many I could poison with rotted food or knock off of bridges, the spirit of bad luck. Runs where I made a point of blowing up every supply shed and armory in the country. Every time I thought I exhausted the very last bit of Snake Eater, there was just a little bit more to find. A new mechanic or trick (that of course was almost totally useless and impractical, and great), or some new weird quirk of enemy behavior (did you know you can kill The Fury with a few swipes of your knife? He even has custom dialog for it), or a new radio conversation or song I had never heard before. I played Snake Eater for years, and I'll bet there are still one or two things left to find; Kojima's bag of tricks never seems to end. I still have the memory card with all of my Snake Eater saves on it, just in case I ever feel the need to get down on my belly and crawl through the weeds and marshes of Tselnoyarsk again. I had a whole library of saves, most of them right before discrete scenes or moments I knew I'd want to play again and again. The mountain infiltration right before you rendezvous with Eva and the treacherous march back down again. Dodging KGB special operation units armed with flamethrowers, mindful of the differences in elevation and the gun emplacements littering the hill. I've heard The Guns of Navarone was one of the movies that inspired Kojima when working on the series, and I like to think this area is his little homage to the cliff-side raid of the movie. I saved right before the sniper duel with The End, two different versions. One where Snake would run into his valley clad in camo greens, ready to fight a war of attrition with the legendary marksman. Another, where I assassinated the old man earlier on in the game with a single split-second crackshot (Snake Eater lets you do this because Snake Eater is a game that gives and gives every time you play it). In that version, his valley was full of Ocelot's personal entourage of soldiers to play with.
all the horrible things that have happened because we lost respect for Jesusy Christmas. "You guys, in this future that I just made up, everything is terrible! So we should change." Um, argument ad imaginarium? Good work, Alex. 10 points. Here's how she deals with the fact that Christmas isn't historically Christian: "Does that mean Christians won the war on Saturnalia? You bet! And that shows the power of new traditions to shape culture." This in a book about how the way Christmas is being shaped by modern culture is inherently evil! Argument self-contradictorium? Correct! 15 points. And most importantly, she really wants to prove that belief in God makes one good and atheism makes one evil. "It was good Christians who opposed slavery and helped end segregation." And who was opposing them? Did I miss the part where a national coalition of atheists were pushing for slavery? This one's actually got a real name, affirming a disjunct. 25 points! Stores need to say Merry Christmas because that's the true meaning of the season but buying things isn't the meaning of Christmas so it doesn't matter what stores say but it's really important to them that you acknowledge their religion because words matter but militant atheists shouldn't get so easily offended by some simple words like "merry Christmas". I'm just going to call that one argument ad Palinium for 50 points and an A+. Again, she's not evil, she's just suffering from a major case of the stupids. The fun thing about reading Palin's books is she spent her life in a town of 9,000 and she doesn't read the news. When she feels attacked by The War on Christmas, it's actually the horrible realization that other people exist laying siege to her mental walls.Seventeen civilians have been killed by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, reportedly for attending a party. The bodies of two women and 15 men were found by the side of a road in the Kajaki district. They were either beheaded or had had their throats cut. Some showed signs of beatings or had gunshot wounds. Meanwhile, 10 Afghan army soldiers were killed in a Taliban attack in the same province. In eastern Afghanistan, two US soldiers were shot dead by an Afghan National Army soldier. The bodies of the 17 civilians were discovered on Monday morning. Local officials said the men had gathered to listen to music and watch the women dance when they were attacked. The Taliban disapprove of men and women mixing socially. "I can confirm that this is the work of the Taliban," the Helmand provincial governor's spokesman, Daud Ahmadi, told AFP news agency. He added that the men and women were "partying with music in an area under the control of the Taliban". The BBC's Quentin Sommerville, in the capital Kabul, says some reports suggest the 17 were killed because they were local government workers. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Brigadier General Gunter Katz, Isaf: "The campaign is on track" 'Green on blue' The 10 Afghan army soldiers were killed in a massive attack by the Taliban on their checkpoint in southern Helmand on Monday morning. As many as 200 insurgents were involved in the assault, 11 of whom were killed. Four soldiers were wounded and six others were also missing following the attack in Washir district, a senior police official told AFP. The two US soldiers with the Nato-led force in Afghanistan were killed in Laghman province by an Afghan army soldier who was subsequently killed by Nato troops. Such incidents, termed "green on blue" attacks in line with colour-coding systems used by the US military, have killed a total of 42 foreign troops this year. The Taliban claim responsibility for many of the attacks, but Nato says other issues, including cultural differences and personal animosities, are behind many incidents. Currently, approximately 130,000 (blue) Nato troops are fighting insurgents in Afghanistan alongside 350,000 (green) Afghans. Nato forces are due to withdraw combat troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, with only training troops remaining.Simplest bare metal program for ARM Bare metal programs run without an operating system beneath; coding on bare metal is useful to deeply understand how a hardware architecture works and what happens in the lowest levels of an operating system. I wanted to create a simple example of bare metal program for ARM using free open source tools: RealView Development Suite is the state of the art of ARM compilers, but it is expensive for hobbyists; Codesourcery is a company that provides a free version of the GNU gcc toolchain for ARM cores. In particular, the EABI toolchain must be downloaded from their download page; I fetched the IA32 GNU/Linux installer. During the graphical installation, the tools are installed in a sub-folder of the user’s home; this is fine if only a single person wants to use the toolchain on that computer, otherwise it is more efficient to install it system-wide. The path to the toolchain binaries must be added to the PATH environmental variable; usually the installation process does it for you, but if it doesn’t, the standard installation path is “~/CodeSourcery/Sourcery_G++_Lite/bin“. I created a C file called test.c containing the simplest C code I wanted to compile: int c_entry() { return 0; } The classic printf(“Hello world! ”); example is more complex because when coding bare metal the standard input/output must be defined: it could be a physical serial port for example. I called it c_entry instead of main because in this example some things that are usually assumed true when the program reaches the main code are not implemented: for example, variable initialized globally in C code could not be really initialized. To compile this code into an object file (test.o) run the following command, very similar to compiling code with gcc: $ arm-none-eabi-gcc -c -mcpu=arm926ej-s -g test.c -o test.o The -mcpu flag indicates the processor for which the code is compiled. I wanted to target the ARM926EJ-S processor in this example for these reasons: It’s a widespread core in common products I worked on a project that used this core The QEMU emulator supports this core in the form of a VersatilePB In order to create a bare metal program we must understand what does the processor do when it is switched on. The ARM9 architecture begins to execute code at a determined address, that could be 0 (usually allocated to RAM) or 0xFFFF0000 (usually allocated to Read Only Memory). We must put some special code at that particular address: the interrupt vector table. It is a series of 32-bit instructions that are executed when something special happens: for example when the ARM core is reset, or when the memory contains an unknown instruction that doesn’t belong to the ARM instruction set, or when a peripheral generates an interrupt (the serial port received a byte). The instructions in the interrupt vector table usually make the processor jump to the code that handles the event. The jump can be done with a branch instruction (B in ARM assembly) when the destination address is near. I created an assembly file called startup.s containing the following code: .section INTERRUPT_VECTOR, "x".global _Reset _Reset: B Reset_Handler /* Reset / B. / Undefined / B. / SWI / B. / Prefetch Abort / B. / Data Abort / B. / reserved / B. / IRQ / B. / FIQ / Reset_Handler: LDR sp, =stack_top BL c_entry B. A brief explanation: Line 1 generates a section named INTERRUPT_VECTOR containing executable (“x”) code. containing executable (“x”) code. Line 2 exports the name _Reset to the linker in order to set the program entry point. to the linker in order to set the program entry point. Line 3 to 11 is the interrupt vector table that contains a series of branches. The notation “ B. ” means that the code branches on itself and stays there forever like an endless for(;;); ” means that the code branches on itself and stays there forever like an endless Line 14 initializes the stack pointer, that is necessary when calling C functions. The top of the stack ( stack_top ) will be defined during linking. ) will be defined during linking. Line 15 calls the c_entry function, and saves the return address in the link register (lr). To compile this code into an object file (startup.o) run the following command: $ arm-none-eabi-as -mcpu=arm926ej-s -g startup.s -o startup.o Now we have test.o and startup.o, that must be linked together to become a program. The linking process also defines the address where the program is going to be executed and declares the placement of its sections. To give this information to the linker, a linker script is used. I wrote this linker script, called test.ld, following a simple example in the linker manual: ENTRY(_Reset) SECTIONS {. = 0x0;.text : { startup.o (INTERRUPT_VECTOR) (.text) }.data : { (.data) }.bss : { (.bss COMMON) }. = ALIGN(8);. =. + 0x1000; /* 4kB of stack memory */ stack_top =.; } The script tells the linker to place the INTERRUPT_VECTOR section at address 0, and then subsequently place the code (.text), initialized data (.data) and zero-initialized and uninitialized data (.bss). Line 11 and 12 tells the linker to move 4kByte from the end of the useful sections and then place the stack_top symbol there. Since the stack grows downwards the stack pointer should not exceed its own zone, otherwise it will corrupt lower sections. The script on line 1 tells the linker also that the entry point is at _Reset. To link the program, execute the following command: $ arm-none-eabi-ld -T test.ld test.o startup.o -o test.elf This will generate an ELF binary for ARM that can be executed with a simulator, or it can be loaded inside a real ARM core on a hardware board; for simplicity we can use the Codesourcery version of the gdb debugger: $ arm-none-eabi-gdb test.elf [...] This GDB was configured as "--host=i686-pc-linux-gnu --target=arm-none-eabi". [...] (gdb) target sim Connected to the simulator. (gdb) load Loading section.text, size 0x50 vma 0x0 Start address 0x0 Transfer rate: 640 bits in <1 sec. (gdb) break c_entry Breakpoint 1 at 0x3c: file test.c, line 24. (gdb) run Starting program: /home/francesco/src/arm-none-eabi/startup/test.elf Breakpoint 1, c_entry () at test.c:24 24 return 0; (gdb) set $pc=0 (gdb) stepi Reset_Handler () at startup.s:34 34 LDR sp, =stack_top The target sim command tells the debugger to use its internal ARM simulator, command tells the debugger to use its internal ARM simulator, the load command fills the simulator memory with the binary code, command fills the simulator memory with the binary code, the debugger places a breakpoint at the beginning of the c_entry function, function, the program is executed and stops at the breakpoint, the program counter ( pc register) of the ARM core is set to 0 to emulate a software reset, register) of the ARM core is set to 0 to emulate a software reset, the execution flow can be examined step-by-step in the debugger. An easier way to debug is using the ddd graphical front-end with the following command: $ ddd --debugger arm-none-eabi-gdb test.elf This program is a starting point to begin to develop more elaborate solutions. The next step I want to take is using QEMU as the development target: with it I can interact with some peripherals, even if emulated, and create bare metal embedded programs more useful in the “real world” using only free open source software. For a deeper look into bare metal programming for ARM see also: 45.447224 8.599690 AdvertisementsRepresentative Katherine Clark (D-MA) has announced a new federal bill to ramp up cybercrime enforcement training for police departments and create a national resource center that hosts a cybercrime-specific library. Clark announced the bill at a SXSW panel about how law enforcement and the tech industry can work together to bring down online trolls. The proposed legislation, called the Cybercrime Enforcement Training Assistance Act, would establish a $20 million annual federal grant for state and local law enforcement agencies to train police officers, prosecutors, and emergency dispatchers in identifying and prosecuting cybercrimes. The funds would also be used to aid in extradition of cybercriminals between states. The Congresswoman told The Verge in a phone interview that the echo across reports from victims was that law enforcement was unfamiliar with how to investigate cases of online threats and harassment and was therefore often dismissive of complaints. She said the reports were consistent with her own experience as an advocate for victims of Gamergate: "The FBI... clearly told us this was not a priority for them and that was a sentiment we have found to be a theme." The federal grant for law enforcement training, she said, would therefore go towards "build[ing] the capacity of local law enforcement to understand the impact of these crimes and how to best investigate them." "The FBI... clearly told us this was not a priority for them" Specifically, the money could be allocated to technical upgrades, expert hiring, and training programs. Clark emphasized the importance of introducing at least one person into each police department who has technical and cultural expertise in online crimes. Funding would be applied for in a competitive grants process. A second, $4 million annual federal grant would be used to establish a national resource center, which Clark told The Verge would ideally house a library of shared resources: investigative techniques, training modules, and data about how cybercrime affects specific populations such as women, people of color, and the LGBT community. Clark also envisions the center hosting training sessions for community organizations, organizing support for victims, and providing technical assistance to local law enforcement.Earlier this week, Suns owner Ken Babby announced that he was changing the team’s name to “Jumbo Shrimp”. After everyone confirmed via Google search that it wasn’t a hoax, the move was met with widespread ridicule. Many Suns fans were enraged; the team had been known as the Suns for all but five years since 1962. (For those five years in the mid to late 80s, they were the Jacksonville Expos.) We felt the same way – what the hell was Babby thinking? How could this ever be a good idea? Then the press conference to announce the move aired later that morning, and the logo and uniforms were revealed. And… they actually look pretty nice. It was no secret that the Suns’ uniforms needed a revamp, and now they’ve gotten a major one. The new branding emphasizes the city strongly, from the subtle water features alluding to the St. Johns River to the alternate Bold City uniforms the team will wear for some home games. The angry little shrimp is even shaped like a J, for Jacksonville. Obviously they’re not perfect. The red on that Bold City alternate is a little strong, and the shrimp does look pretty ridiculous. One of the alternate logos looks a little bit like an angry piece of shrimp humping the state of Florida. It can’t all be perfect. While the move may seem strange, it isn’t unusual for minor league baseball. Think about it – over the years, the Suns played opponents with names such as the Shuckers, the Confederate Yankees, and the Blue Wahoos. For some reason, Babby really likes these weird names. He bought the Indians’ Double-A affliate, the Akron Aeros, and turned them into the RubberDucks. Apparently this resulted in a large attendance spike, but this may have been the result of a ballpark remodel that happened around the same time. Plus, the Suns/Jumbo Shrimp have rarely struggled with attendance. We’ll find out next season how the rebranding affects the team. No matter how ridiculous the name may be, the actual design of the rebrand is encouraging and really does at least attempt to embody Jacksonville. Maybe the name will grow on us. Let us know what you think by voting in the poll below. Are you on board with the Jumbo Shrimp? https://www.wedgies.com/question/what-do-you-think-of-the-jacksonville-jumbo-shrimp-name-changelogoconcept-pkzp7kw4jjLooking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Matt Steinglass is surprisingly optimistic that we’re about to enter a new, more reticent age of American power projection: There haven’t been many examples lately of people learning from their mistakes, but the invasion of Iraq appears to be a mistake from which some lessons have been learned. It’s difficult to imagine America returning to fantasies of easy conquest and democracy-building anytime in the next few decades, anywhere in the world. Summing up the mood, Joe Klein calls the invasion a “national disaster”, and calls for new criteria for the use of American military force that are actually rather old criteria: “We should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.” I would very much like to believe this. But I really don’t. We left Vietnam in 1975 and were supposedly so scarred that we’d never do anything like that again in any of our lifetimes. Your definition of “like that” might be different from mine, but a mere five years later we dipped our toe into Afghanistan and then, over the next 30 years, intervened militarily in Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan 2.0, and Iraq 2.0. In other words, once every three or four years, which is about as frequently as we did this kind of thing before Vietnam. Some scarring, eh? Right now it looks like we’ve learned a lesson because, aside from a bit of chest beating from frustrated neocons over Iran, no one’s banging the war drums. But no one was banging the war drums in 1976, either, which is why it looked like maybe we were going to enter a new era back then too. Then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and suddenly everything changed. So let’s not declare a victory for common sense in foreign policy just yet. I’ll believe things have changed when something actually happens overseas, a president tries to build support for intervention, and Congress and the public—including Joe Klein and me—balk. That will mean things have changed. In the meantime, my friend Marc Danziger, whose son is in Afghanistan, is full of contempt for the way the Pentagon wages war (“It’s like we turned the military over to the DMV”) and believes that our big problem there is that “We have no strategic objective.” Well, one man’s strategic objective is another man’s blather, but the fact is that President Obama has clearly articulated what he wants to accomplish: I set a goal that was narrowly defined as disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda and its extremist allies, and pledged to better coordinate our military and civilian efforts….We must deny al Qaeda a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future. Now, maybe you don’t like this objective. Maybe you think it needs to fit into a grander global plan of some kind. I don’t, especially, but it’s a perfectly legitimate view. Still, even if we had a different global plan than we do now, I don’t think it would change what we want to accomplish in Afghanistan and it wouldn’t change the difficulty of accomplishing it. This kind of counterinsurgency campaign is just really hard, and hardly anyone ever succeeds at it. Our current rules of engagement, which are frustrating for everyone, nonetheless seem to be about as effective as they can be. A year from now, if they’re still not working, even with a huge increase in troops and an obviously highly competent officer like David Petraeus in charge, it’s hard to believe that anything else would work either. The Pentagon’s idea of how to wage war might or might not be as good as it could be, but failing to do the impossible is hardly evidence of it. It’s primarily evidence that we’ve taken on an intractable task. And we’ll probably do it again. Just give us a few years to regroup and a plausible sounding enemy somewhere overseas. I’m pretty sure we’ll hop right back on that horse.Page 2 Of 2 Journey Exit Theatre Mode Journey and its developer thatgamecompany took up one of the more unorthodox positions on the front of independent game development. Journey, as well as TGC’s two previous titles Flow and Flower, were all published by Sony. The media giant paid for everything, unlike Bastion, where Warner Brothers entered towards the end of the development cycle and only really handled promotion. That exchange, while great for relieving the typical stress accompanying self-funded game development left thatgamecompany penniless in the end. Sony, assuming the risk for the three games, picked up most of the revenue. With Journey in particular, that trade-off was frustrating for the team. The downloadable title sold well and went on to become one of the highest-praised games in history, but the people that poured three years of their life into the project had nothing tangible to show for it. It’s definitely a tough situation, but TGC’s creative director Jenova Chen relents, “In terms of financial reward, it’s a gamble. As difficult as the development was, our salary was still paid by Sony. It’s frustrating, but Sony assumed the risk. [Other developers] have told me that they had to borrow money to buy food, which is a struggle I can’t imagine, but when they release, they get 100% of the reward. Even though it’s technically a first party game, we felt like it was still indie because no one told us what to do. We still had creative control. ” Exit Theatre Mode Weighing that against the reality of life, though, isn’t always easy. “People are still a little angry…when we founded this company they were early 20-somethings, now they are 30-somethings. You can’t just say you’re successful when you’re all still living a college life, but…most people keep struggling. I've been through three games now, and I’m still in that same situation. I think it's a good thing that we put our life and career [on] the line. It inspires [a] greater game.” Most people who have played Journey realize that it’s something special. “Everyone sees a bit of themselves in Journey, that’s what makes it special…the beginning is always easy and hopeful, you can go anywhere, do anything. But as you hit the middle you realize that money is running out, time is running out and your bodies are wearing out. Sometimes you can’t even see the goal. Then you persevere, you see the mountain again but you have to struggle, it’s an effort and then you transcend it all. You reach apotheosis. “When people tell you that you’ve made their life better… That’s the best reward I could ever get, y’know, as a human being. What better thing can you do when they tell you that? I don’t know.” Exit Theatre Mode That transcendence, though, isn’t always easy. Kellee Santiago, co-founder of thatgamecompany with Chen, had somewhat of a different take. After the game is released, after consumers have spoken, “…it is still as hard as ever to finance new, innovative games…it was kind of depressing to find out, actually. You expect that you work your ass off for a number of years, and continue to ship commercially and critically successful games, and that you could eventually get to a point where you don't have to beg so much for funding. But that's just not how it is today.” Now that awards season is over, and the games industry starts looking at the next console cycle, developers large and small are starting to take a look at how they are going to be approaching their next batch of games. Without any cash on hand following the release of Journey, Chen had to get creative when securing funding. “Because of Journey, we were able to raise some venture capital. We’ve raised $5.5 million, which is slightly more than Journey cost to make. If there’s any worry, it’s creatively …you think ‘I won’t have to worry about money any more’, but then the ambition sets in, and you always have constraints that you have to deal with. This time we don’t have a publisher that says ‘Hey you have to ship by this date.’ To extend the project we need money, to get money we have to give up ownership of the company. It’s a totally different kind of challenge.” Braid & The Witness Exit Theatre Mode Jon Blow embodies the careful balance between risk and reward, and the ultimate creative freedom that a really big hit can fund. His first commercial release, Braid, was one of the very first independent games to become a mainstream hit. Blow famously paid for the game’s development out of pocket, but rapidly recouped those losses and then some. In essence, Jon Blow is the definition of “Big Indie.” His impact on the scene cannot, however, be overstated. Nearly every other well-known indie developer cites either Blow or Braid as a direct inspiration. Braid is one of those watershed titles, those big pieces that regardless of their actual merits validate an entirely new way of doing things. It’s been almost five years since, and Blow is gearing up for the release of his next game, The Witness. He is approaching The Witness from the perspective of making something much bigger and much more ambitious than Braid, and that lofty goal places the financial security of his company in danger. “For something like Braid, if I had stayed developing games by myself, I would have had plenty of freedom for a very long time. But, The Witness is way more expensive than Braid, so, if nobody were to buy it, we would be out of business. Once you are paying a team of people, you really have to be making money, and money goes away really fast.” Exit Theatre Mode In some ways, Blow is also doubling down. The Witness is set to be one of the very first titles for PlayStation 4. “There are downsides to coming early (not a large number of people with the consoles), but there are also upsides (not that many games flooding the market).” Sony, for its part, is hoping The Witness will pay dividends, and help demonstrate to the world their renewed commitment to independent developers in the face of the OUYA and the burgeoning PC market Valve has tapped by way of Steam. “What I have learned in releasing Braid, and afterward, is that I have a different opinion about games than most people do, and certainly than game critics do -- what makes games good, or what makes them interesting. This difference seems to become bigger as time goes on. So no, there isn't any pressure, because I've established by now that I don't agree with broad opinion...so if broad opinion likes the game, or if it doesn't, is not so significant to me. Obviously it's nice if the game receives rave reviews, or whatever, but if it doesn't, it is not a big deal.” But what if the game fails commercially? “The magic of being an indie designer/programmer is that I could still go off on my own and make one-person games.” We are on the precipice of a new era of interactive entertainment. The rise of digital distribution has proven to be the democratizing factor of media in the 21st century. Bypassing many of the standard publication channels and the competition with shelf space in brick-and-mortar stores, audiences have found games new and old that might not have managed any publicity before. It’s certainly an exciting time, but very real struggles are lost amid presumed wealth. As far as things have come, developer’s still face more than their share of challenges, and it can be easy to forget that millions sold doesn’t always mean millions made.Have you been using Firefox Nightly and seen this big annoying spinner? I hate that thing. I hate it. And while we’re working on making the spinner itself less ugly, I’d like to eliminate, or at least reduce its presence to the absolute minimum. How do I do that? Well, first, know your enemy. What does it even mean? That big spinner means that the graphics part of Gecko hasn’t given us a frame yet to paint for this browser tab. That means we have nothing yet to show for the tab you’ve selected. In the single-process Firefox that we ship today, this graphics operation of preparing a frame is something that Firefox will block on, so the tab will just not switch until the frame is ready. In fact, I’m pretty sure the whole browser will become unresponsive until the frame is ready. With Electrolysis / multi-process Firefox, things are a bit different. The main browser process tells the content process, “Hey, I want to show the content associated with the tab that the user just selected”, and the content process computes what should be shown, and when the frame is ready, the parent process hears about it and the switch is complete. During that waiting time, the rest of the browser is still responsive – we do not block on it. So there’s this window of time where the tab switch has been requested, and when the frame is ready. During that window of time, we keep showing the currently selected tab. If, however, 300ms passes, and we still haven’t gotten a frame to paint, that’s when we show the big spinner. So that’s what the big spinner means – we waited 300ms, and we still have no frame to draw to the screen. How bad is it? I suspect it varies. I see the spinner a lot less on my Windows machine than on my MacBook, so I suspect that performance is somehow worse on OS X than on Windows. But that’s purely subjective. We’ve recently landed some Telemetry probes to try to get a better sense of how often the spinner is showing up, and how laggy our tab switching really is. Hopefully we’ll get some useful data out of that, and as we work to improve tab switch times, we’ll see improvement in our Telemetry numbers as well. Where is the badness coming from? This is still unclear. And I don’t think it’s a single thing – many things might be causing this problem. Anything that blocks up the main thread of the content process, like slow JavaScript running on a web-site, can cause the spinner. I also seem to see the spinner when I have “many” tabs open (~30), and have a build going on in the background (so my machine is under heavy load). Maybe we’re just doing things inefficiently in the multi-process case. I recently landed profile markers for the Gecko Profiler for async tab switching, to help figure out what’s going on when I experience slow tab switch. Maybe there are optimizations we can make there. One thing I’ve noticed is that there’s this function in the graphics layer, “ClientTiledLayerBuffer::ValidateTile”, that takes much, much longer in the content process than in the single-process case. I’ve filed a bug on that, and I’ll ask folks from the Graphics Team this week. How you can help UPDATE (June 1, 2015): Getting profiles from Windows is currently broken because the symbol server appears to be busted. Any profiles from Windows machines will be useless until this bug is fixed. Alternatively, set profiler.symbolicationUrl to http://symbolapi.mocotoolsstaging.net in about:config. If you’d like to help me find more potential causes, Profiles are very useful! NOTE – I don’t mean “user profiles”, as in, your bookmarks / customizations / history, etc, in the profile folder. I don’t mean this thing. I mean a performance profile. A performance profile is a read-out of everything that Firefox / Gecko is doing over a particular span of time. When the profiler is running, Firefox / Gecko will record where the process is in the stack every 1ms or so. It’ll also record information about how long since it’s serviced the event loop, which helps us find jank. To help, grab the Gecko Profiler add-on, make sure it’s enabled, and then dump a profile when you see the big spinner of doom. The interesting part will be between two markers, “AsyncTabSwitch:Start” and “AsyncTabSwitch:Finish”. There are also markers for when the parent process displays the spinner – “AsyncTabSwitch:SpinnerShown” and “AsyncTabSwitch:SpinnerHidden”. The interesting stuff, I believe, will be in the “Content” section of the profile between those markers. Here are more comprehensive instructions on using the Gecko Profiler add-on. And here’s a video of me demonstrating how to use the profiler, and how to attach a profile to the bug where we’re working on improving tab switch times: And here’s the link I refer you to in the video for getting the add-on. So hopefully we’ll get some useful data, and we can drive instances of this spinner into the ground. I’d really like that.VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – To chants of “not my president” and “f@#$ Trump”, thousands of protesters packed into the streets of New York, Chicago, Seattle and other major cities across the United States last night, refusing to accept Donald Trump as their president-elect. Flames lit up the sky in Oakland as fires were started in intersections and a giant papier mache Trump head was beaten at a demonstration in Los Angeles, where riot police had to remove several hundred people blocking a freeway. “There was quite a large crowd outside Trump Tower as well,” says Cam MacMurchy, a former reporter with NEWS 1130 who is visiting New York City. “New York is known to be quite liberal and obviously the election hasn’t gone down well in this city. There was as many as a thousand people marching from 14th Street all the way to Trump Tower and there were crowds in front of the Trump International Hotel at Columbus Circle last night, a lot of them chanting slogans at the president-elect who was holed up inside with his staff,” he tells NEWS 1130. Despite the tension and anger in many other cities, MacMurchy says the crowds in New York City were relatively calm. “It definitely wasn’t an ominous feeling. I think there was some anger and some concern in the crowd but it was a real mixed bag in terms of who was there and what their issues were. A lot of the chanting was about the fact that it appears Hillary Clinton won the popular vote,” he explains. The crowds began to gather at Union Square in New York and didn’t start to dissipate until close to midnight. “When I left there were still a few hundred people lingering outside Trump Tower, which is heavily secured. There is secret service there this morning and the building is surrounded by police, so it’s hard for people to get close to the entrance.” Protesters are expected to gather outside the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Vancouver later today as well. A Facebook page is calling for a demonstration from 4:00 PM – 8:00 PM downtown.— At least 29 people have been charged in an international carjacking ring that stole luxury vehicles in New Jersey and New York before shipping the cars to West Africa, authorities said. Approximately 160 cars valued at more than $8 million were recovered in "Operation Jacked," a 10-month investigation. Most of the cars were recovered at Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal and the Howland Hook Marine Terminal in Staten Island, N.Y., the places from where the ring did most of its shipping, acting Attorney General John Hoffman said at a press conference at the State Police barracks in Totowa. A poster displayed by authorities at a press conference announcing the arrests of suspects in a car theft ring. While warrants have been issued for six of those believed to be involved, 23 others have been arrested, Hoffman said. The seven ringleaders are from Newark, Irvington, Belleville and Roselle, he added. The ring targeted luxury SUVs including Land Rovers, Mercedes-Benz, Acuras, Porches Jaguars and Aston Martins, according to authorities. Of all the recovered vehicles, 27 are believed to have been taken in carjackings The carjackers were paid between $4,000 and $8,000 to steal cars and sell them to fences. "Carjackers are driven to steal and even to murder by the demand that exists for luxury stolen vehicles," Hoffman said. Many of the carjackers targeted people by bumping them from behind on highways, causing minor accidents and then carjacking the vehicles when the victim pulled over. Thefts also commonly occurred at airports and car washes while the vehicles were running. Thieves would also rob valets, Hoffman said. Thieves would then let the vehicles "cool off" at garages and other hiding spots before moving them to a fence, authorities said. The seven ringleaders, according to authorities are: • Leon Nii-Moi, 35, of Roselle • Kyle Champagnie, 27, Irvington • Saladine Grant, 39, Irvington • James Hemphil, 41, Belleville • Omar Smith, 39, Newark • Demarco Sparks, 40, Newark • Deandre Stevenson, 41, Newark All are charged with the second-degree crime of leading an auto theft trafficking network, racketeering, money laundering and fencing. They allegedly also assumed the roles of fence and thief as part of the ring. The investigation was led by the state's Department of Criminal Justice, the State Police, Port Authority police and U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement. RELATED COVERAGE • FOLLOW THE STAR-LEDGER: TWITTER • FACEBOOK • GOOGLE+Rupert Murdoch snubs Britain and says he will invest his billions in the US Rupert Murdoch appears to have turned his back on Britain following his humiliation over the phone-hacking scandal. In an interview with the Fox Business channel on Thursday following New Corporation's confirmation that it was splitting into two companies, entertainment and publishing, Murdoch said he would be "a lot more reluctant" to invest in Britain now, compared to the US. The News Corp chairman and chief executive also told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto it was "highly unlikely" that his eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch, would run the new newspaper, book publishing and education company. Once Britain's most powerful media figure, Murdoch has seen his bid
A CNN/ORC poll taken September 23–25, 2011 found that the favorable/unfavorable ratio was 28% versus 53%.[235] An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in September 2010 found 27% considered themselves Tea Party supporters. 42% said the Tea Party has been good for the U.S. political system; 18% called it a bad thing. Those with an unfavorable view of the Tea Party outnumbered those with a favorable view 36–30%. In comparison, the Democratic Party was viewed unfavorably by a 42–37% margin, and the Republican Party by 43–31%.[236] A poll conducted by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in March 2010 found that 13% of national adults identified themselves as part of the Tea Party movement but that the Tea Party had a positive opinion by a 28–23% margin with 49% who did not know enough about the group to form an opinion.[173] A similar poll conducted by the Winston Group in April 2010 found that 17% of American registered voters considered themselves part of the Tea Party movement.[184] After debt-ceiling crisis After the mid-2011 debt ceiling crisis, polls became more unfavorable to the Tea Party.[237][238] According to a Gallup poll, 28% of adults disapproved of the Tea Party compared to 25% approving, and noted that "[t]he national Tea Party movement appears to have lost some ground in popular support after the blistering debate over raising the nation's debt ceiling in which Tea Party Republicans... fought any compromise on taxes and spending".[237] Similarly, a Pew poll found that 29% of respondents thought Congressional Tea Party supporters had a negative effect compared to 22% thinking it was a positive effect. It noted that "[t]he new poll also finds that those who followed the debt ceiling debate very closely have more negative views about the impact of the Tea Party than those who followed the issue less closely."[238] A CNN/ORC poll put disapproval at 51% with a 31% approval.[239] 2012 polling A Rasmussen Reports poll conducted in April 2012 showed 44% of likely U.S. voters held at least a somewhat favorable view of Tea Party activists, while 49% share an unfavorable opinion of them. When asked if the Tea Party movement would help or hurt Republicans in the 2012 elections, 53% of Republicans said they see the Tea Party as a political plus.[240] 2013 and 2014 polling A February 2014 article from Forbes.com reported about the past few years, "Nationally, there is no question that negative views of the Tea Party have risen. But core support seems to be holding steady."[13] In October 2013, Rasmussen Reports research found as many respondents (42%) identify with the Tea Party as with President Obama. However, while 30% of those polled viewed the movement favorably, 50% were unfavorable; in addition, 34% considered the movement a force for good while 43% considered them bad for the nation. On major national issues, 77% of Democrats said their views were closest to Obama's; in contrast, 76% of Republicans and 51% of unaffiliated voters identified closely with the Tea Party.[241] Other survey data over recent years show that past trends of partisan divides about the Tea Party remain. For example, a Pew Research Center poll from October 2013 reported that 69% of Democrats had an unfavorable view of the movement, in contrast to 49% of independents and 27% of Republicans.[13] A CNN/ORC poll also conducted October 2013 generally showed that 28% of Americans were favorable to the Tea party while 56% were unfavorable.[242] In an AP/GfK survey from January 2014, 27% of respondents stated that they considered themselves a Tea Party supporter in comparison to 67% that said that they did not.[13] Symbols Second Revolution flag Beginning in 2009, the Gadsden flag became widely used as a protest symbol by Tea Party protesters nationwide.[243][244] It was also displayed by members of Congress at Tea Party rallies.[245] Some lawmakers dubbed it a political symbol due to the Tea Party connection[244] and the political nature of Tea Party supporters.[246] The Second Revolution flag gained national attention on January 19, 2010.[247] It is a version of the Betsy Ross flag with a Roman numeral "II" in the center of the circle of 13 stars symbolizing a second revolution in America.[248] The Second Revolution flag has been called synonymous with Tea Party causes and events.[249] "Teabagger" Some members of the movement adopted the term as a verb, and a few others referred to themselves as "teabaggers."[250][251] News media and progressive commentators outside the movement began to use the term mockingly and derisively, alluding to the sexual connotation of the term when referring to Tea Party protesters. The first pejorative use of the term was in 2007 by Indiana Democratic Party Communications Director Jennifer Wagner.[252] The use of the double entendre evolved from Tea Party protest sites encouraging readers to "Tea bag the fools in DC" to the political left adopting the term for derogatory jokes.[251][253][254] It has been used by several media outlets to humorously refer to Tea Party-affiliated protestors.[255] Some conservatives have advocated that the non-vulgar meaning of the word be reclaimed.[251] Grant Barrett, co-host of the A Way with Words radio program, has listed teabagger as a 2009 buzzword meaning, "a derogatory name for attendees of Tea Parties, probably coined in allusion to a sexual practice".[256] On April 29, 2009, Obama commented on the Tea Party protests during a townhall meeting in Arnold, Missouri: "Let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we're going to stabilize Social Security. Claire McCaskill and I are working diligently to do basically a thorough audit of federal spending. But let's not play games and pretend that the reason is because of the recovery act, because that's just a fraction of the overall problem that we've got. We are going to have to tighten our belts, but we're going to have to do it in an intelligent way. And we've got to make sure that the people who are helped are working American families, and we're not suddenly saying that the way to do this is to eliminate programs that help ordinary people and give more tax cuts to the wealthy. We tried that formula for eight years. It did not work. And I don't intend to go back to it."[257][258] On April 15, 2010, Obama noted the passage of 25 different tax cuts over the past year, including tax cuts for 95% of working Americans. He then remarked, "So I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they would be saying thank you. That's what you'd think."[259][260] On September 20, 2010, at a townhall discussion sponsored by CNBC, Obama said healthy skepticism about government and spending was good, but it was not enough to just say "Get control of spending", and he challenged the Tea Party movement to get specific about how they would cut government debt and spending: "And so the challenge, I think, for the Tea Party movement is to identify specifically what would you do. It's not enough just to say, get control of spending. I think it's important for you to say, I'm willing to cut veterans' benefits, or I'm willing to cut Medicare or Social Security benefits, or I'm willing to see these taxes go up. What you can't do—which is what I've been hearing a lot from the other side—is say we're going to control government spending, we're going to propose $4 trillion of additional tax cuts, and that magically somehow things are going to work."[261][262] Media coverage US News and World Report reported that the nature of the coverage of the protests has become part of the story.[263] On CNN's Situation Room, journalist Howard Kurtz commented that "much of the media seems to have chosen sides". He says that Fox News portrayed the protests "as a big story, CNN as a modest story, and MSNBC as a great story to make fun of. And for most major newspapers, it's a nonstory".[263] There were reports that the movement had been actively promoted by the Fox News Channel.[264][265] According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a progressive media watchdog, there is a disparity between large coverage of the Tea Party movement and minimal coverage of larger movements. In 2009, the major Tea Party protests were quoted twice as often as the National Equality March despite a much lower turnout.[266] In 2010, a Tea Party protest was covered 59 times as much as the US Social Forum (177 Tea Party mentions versus 3 for Social Forum) despite the attendance of the latter being 25 times as much (600 Tea Party attendees versus at least 15,000 for Social Forum).[267] In April 2010, responding to a question from the media watchdog group Media Matters posed the previous week, Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation, which owns Fox News, said, "I don't think we should be supporting the Tea Party or any other party." That same week, Fox News canceled an appearance by Sean Hannity at a Cincinnati Tea Party rally.[268] Following the September 12 Taxpayer March on Washington, Fox News said it was the only cable news outlet to cover the emerging protests and took out full-page ads in The Washington Post, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal with a prominent headline reading, "How did ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN miss this story?"[269] CNN news anchor Rick Sanchez disputed Fox's assertion, pointing to various coverage of the event.[270][271][272] CNN, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and CBS Radio News provided various forms of live coverage of the rally in Washington throughout the day on Saturday, including the lead story on CBS Evening News.[270][272][273][274] James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times said that MSNBC's attacks on the tea parties paled compared to Fox's support, but that MSNBC personalities Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews were hardly subtle in disparaging the movement.[275] Howard Kurtz has said that, "These [FOX] hosts said little or nothing about the huge deficits run up by President Bush, but Barack Obama's budget and tax plans have driven them to tea. On the other hand, CNN and MSNBC may have dropped the ball by all but ignoring the protests."[276] In the January/February 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs, Francis Fukuyama stated that the Tea Party is supporting "politicians who serve the interests of precisely those financiers and corporate elites they claim to despise" and inequality while comparing and contrasting it with the occupy movement.[277][278] Tea Party's views of media coverage In October 2010, a survey conducted by The Washington Post found that the majority of local Tea Party organizers consider the media coverage of their groups to be fair. Seventy-six percent of the local organizers said media coverage has been fair, while 23 percent have said coverage was unfair. This was based on responses from all 647 local Tea Party organizers the Post was able to contact and verify, from a list of more than 1,400 possible groups identified.[279] Perceptions of the Tea Party The movement has been called a mixture of conservative,[9] libertarian,[7] and populist[8] activists. As stated before, opinions in terms of the U.S. major political parties play a large role in terms of attitudes about the Tea Party movement, with one study finding that 20% of self-identified Republicans personally view themselves as part of the Tea Party.[168] The movement has sponsored protests and supported political candidates circa 2009.[10][11][12] Since the movement's inception, in the late 2000s, left wing groups have accused the party of racism and intolerance.[280][281] Left leaning opponents have cited various incidents as evidence that the movement is, in their opinion, propelled by various forms of bigotry.[280][281] Supporters say the incidents are isolated acts attributable to a small fringe that is not representative of the movement.[280][281] Accusations that the news media are biased either for or against the movement are common, while polls and surveys have been faced with issues regarding the population surveyed, and the meaningfulness of poll results from disparate groups.[282] Although the Tea Party has a libertarian element in terms of some issue convictions, most American libertarians do not support the movement enough to identify with it. A 2013 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that 61% of identified libertarians stated they did not consider themselves part of the tea party. This split exists due to the strong Christian right influence in the movement, which puts the majority of the tea party movement at direct odds against libertarians on issues such as the war on drugs (with the aforementioned survey finding that 71% of libertarians support legalizing marijuana).[168] Some libertarian leaning supporters have grown increasingly annoyed by the influx of religious social issues into the movement. Many in the movement would prefer the complex social issues such as homosexuality, abortion, and religion to be left out of the discussion, while instead increasing the focus on limited government and states' rights.[citation needed] According to a review in Publishers Weekly published in 2012, professor Ronald P. Formisano in The Tea Party: A Brief History provides an "even-handed perspective on and clarifying misconceptions about America's recent political phenomenon" since "party supporters are not isolated zealots, and may, like other Americans, only want to gain control over their destinies". Professor Formisano sees underlying social roots and draws a parallel between the tea party movement and past support for independent candidate Ross Perot,[283] a similar point to that made in Forbes as mentioned earlier.[13] Controversy The final round of debate before voting on the health care bill was marked with vandalism and widespread threats of violence to at least ten Democratic lawmakers across the country, which created public relations problems for the fledgeling Tea Party movement. On March 22, 2010, in what the New York Times called "potentially the most dangerous of many acts of violence and threats against supporters of the bill," a Lynchburg, Virginia Tea Party organizer and the Danville, Virginia Tea Party Chairman both posted the home address of Representative Tom Perriello's brother (mistakenly believing it was the Congressman's address) on their websites, and encouraged readers to "drop by" to express their anger against Representative Perriello's vote in favor of the healthcare bill. The following day, after smelling gas in his house, a severed gas line that connected to a propane tank was discovered on Perriello's brother's screened-in porch. Local police and FBI investigators determined that it was intentionally cut as an act of vandalism. Perriello's brother also received a threatening letter referencing the legislation. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli stated that posting a home address on a website and encouraging people to visit is "an appalling approach. It's not civil discourse, it's an invitation to intimidation and it's totally unacceptable." Leaders of the Tea Party movement tried to contain the public relations damage by denouncing the violent acts and distancing themselves from those behind the acts. One Tea Party website issued a response saying the Tea Party member's action of posting the address "was not requested, sanctioned or endorsed by the Lynchburg Tea Party". The director of the Northern Colorado Tea Party said, "Although many are frustrated by the passage of such controversial legislation, threats are absolutely not acceptable in any form, to any lawmaker, of any party."[284] In early July 2010, the North Iowa Tea Party (NITP) posted a billboard showing a photo of Adolf Hitler with the heading "National Socialism", one of Barack Obama with the heading "Democrat Socialism", and one of Vladimir Lenin with the heading "Marxist Socialism", all three marked with the word "change" and the statement "Radical leaders prey on the fearful and naive". It received sharp criticism, including some from other Tea Party activists. NITP co-founder Bob Johnson acknowledged the anti-socialist message may have gotten lost amid the fascist and communist images. Following a request from the NITP, the billboard was removed on July 14.[285] See also NotesMilan, Inter, Chelsea want Conti By Football Italia staff Milan face competition for Atalanta wing-back Andrea Conti, as Chelsea and Inter are strong contenders, raising the price-tag to €25m. Atalanta have been a revelation this season and are currently in fourth place awaiting Lazio’s final game away to Crotone this evening. Having just turned 23, Conti is the most prolific defender in Serie A this term with eight goals and four assists in 32 appearances. According to Tuttosport, Milan have made a strong push for Conti during their negotiations with the club for Franck Kessie, who should arrive next week for €28m. However, the Rossoneri are seemingly only prepared to pay €15m for the Italian, whereas Atalanta are demanding €25m. Inter have dived in to the situation with their own interest for Conti, while Antonio Conte is known to be an admirer and wants him at Chelsea. As things stand, Milan have moved quickest on the market, but are still a very long way off an agreement and the bidding war can only raise the price-tag further.Friends enjoying some hot cocoa. (Photo: cjmacer/Shutterstock) One might think the holiday season would be non-stop fun, what with all the bright lights and gift-giving. But there's also something exhausting about writing all those Christmas cards and finding the perfect pair of socks for your father-in-law. That's because those tasks are real work—they require a degree of what's known as "emotional labor," a term sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild coined in 1979 to describe what people do when they suppress their own emotions to soothe or make others happy. "This kind of labor calls for a coordination of mind and feeling," Hochschild writes, "and it sometimes draws on a source of self that we honor as deep and integral to our individuality." ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website Hochschild was talking specifically about jobs requiring emotional labor, like being a flight attendant or a waitress. But maintaining personal relationships can require a lot of emotional labor too. This year, an extraordinary conversation emerged online about personal emotional labor, and how American culture expects women and people of color to engage in more emotional labor than their white male peers. (There's even a highlights sheet, which we loved.) In this emotionally taxing time of year, we thought it might be helpful to remind you that there's plenty of science to support the notion that emotional labor is both real and unfairly distributed—and can take a toll on a person, if undervalued. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website For one, there are the studies that show women in heterosexual relationships and black Americans in the workplace perform extra emotional labor compared to their partners and white co-workers. Angela Chen covered this research and more in a Five Studies in October. Pacific Standard also wrote about a study that found couples have a lower sense of well-being when one person's job entails a lot of emotional labor, which suggests too much emotional labor in one realm of life can hurt other facets. But it isn't only performing too much emotional labor; not engaging in enough emotional labor can also be harmful, as MetaFilter user Eyebrows McGee noted. There are numerous studies showing men married to women are more likely to die soon after their spouses than women married to men. That's in part because of social isolation. Due to cultural expectations, the emotional labor of keeping up with the couple's friends more often falls upon the woman in a husband-wife duo. But that means that if the missus goes first, the man is left bereft of not only his spouse, but also close relationships with friends and family who might otherwise offer him support and good health. As Eyebrows McGee puts it: "Go send your college roommate a 'thinking of you!' card so he doesn't croak." This holiday season, take a moment to consider what emotional labor you undertake—or avoid. Making sure you perform it equally is a good gift for everyone.0 2 arrested after deputies mistake lighter for gun VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. - Two Volusia County men are facing charges after they were caught with what deputies thought was a gun. Lighter WFTV.com - Two Volusia County men are facing charges after they were caught with what deputies thought was a gun. It turned out to be a cigarette lighter that just looked like a gun. The men told Channel 9 the whole situation was a misunderstanding. Bryan Diaz said his friends, Terry Howard and Uleseyc O’Neal, were using the lighter when they were arrested at his Daytona Beach apartment Tuesday night. According to an arrest report, a Volusia County deputy saw the men shining a laser in the eyes of motorists while they were driving on Williamson and LGPA boulevards. The deputy followed the men in his unmarked truck to the Carolina Club Apartments and thought he saw a gun in one of the men's hands. The deputy took cover behind his vehicle. He called in a K-9 unit and had officers remove Howard's wife at gunpoint from the car. Officers found the men inside one of the apartments and made an arrest, but they never found a gun, only a lighter. Howard said the situation never should have escalated like it did. “If he would have just said he was a police officer, it would have been done. It would have been dead. I would have shown him it was a lighter and it would have been over with,” he said. Police charged Howard and O’Neal with pointing a laser light at drivers. It's the first felony arrest for both men, who have hired an attorney and plan to fight the charges. The Volusia County Sheriff's Office did not comment on the complaint. © 2019 Cox Media Group.Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this? No. The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want. It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: Most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high. We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this. If we live rightly—not necessarily ethically, but within the framework of certain ancient beliefs and stereotyped behaviors—we will get everything we want after we die. When our bodies finally fail us, we just shed our corporeal ballast and travel to a land where we are reunited with everyone we loved while alive. Of course, overly rational people and other rabble will be kept out of this happy place, and those who suspended their disbelief while alive will be free to enjoy themselves for all eternity. We live in a world of unimaginable surprises—from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this lights dancing for eons upon the Earth—and yet Paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn’t know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image. Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend. Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm of biblical proportions would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. Nevertheless, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God. As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace. Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is—and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all. One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide in Rwanda, even with machete-wielding priests among the perpetrators. Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century, many of them infants. God’s ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the Earth. Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man. There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: The biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion—to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources—is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors. The Nature of Belief According to several recent polls, 22% of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years. Another 22% believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44% who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution. As President Bush is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance. Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing Scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote largely on the basis of religious dogma. More than 50% of Americans have a “negative” or “highly negative” view of people who do not believe in God; 70% think it important for presidential candidates to be “strongly religious.” Unreason is now ascendant in the United States—in our schools, in our courts and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution; 68% believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world. Although it is easy enough for smart people to criticize religious fundamentalism, something called “religious moderation” still enjoys immense prestige in our society, even in the ivory tower. This is ironic, as fundamentalists tend to make a more principled use of their brains than “moderates” do. While fundamentalists justify their religious beliefs with extraordinarily poor evidence and arguments, at least they make an attempt at rational justification. Moderates, on the other hand, generally do nothing more than cite the good consequences of religious belief. Rather than say that they believe in God because certain biblical prophecies have come true, moderates will say that they believe in God because this belief “gives their lives meaning.” When a tsunami killed a few hundred thousand people on the day after Christmas, fundamentalists readily interpreted this cataclysm as evidence of God’s wrath. As it turns out, God was sending humanity another oblique message about the evils of abortion, idolatry and homosexuality. While morally obscene, this interpretation of events is actually reasonable, given certain (ludicrous) assumptions. Moderates, on the other hand, refuse to draw any conclusions whatsoever about God from his works. God remains a perfect mystery, a mere source of consolation that is compatible with the most desolating evil. In the face of disasters like the Asian tsunami, liberal piety is apt to produce the most unctuous and stupefying nonsense imaginable. And yet, men and women of goodwill naturally prefer such vacuities to the odious moralizing and prophesizing of true believers. Between catastrophes, it is surely a virtue of liberal theology that it emphasizes mercy over wrath. It is worth noting, however, that it is human mercy on display—not God’s—when the bloated bodies of the dead are pulled from the sea. On days when thousands of children are simultaneously torn from their mothers’ arms and casually drowned, liberal theology must stand revealed for what it is—the sheerest of mortal pretenses. Even the theology of wrath has more intellectual merit. If God exists, his will is not inscrutable. The only thing inscrutable in these terrible events is that so many neurologically healthy men and women can believe the unbelievable and think this the height of moral wisdom. It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a rational human being can believe in God simply because this belief makes him happy, relieves his fear of death or gives his life meaning. The absurdity becomes obvious the moment we swap the notion of God for some other consoling proposition: Imagine, for instance, that a man wants to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in his yard that is the size of a refrigerator. No doubt it would feel uncommonly good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered, he says things like, “This belief gives my life meaning,” or “My family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays,” or “I wouldn’t want to live in a universe where there wasn’t a diamond buried in my backyard that is the size of a refrigerator.” Clearly these responses are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of a madman or an idiot. Here we can see why Pascal’s wager, Kierkegaard’s leap of faith and other epistemological Ponzi schemes won’t do. To believe that God exists is to believe that one stands in some relation to his existence such that his existence is itself the reason for one’s belief. There must be some causal connection, or an appearance thereof, between the fact in question and a person’s acceptance of it. In this way, we can see that religious beliefs, to be beliefs about the way the world is, must be as evidentiary in spirit as any other. For all their sins against reason, religious fundamentalists understand this; moderates—almost by definition—do not. The incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature of human cognition and public discourse for centuries. Either a person has good reasons for what he strongly believes or he does not. People of all creeds naturally recognize the primacy of reasons and resort to reasoning and evidence wherever they possibly can. When rational inquiry supports the creed it is always championed; when it poses a threat, it is derided; sometimes in the same sentence. Only when the evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or there is compelling evidence against it, do its adherents invoke “faith.” Otherwise, they simply cite the reasons for their beliefs (e.g. “the New Testament confirms Old Testament prophecy,” “I saw the face of Jesus in a window,” “We prayed, and our daughter’s cancer went into remission”). Such reasons are generally inadequate, but they are better than no reasons at all. Faith is nothing more than the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail. In a world that has been shattered by mutually incompatible religious beliefs, in a nation that is growing increasingly beholden to Iron Age conceptions of God, the end of history and the immortality of the soul, this lazy partitioning of our discourse into matters of reason and matters of faith is now unconscionable. Faith and the Good Society People of faith regularly claim that atheism is responsible for some of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Although it is true that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to varying degrees, they were not especially rational. In fact, their public pronouncements were little more than litanies of delusion—delusions about race, economics, national identity, the march of history or the moral dangers of intellectualism. In many respects, religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the Holocaust: The anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, religious Germans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominately secular way, the religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued. (The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its newspapers as late as 1914.) Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields are not examples of what happens when people become too critical of unjustified beliefs; to the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers
of a 5GH/s miner each day up until the BDD End-Game. At the End-Game, either B.MINEs dividends will have decreased to below the minimum threshold (0.0002 BTC) due to Difficulty increase, or the funds reserves will be exhausted due to Difficulty stagnation / decrease. A true physical 5GH/s Miner would instead mine until the user sells it or until it is otherwise disposed of.B.SELL is similarly susceptible to Difficulty stagnation or decrease. If the Difficulty does not increase, or decreases over a long enough time period, there will be no further dividend payouts to B.SELL until these contracts are bought back at no value. B.SELL holders must remember as well that, in the End-game via Increase, B.MINE holders will receive the fund Reserve (200 days of dividends) as a final payout.Dividends will be paid at 12:00PM Eastern Time daily, based upon the Difficulty at that time. In cases of Daylight Savings Time or any other time changes / discrepancies, 12:00PM in New York City, New York, USA will be the prevailing time.All reasonable care will be taken to pay out dividends on time. In the event that the Manager is available to pay out dividends on time, for any reason, then dividends will be paid out as soon as possible afterwards. The holders of the contracts are entitled to receive dividends at the time that the Manager pays the dividends, not at the scheduled time at which dividends are normally paid.In the event that there is an error with the Bitcoin Network Blockchain (Blockchain), a Blockchain fork, Blockchain roll-back, or other issue that affects the Bitcoin Network Difficulty, the Manager will have discretion over what Difficulty is used to calculate dividends and NAV/U.In the event of any discrepancies in this contract or the calculations within, the Manager will perform his duties and calculations as best possible in the spirit of the contract. In cases of B.MINE versus B.SELL, the calculations will most likely be to the benefit of B.MINE, as those contract dividends are the crux of this contract.In the very unlikely case that the Exchange upon which BDD is listed must cease operations, shut down, or otherwise does not provide sufficient functionality to operate the fund, the Manager, at his sole discretion, may either re-list on another Exchange or take the contract off-exchange to a direct format.In the case where the Manager, in his sole discretion, decides that a change must be made that could affect the Funds payouts to B.SELL, the manager may call a vote. All holders of sell will be allowed one vote per B.SELL contract that they own at the time of the vote. The vote will be conducted in a manner decided by the Manager.1/24/2014 1040AM ET: Updated example SELL/EXCH Dividend Payout calculation error - Thanks Rannasha!1/29/2014 1000PM ET: Updated Buy-back method and added Manager's email address1/30/2014 1244PM ET: Updated EXCH exchange mechanism - users no longer need to send contracts to the Manager2/1/2014 0603PM ET: Removed old EXCH exchange mechanism vestiges2/4/2014 1000AM ET: Removed additional old EXCH exchange mechanism verbiage, updated for clarity of BDD-End Game via Decrease3/13/2014 0750AM ET: Updated EXCH Buy-Back calculation to 98% of Daily NAV/U4/17/2014 1200PM ET: Updated to add Management Fee and reference to Auto-EXCH (Management Fee changes eff 4/18/14 12PM ET)6/04/2014 0800PM ET: Updated verbiage regarding Fund Manager and contracts, Added Voting mechanismNo, and here is why: EDIT:Round 1's Contract, quoted for posterity: Rannasha Offline Activity: 728 Merit: 500 Hero MemberActivity: 728Merit: 500 Re: [Havelock] Bitcoin Difficulty Derivative (BDD) January 24, 2014, 02:21:16 PM #8 Quote from: twentyseventy on January 24, 2014, 02:11:25 PM Quote from: Rannasha on January 24, 2014, 01:04:59 PM First of all, I like DMS-style securities, so yay! Secondly, I have 2 questions: 1) Are you aware that there is a critical error in the calculations in your difficulty-increase example? 2) How will you handle exchanges of the EXCH asset for MINE & SELL? Manual (if so, how frequently) or automatic? Glad to hear it! I've missed DMS, so I'm excited to bring a form of it back to the market. 1) I've went cross-eyed writing this over the weekend; do you mind pointing it out for me? If it's the 'Difficulty is 1,000,000' part, I'm realizing that I left that in and should not have. 2) EXCH will be manual, but I am on internet from around 9-5 Eastern on weekdays and am normally Internet connected outside of those hours as well. I'll be checking throughout the day to see what comes in, but transfers will be most often done between 7AM to 11PM/12AM Eastern Time. All transfers will be processed within 24 hours. Glad to hear it! I've missed DMS, so I'm excited to bring a form of it back to the market.1) I've went cross-eyed writing this over the weekend; do you mind pointing it out for me? If it's the 'Difficulty is 1,000,000' part, I'm realizing that I left that in and should not have.2) EXCH will be manual, but I am on internet from around 9-5 Eastern on weekdays and am normally Internet connected outside of those hours as well. I'll be checking throughout the day to see what comes in, but transfers will be most often done between 7AM to 11PM/12AM Eastern Time. All transfers will be processed within 24 hours. Quote Both Havelock and I have agreed that a funds-lock on the Issuer account (how the set up all Issuer accounts) would be the best for the speculators. I have thought of the possibility your scenario; I know that I won't run with the funds, but no one else can know that as a certainty. Allowing fund buy-backs is a crucial part of the speculation process, so I didn't want to get rid of that part. I'm open to any other options that speculators might propose for increased capital security. There is no way to guarantee that the issuer doesn't cheat investors in some way unless Havelock operates the fund (in which case, investors have to trust Havelock, which they have to anyway since it's on their platform). So trust in you is still required. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that measures like funds held in escrow are not very effective. eltopo was in the same situation when he launched his ET.DIFF securities on BTCT, where he wanted to provide a similar level of security through a locked account, but it turned out it was not possible. Regarding 1): The error is in the calculation of the fund reserve after a difficulty change (and consequently the SELL dividend) in both the written example and the figures. I'll leave the rest as an exercise for the reader, since this correctness of this calculation is rather crucial for the entire asset.There is no way to guarantee that the issuer doesn't cheat investors in some way unless Havelock operates the fund (in which case, investors have to trust Havelock, which they have to anyway since it's on their platform). So trust in you is still required. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that measures like funds held in escrow are not very effective.eltopo was in the same situation when he launched his ET.DIFF securities on BTCT, where he wanted to provide a similar level of security through a locked account, but it turned out it was not possible. twentyseventy Offline Activity: 1386 Merit: 1000 LegendaryActivity: 1386Merit: 1000 Re: [Havelock] Bitcoin Difficulty Derivative (BDD) January 24, 2014, 03:35:15 PM #10 Quote from: Rannasha on January 24, 2014, 02:21:16 PM Quote from: twentyseventy on January 24, 2014, 02:11:25 PM Quote from: Rannasha on January 24, 2014, 01:04:59 PM First of all, I like DMS-style securities, so yay! Secondly, I have 2 questions: 1) Are you aware that there is a critical error in the calculations in your difficulty-increase example? 2) How will you handle exchanges of the EXCH asset for MINE & SELL? Manual (if so, how frequently) or automatic? Glad to hear it! I've missed DMS, so I'm excited to bring a form of it back to the market. 1) I've went cross-eyed writing this over the weekend; do you mind pointing it out for me? If it's the 'Difficulty is 1,000,000' part, I'm realizing that I left that in and should not have. 2) EXCH will be manual, but I am on internet from around 9-5 Eastern on weekdays and am normally Internet connected outside of those hours as well. I'll be checking throughout the day to see what comes in, but transfers will be most often done between 7AM to 11PM/12AM Eastern Time. All transfers will be processed within 24 hours. Glad to hear it! I've missed DMS, so I'm excited to bring a form of it back to the market.1) I've went cross-eyed writing this over the weekend; do you mind pointing it out for me? If it's the 'Difficulty is 1,000,000' part, I'm realizing that I left that in and should not have.2) EXCHThe Pangu Team has just released an initial version of the iOS 9 Jailbreak Tool for Mac. Here’s how to jailbreak with it: Download Mac version of Pangu Jailbreak Tool on http://en.pangu.io/ Launch pangu9_mac_v1.0.0.dmg and run Pangu by double clicking the Pangu Logo Quit iTunes and XCode before jailbreaking If your device is not yet recognized by the Mac, launch iTunes, trust each other on both devices If you updated via OTA, make sure you restore with iTunes first Once device is connected and detected by the Pangu Jailbreakt Tool, press Start to jailbreak Disable Password Lock and Touch ID Sign out from iCloud or Find my iPhone in Settings Turn on Airplane Mode Press “Already Backed up” to let the jailbreak process start If you have not turned on Airplane mode, it will remind you to do so now After first reboot, unlock the device, open ControlCenter, enable Airplane mode again Upon request, unlock the device, launch the Pangu App on installed Home Screen Tap Accept, and allow access to Photos The jailbreak process will continue Do not do anything if you see Device is Almost Full message. Just wait until the jailbreak finishes. When you see the message below, you are good to go! Have you jailbroken your device on Mac? Let me know your experience in the comments.0 Atlanta losing millions on 75-year Underground Atlanta lease ATLANTA - Taxpayers are losing millions of dollars on what is supposed to be a tourist attraction for all of metro Atlanta. Some Atlanta City Council members told Channel 2 Action News the city is paying more than $8 million on the mortgage for Underground Atlanta, but only getting $100,000 a year in rent. The lease on the property lasts for the next 75 years. Each year, thousands of people gather at Underground Atlanta for the New Year's Eve Peach Drop, but that's only one night a year. City leaders and neighboring businesses said for the rest of the year, Underground is virtually empty. "(It's a) catastrophe," said Brett Teilhaber, who owns nearby Friedman's Shoes. "If you look right across from Underground, you have a vacant building that looks like it should be blown up. I think it's time for the city to take some time and invest in the properties around Underground." Underground Atlanta has a rich history dating back to the end of the Civil War. The freight train depot, which stands at the entrance of Underground Atlanta was constructed in 1869, and is one of the oldest buildings in the city. Underground Atlanta, as a shopping and entertainment district, opened 100 years later. Savannah Riverwalk and Underground Atlanta are the only two entertainment districts officially recognized by the state. Still, reports of crime at Underground and the surrounding areas have hurt its image. The city of Atlanta owns the property. Some city leaders say the deal it has with Underground is hurting the taxpayer’s bottom line. "Right now, it's a financial drain on the city," said Atlanta City Councilwoman Felicia Moore. "We're paying somewhere around $8 million in debt services on it." The operations of Underground are headed by Dan O'Leary. His company pays $100,000 a year in rent to the city. According to the contract, the company only pays more if it makes a certain amount of money. City leaders told Channel 2's John Bachman the city gets just the $100,000 for Underground. Still, O’Leary said the deal is fair for his company and the city. "We want nothing more than to stroke the city a gigantic check. Because if we win, they win and vice versa. And that's the way it ought to be," O'Leary said. http://bcove.me/obgcombu Channel 2's John Bachman looked at the city's lease for Underground Atlanta, and found it is signed through 2086. Former Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell signed the original lease agreement in 1999 for 48 years. Then in 2001, Campbell approved a 38-year extension to the lease, just before he left office. New Mayor Shirley Franklin took a second look at the extension and approved it in 2002. O'Leary said a long term lease is needed to make lenders feel comfortable to make large loans to a leased property. Still, Moore said it's not in the city's best interest. "I certainly hope that we can find some ways to move the needle on that, because frankly, it's a drain on our annual budget. That's $8 million that we can be spending for police officers, firefighters or other things that our city government needs," said Moore. Moore told Bachman the city needs to improve the safety and perception of Underground Atlanta to get more crowds like those seen at the Peach Drop. "We need to see, how do we replicate that throughout the year. (We need) other events that will bring people from all over the metropolitan area to Underground," Moore said. O'Leary pledged if that's done, he will get investors to buy into Underground, making him and the city more money. "Once the quality of life issues are dealt with, I don't believe implementing a big idea is going to be that difficult," O'Leary said. "(That's) because the attributes of Underground Atlanta are incredible."Advertisement Advertisement David Cobb, the campaign manager for Jill Stein, offered an 18-minute online video on Friday about the status of the efforts for the recount pertaining to the November 2016 American presidential election. Near the start of his video statement Cobb stated that he had some "cutting-edge announcements." After the first few minutes of the video, he gets away from the "announcements" and talks about the importance of several political issues and movements. Activists converge on Wisconsin "In Wisconsin," David Cobb stated, "we have beaten back multiple efforts to actually stop the recount." Cobb states that judges can't force a hand/manual recount to be done however he said that "In Wisconsin the federal judge...did'strongly implore' county officials across the state to use hand recounts." Cobb, shortly after providing that update, then makes an interesting statement on the matter of the Wisconsin hand recounts. Advertisement He says that three counties in Wisconsin are refusing to do hand recounts. Interestingly enough these three counties are ones that are under suspicion it seems: "Here's something interesting," Cobb stated. "Three specific counties are refusing to do (hand recounts). In counties where...'statistical anomalies showed a different result than expected.'" The counties where the results were anomalous are arguably the ones the matter of the recount is most pertinent to. As a response, Cobb states that the activists involved in protecting election integrity are "mobilizing" with these counties as a target. Certainly it is interesting that anyone would oppose a recount or not want to verify the results of something as important as a national election. Advertisement Top Videos of the Day David Cobb update not all about news Cobb plugs for the Green Party after talking about Wisconsin activist efforts. He then shifts over to Michigan updates where he claims that the Donald Trump campaign has tried to stop the recount, a matter that Cobb says will "now go to the Michigan supreme court." Cobb also claims that Trump is "trying to stop the recount" in Pennsylvania while wondering what Trump is trying to hide. The video as a news update perhaps contains a lot of fluff. The first few minutes contain information about the recount and its progress. After that Cobb talks about activism, his opinions, and other matters. If you watch the video then the first five minutes is where news regarding the recount is most discussed.Now that the Dutch elections for the Lower House are over, as well as the unprecedented international hype surrounding it, it is time for a few pointers and reminders. Turkey Prime Minister Mark Rutte used the crisis with Turkey to his greatest advantage. When the crisis just loomed he escalated, helped of course by the increasingly hysterical reactions of the Turkish authorities, particularly the President. I have not been able to get figures, but it is rather normal for foreign ministers, including from Turkey, to visit the Netherlands and address their nationals, also for political purposes. This is just the consequence of allowing Turkish people to have dual nationality and -in the Turkish case- also double voting rights. With the referendum in Turkey coming up, it is only logical to allow proponents and opponents to campaign as well. This said, any thinking person would strongly object to the plan to give even more power to the already way too powerful Turkish executive. Dictatorship looms (please read Barry’s much better informed blogs on this). Politicians almost always choose the short term over the long term. Certainly four days before elections. Still, the downside of Rutte’s actions are immense, as they also serve the interest of Erdogan, enabling him to play the victim of the ‘racist Dutch’. It might even pull the deciding number of voters into his camp. That would be bad for Turkey, and for Europe. Chances for Turkey joining the European Union were already small, but have now disappeared completely. (Which I personally do not mind much, but others differ, including many in Rutte’s own party). Populism Another topic of international concern surrounding the election was the rising populism and its alleged ending by the electorate at the ballot box. Indeed, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom did not become the biggest party, yet he did win votes again. An increase of a third actually, from 15 to 20 in the 150-seat Lower House. His party thus became the second largest party in parliament. He was never going to be Prime Minister anyway, as all parties had said before the elections they would not collaborate with him. This was important as the Dutch electoral system has a low threshold, which means many parties can enter parliament and no party has ever won a majority of 76. It demands parties to negotiate a governing coalition. After Wednesday at least four parties are needed for such a majority, which will take months. There is a less-noted, other ‘bad populism’, which includes the largest winner, the Green Left party. This party represents are the radical environmental left, led by a young good looking leader who has been able to attract a lot of young people, in particular women, according to electoral research. There are also other populist parties elected, most notably the party for pensioners, the Islamic party DENK, and the Forum for Democracy, the intellectual version of Geert Wilders’ party. Coalition building It remains to be seen whether Green Left will get a seat in government, given the large differences with the other parties who will be negotiating the new government: the centre right VVD of Rutte, the social liberals of D66, and the Christian democrats. This process is slow and boring for most people, except for political junkies like myself. So chances are you will not hear about Dutch politics until a new government has finally been installed. Do not be surprised if this does not happen before Christmas.A screenshot of one of Neuromama's commercials on YouTube. Neuro Mama/Youtube Here's your bizarre business news of the day. The US Securities and Exchange Commission said on Monday that it has halted the trading of a firm called Neuromama. The company has a market cap of around $35 billion with shares valued at $56.25 a share before the halt. As Bloomberg News noted, the market cap of the company would make it more valuable on paper than Tesla and Delta Air Lines. The only issue, according to the SEC, is, well, pretty much everything about the company. From the SEC announcement: "The Commission temporarily suspended trading in the securities of NERO because of concerns regarding the accuracy and adequacy of information in the marketplace about, among other things, the identity of the persons in control of the company's operations and management, false statements to company shareholders and/or potential investors that the company has an application pending for listing on the NASDAQ Stock Market, and potentially manipulative transactions in the company's stock." So quick recap: The people running the firm may be impostors, the company is lying about possibly being listed on the Nasdaq, and the stock may have been manipulated. Dive into the company's businesses, and things look even weirder. Neuromama invested in everything from TV networks to "a clone of Amazon" to atomic fusion. Here's a brief rundown of what the firm claims to own: A search engine. NeuroZone, which it describes as "a clone of Amazon and EBAY." The recent acquisition of a "small library of entertainments assets consisting of 65 Jazz Network TV shows and feature films. In one of those films the main actress is Vanessa Williams.... before she was famous." The website later refers to these entertainment assets as "our Fort Knox." NeuroMANIA-branded brick-and-mortar retail stores. "NeuroPad, NeuroPhone and NeuroBook, the line of computers and mobile-type devices sold under NEURO brand." Note: The picture of these products looks like an older-generation iPhone, iPad and Samsung phone. Some sort of entertainment venture in Las Vegas called the "Eurasia." Live shows, some of which feature "Popular Russian singer Vladimir Kuzmin who will grow the company's popularity by giving free NeuroPads to Russian orphans. The company holds 600 patents, 500 of which are expired by the NeuroMama's admission, but it is unclear what these patents pertain to. The "Heavy Ion Fusion," which purports to be developing atomic fusion, a cleaner, safer way of producing nuclear energy. A cooperative between seven countries, including the US, China, Japan, India, and the EU, among others, has yet to achieve this goal after spending more than $15 billion on the project.The Gold Standard Led Zeppelin loosens its grip on using its music in films One problem: Led Zeppelin has been notoriously picky about allowing its music to be used in films. The band members' reluctance has lessened a bit over the years, but their asking price remains high, often in the neighborhood of a seven-figure fee. That kind of payout isn’t possible for a modestly budgeted movie like Russell’s. “It starts so gentle and loving and then gets really loud and crazy and then gets quiet and gentle again,” Russell says. “It was like a theme song written for Pat.” Russell wanted to marry the dialogue and visuals to a piece of music, heightening its cinematic appeal. And he found what he calls the perfect bipolar song, Led Zeppelin’s “What Is and What Should Never Be.” While cutting “Silver Linings Playbook” with editor Jay Cassidy, director David O. Russell was watching the scene in which Bradley Cooper’s bipolar protagonist Pat Solitano melts down in his parents’ attic looking for a copy of his wedding video. The frantic search had been triggered by a highly charged first evening with Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a woman, Pat subconsciously realizes, who might derail him from his manic mission to reunite with his estranged wife. And even if you have the money, as Ben Affleck did when he approached the band to use its sludgy anthem “When the Levee Breaks” for his period hostage drama “Argo,” you basically have but one option: Dogged persistence. “You have to be like a man determined to marry somebody,” Russell says, laughing. “And you keep coming back humbly, and humbly asking, ‘May I please show you the film? Do you know how much this means?’ It’s a slow process, and you have to go about it passionately. Otherwise, you won’t get the song.” Both “Silver Linings Playbook” and "Argo" are considered contenders in this year's Oscars race. When Affleck shot the scene in “Argo” depicting the hostages’ last night in Tehran before their escape attempt, he didn’t know what song he’d use behind the footage. He filmed Tate Donovan putting the tone arm down on the first track of a vinyl record. In the editing room, Affleck and editor William Goldenberg tried some 40 different songs, settling first on The Eagles’ “Hotel California” before deciding that the lyrics “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” were too on the nose. Affleck had always leaned toward using Zeppelin, and after trying several songs, including “Kashmir,” he settled on “When the Levee Breaks.” “It’s got an ominous feeling, but it’s celebratory in a sense as well,” Affleck says. “Zeppelin, to me, is the greatest rock 'n' roll band. People say, ‘The Beatles, the Stones.’ No. It’s Zeppelin.” The band eventually signed off on the song, but had one request. Since “Levee” is the fourth song on side two of “Led Zeppelin IV,” they asked Affleck if he could digitally change the shot so it looked like Donovan was putting the tone arm down at the correct spot on the record. “So not only did we have to pay for the song,” Affleck laughs, “we had to pay for an effects shot. You have to appreciate their attention to detail, though.” David Chase’s coming-of-age, rock 'n' roll film “Not Fade Away” doesn’t contain any Zeppelin songs, as it’s largely set in the mid-'60s, before the band was formed. But it does have 52 musical cues, including four each from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, meaning that 10% of the movie’s budget went to music rights alone. And that’s at the discount rate that the movie’s music supervisor, E Street Band guitarist and “Sopranos” alum Steven Van Zandt, was able to procure, thanks to his connections in the business. “When we made the deal with the Beatles’ and Stones’ people, especially the Stones people, we told them we would not use the big hits,” says Chase, who used the Rolling Stones’ music on several episodes of “The Sopranos” as well. (“I could have scored the whole ‘Sopranos’ using just Stones songs, he says.)Four Years Later, USAID Funds in Haiti Still Unaccounted For WASHINGTON, Jan 10 2014 (IPS) - As the fourth anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti approaches on Jan. 12, development analysts are decrying an ongoing lack of transparency in U.S. foreign aid to the country, even as those assistance streams are drying up. From what is known of U.S. post-earthquake funding to Haiti, it appears that a notably small proportion of money from USAID, the county’s main foreign aid arm, is going directly to local Haitian businesses, institutions and organisations. “Sixty percent [of USAID funds] goes to firms operating inside the beltway, disappearing in a black box.” -- Jake Johnson “Sixty percent [of USAID funds] goes to firms operating inside the beltway, disappearing in a black box,” Jake Johnson of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a Washington think tank, told IPS. “That makes it very hard to determine how and when the funds reach the ground.” Even though the United States offered three billion dollars in aid for Haiti after the earthquake, less than one percent of the 1.3 billion dollars in obligated USAID funds – money designated specifically for Haitian recovery efforts – has gone directly to local Haitian groups. “When so little of the funding reaches Haitians themselves, it takes them out of the decision-making process and ensures that aid programmes are not actually responsive to the needs of people on the ground,” Johnson says. He believes that aid money can often be better utilised in post-emergency situations if donor governments ensure a high level of transparency around those assistance flows, and if they direct as much of these funds as possible towards developing new industries. A USAID official accounts for these apparent discrepancies by noting that “part of the challenge of making more awards directly to Haitian entities – public and private – has been that few of them have the internal financial controls in place to ensure compliance with U.S. government terms and conditions.” The official told IPS the agency is trying to address this impediment by working directly with Haitian organisations to build their “financial control capabilities”, as well as to educate them about USAID procurement procedures and provide them with financial services. “Many USAID-funded partners already work with numerous Haitian NGOs – more than 400 – through contractor and grantee sub-awards as well as arrangements with local vendors.” Half of the data is missing So if less than one percent of USAID funding has gone to Haitian groups, where has the rest of this money been directed? The lack of funding transparency makes it impossible to know for sure. “Reports on contractors are not actually done according to the Office of Inspector General for USAID,” says Johnson. USAID’s primary contractors are required to report on their subcontractors’ activities, and this data in turn is supposed to be made public. “But this information is nowhere to be found,” Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow with the Centre for Global Development (CGD), a Washington think tank, wrote this week. The USAID official told IPS that “all reported subcontract and sub-award information is published publicly” through a government website. But Ramachandran asserts that “almost half of the transactions data” are missing important data that identify individual vendors. Lawmakers have noticed similar problems. Legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives in mid-December that would require a government audit of U.S. assistance in Haiti. (That bill is currently awaiting a vote in the Senate.) USAID gave seven of the 10 largest contracts for operations in Haiti to Chemonics International, a for-profit provider that Johnson says is the largest USAID contractor in the world. Chemonics’s two largest projects in Haiti include the WINNER Project and the Office of Transitions Initiative, which Johnson describes as “the more political arm of USAID”. The project was designed to provide aid to countries afflicted by natural disasters or political turmoil, and following the earthquake it immediately provided disaster relief for displaced Haitians. Nonetheless, the public is unable to ascertain how Chemonics spent the vast majority of its multi-million-dollar contracts in Haiti due to USAID’s lack of oversight reports. “The [USAID] inspector-general found that Chemonics regularly runs short of its goals and over its budget,” CEPR’s Johnson says. “This is typical, but it’s become particularly evident in Haiti because of the earthquake.” Trade burden In addition to development and reconstruction aid, Washington is also seeking to assist Haitian recovery efforts by strengthening the country’s garments industry. Doing so, however, has presented a different set of challenges. Following the earthquake, USAID partnered with the Clinton Foundation, the Inter-American Bank and Sae-A Trading, a Korean textile manufacturer, to construct the Caracol Industrial Park. Although the agency predicted that the complex would create up to 65,000 jobs, media reports suggest that as of last September the park had created fewer than 1,500 jobs. Furthermore, although the project’s financers gave hundreds of small-scale farmers 3,200 dollars each to vacate their land for the complex, 95 percent of that land today reportedly remains inactive. Meanwhile, Haitian garment factories, including Caracol Park, are said to be openly flaunting minimum wage laws by paying their employees a mere 4.56 dollars a day, rather than the 6.85 dollars per day stipulated by the government. Other U.S. attempts to bolster the textiles sector have started out more strongly, but been beset by pre-existing measures. In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, the U.S. Congress passed the Haiti Economic Lift Programme (HELP) Act in the hopes of stimulating the country’s economy by boosting apparels exports, long a cornerstone of Haitian industry. Haiti’s clothing exports to the U.S. have indeed risen by 25 percent since 2009, creating 30,000 jobs, a number that is expected to double by 2016. Because Haitian apparel imports into the United States are restricted based on a rule of origin, however, certain types of clothing imports over a certain quota must be produced using U.S. materials. These measures are designed to benefit the U.S. textile industry. Although the HELP Act partially ameliorated these complex trade restrictions, the quotas and tariffs that the United States places on the Haitian apparel industry continue to inhibit trade-based economic growth. The CGD’s Kimberly Elliot told IPS that U.S. red tape on Haitian imports today consists of a “complex maze of caps and rules of origins. That’s unlike the European Union, Canada and Japan, all of which have simplified restrictions on rules of origins for states that the U.N. designates as least-developed countries.” She calls the rule of origin a “burden” for Haiti and argues that if U.S. trade restrictions were less complex, post-earthquake Haitian trade would have a greater potential for growth.Brandon Turbeville Activist Post Informed observers and those knowledgeable about the crises in Syria might be somewhat confused by recent remarks made by Vice President Joe Biden at the annual John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. At first glance, Biden’s comments seem as though they are a stunning admission that not only are there no moderate rebels in Syria but that close American allies like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates are responsible for their growth and proliferation in Syria. In the Q&A session after the scheduled talk, Biden’s statements went as follows: Question: In retrospect do u believe the United States should have acted earlier in Syria, and if not why is now the right moment? Biden: The answer is ‘no’ for 2 reasons. One, the idea of identifying a moderate middle has been a chase America has been engaged in for a long time. We Americans think in every country in transition there is a Thomas Jefferson hiding beside some rock – or a James Madison beyond one sand dune. The fact of the matter is the ability to identify a moderate middle in Syria was – there was no moderate middle because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers – they are made up of people who in fact have ordinary elements of the middle class of that country. And what happened was – and history will record this because I’m finding that former administration officials, as soon as they leave write books which I think is inappropriate, but anyway, (laughs) no I’m serious – I do think it’s inappropriate at least, you know, give the guy a chance to get out of office. And what my constant cry was that our biggest problem is our allies – our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends – and I have the greatest relationship with Erdogan, which I just spent a lot of time with – the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. Now you think I’m exaggerating – take a look. Where did all of this go? So now what’s happening? All of a sudden everybody’s awakened because this outfit called ISIL which was Al Qaeda in Iraq, which when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space in territory in eastern Syria, work with Al Nusra who we declared a terrorist group early on and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them. So what happened? Now all of a sudden – I don’t want to be too facetious – but they had seen the Lord. Now we have – the President’s been able to put together a coalition of our Sunni neighbors, because America can’t once again go into a Muslim nation and be seen as the aggressor – it has to be led by Sunnis to go and attack a Sunni organization. So what do we have for the first time? To be sure, Biden’s statements are stunning in their level of clarity considering the consistent stream of lies and disinformation coming from the White House since the beginning of the Syrian crisis. But the fact that there is no moderate opposition and that a number of Gulf State feudal monarchies have funded the death squads from the beginning is not news to anyone who has been following the situation. Nevertheless, it does stand as an important confirmation of everything informed researchers have been saying since 2010 – that nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates have been supporting Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other death squads holding a variety of different names for the same organization. Saudi Arabia has been quite open regarding its support for terrorism. Remember, the Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan even threatened Russia over the first attempt to invade Syria; that if Putin did not throw Syria to the
Corp worked to suppress land prices in Michigan in 2010. In June, Reuters quoted from internal Chesapeake emails that show top executives of the two companies traded proposals to divide bidding responsibilities for nine private landowners and counties in Michigan. Other emails reviewed recently indicate that Chesapeake and Encana executives discussed suppressing land prices in Michigan more frequently and in greater detail than previously reported. One of the emails came from John Schopp, a vice president at Encana. It was sent to Chesapeake’s executive vice president of acquisitions and divestitures, Doug Jacobson. Dated June 17, 2010, the email was copied to Jeff Wojahn, president of Encana USA. Neither Encana nor Chesapeake would comment on the emails. Schopp noted why he thought teaming with Chesapeake would benefit both firms. “I certainly feel that combining forces will be helpful to prevent further inflation,” he wrote. “After a time we might benefit from some deflation as well. Your thoughts?” Five days later, Schopp followed up in an email: “As we continue our leasing activities, it is increasingly apparent that we need an AMI in place soon versus our alternative to escalate prices.” AMI stands for Area of Mutual Interest, a partnership that companies sometimes use to share the costs of developing particular areas. Oil and gas attorneys who examined the email discussions between Encana and Chesapeake say what the two companies were discussing is not how AMIs are supposed to work. “These agreements are not a way in which companies divide up territory together or avoid sellers playing them off each other,” said Bruce Kramer, an expert on oil and gas law. Such a proposal circulated inside Chesapeake. In late June 2010, one Chesapeake executive inserted comments into the margin of a draft document, according to details of that document shared with Reuters. One paragraph of that proposal, which addressed future state lease sale auctions, reads: “At any time during the bidding process a party may stop bidding on any designated tract, at which point the other party may commence bidding on such tract.” David Bolton, a senior landman at Chesapeake closely involved in Michigan land leasing, wrote in the margin: “This will be difficult to enforce - I would suggest we keep this simple and coordinate our bidding efforts within the AMI lands prior to the state sale. Then offer each the leases according to this agreement just as we would any other. Your thoughts?” Another paragraph in the proposal read: “With respect to the tracts that are designated for bidding by only one party, the other party will be free to bid independently bid (sic) on said tracts, including bidding against the designated party.” Next to that paragraph, Bolton wrote: “Why have this if the goal is to keep from running the prices up on each other?” Darren Bush, a former Justice Department anti-trust attorney, said the emails and proposal comments were likely to be “deeply troubling” to Justice Department investigators already examining Chesapeake and Encana communications. The emails and comments show “the purpose is to make sure that they are not bidding each other up,” said Bush, now a professor of anti-trust law at the University of Houston. “At some point, they think they can stabilize the prices. And then over time, they can have it decrease.” ROAD AHEAD Both Chesapeake and Encana have acknowledged holding talks about forming a joint-venture in Michigan. But the companies say no agreement was ever reached. In September, Encana’s board of directors said an internal investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing by the company. It did not say how it came to that conclusion. The ongoing Justice Department and Michigan Attorney General probes have stymied Chesapeake’s plan to sell its Michigan acreage. In June, the company put up for sale 450,000 acres, for which it says it paid $400 million. A sale was expected by August 31. Since then, no prospective buyers have been disclosed. Slideshow (2 Images) The investigations could take years to resolve, antitrust experts say. They involve the review of thousands of documents and emails and are likely to include interviews with key executives including McClendon. The investigations could necessitate analyses by economists to determine whether the state of Michigan and private land owners incurred losses. McClendon most certainly has. In 2011, Forbes estimated McClendon’s net worth at $1.1 billion. After Reuters reported this year that McClendon had taken out more than $1 billion in personal loans, he fell off the magazine’s roster of the wealthiest 400 Americans. Forbes now estimates his net worth to be $500 million, less than half of its estimate a year ago.Routing and Web Performance on Heroku: a FAQ Hi. I'm Adam Wiggins, cofounder and CTO of Heroku. Heroku has been my life’s work. Millions of apps depend on us, and I take that responsibility very personally. Recently, Heroku has faced criticism from the hacker community about how our HTTP router works, and about web performance on the platform in general. I’ve read all the public discussions, and have spent a lot of time over the past month talking with our customers about this subject. The concerns I've heard from you span past, present, and future. The past: some customers have hit serious problems with poor web performance and insufficient visibility on their apps, and have been left very frustrated as a result. What happened here? The present: how do you know if your app is affected, and if so what should you do? And the future: what is Heroku doing about this? Is Heroku a good place to run and scale an app over the long term? To answer these questions, we’ve written a FAQ, found below. It covers what happened, why the router works the way that it does, whether your app is affected by excessive queue time, and what the solution is. As to the future, here’s what we’re doing. We’re ramping up hands-on migration assistance for all users running on our older stack, Bamboo, or running a non-concurrent back-end on our new stack, Cedar. (See the FAQ for why this is the fix.) We’re adding new features such as 2X dynos to make it easier to run concurrent back-ends for large Rails apps. And we're making performance and visibility a bigger area of product attention, starting with some tools we've already released in the last month. If you have a question not answered by this FAQ, post it as a comment here, on Hacker News, or on Twitter. I’ll attempt to answer all such questions posted in the next 24 hours. To all our customers who experienced real pain from this: we're truly sorry. After reading this FAQ, I hope you feel we're taking every reasonable step to set things right, but if not, please let us know. Adam A. No. While hundreds of pages could be written on this topic, we’ll address some of this in Routing technology. Summary: the current version of the router was designed to provide the optimum combination of uptime, throughput, and support for modern concurrent back-ends. It works as designed. A. Since early 2011, high-volume Rails apps that run on Heroku and use single-threaded web servers sometimes experienced severe tail latencies and poor utilization of web back-ends (dynos). Lack of visibility into app performance, including incorrect queue time reporting prior to the New Relic update in February 2013, made diagnosing these latencies (by customers, and even by Heroku’s own support team) very difficult. A. Rails apps running on Thin, with six or more dynos, and serving 1k reqs/min or more are the most likely to be affected. The impact becomes more pronounced as such apps use more dynos, serve more traffic, or have large request time variances. A. Add the free version of New Relic ( heroku addons:add newrelic ) and install the latest version of the newrelic_rpm gem, then watch your queue time. Average queue times above 40ms are usually indicative of a problem. Some apps with lower request volume may be affected if they have extremely high request time variances (e.g., HTTP requests lasting 10+ seconds) or make callbacks like this OAuth example. A. Switch to a concurrent web back-end like Unicorn or Puma on JRuby, which allows the dyno to manage its own request queue and avoid blocking on long requests. This requires that your app be on our most current stack, Cedar. A. Certainly. We’ve already emailed all customers with apps running on Thin with more than six dynos with self-migration instructions, and a way to reach us for direct assistance. If you haven’t received the email and want help making the switch, contact us for migrating to Cedar or migrating to Unicorn. A. The Cedar router was built with two goals in mind: (1) to support the new world of concurrent web back-ends which have become the standard in Ruby and all other language communities; and (2) to handle the throughput and availability needs of high-traffic apps. Read detailed documentation of Heroku’s HTTP routing. A. Probably, but it comes with trade-offs for availability and performance. The Heroku router favors availability, stateless horizontal scaling, and low latency through individual routing nodes. Per-app global request queues require a sacrifice on one or more of these fronts. See Kyle Kingsbury’s post on the CAP theorem implications for global request queueing. After extensive research and experimentation, we have yet to find either a theoretical model or a practical implementation that beats the simplicity and robustness of random routing to web back-ends that can support multiple concurrent connections. A. Not at all. We're always looking for new ways to make HTTP requests on Heroku faster, more reliable, and more efficient. For example, we’ve been experimenting with backpressure routing for web dynos to signal to the router that they are overloaded. You, our customers, have told us that it’s not routing algorithms you ultimately care about, but rather overall web performance. You want to serve HTTP requests as quickly as possible, for fast page loads or API calls for your users. And you want to be able to quickly and easily diagnose performance problems. Performance and visibility are what matters, and that’s what we’ll work on. This will include ongoing improvements to dynos, the router, visibility tools, and our docs. A. Yes. Our older router was built and designed during the early years of Heroku to support the Aspen and later the Bamboo stack. These stacks did not support concurrent back-ends, and thus the router was designed with a per-app global request queue. This worked as designed originally, but then degraded slowly over the course of the next two years. A. Yes, for Bamboo. They were correct when written, but fell out of date starting in early 2011. Until February 2013, the documentation described the Bamboo router only sending one connection at a time to any given web dyno. A. At the time, our entire product and engineering team was focused on our new product, Cedar. Being so focused on the future meant that we slipped on stewardship of our existing product. A. Yes. Similar to the docs, How It Works section of our website described the router as tracking which dynos were tied up by long HTTP requests. This was accurate when written, but gradually fell out of date in early 2011. Unlike the docs, we completely rewrote the homepage in June of 2011 and it no longer referenced tracking of long requests. A. Yes, for the same 2011—2013 period from previous questions. The metric was transmitted to the New Relic instrumentation in the app via a set of HTTP headers set by the Heroku router. The root cause was the same as the Bamboo router degradation: the code didn't change, but scaling out the router nodes caused the data to become increasingly inaccurate and eventually useless. With New Relic's help, we fixed this in February 2013 by calculating queue time using a different method. A. We’re sorry that we didn’t take action on this based on the customer complaints via support tickets and other channels sooner. We didn’t understand the magnitude of the confusion and frustration caused by the out-of-date Bamboo docs, incorrect queue time information in New Relic, and the general lack of visibility into web performance on the platform. The huge response to the Rap Genius post showed us that this touched a nerve in our community. A. We’ve been working with many of our customers to get their queue times down, get them accurate visibility into their app’s performance, and make sure their app is fast and running on the right number of dynos. So far, the results are good. A. If we haven’t been in touch yet, here’s what we’re doing for you: Migration assistance: We’ll give you hands-on help migrating to a concurrent back-end, either individually or in online workshops. This includes the move to Cedar if you’re still on Bamboo. If you’re running a multi-dyno app on a non-concurrent back-end and haven’t received an email, drop us a line about Thin to Unicorn or Bamboo to Cedar. We’ll give you hands-on help migrating to a concurrent back-end, either individually or in online workshops. This includes the move to Cedar if you’re still on Bamboo. If you’re running a multi-dyno app on a non-concurrent back-end and haven’t received an email, drop us a line about Thin to Unicorn or Bamboo to Cedar. 2X dynos: We’re fast-tracking the launch of 2X dynos, to provide double the memory and allow for double (or more) Unicorn concurrency for large Rails apps. This is already available in private beta in use by several hundred customers, and will be available in public beta shortly. We’re fast-tracking the launch of 2X dynos, to provide double the memory and allow for double (or more) Unicorn concurrency for large Rails apps. This is already available in private beta in use by several hundred customers, and will be available in public beta shortly. New visibility tools: We’re putting more focus on bringing you new performance visibility features, such as the log2viz dashboard, CPU and memory use logging, and HTTP request IDs. We’ll be working to do much more on this front to make sure that you can diagnose performance problems when they happen and know what to do about it. Want something else not mentioned here? Let us know.We’ve modified our fundraising strategy advice to YC founders. In the interest of everyone having the same information, here is the email I sent to the current batch this morning. Founders, As Y Combinator’s prominence has grown in recent years, we’ve seen a flood of new investors who are very focused on investing in YC companies in the current batch. Some of these investors are very aggressive and offer attractive terms with no diligence. There are obvious good things about this, but there are really bad ones too. We’re now about a month away from Demo Day, which is when the investor outreach usually starts in earnest (as we’ve said before, we recommend politely deferring these requests to meet until closer to Demo Day). So we’re modifying our advice about how to raise money at the end of YC. Before we get to that, here’s a very important point: some good companies will struggle to raise money. Fashionable companies, good or bad, have a much easier time raising money than unfashionable companies. This is a bug in the market that some of the best investors learn to exploit, but it still doesn’t help you much if you need to raise and can’t. Try not to get demoralized if you don’t get the response from investors you were hoping for–be relentlessly resourceful and figure out a way to make it work with what you have. Also, the environment seems to be changing. It will very likely be somewhat harder to raise money now than it’s been in past years, but it’s too early to say for sure (so far we haven’t seen nearly as much of an effect on early-stage fundraising as the level of press coverage would seem to indicate). Ok, on to our advice. 1) You should care more about good investors than good valuations. Use the YC investor database, talk to us, talk to alumni, and talk to the founders of the companies that investor has funded (especially in cases when the companies haven’t worked out). However, you should insist on clean terms (in practice, offering messy terms is a sign of being a bad investor). 2) You should aim to sell only about 20% of the company in your seed round (though 25% is ok if you’re raising a ‘large’–say more than $2.5 million–seed round). 3) You should raise enough money to get to your next significant milestone. 4) You should try to get the process over with reasonably quickly so you can get back to work. The founders that fall in love with fundraising rarely go on to be the most successful. So here’s what I would do if I were a YC founder in the current climate. I’d close the first, say, $200k from the first reasonably good investors that offer it on reasonable terms–say a $5 million pre-money valuation or higher. This removes some uncertainty and pressure, gives you capital to execute with while raising the rest of your round, puts you in a stronger position, etc. It’s worth a discount for all of this. Beyond that, I’d then collect interest from investors. Get to know them and let them get to know you. This doesn’t have to take a long time; a few weeks and 3 meetings per investor for a seed round is enough, and in some cases both sides will feel ready to make a decision after one meeting. But don’t feel the need to take offers in the order they come in; you have a limited amount of space in the round, investors are on your cap table for a very long time, and you want to pick the best people you can get. Every batch, some of the best companies regret selling a lot of stock early on and then getting interest from great investors later. Then, after a set number of weeks you decide to spend fundraising, make the allocation decisions at the same time. It’s cleanest to offer everyone the same terms that invests at the same time–everyone claims they add extra value and needs advisor shares, but no one else thinks anyone should get them. If you deviate from this, you should be transparent and let everyone in the round know about advisor shares or different terms. (If you fill up your initial raise and then have more interest but are sensitive to the dilution, it’s fine to ask new investors if they want to raise more at a higher price. They can always say no.) Use the Handshake Deal Protocol when you’re ready to make allocation decisions. (Though it’s worth noting we only recommend the HDP for seed rounds. If you’re raising a Series A, i.e. millions of dollars from one investor, use the tried and true term sheet to indicate an agreement.) Other reminders for fundraising: – The best investors know that the most important thing to figure out at this stage is how much your users love you. Great engagement and word of mouth growth are magic for fundraising. – Growth is obviously still really helpful. – It’s important to articulate why the company will eventually be in a strategically valuable position (i.e. a monopoly). – It’s important to articulate your mission. – Don’t be arrogant–this is a tactic that somehow does manage to work for fundraising some of the time for some founders, but most of the time it doesn’t. As always, reach out to us along the way with questions. SamTeachers in government schools in Karnataka are having a hard time as annual grants to schools for the current academic year has not yet been released by the state government, The New Indian Express reported. The problem has reached a level where teachers have to buy even basic materials like chalk pieces from their own pockets. Fed up after their repeated requests to district authorities fell on deaf ears, teachers have decided to close schools for three days in January as a mark of protest, the report states. "The grants are necessary for schools. But this year, the government has not released the funds yet," Karnataka State Primary School Teachers' Association president Basavaraj Gurikar told NIE. "Every year, these grants are released during June when schools open for that academic year. We have submitted requests at the district-level. Since it has not borne any result, we have decided to protest by closing the schools," he added. The dates to the protest are yet to be decided. According to the report, the government provides Rs 15,000 as annual maintenance grant and Rs 7,000 as basic grant for primary schools and Rs 15,000 as maintenance grant and Rs 5,000 as basic grant for lower primary schools to the over 46,000 government schools in the state. The NIE report further states, "The education sector has always received the highest allocation in the State budget. During the 2014-15 budget presented by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, the total amount set aside for the sector was Rs 21,305 crore, Rs 2,639 crore more that allocated in 2013-14. The Primary and Secondary Education Department has received as much as Rs 17,425 crore of it this year."The Consensus Mock Draft is a compilation of the best mock drafts around the web. We bring them together to come up with a good estimate of how the 2013 NBA Draft could play out. A few things of note in the latest look at the mock drafts: • The latest look has Nerlens Noel becoming less of a lock at No. 1. In our last look, 11 of the 12 mocks had him going first to Cleveland. Now, only seven have him going No. 1, with Alex Len gaining ground (three mocks) as the top pick. • Speaking of Len, the Maryland big man is gaining big ground in the latest look. Other than Sporting News (which has him going 11th to the Sixers) every other mock has him going before the sixth pick, with three placing him at No. 1. • Gaining ground is Georgia's Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who surges into the lottery thanks to six mocks placing him in Minnesota with the No. 9 pick. • Another player gaining ground is Michael Carter-Williams out of Syracuse. He appears three times at both No. 7 (to the Kings) and No. 8 (Pistons). He had been hovering in the lower portion of the lottery before the latest look. • UNLV's Anthony Bennett is going as high as No. 4 (four mocks), but no lower than No. 7 (four mocks). • Otto Porter is gaining ground as the consensus third pick. He's going there on 10 of the 12 mocks (HoopsWorld surprisingly has him going sixth to the Pelicans, while NBA Draft Insider has him going No. 1 to Cleveland). • The one player prognosticators can't seem to figure out is UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad. He appears on only six mock drafts now, going as high as No. 8. He could end up being a true wild card of this Draft. • This lottery is a lot more consistent than last year. Ten players appear in the Lottery on all 12 mock drafts: Noel, McLemore, Porter, Victor Oladipo, Trey Burke, Bennett, Alex Len, Cody Zeller, Michael Carter-Williams and C.J. McCollum. • Steven Adams, the freshman center from Pitt jumps into the lottery thanks to his addition on several mocks. He appears twice at No. 10 (Blazers) and No. 12 (Thunder) and once at No. 11 (Sixers). He appears on nine of the 12 mocks. • Where available, heights are taken (with shoes on) from official measurements at the NBA's pre-Draft combine and are rounded to the nearest inch.President 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 shot a 68 in a game of golf last month, according to October records from the U.S. Golf Association. The USGA Handicap Index shows that the president shot the score on Oct. 17 at his own golf club, Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Va., that has a handicap index of 2.5. The score is likely a 4-under par game on a 72-hole course that Trump has frequently visited during his time in office. It is the first score posted for Trump this year on the USGA site. Trump also reported shooting a 68 in 2007 at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles, according to a Sports Illustrated report. ADVERTISEMENT "He really can play. He's very, very good," retired professional golfer Gary Player, 81, who has golfed with eight former U.S. presidents, told CNBC. Player also said the president needed work on his short game. Trump's most recent golf outing on Oct. 28 to his club in Virginia was his 76th visit to a golf club since assuming the presidency, according to a NBC News tracker. Trump often works from his clubs, according to the White House.When we say "booby trap," chances are you either A) imagine Indiana Jones running, jumping, and dodging through a hail of poisoned arrows, or B) snicker like a schoolboy because we just said "booby." But you don't get to run away from booby traps in reality, because the kind of person who builds them is, generally speaking, trying to kill you, not supply a narratively compelling escape scene. And then there are these folks, who stepped way over the line from "homicidal maniacs" to "huge dickheads." 5 The Viet Cong Rigged All Sorts of Traps Involving Insanely Venomous Snakes StefanieDegner/iStock/Getty Images Continue Reading Below Advertisement There's rigging a trap for your enemy, and then there's rigging a venomous snake to bite your enemy right in the face. IN THE FACE. This trap falls into that second category. Steve Kharmawphlang IN. THE. FACE. The bamboo pit viper of Vietnam is chock full of hemotoxic venom, which works by disrupting the blood's clotting process, destroying red blood cells, and wreaking havoc on your organ tissues. They were known as three-step snakes, because that's as far as you'd make it after getting bit by one. Now, it's bad enough to be burdened with the knowledge of such a creature, much less to have even the remotest possibility of stepping on something like that in the dense underbrush. But during the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong made everything worse when they started using them as natural biological weapons. Continue Reading Below Advertisement They hid pit vipers in their packs so that anyone searching through them would get an agonizingly fatal surprise. In the tunnel complexes, they stuffed them into pieces of hollow bamboo and propped them in places where U.S. "tunnel rats" were likely to stick their unwary hands. Worst of all, they tied them into the branches of trees by their tails, right at face height. After a couple days spent hanging in a tree without food, the snake would be (admittedly, justifiably) pissed. And at that point, it would lash out at anything that came within range, even your goddamn eyeball. Especially your goddamn eyeball.Speaking to Autocar, Gagstatter said that making the RS affordable was a key target of the project: "What we’ve aimed to do is to have a technically competitive package which is affordable for our customers, that has been the overriding principal here. "If you look back in history the previous Focus RS was front-wheel drive, but it was the right package for that time. The world moves on, and it was clear from the beginning that we needed an all-wheel drive package. "When you start planning a replacement product [for the last Focus RS] you have a number of opinions and a number of people to talk to. Relatively quickly we found ourselves where we wanted to be in terms of performance." Ford Focus RS engine power and torque The 2.3-litre four-cylinder Ecoboost engine is an uprated version of the unit available in the new Ford Mustang, producing 10% more power than that unit as a result of a variety of modifications. Changes from the Mustang engine include a low-inertia twin-scroll turbocharger with a larger compressor to aid airflow, plus a notably larger intercooler and air intake. The Focus RS’s engine is linked to a six-speed manual gearbox that has had its shift action shortened for faster, more accurate changes. The transmission and clutch have also been uprated to cope with 324lb ft of torque, which is available from 2000rpm to 4500rpm. Additionally, 347lb ft of torque is availble for up to 15 seconds under hard acceleration, as part of a transient overboost facility. The engine is also linked to a larger-bore exhaust system. As well as boosting performance, the system is said by Ford to be tuned to “deliver a rewarding and sporty sound character during spirited driving, with the distinctive burbles, pops and crackles that are an RS signature”. In addition, and in the quest for high-temperature durability, the cylinder head is made of an upgraded alloy and mounted on a strengthened head gasket. For the same reason, the cylinder block also has stronger high-tensile cast iron liners. A significantly larger radiator than in the Focus ST aids cooling. The engine’s power figure of more than 345bhp has now been ratified. However, it establishes the Focus RS Mk3 as the most powerful ‘standard’ Focus RS to date. The Mk1 Focus RS had 212bhp and the Mk2 had 301bhp. However, the special-edition Focus RS500 had 345bhp - a figure now matched by this latest RS. Ford Focus RS set-up and pricing The new Focus RS will be sold as a five-door model only, in line with Ford’s global strategy for the entire Focus range. Inevitably, though, the Focus RS is significantly upgraded, even from the Focus ST. Most significantly, the chassis has been retuned, with the use of stiffer spring rates, bushes and anti-roll bars, and two-mode dampers that can be switched between road and track settings. The electric power-assisted steering has also been retuned to work with a more rigid front suspension knuckle and shorter link arms to deliver what Ford describes as “connected and responsive steering with outstanding feel”. To emphasise the track capabilities of the new Focus RS, it will be available with a specially developed semi-slick tyre for the first time. All buyers will have a choice of standard or lightweight forged 19in multi-spoke alloy wheels, which can be shod with either Michelin Pilot Super Sport 235/35 RD tyres or Pilot Sport Cup 2 semi-slicks. Iconic driver Ken Block has been involved in the car's development process.New Study of Domestic Violence: ‘Women Significantly More Likely to be Physically Aggressive’ July 7, 2014 by Robert Franklin, Esq. We’ve known for decades that women and men are about equally likely to commit domestic violence. We’ve had solid information on the subject since around 1971 when Erin Pizzey opened the first women’s DV shelter in England. There she found that 62% of the women who came to her were as violent or more violent than the men they’d left. That information didn’t sit well with gender feminists who, even at that early date, had come to see the issue of domestic violence as an important lever with which they could at once pry apart male/female intimate relationships and pry open government treasuries. So Pizzey was drummed out of the movement, fleeing to America in the face of death threats and the murder of her dog. Since then, the issue of domestic violence has been a race between gender feminist ideology and reputable science. The race isn’t over yet by a long shot, but for four decades, gender feminism has left science in the dust. Essentially everywhere we look, what people understand to be the realities of domestic violence are the fictions peddled by gender feminists in the domestic violence movement. Of course good science has opposed those fictions almost from the start. The idea that men are the sole perpetrators of domestic violence has long been known to be false and the DV establishment has retreated from that claim. But they’ve only retrenched, claiming that, whenever women are violent, it’s only in self-defense. That too is hocus-pocus, as good science by reliable scientists has long shown. But whatever the state of the science may be, the domestic violence establishment and their many benefactors, both in and outside of government, don’t care. So rivers of dollars flow to domestic violence entities that routinely purvey notions, long established to be false. The unsurprising result is that those entities that supposedly address the problem actually do little but repeat the mantra of gender feminism – it’s all the fault of the Patriarchy. Even if that were true, it’s hard to figure how the information might do anything to reduce intimate partner violence. But of course, since it’s not true, we have organizations, paid by the U.S. government, preaching “male privilege” to men ordered by courts to listen to that nonsense in the quixotic belief that the experience might help them in their intimate relationships. Of course a quick peek at the tenets of gender feminism will tell anyone that the point is not to improve relationships between men and women, but to separate them altogether. And achievements like the shelter system, restraining order legislation, mandatory arrest policies, dominant abuser policies, child support policies and the like go a long way toward exactly that. This is not to say that there’s no need for DV shelters; there is. But the concept of shelters springs from the same place as all the others – the desire to remove men from the lives of women. What we’re left with, after all these years, is a system that’s massively funded, utterly incompetent to deal with the problem of DV and does substantial damage to due process of law in the process. Not much to crow about. Exactly why we’ve established a public policy that is, across the board, so dysfunctional, so unable to address the sole problem it’s aimed at, is a subject for another post. But now there’s yet another study that tells us more of what we already know. Read about it here (Daily Mail, 6/26/14). Increasing numbers of women can now be classed as ‘intimate terrorists’, meaning that they are verbally and physically violent towards a partner. Psychologists at the University of Cumbria questioned 1,104 young men and women using a scale of behaviour which ranged from shouting and insulting to pushing, beating and using weapons. They discovered that women were ‘significantly’ more likely to be verbally and physically aggressive to men than vice versa. They concluded that violence was linked to controlling behaviour such as checking up on partners and persuading them not to see certain friends… Study leader Dr Elizabeth Bates said: ‘The stereotypical popular view is still one of dominant control by men. That does occur but research over the last ten to 15 years has highlighted the fact that women are controlling and aggressive in relationships too.’ She said scientists may have to think again about the reasons for male violence against women, which previous studies said arose from ‘patriarchal values’ in which men are motivated to seek to control women’s behaviour, using violence if necessary. She said other research also looked at men in prisons and women in refuges, rather than typical members of the public. The study team were surprised at the level of violence shown by some women, revealed in answers to an anonymous questionnaire. Dr Bates, who presented her findings at the annual meeting of the forensic division of the British Psychological Society, in Glasgow, said: ‘It wasn’t just pushing and shoving. Some people were circling the boxes for things like beating up, kicking, and threatening to use a weapon.’ She added men may be starting to report the issue more often. ‘A contributing factor could be that in the past women have talked about it more,’ she said. ‘The feminist movement made violence towards women something we talk about. ‘Now there is more support for men and more of them are feeling comfortable coming forward.’ The analysis showed that, while women tended to be more physically aggressive towards their partners, men were more likely to show violence towards members of the same sex, including friends. One of the many problems with the gender feminist paradigm is that, because it denies the fact of women’s violence, also denies violent women any help with their problem. So, when they attack their male partners, the men often respond in kind, and that’s one of the main ways in which women are injured in intimate partner altercations. As previous studies have unequivocally shown, if women will refrain from initiating violence, they’ll be much safer. The concept of course is anathema to gender feminists, which adds evidence to the proposition that the domestic violence establishment is more about separating women from men than keeping women (or men) safe from their partners. The fact is, we know a good bit about who commits DV, why and how to stop it. To a great extent, domestic violence is learned in the home at an early age. Children who are hit by their parents or who frequently witness their parents hitting each other are far more likely than others to grow up to do the same. Large numbers of people who engage in domestic violence can be helped to ameliorate their behavior. But they can’t do so if the only intervention available to them is the one that still says, against all the evidence, that “the Patriarchy” teaches men it’s OK to batter women in order to keep them under their thumbs. If we wanted to fix our DV problem, we’d do a lot of things differently. That we don’t strongly suggests we’re happy with the status quo. That of course includes separating fathers from their children sometimes on the barest allegations of DV. Still, like a steady drip of water on stone, the truth about DV as revealed by the science on it, will change our understanding, and ultimately our policy on domestic violence. Dr. Bates’s study is one of those small, but not inconsequential drips. National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved? Here’s how: Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team. an official member of the National Parents Organization team. Join our Facebook Page. Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism. #domesticviolence, #genderfeminism, #women'sdomesticviolence, #BritishA Navy SEAL
relatively high rates. The trick is finding the player who has this skill and isn’t an anchor for the team in other facets of the game. The $42-million Milan Lucic contract – and make no mistake, his ferocity as a player and ability to win puck battles in those hotly contested areas is a prime reason why he was paid handsomely by the Edmonton Oilers this summer – had me wondering about the players who most frequently exhibit this talent, and the dividends they have paid to their team’s offence as a result. Let’s look at rebound leaders on a per-60 basis over the last four seasons, and we’ll do so in both game states – 5-on-5, where players spend most of their time, and 5-on-4, where players score the highest frequency of goals. Rebounds are measured as any instance in which a shot is taken just seconds after a preceding shot was attempted by the same team with no other intervening play-by-play event. Here’s what our even-strength leaderboard looks like. Any surprises? Zach Parise and Brendan Gallagher leading the list certainly doesn’t qualify as a surprise – despite not being the most gigantic skaters on the planet, they’ve more or less made a living off of wearing blueliners down with relentless aggression and the type of agility that generally makes bigger defenders uncomfortable. I found a couple of the names lower down the list intriguing. Jason Spezza has always been a great playmaker with a truly wicked shot when he wants to use it, but I’ve kind of thought of him more as either the initial trigger man or the guy who is setting up his teammates. The data pretty clearly suggests that over our four-year sample, Spezza has been just as active in secondary attacks, generating rebound attempts at very high rates. Michael Raffl is really curious too – more on that in a minute. Let’s look at our power-play numbers now. If you are of the belief that generating shots from these areas is a repeatable talent and should carryover from 5-on-5 to 5-on-4, then you’d expect many of the same names on this list. And you’d be delighted to find out you are right: Gallagher and Parise are once again in the top three, and they’re joined by Flyers winger Wayne Simmonds. I have to say, at first pass through the 5-on-5 data, I was a bit shocked to not see Simmonds there. My eye test suggests that he’s just as good as Gallagher and Parise at wreaking havoc in that home plate area, winning pucks back for his teammates and generating that second-wave of attack that’s historically driven his personal goal-scoring rates. The one thing I think I inadvertently discounted was a potential Claude Giroux effect here. After all, Raffl was on our 5-on-5 leaderboard, and he’s played with Giroux extensively there. Ditto Simmonds and Giroux on the power play. Raffl and Simmonds might be very skilled in their own right here, but I don’t think it’s unfair to wonder how much of that is driven by Giroux just being a truly quality offensive zone presence in his own right. Two closing thoughts: The variances on the power play seem pretty extreme, especially so when you isolate on that top trio of Gallagher, Simmonds, and Parise. For example: the gap between Gallagher and, say, Martin Hanzal in fourth is the same as the gap between Hanzal and mid-100 rank players like Artem Anisimov and Joe Colborne (1.0 per-60). As for Milan Lucic? At 5-on-5, he ranked 250th in our pool of players (0.40 rebounds per-60), which is Chris Kreider/Daniel Sedin territory. At 5-on-4, he ranked 215th in our pool of players (0.58 rebounds per-60), which is Alex Tanguay/Steven Stamkos territory. Lucic clearly has the goal totals to legitimize his talent (and as you can see from his comparables, you don’t need to mercilessly create rebounds to be a fantastic scorer in this league), but it is a bit curious that his rebound numbers are relatively middling. It’s certainly something to keep an eye on next season, especially if he sees an abundance of time with superstar playmaker Connor McDavid.… The last time we saw Golovina was on the evening of the 14th. We passed her on the road to Lipsk. She was bringing in a Sd.Kfz 11/5, a real nice example. Said she’d found it “under a gooseberry bush”. There were rumours that a big Kraut convoy had gone down in the wets near Krikštonys, and Golovina and that idiot winchman of hers, had found it. Most magpies steer clear of that part of the world on account of the wisps, but she had balls as big as Tiger turret bearings. She went where she liked. Anything that so much as glimmered at her funny, got a signal flare in the mush … The Flare Path has been bog angling this week, and our toothy Swamp Hydra has snagged Vietnam ’65, DCS World, Ultimate General: Gettysburg, and Steel Armor: Blaze of War stories. Released yesterday, Vietnam ’65 [official site] is not a typical piece of historical hexiana. Ingenious, evocative, deceptively simple… it’s a tactical wargame filled with monster cabinets, milk runs and tricky unit purchasing and base placement decisions. Much of the time you’re fighting communist ghosts – guerillas who are far more interested in ambushing, mine-laying and inculcating, than engaging in full-blown pitched battles. The Hueys and Chinooks that buzz around the randomly generated maps aren’t period decor or optional combat luxuries, they are the circulatory system that keep your war effort effervescent. Though I haven’t had a chance to play the release version yet, the menu screen suggests that Every Single Soldier haven’t slipped in a campaign mode at the eleventh hour. It looks like they haven’t worked out a way to inject more variety into their random maps either. If Vietnam ’65 carried a typical Slitherine/Matrix Games price tag, such shortcomings might have been reasons to burn your draft card and make for Canada. At $10, the surprisingly reasonable RRP, I’d argue they’re merely overlookable (and, hopefully, patchable) annoyances – mild disappointments that you put to the back of your mind while you’re busy massaging hearts and minds, and deluging hillsides with napalm. ******************************* Will someone prod me with that cannon wormer over there when Ultimate General: Gettysburg [official site] arrives at its final destination. I was rather hoping the long-awaited 1.1 patch would mark the end of major behaviour and campaign tweaks, but the wide-ranging hotfix that came hot on its heels suggests Nick Thomadis is still struggling to get his campaign flowing and his sprite soldiers battling exactly as he’d like. Until everything is nailed down for good, attempting a second assessment or nagging Nick for details of UG2 (Shiloh? Sharpsburg? Waterloo? Isandlwana?) seems fairly pointless. ***************************** If you’re an impatient crumpet toaster or a frustrated Maverick impersonator, the latest DCS World [official site] news is guaranteed to seed a smile. Not only has the F-86F Sabre recently gained a formidable sparring partner… …Leatherneck Simulations, the poly-national perfectionists behinds the MiG-21bis, have announced that a recreation of the seldom-simmed F-14 Tomcat is on the way. Feature list talk of “highly accurate” avionics, weapons systems, and flight and external models is hardly a surprise. What snags my attentional arrestor hook is the mention of “one free theatre bundled with aircraft” and “JESTER AI – A proprietary AI system for fully voiced, dependable and smart RIO/WSO”. Will our artificial cockpit companions berate, barrack and barf, I wonder? Will we get to buzz the tower at NAS Miramar? We should know by Christmas. ******************************* How exactly does the Steam store’s ‘New on Steam (Featured New Releases)’ list work? I ask because perusing it this morning I couldn’t see any mention of the fact that one of gaming’s most entertaining and ambitious armour sims, trundled onto Steam yesterday. Steel Armor: Blaze of War [official site], also available at GamersGate, is a true eccentric. It champions Cold War war chariots like the M60 Patton and the T-62, and provides large, deformable Cold War-era battlefields based on genuine Angolan, Afghan, and Iranian/Iraqi real estate. It can be transformed into a Combat Mission-calibre tactical RTS at the press of a button. And a marvellous turn-based strategy layer means there’s meaning and uncertainty in every campaign engagement. In effect a rich, high fidelity tank sim welded to a rich, high fidelity wargame, the unique SABOW unfortunately comes with an interface as rambling and idiosyncratic as its theme. If you’re new to Graviteam games, you’re going to struggle at first. A tooltip-utilizing tutorial mode attempts to teach the basics, but my advice to initiates would be: * Print out the extensive key list * Set up some simple scraps with the skirmish generator * Once you’ve deployed units, rely on the Close Combat-style right-click order list rather than the potentially confusing grid of icons in the lower-right corner of the screen * Read Krabb’s gunnery guides (M60 firing, T-62 firing, using the M60 rangefinder, tank weakspots) * Experiment * Experiment * Experiment After a day or two of acclimatisation, the Byzantine GUI will, I promise, start to make sense. You’ll begin to notice and utilize more and more of its powerful features. Wow, that’s handy, I can get my units to auto-deploy in cover by clicking that icon. That one lets me see individual soldiers on the tac map. If I dab that one, my AFVs will attempt to use roads to reach their destination… The more comfortable you get with controls, the freer you’ll be to savour SABOW’s potent atmosphere and savage spectacle. My last campaign – a recreation of Operation Hooper – was a corker. Tracer-laced night engagements between South African Olifants and Ratels, and FAPLA-supporting Cuban-crewed T-62s in the thick of the Angolan bush. Bloody infantry scraps for riverside villages. Desperate retreats across plains patrolled by swooping bomb-burdened Strikemasters … Historical wargaming doesn’t get much more gripping or exotic. Units in stablemate Graviteam Tactics: Operation Star (aka Achtung Panzer: Operation Star) occasionally exhibited clumsy pathfinding and sometimes seemed a little cavalier during assaults. Though the engine has come a fair distance since my APOPSTAR Wot I Think, the refurbished SABOW suffers from similar issues now and again. Don’t be put off. No-one else is making games like this. Perhaps if we pray and plead hard enough, the Ukrainian devs will eventually give us a WW2 version. ******************************* The Flare Path Foxer Last week’s foxer was literally littered with literary locales. Only a Pamplona street scene and the site of Dresden abattoir foxed fiction fiends Matchstick, Gusdownup, phlebas, Shiloh, Rorschach617, foop, Smion, Pockets and Halk. a. Pamplona (The Sun Also Rises) b. Oran (The Plague) c. Lyme Regis (Persuasion or The French Lieutenant’s Woman) d. Cannery Row, Monterey (Cannery Row) e. Woking (The War of the Worlds) f. Sacra di San Michele, Piedmont (The Name of the Rose) g. Slaughterhouse 5, Dresden (Slaughterhouse-Five) ******************** I’m 127 words into my ‘History of PC Wargames’ book and the £2000 advance is already almost gone. I was hoping to get at least the introduction done yesterday, but the discovery of a fascinating scrapbook filled with old wargame adverts put paid to that. See how many of the following ten ad fragments you can identify before getting an uncontrollable urge to DOSBox Steel Panthers or Fields of Glory. All answers in one thread, please.big clucking deal Tyson says: No more antibiotics for our chickens Tyson Foods, the largest processor of meat and poultry in the United States, announced today that it would significantly curtail the use of antibiotics in its U.S. meat chickens by the end of September 2017. Specifically, it will eliminate all those antibiotics which are medically important to humans. Sasha Stashwick at the Natural Resources Defense Council framed the news this way: “I’m going to call it and say we’ve now hit the tipping point for getting the chicken industry off antibiotics.” Tyson had previously stopped using antibiotics in its hatcheries, and says that it has reduced its use of medically important antibiotics by 80 percent since 2011. Other companies have already cut back: Perdue cut 95 percent of human antibiotics, Fieldale Farms has been antibiotic-free since 2011, and Pilgrims is eliminating antibiotics from 25 percent of its flock. There is a big caveat here: The elimination of antibiotics has mostly been limited to chicken flocks in the U.S., but these are big multinational corporations. Tyson, for instance, has significant operations in China, India, and Mexico. When it uses antibiotics in those countries, microbes will pass around antibiotic-resistant genes, just as they would here. And in our high-speed, well-connected world, germs skip from continent to continent pretty easily. So the U.S. may be at the tipping point for antibiotic use in poultry, but the rest of the world isn’t, yet. Still, the fact that big corporations are pulling this off in the U.S. quashes the argument that it simply can’t be done. Sure, eliminating human antibiotics takes work, but I suspect that once Tyson figures it out in the U.S., it will try it in its overseas operations as well. Then there’s the question of whether it’s enough to eliminate just the antibiotics that are medically important to humans. There is a (highly unlikely) chain of events by which microbes resistant to veterinary antibiotics could cause problems for humans. That’s something to think about, but it’s a completely different order of risk: Using medically important antibiotics in agriculture is like driving without a seatbelt; using veterinary antibiotics is like driving without a helmet. So far, chicken producers have been the quickest among animal farmers to cut antibiotics. But the practice should spread: Tyson announced that it will start meeting with beef, pork, and turkey farmers in its supply chain this summer.Getty Images Some questionable calls went against the Chiefs in their 31-30 loss to the Raiders last night, but Kansas City coach Andy Reid didn’t want to talk about it afterward. A long touchdown catch by Amari Cooper was initially flagged for offensive pass interference, but the officials decided to pick up the flag without explaining why. Asked about the play after the game, Reid declined to comment. “I’m not going to comment on that –– I mean, they’re trying to do their best job,” Reid said. “Whether I agree with it or not, it doesn’t really matter. The call stood and that’s what it was.” A strip sack of Derek Carr by the Chiefs’ defense was also waved off by a questionable illegal contact penalty, and the Raiders’ final drive was extended by multiple Chiefs penalties. “Had a few penalties down the stretch there that got us,” Reid said. “It’s a shame it came down to that, right? Let the guys play there. Let them settle it right there on the field.” On balance, the officials appeared to help the Raiders on Thursday night. But Reid apparently doesn’t think saying so will do any good.Wolfenstein: The New Order is not a game about shooting Nazi robots. Of course, on the surface of it, the above statement is nonsense. You’ll be shooting a lot of the mechanised Reich during the course this year’s sequel. A Hell of a lot. So many, in fact, that by the end of it all PETA will probably have started a campaign for their protection. But underneath the expected--and entirely welcome--return of Wolfie’s hectic, breakneck brand of jubilant fascist-smashing, there’s something more going on. I noticed it during my most recent hands-on last month. During the game’s opening sections, set amid a last-ditch, desperate assault on a coastal Nazi stronghold during the game’s extended, alternate World War II, I felt an unmistakable inkling that something smarter was afoot. When I fired the game up, I had certain hopes and expectations. Flagrant carnage. Guns the size of caravans. Free-flowing, high-speed, tactical combat. The dual-wielding of everything. The New Order delivered all of these and more, but it also gave me something that I wasn’t expecting in the slightest. Real, affecting human drama, with a great deal of pathos. For all the crazy, explosive, sci-fi excess on display, The New Order is a game grounded in a powerful, sometimes even upsetting sense of reality. You see this new Wolfenstein isn’t taking the easy, obvious approach. It could well have simply imparted a roaring rampage of retro revenge, and no-one would have batted an eyelid. But The New Order is being made by MachineGames, a new developer, but one with a long-standing pedigree in creating believable, resonating worlds through its inclusion of ex-Starbreeze staff responsible for the likes of The Darkness and the Chronicles of Riddick games. “I feel like it’s a culmination of our journey in this industry, learning how to convey that kind of characterisation in a video game.”, says Creative Director Jens Matties. “Obviously there are video games where story is everything; it’s an interactive movie essentially. And there are video games where story is nothing; it’s all about the gameplay and the story is [just] there because you have to be in a setting and somebody has to tell you what to do. Our aim has always been to integrate and merge those two components in the best possible way. We’ve got better at it over the years, and so with each game we do, the more lessons we learn and the better we get at making these digital heaps of polygons feel like humans”. But even for a studio dedicated to narrative quality in action gaming, applying that philosophy to a new Wolfenstein is surely one heck of a challenge to set. After all, this is a series with its roots firmly in the comic-book schlock of FPS’ earliest days, when gore, carnage, and cartoon mecha-Hitlers were the genre’s raison d’etre. Transplanting that quintessential Wolfenstein vibe into a sophisticated, modern narrative environment is a highly impressive trick to pull off. “It’s really important to us that not only do we honour the legacy, but also that we put something fresh out there too”, Matties tells me. “And we try to do that on all fronts. So one of them is on the gameplay front; it feels old-school and familiar, but it also feels modern and new. And one of them is in the story, taking these old-school concepts and making them interesting, looking at the depths beneath all of that.” Those depths are apparent from The New Order’s opening moments. Even during the game’s frantic opening sequence, in which stalwart hero BJ Blazkowicz and a long-standing war buddy struggle to keep their plane aloft before plunging into the salty Hell of a furious beach assault, the most immediately striking elements are not the advanced Nazi fighter planes or the jaw-mashing robot dogs, but the underplayed warmth and humanity underpinning the dialogue and dynamic between the two comrades. The New Order might not be gunning for realism, but it understands that believability isn’t about plausibility. It’s about having convincing characters behave like real people in real situations. Use that as your in-road to empathy, and you can ground any level of madness in a pervading sense of truth. Wolfenstein nails that from the off. Even when perforating Nazi after Nazi with duel-wielded assault rifles, the welfare of Blazko’s put-upon squad is always on my mind. When we become locked in a fiery, room-sized deathtrap, and are then forced to fight for our lives against an experimental monstrosity sporting steampunk power-armour, the sense of real fear for real human lives elevates the set-piece far beyond the surface thrill of its action-movie tropes. After that, The New Order forces me into an agonising, lose-lose moral decision. Given how attached I now am to the game’s world and characters following all of the above, the moment ruins me in a way I haven’t experienced since Telltale’s The Walking Dead. But all of this is just an hors d’oeuvre for Wolfenstein’s real, jack-booted kick in the teeth. As the mission goes south, Blazkowicz receives a head injury, garnished with a free side-order of coma. It’s a long coma. He wakes up in a rural mental asylum, long after the Nazis’ victory in the war has lead to their total domination of the globe. This is where Wolfenstein: The New Order really starts. And after enticing players with the familiar bang of its prologue, it reveals that a pained whimper was its real intent all along. Narrative Designer Tommy Tordsson confirms this when I put the point to him: “The prologue is where we establish where the franchise has been in the past, and when that moment happens, where your character is put in a coma, there’s where we diverge from where we used to be and go into this completely unexplored territory.” That unexplored territory refers not just to The New Order’s new world--an alternative 1960s, “uniform, drained of life, and almost culturally incestuous”--but to what amounts to a full deconstruction of the gung-ho themes and archetypes of the old-school shooter. This is the same Blazkowicz we’ve known before; MachineGames certainly isn’t sweeping away his legacy. Rather, it’s leveraging the one-man-army’s storied history maturely and analytically, to turn iD Software’s lantern-jawed bullet-sponge into a real man for the first time. Explains Matties: “The original inception of BJ Blazkowicz is this muscle-bound action-hero, and so you’re faced with this choice: Either we stray away from that and make our own version that is radically different--sort of a Nathan Drake-type character or whatever--or we honour it and we try to see what the world would be like for this kind of character. And we really wanted to honour the legacy of Wolfenstein 3D, so that’s what we chose. I think in retrospect that has been a very good choice and we’re really happy about how that character came out; taking an archetypal character like that and turning him into an interesting person.” Tordsson elaborates: “The way we approached BJ was to really look at how he’s gone through all these games. He’s gone through a lot of battles and fighting, and really what we found interesting to explore was this aspect of him being really combat-weary, of being tired and sick of always fighting. And having him dream of having the quiet, normal life in the countryside with a family.” Blazko comes painfully, ironically close to that dream following his escape from the asylum. In a disarmingly subtle subversion of the traditional video game ‘big reveal’, his comprehension of this dark new world comes not from striking blunt imagery, but a downplayed, saddening conversation with a broken-down elderly couple on an equally broken-down farm. Again, humanity, not pomp and explosions, becomes the path to drama. As Tordsson explains: “That is part of grounding it in humanity. You can choose to open up with seeing the Statue of Liberty crumble, but to us it’s more important to see what has happened to normal people in this world; how have they been affected by the Nazis taking over the world?” The scene is a startlingly powerful one, pulling the rug out from under player and protagonist alike. Where many games would deliver a quick exposition-dump before returning to the earlier carnage with a new excuse for the slaughter, The New Order instead pulls apart everything Blazkowicz has previously represented. There is no immediate fight to be had, because the fight has gone out of the world. He can’t take charge of a resistance movement, because the populace has long-since accepted the path of least resistance as the only way to survive. He doesn’t end the scene with a gun in his hand and renewed vigour in his heart, but with a heavy sense of sheer, disempowered frustration, isolated and standing for nothing but his own, now-anachronistic sense of will. The steady drip-feed of cultural degradation is a favoured tool of the fascist, and here it seems to be as powerful as any of the super-charged firepower on offer. Matties tells me that the team has been careful to ensure that its treatment of Nazi rule is thematically sound. And of course, it’s no coincidence that all of this is taking place in the ‘60s, one of the real world’s most politically charged decades to date: “…the horrible thing about the Nazis, it goes beyond just the war crimes and the sheer brutality of it. It’s also the psychological component of it, which is that it’s essentially strangling cultural expression as we know it. And what better decade to show that than the ‘60s, where this cultural rebellion occurred? What would have happened if all of that had just been sanitised and neutered, and they’d taken the whole soul out of that cultural movement?” Tordsson agrees, as we reflect upon how much video games’ treatment of real-world conflict has changed since Wolfenstein 3D. The sombre reverence of the modern military shooter is a far cry from the days of chainguns and mutant rats. Though we have kept the Nazi zombies. “Obviously there are the massive atrocities that occurred during World War II, and we didn’t want to make light of that. In other words, what we felt was important to us was to show the brutality of the opposition, not only in terms of violence but in terms of ideology, in a way that felt authentic…. So you will have an experience that is completely outlandish sometimes, where people perform larger-than-life heroics and things are supremely over the top, but it’s rooted in themes that feel real and feel authentic.” The nuance of Nazi rule goes through to individual characterisation. It’s ironic, though perhaps understandable, that the most evil regime in human history has been turned cartoonish in so much fiction since, but even in a game like Wolfenstein such archetypes need not be a crutch. “Nazi characters have been portrayed a lot in movies”, says Tordsson. “It’s hard to diverge from that image that people have of them from stories and books and movies. But it’s a philosophy we have here at MachineGames that you always need to have a sense of characters being real people, even if they’re villains. So we try to create backstories for them where you can discern some kind of reason why they’ve become these monsters. That’s something that I believe subconsciously affects you when you write these scenes and dialogues for them, if you have these backstories created beforehand.” The results of MachineGames’ efforts ring loud and clear through what I’ve so far experienced of Wolfenstein: The New Order, sounding an unmistakably human voice above the explosive din and crumpling of metal. And lest we forget, said giddy carnage is rather excellent in its own right. Should everything come together as hoped, we just might be looking at the first surprise hit of 2014. At the very least, it promises to be one of the most interesting franchise reworks we’ve seen in quite some time.AFP/Getty Images Google Inc. plans to spend more than $1 billion on a fleet of satellites to extend Internet access to unwired regions of the globe, people familiar with the project said, hoping to overcome the financial and technical problems that thwarted previous efforts. Details remain in flux, the people said, but the project will start with 180 small, high-capacity satellites orbiting the earth at lower altitudes than traditional satellites, and then could expand. Google’s GOOG, +0.08% satellite venture is led by Greg Wyler, founder of satellite-communications startup O3b Networks Ltd., who recently joined Google with O3b’s former chief technology officer, the people said. Google has also been hiring engineers from satellite company Space Systems/Loral LLC to work on the project, according to another person familiar with the hiring initiative. The projected price ranges from about $1 billon to more than $3 billion, the people familiar with the project said, depending on the network’s final design and a later phase that could double the number of satellites. Based on past satellite ventures, costs could rise. Google’s project is the latest effort by a Silicon Valley company to extend Internet coverage from the sky to help its business on the ground. Google and Facebook Inc. are counting on new Internet users in underserved regions to boost revenue, and ultimately, earnings. “Google and Facebook are trying to figure out ways of reaching populations that thus far have been unreachable,” said Susan Irwin, president of Irwin Communications Inc., a satellite-communications research firm. “Wired connectivity only goes so far and wireless cellular networks reach small areas. Satellites can gain much broader access.” Google also is hoping to take advantage of advances in antennas that can track multiple satellites as they move across the sky. Antennas developed by companies including Kymeta Corp. have no moving parts and are controlled by software, which reduces manufacturing and maintenance costs. An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com More must-reads from MarketWatch: Fixed-income market is ‘permanently shrunk’ The 10 most miserable cities in AmericaAlan Connor looks at a cryptic pioneer who set over 5,000 puzzles – and had a sideline in both prog-rock and football I was mildly startled to note that, until a fortnight ago, these pages had not covered one of the most intriguing episodes in crosswording: the D-day codewords enigma. While choosing which information, apparent information and theories to include in telling the tale, I wondered momentarily if I was short-changing its protagonist: Leonard Sidney Dawe, the setter who was visited by MI5 to find out why his puzzles contained so much information about the most secret of top secrets. I was indeed. As reader Jolly Swagman remarked: It's a shame that L S Dawe's name only ever comes up in this context. He was one of the [Telegraph]'s leading setters and [probably] one of the key figures in the evolution of cryptic crosswords in UK dailies. Let's put that right. The Daily Telegraph was one of the first British newspapers to embrace the American novelty of the "cross-word puzzle" in the 1920s; indeed, it was the effect on the Telegraph's sales that persuaded the Times, after a period of sniffiness bordering on hostility, that there might be something in this wordplay business after all. Nor was the the Telegraph itself overly keen: that paper already had a contributor of acrostics, who said he would not touch crosswords "with a bargepole". In her profiles of pioneering setters, A Display of Lights, former Telegraph puzzle editor Val Gilbert is puzzled as to how the first setter was then recruited, presuming that it was word of mouth which suggested that the chaps for the job might be found at St Paul's School: classics master Melville Jones and science master LS Dawe (later known by his pupils as "Moneybags", via his pre-decimal-currency LSD initials). The acrostician's disrelish is understandable: the form of the crossword was still evolving and the task of the first Telegraph setter was to create a variant that the readership would come to find addictive, without their knowing quite what it was on first sight. That first setter was Dawe. He later described his first puzzle, from 30 July 1925, as "ghastly". That's a little harsh: yes, clues like "conjunction" and "pronoun" are underwhelming and "military abbreviation" is downright grim, but the puzzle itself is to be cherished, if for nothing other than the decades of British broadsheet crosswords which followed. It was during Dawe's watch that the crossword became a more satisfying challenge, adding more black squares, losing filler words and two-letter entries, and eventually indicating the wordplay more cryptically than boldly stating "(hidden)" or "(anag.)". Along the way, Dawe experimented with themed puzzles (Val Gilbert's book reproduces a 1927 grid based around doctors and dentists) and rhyming clues; more than that, he should be remembered for the sheer volume of his output: in 1961, he reckoned that he'd written over 5,000 Telegraph puzzles, and he had a couple more years in him. That spot of unpleasantness with the D-Day codewords, then, is best seen as a curious incident which occurred when Dawe had already been setting for two decades, or when he had two decades' more setting to come. Others may remember him for his brief footballing career, or depict his war years in the form of a prog-rock concept album, but today we toast Leonard Dawe for taking the crosswording clay of the 1920s and sculpting us something magical.If you’ve ever wondered if Netflix employees spend their days swimming in tanks of cash, Scrooge McDuck-style, just look at the fact that they just aired a trailer for Stranger Things season 2 during the Super Bowl. That’s kind of remarkable when you pause and think about it for a second – in about a year, Netflix’s throwback science fiction series went from “out of nowhere sleeper hit” to “show popular enough to warrant airtime during one of the biggest events of the year.” And if you’re not a football fan, you can watch the spot for yourself below. We don’t know much about what Netflix and series creators/showrunners the Duffer Brothers have up their sleeves for season two, but this is clearly going to be worthy of a weekend-of-release marathon binge. There is no exact release date in the teaser, but it does say “Halloween.” So let’s say mid-October? What we do know about Stranger Things season two has come from a handful of interviews with cast and crew. Here’s series star David Harbour, who plays Sheriff Jim Hopper, talking about reading the first script of the season: I got the first script of season two, and the first five minutes I was on my feet going, ‘Yes! Yes!’ Because they open up the world in such a new way. And these characters that I feel like are so iconic, and that we love so deeply, get to really go on different arcs and different journeys and explore these little things that we touched on in their personalities and psychologies. And we get to really expand on that… I really do think it’s going to be thrilling. And you can tweet at me that I’m an idiot if it’s not. And here’s series producer and director Shawn Levy, laying the groundwork for how the new season will follow the events of the first year: It’s a year later in the story, so there are several things that happened last year, like Will has come back. There are certain people in the town that know what happened, and then certain people that don’t know what happened. So there’s a lot of fallout with who knows what. Stranger Things season 2 will arrive in October and we’ll probably know the exact release date soon enough. We’re probably going to make ourselves sick talking about it.By Jason Snell Kindle Voyage review (Photo by Andy Ihnatko.) I’m a serial Kindle buyer. I bought (and returned) the original model. The second model I kept, and since then I’ve bought at least four more of Amazon’s E-Ink-based reading devices. The latest up is the Kindle Voyage, which I bought immediately upon its announcement. I took receipt of the Kindle Voyage last week and have been using it to read books and newspapers since then. Why a Kindle? Every time I mention that I am a Kindle user, especially when it’s around an audience of tech savvy people, I’m met with some quizzical looks from people who don’t understand why this product still exists, now that we’ve got iPhones and iPads and other similarly miraculous devices. As a device for reading outdoors, the Kindle is tops. Smartphones and tablets are lousy as reading devices when there’s bright sunlight around, while in bright environments the Kindle is at its best, looking as crisp as a printed book1. Apple’s finally trying to address the problem of glare with a glare-resistant coating on the iPad Air 2—DisplayMate says it’s 62 percent less reflective, and that’s good news, but there’s a lot of catching up to do. But the real reason I enjoy reading on these devices is that they’re distraction free. They don’t make noise, they don’t display pop-up notifications, and they don’t offer email and Twitter apps that are just a couple of taps away. The static black-and-white calm of words on a page evokes the best things about reading in print. I’m not saying you can’t read books on an iPhone or an iPad. I’m saying that I prefer not to, because I find the Kindle reading experience superior. Does that make the Kindle a luxury? Absolutely. But when I bought my first Kindle, the volume of reading I did went way up, thanks to the convenience and portability of the device. Having a Kindle lets me read more. It makes me want to read more. The prospect of reading books on an iPad has never held the same appeal for me. Your mileage may vary, obviously. I know people who swear by their iPads or iPhones for reading. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s definitely a market for people who want a dedicated reading device—and Amazon knows it. Voyage to the unknown (Photo by Andy Ihnatko.) The $199 Kindle Voyage is the new top-of-the-line model, eclipsing the Paperwhite. (Last year’s $119 second-generation Paperwhite and a new $79 Kindle Touch round out the line.) About those prices. Amazon has a strange pricing structure: Base models come with “special offers” turned on, meaning that when the device is off, the screen displays an ad, and
his deal even though the Senate hadn’t done anything of the sort. Mr. Corker taught Mr. Obama the lesson the president is adapting now to suit his desire to bind America to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This time, Mr. Obama is just eliminating the Senate middleman. Mr. Corker, having made the Senate irrelevant, is now grousing about its irrelevance. In obvious retrospect, it would have been better if the Senate had done nothing rather than pass Mr. Corker’s measure. Nothing the U.N. Security Council can or will do substitutes for Senate ratification. No future president is bound by the Iran nuclear weapons deal, nor would a U.N. Security Council resolution be binding with respect to CTBT. Donald Trump has often condemned the Iran agreement as a bad deal, but he hasn’t said that he’d revoke it. Mrs. Clinton has praised the deal and is certain to retain it. Whatever he does on the CTBT, it’s pretty clear that Mr. Obama isn’t done with respect to nuclear weapons, including ours. There are credible reports that he may declare a “no first use” policy for nuclear weapons. Since 1978, it has been the announced policy of the United States that use of nuclear weapons will be considered in any conflict. The reason for this policy is that deterrence will only be effective if enemies cannot be sure that we won’t use nuclear weapons in a sufficiently dangerous conflict. During the Clinton administration in 1996, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry said that if America were attacked with chemical weapons, “We could have a devastating response without nuclear weapons, but we should not foreswear that possibility.” Deterrence by not foreswearing the first use of nuclear weapons has served us well since the Soviet Union obtained nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them. There is no reason to change that policy now, especially in light of the threats we face from nations such as Iran. To maintain the credibility of our nuclear deterrent force, future underground tests of nuclear weapons may soon be necessary to ensure they work. Mr. Obama’s actions on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the U.N. Security Council notwithstanding, we will have the legal right to perform such tests when they are necessary and should not hesitate to do so. • Jed Babbin served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration. He is a senior fellow of the London Center for Policy Research and the author of five books including “In the Words of Our Enemies.” Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Kesha was originally set to perform this Sunday at the Billboard Music Awards, but the performance was cancelled following a dispute with her label, Dr. Luke's Kemosabe Records. Kesha had previously received permission from the label to perform, but the label changed its mind following reports that she would make “direct references” to her legal battle with Dr. Luke. However, the performance is back on, as Kemosabe has once again given its approval. As the label wrote in a statement, the approval was contingent on “assurances” that Kesha won't use the performance as “a platform to discuss the litigation.” Find the statement below. Kesha’s performance on the Billboard Music Awards was always approved, in good faith. Approval was only suspended when Kemosabe learned Kesha was to use the performance as a platform to discuss the litigation. Now that Kemosabe has obtained assurances, that it is relying upon, from Kesha, her representatives and Dick Clark Productions that neither Kesha nor her supporters will use the performance as such a platform, the approval has been restored. Kesha's California lawsuit accusing Dr. Luke of rape and abuse has been stayed pending the outcome of Dr. Luke's lawsuit in New York accusing Kesha of defamation. A New York judge recently dismissed Kesha's countersuit alleging emotional distress, employment discrimination, and gender-based hate crimes. In February, the judge also denied Kesha's request to record legally for labels other than Dr. Luke's Sony imprint Kemosabe Records; Kesha has appealed that ruling. Last month, Kesha unveiled her Zedd collaboration "True Colors," which was her first official release since Pitbull's Dr. Luke-produced 2013 song "Timber." Zedd clarified via Twitter that "Kemosabe/RCA gave us permission to release this song." Kesha recently performed Lady Gaga's "Til It Happens to You," which she dedicated "to every man, woman, child, and animal that has ever been abused." Last night, she and Ben Folds covered Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me." Folds was rumored to be accompanying Kesha at the Billboard performance, which may still happen now that it's back on. Read "Are Kesha's Lawyers Playing to the Public More Than the Courts?" and "Why Kesha Lost Her Court Battle, But Not Necessarily the War" on the Pitch.We recently did a feature on Eliot Dudik’s 8×20 large format film project and he just let us know that he’s been able to do some preliminary scans of his images so far as he prepares for the documentary project. You may also recall that Eliot is on PDN’s “30 New & Emerging Photographers to Watch” feature for 2012 which is quite an achievement. But not too long ago, Eliot sent us an update on the project; and the images that revisit the American Civil War sites are really quite stunning. Eliot is working with a very special type of camera called the Korona Panoramic View, which was manufactured by the Gundlach-Manhattan Optical Co. in the early 1900s. There aren’t many of these beasts still in active use, so it’s rather impressive to see one in such usable condition. He has chosen to use a C.P. Goerz Dagor 12 inch F/6.8 lens for now, but Eliot mentioned that he’s actively on the hunt for a longer 14 inch Dagor lens (also made by C.P. Goerz). The reason for this is that such an enormous film area to cover creates an exceptionally wide angle image and the 12 inch is a bit wider than Eliot is looking to work with for the project. As mentioned in the title, Eliot has chosen to shoot this project on Kodak’s beautiful Portra 160 film–the very same emulsion that you will see from 35mm through large format. While Portra is obviously most well known for its exceptional rendering of skin tones, Eliot also finds that he enjoys the colors and tones it produces for landscapes. I’m definitely inclined to agree with him, being a Portra 400 shooter myself. So far Eliot has been able to do some test scans utilizing an Epson v700 flat-bed scanner, he has told us that the colors and quality are far from finalized as he is going to have the final scans done via a drum-scanning system which will yield a highly impressive result in the end. You’ll notice that there is a break in the images, and this comes from the fact that Eliot has to use two 8×10 sheets of film side by side in the holder to be able to shoot a single image on this monster camera. In the past, one could purchase 8×20 format film but it is becoming more and more difficult to source. I have to commend Eliot on this awesome undertaking for his project, and I can’t wait to see the finished work. If you would like to see more of Eliot Dudik’s work, be sure to stop by his website. Please Support The Phoblographer We love to bring you guys the latest and greatest news and gear related stuff. However, we can’t keep doing that unless we have your continued support. If you would like to purchase any of the items mentioned, please do so by clicking our links first and then purchasing the items as we then get a small portion of the sale to help run the website. Also, please follow us on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.NHL PRESEASON: Edmonton Oilers vs. Vancouver Canucks Saturday, Oct. 4, 7 p.m., Rogers Arena TV: Sportsnet One; Radio: TEAM 1040 Five things we’re thinking about tonight. 1. Zack Kassian is back in the lineup tonight, fully over the lower body injury that had kept him out of action. Cue the “Kassian Deserves Top-Six Minutes” storyline once more? Not according to Kassian. “You guys run with that story — not me,” said Kassian, 23, a right winger who coach Willie Desjardins had skating with Shawn Matthias and Nicklas Jensen Saturday morning. “I’m actually sick of hearing it. I think everyone is. “I think we have to focus on the team and what’s best for the team and how this team can win. We haven’t done that in the past three years. This is a new year where everyone wants to come in and everyone is a little bit bitter with the way the season ended last year. “We want to be a team that competes and plays hard and rolls four lines. Wherever I might be is up to Willie and the coaching staff. I’m ready to play wherever they put me.” Kassian has no points in two preseason games this season. 2. Saturday is the final preseason tilt before Wednesday’s official curtain-raiser against the Flames in Calgary, and winger Derek Dorsett was saying after the morning skate how important it was to get into the regular-season mindset. “We have to make sure we bring that intensity tonight,” he said. “You have to make sure that intensity is there, because come Wednesday you’re not going to be able to just turn it on.” Saturday morning, Desjardins seemed to have his top two lines intact, with Henrik and Daniel Sedin skating with Radim Vrbata and Nick Bonino between Alex Burrows and Chris Higgins. Besides the Matthias line, he also had the all-righty line of Linden Vey centring Dorsett and Jannik Hansen. Brad Richardson and Tom Sestito both took the morning skate but Desjardins said they wouldn’t be playing. They have been dealing with injuries through the preseason, but Desjardins said they both could play. Bo Horvat didn’t skate, and remains sidelined with an injured shoulder. There was no update on his progress. Vancouver has 25 players on their roster, and they must get down to 23 by Tuesday. 3. Kevin Bieksa didn’t take the morning skate after missing Friday’s practice with “soreness.” Desjardins said he was “coming along.” He wouldn’t elaborate on what the actual injury was. As for whether he’ll play against Calgary, Desjardins said, “We’ll have to see over the next couple of days. I think he should be good. It just takes time. Guys react to treatment differently.” Saturday morning’s defence pairings were Alex Edler and Chris Tanev, Dan Hamhuis and Luca Sbisa and Ryan Stanton and Yannick Weber. Frank Corrado is sidelined as well with an upper-body injury. Ryan Miller is expected to play in goal. 4. Edmonton won’t have Taylor Hall or Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in their lineup, but they will have Jordan Eberle up front, along with Nail Yakupov and youngster Leon Draisaitl. Justin Schultz is among the blueliners expected to play for Edmonton, while Ben Scrivens is slated to start in goal. 5. Onetime Canucks forward Steven Pinizzotto, who’s trying to catch on with the Oilers, isn’t slated to dress for what’s also Edmonton’s final preseason game. “I’ve been here before, I’ve been around the league, but, nah, it doesn’t get easier,” the 30-year-old winger told the Edmonton Journal of his emotions. The Oilers had 34 players listed on their roster Friday. That includes four players currently injured. Pinizzotto has two assists and two fights in four preseason games with Edmonton, including a tilt with Dorsett Thursday in Edmonton in a 2-1 Vancouver win. “Not many guys play my style. I like to do everything. Hit. Fight. Score sometimes. Get the assists. I like to lay it all out there and my game gets better with confidence,” he said. Pinizzotto, who played 12 games with Vancouver in 2012-13, got into six last year with the Oilers after coming over from the Florida Panthers in a January trade. He spent the majority of last year in the AHL.Laugh if you must but it’s no goofier than the idea that “due process” implies a substantive right to kill a baby in the womb but not five minutes later, after it’s emerged. Besides, Jackson Lee’s been consistent on this. Back in January 2011, right after the new Republican House majority was sworn in, she started arguing that repealing O-Care would amount to a deprivation of due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. There’s a certain ruthless logic in her reaching for the Constitution right after the Democrats’ hold on power began to slip in hopes of putting her favored programs beyond the new majority’s grasp. And now she’s doing it again, conveniently just as the media’s filling up with stories about ObamaCare’s implementation maybe turning into a “train wreck.” Speaking on the House floor, Jackson Lee said the right to these services can be read into the Declaration of Independence, which preserves the rights of Americans to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “One might argue that education and healthcare fall into those provisions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she said. Jackson Lee also praised President Obama for fighting for these rights. “I think that what should be continuously emphasized is the President’s leadership on one single point: that although healthcare was not listed per se in the Constitution, it should be a constitutional right,” she said. How many Democrats at this point have been forced to resort to the Declaration of Independence for quasi-constitutional arguments to support O-Care because the actual Constitution doesn’t do much for them? Pelosi’s the most famous example, but John Lewis once went there too. It makes me nostalgic for the elegant simplicity of the “Commerce Clause lets us do anything we want, wingnuts” arguments before the Supreme Court ruling on the mandate last year. Friendly advice to Pelosi et al.: You can justify literally any policy, left or right, on grounds that it’s designed to enable the citizen’s “pursuit of happiness.” We should repeal Social Security and Medicare right now because eliminating payroll taxes and easing the debt burden on the public will make it easier for them to pursue their happiness. Good lord, even the “general welfare” provision in the Constitution’s preamble, as flimsy as it is as a basis for constitutional law, would at least put you in the correct document. If you’re going to try to strip Congress’s power to govern, at least make a rhetorical effort. I can’t find video of Jackson Lee’s speech last night so here’s the video from 2011. The idea that “rights,” once granted by statute, can’t be removed constitutionally even by another duly-passed statute is true, at least, to the spirit of the Democrats’ one-way ratchet for the welfare state.Matthew Hickley Daily Mail July 16, 2008 Plans for a massive database snooping on the entire population were condemned yesterday as a ‘step too far for the British way of life’. In an Orwellian move, the Home Office is proposing to detail every phone call, e-mail, text message, internet search and online purchase in the fight against terrorism and other serious crime. But the privacy watchdog, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, warned that the public’s traditional freedoms were under grave threat from creeping state surveillance. Apart from the Government’s inability to hold data securely, he said the proposals raised ‘grave questions’. ‘Do the risks we face provide justification for such a scheme in the first place? Do we want the state to have details of more and more aspects of our private lives? ‘Whatever the benefits, would such a scheme amount to excessive surveillance? Would this be a step too far for the British way of life?’ It is thought the scheme would allow the police or MI5 to access the exact time when a phone call was made, the number dialled, the length of the call and, in the case of mobile phones, the location of the handset to within an accuracy of a few hundred yards. Read articleIn an effort to find ways to make zero-energy homes more affordable, San Joaquin County Habitat for Humanity (SJC Habitat) went farther than most. Headquartered in Stockton, California, the non-profit organization found ways to make their zero-energy homes cost less to build than their standard, moderately energy-efficient homes. A recent report on one SJC Habitat project documents almost $3,000 in construction cost reductions even as they brought the home to the zero-net-energy standard. Labor and material costs were reduced for heating and cooling, ductwork, water heating, and other measures. How did they achieve these savings? The key was intelligent design and planning. Heating and cooling equipment One striking cost reduction occurred in the heating and cooling system. Earlier homes built in this subdivision included a 60,000 Btu/hour gas furnace and a 3-ton (36,000 Btu/h) air-conditioner. Heating and cooling loads were slashed by 75% with design changes and shell efficiency measures. The large gas furnace and air conditioners used in previous SJC Habitat homes were excessive. Instead, a ducted minisplit heat pump, which both heats and cools and is capable of producing 19,000 Btu/h, was installed for a cost savings of $2,000. Properly-sized heating and cooling systems reduce construction costs, cut energy use, and improve occupant comfort by reducing on-off cycling. Ducts inside Ducting offered another chance to reduce mechanical equipment costs. A dropped ceiling in the central hall enclosed the minisplit’s small air-handler and ductwork. This space was fully enclosed and sealed to ensure that it was in conditioned space. The central location, short duct runs, and easy access made this internal duct system more direct and less expensive than typical ductwork that meanders through attics or crawlspaces. The net result was a $600 savings on construction cost and more efficient operation. Water heating In most homes, water heaters are located in a basement or garage, often far from the end fixture. This demonstration home placed the water heater in a central utility room to reduce the length of hot water pipe needed. This compact hot water system saved $470 and was made possible by placing the hot water fixtures close to one another during the design phase. The design team worked closely with the construction manager to make sure that the ideas on paper made sense and could be effectively applied in the field. Strategies for additional savings An array of smaller savings resulting from intelligent design added up to a big impact. Here are two examples. Using advanced framing techniques (studs 24-inches on-center, single top plates, etc.) reduced material and labor cost. More insulation and air sealing did increase costs slightly, but reduced the need for solar electric panels resulting in a net reduction in cost. This holistic, highly-integrated approach, involved bigger outlays in some areas of labor, materials and equipment, but resulted in savings that more than offset other expenses for key energy efficiency strategies. These economies essentially paid for all the energy upgrades according to the comprehensive report on the project. Air sealing Air sealing is a highly cost-effective way to reduce energy use due to space heating and cooling. The team accomplished an impressive reduction in air leakage — down from 4.75 ach50 in previous homes to 1.5 ach50 in this demonstration home. While operable windows are essential for emergency egress and desirable for natural ventilation, not every window needs to open. Non-operating windows, which cost less, were specified where possible. To save energy, window area was reduced, which also reduced costs. Recessed lights were eliminated due to the high rate of air leakage they create. Attic and crawlspace access hatches were located so that they didn’t penetrate insulated floors or ceilings. To create a continuous air barrier, all seams in the structural sheathing were caulked. These air sealing measures were tested at the rough framing stage with a blower door and smoke generator, allowing workers to find and seal leaks earlier in the construction process. Advanced air sealing is one practice that any builder can employ to reduce energy use at a relatively low cost. Other zero energy features Like all Habitat for Humanity homes, this one demonstrates one design element that advances both affordability and net zero energy use. It is small. The 1,200 square-foot home is one story, with three bedrooms and two baths. Comfortably sheltering a family of four in 1,200 square feet is a key step to affordability. To reach zero-energy, SJC Habitat employed many other tried and true energy saving techniques. Keep in mind that these homes are located in California’s Central Valley which sees scorching summers so cooling is an important design consideration. Other techniques employed include: Wall cavity insulation increased from R-11 to R-21. One inch (R-5) of exterior rigid insulation added. Windows upgraded to lower U-value and higher Solar Heat Gain Coefficient. Reduced window area. Radiant barrier roof sheathing added to control solar heat gain. Low-cost heat recovery ventilation with two Panasonic energy recovery ventilators (ERVs). LED lights throughout. Solar tube skylights were not selected for the project. The designers decided that the heat gained and lost through this opening in the thermal envelope was more significant than the small amount of electricity that would be used by LED lights. Rooftop solar electricity By emphasizing shell and mechanical system efficiency, the annual energy needs of the home and its occupants can be supplied by a relatively small, 3.36 kilowatt rooftop solar system, the same size used on their standard non-zero energy homes. Although solar prices have dropped radically over the last few years, solar remains the most expensive component of a zero-energy home. A key element of affordability is minimizing energy use and the resulting size of the on-site renewable energy production system. ZNE demonstration program For Habitat for Humanity, keeping construction cost low is essential to their mission to build homes that are simple, decent, and affordable. While already interested in lowering energy and water costs for their homeowners, SJC Habitat wanted to take it a step farther. So they participated in the Zero Net Energy (ZNE) Production Builder Demonstration offered by Pacific Gas & Electric. Consultants Ann Edminster, Steve Easley, and Rick Chitwood provided technical assistance to the project. This project worked out so well that the features, materials, and practices from the demonstration will become standard practice for future SJC Habitat builds. The full report on the project is extremely informative and includes photos of construction details, energy modeling results, cost data, and process evaluations. Affordability through low utility bills is essential for the families living in Habitat for Humanity homes. That’s why most Habitat affiliates have been adopting more energy-efficient construction practices. Although this is not the first Habitat project to achieve zero energy, the significance of this project is that it refines and quantifies the many elements that make zero energy homes truly affordable. And it resulted in a zero-energy home that cost less to build — not to mention less to own — than a standard energy-efficient Habitat home. These cost reductions were achieved by intelligent planning during the design phase. This post originally appeared at the Zero Energy Project. Zero_Net_Energy_Production_Builder_Demonstration.pdfHere’s yet another post about the crappy callousness with which the DWP treats people it finds fit for work and throws off disability benefits… We’ve heard plenty of stories like the one below in the past few years and I imagine we’ll be hearing more of them as more and more people on the Employment and Support Allowance disability benefit are forced to look for work. At jobcentres recently, I’ve found more people who were either on ESA and recently found fit for work, or who are in the ESA work-related activity group (the group for sick or disabled claimants who are thought capable of some type of work in future and of attending work-related activities) and being forced to attend the jobcentre for work activities, even when their jobcentre advisers happily concede that those work activities won’t lead to jobs. These few people don’t make a trend, of course, but I’m inclined to think they suggest a direction of travel – a DWP crackdown on people in the ESA work-related activity group and ESA in general. As you’ll know, George Osborne targeted new claimants to that work related activity group in his July 8 budget, so ESA is certainly in his sights. I already know people in the ESA Support Group who have received letters telling them to attend work-focused interviews (the ESA support group is for sick or disabled people who are supposed to be excused from work and work-related activities). I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again and why not: I think the government’s ultimate plan is to eliminate disability benefits, as well as the idea that some people just can’t work. Anyway, I do sometimes wonder what the fallout from a crackdown on sick and disabled claimants in the ESA WRAG group will be… I can say this for sure: the DWP continues to remove benefits from people who have mental health conditions in a particularly shitty and cold-blooded way. Take this latest example. At one of the Northwest London jobcentres a couple of weeks ago, I spent time talking to an older woman I call Mary in this post (this woman did say I could use her real name, but I decided not to at the last minute here, because I’m getting more and more nervous about DWP vindictiveness to claimants). Mary was not in a very good way. Mary said that she had long-term mental health problems and had receiving ESA because of this. She’d been on the benefit for about six years. Mary said that she had been in the ESA work-related activity group until very recently. A few days before we met outside the jobcentre, she’d received the letter which you can see below – the letter which told her that she was no longer entitled to Employment and Support Allowance. She’d been found fit for work after a June work capability assessment. Her last ESA payment had been made on 2 July – just a couple of days before we met. She was obviously very concerned about that money ending – as anyone would be – and had no idea what to do next. “They didn’t give me nothing [at the work capability assessment] – zero points. I got my letter, but I’m doing this with mental health problems. I can’t read and write very well.” As you can see below, the letter that Mary just received from the DWP told her that she’d get no more money from early July and that she’d better pull finger and start looking for a job: “you should start looking for a job straightaway.” If she couldn’t get a job straightaway (and it seemed unlikely that she would at that very moment, given her age and history) the letter gave a number to call to make a jobcentre appointment. That was the end of that. Other than those mostly useless pointers, all this letter offered was a few of the DWP’s now-unavoidable odes to the joys and supremacy of work: “we know that most people are better off in work,” and blah blah blah. These letters are as sanctimonious as they are unhelpful. There’s a repulsive smugness about the DWP when it pulls the rug on people in these situations. Which is the thing. I’m not talking about Mary in particular here, or her history. I don’t know enough about her history to go into it. I’m talking about the system Mary is stuck in, the way this bureaucracy behaves towards people who use it and the assumptions it makes about those people. I’m talking about a system which removes people’s small incomes at the stroke of a pen, and the amazing callousness that the DWP shows when it throws people with mental health problems off ESA. There’s no “We Get That Mental Health Conditions Are A Real Thing” going on in this letter, or even “We Get That Stopping Your Income Might Devastate You.” The assumption in this letter is that people who are found fit for work have been taking the piss and that everyone who is found fit for work is robust enough to deal with a major blow like a sudden and total loss of income. This, presumably, is how the DWP continues to “fix” people with mental health conditions and indeed to “fix” anyone who claims a disability benefit. Forget about eligibility for a minute, or whether or not people are “deserving,” so-called (nobody’s deserving as far as this government is concerned, so that conversation is barely worth faffing around with). The point is that this is how people are handled when decisions to stop their income are made. Sightings of letters like this one and of people in Mary’s situation reeling around outside jobcentres are among the reasons why I await the outcome of Mike Sivier’s request for benefit deaths statistics with interest. There’s absolutely no concession in the above text-heavy letter to the fact that the sudden stop of ESA might have a very bad effect on someone with mental health problems, or that such a letter might make those problems worse. There’s certainly nothing at the front of the letter about help to sign on for jobseekers’ allowance for some income in the first instance, or help to navigate the difficult path to jobseekers’ allowance, or how someone who once claimed ESA might deal with JSA’s difficult, demanding and punitive jobsearch regimes (I don’t count the provision of the Jobcentre Plus phone number on page 2, or the warbling on about Work Coach help at a jobcentre as immediate and intensive support). For her part, Mary was going to try and appeal the fit-for-work decision: “I’m on medication,” she said. “I’m going to my doctor now to get the letters.” I gave her my number and have her address: hopefully, we can catch up and find out how things went. Suffice to say for now that I expect to see more and more people clutching these letters outside jobcentres as Osborne and the boys target ESA – and the people who collect it – for destruction. Cute, innit. Update Monday 20 July: sentence with * changed from “thought fit for some type of work” to “thought capable of some kind of work in future” as original could be interpreted as “fit for work” as in a WCA decision to end an ESA claim altogether. Also added “and of attending work-related activities” inside the bracket, as agree with commentator below that the work-related activities requirement for WRAG should be made clear as part of that sentence. Good ESA WRAG definition here.On September 1, Byron Buxton returned from a stint in Triple-A and proceeded to go 15 for 37 with five home runs over 10 games. Talking to him at the tail end of that stretch, I got a good feel for what was driving his success. The 22-year-old phenom was just playing baseball. When expectations are sky-high, that’s easier said than done. Buxton was drafted second overall by the Minnesota Twins in 2012, and shortly thereafter he was ordained as the game’s No. 1 prospect. Media attention was heavy. Every success and failure was scrutinized. Being Byron Buxton was burdensome. That’s slowly changing. Buxton told me that this is “probably the least attention,” he’s received since turning pro. He still feels pressure to perform, but at the same time, it’s easier for him to “not worry about what people are saying, or expecting.” He admits to pressing early in the season. He also owns up to getting away from what comes natural. “I started complicating hitting,” said Buxton. “I got to where I was too mechanical and thinking too much in the box. What got me here was trusting my stuff — letting my ability take over — and not worrying about anything. Don’t care about striking out. Don’t worry about what they’re going to throw me. Just be aggressive and attack the fastball.” Buxton feels that going back to his old see-ball-hit-ball approach — and the leg kick he briefly abandoned — “kind of takes everything off my shoulders and allows me to be myself.” Whether that results in him putting everything together remains to be seen. Buxton cooled off after we spoke, and his slash line is an uninspiring.221/.280/.415. Much like the team he plays for, Buxton had a disappointing season. But then there’s his birth certificate to consider. Are impatient Twins fans guilty of losing sight of the fact that he’s just 22 years old? “I don’t know,” said Buxton. “That’s not for me to say. Personally, I don’t really care what people think. I know that I’m not going to be able to do this the rest of my life, so I can’t worry about things that shouldn’t matter. I just need to go out there and have fun, and play baseball.” ——— Coming into the season, Adam Frazier was ranked by Baseball America as the No. 27 prospect in the Pirates system. Here at FanGraphs, Dan Farnsworth — opining that he has a high floor — had him at No. 20. He’s surpassing expectations. BABiP has been his friend. Frazier had a.360 BABiP last year in Double-A, and this year it was.369 in Triple-A before his June call-up. Since reaching Pittsburgh, his BABiP is.345. When I asked the 24-year-old infielder-outfielder about the sustainability of his balls-in-play numbers, he referenced his approach. “I just stay inside the baseball and try to hit low line drives,” Frazier told me. “I’m not a big power guy. I’m basically trusting my hands and trying to put the barrel on the ball. I know my identity and that’s what I have to stick with. I need to make things happen.” Frazier is slashing.297/.352/.407 in 159 big-league plate appearances. ——— Mike Napoli is quietly having a solid season in Cleveland. The 34-year-old first baseman has 34 home runs and a team-leading 101 RBI. Along with seeing a lot of pitches, he clears fences. It’s what he does. “I could sit there and try to hit singles the other way, but that’s not part of my game,” explained Napoli. “I know what I can do — what I can bring to the lineup — and I’m not going to change that.” I suggested to Napoli that he and Carlos Santana — 34 home runs and a.367 OBP — share a similar power-and-patience approach. After chewing on that for a few seconds, he cited a third party in his response. “We are a little,” acknowledged Napoli. “He’s a big on-base guy. He takes a lot of walks and can hit for power. As a guy that can get on base and hit for power… David Ortiz does that, too. I’m not comparing them, but they both do that.” —— I’ve been asking people around the game for their thoughts on the soon-to-retire Ortiz. Among those I’ve asked is Toronto reliever Joe Biagini. If you saw the interview I did with him in April — or if you’re a Blue Jays fan otherwise familiar with his quirkiness — you know that Biagini is… let’s just say that he’s one of the game’s great personalities. Here is what the irreverent rookie had to say about the Red Sox icon: “I don’t know much about him,” said Biagini. “I know he has really good facial hair. He’s a large man. He seems like a nice guy. I have a lot of respect for him, but I wonder what his interests are? Does he like art? Does he play golf? Does he like to fish? As for what he’s done on the field, I guess we all know that.” ——— Devon Travis didn’t lose any sleep after Thursday night’s loss to the Orioles. The Toronto infielder has learned that once the game is over, “You shut it off and it’s on to the next one.” Not that it’s always easy. As he admitted on Friday, “Last night’s was a little harder than most because of how important it was.” A win would have given Toronto a two-game lead over Baltimore for the top Wild Card spot. Instead, the two clubs were dead even going into the weekend. Travis didn’t play a notable role on in the loss, so no reporters approached him after the game for quotes. He did talk to teammates — “probably half the team” — on the plane ride from Toronto to Boston. There was concern, but no panic. “It’s not the first series we lost this season, so it was nothing I was going to dwell on,” Travis told me. “You just control what you can control. It does nothing for you to think about (the previous game) and drive yourself crazy.” The Blue Jays landed in Boston a little before 2 a.m., and Travis estimates that he got to bed around 3 o’clock. He was up by noon and left for the ballpark a few hours later. The upcoming contest was already on his mind. “It’s a big game,” he acknowledged before taking the field. Travis went 3 for 4 with a pair of doubles that night, but the Blue Jays blew a late lead and lost, 5-3. ——— Once upon a time, managers were reluctant to start left-handed pitchers at Fenway Park. It was thought they couldn’t thrive there — or even survive — because of the Green Monster. For the most part, that’s no longer the case. Rotations are rarely shuffled when teams come into Boston. I brought this up with White Sox manager Robin Ventura. What are his thoughts on southpaws at Fenway? “I think when they pitch like Chris Sale they can pitch here,” said Ventura. “If you’re good enough… most of it is that you get so many righties and the wall is short. I don’t think anything has necessarily changed, it’s just that you have to be a very good left-handed pitcher to do it.” So, is it indeed harder? “Absolutely,” answered Ventura. ——— The aforementioned Sale and Boston’s Rick Porcello are among the top contenders for this year’s American League Cy Young award. Neither would top my ballot. Nor would Cleveland’s Corey Kluber. My vote would go to Detroit’s Justin Verlander. The foursome have similar ERAs and innings totals. Verlander will lead the league in strikeouts, but what tips the scales in his favor in my mind are low-run outings. The Tigers righty has allowed two-or-fewer runs in 22 of his 33 starts, while Kluber has done so in 18 of 32, Sale in 17 of 31, and Porcello in 15 of 33. Verlander has also had the fewest outings in which he allowed
provided valuable assistance to the investigation. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy C. Brown.BY: ROB HOFFMAN “A little bit of stress is productive, but a lot isn’t worth it.” I remember this advice clearly from one of my professors during exam season. Although I had taken an ‘easier said than done’ mentality back then, the words stuck in my mind and now I think I know why. The hidden wisdom behind this advice is that stress can be demonized, or it can be embraced. It can be a blessing in disguise, but only if you let it. ‘Easier said than done’ you might be thinking—and in some ways you would be right. But recent science has opened the door to a fabulous world of stress management, and more importantly, a new way to use your stress as a tool to achieve happiness, success and ultimately—health. In her TED Talk, Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal mentions a study conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which disbands many of our beliefs surrounding the impacts of stress. “[This] study tracked 30,000 adults in the United States for eight years. They started by asking people, ‘how much stress have you experienced in the last year?’ They also asked, ‘do you believe stress is harmful for your health?’ Then, they used public death records to find out who died.” She says. The results of this study stand to change the way we think about stress forever. Though people under a high amount of stress in their last year of life had a 43% increased risk of death, this was “only true for the people who also believed stress is harmful for your health,” says McGonigal. “People who experienced a lot of stress but didn’t view stress as harmful were no more likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying, of anyone in the study—including people who had relatively little stress.” This is an important scientific discovery, but it also begs the question: how do we change our perception of stress? A similar study conducted by the University at Buffalo indicates that perhaps the answer is founded in selflessness. After studying 846 participants from Detroit, the researchers determined that individuals who were under high levels of stress did not experience the detrimental health effects, so long as they had a record of selflessness and helping others in the past year. Those who did not have this record, however, suffered adverse health effects from stress. You have the power to change your perspective on stress, and even to take preventative measures against the negative health effects. This is an important discovery for a number of reasons. As underlined by a third study published in the European Heat Journal, failure to properly deal with stress is associated with “an increased risk of coronary heart disease.” Aside from adverse physical health effects, if stress is not properly managed, it poses mental health issues. This isn’t a particularly surprising fact for anyone who has experienced high levels of stress. The thing is, stress is unavoidable and you would be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t suffer the effects, save perhaps a Tibetan Monk or two. It’s a fact of life that will likely follow you to your grave—but the timeline of when you end up there depends on a choice. You have the power to change your perspective on stress, and even to take preventative measures against the negative health effects. If you’ve had a particularly stressful week, do something kind for a stranger. It sounds ironic, but you might be surprised at how much you stand to benefit from selflessness. As research indicates, funny enough, acting from the heart may just be the easiest way to strengthen it.Dr. Wolfson was smeared by the mainstream media while receiving death threats from vaccine trolls Vaccine industry FAIL: Dr. Wolfson will not be silenced Dr. Jack Wolfson's public statement (NaturalNews) After Arizona cardiologist Dr. Jack Wolfson spoke out about the potential dangers of vaccines following the contrived Disneyland measles outbreak, he was aggressively attacked by the vaccine medical-industrial complex, which routinely accuses anyone who questions the party line on vaccines as being a danger to society.Organized by vaccine industry trolls and paid negative PR operatives, a total of 38 complaints were filed against Dr. Jack Wolfson with the Arizona state medical board. This is all part of the effort of the vaccine industry to destroy the credibility of any person who exercises true scientific, rational thought on the issue of risks versus rewards for vaccine interventions in children and adults. The idea here is that if enough punishment and aggression is directed against some doctors who speak out on the issue of vaccine side effects, then all the other doctors who may be witnessing these damaging effects of vaccines will decide to stay silent.Like many physicians who tell the truth about vaccine side effects and potential dangers, Dr. Wolfson received death threats and was threatened with violence. This is more common than you might suppose -- the very same industry that routinely commits medical violence against children in the form of toxic vaccine ingredients is also well-known for encouraging and even organizing online threats of violence against physicians who are attempting to help protect children.The "chilling effect" of these campaigns to discredit compassionate doctors is extraordinarily powerful, and it's one of the main reasons why so many people are terrified at speaking out against the vaccine industry and its ongoing damaging and maiming of innocent children. We are literally living in a modern day medical police state where informed opinions that question the official narrative of the vaccine industry are simply not tolerated by the establishment.The Arizona Osteopathic Medical Board took up the complaints against Dr. Jack Wolfson, and they concluded that although Dr. Wolfson's statements might not reflect the consensus of the medical establishment, they are an acceptable expression of Dr. Wolfson's free speech rights to voice his own educated medical opinion on matters relating to public safety and medical practices.All the doctors and trolls and Pharma-funded operatives who were calling for Dr. Wolfson's license to be revoked, in other words, have once again failed to achieve their desired aim. Dr. Wolfson continues to practice medicine in Arizona as a well-respected cardiologist, where he is widely celebrated by his patients for being a doctor who isn't paralyzed into silence by the medical system... and is therefore able to offer extremely valuable opinions and insight on medical issues affecting millions of people today.Patients are now flocking to Dr. Wolfson because they know he's someone who can be trusted to tell the truth about public health issues, and he won't be silenced by the medical system that wants to keep patients in the dark on issues that impact their health.Here at Natural News, we salute Dr. Wolfson for having the courage and perseverance to stand his ground and tell the truth, even in the face of a delusional mob of vaccine fanatics. The truth is the most dangerous thing in modern medicine today, an industry built on lies, propaganda and profits. The very last thing the industry wants people to know is the truth about vaccine side effects and the shocking lack of efficacy found in many of the vaccines being sold today, which utterly lack any real scientific testing at all. See Merck vaccine fraud exposed by two Merck virologists; company faked mumps vaccine efficacy results for over a decade, says lawsuit The fact that Dr. Wolfson was so aggressively attacked for defending medical integrity is all the evidence you need that the vaccine industry is a house of cards built on medical delusions and a "science mob mentality" rather than scientific truth. After all, any system of medicine based on rigorous science rather than propaganda would have no fear at all of someone raising relevant questions.For those of you in Arizona or anywhere across America who would like to visit Dr. Wolfson as a patient, you may learn about his cardiology practice at the following website:What follows is the statement released by Dr. Wolfson, describing how he was cleared of all charges and complaints that were leveled against him for speaking out on the issue of vaccine safety:Within the decade, solar could be cheaper than coal. Within two decades, cheaper than gas. When that happens, assuming we also have electric cars, it is game over for carbon emissions. Am I being optimistic? Not especially. Global warming might still destroy the world. But technology has given us a fighting chance and this has big implications for at least four groups of people: Environmentalists, conservatives, economists, and policymakers. Environmentalists have been the main force behind the fight against carbon emissions. But, as it became apparent that there would be no drastic voluntary worldwide curtailment of industrial society, many seem to have fallen into a funk of despair. Perhaps that despair will be justified in the end...but instead of cowering in the closet and holding their heads in their hands and saying "Oh God, we're all going to die," environmentalists should be doing what they can to seize the chances that we do have. And those chances are all related to technology. Natural gas may be the enemy in the long run, but in the short run it is our most powerful friend. Gas has succeeded in sending U.S. emissions tumbling; what else has managed that feat? Instead of panicking over the environmental dangers of fracking (toxic chemicals that can seep into groundwater), environmentalists should focus on finding ways to limit those risks. This means working with gas companies, which often are also the same oil companies that have funded denial of global warming. Environmentalists will be understandably wary about partnering with such entities. But remember, the true enemy is not corporations; it's global warming. If Exxon can help fight warming by replacing coal with gas, then they are temporarily on the side of the good guys. (And take heart; the fall in solar costs, if it continues, will eventually render all of this fighting irrelevant.) Conservatives, meanwhile, need to recognize that solar is for real. Modern American conservative ideas were mostly formed in the late 70s and early 80s, when solar really was prohibitively expensive. But things change. At one point, computers were so big that CEOs laughed out loud at the idea of a "personal computer"... but a few years later, Moore's Law had made those dreams into reality. Similarly, the conservative conventional wisdom - that solar will only ever survive by leaning on the crutch of government subsidies - is an anachronism whose expiration date has arrived. Solar is now so advanced that Germany, although it is cutting subsidies, is installing capacity at a breakneck pace; solar now provides over 4% of the electricity consumed by that cloudy, high-latitude country, and over 10% at peak times. Meanwhile, solar installations in the U.S., though helped by regulation and subsidies, are approximately doubling every year, without causing civilization to collapse. This trend will only make more sense as the exponential cost drop continues.A spokeswoman for Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., responded to the Washington Examiner's questions regarding the senator’s recently introduced campus sexual assault bill. Liz Johnson, Ayotte’s press secretary, did not provide a question-by-question answer, as did spokespeople for Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, but I will still post her comments verbatim, as I did with the others. In response to my six questions about the Campus Safety and Accountability Act, Johnson sent the following via e-mail: Those who are accused in a court of law will retain their constitutional rights. No one can be convicted of sexual assault in a court of law now, or as a result of this bill, unless the case is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. As in any criminal court case, if the accused can't afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for him or her. To begin with, no criminal prosecution can be brought without probable cause and in the case of a felony charge, a grand jury indictment. With statistics showing one in five women is the victim of campus sexual assault, the status quo is clearly unacceptable. Campus sexual assault is a serious and disturbing crime, and it’s clear that survivors aren’t getting the support they need and deserve. This bipartisan bill will bring accountability to this very serious problem — and it will ensure that only those who are properly trained are investigating these crimes, benefiting both the victim and the accused. Colleges can’t be allowed to hide criminal activity, and with greater transparency, students and parents will have the data they need to make informed decisions. This legislation includes provisions to help smaller schools afford the cost of carrying out the bill’s accountability standards, including grants to help institutions ensure only those who are properly trained handle sexual assault cases. A few problems with this response: First, Johnson’s response doesn’t address my question about providing due process for men in campus hearings, since the outcome of those hearings have the potential to ruin lives. Second, Johnson uses the oft-repeated “one-in-five” statistic, which has been debunked numerous times before ( and by me on Wednesday). Johnson also completely ignores the fact that the accused aren’t getting the support they need and deserve. I sent my follow-up questions back to Johnson on Monday, but still have not heard back.Nobody took Frankie Edgar’s loss against Jose Aldo at UFC 200 harder than Edgar’s coach, Mark Henry. In short, he took the blame for overtraining Edgar, and was gutted to see his longtime contender fall back a space or two in the 145-pound picture. Edgar was one fight away from presumably getting a featherweight title bout with Conor McGregor, whom he was promised a fight with back in December only to see it dissolve just as quick. Now the familiar players are all gathered for UFC 205 in November, as Edgar will fight Jeremy Stephens and McGregor will try to become the first UFC fighter to hold belts in two weight classes at the same time with a lightweight title shot against Eddie Alvarez. Henry, who coaches Alvarez as well, has been critical of McGregor and his coaching staff — at one point labeling McGregor a fraud — and it became apparent that there’s no love lost from the other side at the UFC 205 press conference last week at Madison Square Garden. Alvarez and McGregor traded barbs about each other’s coaches, setting the table for what promises to be a heated lead-up to Nov. 12. At one point, when Alvarez brought up Henry’s name, McGregor grabbed the mic and shouted, "F*ck Mark Henry." Surprisingly, Henry, who was in attendance, said he couldn’t blame McGregor — not after he gave him ammunition to feel that way. "I was a little upset with myself because, for over a decade being affiliated with guys in the UFC and any organization for that matter, I try to be a good example for my fighters, for my kids and especially as a coach," Henry told MMA Fighting. "Guys that I look up to like Renzo [Gracie] and Ricardo [Almeida] and Nick Catone, and outside of our thing, like Greg [Jackson] and Wink and Brandon Gibson, so many good guys, John Crouch. I don’t know one coach I don’t get along with. "I talked about a fighter when I shouldn’t have, and I really felt bad about it. I don’t think I have any business talking about a fighter. And whatever Conor had to say to me I think I deserve it or more. Whatever he said…I deserve more than that." Most of Henry’s frustration goes back to things McGregor’s coach, John Kavanagh, said about his fighters. What bothered him more was that Edgar was left to languish while McGregor fought out of the featherweight division. He compared McGregor to his young daughter. "Everybody keeps stoking up Conor so much, but Frankie is also trying to go for his second belt, too, and this guy — the thing with my daughter growing up, she was a great kid, but she wanted the baba and the binkie and the blankie (and) she was scared," Henry said at the time to MMA Junkie Radio. "She just wouldn’t get rid of it and held on tight to that. And I think Conor needs to let go of that baba and the binkie and just let go of the 145-pound title." Henry also responded on Twitter to things that Kavanagh had said, calling him "Irish Edmund," a two-pronged swipe comparing Kavanagh to Ronda Rousey’s beleaguered coach, Edmund Tarverdyan. Since then, Kavanagh has blocked him on Twitter, and some hard feelings hover in the air. Henry says he regrets taking the shots, and that it’s not in his nature to do so. "I’ve got nothing but respect for Conor," he said. "He’s an amazing fighter, and besides my guys where I’m going to be biased, I think he’s the best striker in MMA. I think he’s gotten better in different areas, I have nothing but the utmost respect for him and just what’s he’s done in this sport. And not just in the sport, but personality wise." Part of Henry’s resolve comes from the way the UFC is booking fights in 2016, with intrigue fights usurping fights that could be made adhering to the rankings. It’s one reason he says he can’t be mad at McGregor, who is just playing the game, but he feels bad for the casualties of the game itself. "You can’t blame him," he said. "My kid is going to do as much as I’ll allow him to do when he’s five. He’s going to take it and he should. That’s where that’s at, I don’t blame him for that. It just sucks for Frankie at 45 wondering where the hell things are going. I feel horrible for Jose, I mean I feel bad for him. And I feel bad for Khabib too, I really do. But that’s the way it’s done now. It’s done with [Dan] Henderson fighting [Michael] Bisping, and Conor fighting two meaningless fights, Ronda [Rousey] coming back a year-and-a-half, two years later, fighting for the title. CM Punk fighting, it’s crazy." Though he may be respectful of Kavanagh and McGregor leading up to UFC 205, Henry says he can’t say the same for Alvarez, who already showed he wouldn’t be pushed around at the press conference. In fact, his coach believes Alvarez is the worst kind of person to try and bully or play head games with. "From my end I have nothing but kind words to say to the coaches and to Conor, like I’ve tried to do through my whole coaching time," Henry said. "But I cannot promise the same for Eddie. But here’s one thing I will say about Eddie man. This stuff does not phase this kid in the least. He laughs his butt off. Even when in the title fight to him, I turn to Marlon Moraes in the corner with us, I turn to him two hours before the fight, and I said, does this dude know he’s fighting for the title, or does he think he’s going to the movies with his wife? He calms you down so much."In order to understand the concept of “treason” as it exists under The Constitution of the United States, you have to closely read Article III Section 3 which first declares, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” The words “them” and “their” are plural and refer back to the “United States”. Thus, treason–as defined in the People’s Law... the Constitution–was only against the several “United States” a/k/a The United States of America. Note that the Constitution does not define or prohibit treason against the territories, Washington DC, the federal government, or the singular “United States” found in the 14th Amendment. Constitutional treason can only be against the people of the several States of the Union. Article III Section 3 continues with “No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.” It’s tough to prove treason. It requires at least two witnesses to the same “overt Act”. If I, alone, were to witness a Congressman committing treason, I might file a “criminal complaint” with the alleged authorities–but that complaint would be almost instantly dismissed. Why? If I can’t produce a 2nd witness, the charge of treason can’t be proved so there’d be no point to proceeding with a prosecution. Read the rest of this entry »In my last post, I talked about spirit sex – erotic encounters with ghosts, angels, and other spirit beings. I concluded that such things are not only possible, but that they can actually be quite pleasant and beneficial in some cases. This leads me to the idea of erotic encounters with God. While many people find this idea absurd, more than a few mystics throughout history have described their relationship with God in romantic or sexual terms – and I don’t think they were just using exalted metaphors! My own experience (as well as that of many others) suggests it’s possible to receive this sort of love directly from God, with no human mediators involved. Consider the following quotes from mystics who experienced God in a romantic way: “Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free; Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me” (John Donne, Holy Sonnet 14). “Now as the soul is more excellent than the body, and admits of far greater joy, so this spiritual union (with God) brings in more astonishing delights and ravishments than any other marriage relationship is capable of” (Thomas Watson). “Our marriage union with husband or wife cannot be more clear, more sure, more matter of fact, than our oneness with Christ and our enjoyment of that oneness” (Charles Spurgeon). If God is the creator of sexuality, then it stands to reason that God can interact with human beings in an erotic way. And Scripture doesn’t hesitate to describe God’s relationship with humanity in exactly these terms: “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:5). “I passed by you again and looked on you; you were at the age for love. I spread my cloak over you, and covered your nakedness; I pledged myself to you and entered into a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine” (Ezek 16:8). “For this reason (that man should not be alone), a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife; and the two will become one flesh. This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church” (Eph 5:31-32). “Let us rejoice and exult and give (God) the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready” (Rev 19:7). Some people have trouble with this concept because of the power differential. Since God is so much more powerful than any human being, it’s argued, a romantic or erotic relationship between the two could never be a healthy thing. In truth, however, every relationship is somewhat imbalanced in this way. Indeed, everyone is more powerful than their spouse in one way or another, be it physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually. It’s simply not possible to find two people who are equal in every dimension of their relationship! We also need to remember that God is perfect in love, and would never do anything that isn’t for our good. Human beings may (and often do) use their power or influence to coerce, manipulate, and exploit others; but this is not the case with God. God’s power is always directed at love. Others have argued that having an erotic relationship with God is improper because it “brings God down to our level.” People who make this argument are essentially saying that sex can’t be holy; that it’s something we can (and ideally should) eventually transcend. This is essentially a Gnostic argument, favoring the spiritual over the material; and while many people think this way (including both Christians and pagans), it’s hard to reconcile it with the biblical doctrine that all of creation is “very good” (Gen 1:31)! One final argument against erotic intimacy with God is that it involves an inappropriate mixing of roles. Since God is our spiritual Father (or Mother), it’s argued that God cannot also be our lover; this would be a spiritual form of incest. The problem with this argument is that it judges spiritual realities by material ones. While incest is emotionally (and often physically) harmful on the physical plane, there’s no reason we should suppose this is the way it is on the spiritual. Indeed, it’s quite possible to love someone in an erotic way and also a parental way without harming them; it’s only when this is acted out in a physical form (by an actual parent or sibling) that it becomes problematic. As the doctrine of the Trinity makes clear, it’s very possible for God to relate to us in several different ways at the same time, without any necessary conflict. Just as God can live within us and also beyond us at the same time, God can be our divine Parent, Sibling, and Lover all at the same time. It’s only when we try to conceptualize this in physical terms that it gets awkward. While most people only experience the erotic side of God indirectly (through romantic/sexual relationships with other people), there’s nothing in Scripture, church tradition, or my own experience that would preclude feeling it in a more direct form. If God can be experienced in a sexual way, does this mean that sexuality survives beyond the grave? My own suspicion is that it does. I have several reasons for believing this. For one thing, the spirit of Christina (my girlfriend in heaven, who passed on in 2014) revealed this to me directly the first time I made contact with her. Sexuality takes a different form here, she said to me, but we still have feelings and attractions of that kind. Many Christians who object to this idea cite Jesus’ teaching that “those who are considered worthy of a place in (the coming) age, and in the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Luke 20:35). But Jesus never says that the resurrected dead have no sexual desires, or that they never interact in this way; He simply says that they don’t marry. The reason for this is simple: they are immortal, and have no need to reproduce (Luke 20:36). We must remember what marriage in Jesus’ day was: a patriarchal institution aimed at the preservation of family lines. Thus women (who were seen as the property of their fathers) were “given” to their husbands in exchange for some other form of property. A vestige of this tradition remains whenever fathers “give away” their daughters at the altar. Among the resurrected dead, however, there’s no need for any of this. Since procreation is no longer necessary, the concept of marriage as a property exchange simply disappears. In the resurrection, both women and men are free to express their sexuality for the sake of love alone. They no longer “belong” to one another in an economic sense, but are united in a cosmic love with God and all of creation. This love transcends sexuality, but also somehow includes it. I can only guess what this might be like. One thing seems clear to me, though. Whatever form sexuality takes in the resurrection, it will not be less enjoyable than what it is now – it will be more so! The biblical witness on this point is clear: all of creation is good (Gen 1:31); and in the age to come, all of it will be preserved and made new (Rom 8:22-23, Rev 21:5). This includes sexuality – which, at its best, is a foretaste of an ecstasy so amazing it strains the imagination. (This concludes the “Jesus and Sex” series. Coming Soon – “Why Are You Letting This Happen?”: The Living God and the Problem of Suffering) AdvertisementsWhy I believe the king of the Nazi hunters, Simon Wiesenthal, was a fraud For millions around the world, Simon Wiesenthal is seen as a hero. Often credited with bringing to justice some 1,100 war criminals, the Nazi hunter and Holocaust survivor is regarded almost as a saint, a man who did more than any government to lock up the perpetrators of some of the worst crimes the world has witnessed. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the recipient of a knighthood and more than 50 other honours, Wiesenthal is particularly remembered for his role in tracking down the notorious architect of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann. Revered: But did the Nazi hunter build his reputation on fantasy? After he died at the age of 96 in September 2005, the eulogies poured in from around the world. Wiesenthal was lauded as the ‘permanent representative of the victims’, a man who had not only sought justice, but prided himself on never forgetting his six million ‘clients’, as he called those who died in the Holocaust. Those who read his memoirs could only marvel at his wartime heroism and incredible escapes from death at the hands of the Nazis. It seemed as if Wiesenthal’s mission was almost divinely given, the gods sparing his life for some higher purpose. The accounts of his hunts for fugitives were no less sensational, as Wiesenthal told how he engaged in a battle of wits against the sinister postwar Nazi networks and their sympathisers. It was the ultimate feelgood story of revenge, and the world lapped it up. Rewriting history: Wiesenthal is shown attending a trial of suspected Nazi war criminals in Vienna, Austria in 1958 TV programmes and movies were made, and soon Wiesenthal became a household name, a symbol for the triumph of hope over evil. Those who thrilled at his life story can now do so once more, thanks to a new biography written by the Israeli historian Tom Segev. The figure who emerges in the book is far more complex than one might expect. Dr Segev shows that so much of Wiesenthal’s account of his life was the product of exaggeration and self-mythologising. Appearing on Radio 4’s Today programme this week, the author said Wiesenthal was ‘a storyteller, a man who lived between reality and fantasy’. He excused Wiesenthal’s inclination to fabricate stories about his past,saying it was his way of making it easier to deal with the real atrocities he had experienced in the concentration camps. I’m sorry, but this compassionate approach simply does not wash with me. For the truth is that the great Nazi hunter is far, far worse than Dr Segev makes out. In my view, Simon Wiesenthal was a liar and a fraud. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he was one of the biggest conmen of the 20th century. I spent four years working on a history of Nazi-hunting that was published last year, and the material I gathered on Wiesenthal was enough to make me scream out loud. When I started my book, I too believed that the great man was just that — great. But when I looked at all his memoirs, biographies and original archive material, I realised that, like so many others, the image I had built up of Simon Wiesenthal was hopelessly incorrect. The Lvov State Archives have no record of Simon Wiesenthal having studied at Lvov Technical University There were too many distortions and inconsistencies, too many outright lies — none of which could be explained away by sympathetic psycho-babble offered by the likes of Dr Segev. The fact is that Wiesenthal lied about nearly everything in his life. Let us, for example, start at the beginning and look at his educational record. If you visit the website of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, you’ll learn that he ‘applied for admission to the Polytechnic Institute in Lvov’, but was turned down ‘because of quota restrictions on Jewish students’. The website then claims that he went to the Technical University of Prague, ‘from which he received his degree in architectural engineering in 1932’. Other biographies — published during Wiesenthal’s lifetime — state that he did in fact go to Lvov, in either 1934 or 1935, and gained a diploma as an architectural engineer in 1939. All of these accounts are rubbish. The Lvov State Archives have no record of Simon Wiesenthal having studied at Lvov Technical University. The archives have records for other students from that period, but not for Wiesenthal — and there were no quota restrictions on Jewish students at that time. Neither did he graduate from Prague. Although he matriculated on February 21, 1929, Wiesenthal never completed his degree. He passed his first state examination on February 15, 1932, and then he left that same year. Despite a lack of academic credentials, he would fraudulently use his supposed engineering diploma on his letter paper for the rest of his life. During the war, Wiesenthal claimed to have spent years in and out of a succession of concentration camps. Although he certainly spent time in camps such as Mauthausen, he also said he had been in Auschwitz — a claim for which there is no record. Then there is his supposed career as a brave partisan. In two of his memoirs, he claims to have joined a group of partisans after escaping from a camp in October 1943. According to an interview he gave the American army in 1948, he claimed he was immediately made a lieutenant ‘on the basis of my intellect’. Since there exist at least four wildly differing accounts of Wiesenthal’s activities, serious questions about what he actually did should surely be raised He was soon promoted to major, and he was instrumental in ‘building bunkers and fortification lines’. ‘We had fabulous bunker constructions,’ he said. ‘My rank was not so much as a strategic expert as a technical expert.’ One only needs a basic grasp of World War II military history to know that Wiesenthal’s claims are highly dubious. Partisan groups do not build ‘ fabulous bunker constructions’, they instead rely on mobility to outwit the enemy. As a Jew, it is also highly unlikely that he would have been made an officer in such a group, which was usually anti-semitic. Wiesenthal would also give another account of his experience in the partisans, in which he joined a more ad hoc and smaller band — hardly one to build bunkers and fortifications or have a formalised promotion structure. Since there exist at least four wildly differing accounts of Wiesenthal’s activities between October 1943 and the middle of 1944, serious questions about what he actually did should surely be raised. Some of those who doubted his version of events — such as the lateformer Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky — went so far as to accuse Wiesenthal repeatedly in the 1970s and the 1980s of being a collaborator with the Gestapo. Kreisky’s claims were supported by unsubstantiated evidence provided by the Polish and Soviet governments, and when Wiesenthal took Kreisky to court, it was Wiesenthal who won. Two affidavits made by former members of the German army also asserted that the Nazi hunter was a collaborator, but such claims must be treated with extreme caution. Smearing Wiesenthal is a popular pastime for anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, so-called ‘Revisionists’ and other such cranks. But the multiplicity of conflicting accounts demands that questions about the authenticity of his story must be raised by those who, like me, have no agenda. However, I have no compunction in stating that the biggest lie he spun was over his involvement in the hunt and eventual capture of Adolf Eichmann, a supposed coup with which he will always be associated — and quite unjustifiably. According to the myth, Simon Wiesenthal star ted hunting Eichmann almost as soon as the war was over. By the early 1950s, he had all but given up, until he had a supposedly chance meeting with an Austrian nobleman called Baron Mast in the late autumn of 1953. Unfortunately, Wiesenthal’s intelligence was useless Baron Mast showed Wiesenthal a letter he had received in May that year from a former army comrade now living in Argentina, in which the writer had come across the ‘pig Eichmann’, who was living in Buenos Aires and working nearby. In his first published memoirs, I Hunted Eichmann, Wiesenthal recalls how he was terribly excited by the news, but realised that he was out of his depth. A few months later, on March 30, 1954, Wiesenthal finally sent a dossier on Eichmann to the World Jewish Congress and the Israeli consul in Vienna, in which he shared the contents of the Baron’s letter and revealed that the criminal was working at the construction site of a power station 65 miles from Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, Wiesenthal’s intelligence was useless. Not only was he unable to supply Eichmann’s alias — Riccardo Klement — but at the time of the Baron’s letter, Eichmann was in fact working more than 800 miles from Buenos Aires, and by March 1954 he was living in the Argentine capital trying to establish his own business. However, there was worse to come. In 1959, when the hunt for Eichmann was heating up, the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, asked Wiesenthal if he had any more information on the criminal. On September 23, he wrote to the Israelis and told them that he suspected Eichmann was in ‘northern Germany’ and that he ‘does visit Austria from time to time’. Once again, he was supplying useless information. From other sources, the Israelis had established that the fugitive was in fact in Buenos Aires, and the Wiesenthal lead was another dead end. After Eichmann was kidnapped the following year by Mossad agents, Wiesenthal at least had the grace to deny that he ‘personally had something to do with Eichmann’s arrest’, and that he had deposited all his files in Jerusalem. However, with the Israelis remaining tight-lipped about his involvement,he decided to fill the information vacuum and started placing himself right at the heart of the hunt. He would write that although he said he had sent all his files to Israel, he had actually always kept the Eichmann file. This was completely untrue. Perhaps Wiesenthal’s most shocking lie concerning the Eichmann affair was to claim that he told the Israelis in his letter of September 1959 that the Nazi was actually in Argentina. As we have seen, he told them that Eichmann was likely to be in Germany — a minor difference of several thousand miles. Curiously, Dr Segev has seen both the September 1959 letter and the later claim, yet he chooses to ignore the differences in his book. The plain facts are that Wiesenthal lied about his degree, his wartime experiences and his ‘hunt’ for Adolf Eichmann. Any man who utters so many untruths does not deserve to be revered. Although some excuse Wiesenthal’s ‘story-telling’,
give insights into Boko Haram. The BBC has a special report from Maiduguri, the stronghold of the movement. Reuters has a helpful Q&A on the movement, and al Jazeera has a backgrounder from 2010. Here is the list. For each incident I have listed the date, method of attack, target (if known), location, and casualties. I hope this list will permit deeper analysis of trends in these attacks. I may write something on that next week, but in the meantime definitely leave a comment if something leaps out at you. – Alex Thurston is a PhD student studying Islam in Africa at Northwestern University and blogs at Sahel Blog.We, at iBUYPOWER, are proud to announce our exciting new partnership with Team SoloMid (TSM). We are thrilled to align ourselves with the most premier Esports organizations in the world and eager to support Team SoloMid so that they may continue their dominance in North America as well as the global stage. 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Use the coupon code: TSM2015 to take advantage of this deal.CLOSE Press secretary Sean Spicer disputes the notion that the move by the U.S. Treasury Department was 'easing' sanctions against Russia. USA TODAY NETWORK A woman walks along a bridge over the Moskva river near the Kremlin during a sunny winter day in Moscow on Feb. 2, 2017. (Photo: Kirill Kudryavtsev, AFP/Getty Images) The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday eased economic sanctions on Russia, allowing some cyber-security transactions with the Russian Federal Security Service accused of meddling in the U.S. electoral process. Some Russian officials applauded the move as signaling a thaw in relations with Washington. But several members of Congress decried the move as pandering to Russia and its hacking attempts. The Trump administration, meanwhile, denied any easing of sanctions, describing the changes as routine tweaking of complicated policy. The move by Treasury makes changes to sanctions initially imposed by President Obama in April 2015 and strengthened again in December, in reaction to alleged "malicious cyber-enabled activities" by Russia's security service, known as the FSB, in the U.S. electoral process. The changes by the Office of Foreign Assets Control cover "all transactions and activities" involving the FSB, the successor to the KGB, that were banned by Obama's executive orders. It specifically eases the ban on sales of information technology products to Russia. #RussianHacking attacked our democracy. They should pay a price. @POTUS rewards them by rolling back sanctions against their team of hackers — Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) February 2, 2017 President Trump disputed the notion that the modifications of earlier sanctions amounted to an easing of sanctions. "I'm not easing... anything," he told reporters. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the changes do not mark a policy shift, describing them as "a regular course of action" that Treasury takes to address unintended consequences of sanctions. In the latest case, some U.S. companies had expressed concern that the sanctions would limit their ability to sell electronics to Russia. The FSB has control over imports to Russia of devices with encryption technology. While the White House tamped down speculation of a policy change, former FSB director Nikolai Kovalyov, a member of the State Duma, saw the move as a sign of improving relations between Moscow and Washington. "This shows that actual joint work on establishing an anti-terrorism coalition is about to begin," Kovalyov told Russia's TASS news agency. "Without easing these sanctions it would have been impossible to take the next step," he added. In Washington, where Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have called for strengthening, not easing of sanctions on Moscow, the move by Treasury was met with dismay among some members of Congress. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., ranking member of a House CIA subcommittee, accused the Trump administration of “rewarding” the FSB for tampering with the U.S. elections. “This is the same group (FSB) that, just a month ago, our intelligence community determined was responsible for the attack on our democracy,” Swalwell told USA TODAY. “We just made it easier for the same group to import into Russia the tools they could use to hack us or our allies again.” Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the Trump administration appeared to be going to "extreme lengths" to put Russian interests above the United States. "Allowing U.S. companies to do business with the Russian intelligence service (FSB) rewards Russia for its nefarious behavior and emboldens Putin to act out in the future," he said. The Trump administration's starts and fits over other policies, such as the recent travel ban, complicated efforts to assess the meaning of the move by Treasury. In the past, sanctions have been modified, for example, when the Obama administration eased sanctions on Iran in its landmark 2015 nuclear deal because the language of the act inadvertently included a ban on the sale of medical devices using nuclear medicine. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to make a statement on the decision, TASS reported. "First we need to understand what it is all about," Peskov said, according to TASS. "If we turn to the rocket engines matter, we will see that our U.S. counterparts never impose sanctions that could damage their own interests." Contributing: Donovan Slack in Washington; John Bacon in McLean, Va.; the Associated Press Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2k0be6sZee Media Bureau/Hemant Abhishek New Delhi: As part of the ‘Chai Pe Charcha with NaMo’ programme held on the occasion of International Women’s Day on Saturday, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi took the opportunity to address queries of women from all across the country and spelled out his ideas to solving problems faced by womenfolk in India. The Gujarat chief minister who was at the BJP headquarters here interacted with people from around 1,500 different locations via video-conferencing. Keeping in mind the upcoming polls, Modi said there was a pressing need for more effective role of women in the elections and felt this would be beneficial for the nation. “Elections have been announced. If the women of India decide we will shape India`s future, no votebank can do anything,” he avered. Spelling out his roadmap for empowering women in the country, so as to turn “home-makers into nation-makers”, Modi said that ever since he took over the reins of Gujarat he has made efforts to educate more women. “If we educate a woman we don`t only educate a family but we educate generations. Women education is very important,” he said. “We saw drop-out rates (in Gujarat) increased after Class III and IV and we realised that this was because of lack of toilet facilities and we tried to change it,” said Modi. Discrimination was another bane for women, felt Modi and added, “Why must we see sons and daughters differently. We need to be free from that.” Modi said there was a need to pass the Women`s Reservation Bill, but averred that the need was for going beyond laws by making women partners in the decision-making process. Women should be empowered right from birth, he said. Joined at the BJP headquarters by many women achievers, including former IPS officer Kiran Bedi and former Indian women`s cricket team captain Ajum Chopra, Modi said he found it strange and felt sad when people blamed all sorts of things, including women`s clothes, for cases of assault on them. On issues of women empowerment there must be no compromise—from birth, education to health said the BJP leader, and added that women should be able to “decide when to get married, how many children they want, to build a career.” Addressing a question regarding the safety of women, or rather the lack of it, Modi said that “a man must be ashamed if he commits a crime against women.” And he attacked the UPA government for twiddling its thumbs over the sensitive issue. “Centre set up the Nirbhaya Fund worth Rs 1000 crore. From what I know not a single penny has been spent from it. They also added more money this year but still nothing has been done,” said the Gujarat CM. Quoting a media report, he said that the `181` helpline it had started has also stopped working as employees running it are not being paid. The said helpline, however, has been reportedly revived after government cleared the salary arrears. "It shows how insensitive, unserious they are," he said. Like every problem, Modi said there was a solution to the lack of safety for women as well, “bas irada aur niyat chahiye (all that is required is the will and the right intention).” He said his dream was to have an India by 2022 where every family has a home with power, water and accessible education facilities for their children. The country will celebrate 75 years of independence in 2022. "Time has come when we all should think what kind of India we want to have in 2022... If we start this project (housing), imagine how much positive impact it will have on jobs, education and health of people. "When I get the chance to serve the country, which I will with your blessings, I will start it," he said. If the government can provide electricity and water to homes in all villages, that would hugely empower women as, for many of them, life is all about fetching water from far and working in smoke-filled kitchens. Asked what he had personally done for women, Modi said he had taken a decision to auction all the presents he receives, the proceeds from which would go towards the education of girls, which was in a poor state in Gujarat when he took over as the chief minister. "All CMs before me deposited 200-250 gifts with the government. I alone have submitted 3,000-4,000 gifts, which have fetched Rs 70 crore so far," he said. (With PTI Inputs)The conventional quantitative measure of the fall of the Democrats – over a thousand elective officials defeated by the GOP in the eight Obama years – doesn’t fully capture the seriousness of the problems the party faces. The party is in the hands of ancient leaders: Nancy Pelosi is 76 years old, Chuck Schumer is 66, and Hillary Clinton is 69. Bernie Sanders, the only Democrat to ignite genuine enthusiasm in the grassroots, is 75. Add four years to each, and you get the ages these leaders will be the next time the country inaugurates a new president. One option, the one I suspect they will take, is to find an African-American candidate who can ignite the black turnout the way Barack Obama did. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, both now in the Senate, are obviously positioning themselves for a run. Both are of a younger generation. Nobody wants to talk about it, but the Democrats are in serious danger of becoming quietly identified in the minds of many voters as the Black Political Party. All of the identity politics pandering, and the leftward drift of rhetoric play into the hands of racialism – igniting angry anti-white rhetoric: “…we don't need white people leading the Democratic Party…” While such sentiments may juice black turnout, they also send a message to whites, who still remain the overwhelming majority of voters, and whose support the party has been losing for years, in the hope that nonwhites will soon outnumber Caucasians. This is not a winning strategy. But the Democrats, despite their pretensions of being the party of the people, love dynasties. And when it comes to Democrat dynasties, nothing comes close to the Kennedys, the family that combines glamour, money, and the heartbreak of assassination. But as the old saying goes, “the blood thins over the generations.” What are the Democrats left with? This (via Jerry Oppenheimer of the New York Post): After three years as US ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy is coming home to New York and has big plans: a political run and penning a memoir, Kennedy insiders tell The Post. “Caroline had a successful ambassadorial run in Japan and feels really very confident about putting her hat in the ring for a New York congressional or Senate seat, with even possibly bigger political objectives down the road,” said a source familiar with Kennedy’s plans. And another close source revealed, “Caroline is seen in some quarters as the next Hillary Clinton. She has the Kennedy name but no Clinton baggage.” The sources maintain that Kennedy’s “dream” is to become a US senator from New York, following in the footsteps of her late uncle, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. While the sources declined to reveal Kennedy’s precise political plans — when and which race she might enter — 2018 is the earliest she could do it. She could target the seat of New York’s junior Democratic senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, or Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the liberal Democrat representing Kennedy’s 12th District. While I relish the thought of Caroline Kennedy engaging in an ugly intra-party struggle with either female solon, I am afraid she is not presidential material despite her last name. She dropped her previous bid for the Senate when her inability to string together words without “ya know” liberally sprinkled throughout became painfully self-evident. Have her years in Tokyo enhanced her speaking ability? How will she hype her track record in Japan, her only government experience? Our trade deficit did not reverse itself, and in the age of Trump, that is going to be where the spotlight shines. I also wonder if the power of the Kennedy brand, anchored as it is in events more than 60 years in the past, is still powerful outside Democrat loyalist circles. I don’t wish Caroline Kennedy ill. She suffered the loss of her father at a very young age and has lived in the public spotlight her entire conscious existence. She should instead find other ways to use her ample inherited resources, which include a “net worth estimated to be between $80 million and $500 million, according to Bloomberg and CNN. The Post has reported that she receives $12 million to $30 million a year from Kennedy trust funds.Roughly 2 out of 3 Poles do not want immigrants in Poland, and about 69% say they do not want non-White people in their country at all, according to studies. Despite this, the EU has been putting pressure on Poland, as well as other Eastern European countries to take in illegal immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. The public have made their views very clear, but Poland’s government has caved in to anti-White demands from the EU, and now Africans and Arabs are on their way. “The deputy minister declared during an informal meeting with his counterparts in Luxembourg that Poland would be ready to host 2000 people by 2017,” said Malgorzata Wozniak, spokeswoman for the ministry of internal affairs… Read More – White GeNOcide Project South Africa Today – World NewsBANGKOK - A Scottish tourist has been gored to death by an elephant that he and his 16-year-old stepdaughter were riding on the resort island of Samui, Thai authorities said Tuesday. Police Lt. Rotjanart Kiewjan said the animal threw Gareth Crowe and Eilidh Hughes to the ground during a trek on Monday. The elephant then gored Crowe with his tusk and stomped on him. Thai news reports said the elephant became enraged after its trainer, known as a mahout, climbed off to take a picture of the tourists. Police think hot weather may have disturbed the 13-year-old elephant. The mahout, who is from Myanmar, was also gored and Hughes was injured from her fall. Both were hospitalized. There was speculation that the elephant might have been in a state of musth, when it becomes more aggressive during its mating cycle, but Cherdchai Jaroenwech of the Office of Livestock Development said that was not the case. Cherdchai, who shot the elephant with a tranquilizer dart Monday evening, said it had been taken back to the corral of its trekking company owners, Island Safari, where it was attended to by its usual caretakers and showered constantly to cool off while remaining chained. He said the elephant, dubbed Rambo but also called by the nickname Golf, will take a 15-day break from work and then be moved to another branch of the trekking company in either Krabi or Phang Nga. Elephants are Thailand's de facto national animal and were once featured on the country's flag. Their numbers have declined in recent decades as expanding human settlements have reduced their natural habitats. Thailand now has fewer than 3,000 wild elephants and about 4,000 domesticated elephants, according to the National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department. The beasts once were used for logging, but deforestation and a subsequent ban on most logging has led to many elephants now being used as tourist attractions.Jurgen Klopp‘s search for defensive cover has led to Augsburg centre-back Ragnar Klavan, who is set to join Liverpool next week. Injuries to Mamadou Sakho and Joe Gomez prompted Klopp to look to the Bundesliga for reinforcements, with Estonia captain Klavan emerging as a key target. The 30-year-old has spent the past four seasons with Augsburg, and has one year left on his current contract. According to reporters including the Liverpool Echo‘s James Pearce, this should lead to his move to Liverpool, in a deal worth around £4.2 million. Klavan’s arrival will see him join Dejan Lovren and Joel Matip as Klopp’s immediate options at centre-back, likely dropping to the role of fifth choice on the return of Sakho and Gomez. A 6’1″, left-footed centre-back with considerable experience of top-flight football, Klavan could prove to be a shrewd acquisition for the Reds. He is clearly a player familiar to Klopp, with the 49-year-old having encountered him during his time with Borussia Dortmund, as well as in both legs of last season’s Europa League last-32 clash. Klavan is said to be seen as the “ideal replacement Kolo Toure,” with the former AZ defender five years Toure’s junior. His arrival at Anfield will likely see both Tiago Ilori and Andre Wisdom to depart, with the duo reportedly surplus to requirements for 2016/17. Ilori is set to link up with the Portugal squad for this summer’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, leaving Klopp with even fewer options for the season opener away to Arsenal on August 13. Both Ilori and Wisdom have featured heavily throughout pre-season so far, but Klavan’s arrival could see the latter omitted from Klopp’s squad for Liverpool’s tour of the US. As defensive cover, Klavan seems a sensible target for Klopp, with his willingness to play a squad role key.MINNEAPOLIS -- A bank robbery in Minnesota was caught on live TV Tuesday, sort of, CBS Minneapolis station WCCO-TV reports. Reporter Adam Sallet from CBS affiliate KIMT-TV of Mason City, Iowa, was beginning a live report Tuesday morning outside of a Sterling State Bank branch about a string of robberies in Rochester, Minnesota. Just seconds into his report, a bank employee runs up and interrupts Sallet to tell him a bank robber had just struck. "It's that guy right there," the bank employee said. A bank employee interrupts a live news report to point out a suspected bank robber in Rochester, Minn., Dec. 15, 2015. KIMT-TV A surprised Sallet, who was most likely running his own camera and audio at the scene, rolls with the punches. "Oh, that's the robber!" Sallet said. "This is live TV, folks! That's the robber [that] just went by, according to the bank employee. So, I got to go here and call 911. I'll talk to you later." Sallet then runs off camera, ending the live report. The robber was never seen on camera. Sallet tweeted Tuesday afternoon that a suspect was in custody and the suspect was likely the same person who tried to rob that bank on Monday.Blitz-speed: Germans finally get the chance to cross the Channel as 200mph Berlin to London service is given the green light Berlin to London rail service will take only four and a half hours A one way trip to Germany could cost as little as £39 to £49 German railway giant Deutsche Bahn has set its sights on rival Eurostar Trains will be connecting London's St Pancras with Germany and Holland There was a time when the prospect of Germans crossing the English Channel at speed might have been a source of some alarm. But today rail passengers on both sides of the water will be celebrating Germany’s Deutsche Bahn receiving permission to run its 200mph trains at ‘blitz’ or lightning speed through the Channel Tunnel. It will get travellers from Berlin to London in four and a half hours – and vice versa. A German ICE high speed train coming out of the Channel Tunnel on its test run in 2010 Experts predict the extra trains and competition from the nation most renowned for making its railways run on time will result in cheaper fares and a better deal for passengers. It will add four million passengers to the 10 million who already use the rail-link ‘Chunnel’. The decision follows three years of negotiation and a trial run of a 200mph German bullet train in October 2010. It will lead to direct services between Germany and Holland and London with connections across the country. The aim is to run regular services between London's St Pancras station and Frankfurt in Germany, as well as Amsterdam in Holland. Experts say the competition could also mean lower fares with a one way trip to Germany costing as little as £39 to £49. The decision was welcomed by Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin who is in favour of the move. The Intercity Express Train, one of Germany's most modern superfast trains, which will be continuing to expand across the continent Announcing the new deal, Eurotunnel said: ‘After three years of detailed study, the Intergovernmental Commission has granted Deutsche Bahn an operating certificate to run passenger services through the Channel Tunnel.’ It said: ’We believe that this long awaited decision will considerably enhance exchanges between the United Kingdom and northern Europe (Germany, Holland) and will over time add between 3 and 4 million new passengers per year to the 10 million already using the existing high speed passenger services.’ A Eurotunnel spokesman said: ‘This new chapter requires no additional investment as adjustments to the timetable and modifications to the paths through the Tunnel will suffice to accommodate the new traffic.’ He said: ‘This increase in the choice of services offered by railway operators is a measure of the improvement in the transport sector as it brings major benefits to passengers. Jacques Gounon, chairman and chief executive officer of Groupe Eurotunnel SA said: ‘Twenty years after the start of commercial services, the authorities have finally opened the Channel Tunnel to all. ‘This is wonderful news for the millions of passengers in northern Europe who can now use this most environmentally friendly means of transport to travel to London’. The Germans first made their pitch for a cross-channel train in October 2010 when they sent a trial 200-mph German bullet-train on a slow-speed dry run trial for a new direct cross-channel link. The German 'Inter City Express' train bearing the initial letters 'ICE' adorned as a red, white and blue Union Flag, aims to replace passenger jets as the main transport to Germany's financial capital and the Rhineland. The plan is for three services a day in each direction - each carrying 888 passengers in 16 coaches - on a new generation German cross-channel bullet train that will put the people of Cologne closer in travelling time to the British capital than they are to their own capital, Berlin. Two high-speed trains - one German, left, one French - in Paris. The TGV high speed train and ICE Inter City Express was a significant collaboration between rival rail giants, France's SNCF and Deutsche Bahn In Brussels, the trains will split, with eight carriages carrying 444 passengers heading to Rotterdam and then Amsterdam. The other eight carriages will head to Cologne and then Frankfurt. Deutsche Bahn officials said the journey time from Cologne to London would be under four hours - less than the time it takes to get to Berlin, around four and a half hours: 'Passenger can choose which capital they prefer - yours or ours,' said one DB official. It also mean business travellers and tourists can relax for longer in their seats or work via wi-fi rather than enduring the hassle of airline check-in, security and trips to and from the airport. It is the latest step in the plan to create high speed rail links across Britain and Europe - from Edinburgh to Madrid and Manchester to Marseilles. But while trains will hit 200mph on the Continent, tunnels on the UK side of the Channel mean high speed trains are restricted in many places to 140mph. The German challenger was the first all-new train to use the Tunnel since it opened. German railway giant Deutsche Bahn has already been busy buying up a number of UK train operators and has now set its sight on taking on the airlines and arch rival Eurostar to win passenger services between the UK and the Continent. It aims to slash the train travelling time from Central London to Frankfurt, nicknamed 'Bankfurt' in Germany because it is the nation's major financial centre, from around six hours to less than five hours. This competes with the door-to-door four and a half hours needed to fly there, once travel to the airport, check-in time and the 1 hour 30 minute flight time are put together. Launching the plan at St Pancras in October 2010, Deutsche Bahn boss Dr Ruediger Grube said it marked'a new era' of train travel adding: 'Europe is becoming a small place. 'Every day there are around 50 flights between the Greater London area and the region of Frankfurt and the Rhineland.' The City Night Line is a joint venture combining Deutsche Bahn and Eurostar trains to Paris for a service to the Tirol as part of Deutsche Bahn's expansion across the continent Until now that was out of reach of the railways, he said: 'But times change. Thanks to new railway lines, new high speed trains, and new transport policies, we will be able to share in that market.' Mr Grube said: 'Three pairs of trains will connect Frankfurt and London via Cologne, Brussels, and Lille, with one train running in each direction in the morning, at lunchtime, and in the evening. 'This will also be the first time that Amsterdam and Rotterdam have a direct connection with London.' The high speed German-built Inter City Express (ICE) trains have to pass stringent safety tests to pass through the Channel Tunnel - including evacuations. Their arrival nevertheless highlights how far international relations have moved. Some 73 years ago, at the height of the Battle of Britain, the narrow strip of water comprising the Channel was all that separated Britain from German invasion. Today the nation which was defeated is now running much of Britain's railways. Last year state-owned Deutsche Bahn said it would delay the launch of direct train services between London and Frankfurt to at least 2016, compared with initial plans to start the route in 2013. Cross-Channel train services are currently operated by Eurostar, which is majority-owned by French state-owned SNCF. Eurotunnel gets a fee for each train passing through the tunnel linking Dover to Calais. The announcement comes as ministers are embroiled in a ‘jobs for British workers’ row after confirming that Germany’s Siemens had won a controversial £1.6bn contract to build trains for the Thameslink line. The decision is a huge blow to Derby-based Bombardier, one of three major employers in the city and the last British-based train-maker. Canadian-owned Bombardier had warned ministers it needed the Thameslink contract to safeguard the future of the factory – which survived a zeppelin airship raid in 1916. It announced 1,400 job cuts at Derby plant when it was first announced that it had lost the deal. TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: ‘This will be a death blow to Derby’s economy’.A widely reported Stanford University study1 concluding there is little difference in the healthfulness and safety of conventional and organic foods has been criticized by experts in the environmental health sciences for overlooking the growing body of evidence on the adverse effects of pesticides. Critics take to task the authors’ omission of relevant studies and overinterpretation of the data. The meta-analysis of 237 studies, published in the September 2012 Annals of Internal Medicine, largely focused on nutrient content and viral/bacterial/fungal contamination of organic versus conventionally grown foods. Nine studies reporting pesticide residues, including three of residues exceeding federal limits, were included in summary analyses. The authors concluded that the studies reviewed do not support what they call the “widespread perception” that organic foods overall are nutritionally superior to conventional ones, although eating an organic diet may reduce exposures to pesticides and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.1 A Stanford press release quoted senior author Dena Bravata as saying, “There isn’t much difference between organic and conventional foods, if you’re an adult and making a decision based solely on your health.”2 (According to the Stanford Medical Center press office, Bravata is no longer doing interviews about the study.) In one key finding, the team reported a “risk difference” of 30% between conventional and organic produce, meaning organic produce had a 30% lower risk of pesticide contamination than conventional produce. That number was based on the difference between the percentages of conventional and organic food samples across studies with any detectible pesticide residues (38% and 7%, respectively). But the concept of risk difference is potentially misleading in this context, as the metric does not refer to health risk, according to Charles Benbrook, research professor and program leader for Measure to Manage (M2M): Farm and Food Diagnostics for Sustainability and Health at Washington State University. Furthermore, says Benbrook, “Pesticide dietary risk is a function of many factors, including the number of residues, their levels, and pesticide toxicity,” not just whether contamination was present. In a letter accepted for publication in the Annals of Internal Medicine,3 Benbrook pointed to the Stanford team’s lack of consideration of extensive government data on the number, frequency, potential combinations, and associated health risks of pesticide residues in U.S. food. Using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Pesticide Data Program,4 Benbrook calculated a 94% reduction in health risk attributable to eating organic forms of six pesticide-intensive fruits.3 The Stanford researchers also missed opportunities to examine the relationship of pesticides and health outcomes demonstrated in a growing number of cohort studies, says Brenda Eskenazi, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. Eskenazi conducted one such study,5 one of a trio published in April 2011 that examined the relationship between cognitive development and prenatal pesticide exposures in two multiethnic inner-city populations6,7 and one farmworker community in California.5 One of the studies7 found deficits of seven IQ points in 7-year-old children in the highest quintile of pesticide exposure, compared with children in the lowest quintile, as measured by maternal urinary pesticide metabolite levels during pregnancy. Results were comparable in the other two studies. In concluding that the evidence “does not suggest marked health benefits from consuming organic versus conventional foods,”1 many commenters, including Eskenazi and Benbrook, felt the Stanford team ignored risks to broader public health like those outlined in an April 2012 review by David C. Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. In his review Bellinger argued that subtle impacts of organophosphate pesticides on neurodevelopment can add up to substantial population-level impacts. He wrote, “It is frequently noted that a modest downward shift in mean IQ scores will be accompanied by a substantial increase in the percentage of individuals with extremely low scores.”8 Conventional toxicology testing is now being shown to miss responses that occur at doses that are orders of magnitude lower than previously established no-observed-adverse-effects levels,9 with potential implications for our understanding of pesticide safety. And others are finding in animal studies that pesticide exposures in utero can induce epigenetic changes that alter stress responses and disease rates in future generations. In one study, exposure of rats to vinclozolin, a common agricultural fungicide, was associated with altered stress responses in the F3 generation (the original animals’ great grandchildren), compared with F3 progeny of unexposed animals.10 These responses were seen at high doses unlikely to be encountered as food residues but potentially applicable to agricultural workers. Exposures to the pesticides methoxychlor, DEET, permethrin, and vinclozolin, as well as dioxin (which can appear as an impurity in pesticides), also “predispose animals to develop a variety of adult-onset diseases earlier than normal,” says Michael Skinner, a professor in the Washington State University School of Biological Sciences who coauthored this study. He says these effects are “still detectable in animals over four subsequent generations, without diminution.” In October 2012 the American Academy of Pediatrics weighed in, for the first time ever, on the question of whether children benefit from an organic diet.11 In a report published in Pediatrics, the academy recognized that an organic diet definitely reduces exposure to pesticides and may reduce diseases associated with antibiotic resistance but has not been proven to offer a clinically relevant nutritional advantage over a conventional diet. The academy emphasized the importance of providing children a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat or fat-free dairy products, regardless of whether the foods are conventional or organic, and provided resources for parents seeking guidance on which foods tend to have the heaviest pesticide residues.What do dogs want, petting or being spoken to? According to a study it’s very much the former. Scientists found that dogs had a preference for petting, whether it was from a stranger or from their owner. And it was found that dogs will only respond to vocal praise when they are very familiar with an owner and their voice. Scroll down for video Research led by the University of Florida says dogs prefer petting (stock image shown). In the study they found dogs were more satisfied by physical contact. But they also found that dogs never tired of being petted. The results were true for dogs being petter by strangers and their owners The research was led by Dr Erica Feuerbacher from the University of Florida. In the study, co-authored by Dr Clive Wynne of Arizona State University, the scientists examined a variety of dogs and their responses to situations. They looked at shelter dogs, owned dogs with strangers providing interactions and owned dogs with their owner providing interactions. DOES YOUR DOG HAVE 'DOMESTICATION SYNDROME'? Scientists think they know why domestic species tend to have certain characteristics that accompany their tameness, such as floppier ears, patches of white fur, and more juvenile faces with smaller jaws. Geneticists believe that a group of embryonic stem cells called the neural crest, link all these traits, which are seen in many people’s pet cats and dogs. Although the experts' proposal has not yet been tested, it is the first hypothesis that connects several components of the ‘domestication syndrome.’ It not only applies to mammals like dogs, foxes, pigs, horses, sheep and rabbits, but it may even explain similar changes in domesticated birds and fish, according to the study published in the journal Genetics. Across all groups they found the dogs had a preference for petting over vocal praise. Additionally they found that dogs never tired of being petted. When the dogs were petted they also preferred to stay in the proximity of the experimenter. But when only vocal praise was used they showed little proximity-seeking behaviour, on a similar level to when no interaction was initiated at all. ‘Overall, petting seems to be an important interaction between dogs and humans that might maintain inter-specific social behavior but vocal praise likely has to be specifically conditioned,’ the researchers write. Previous research this year from the same two scientists, however, found that petting wasn’t the be-all and end-all; the animals actually preferred food to being touched. When food was readily available the dogs preferred to eat than be petted, and when access to food was limited the dogs showed ‘sensitivity’.Cybersecurity will be a topic of discussion as US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet Friday and Saturday for a historic, informal summit at a California retreat. But with US accusations of hacking at a fever pitch and Chinese denials of state support for hackers only slightly muffled by an agreement to form a high-level working group, what would productive US-China cybersecurity cooperation really look like? For the United States, cooperation starts at home. Cybersecurity is a confoundingly broad concept, including copyright protection, guarding trade secrets, maintaining secrecy at military contractors, protecting military and intelligence community secrets, and defending critical infrastructure from potentially deadly sabotage. Thus the United States policy community needs to define its goals with a realistic view of potential Chinese cooperation and in connection with new measures at home. Different types of cybersecurity require different perspectives. With political and military secrets, including the work of defence contractors, neither country can realistically expect the other to stop spying. The Washington Post reported last month that Chinese hackers were suspected of accessing parts of the designs for "more than two dozen major weapons systems". The US government can protest if it likes, but it should not be surprised. Espionage of this kind is to be expected, and these alleged incursions are unlikely to be useful topics of conversation. Instead, the United States should upgrade its system for controlling secrets, including among contractors, and hold accountable those who fail to meet strict standards. Some secrets will inevitably be lost, but stronger measures at home, including Obama's effort to increase information sharing on attacks, can help. The US government does have a chance to decrease the theft of corporate secrets, widely alleged to be sponsored in some cases by Chinese state entities. The US side could frame intellectual property (IP) protection as a foundation of China's efforts to spur innovation and show that more US technology would move
Bollywood actor to star in two films that won the Academy Award for Best Director ( Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and Life of Pi (2012)). Both films also won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography and Best Original Score. Was signed for the film "Tezaab - Acid of Love" but opted out. Was signed for Deepa Mehta's Midnight Children, but was replaced by Ronit Roy. Had signed a film titled " Fanne Khan" directed by Shivam Nair. He was later replaced by Randeep Hooda. Kunal Khemu' s name was also being talked about as being the lead. The film was announced in 2012 and was shelved in 2014. Was signed for the lead role in Mira Nair's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. He later opted out as he did not want to play a terrorist. Starred in Tigmanshu Dhulia's shelved 2006 period drama " Ghulaami". Co starring Sunny Deol and Sameera Reddy. Starred in Tigmanshu Dhulia's shelved 2004 film "The Killing of a Porn Filmaker". Co starring Konkana Sen Sharma. In the film Irrfan plays a porn film maker who finds out he was Adolf Hitler in his last life time. To pay for his sins of his last life time, he starts to do charity work. He is killed by a Jew in the end of the film. Starred in the shelved film 1998 "Kanoon Ki Zanjeer". Directed by Dilip Gautam and Baal Nave. Co starring Chandrashekhar, Seema Kashyap, Laxmi Chhaya, Asha Sharma, Avtar Gill, Junior Mehmood, Kiran Kumar, Bharat Kapoor, Ram Sethi, Rakesh Bedi. Music by : Mewalal Sharma and Anmol. Starred in Anil Sharma's 2004 shelved production " Phaansi". Directed by Chandrakant Barve. Co starring Sunil Shetty (as a Punjabi sardar), Rahul Dev, Deepti Bhatnagar. He was signed for an important role in Anurag Kashyap's "Black Friday" but opted out. Starred in director Navneet Baj Saini's 2007 shelved film " Teersri Manzil". Co starring Lucky Ali, Ranveer Shorey, Deepal Shaw, Nausheen Ali Sardar. The films title was later changed to "Bangkok Blues". Starred in Jaya Pradha's 2006 shelved home production. Directed by Kitu Gosh. Co starring Jaya Pradha, Priyanshu Chatterjee, Sandhya Mridul. It was a suspense thriller. Was approached to star in Anjan Das film "Faltu"(2005) Starring Yash Pandit Manjari, Tinnu Anand,Anjan Srivastav. Produced by Planline Life. The film was based on the partition. He agreed to star in the film but later had to back out. Was signed for the film "Gangor" aka (Choli Ke Peeche) but was replaced by Adil Hussein. Starred in Mahesh Bhatt's 2004 shelved production based on Abdul Karim Telgi. Directed by Pooja Bhatt. Starred in Sudhir Mishra's shelved film" The Nawab The Nautch Girl and The John Company" co starring Saif Ali Khan, Chitrangada Singh. It was a.period film based in 1857. Sudhir initially wanted Anil Kapoor in the film. This was in 2003. Wife Sutapa is a dialogue writer in films. Had gone to see the shooting of Ganga Ke Saugandh and Jal Mahal as a child. Both films were shot in his home town. Was offered a role in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Sean Connery. the deal fell though at the last minute. Was offered Matt Damon's part in 'Interstellar' and Chiwetel Ejiofer's part in 'The Martian', he ended up turning down both roles due to scheduling conflicts. Starred in Ragini and Vibha Bhatnagar's shelved untitled film in 2005. Starring Irrfan Khan, Amisha Patel, Dino Morea. Directed by Vikram Bhatt. The film was going to be a genre never attempted before by Vikram Bhatt. Was going to star in the Hollywood movie "Indian Summer". The controversial film "Indian Summer", about Lady Edwina Mountbatten's alleged affair with India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, has been scrapped. Based on the book of the same name by Alex Von Tunzelmann about the last days of Britain's colonial rule in India, the film got in trouble after the Indian government voiced concerns over the plot. Officials demanded copy approval of the script and eventually gave the film the green light, but the project continued to be plagued by money problems, with bosses at Universal Studios reportedly fretting over the estimated $30-40 million cost. Director Joe Wright (husband of Anoushka Shankar) says the wrangling with the Indian government effectively sealed the film's fate. "We were in between a rock and a hard place. The Indian government wanted us to make less of the love story while the studio wanted us to make more of the love story," he told Variety magazine. Cate Blanchett was roped in to play Edwina in the movie while Irrfan Khan was to play Nehru. Two of the films that he has worked on (Slumdog Millionaire and Life of Pi) collectively won 12 Oscars. Starred in Dheeraj Kumar's shelved film "Behind The Painted Veil"(2003).Directed by Roger Christian. The film was going to be a international cross over film. Starring Irrfan Khan, Gulshan Grover. Starred in the shelved film,Alibaug: A Sanjay Gupta film, based on an episode from Gupta's life. This film revolves around a young professor, who was once the life of his college. He is now dying, but has something to take care off before he breathes his last. He wishes to bring together his favourite bunch of students, who've drifted apart, and let the mad race of life take over their existence. Will the dying man help them make regain their lives?... Sanjay Dutt was to make a Special Appearance, but in March 2008 he asked Gupta to replace him. He had shot for ten days in June 2007, but after his separation from White Feather Films and Gupta and with his many other pending commitments, Sanjay obviously didn't find place for Alibaug anymore in his schedule. His role went to Irrfan Khan. But even then, the film was never completed. When he arrived in Bombay, he worked as a air conditioner repair man. One of the first houses he visited to repair a air conditioner was the house of superstar Rajesh Khanna. Personal Quotes (2) I often visualized giving my mother this big black suitcase crammed with notes like those gangsters do in our masala flicks. We're yet to make inroads into the West and the way Chinese cinema is made. I mean, long before Ang Lee's 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon', Bruce Lee had made an impact on the Western audience with his 'Enter The Dragon'. Indian cinema is yet to make that kind of impact. But we're getting there.TOKYO (Reuters) - The radiation released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was almost 2-1/2 times the amount first estimated by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday. Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's reactor buildings one to four (L to R) are seen in Fukushima prefecture, in this aerial view photo taken by Kyodo, March 11, 2012, the day marking the first anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands and set off a nuclear crisis. REUTERS/Kyodo Tokyo Electric Power said its own analysis conducted over the past year put the amount of radiation released in the first three weeks of the accident at about one-sixth the radiation released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. “If this information had been available at the time, we could have used it in planning evacuations,” Tepco spokesman Junichi Matsumoto told a news conference. Because radiation sensors closest to the plant were knocked out by the March 11, 2011 quake and the tsunami, the utility based its estimate on other monitoring posts and data collected by Japanese government agencies. Tepco, set to be nationalized in July in exchange for a Japanese government bailout, estimated meltdowns at three Fukushima reactors released about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances into the air during March. That was 2-1/2 times the amount of the first estimate by Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency in April last year and about 17 percent more than the highest estimate provided by the government safety agency. The estimate was based on measurements suggesting the amount of Iodine-131 released by the nuclear accident was three times higher than previous estimates, the utility said in the report. Iodine-131 is a fast-decaying radioactive substance produced by fission that takes place inside a nuclear reactor. It has a half-life of eight days. More than 99 percent of the radiation released by the accident came in the first three weeks, it added. The Fukushima Daiichi plant, which had six reactors, was hit by a series of hydrogen explosions and meltdowns after power and cooling systems were cut off by the tsunami. The World Health Organization released its own study this week concluding that residents around the Fukushima plant had been exposed to up to 20 times normal background radiation in the first year after the accident. That was still within the WHO’s recommended emergency limit. Officials expect it will take up to 30 years to decommission the Fukushima reactors. The accident has prompted a debate over the future of nuclear power in the resource-poor nation.The article was written by Ayush Singh Tip Ranks #4 Financial Blogger – Senior Analyst at I Know First. Baidu Stock Improving cost structures will boost margins. Improving cost structures will boost margins. Core business will continue generating cash. Diversification efforts will drive growth. I Know First has a bullish view on BIDU Stock for the next short and long time horizons. I have been bearish on the Chinese stock market and companies that rely heavily on China since the last four months. Due to the overvaluation of the stocks in China, I was expecting a crash, which was the primary reason I was bearish. However, despite the overvaluation, investors can find value in some companies and one of those companies is Baidu (BIDU). Baidu is a Chinese language Internet search provider. The Company offers a Chinese-language search platform on its website Baidu.com. The company has a high penetration rate in China and I am sure that it can outperform even if there’s a slowdown in the Chinese economy. Hence, investors who want to buy and hold a stock for the long-term (about 5 years) can take a look at Baidu. (Source: Google) Eliminating Costs Towards the end of 2015, Baidu sold Qunar stake to its rival Ctrip. The foremost thing about selling the Qunar position to Ctrip is the removal of the rising prices of the online travel site from the financials. For the third quarter, Qunar reported negative operating margins of 41.3 percent. The agreement with Ctrip is likely to display refining yields and higher margins, but the guidance for fourth quarter proposed no enhancements in the operating margins. Moving back to October 26, 2015, keeping in mind the expenses reported for the fourth quarter, the Qunar numbers were no longer involved in outlays of Baidu contributing to the stumpy growth speed. Despite that, throughout the fourth quarter, the transaction services affected Baidu’s total operating margins by around 24.9 percent. In spite of this cost and additional 5.9 percentage point smash from iQiyi, the company still produced an operating margin of 20.7 percent. Given the strong growth, Baidu is still trading at a decent multiple, especially since it is known as the Google of China. Price–sales ratio (Source: SeekingAlpha) Eliminating the Qunar costs completely this year will help Baidu focus the investment theme back on the fundamental Internet search business of the company that has a top-line growth rate of around 20 percent and profit margins of approximately 50 percent. Apart from this, the company strategies a more dignified outlay on transaction services with an aim of a better focus on computing the efficiency of advancements. The core cash cow Baidu’s total revenue in 2015 was up 35.3 percent as compared to 2014’s revenue. The major portion of the revenue came from Baidu’s online search business. According to the company, online marketing revenues accounted for more than 96 percent of the yearly total. The company’s client list jumped around 29 percent and the average revenue per client by approximately 2 percent. (Source: Google) The online search business is the most perilous part of the company for the short term. Furthermore, it delivers the cash that Baidu is spending to enlarge its contribution in maps and transaction services. It is fine to focus on Baidu’s next growth driver, but the core search business has enormous tailwinds behind it, and the company’s growth story still has a lot to show. Risk is controllable Any investment contains risk, and Baidu is an investment whose risks are relatively controllable. The most significant risk it that the company is mainly dependent on China, as its business operates in China, which points towards a financial and supervisory risk profile that is very exclusive. There are several reports which put forward that China’s economy is approaching towards a phase of more retained growth, which could definitely act to shrink advertiser expenditure over the coming few years. However, this is not likely to be a substantial grinch on the company’s long-term growth. The digital advertising landscape in China is also at a state of flux as various new players create new value proposals. Recently, Tencent is the one to attract many advertisers and is seizing a disproportionate share of social advertising mainly due to the reason because advertisers start to shift investments from search in the direction of more personalized content offerings and social commerce. My bullish sentiment is shared by the analysts covering Baidu. According to TipRanks, out of the 9 analysts covering Baidu, 7 rate it a Buy, whereas 2 rate it a Hold. Also, analysts have an average price target of roughly $212, representing almost 16% upside potential from the current value. In addition, out of the bloggers covering the stock, 81% are bullish whereas only 19% are bearish. Given the positive sentiments, I think Baidu definitely has more upside to offer. Additional services Apart from this, the company introduced several new mobile facilities in recent times, comprising a mobile cloud offering and mobile navigation as well as mobile music streaming package. Baidu’s new services should aid to surge the adhesiveness of search users, if not subsidize to additional revenue. These new services also provide a new mobile catalogue, where Baidu can influence prevailing advertising relations and propose new properties to advertisers. The company’s mobile music service nowadays claims over 150 million MAUs. The company is continuously putting efforts to make its services advance and is not standing still as far as next-generation service improvement is alarmed. As Google, Baidu is also working on its moonshot projects, together with the self-driving car concept. These new businesses should ultimately produce new revenue streams. Conclusion To sum it up, Baidu is the Google of China. While the concerns surrounding the Chinese economy may put downward pressure on the stock, I think it is a perfect for long-term investors. Baidu has a strong core business and is also actively diversifying into other sectors. The favorable risk/reward ratio makes Baidu a great pick for long-term investors. My long-term bullish Baidu outlook is echoed by algorithmic forecasts of I Know First. I Know First uses an advanced state of the art algorithm based on artificial intelligence and machine learning to foresee market performance for more than 3,000 markets including stock forecasts, world indices, commodities, interest rates, ETFs, and currencies. The algorithm generates a forecast with a signal and a predictability indicator. The signal is the number at the center of the box. The predictability is the figure at the bottom of the box. At the top, a particular asset is identified. This format is standardized across all forecasts. The middle number indicates strength and direction, not a price target or percentage gain/loss. The bottom figure, the predictability, signifies a confidence level. As you can see from the image above, the green bullish signals of 278 and 17.29, 3 months and the 1-year forecast indicates that the stock can head a lot higher in the long-term. Hence, I think long-term investors can use the recent pullback as an entry point as Baidu is still in the red YTD. In the past, I Know First has correctly predicted the bearish movement of BIDU stock thanks to their advanced algorithm. The forecast from August 1st, 2014 correctly predicted the great fall they had bringing to investors who took a short position on BIDU a 20.08% return for the 1 year period. The forecast had predicted a bearish signal of -57.26 and predictability of 0.23 as seen below in the forecast. Also, I Know First has previously predicted successfully BIDU stock movement with a bullish signal in this forecast from April 29th to July 29th, 2014.The algorithmic bullish signal of 31.43 and predictability of 0.16 was enough for the stock to bring returns of 45.76% for the three-month position.Demands for Goldsmiths University diversity officer Bahar Mustafa to be removed from her post have grown after it emerged she used inflammatory quotes on tweets including #killallwhitemen and #whitetrash. Almost 15,000 people have now signed a petition at change.org calling for Mustafa's removal following her plea for white men not attend an event for black and ethnic minority students at the south east London university. About 1,700 signed a similar petition supporting her. Attempting to explain why she had tweeted offensive slogans, Mustafa said they were "in-jokes and ways that many people in the queer feminist community express ourselves. It's a way of reclaiming the power from the trauma many of us experience as queers, women, people of colour, who are on the receiving end of racism, misogyny and homophobia daily." She admitted, however, that using the term #whitetrash on an official account was "not professional". In a video posted online Mustafa added: "I, an ethnic minority woman, cannot be racist or sexist towards white men because racism and sexism describe structures of privilege based on race and gender and therefore women of colour and minority genders cannot be racist or sexist, since we do not stand to benefit from such a system." Mustafa, who claims to have received racist and sexist abuse when the news surfaced, has also had plenty of support from the online community with many followers using the hashtag #supportbaharmustafa. One Twitter user, Ella Baeker, said: "I #supportbaharmustafa because the question shouldn't be 'why were white people & men excluded?' but instead 'why are safe spaces needed?'" However, others took an opposing view. George King wrote: "#supportbaharmustafa: one of the stupidest hashtags I've actually seen on here. Because replacing inequality with more inequality is right?" Goldsmiths University said in a statement: "We have no involvement in [the Union's] decision-making or the programme of events that they offer."OAKLEY — Police say an argument about sports and politics led to a fatal stabbing in Oakley on Saturday. Phillip Wade, 38, of Antioch was arrested for allegedly stabbing 57-year-old Anthony Johnson of Pittsburg multiple times at a bus stop in Oakley on Saturday afternoon. According to police, Johnson and Wade were arguing over sports and politics on a Tri Delta Transit bus. The argument continued after both men got off the bus on Main Street near Charles Way. Wade then allegedly produced a knife that he used to stab Johnson multiple times. A witness passing by stopped his vehicle and pulled out a gun and told Wade to get on the ground until police arrived. Without knowing who was who, the police took the witness and the suspect into custody, but later released the witness. Johnson was transported to the hospital, but later died from injuries sustained in the assault. Johnson’s brother, James Johnson, said that “Tony” was not a violent man, but that he liked to socialize a lot and was well-known in Pittsburg. “He just talked a lot. He could talk to anybody and sometimes he would talk loud,” James Johnson said. “He socialized a lot and he talks, but he wasn’t a man to be violent like that.” Tony’s brother said that Tony had moved from Alabama back home to Pittsburg three years ago after his wife passed away. Lavonda Harts, Anthony Johnson’s niece, said her uncle was passionate about life and loved to talk about sports and politics. “He was very quick with his words and everyone always has a joke that he’s told them,” Harts said. “He left some funny jokes with anyone he ever met.” The incident marks the third stabbing in six years for Wade. In March of 2011, Wade stabbed 23-year-old Justin Garza in the Brentwood BART park-and-ride after an argument on the train carried into the parking lot. Garza survived the incident. Then in August of 2013, Wade fatally stabbed 49-year-old Kann Cendejas, a homeless veteran, at a Chevron gas station in the 3200 block of Delta Fair Boulevard in Antioch. Antioch police did not return calls for comment on this case, but Wade’s friend, Gabriel Desta, said he was released after a few days. “He’s had many altercations over the years and it’s gotten more severe,” Desta said. “He was never like this before. He’s been very vocal ever since I met him, but lately he was getting paranoid. Unusually paranoid.” According to Desta, Wade had been taking a lot of medication for seizures and started telling Desta that people were talking about him, even when the people in question were too far away to be heard. “The other day at Mel’s Diner, he told a waitress that he would stab a group of black guys there, saying they were talking bad about him, but they weren’t talking about him,” Desta said. Wade’s Facebook page outlines increasingly hostile statements and threats towards Muslims and African-Americans. On May 19, Wade posted a threatening racist statement concerning former president Barack Obama along with the gun emoji and the emoji of a man wearing a turban. Desta said that Wade could be prejudiced at times, but described him as “more of a follower,” who became a “major Trump supporter.” The victim in Saturday’s fatal stabbing was black. On Monday, Oakley police chief Chris Thorsen said they do not believe the incident was racially motivated, but continue to investigate. Check back for updates.Anyone who watched the women’s World Cup final might have wondered if it’s possible to harness that pure human energy. Turns out, it is. There’s enough power in a soccer ball to light the night — or at least a part of it. It’s done via sOccket, a soccer ball that kids kick around all day, where its movement generates energy. When the sun sets, plug an LED lamp into the ball and it turns into a light for reading or other purposes. Play with the sOccket for 15 minutes and use the light for up to three hours. Sustainable, non-polluting, safe. SOccket was created to solve a pervasive problem — the lack of reliable electricity — with a pervasive game. More than one-fifth of the world’s population, about 1.4 billion people, lack electric power, but kids almost everywhere play soccer. Conceived as a group project at Harvard University by Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman when they were undergraduates, sOccket has been tested in South Africa, Nigeria, Spain and Haiti. Now, Matthews said in a telephone interview, it’s on track for mass production and distribution later this year. Testing has led to significant improvements, Matthews said from London. “We’ve pretty much changed everything from the prototype … One thing that people can expect is definitely a redesign of the soccer ball, to think of our end-user, which is the resource-poor child.” That includes making the internal mechanism a lot sturdier. Early versions lasted a few months; the new ones to be unveiled in August or September should last at least a year, she said. The latest version will also be able to power more than an LED lamp, but Matthews wouldn’t say exactly what appliances it might energize. SOccket is a “movement” of an enterprise called Uncharted Play Incorporated, co-founded by Matthews and Silverman. This movement isn’t ending with a soccer ball. Matthews said plans for next year include a sOccket basketball. Photo credit: REUTERS/Thomas Bohlen (Japan’s Nahomi Kawasumi (C) is challenged by Amy Le Pielbet of the U.S. during Women’s World Cup final soccer match in Frankfurt July 17, 2011)What if you could walk the enormous Valles Marineris on Mars, one of the biggest canyon system in the Solar System? Or, if you are more of a “down to Earth” type of person, what if you could ascend Mt. Everest – within the comfortable setting of your own bed? You can with a special technique called lucid dreaming! A lucid dream is a type of dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. In a lucid dream, the dreamer can in varying degrees gain control over their participation within the dream and even be able to manipulate their imaginary experiences in the dream environment. The term lucid dreaming was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden in 1913. He explained that within this state “the re-integration of the psychic functions is so complete that the sleeper reaches a state of perfect awareness and is able to direct his attention, and to attempt different acts of free volition. Yet the sleep, as I am able confidently to state, is undisturbed, deep, and refreshing.” But if one is conscious surely it means that one is not dreaming since those two concepts are polar opposites, right? True, many researchers, scientists and psychologists who have since engaged in studying this peculiar phenomenon hold the opinion that lucid “dreaming” in not really dreaming. Putting aside the scientific debate let’s explore how any of us can, with time and practice, achieve this interesting state. One of the best known and most reliable technique is called MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming). You should wake up early in the morning and do some simple activity like reading or drinking a cup of water and then you should go to sleep again. Then you must imagine yourself asleep and dreaming, rehearsing the dream from which you woke, and reminding yourself, “Next time I dream this I want to dream” or “I’m going to have a lucid dream” to the point where you start believing in the words. That technique is most reliable because you initiate it yourself. Once you realize you are dreaming it’s best to do a reality check to make sure. Reality checks can be done simply by counting the fingers of your hand or checking the time. If one sees 4 fingers on one hand and 6 fingers on the other – it is a sign of a dreaming state since, most of us at least, have 5 fingers on each hand. Another good reality check technique is called backtracking – figuring out how you got to where you are now. If, for instance, you realize you are in your familiar room but suddenly after 5 seconds you find yourself in the Australian outback being pursued by a giant kangaroo – that means you are dreaming! A bit harder technique to master is called WILD (Wake initiated Lucid Dreaming). In this method you go from waking state to dreaming state without losing consciousness. You should lie in a comfortable place and focus on breathing deeply, relaxing muscle tension in your body. This kind of method is similar to the technique for increasing awareness by meditation and mindfulness. Advanced practitioners of meditation claim to maintain awareness through a large proportion of their sleep. Transcendental meditation is often claimed to lead to sleep awareness. So perhaps it is not surprising that some recent research finds associations between meditation and increased lucidity (Gackenbach and Bosveld 1989). Your brain will try to test if you are awake by giving the body an impulse to roll over or it will give the body and itching sensation but you must resist the urge to act on them. One way to battle them is by visualizing objects and images of your choice and letting them come and go into your mind, not focusing on them. Another simple yet highly recommended tool in achieving lucid dreaming is keeping your own “dream diary”. Upon waking up you should write anything you remember about the dream you just had. This is helpful in identifying dream signs – those crucial details that will help you identify whether or not you are in a dream or not in a particular moment. One type of sleep called REM has been found to be particularly associated with dreaming. Rapid eye movement sleep (or REM) is a unique phase of sleep characterized by random movement of the eyes, low muscle tone throughout the body, and the propensity of the sleeper to dream vividly. Therefore it has been found that lucid dreams occur far more often in REM type of sleep than any other. Hobson and McCarley proposed that the PGO waves characteristic of “phasic” REM might supply the visual cortex and forebrain with electrical excitement which amplifies the hallucinatory aspects of dreaming. Scientific research has found that these eye movements that occur in REM sleep may correspond to the direction the dreamer “looks” at in the dreamscape. This has enabled trained lucid dreamers to communicate with researchers while dreaming by using eye movement signals. In 2014 an experiment conducted by Ursula Voss and her team in Frankfurt University found that current stimulation (electrocution) during REM sleep influences ongoing brain activity and induces self-reflective awareness in dreams. When non-lucid dreamers were given 30-second jolts of electrical current to the frontal cortex while asleep, they reported spontaneously vivid dreams in which they fully recognized they were dreaming. Stimulation at 40 Hz was effective 77% of the time. This and other scientific research only supports what we knew all along – the fact that everybody dreams, the real difference is only in the “how” part of our dreaming. Are you ready to make your dreams interactive and exciting? CommentsBefore I had kids, I went to concerts. A lot of concerts. The New Pornographers, Peaches, Rilo Kiley, Wilco. Never Fall Out Boy, though. Don’t get me wrong: I liked Fall Out Boy. But I filed them under the “guilty pleasure” category. Motherhood changed me in a whole lot of ways, but one of the most significant is that I stopped having “guilty pleasures.” I stopped concealing things I loved because I cared what other people thought—partially because I stopped having time to care and partially because I feel a huge responsibility to raise kids who feel free to love what they love and who aren’t afraid to express that love. And they need to see that, first and foremost, embodied in their mom. Since having kids, I’ve been to six Fall Out Boy concerts, and they’ve come to define my journey through motherhood. Show #1 When: May 2013 Where: 9:30 Club, Washington, D.C. Key stats: My daughter is 7 months old My daughter was born in October 2012. My husband and I used to joke that she was a video game—but instead of getting started on an easy level like Beginner, we were handed a baby who was always set to either Hard, Advanced or Expert. She had colic, which means she cried inconsolably for hours every day. I spent the next few months living in a body I didn’t recognize while trying to soothe this new human being, one I’d made, one who seemed miserable to have been born. November 22, 2012: I had a 1-month-old. Things weren’t great. Motherhood does things to you. You instantly have more responsibility and less power than you’ve ever had before, and I was caving under the weight of it. I used to take one drive every day, alone. I’d listen to “Runaway” by Kanye West and cry—and then I’d go home and be the best mom I could be. That’s what parents do: We stabilize. We file away your own big, bad emotions into a secret compartment for the sake of our families, and we fight to stay happy in the process. And then, in April 2013, Fall Out Boy ended their hiatus and released “Save Rock and Roll.” Subscribe to the Motto newsletter for advice worth sharing. The album became the soundtrack to my days; it inspired me to acquire a pair of concert tickets and a babysitter. When my daughter was 6 months old, there was a weeklong period where she cried for at least an hour every night, starting at 3 a.m.; I’d put on a pair of headphones, put that song on repeat and attack the grout in our bathrooms with a toothbrush. I was exhausted. The grout had never been cleaner. The show was amazing. FOB at the 9:30 Club. My water and me. Show # 2 When: September 2013 Where: Patriot Center, Fairfax, Virginia Key stats: My daughter is 11 months old As the year passed and I juggled family and work, I always felt like I had three roles to play: Mom, wife and employee. And some days (fine, a lot of days), it felt like I was failing at all of them. There is a line in “I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off (Me & You)” that goes: The best way to make it through With hearts and wrists intact Is to realize two out of three ain’t bad This is not how Fall Out Boy meant this lyric, but I adopted it as my metric for success in motherhood. On any given day, I tried to do well at two of my three roles. I gave myself permission to fail at one thing. And I forgave myself. I accepted that I was doing my best. Some days, 95% of a meal I made would end up on the floor, and I’d want to cry and scream, “Why did I bother?!” But instead, I gave myself a passing grade because I tried. When word came that there would be a follow-up “Save Rock and Roll” arena tour, I was immediately in. I bought great seats. The concert—which was on a Tuesday night—rolled around, and I screamed in the crowd. I danced. I let go of all the times it felt like I’d failed as a mom, as a wife, as an employee. I let go of all the times I didn’t feel like I was enough. And I left clean. Show #3 When: July 2014 Where: Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, Maryland Key stats: My daughter is 18 months old The further my husband and I got away from the first bad months with my daughter, the harder they became to remember. And the further we got away from them, the more we began to gaslight ourselves. Had it really been that hard? Were we really just freaked-out first-time parents? We couldn’t be sure, but we were happy. We moved. We left our tiny condo on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., and decamped to the suburbs. I’d made a career change after having my daughter—from content to product management—and I was finally finding my way. At the same time, Fall Out Boy was being accused of changing their sound, from punk to pop. I was making frequent trips west to Los Angeles for meetings. In early July, on a flight from D.C. to Los Angeles that left in the evening and flew into the sunset for what felt like the longest, most endless evening ever, I drank a glass of wine and wrote my husband an email that said: “Going away and facing going away—and the thought of you and our daughter living a life without me—made me realize how much and how full I am with love for you both. Like, the thought of little moments you’ll have when I am gone the next few days makes me physically ache—and it makes me see how even though my heart is pretty full, it’s also possible for it to grow and grow and grow with the amount that you love someone, or someones. Because, man, do I love you two.” I had achieved equilibrium. Me and my husband at Monumentour. Monumentour was the final leg of the “Save Rock and Roll” era. I was so pumped for this show. So pumped. But when the day of arrived, I was so tired. My husband and I stopped at a Starbucks on our way to the show for an iced coffee, black. And then we stopped for another. It didn’t work. I was exhausted. Weeks of traveling and work and taking my daughter to the pool had clearly caught up with me. I conserved my energy for Fall Out Boy, and when they played, I danced. It was what I needed, but I knew that it was likely to be the final leg of the touring cycle for the album, and I was bummed. Two things happened quickly afterward that lessened my disappointment: I had a thought that led me to a CVS, which led me to a bathroom stall at work, which led to a plus sign. I was tired at Monumentour because I was pregnant. Then, in September 2014, Fall Out Boy released “Centuries,” so I blocked off time on my work calendar to hear the song premiere. Another album was coming. Maybe the “Save Rock and Roll” trilogy was over. But the “American Beauty/American Psycho” trilogy was just beginning. Show #5 When: June 2015 Where: Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, Maryland Key stats: My daughter is 2 ½, my son is 3 months old My son was born in March, and I spent all of April, May and June on maternity leave. If my daughter was a video game set to Expert level of difficulty, my son was set
Timothy P. and Willard B. Gatewood Jr., eds. The Governors of Arkansas (1981) (1981) Dougan, Michael B. Confederate Arkansas (1982), (1982), Duvall, Leland. ed., Arkansas: Colony and State (1973) (1973) Hamilton, Peter Joseph. The Reconstruction Period (1906), full length history of era; Dunning School approach; 570 pp; ch 13 on Arkansas (1906), full length history of era; Dunning School approach; 570 pp; ch 13 on Arkansas Hanson, Gerald T. and Carl H. Moneyhon. Historical Atlas of Arkansas (1992) (1992) Key, V. O. Southern Politics (1949) (1949) Kirk, John A., Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940–1970 (2002). (2002). McMath, Sidney S. Promises Kept (2003) (2003) Moore, Waddy W. ed., Arkansas in the Gilded Age, 1874–1900 (1976). (1976). Peirce, Neal R. The Deep South States of America: People, Politics, and Power in the Seven Deep South States (1974). (1974). Thompson, Brock. The Un-Natural State: Arkansas and the Queer South (2010) (2010) Thompson, George H. Arkansas and Reconstruction (1976) (1976) Whayne, Jeannie M. Arkansas Biography: A Collection of Notable Lives (2000) (2000) White, Lonnie J. Politics on the Southwestern Frontier: Arkansas Territory, 1819–1836 (1964) (1964) Williams, C. Fred. ed. A Documentary History Of Arkansas (2005) Coordinates:DEVO’s 8th album from 1990 was titled, “Smooth Noodle Maps ” and before this month’s announcement of a new album, it was their unappreciated swan song. The album, while not DEVO’s greatest work, is filled with some great songs like “Morning Dew” and my album favorite “Pink Jazz Trancers”. Which, with its driving bass and great lyrics, is a great way for any DEVO fan to start their day and, if I can make a bold suggestion, should be included on your DEVO’s greatest hits playlist. Seriously, give it a listen and add it… Lyrics to “Pink Jazz Trancers” YOU BETTER WATCH OUT I’M TELLIN’ YOU WHY JUST WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT JUST WHEN YOU FEEL AT EASE THAT’S WHEN YOU GET SELECTED THAT’S WHEN THEY’LL COME YOU’LL SEE SO MANY STRAY TRANSMISSIONS THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO SO MANY LIQUID RHYTHMS THEY’D FILL A SWIMMING POOL BEAMED FROM THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN NOWHERE LEFT FOR YOU TO GO THEY’LL TAKE YOU EVEN HIGHER THEN YOU’VE EVER BEEN BEFORE BUT THERE’S NO NEED TO WORRY FIRST YOU’LL DIP INTO A DREAM AND IN YOUR MIND IT’S COMING LIKE SO MANY BRIGHT IDEAS IT’S ALL ABOUT TO HAPPEN IT’S WAY BEYOND FANTASTIC IT’S USELESS TO RESIST IT WHEN YOU’RE FINALLY HIT WITH PINK JAZZ TRANCERS JAZZ TRANCE FOR U WAIT JUST FOR A MINUTE LAY DOWN HERE NEXT TO ME JAZZ TRANCE FOR U NO NEED FOR YOU TO HURRY TURN ON THE CABLE TV JAZZ TRANCE FOR U LET’S CLOSE OUR EYES TOGETHER NOW CAN YOU SEE HOW GOOD IT’S GOING TO BE!Witcher 2, you seem different somehow. Did you get a haircut? Have you been working out? Are you pregnant with a future barbershop owner who will also be a professional body-builder? No? Well then, color me stumped. Unless… no way. Is today the launch of your Enhanced Edition, which has been heralded incessantly by a procession of myths, prophecies, and, like, a million trailers? Truly astounding. I jest, however, because I love, and I certainly can’t complain about gobs of free fixes and content. But what about an altered ending (yes, just like that one thing) and general acceptance of “mature” content in the gaming industry? Are these things worthy of my trusty torchfork, the latest in pitchfork, torch, and duct tape technology? I spoke with CD Projekt Red managing director Adam Badowski to find out. “There are few games like The Witcher 2, and we are not afraid to say, ‘Hey, we are not a game for everyone. We won’t treat you as a child – at any level,’” began Badowski. “The gaming community is growing, and every demographic has something for themselves. Diversifying and finding your target is important. We’ve chosen ours – adults who want ambitious games. And we will stick to that.” But what, nowadays, does that even mean? Years ago, it was fairly cut-and-dry. Did a game have blood, cursing, and a brooding anti-hero lead? Well then, it got slapped with the appropriate age rating and greeted with an elementary-school-like chorus of “ooooooooos.” Now, though, things are a bit more complicated. Dear Esther, for instance, spilled nary a drop of blood nor bounty of bosoms, yet it even frightened away many adults. And what of PlayStation 3 indie darling Journey? Its sand-caked, candy-coated graphics seem to suggest a world of childlike whimsy, yet its overall experience requires thoughtfulness and contemplation. Are these games “adult”? And, among them, where does Witcher’s seemingly juvenile love of blood spilling and male gazing fit in? “Our game is targeted to a grown-up audience,” Badowski elaborated. “Watching the opposite sex naked is quite pleasant, but real adults don’t get excited over a nipple. They are a part of our world and their appearance in other media doesn’t shock anyone. The nudity in our game serves the story, it’s a form of artistic expression – they are a part of the game world.” “But also the subjects we touch in the storyline and the type of moral choices the player faces require a certain level of world awareness that only adults have. We often have the player make morally controversial decisions, which force them to really think about their actions. This layer of maturity is very important in our game, and it provides really ambitious entertainment. I dare say that the nuances and controversies define our game as mature even more than sex and violence. Those aspects provide great entertainment, but they have to be put in the game with taste.” And ultimately, no matter the weightiness of the message, that’s what this is: entertainment. So what happens when a certain aspect of your game doesn’t have players enviously eyeing every furniture store they pass just because they want a new seat to move to the edge of? Well, you fix it, of course. And with 102 fixes in the pipeline, I’m thinking CD Projekt might just be on board with that idea. Granted, it’s one thing to litter the game with “assorted animals” (which sounds like something that should come in a small, heart-shaped box), but what of heavier hitters like – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – “extended” endings that provide players with more tangible consequences for their actions while remaining true to the original ending’s vision? “What we did doesn’t compromise our artistic integrity,” Badowski said. “We didn’t change the ending, but extended the outro. The story of The Witcher 2 is complete, and we didn’t change the writing. By extending the outro we mean adding new cinematics to it. We are really proud of what our story team did, so there was no point in changing that. What we added is a short cutscene and a series of final-boards. These short scenes will change depending on the player’s choices in the game. They show how your decisions influenced individual characters, locations and kingdoms. Our game was always about choice, and this is a neat way to show players how they really had control over the story.” “When it comes to criticism, it wasn’t the ending that fans found bad, but that the final chapter was too short and left some loose ends. That’s why the additional quests take place in the final part of the game. They are added not to leave some questions unanswered and make the game experience complete. There was no strong accent at the end. The game just stopped. That’s why we added the final boards and the outro. Now there’s a real POW at the end. This was both made for our own satisfaction and for the fans.” The parallel between CD Projekt and BioWare’s respective attitudes, approaches, and solutions to a similar problem, then, is well worth a momentary donning of your flowing costume beard for a chin stroke or two. Admittedly, the tremendous “fan” pressure that prompted BioWare’s reaction is the key piece in this puzzle, but both ending up-endings paint a picture of game stories as malleable. This isn’t intrinsically good or bad, as it all depends on what developers and gamers come to expect from it. So far, both Mass Effect and Witcher have arrived at – at least, on paper – eerily similar conclusions as to where this winding trail of blood, sweat, and tears should lead. What the future brings is anyone’s guess, but for now, this hardly sounds like the end of the world. We still haven’t, however, answered the most important question of all. So then, have they fixed the goddamn doors? “We didn’t change the doors, because we didn’t consider them an issue at all,” admitted Badowski. Then all hope is lost.A true story of the effect of free eggs on a market for eggs I love watching documentaries and one of my recent favorites on Netflix, aside from Noam Chomsky's "Requiem for the American Dream", is "Poverty, Inc." I highly recommend just watching the entire film yourself, but there is one story from it that is one of my new favorites to share onward, and that's the story by Peter Greer who is the CEO of Hope International. As soon as I first saw it, I immediately even recorded it onto my phone and shared it on Twitter. It is such a short and simple lesson of the unintended consequences of giving goods instead of cash to buy goods. Transcript: Growing up, the model that I saw was this model that we would have a shoe drive at church, and we'd all give our excess shoes. We never knew what happened but we knew we were responding to this desire that we had to help the poor... the vulnerable. What I experienced living overseas, especially in Rwanda, was the end of the story. The collection in some ways is the easy part. The distribution is where there are a lot of complications, and I had my eyes opened to this through a friendship with Jean. Jean was a friend in Rwanda and he told me this story that after the Rwandan genocide, that he had a church from Atlanta that started sending over eggs, and ended up just distributing eggs in a small community outside of Kigali. And this seems like a great thing to do, right? The church wanted to help after the genocide. But Jeano a few years before had started this small egg business himself. He put this investment in all the materials that he needed to start this egg business. His business was starting to grow. It was starting to take off and then all of a sudden in one summer, there comes this surplus of eggs that were flooding the market in his area. And so this desire that the church had to really take care of a need, it did take care of a need, but the problem is that it put Jeano out of business. He ended up selling his hens, and then the next year the church decided to focus its attention to somewhere else in the world. Jeano was out of business. No one else was there providing eggs, and so they had to bring the eggs in from another community. So this desire to help in that community, according to Jeano, actually had a long-term negative impact on that community. Yet another frequent response to the idea of giving people an unconditional basic income, is why not just give them goods like food instead of money? Money can be spent on anything, and if we want to help people, isn't the best way to be paternalistic about it and limit people from making any choices save for those we decide for them are the right ones? In the example above, the logic of the church was absolutely paternalistic. It was also naive. It knew people were hungry and decided eggs were the right thing to eat. It also either assumed that there were no local markets there capable of providing eggs, or that there were but if they gave people money, they might be too stupid and/or irresponsible to buy eggs. So this church got together a bunch of eggs, and shipped the eggs, and distributed the eggs and this unavoidably involved all kinds of costs in the form of human labor and time, to the point a great deal of money was likely spent on stuff other than actual eggs, and the end result was not only a short-term positive impact (at least for those not put out of business and who enjoy eggs) but more importantly a long-term negative impact that was also extremely inefficient and wasteful. Now if the church had provided money instead, it would have been extremely efficient because money is now just 1s and 0s. And because money can be used to buy anything, including eggs, chickens, and chicken feed, among other things, the money would have helped on both the supply end and the demand end. Jeano could have invested more in his business, and he also would have had more customers, which would have further grown his business. He may even have seen new competition or business partners from others going into business for themselves. Meanwhile, those who don't like eggs would have been happier too. They could have used that money on other things in their local stores, and the entire local economy would have been better off. New businesses could have sprouted and flourished. More goods and services of many other kinds could have been introduced making everyone better off in both the short-term and the long-term. But that's not what happened because some paternalistic-minded people thought eggs would be better than money. The above story is a great window into how we go about trying to solve poverty. Instead of simply giving people money to engage in markets we give them what we want them to buy, which is bad for the local markets of which they are part. We depend on food banks where people can get free food instead of just giving people money to buy food in stores. We subsidize the hell out of our agricultural goods and then ship our huge surplus of unrealistically cheap goods like rice and corn all over the world which distorts markets and only helps sustain poverty instead of alleviating it. We fear that money will be spent on drugs instead, despite the evidence showing cash transfers actually reduce purchases of drugs and alcohol. Worst of all, an entire industry now exists to profit off of and perpetuate poverty. And it's all based on a lack of trust, and an unfortunate desire to maintain control over others. Some organizations are different though. Some do trust because they care about data and the scientific method. GiveDirectly is an organization that isn't trapped in paternalistic thinking. They know giving cash to people is the most efficient thing one can do, and is also something that allows an infinite number of creative possibilities because money can be spent on anything. They know money helps grow markets. They know money creates new choices. And they care about what works through rigorous focus on data and actual human behavior. This is also why GiveDirectly is doing the biggest test of universal basic income to date, by giving more than 6,000 people in East Africa basic incomes for 12 years. The data has spoken. Giving people cash works, so now the question is just what happens when entire communities have permanent free access to markets via cash for at least a decade. We've seen it work for years at a time in places like Namibia where it tripled self-employment, and in places like India where it resulted in three times as many businesses being created than in control groups not given basic income, and in Liberia where one third of those who received the income started their own business. We know people use money as capital for business formation and we know people use money as consumers to be their customers. But what else happens? Just what is possible when we give people money for over a decade instead of eggs? We're going to find out. Would you like to help? Click here to donate to them. Next also watch: Have a question about basic income? Here's a list of links that answers frequently asked questions. Interested in reading an entire book about basic income? Here's a BIG list of what's available out there.Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press OTTAWA -- Governments from across the country will meet next month to debate a key question about Canada's eventual recreational-marijuana market -- how much should users pay for their pot? Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau said Monday that cannabis taxation will be on the agenda when he meets with his provincial and territorial counterparts. Morneau said the Trudeau government has begun designing a taxation regime -- but he insisted the top concerns for Ottawa remain getting weed out of the hands of young Canadians and dealers on the street. "Taxation will follow those principles, so we will be thinking about how we can ensure that the taxation doesn't generate a black market," Morneau said. "We will constantly be looking at how we can ensure that we get criminals out of the market and protect youth in the market. That's our goal." He's been adamant that maximizing federal revenues will not be the priority when it comes to pot and he's suggested the feds favour keeping prices competitive in order to wipe out illegal activity. A recent C.D. Howe Institute report found 90 per cent of the black market would disappear if pot cost $9 per gram, projecting $675 million a year in federal and provincial revenues if governments only applied existing sales taxes. Last fall, the parliamentary budget officer projected 2018 sales tax revenue for Ottawa and the provinces combined to be as low as $356 million and as high as $959 million. Provinces and territories have been busy since the Trudeau government tabled legislation last month to legalize and regulate recreational pot use. Ottawa's goal is to make it happen by July 2018. Quebec Public Health Minister Lucie Charlebois said in an interview last week that the province is looking at its taxation options, but that it needs more information from Ottawa. "We've got to see what the federal (government is) going to do," said Charlebois, who added the cost of legal pot must be competitive with street prices. Alberta Justice Minister Kathleen Ganley said in a statement earlier this month that she has asked Ottawa for more information on the tax regimes for recreational pot because the federal legislation did not include details. "The end goal must be to limit the black market as much as possible and taxation cannot drive the price of the product too high if we are to achieve this goal," Ganley said.Lutheran churches in America have an ethnic origin–they were usually started by communities of German, Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian immigrants–and that has definitely shaped the culture of local congregations, sometimes putting off new people who want to join. I remember marveling at the Germanness of our congregation in Wisconsin, with its Men’s Club singing “Sie Leben Hoh” on birthdays and drinking beer and eating cannibal sandwiches while playing Sheepshead, after an extremely brief devotion from Herr Pastor. This didn’t bother me–I got a kick out of it and actually liked it–though I was highly conscious that I was an outsider. The distinguished sociologist of religion Peter Berger, an ELCA Lutheran, writes about this phenomenon, though he concludes that today the ethnic identity stuff is largely absent from American Lutheranism. It is still a factor, he says, in American Orthodoxy. Also, I would add, in the various ethnic Catholic parishes and in black churches. I would further add that cultural identity is a factor in distinctly “American” churches too, with the upper class WASP Episcopalians and obviously southern Southern Baptists. There is also the distinct culture of middle class white suburbanites in the megachurches of the land. Is this a problem, or not? Or are churches preserving something precious, something distinctly “cultural” in our current society that is actually “anti-cultural”? Do you agree with Berger that ethnic identity is mostly gone from Lutheran congregations, or can you still see it, and, if so, where? Where it persists, are there ways congregations can help newcomers navigate these cultural shoals? My preferred cognitive style is free association—that’s how I remember so many jokes. One joke leads to another. I don’t really want to know whether this is due to some faulty electrical wiring in my brain. But this is the first time this has happened in writing for my blog: the last post dealt with ethnicity and Eastern Christian Orthodoxy in America; then I thought of American Lutheranism, which has had a very different history with ethnicity (mainly German and Scandinavian). I think the differences are interesting. [I am Lutheran myself, of a rather heterodox sort. But I don’t see why this should preclude my writing about this curious denomination in America.] The first Lutheran church in America was founded in 1646 in Christina, a Swedish colony which we now know as Wilmington, Delaware. It was captured by the Dutch in 1655, as they pushed out from New Amsterdam (aka New York). The Dutch soon faded out of the Lutheran picture on the East Coast. Lutherans came in large numbers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The biggest group of Lutheran immigrants was German, with Scandinavians next in numbers. They came into a Protestant country where they did not have to face the deep religious prejudices which Catholics had to face, and they felt comfortable in America from early on. [Keep reading...] What Peter Berger says, after the jump. His article will also serve as a map for people trying to figure out the Lutheran landscape.From Peter Berger, After Ethnicity – The American InterestPerhaps, readers remember my article titled "Last line effect". It describes a pattern I've once noticed: in most cases programmers make an error in the last line of similar text blocks. Now I want to tell you about a new interesting observation. It turns out that programmers tend to make mistakes in functions comparing two objects. This statement looks implausible; however, I'll show you a great number of examples of errors that may be shocking to a reader. So, here is a new research, it will be quite amusing and scary. Problematics Here is my statement: programmers quite often make mistakes in rather simple functions that are meant to compare two objects. This claim is based on the experience of our team in checking a large number of open source projects in C, C++ and C#. The functions we are going to consider here are IsEqual, Equals, Compare, AreEqual and so on or overloaded operators as ==,!=. I noticed that when writing articles, very often I come across errors related to the comparison functions. I decided to explore this question in detail and examined the base of errors we found. I did a search of functions throughout the base containing words Cmp, Equal, Compare and such. The result was very impressive and shocking. In fact this story is similar to the one we had when writing the article "Last line effect". Similarly, I noticed an anomaly and decided to explore it more carefully. Unfortunately, unlike the aforementioned article, I don't know how to bring statistics here and which figures to provide. Perhaps, later I'll come up with a solution with the statistics. At this point I am guided by intuition and can only share my feelings. They see that there are a lot of errors in the comparison functions and I am sure, you will get the same feeling when you see that huge amount of truly impressive examples. Psychology For a moment let's go back to the article "Last line effect". By the way, if you haven't read it, I suggest taking a break and looking at it. There is a more detailed analysis of this topic: "The last line effect explained" In general, we can conclude that the cause of the errors in the last lined is related to the fact that the developer has already mentally moved to the new lines/tasks instead of focusing on the completion of the current fragment. As a result - when writing similar blocks of text, there is a higher probability that a programmer will make an error in the last one. I believe that in the case of writing a comparison function, a developer in general often don't focus on it, considering it to be too trivial. In other words, he writes the code automatically, without thinking over it. Otherwise, it is not clear how one can make an error like this: bool IsLuidsEqual(LUID luid1, LUID luid2) { return (luid1.LowPart == luid2.LowPart) && (luid2.HighPart == luid2.HighPart); } PVS-Studio analyzer detected this error in the code of RunAsAdmin Explorer Shim (C++) project: V501 There are identical sub-expressions to the left and to the right of the '==' operator: luid2.HighPart == luid2.HighPart RAACommon raacommonfuncs.cpp 1511 A typo. In the second line it should be: luid1.HighPart == luid2.HighPart. The code is very simple. Apparently, the simplicity of code spoils everything. A programmer immediately thinks of the task to write such a function as standard and uninteresting. He instantly thinks of the way to write the function and he has just to implement the code. This is a routine, but unfortunately an inevitable process to start writing more important, complex and interesting code. He is already thinking about the new task... and as a result - makes an error. In addition, programmers rarely write unit tests for such functions. Again the simplicity of these functions prevents from it. It seems that it would be too much to test them, as these functions are simple and repetitive. A person has written hundreds of such functions in his life, can he make an error in another function? Yes, he can and he does. I would also like to note that we aren't talking about code of students who are just learning to program. We are talking about bugs in the code of such projects as GCC, Qt, GDB, LibreOffice, Unreal Engine, CryEngine 4 V Chromium, MongoDB, Oracle VM Virtual Box, FreeBSD, WinMerge, the CoreCLR, MySQL, Mono, CoreFX, Roslyn, MSBuild, etc. It's all very serious. We are going to have a look at so many diverse examples that it would be scary to sleep at night. Erroneous Patterns in Comparison Functions All errors in comparison functions will be divided into several patterns. In the article we'll be talking about errors in projects in C, C++ and C#, but it makes no sense to separate these languages, as most of the patterns are similar for different languages. Pattern: A < B, B > A Very often in the comparison functions there is a need to make such checks: A < B A > B Sometimes programmers think that is more elegant to use the same operator <, but to switch the variables. A < B B < A However, due to the inattentiveness, we get such checks: A < B B > A In fact, one and the same comparison is done twice here. Perhaps, it's not clear what it is about here, but we'll get to the practical examples and it'll all become clearer. string _server;.... bool operator<( const ServerAndQuery& other ) const { if (! _orderObject.isEmpty() ) return _orderObject.woCompare( other._orderObject ) < 0; if ( _server < other._server ) return true; if ( other._server > _server ) return false; return _extra.woCompare( other._extra ) < 0; } PVS-Studio analyzer detected this error in the code of MongoDB (C++): V581 The conditional expressions of the 'if' operators situated alongside each other are identical. Check lines: 44, 46. parallel.h 46 This condition: if ( other._server > _server ) Will always be false, as the same check was done two lines before. Correct code variant: if ( _server < other._server ) return true; if ( other._server < _server ) return false; This error was detected in the code of Chromium project (C++): enum ContentSettingsType; struct EntryMapKey { ContentSettingsType content_type;... }; bool OriginIdentifierValueMap::EntryMapKey::operator<( const OriginIdentifierValueMap::EntryMapKey& other) const { if (content_type < other.content_type) return true; else if (other.content_type > content_type) return false; return (resource_identifier < other.resource_identifier); } PVS-Studio warning: V517 The use of 'if (A) {...} else if (A) {...}' pattern was detected. There is a probability of logical error presence. Check lines: 61, 63. browser content_settings_origin_identifier_value_map.cc 61 That was a C++ example, now it's C# turn. The next error was found in the code of IronPython and IronRuby (C#). public static int Compare(SourceLocation left, SourceLocation right) { if (left < right) return -1; if (right > left) return 1; return 0; } PVS-Studio warning (C#): V3021 There are two 'if' statements with identical conditional expressions. The first 'if' statement contains method return. This means that the second 'if' statement is senseless. SourceLocation.cs 156 I think there is no need in explanation. Note. For C# there was just one example of an error, but for C++ - two. In general, there will be less bugs in the C# code, than for C/C++. But I do not recommend rushing to the conclusion that C# is much safer. The thing is that PVS-Studio analyzer has only recently learned to check C# code relatively recently, and we have just checked less projects written in C#, than in C and C++. Pattern: a Member of the Class is Compared with itself The comparison functions usually consist of successive comparisons of structure/class members. This code tends to be more erronreous, when the member of the class starts being compared with itself. I can specify two subtypes of errors. In the first case, a programmer forgets to specify the name of the object and writes in the following way: return m_x == foo.m_x && m_y == m_y && // <= m_z == foo.m_z; In the second case, the same name of the object is written. return zzz.m_x == foo.m_x && zzz.m_y == zzz.m_y && // <= zzz.m_z == foo.m_z; Let's take a closer look at practical examples of this pattern. Pay attention that incorrect comparison often occurs in the last block of similar code blocks, which reminds us of the "last line effect" again. The error is found in the code of Unreal Engine 4 (C++) project: bool Compare(const FPooledRenderTargetDesc& rhs, bool bExact) const {.... return Extent == rhs.Extent && Depth == rhs.Depth && bIsArray == rhs.bIsArray && ArraySize == rhs.ArraySize && NumMips == rhs.NumMips && NumSamples == rhs.NumSamples && Format == rhs.Format && LhsFlags == RhsFlags && TargetableFlags == rhs.TargetableFlags && bForceSeparateTargetAndShaderResource == rhs.bForceSeparateTargetAndShaderResource && ClearValue == rhs.ClearValue && AutoWritable == AutoWritable; // <= } PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions to the left and to the right of the '==' operator: AutoWritable == AutoWritable rendererinterface.h 180 The code of Samba (C) project: static int compare_procids(const void p1, const void p2) { const struct server_id i1 = (struct server_id )p1; const struct server_id i2 = (struct server_id )p2; if (i1->pid < i2->pid) return -1; if (i2->pid > i2->pid) return 1; return 0; } PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions to the left and to the right of the '>' operator: i2->pid > i2->pid brlock.c 1901 The code of MongoDB (C++) project: bool operator==(const MemberCfg& r) const {.... return _id==r._id && votes == r.votes && h == r.h && priority == r.priority && arbiterOnly == r.arbiterOnly && slaveDelay == r.slaveDelay && hidden == r.hidden && buildIndexes == buildIndexes; // <= } PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions to the left and to the right of the '==' operator: buildIndexes == buildIndexes rs_config.h 101 The code of Geant4 Software (C++) project: inline G4bool G4FermiIntegerPartition:: operator==(const G4FermiIntegerPartition& right) { return (total == right.total && enableNull == enableNull && // <= partition == right.partition); } PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions to the left and to the right of the '==' operator: enableNull == enableNull G4hadronic_deex_fermi_breakup g4fermiintegerpartition.icc 58 The code of LibreOffice (C++) project: class SvgGradientEntry {.... bool operator==(const SvgGradientEntry& rCompare) const { return (getOffset() == rCompare.getOffset() && getColor() == getColor() // <= && getOpacity() == getOpacity()); // <= }.... } PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions to the left and to the right of the '==' operator: getColor() == getColor() svggradientprimitive2d.hxx 61 The code of Chromium (C++) project: bool FileIOTest::MatchesResult(const TestStep& a, const TestStep& b) {.... return (a.data_size == a.data_size && // <= std::equal(a.data, a.data + a.data_size, b.data)); } PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions to the left and to the right of the '==' operator: a.data_size == a.data_size cdm_file_io_test.cc 367 The code of FreeCAD (C++) project: bool FaceTypedBSpline::isEqual(const TopoDS_Face &faceOne, const TopoDS_Face &faceTwo) const {.... if (surfaceOne->IsURational()!= surfaceTwo->IsURational()) return false; if (surfaceTwo->IsVRational()!= // <= surfaceTwo->IsVRational()) // <= return false; if (surfaceOne->IsUPeriodic()!= surfaceTwo->IsUPeriodic()) return false; if (surfaceOne->IsVPeriodic()!= surfaceTwo->IsVPeriodic()) return false; if (surfaceOne->IsUClosed()!= surfaceTwo->IsUClosed()) return false; if (surfaceOne->IsVClosed()!= surfaceTwo->IsVClosed()) return false; if (surfaceOne->UDegree()!= surfaceTwo->UDegree()) return false; if (surfaceOne->VDegree()!= surfaceTwo->VDegree()) return false;.... } PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions'surfaceTwo->IsVRational()' to the left and to the right of the '!=' operator. modelrefine.cpp 780 The code of Serious Engine (C++) project: class CTexParams { public: inline BOOL IsEqual( CTexParams tp) { return tp_iFilter == tp.tp_iFilter && tp_iAnisotropy == tp_iAnisotropy && // <= tp_eWrapU == tp.tp_eWrapU && tp_eWrapV == tp.tp_eWrapV; };.... }; PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions to the left and to the right of the '==' operator: tp_iAnisotropy == tp_iAnisotropy gfx_wrapper.h 180 The code of Qt (C++) project: inline bool qCompare(QImage const &t1, QImage const &t2,....) {.... if (t1.width()!= t2.width() \|\| t2.height()!= t2.height()) {.... } PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions to the left and to the right of the '!=' operator: t2.height()!= t2.height() qtest_gui.h 101 The code of FreeBSD (C) project: static int compare_sh(const void _a, const void _b) { const struct ipfw_sopt_handler a, b; a = (const struct ipfw_sopt_handler )_a; b = (const struct ipfw_sopt_handler )_b;.... if ((uintptr_t)a->handler < (uintptr_t)b->handler) return (-1); else if ((uintptr_t)b->handler > (uintptr_t)b->handler) // <= return (1); return (0); } PVS-Studio warning: V501 There are identical sub-expressions '(uintptr_t) b->handler' to the left and to the right of the '>' operator. ip_fw_sockopt.c 2893 The code of Mono (C#) project: static bool AreEqual (VisualStyleElement value1, VisualStyleElement value2) { return value1.ClassName == value1.ClassName && // <= value1.Part == value2.Part && value1.State == value2.State; } PVS-Studio warning: V3001 There are identical sub-expressions 'value1.ClassName' to the left and to the right of the '==' operator. ThemeVisualStyles.cs 2141 The code of Mono (C#) project: public int ExactInference (TypeSpec u, TypeSpec v) {.... var ac_u = (ArrayContainer) u; var ac_v = (ArrayContainer) v;.... var ga_u = u.TypeArguments; var ga_v = v.TypeArguments;.... if (u.TypeArguments.Length!= u.TypeArguments.Length) // <= return 0;.... } PVS-Studio warning: V
who lost 40 states to 10 in 1988. I was in high school at the time, and I remember how we all thought Dukakis was great, and how polls had him beating George H.W. Bush. Then came the Republican attack machine, painting Dukakis (in racist ways) as a soft-on-crime liberal. The election was a disaster. Show me why this won’t happen to Sanders, please. Now, some of my pro-Bernie friends say that even if Bernie isn’t ultimately electable, they can’t vote for Clinton in the primary because she’s so awful on, well, insert your key issues here. That is, of course, a coherent position to take. If Clinton’s negatives, or Bernie’s positives, are so high as to be worth losing the general election, then of course it makes sense to vote your values. But let’s remember what’s at stake. We’ve all seen those simplistic ads making Clinton look more like the GOP than like Bernie. But as Sanders himself said, both he and Clinton are 100 times better than any Republican candidate. Specifically, a Republican president would mean: - Further tax breaks for the 1 percent including income tax breaks, capital gains tax breaks (Rubio wants to eliminate the capital gains tax entirely), and estate tax breaks. More cuts to the social safety net to pay for them.- New conservative Supreme Court justices that will overturn Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage, plus Obama’s executive orders on LGBT people, and allow new restrictions on contraception.- No action on climate change—indeed, denial that it even exists—and the undoing of the Obama administration’s executive actions on it, and undermining international efforts. Plus potentially eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency entirely (!) and rolling back regulations on logging, mining, and drilling.- No acknowledgement that white privilege exists, that black lives matter (in the way BLM means it), or that racism persists in housing, voting, and employment. On the contrary, more voter suppression and racist gerrymandering and housing policies.- Warmongering in the Middle East, either overt or covert Islamophobia at home, the growth of the surveillance state, and the return of torture.- Stripping 18 million people of health insurance by repealing Obamacare, or at the very least restricting its implementation, with no alternative plan in sight.- Not only no campaign finance reform and money in politics, but even more “freedom” for corporations and 1 percenters to buy our government. Is it still worth it? I’m not asking you rhetorically; maybe you think it is. Maybe you think we need a political revolution, even though only around 25 percent of Americans agree with you, and this is the only way forward. Maybe you’re “tired of the status quo.” To me, though, I couldn’t look someone struggling with poverty, perhaps in a community of color, perhaps in an urban context blighted by a century of the new Jim Crow, and say that I helped bring this about. I couldn’t explain my vote to a civilian family we bombed in Iraq or Syria, or to my children who will have to deal with a changed climate. Hell, I couldn’t explain it to my own husband, who will be legally un-wedded from me within half a decade if a Republican president delivers on his campaign promises. Show me a Sanders path to victory, or admit that you’re making that choice, and putting the Republican Party in charge of all three branches of government. Finally, and at the risk of alienating you a little, I think that preferring my moral/political purity over these life-or-death questions is a privileged position to take. I think one reason Bernie’s supporters tend toward the white, young, and privileged is that we don’t have as much skin in the game as others who would be affected by a Republican victory. Moral purity is a luxury not. It’s not compromising, selling out, or picking the lesser of two evils to choose a candidate that can appeal to the broad middle of America—it’s democracy.(If you’re having trouble viewing this video on a mobile device, click here.) ANTIOCH — Police here made the shocking announcement Monday night that they have solved one of the city’s most notorious cold-case homicides, the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Suzanne Bombardier, who disappeared while babysitting her nieces more than 37 years ago. It was a case that shook the community and continues to haunt longtime Antioch residents. The former police officers who investigated it rallied time and time again to keep the investigation going, and to make sure no one forgot Suzanne, even more than three decades after the homicide investigation went cold. Mitchell Lynn Bacom, 63, will be charged with murdering Suzanne, according to county prosecutors. He was arrested Monday at his Antioch home without incident, police said. Bacom, a native of Knightsen, was a longtime suspect in the case. He was being held on charges of murder, kidnapping, rape and oral copulation. “Justice may not have come swiftly as we may have hoped or liked,” Contra Costa DA Diana Becton said. “But we will continue to work diligently on these cases and hopefully justice will come.” Police say Bacom was known to Suzanne’s family but wouldn’t elaborate how. They said he was identified as the killer through DNA evidence acquired in the case that was run through a federal database. The biological material linked to Bacom’s DNA had been in an evidence locker and was tested before, but Contra Costa DA inspector Paul Holes said that new medical research that came out within the past year has allowed police across the country to solve more cold cases. “We literally saw within the past 12 months the technology improve to the point where we were able to get a match,” Holes said. “The crime labs are using new chemistry in the DNA process.” In an interview with the Contra Costa Times in 1996, Suzanne’s father, Ted Bombardier, said that Suzanne must have known her killer. “Obviously, there was no forced entry. She must have known who it was,” Ted Bombardier said. Suzanne was abducted on the early morning of June 21, 1980. She was babysitting her two nieces alone in her sister’s Hudson Court apartment. Suzanne had just started the first day of summer vacation and had talked with a friend on the phone until 1:30 a.m. When her sister Stephanie Mullen arrived home at 4 a.m., she couldn’t find Suzanne. . On June 27, Antioch police Detective Gregory Glod received the call that Suzanne’s body was pulled from the San Joaquin River by a fisherman. Suzanne had been sexually assaulted and died from a single stab wound to the heart. Days later, a report card came to her family’s home saying she was making straight A’s. “She was young and full of life, and she had her whole life ahead of her,” Glod said in an interview Monday, later adding, “It had a huge impact on the community. It has affected a lot of people’s lives; family, friends.” Glod was assigned Suzanne’s case on the first day of her disappearance, and it has gnawed at him ever since. After learning of the murder charges Monday, he could hardly contain his joy, calling it “a dream come true” and commending Antioch police and the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Cold Case Unit for staying with the investigation. He said he became convinced of Bacom’s guilt at some point during his investigation but police couldn’t gather enough proof for prosecutors to file a case. “My prayers have been answered. … Probably not too many days have gone by that I haven’t thought about this case,” Glod said. “This has made my life complete to be quite honest with you.” Bacom is a registered sex offender whose last reported address was on West Madill Street in Antioch. In 1973, he was arrested in Mountain View and eventually was convicted of first and second-degree burglary, assault with intent to murder and sodomy. He was sentenced to five years to life. In 1981, Bacom was arrested for sodomy by force or fear of a person under 14 years of age in Isleton and was sentenced to 24 years in prison. He was released from custody 12 years later. In 2002, Bacom was convicted of failing to register as a sex offender and was sentenced to four years in prison. Former Antioch police detective Ron Rackley — the officer who filed the missing person’s report — had been working on the case with Glod off and on since he retired in 2006; the two men would contact each other periodically to share notes and decades after the murder they reinterviewed Bombardier’s sister and niece. Several years ago he and Glod also made a concerted effort to persuade Antioch Police Department to revive the investigation, Rackley said. Over the years, Bombardier’s family has experienced some healing, he said, and although the arrest will reopen those wounds, Rackley thinks her relatives eventually — finally — will be able to accept the painful past and let it go. “It’ll give me closure,” he added, “and I won’t have any more nightmares knowing that someone is in jail.” Related Articles East Bay cold case suspect warned 20 years ago that he might ‘slip’ again Former Antioch cops spotlight 35-year-old cold case After 37 years, many have Glod, Rackley, and author Jennifer Kathleen Gibbons to thank for the continued spotlight. Gibbons was the author that brought Suzanne’s case back into the spotlight in 2014 after coming across her headstone in Lafayette’s Queen of Heaven Cemetery. She was visiting her grandparents’ graves in 2013 when she came across Suzanne’s gravesite and her curiosity brought her to write the Lost Girl blog that traced her discovery of Suzanne’s stories. “I can name five to 10 children that were kidnapped in the early 80s,” Gibbons said. “I never talked to strangers, I tried to stay safe. I was one of the lucky ones and felt it was my duty to tell the story of a lost girl who slipped through the cracks.” Her work brought her the attention of Glod and Rackley. Both detectives were trying to start up a cold case unit in Contra Costa County at the time. Police say they are investigating Bacum in other homicides and encourage anyone with information about him to call Capt. Leonard Orman at 925-779-6918.Robin van Persie talks about being beaten up by Ajax fans, why he ‘would walk on fire’ for Manchester United’s new manager, Louis van Gaal, and … his love for table tennis The following is an extract from Leo Verheul’s article from the forthcoming issue 13 of the Blizzard. The Blizzard is a quarterly football journal available from www.theblizzard.co.uk on a pay-what-you-like basis in print and digital formats. He must have been about 10 years old when I saw him playing for the first time. It was on a lazy Sunday afternoon in a children’s playground in our neighbourhood, Kralingen, the most beautiful part of Rotterdam, a green area enclosed by the river Maas, the centre and Kralingse Bos en Plas, the biggest wood and lake in town. My three-year-old daughter was playing on the swing and the slide with other toddlers and I sat down in the sun to watch the older kids playing football in the cage, a small football pitch surrounded by wire mesh. I recognised one of them, Robin, the son of my friend Bob who was always talking about him, telling me how he was bound to be a global superstar and teasing me that I should write about him even when he was six years old. The rest of the kids were Moroccan. Much later I realised that two of them were Said Boutahar (Real Zaragoza and Al Wakrah) and Mounir Hamdaoui (AZ and Ajax), other kids who went on to be professionals. Robin always hung around with them. He spoke like them, with the same accent and the staccato way of speaking. He was one of them. And played like them, fixated on doing a new trick, fixated on doing a panna (a nutmeg). I enjoyed watching them play. They didn’t fight to win, but for enjoyment and entertainment. And my friend’s son was the best. Every ball he touched, with his left foot, exclusively the left, was like he was caressing his girl. He mixed slow and speedy moves like a bartender his cocktails. And at kicking the ball he was brilliant. And then it happened. One of the kids blocked an opponent and the ball was launched up to the stars and landed in a garden next to the cage. At once we heard some animal growling. An enormously fat creature, apparently drunk, came out of his house shouting, “You African bastards! I told you to fuck off …” But just as he bent over to confiscate the ball, one of the kids jumped over the barrier into the garden, pulled the ball with his left foot towards his heel, and flicked the ball up to grab it away from the fat guy. The fat guy was furious and made to kick the hell out of the boy but the kid was too quick and leapt away with great elegance. Footballing ability saved him. The fat guy, having swung too hard, lost balance. He spun 180 degrees and collapsed with a terrible cracking of bones. He lay, screaming, in the garden and the boys ran away. They had no reason to: they were entitled to play there and they’d been attacked by a drunken racist. “I was there! I was there!” Robin shouted, jumping up from his seat when, years later, I visited him in London where he was slowly making his mark at Arsenal, breaking into the team of Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires and Thierry Henry. “That fat guy was always nagging, insulting and bothering us,” he said. “He broke his leg all by himself. But after that incident we chose another playground nearby.” ********* From being just a friend’s son he became a local phenomenon, who drew special attention. I saw him frequently on the street, always with a ball, always. Going to school, he would have the ball at his feet, making feints against every lamppost on his way. Going to the shop for his father, he would keep the ball up, preventing it from touching the ground. But he didn’t stop when he entered the store. With the ball in the air, he grabbed what his father had ordered, paid and went off, the ball still dancing. The owner of the shop was an extremely friendly Pakistani man, who smiled an almost offensive amount. He liked Robin but sometimes he lost his smile. Robin had a habit of dribbling with the ball through the store making pannas on customers. Some people hated that, were scared or irritated, but the kid just couldn’t resist. Or, balancing the ball in the air, he would kick it gently with his heel against the large window of some bar, shop or office, take it smoothly and walk on. Behind him you saw the heads of surprised people asking themselves what the noise had been. “Football has always been my great love,” Van Persie says today. “I slept with a ball – really! Even when I started going out with Bouchra – ouha! She must have thought, ‘What’s this...?’ When I was five, I joined a club, Excelsior, the club of Kralingen, in the first division. I was always training. On a free afternoon I did individual work with Aad Putters, my youth trainer. Not with the idea growing to be a star, but for fun. I didn’t want to do anything else. When friends wanted to go to the centre of town, they took a bus or tram. I took the ball and went running after them. School was hell, because I had to put the ball on the ground. Outside I was free, playing the ball.” In the early 90s, I began to believe the story Bob had told me years earlier when he was still married to José, an artist like himself. José was a painter, Bob was dedicated to sculptures. A fortune-teller told him he would have three children, first two daughters and then a son. “When it comes true,” a disbelieving Bob said to the woman, “I’ll come back to you to hear the rest …” Two weeks after Robin’s birth in August 1983 (coming as brother to Lily and Kiki), he went back to the fortune-teller and she told him that his son would struggle at school but would be a king on the pitch: “A football star is born. He will be rich and famous.” Bob wasn’t convinced, but he wanted to believe the woman. When Robin began to walk, he started having him practise with balloons, light and easy, like balls in slow motion. Then there came a gap. The marriage with José broke up and Bob moved out. Years later, when Robin was nearly six years old, José stood in Bob’s doorway. Bob was then living in the Jaffadwarsstraat, in a modest but cosy home at the back of Kralingen. Alone. José was desperate. “Can Robin live with you?” she asked. “He’s unmanageable and only wants to deal with you.” “The problem with the kid,” Bob van Persie explained to me, “was that he was hyperactive. “Not ADHD: then you have to be treated. Robin just had to use up his energy, that was all. At first he did a lot of mischief on the street. For the first time I had to be hard on him, punish him. Then he met his Moroccan bunch and found his soul-mates. From that moment he started to breathe, eat and dream football. That was the salvation. You know that he trained one of the younger teams of Excelsior when he was only 12 years old? Quite fanatically but just for fun. “Besides eating and sleeping he was busy only with football. School was a huge problem. I was ordered to show up for the school board. They held me responsible for Robin’s conduct, for him never paying attention and not doing homework at all: ‘School is more important for his future than football, sir.’ But Robin and I didn’t agree …” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robin van Persie's first club, Excelsior, has named a stand after the Holland international striker. Photograph: Graham Chadwick/Associated N/REX At 13 years old, Van Persie joined Feyenoord, a top club with a more professional training set-up. After a couple of years he had emerged as a prime talent and, on 3 February 2002, he made his debut for the first team. A few months later, he played in the Uefa Cup final. Feyenoord won. The fans, at first, were crazy about him. Van Persie was a local hero in no time. On a national level, he was chosen as Talent of the Season for 2001-02. So far, so good. But suddenly, it all went wrong. As quickly as he’d risen, Van Persie was knocked down again, his enemy Pierre van Hooijdonk ready to give the blow. On 31 March that year there’d been an embarrassing clash between the two players in front of 50,000 fans when Feyenoord played RKC. Van Persie, having been in the team only just over a month, pushed his older team-mate away to take a free-kick to the right side of goal. As a left-footer, he thought he should be taking it. He produced a brilliant shot that forced the goalkeeper to turn the ball away from the very corner of his goal, but Big Pierre was furious, and so was the coach, Bert van Marwijk. Van Hooijdonk would not forget this humiliation and waited for his chance to get even. After winning the Uefa Cup, Van Persie started walking around with his head in the clouds. He developed an attitude. He didn’t like the mid-range car made available for the players by sponsors and bought himself a trendy Mercedes sports car. In training and in matches, the rest of the squad began to be irritated by the non-conformist youngsters. Internationals like Van Hooijdonk and Paul Bosvelt made the rules. Kids like Van Persie had to shut up or they were kicked down and humiliated. But this new kid on the block was not like that. Before the start of the new season Van Hooijdonk and Bosvelt asked for a talk with the coach and demanded that Van Persie be treated properly. They wanted him relegated to the bench and he was. When Feyenoord qualified for the Champions League on 27 August 2002, after a tense game against Fenerbahçe, the situation exploded. 15 minutes before the end of the game Van Persie was sent by his coach to warm up. But after a couple of minutes he asked Van Persie to sit down, because – he thought – the forward wasn’t motivated. Van Persie was furious and when Van Marwijk shook hands with everybody after the final whistle, he refused. It was the beginning of the end. For the next two years, he was at war. Van Marwijk later became national coach. Before working with Van Persie, they thrashed things out. Van Marwijk still believes he did the right thing. “I was the first one to be hard on him,” he said. “He’d never been criticised in his youth. Hopefully, some day he will understand it was good for him. I put everything in place for him.” It’s probably a vain hope. “I have never felt the trust of the people who didn’t stop criticising me,” Van Persie said. “At the end I sat on the bench at Feyenoord believing I wasn’t good enough to be a number 10 and that I even was just an average left-winger. When people are always nagging you, you stop listening and become stubborn. When I made a mistake at Feyenoord they always tore hell out of me. It is possible to criticise constructively.” Apparently, Van Persie has other ways of dealing with young players. “When you had problems, Robin was always there for you,” said his former Arsenal team-mate Carl Jenkinson. “Especially for the youngsters. He was approachable and always prepared to listen to the opinion of others. Also on the pitch he always set the right example. You could say he was the perfect captain.” In the summer of 2002, Robin wasn’t so old and wise. He had a long and hard way to go to the top, to be a perfect pro. Partly because he was a rebel and partly because of the questionable management of Van Marwijk, he lost two valuable seasons. Until 15 April 2004, he made no progress, playing only a handful of first-team games and turning out mostly for the seconds, Young Feyenoord. But 15 April 2004 would be a key date in his career. Young Feyenoord were playing Young Ajax, their biggest rivals. There were 4,000 fans there, clustering close to the players, who had no protection: no stewards, just low fences. The fanatical part of the Amsterdam public, drinking beer and smoking pot, jeered him, spitting at him, abusing him and throwing drinks over him. But Van Persie stayed calm and played superbly. He knew that Arsenal’s chief scout, Steve Rowley, was watching him. Seeing him battling against a stronger team and aggressive spectators, Rowley decided he had seen enough. Facebook Twitter Pinterest It was during a Feyenoord v Ajax game that Robin van Persie was chased and beaten up be fans. Photograph: Robert Vos/AFP/Getty Images Near the end, Van Persie scored to make it 1-1 and celebrated by blowing a kiss to the Ajax fans. After the final whistle, 40 thugs chased after him. He was punched and kicked and forced to the ground. Only with intense efforts from his team-mates and Ajax players was he freed and led to safety. “I don’t want to exaggerate,” Van Persie said, “but I thought I was going to die. When you’re unconscious on the ground and they stick a knife in you it’s over. For a few weeks after I couldn’t sleep, or I’d wake up bathed in sweat after another nightmare. I had to do something and went to a psychotherapist who helped me out.” Guus Hiddink, the manager of PSV, had been watching Van Persie for some time, but when Rowley called the day after the nightmare in Amsterdam, the decision was easy enough to make. Van Persie joined Arsenal. At the end of that year, I visited Van Persie in London. Arsène Wenger had decided to bring him through slowly and my friend’s son was playing for the second team, but he was talking now with laughter in his eyes. “A few minutes chatting with Arsène Wenger were enough,” he said. “I knew I could trust this man. He is as crazy about football as I am. He says I am good but that I have to be patient. While negotiating he said to me, ‘When you dribble past [Sol]Campbell and [Kolo] Touré in training, you can play!’ That was all I wanted to hear. I gave Arsenal my word straightaway.” He spoke enthusiastically about his new surroundings. “The first two months were hell,” he said. “I had to follow a special training regime with a guy called Tony, who’d been in the navy. I was dead every night. But now I’m training with Thierry, Pires, Bergkamp! I am only watching what’s going on around me … filling myself like a sponge with everything I see. Pires had been injured and played with us in the second team. We had a combination knocking the ball over six players, all one touch … that’s life, that’s pure happiness! I’m close, man, I’m so close now. I am touching the sky, close to the top.” But in the weeks that followed, I noticed from afar that Van Persie wasn’t so close to the top. There were still a couple of lessons to be learned. At the beginning, there was Dennis Bergkamp, teaching Robin what to do and how to do it. Van Persie watched games over again to learn to be self-critical. Rowley told him there was something missing in his play – intelligence: there could be no risk in the midfield, only around the box – but that he had to find that out by himself. Rowley sent him a message after each game. Wenger, irritated by stupid yellow and red cards, was hard on him. Van Persie improved on the pitch but not in his private life. He rose, fell and got up all the time. Soon after winning the FA Cup with Arsenal and making his debut for the Dutch national team, Van Persie found himself in a nightmare. At the beginning of June 2005, he was arrested in Rotterdam and accused of rape. He was held in prison for a few weeks and then released on parole. After a night out, Van Persie had visited a hotel with a couple of friends and an erotic dancer, Sandra K. There was laughter, there was sex, but when the men hid her clothes as a joke, she left, irritated. Vitally, she didn’t tell the people she met in the hours after the party that she’d been raped, while a waiter at the hotel overheard her talking on the phone about the famous player she had been with. Later that day, she went to the police. Months later, a judge decided to throw out the case, concluding that there was no evidence of a crime and the woman’s evidence was contradictory. The shame for Van Persie remained. It took years to restore his image and it almost cost him his marriage. But his Moroccan wife Bouchra remained loyal. She believed in him and fought for him from the moment the scandal broke, looking for the best lawyer she could find. “My love is hurt,” she said, “but our friendship will survive it all.” It would be the last scandal, the last lesson Robin had to learn: don’t hustle, don’t fool around, be there for the ones you love. In the years after the lowest point in his life, he paid back the loyalty of his wife and he paid back Arsenal, paid back Wenger, who had never stopped believing in him and also paid back Rowley, another key figure in his life. Van Persie was 21 and – finally – an adult. Just in time. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robin van Persie spent eight years at Arsenal before moving to Manchester United in 2012. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images Under Wenger, Van Persie developed into one of the best players in the world. He was twice Arsenal’s player of the year and in 2012-13 he was Manchester United’s, at least according to the fans’ vote (the players went for Michael Carrick). He became the ideal professional. A loyal husband. (“After all we have lived through, our relationship is stronger than ever.”) A dedicated father to a son and a daughter. An example for young players. Three times he fought back from serious injuries. Five years ago, one of them almost ended his career. Sometimes people ask me: “The son of that friend of yours, Robin van Persie … what’s he like?” I answer: “Healthy. Healthy in all kind of ways.” Robin thinks healthily and lives healthily. He watches what he eats, takes the rest a player needs, doesn’t smoke and never drinks alcohol. He has three activities. In order of importance, they are: his wife and children, football and table-tennis. He is boring in a spectacular way. “At home in Manchester, I have a recreation room, like I had in London. I have all kinds of shirts on the wall. In the middle is a table-tennis table. Everybody who comes to my home has to play at least one set against me. I beat them all. The best thing is when they want another set. People like me who can’t stand not to win. I beat them again and again until they are furious, then I laugh. That’s funny.” Once he was on holiday in Marbellaand was a little bored, lying in the sun with all the family. “Suddenly I heard: tac … tac … tac… ” Robin said. “Wow! The neighbours are playing table-tennis. I’m saved! I grabbed my friend and we went there to ask if we could play. They were English people. They didn’t mind. We didn’t play against them – they weren’t good enough. When we started playing you heard: ‘tac-tac-tac-tac … ‘’ Ha! We played for an hour and then … pfff … the pressure was gone.” That’s typical Van Persie. He always worships the kid in himself. The artist. Not the money-maker. Not the collector of personal prizes. He is the player with the artist-blood of his parents in his veins. I remember a game two years ago. Van Persie was free in the box. He might have beaten AC Milan’s goalkeeper Christian Abiatti. But instead of killing the ball directly, he preferred to caress the ball and attempt a stunning chip. Not a goal, but an everlasting memory for all his admirers. “You flatter me with this remark,” Bob van Persie said, “but without being immodest I think it’s true: Robin is first of all an artist on the field, more than a player. That’s his main motivation. Making art, making history in his own special way.” In the summer of 2012, Van Persie faced the biggest decision of his life: to leave Arsenal or not. “It was a dilemma,” he said. “I loved that club. The fantastic stadium. The public. The atmosphere. I am a real Gunner and will always be one. A part of me was hurt. But I am a winner. I always want to win and it was time to win some prizes with a club, some titles. “I never would have gone for the money, but wanted the change to take my career a bit further. And it turned out to be the right decision. I won the title with Manchester United right away. And I must also say: Manchester United is a warm club. I feel happy there. It was the first time in my life that I became champion of a country. A dream. But the most beautiful thing about the title was the path towards the championship. It was like being on a train. It was fabulous.” Van Persie is now the captain of Holland and in October 2013 he became his country’s all-time leading scorer, surpassing Patrick Kluivert’s record with a hat-trick against Hungary. “It was a fantastic moment,” Van Persie said, “especially because my two kids were there. Normally matches are too late for them, but that time the two of them were there. “Maybe they don’t realise exactly what happened, but it’ll be wonderful to be able to talk about that memory in the future.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Robin van Persie will be Louis van Gaal's captain at the 2014 Brazil World Cup. Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images Just before half-time, Van Persie scored his second to match Kluivert’s tally. He ran to the bench and hugged Kluivert, who is now one of Louis van Gaal’s assistants with the national team. “I can’t say what I felt in that moment,” Van Persie said. “Kluivert’s 40th exactly 10 years before. Patrick was keen to celebrate it with me. ‘It’s amazing you’ve come that far. Now go on, champ!’ he said. I had to celebrate that moment with him. In the second half I scored number 41. Van Gaal called me over and took me off the pitch. The public stood up and gave me a hell of an ovation. That’s Van Gaal. I was injured in the days before, my little toe. Ridiculous, but very painful. A couple of days before the game it was still hurting. “The house-rule within the Dutch team is that you if you’re in pain, you have to go home. But the coach made an exception for me. And that paid off. Sometimes every piece of the puzzle falls together. This was such a night.” Holland had already secured their place in Brazil before that game, becoming the first nation to qualify. “In recent history, Holland have always been among the contenders for the World Cup,” Van Persie said. “We have a great team. A good mix of experience, skill and young talent. For a lot of us it will be the last chance, the last cry of a generation. Players like me. Like Wesley Sneijder, Raphaël van der Vaart and others. Personally, I’m in my best period. Van Gaal gave me all the confidence I can ask for. He made me the main striker, my favourite position. At last. He made me captain. I owe him something. So I will be as sharp as a knife in Brazil. I will walk on fire for him if I have to. Like the rest of the team. We have a lot of options. Our coach has a lot of choices over there. I think we are going to do something special: like in 2010 but hopefully this time winning the final.” Asked about the key to his success, Van Persie answered: “I think my biggest strength is that I always keep doing exactly the same thing. There are forwards who go crazy in the euphoria, but after a goal I let myself fall back to midfield, getting some gas back, keeping myself cool and focused on my mission. And sometimes you are dry for weeks, but if you stop scoring goals for a while, don’t panic. Take it easy. Stay relaxed. That next goal is only waiting to fall your way. “Don’t worry. In a bad period like that I also let myself drop to the midfield. By staying cool you give your mind the chance to cure your body. The human soul, the spirit, is much more important than the body. The modern player is judged by his results. I’m always on a train: three big games a week. So I have to function like a machine. It’s the only way to survive. That’s why you have to be stable in the emotional process. You always must try to find the balance. That’s what it’s all is about. Keeping your train going.” Van Persie is now 30 and nearing the end of his career, which he’s already decided to finish with Excelsior, his first club. Van Persie is loyal. A couple of years ago, he donated a huge amount of money for youth training there. Excelsior named a stand after its most famous son. When he is in Rotterdam he always drops in. It’s like home. But before that, what are his plans? “When his contract ends in Manchester he’ll be 33,” said Bob. “As long as he’s fit enough – and I’m sure he will be – he’ll stay in Manchester. Then he’ll go back to Excelsior. Money will never be an issue. Robin is hyperactive. He was like that as a kid and always will be like that. He needs football to burn his energy and he’ll be like that for the rest of his life. So he’s got to look forwards. I think he’ll probably always be loyal to Excelsior, Arsenal and Manchester United. Those clubs are like home. I think Robin will finish his career in Excelsior and then go back to London or Manchester as a coach. That will be his next goal in life: to be the best coach in the world. I hope we have to wait years for that moment. Let’s enjoy watching him play a little more.” I asked Van Persie if his dream had come true. “Yes,” he answered. “Of course. I’m where I always wanted to be.” Then he looked outside, with a distant smile. “I’m still a kid. Still with a dream. I’ll tell you something that happened the other day. I had lunch with Rio Ferdinand at the club when four kids, 10 years old or so, came in, players from the youth set-up. They were wearing nice training kit from United and they looked about curiously. In 10, 12 years maybe they’ll play for the first team. I said to Rio: ‘Look … those guys, still so young, that might be our most beautiful time. No worries. Cool being dressed in your training outfit all day long. Football shoes on all the time. Just playing along. On the street, indoors, on the pitch. Tired? Never. Muscular pain? Hardly ever. Maybe a day, once in a year … It’s incredible how you recover as a kid. You couldn’t imagine being injured, you just didn’t know what that was.” Then it was as though he'd
Update: DreamWorks Pictures has titled director Robert Zemeckis’ Nov. 21 release as Welcome to Marwen. Steve Carell plays the victim of a brutal attack who finds a unique and therapeutic outlet to help him through his recovery process. The pic is based on Jeff Malmberg’s 2010 documentary, Marwencol, which follows Mark Hogancamp, who after being left brain-damaged and broke, finds recovery in a sixth-scale World War II-era town he’s built in his backyard. Universal is releasing the pic in the five-day Thanksgiving corridor. Previous April 28, 2017 :Universal has set November 21, 2018 as the release date for Oscar winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis’ untitled project, which stars Steve Carell in the true story of one broken man’s fight as he discovers how artistic imagination can restore the human spirit. Zemeckis co-wrote the screenplay with Caroline Thompson, and will also serve as producer along with Steve Starkey and Jack Rapke of Zemeckis’ Universal-based ImageMovers banner, with DreamWorks Pictures co-financing. Pic is executive produced by Jackie Levine, and Jeff Malmberg, who directed the riveting 2010 documentary, Marwencol, upon which this film is based. In Marwencol, a man by the name of Mark Hogancamp who is left brain-damaged and broke, finds recovery in a sixth-scale World War II-era town he’s built in his backyard. The Zemeckis’ pic will open against Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 on Thanksgiving eve. The movie also follows in the wake of Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts sequel and New Regency/20th Century Fox’s Widows directed by Steve McQueen.Even while campaigning for somebody else, Barack Obama can’t help but talk about himself. During two appearances for Hillary Clinton on Thursday, the president referred to himself a total of 207 times — 110 in Miami and 97 in Jacksonville, Florida. “Now, I have to say that I’ve been going to some college campuses and I realize that eight years ago some of you were ten,” Obama said during roughly 43-minute speech at Florida International University. He then went on to defend his own record on the economy, energy and Obamacare. “Can I just say I was driving through North Carolina yesterday and we passed by a gas station … and I noticed gas at $1.99.” “Thanks, Obama,” he said, echoing someone in the audience. During the Miami speech, he mentioned himself 30 times before talking about Hillary Clinton. Here’s Obama’s speech in Miami: Meanwhile, at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Obama focused a little less on himself before mentioning Hillary. He talked about himself only 27 times before talking about his candidate and a total of 97 times during the roughly 41-minute speech. Criticizing congressional Republicans, Obama said, “I mean, Democrats have their flaws. I promise you. I know them. “Just like I got my flaws. I understand, we all got blind spots. But generally speaking, Democrats have consistently tried to work with the other side and do reasonable things and just make the government work,” he said. He accused Republicans of opposing “anything good for the country” if a Democrat proposes it. “In fact, sometimes I propose things that are in their platform just to see what they’ll do. And they’ll say ‘no’ and I’ll say, ‘But, you just proposed this.’ Don’t matter. “‘We can’t do it now cause you proposed it’,” Obama said, apparently talking like the Republicans. “‘In fact, it’s your fault we can’t support it because you supported it even though we said we wanted to do it.'” “I’m not on the ballot, I’m not on this ballot,” he later said to boos. Here’s his full speech:Serie A 2013-14: The big games By Football Italia staff There are some big games straight away in the Serie A 2013-14 campaign, while the Milan Derby is a Christmas treat. The fixture list was drawn up this evening in a ceremony in Milan, as the tournament kicks off on August 24-25 and concludes on May 18 2014. Click here for the full calendar. Roma-Lazio comes early into the campaign in Week 4, the same round as a Milan-Napoli Scudetto showdown. Week 7 is extremely interesting, as it includes Inter-Roma, Juventus-Milan and Lazio-Fiorentina. The Milan Derby will be just a few days before Christmas, while Walter Mazzarri and Rafa Benitez face their past in mid-December. Also worth noting is that the final round of the season will see Juventus-Cagliari, Napoli-Verona, Milan-Sassuolo, Chievo-Inter and Fiorentina-Torino. These are some of the most intriguing fixtures: Week 1: Lazio-Udinese Week 2: Juventus-Lazio Week 3: Inter-Juventus, Sampdoria-Genoa Week 4: Milan-Napoli, Roma-Lazio Week 5: Inter-Fiorentina Week 7: Inter-Roma, Juventus-Milan, Lazio-Fiorentina Week 8: Fiorentina-Juventus, Milan-Udinese, Roma-Napoli Week 9: Udinese-Roma Week 10: Fiorentina-Napoli, Milan-Lazio Week 11: Milan-Fiorentina, Udinese-Inter Week 12: Juventus-Napoli Week 13: Udinese-Fiorentina Week 14: Juventus-Udinese, Lazio-Napoli Week 15: Napoli-Udinese, Roma-Fiorentina Week 16: Milan-Roma, Napoli-Inter Week 17: Inter-Milan Week 18: Juventus-Roma, Lazio-InterJay Park has always been on his grind when it comes to music, this no exception when it was announced earlier on 21st July that Jay had signed with Jay-Z’s label Roc Nation. “Jay Park recently signed with the famous American music label Roc Nation and is planning to promote locally [in the United States]. The specifics have yet to be confirmed, but you can think of this as part of a process to enter the American market. His independent label AOMG will take care of his domestic activities” – A source from Roc Nation Roc Nation is home to American artists like Rihanna, Big Sean, J.Cole just to name a few. On Instagram Jay Park announced the news whilst Roc Nation uploaded a welcome post. It’s Official @RocNation This is a win for the Town This is a win for Korea This is a win for Asian Americans This is a win for the overlooked and underappreciated This is a win for genuine ppl who look out for their ppls This is a win for hard work and dedication This is a win for honesty and authenticity Thank you for the acknowledgement and recognition🙏🙏 Just gettin’ started 10년차가수인데 이제부터시작이네 🙌 🙌🙌#RocFam #RocNation A post shared by $hway BUM Park 박재범 (@jparkitrighthere) on Jul 20, 2017 at 10:49pm PDT We are excited to announce @JParkitrighthere has officially signed with #RocNation! Welcome to the #RocFam!!! A post shared by Roc Nation (@rocnation) on Jul 20, 2017 at 10:58pm PDT Jay Park has definitely come a long way from his 2PM days, to singing on his bathroom floor to becoming a mogul, this is only the beginning for Jay. Congratulations!Above: The surface parking lot at Chicago Ave and 3rd Street (Glen Stubbe) Above: The surface parking lot at Chicago Ave and 3rd Street (Glen Stubbe) The Minnesota Vikings see a branding problem with the street next to the new $1.1 billion downtown football stadium -- and they intend to fix it. The street is Chicago Avenue, named in the 19th century after what is still one of the nation's largest cities. It also happens to be the home of the Chicago Bears, a football team. "The Minnesota Vikings strongly object to having the street running in front of the stadium named after one of its opponents and neighboring rival," the Vikings said in a formal request to rename a segment of the street Vikings Way -- released yesterday. The name change, first reported by the Star Tribune's Kristen Painter last month, will go before the city Planning Commission on March 14. The street segment in front of the stadium technically has two names: Kirby Puckett Place and Chicago Avenue. The former is a commemorative name, remescient of the Twins' Metrodome days. The Vikings would like to change them both to Vikings Way. The team noted in its application that the city renamed a portion of 3rd Avenue North "Twins Way" when Target Field opened in 2010. Staffers recommended approving the change. They found it met the city’s rules regarding street renaming, which include streets being generally “named after people, places, events and things related to the City and citizens of Minneapolis.” “The Minnesota Vikings are a long term, iconic business and will be located at the new stadium location,” the team said in its application. “The Minnesota Vikings played for 32 years at the Metrodome and the new stadium is being built to last for several generations.” Eric Roper • 612-673-1732Although Bible prophecy can be difficult to interpret, some predictions seem clear – for example, the return of Israel to their own land (fulfilled in 1948). The Brexit vote on Thursday, where Britain decided to leave the EU following a referendum, is consistent with prophecies traditionally interpreted to mean that Britain will collaborate with nations other than the EU at the time of Jesus’ return. However, there are other plausible interpretations of these prophecies. So, whist I think it's good to get excited when world events seem to fulfill Bible prophecies, it is probably better to reflect on the fact that God is in control of world events, Jesus will return at some point, and we should be ever-ready for this! The Bible predicts an invasion of Israel around the time of Jesus’ return led by a ‘Northern’ confederacy of nations (see Daniel 11, Ezekiel 38 & 39, Zechariah 14). Whilst it isn’t easy to ascribe specific modern nations to the ancient nations listed in these prophecies, it seems that the Northern confederacy will include Russia and countries from continental Europe. The Bible also speaks of a resistance to this invasion, which includes ‘Tarshish with its young lions’ (Eze38:13). Tarshish and her young lions are traditionally identified as Britain and the nations that have arisen from the British Empire (including the USA). If 'Tarshish and the young lions' refers to Britain and the nations that have arisen from the British Empire, it would seem odd for Britain to be part of the EU at the time that this prophecy is fulfilled if the countries in continental Europe are part of the Northern confederacy that invades Israel. This prompted many to predict – correctly as it turns out – that Britain would leave the EU. However, I think it would be a mistake to say categorically that the Bible predicted the result of the referendum last Thursday. Tarshish could relate to other nations (e.g. Spain). Also, even if Tarshish does refer to Britain, there are other scenarios that would still be consistent with Bible prophecy with Britain remaining (or perhaps even returning) to the EU (for example, Britain in the EU but making different military alliances around the time of Jesus’ return). So, whilst it's good to be excited when world events seem to fulfill Bible prophecy, it's healthy to remain open-minded to other possible interpretations. It’s also important to recognise that Brexit will result in upheaval and painful changes for many. However Brexit relates to Bible prophecy, God is firmly in control of world events (Daniel 2:21-22), and Jesus will return. We are told to look out for signs that this return may be soon, and to be ready (Mark 13:35-36)! By Jon. Image: Publicdomainpictures.netUntil it was shut down last year, the company registration business of New Zealander Ian Taylor was one of the most outrageous examples of the criminal services industry – companies that enable organized crime, terrorists and corrupt government officials to steal money, evade taxes and hide ownership. Now Taylor is back – with a new company and a new host country. Publika TV is one of the largest television stations broadcasting in the Republic of Moldova, yet oddly, despite its influence and importance, it is impossible to determine who really owns it. On paper, the man who runs the company in charge of Publika is Anatoli Zosciuc, 46, a Ukrainian-born former mechanic and customs inspector. Zosciuc does not have the resume of a media magnate. He is likely just a proxy. Anatoli Zosciuc Proxies are individuals whose names are used in the place of real owners who want to hide their identities as beneficiaries of companies. Proxies often do this for a fee, but sometimes they are victims of identity theft and don’t even know they are directors. OCCRP tried to reach Zosciuc but he did not answer his phone. Publika’s ownership is even more complex, and troubling. Publika is owned by a Moldovan corporation called Stiri Media Group, which in turn, is owned by a Rochdale International Limited of New Zealand. Rochdale is owned by a nested set of companies that lead to another proxy – like a set of Russian Matrioshka dolls that fit one inside the other. This complex structure effectively obscures Publika’s true ownership and finances. Rochdale International Limited is a phantom or shell company – a company that has no office, no staff and no bank accounts. It exists on paper to hide the real owners and beneficiaries. The nominal director, or proxy, of Rochdale is the controversial offshore company formation agent Ian Taylor. THE TAYLOR NETWORK The business of Ian Taylor and his family is to register companies. They are well known to reporters, law enforcement, due diligence professionals, lawyers and others. Beginning in November of 2010, OCCRP published articles detailing how Taylor and his family helped build a network of offshore companies that criminals used to launder money, evade taxes and hide their identity through phantom companies. The reports showed how Russian crime networks and Asian organized crime groups, among others, used companies registered by the Taylors. In the wake of the OCCRP report, New Zealand authorities cracked down on the Taylors.. In June of 2011, New Zealand authorities forced the shuttering of the Taylor’s registration empire including GT Group, the notorious registration agent used by so many criminals and terrorists over the years. Their businesses in the Pacific island of Vanuatu also closed. Thousands of the companies they had registered were delisted. But Ian Taylor is back in business helping to hide the ownership of Moldova’s media. The Taylors never ceased doing business in New Zealand. They just changed tactics, re-branded and shifted to a new website. OCCRP discovered an active website, http://readymadeshelfcompany.com, that performs the same services in New Zealand that Ian Taylor said had been stopped. The website registered the phantom company Rochdale International, which links to Publika in Moldova through Stiri Media. The website offers services that can be used to launder money and evade taxes including: Providing a pre-registered offshore company in a popular tax haven Opening and operating offshore bank accounts. Creating “nominee directors” and “nominee shareholders” to serve as proxies which allows hiding the real owners. Creating an offshore address with a Registered Agent. They also can create a “Virtual Office” because, according to the website: “Many businesses throughout the world suffer from poor location when entering the international market. A Virtual Office allows you to give the appearance of being located in a country known for its highly regarded and clean reputation.” While none of these services are illegal and the Taylors offer services available from many other firms, what distinguished them is the remarkable array of criminals using their services. In June of 2011, in breaking the news to his customers that the registration business would shutter, Taylor told his current customers that they would be transferred to another firm that would “incorporate a new structure in a reputable Asian jurisdiction” with services provided by “a bank you will already know and trust.” Taylor’s customers appear to have been transferred to another Taylor-controlled firm with a new address. The website’s contact information lists the Menara Citibank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Asia -- as its mailing address. OCCRP called the offices of readymadeshelfcompany.com but a secretary in Kuala Lumpur said Ian Taylor was not there and no one was available to talk about the company's business. THE TAYLORS REBRAND, WITH A NEW PROXY cracked down in New Zealand. But the Taylors had already begun migrating work to Malaysia and the majority of the new New Zealand-based shell companies offered on the site list Ian Taylor and a new proxy, Angelique Lilley, as directors or shareholders. Rochdale International Limited was incorporated on Feb. 22, 2011. By Dec. 31, 2011, RSHRS Limited had changed addresses. On Feb. 16, 2012, Lilley, the new proxy, became director and shareholder of a phantom company called Atherstone Limited. Atherstone, through a web of other shell companies, holds all the shares of RSHRS Limited and in turn, Rochdale International Limited. Lilley, who listed her occupation as “mother,” as late as 2009 in New Zealand records, is now the proxy shareholder of one the biggest media companies in the Republic of Moldova. Approached by a Fairfax New Zealand reporter at her back section house in Nayland Rd, Stoke, this week, Ms Lilley declined to answer questions or be photographed. "I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm just working,'' she said. She said incorrect information about "us'' had been printed in the past but wouldn't say who she was working for, or confirm any relationship with Geoffrey or Ian Taylor. "Those are the names that always come up.'' Asked about ownership of the Moldova television station, she asked for the station's name, and wrote it down. She later said by email: "Thank you for your enquiry. I offer legitimate nominee services. I have no knowledge of a TV station in Europe. Have a lovely weekend." A man in the house with her used a phone to photograph or film the reporter and photographer, and would not give his name. Who is Really Behind Publika Before being owned by Rochdale International Limited, Publika was owned by a company from Cyprus called Bluelink Comunicazione. This company was founded by Sorin Ovidiu Vintu, a Romanian currently serving jail time on blackmail charges (P9_VINTU_JAIL). The same Bluelink is still a majority shareholder of a news television station in Romania, Realitatea TV. There are numerous connections between Taylor and Vintu. Taylor has long partnered with Lazlo Kiss, a Romanian registry agent currently charged along with Vintu by Romanian authorities with embezzlement and money laundering via offshore companies. According to Romanian prosecution records, Kiss, whose own company is registered in New Zealand and owned on paper by Taylor, allegedly helped set up Romanian money laundering schemes for Vintu. Taylor’s network of proxies also thrives outside of New Zealand and Eastern Europe. Lilley is listed as director of more than a dozen Panama. Other proxies include directors Victor Manuel Perez Acosta, who has an address in Mexico, and Nesita Mercea, who was struck off most of the New Zealand companies, but is also the director of more than 50 shell companies based in England. TRANSPARENCY WILL HAVE TO WAIT, FOR NEW ZEALAND The offshore financial networks that shroud company ownership also depend on government regulations that allow them to set up shop. In an email to OCCRP, Alastair Stewart, the communications advisor in the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development, wrote: “As an open economy, New Zealand company law allows any person to form a company, so long as the company has a name, shares, at least one shareholder, and at least one director.” According to Stewart, New Zealand authorities are taking additional steps to strengthen the financial regulatory system and anti-money laundering frameworks, including passing the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) of 2009 that “will increase the ability of government and the financial sector to deter and detect money laundering and terrorist financing, and will substantially enhance New Zealand’s compliance with the FATF standards.” Unfortunately, the law is unlikely to take full effect until June of 2013. The Taylors do not appear to have broken New Zealand law. However, the Taylors’ activities have cost New Zealand international credibility. In February of 2012, the European Union struck New Zealand from the banking and corporate “white list,” in part because a Taylor-registered firm appeared to be engaged in massive money laundering through Latvian banks. (see the Proxy Platform) The removal meant that the EU would not recognize or acknowledge New Zealand’s “know your customer” analyses due to the country’s weak anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism laws. Taylor could not be reached for comment. Reported and Written by Ion Preasca, Mihai Munteanu and Matt SarneckiThere's no shortage of golf gadgets in the world, but these three are worth a special look. Two are based on Android handheld computers (PDAs) while the other clips to your clothing and talks to you. If that sounds all techie and horrible and a total anathema to getting away from it all on the golf course, worry not, these devices are unobtrusive and are here to help. They're like tiny robot caddies. Fundamentally, the handhelds let you keep score electronically while also measuring distances (in yards or metres). They are legal in all competitions because they are fundamentally measuring devices. This is different to smartphone apps which are banned in competition because they also can provide unfair assistance such as weather information, wind and slope details. They also have far superior battery lives and won't drain your phone. Common handheld features Both handhelds keep score - you just jab the number of strokes you took. However, they also allow you to record how many putts you made and whether you drove off left or right of the fairway. Both cater for up to four players at a time. You don't have to program them either - just turn them on in the car park and by the time you hit the first tee they'll know exactly which hole you're playing on at which golf club in the world. If for a reason it gets a location a little wrong (because two tees are very close to each other or that a single tee is used for two separate holes) it's simple to manually adjust which hole you're supposed to be playing. As you walk round the course they will automatically know when to focus on the green or the next tee. They'll account for handicaps and keep track of whether you're using a Stroke play or Stableford scoring system. They both show an illustration of each hole and provide the distance from where you are to where you hit the ball. Both also allow you to jab a point on the map and set a target on the fairway to lay up to: you will then be given the distance to that target and then on to the green. On both models you can adjust where the pin has been positioned on the green. The view of the green also changes automatically depending on your angle of approach. Both can measure the distance of individual shots at the click of a button. Both are weatherproof (not fully water proof) and can be viewed in direct sunlight. You can also preview a course before you play it. Garmin Approach G6 ($330ish) It may be a little less refined than the GolfBuddy Platinum but the G6, with its 2.6-inch screen, is a useful piece of kit. Basic functions involve showing a representation of either an entire hole or just the green (all distances are to the middle of the green by default but you can drag and drop the pin as required) and you can pick a target along the fairway to aim for too (it will tell you the distance to the target and from the target to the green. It will also display the distances to any hazards. Measuring the distance of a shot is simply a case of holding the measure button to set a mark and walking to your ball after hitting it. Uniquely, you can then add that distance to each of your club's average distance and build up a very accurate average measurement for each club that you have. If you've got some obscure clubs you can easily add more and rename any existing ones. Included accessories are limited - there is a wall charger and holder with carabiner. The battery lasts for around 15 hours. The two buttons make it facile to use although the slightly smaller screen and chunkier graphics weren't quite as pretty as those seen on the Platinum. That said, the functional nature may prove attractive to technophobes who prefer a simpler layout that focuses on basic information and intuitive ease of use. Unlike the platinum it also caters specially for Match Play and Skins scoring methods. We had very few problems when testing it although it did freeze up when measuring the distance of some shots sometimes: only an annoyance in that a great tee-off was only registering 28m, but it didn't happen too often. Saved information is simple to view later on - two web page files are stored on the device and can be accessed just by plugging it into a computer. However, only basic score information is displayed although you are reminded how many fairways were hit from your drive plus how many greens were hit in regulation and how many putts you took in total. The other page keeps track of your club averages. However, due to a mistake in selecting the wrong course on one occasion my average drive is now listed at almost six million metres and I can't change it without resetting all its scores. Nonetheless, it's simple to use and simple to access. Course updates are for life (there are some 30,000 global courses at present and over 1000 of those are in Australia). At $330 it's a reasonable price and generally cheaper than the more powerful GolfBuddy World Platinum although the wild price fluctuations of that might change things. It feels more basic and functional than the Platinum and this could be attractive if you point blank hate technology. If you like the idea of measuring the average distance for all of your clubs, prefer pressing buttons to fiddling with the screen and aren't too fussed about keeping track of (and analysing) your historical round statistics, then it could make for a more attractive choice. GolfBuddy World Platinum ($220ish to $449ish) The Platinum has a slightly-larger, 3-inch screen with a higher resolution and an 18-hour battery life. Having 50-channels makes it fast to lock on to satellites but it wasn't noticeably more accurate than its competitors. Some 40,000 courses are loaded onto the included microSD card and updates are also for life. On the one hand, more fairway information is visible in terms of colour schemes, however, you'll sometimes need to jab the Targets button to see how far each hazard is whereas the G6 displays everything at once. While more information can be displayed it's not always correct: a path was listed as a creek on one of our holes, although it was better having it there than not at all. Setting a mark involves tapping the side button but you can't record which club was used to strike the ball with. Nonetheless, you can easily set marks wherever the ball lands. When recording your score you can note whether you hit a bunker or not. Where the Platinum pulls away is with its computer integration: a computer program manages the information and device updates. Each round provides more information than simply numbers; there are graphs for how often you hit the fairway or the 'Green in Regulation' plus your number of putts and putting average. It's all very well laid out and more useful than the Garmin in this regard. Accessories include two flavours of clip case and a car charger. It's a more refined product than the Garmin but it's pricey at $449. However, a bit of savvy internet shopping means it can be had for just $220 from US-based suppliers and the global nature of the product means you'll still get all of the courses. You'll lose local support buying from overseas but not paying the 100 per cent Nice Beaches Tax balloons the value proposition. Ultimately, if you want a fully-featured, easy to use map tool and score card just for the course then the Garmin is probably your best bet. However, if you don't mind more-fiddly operations and want to track your performance on the computer (and you can find it cheap) then the Platinum has the edge. Missing features There is some serious power in the units. With that in mind it shouldn't be too hard to record everything you do on a course just by hitting the ball, walking to the ball and telling the device which club you used. In doing this you wouldn't even need to type in your score. You'd also be able to track your round history over time and see where you are having consistent problems on a course. The stat tracking would be out of this world. How hard can it be? Golfbuddy Voice ($120ish to $240ish) The small, square, golf-ball-sized, 30-gram Voice is a different beast altogether. The small LCD display carries minimal information although it's still able to provide a small line-diagram of each hole. This zooms into the green where appropriate and even rotates the diagram depending on you angle of approach. Its basic function means you press the button and it tells you the distance to the green using clear, femal voice. It can't be overstated how quickly you come to rely on this. There's no more scanning around for course distance markers or working out which club to use based on guess work and iffy trigonometry (or Imperial/Metric conversions in some countries). With one of these clipped to your shirt or hat you now will always know the exact distance to the green - just by pushing a button and listening. You can also choose the front, middle or back of the green if you want to be a smidge more accurate on your approach play. That's not all; with a few extra button pushes - which you'll have to learn as they're not that intuitive - you can also set marks and measure the distances of your shots. The downside is that the small size means that it's easily lost. But once you lose it you'll quickly realise how much you relied upon it and you'll seriously miss it not being there. Naturally its size limits its functionality and it can't keep score or provide course maps like the handhelds. Value is another concern. In Australia it costs $240 which might sound reasonable. However, in the US (and online in Australia from the likes of eBay) it can be had for literally half that. Nonetheless, this isn't just a great golf gadget it's a great gadget. It's pure innovation, simple to operate and will do the job for golfers of all ages forever. Basically, if you play golf then you need one of these, it's just as simple as that.LaVine thinks better days for Chicago Bulls could arrive soon hello Two games into the regular season, the Chicago Bulls could use a better storyline than practice-punch recap or rookie Lauri Markkanen's rebounding breakdown. So Zach LaVine stepped forward Monday to remind fans that things could get better relatively soon. LaVine is working out but still recovering from a torn ACL in his left knee suffered last Feb. 3. "I should be doing contact (in practice) really soon," he said at the Advocate Center. "It all depends on (team doctors). I'm pushing them as hard as I can, but at the end of the day we've still got to be careful. I feel great. I'm doing everything I was doing before. I'm pretty sure I can do contact, but we've got to stick to that schedule." LaVine appears to be making great progress and has been doing basketball drills for a while. But doctors believe the 6-foot-7 swingman should wait the full nine months after surgery before returning to full practice. "Probably in the next two weeks, I would say he'll start doing a little bit of contact," Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg said. "Probably three weeks, he'll be back to full contact if everything stays on schedule." If all goes well, LaVine could make his Bulls debut sometime around Dec. 1. That's a short wait in the scheme of an NBA season, but time may pass slowly while the rebuilding Bulls putter along without three projected starters. Hoiberg did say guard Kris Dunn (dislocated finger) practiced Monday and could play later this week. The Bulls visit Cleveland on Tuesday. "I'm pushing as much as possible because I want to go play with my guys," LaVine said. "When that day comes and I'm able to get on the floor, it'll be a good day for everybody, because I'm waiting." LaVine has been watching practices and running through dummy offense. The hope is, once he's healthy and cleared to play he should already be up to speed with Hoiberg's schemes. So far, LaVine likes what he has seen from the offense, which is designed to be fast-paced and 3-point intensive. "I think it's great," he said. "With the team that we have and the system coach put in, we're going to get up a lot of 3s. When we're on, we're going to blow some teams out with those 3s. When we're off, as the last couple games have shown, it's going to be a struggle to score sometimes, but I think that's where I can come in and help." LaVine, 22, has improved his stats in all three of his seasons in the NBA. At the time of his injury, he was averaging 18.9 points for Minnesota, while shooting 39 percent from 3-point range. The deadline passed for LaVine to sign a contract extension, so he will be a restricted free agent next summer. There's no doubt both sides want to extend the relationship, especially since LaVine and Markkanen were the main pieces in the Jimmy Butler trade. "I think it's fine," LaVine said of not signing an extension. "Obviously, I want to be here for a long time. And I feel the deal is going to get done." There's no guarantee LaVine will ever turn the Bulls back into a playoff team. But after a rough start to the regular season, Hoiberg was able to think ahead to better times when the two-time slam-dunk champ is ready to play. "He's got a skill set that you can do a lot with, starting with his athleticism," Hoiberg said. "He's the fastest guy on our team; really, one of the fastest guys in the league. "His explosiveness, he's already gotten that back. And his ability to shoot the ball from anywhere on the floor puts another shooter, floor-spacer out there. So, yeah, he does make our team a lot better." • Twitter: @McGrawDHBullsMAKIYVKA, Ukraine (Reuters) - Pro-Russia separatists brought reporters on Tuesday to witness the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line in east Ukraine under a ceasefire deal, but Ukraine said the rebels were using the cover of the truce to reinforce for another advance. Fighting has eased in eastern Ukraine in recent days, raising hope that a ceasefire due to start on Feb. 15 can finally take effect after the rebels initially ignored it to storm a government-held town last week. The prospect that the ceasefire will fail has fueled a rout in the Ukrainian hryvnia, which plunged 11 percent to close at 31.63 to the dollar. The currency has already lost half its value since the start of this year after halving during the whole of 2014. Dollar bonds issued by Ukrainian companies sold off heavily after authorities tightened currency controls. A feud over natural gas, which appeared to have been settled for the winter by an agreement late last year, has also resurfaced, with Moscow threatening to cut off Kiev’s supplies in two days unless Kiev pays more money. Since taking the railway hub of Debaltseve in one of the worst defeats of the war for Kiev, the Moscow-backed rebels have indicated they now want to abide by the truce. Kiev says the rebels are still shooting, which they deny. Reuters journalists in rebel-held territory watched 10 trucks carrying howitzers roll through Makiyvka, near rebel-held Donetsk. Rebels said the guns were on their way from Donetsk toward Amvrosiyvka, a town far from the front and close to the Russian frontier. Near Amvrosiyvka, Reuters journalists saw a second convoy carrying 14 howitzers, also heading toward the Russian border. Rebel commander Eduard Basurin said there were no plans for any further military advances. “That’s it. We are going no further,” he said. He said the rebels still aimed to gain control of the entire territory of east Ukraine’s two rebellious provinces, including the government-held port of Mariupol, but would seek this through “negotiations with the Ukrainian side”. Basurin said late on Tuesday that 100 artillery pieces had been pulled back during the course of the day, and the rebels intended to complete the entire withdrawal of all heavy weapons as required under the truce, despite an announcement by Kiev that it was not yet ready to start. “However many there are, they will all be withdrawn. The mission of the OSCE will monitor all the sectors and confirm whether or not we are lying,” he told reporters in Donetsk, referring to the European security body tasked with verifying the truce. The Kiev military said rebel assertions they were pulling back guns were “empty words”. “On the contrary, the terrorist groups, making use of the ceasefire period, are reinforcing their units and building up ammunition.” NOT GIVING UP Western countries have not given up on the ceasefire deal to end fighting that has killed more than 5,600 people, although they remain suspicious of the rebels and their presumed patron, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany met in Paris on Tuesday and backed the ceasefire, pledging more resources to enable the OSCE to monitor it. Trucks of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic army towing mobile artillery
, we also cannot get rid of it.” (29) The Real is impossible, and yet indispensible. The subject does not have priority, then. The subject is the mark of a prior void, but one which asserts itself as primary. The subject retroactively posits its own pre-suppositions. Which as Zizek cannily remarks, is a good way of thinking what Marx means by ‘capital.’ It appears as if everything is the self-movement of capital, because capital posits itself as subject retro-actively. Zizek’s brachylogical reading of Marx makes him an über-Hegelian, and “Hegel is to be repeated today because his and our epochs are both epochs of passage from the Old to the New…. But the failure of the Marxist revolutions makes it clear that we can no longer rely on the eschatology of the New-to-come – the future is open.” (36) Zizekian-Hegelian history is one of affirmation, negation – and the twist. “The Hegelian matrix of the dialectical process is thus that one must first fail in reaching the goal, as the intended reconciliation turns into its opposite, and only then, in a second moment, will the true reconciliation come, when one recognizes this failure itself as the form of success.” (36) The communist project is thus for Zizek still an open question. The revolution just has to be repeated, even though it failed the first time: “this fiasco is necessary since it creates the conditions for its overcoming.” (37) Which is of course a peculiarly perverse version of Stalinist apologetics. It is not enough to have endured the negation, still to come is the twist. Here Zizek touches on a central point for accelerationist theories of history. For Zizek, Marx saw the dynamic capitalism had unleashed, its self-propelling productivity, but thought it possible to conceive of a higher state of civilization that would retain the dynamic but without the internal limit to it imposed by capital itself. Zizek: “if we abolish the obstacle, the inherent contradiction of capitalism, then far from fully unleashing the drive to productivity, we precisely lose this dynamic…” (38) Once more the subject – in this instance capital itself – cannot be eliminated. Hegel is for Zizek the source of both Marx’s concept of capital itself, but also of the will to overturn it. In explicitly brachylogical move, Zizek reads together Hegel’s remarks about the rabble and his account of the conditions under which a subject has a “right to distress,” meaning that it must break the law to survive. The result is a “Maoist Hegel,” The Master whose lesson is “It is right to rebel.” (44) While pretty much nothing in Zizek could really be read as orthodox dialectical materialism, the doctrine of the Master does indeed recode Lenin’s belief in the necessity for the party in psychoanalytical language, as the Master. Zizek: “A Master is a vanishing mediator who gives you back to yourself, who delivers you to the abyss of your freedom: when we listen to a true leader, we discover what we want… A Master is needed because we cannot access our freedom directly.” (45) Without the Master, our freedom does not appear as such, but as a pre-determined field of possibilities. The Master shows us to ourselves otherwise. The Master does not try to fathom what we really want. The Master simply follows their own desires: “his power stems from his fidelity to his desire.” (46) That there is, or could be freedom is guaranteed by the incompleteness of the real itself. First comes freedom, in the sense of the incomplete determination of the real, then comes the subject, which marks the gap. The role of the Master is in a sense to be the gap itself, to open the void. To show that we are free to repeat history, to get it right this time – with a twist. Also for you:While most of the US national team is preparing for tonight’s friendly with Canada, (9 pm ET, live chat on MLSsoccer.com, ESPN2/Sportsnet/Univision Deportes) one international is somewhere in the skies over Europe. The big question remains, where will FC Dallas star Brek Shea be landing? FCD announced in a short press statement on Monday evening that Shea was leaving for Europe to discuss a potential transfer. "We have received interest from a number of European clubs regarding Brek Shea," the statement read. "Brek is traveling there this evening. Currently, there is no deal in place with any club and we have no further details at this time." So is the deal to Stoke City back on? That seems to be Shea’s most likely destination and we’ll find out for sure by 7 pm ET on Thursday, when the European transfer window slams shut. Soccer By Ives is reporting Shea will become the third US international to sign for the Potters this season, as long as he passes a medical. As another USMNT starlet flocks to Europe, Jurgen Klinsmann may have a wry smile on his face. After all, we all know Klinsi is a huge advocate of USMNT stars plying their trade in the top European leagues. But Klinsmann has had plenty on his mind this week -- besides flying his helicopter to and from his Southern California house and US camp -- as his side kicks off USSF's centenary celebrations with a friendly vs. Canada. The team has been in camp for some time, with Klinsmann naming his 23-man squad yesterday. And the former German international has been impressed with what he’s seen from plenty of newcomers. “The last three weeks showed us that we maybe have a deeper pool than we thought,” Klinsmann told reporters. “We have a lot of good players coming through, and their job is to challenge whoever’s in front of them. It was great to see there’s a next generation of players that are eager and hungry to get to the next level." And Klinsi reserved plenty of kind words for Omar Gonzalez when talking to The New York Times: “So far in these few weeks now, I read him, I read him in training sessions, his body language, the way he walks up to the training field, the way he walks through the hotel, and I see a very focused and driven Omar Gonzalez, which is for us wonderful to see.” Check out interviews with Gonzalez and Alejandro Bedoya, as they’ve been enjoying life back with the USMNT. [VIDEO] And in case you missed it, Bedoya also spoke at length with The New York Times about free agency and the many problems it producing. From the Canadian camp, interim head coach Colin Miller is aiming for defensive solidity after his young side were beaten 4-0 by the Danish national team this past Saturday. “We have the approach that we have to be off to a good start,” Miller said. "The longer it goes on without conceding a goal, there’s a bit more confidence in the camp so we’re well aware of how we’ll have to start.” If you want to do a bit of scouting on Canada’s youngsters, KICKTV aired the defeat to Denmark in its entirety. Watch it back here. On the topic of airing live games over the Internet, hands up if you want to watch 26 live MLS preseason games. We've got you covered, because from today until Feb. 20, MLSsoccer.com is streaming 26 games from the Desert Friendlies, Disney Pro Soccer Classic and Desert Diamond Cup. Find out the schedule here, as the coverage kicks off at 1 pm ET today, with the Desert friendly opener between the Portland Timbers and the Colorado Rapids. Lets head off around the league now, with some of the biggest news coming from LA, where the Galaxy announced former player Chris Klein is the new club president. Klein had this to say: "I am thrilled with this opportunity and excited to continue working with the great group of individuals we have on our staff. The Galaxy's best days are ahead of us and I am thankful that Tim and his team at AEG have the confidence in me to help lead us into the future." Meanwhile up in Seattle, defender Patrick Ianni could be out for some time after he added his name to the list of bizarre injury folklore. “That's a first. That's a history maker,” head coach Sigi Schmid said. “I don't know how anybody injures himself on the jump test, but he did. Landed funny, I guess.” Up the road in Vancouver, Japanese playmaker Daigo Kobayashi is officially a Whitecap. The 29-year-old joins Martin Rennie’s side from J-League outfit Shimizu S-Pulse. And the Columbus Crew added to their ranks, with the signing of American born Uruguayan midfielder/defender Agustín Viana. See who else is on trial with the Crew. Ex-Peruvian international Walter Vílchez is rumored to be signing with Chivas USA after playing 45 minutes for the Goats against UC Irvine on Saturday. He formerly played for José Luis Sánchez Solá in Mexico with Puebla. And a Honduran international striker has turned up for preseason with the Colorado Rapids. Find out who. Speaking of Honduras, they named five MLSers in their squad to face the US in WC qualifying on Feb. 6. Check out the full list. In Houston a former Portland Timber is making waves with a sharp trial period so far. Franck Songo’o is travelling with the Dynamo to Arizona to continue his trial before a final decision is made. Back to the Northwest, the Seattle Times revealed just how large their MLS fan base has become and how it compares to the number of fans of other sports in the Emerald City. Check out which US city holds the largest percentage of MLS fans. You may be surprised. And one area earmarked to grow in the future is attendance at college soccer venues across the US. Look at these awesome plans for a new stadium at a top college program. Impressive. [VIDEO] New England and Rochester announced a formal partnership yesterday, as the Revs’ become the latest MLS side to link up with a USL Pro franchise. Peruse all the details here. Across the pond, David Beckham is back in training for the first time since leaving the LA Galaxy in December. But who is Becks training with? We will give you three clues: 1) It’s in his home country; 2) They play in red jerseys; 3) It’s not Manchester United. Speaking of United, they were announced as the most valuable sports team in the world with their value exceeding $3.3 billion. Second on that list is the Dallas Cowboys, with a measly value of $2.1 billion. But it wasn’t all good news for the Red Devils. See which star player had his car stolen in bizarre circumstances. There is plenty of EPL action available on the tube today, with a huge relegation scrap taking place between Brad Guzan’s Aston Villa and Newcastle United. (2:30 pm ET, Fox Soccer) While over on Fox Soccer Plus, Geoff Cameron’s Stoke City take on Wigan at 2:45 pm ET. Will Brek Shea be looking on at the Britannia Stadium? Finally, this has to be goal of the season. Watch Ricardo Fernandes’ incredible scorpion-kick finish. Remarkable. VIDEO MLSsoccer.com Musts ExtraTime Radio: Bedoya on his next move, Mike Petke on RBNY and the Adu dilemma Commentary: Now Klinsmann must back up his big talk What Ever Happened To... Marco Etcheverry Get the Kick-Off delivered to you! Enter your email address and favorite team below to sign up for The Kick-Off mailing list and get it delivered to your inbox every morning.retro gaming from the 90's!!!! In my respect for the SNES. It was one of the best consoles in the 90's, not only did it have great graphics, for the time but you didn't have to wait on load time, for the games to load up like in PS1, 2 3 and 4! it's easier to hook up, say then the Atari 2600 was. The button lay out on the controller was much more advanced for the time on the SNES controller then with the NES controller! The system has a straight up eject button where you could just eject the cart, the with the ps2 you had to wait for the draw to open to eject the game. The console itself had many great games, RPG, FPS, MMO's, ect!!! Certain games had a save function for example THE LEGEND OF ZELDA A LINK TO THE PAST AND FINAL FANSTY I, II, AND III games. where other games on the snes had no saving feature, I can't think of anymore games off the top of my head. the carts for the snes sometimes yes you had to clean them, unlike cd's that will get scratched. Bring back the retro 90's for gaming! there is only 3 ways of hooking the SNES to a TV, using R/F or Radio frequency which is the screw on type which the video resolution is 480 interlaced, A/v which brings a better picture, and s-video which a/v and s-video are a better way of hooking up the system to the tv then R/F is!Read full review Verified purchase: Yes \| Condition: Pre-ownedBy Maegan Murray, WSU Tri-Cities RICHLAND, Wash. – While neonicotinoid pesticides can harm honey bees, a new study by Washington State University researchers shows that the substances pose little risk to bees in real-world settings. The team of WSU entomologists studied apiaries in urban, rural and agricultural areas in Washington state, looking at potential honey bee colony exposure to neonicotinoid insecticides from pollen foraging. The results were published in the Journal of Economic Entomology (http://jee.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/01/19/jee.tov397) this spring. After calculating the risk based on a “dietary no observable adverse effect concentration” – the highest experimental point before there is an adverse effect on a species – of five parts per billion, the study’s results suggest low potential for neonicotinoids to harm bee behavior or colony health. Understanding risk vs. hazard “Calculating risk, which is the likelihood that bad things will happen to a species based on a specific hazard or dose, is very different from calculating hazard, which is the potential to cause harm under a specific set of circumstances,” said co-author Allan Felsot, WSU Tri-Cities professor of entomology and environmental toxicology. “Most of what has dominated the literature recently regarding neonicotinoids and honey bees has been hazard identification,” he said. “But hazardous exposures are not likely to occur in a real-life setting.” Felsot said the study shows that the risk of bee exposure to neonicotinoids is small because bees aren’t exposed to enough of the pesticide to cause much harm in a real-world scenario. Lead author Timothy Lawrence, assistant professor and director of WSU Island County Extension, said many sublethal toxicity studies, whether at the organism level or colony level, have not done formal dose-response analyses. “The question we posed focused on the risk of exposure to actively managed honey bee colonies in different landscapes,” he said. Risks in landscapes none to very low With the cooperation of 92 Washington beekeepers, the team collected samples of beebread, or stored pollen, from 149 apiaries across the state. Throughout the one-year trial, neonicotinoid residues were detected in fewer than five percent of apiaries in rural and urban landscapes. Two neonicotinoids, clothianidin and thiamethoxam, were found in about 50 percent of apiaries in agricultural landscapes. Although neonicotinoid insecticide residues were detectable, the amounts were substantially smaller than levels shown in other studies to not have effects on honey bee colonies. The WSU researchers referenced 13 studies to identify no observable adverse effect concentrations for bee populations, which they used to perform a risk assessment based on detected residues. “Based on residues we found in apiaries around Washington state, our results suggest no risk of harmful effects in rural and urban landscapes and arguably very low risks from exposure in agricultural landscapes,” Felsot said. Care required to regulate exposure While exposure levels were found to be small, Lawrence said it is still important to be careful with use of neonicotinoid insecticides and follow product label directions. For example, insecticides should not be used during plant flowering stages when bees are likely to be foraging. “While we found that bees did not have chronic exposure to adverse concentrations of neonicotinoids, we are not saying that they are not harmful to bees – they are,” he said. “People need to be careful with pesticide use to avoid acute exposure.” Other researchers on the study included Elizabeth Culbert, WSU Food and Environmental Quality Lab (GEQL) research technician; Vincent Hebert, WSU associate professor of entomology and laboratory research director; and Steven Sheppard, WSU professor and department chair of entomology. Contacts: Allan Felsot, WSU Tri-Cities entomology and environmental toxicology, 509-372-7365, afelsot@tricity.wsu.edu Timothy Lawrence, WSU Island County Extension, 360-679-7329, timothy.lawrence@wsu.edu Maegan Murray, WSU Tri-Cities public relations specialist, 509-372-7333, maegan.murray@tricity.wsu.eduSignup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world Hundreds of LGBT people have flocked to the capital of Peru to stage a mass “kissathon”. LGBT couples from across the country reportedly staged the peaceful protest as a protest to demand equal rights for same-sex couples in the country. People staged the act after a call to action was put out across social media networks. Couples that attended the protest engaged in a prolonged period of kissing, that is deemed “inappropriate” by a majority of the staunch catholic and conservative groups in the country. “The streets of Peru are for all, regardless of sexual orientation. Therefore kisses, whether homosexual or heterosexual, should be seen as a normal behavior and not as inappropriate,” a group who helped organise the protest said. Same-sex marriage is not legal in Peru, however a recent court case meant a step was taken towards it being recognised. Oscar Ugarteche married his partner in Mexico and sued in Peru, his home country, and the court ruled in favour. Crimes which are motivated by homophobia are not punished in the country because the criminal code does not recognised prejudice towards the LGBT community. It is estimated that nine LGBT people were killed in the country last year because of sexuality or gender discrimination. The anti-LGBT lawyer who represented Kim Davis previously shared a photo of an alleged ‘Kim Davis solidarity’ rally in Peru. Mat Staver claimed 100,000 people turned up for the solidarity prayer in the country. However, it later emerged that the picture was fake and portrayed a prayer meeting from the year prior.Today, there's a big batch of graphical improvements to Lletya and the elven quest areas for you to enjoy, as you skill and quest your way towards the Elf City requirements. Complete the prerequisites for this year's biggest update in a better-looking Tirannwyn. Let's Getcha to Lletya Today's graphical updates are focused around four quests: Underground Pass, Mourning's End I, Mourning's End II, and Within the Light. The areas in which those quests take place have been spritzed, shined and retextured, and look better than ever. We've also rebuilt the town of Lletya with some elegant woodwork, giving it an atmosphere unique to the elves' woodland realm. Within the Light and Catapult Construction are the quest requirements for entering Prifddinas when it opens later this year. Completing them and their pre-requisite quests is quite a feat, so now's the time to get stuck into some elven adventuring. Remember, too, that the crystal amulet will give you daily bonus XP towards the Prifddinas skill requirements. It will also allow you to start collecting new crystal resources for use when the city opens. Get hold of one of these when you subscribe at 25% discount in our Summer Special membership offer. Have Fun! We're getting closer to the Elf City launch, so it's high time for a walk in the forest. Take a look, and let us know your thoughts on the forums. The RuneScape Team In Other News Solomon's hosting another stunning showcase from our Character Team. Visit Solomon's General Store to get your Vyrewatch Skyshadow and Aviansie Skyguard outfits - coming later today! and outfits - coming later today! You can now log into RuneScape with a Google account. You can now pay farmers for farming plot protection while the Greenfingers aura is active. The superior Kyzaj rewards from The Mighty Falls now have the Bandos Godsword’s passive effect. Following Mod Dean's Twitch playthrough of Sheep Herder (contains strong language) a number of changes have been made to the quest: Sheep are now less likely to wander off immediately after being prodded. Sheep will now move to a random location if prodded repeatedly in a direction they cannot move. The "mushroom of doom" has been removed. Read the patch notes for other updates released today.Friday's Express front page You might have noticed that some sectors of our fearlessly free press have lately started to seem a little unhinged. The Daily Mail, which was always the printed equivalent of somebody's ranting uncle, is now purple and choking, eyes streaming with frustrated sadism as little white globs of fury fountain from a hideously engorged mouth. The Sun, everyone's favourite casually violent pub-banter idiot, has gone into a blind and thrashing rage; pint-glasses smash against everything in sight, blood and piss mingle in sticky rivulets down its clothes. The Telegraph and the Spectator are hunched into hideous new hieroglyphs, bent double under the weight of their own sneers; the Express, its world in collapse through darting eyes, is stockpiling weapons and barricading the doors. These people want fear – panic tingling under your skin from the moment you wake up; slow-stewed resentment sloshing through the underpasses of a greyer, grimmer Britain; bitterness falling in the constant drizzle, all while the front pages of the newspapers are more achingly lurid every day – and they're getting it. This has been going on for months now, but today saw some really unprecedented hysteria. After the High Court's ruling on Article 50, in which three judges decided that our future shouldn't be put under the dictatorial control of one fanatic with her cabinet of shuffling non-entities and her secret unknowable plans, the reactionary press exploded with incoherent rage. "Enemies of the people," the Mail trilled, above portraits of the three judges. The Mail Online shockingly revealed one judge to be "openly gay". The Express sagely commented that "truly, November 3, 2016, was the day democracy died", before adding that "it is not in the British nature to take injustice lying down – more than ever, your country needs you to fight for its freedom". (They also described the constitutional ruling as "a plot too improbable even for a Franz Kafka novel", which is actually a decent comparison, but not in the way they think it is.) All power must go to the executive, all must sacrifice for the lifeblood of the nation, all quibbling is treason. This language is dangerous and insane, no longer just floating off the edges of fascism, but outrightly, gleefully totalitarian. On the face of it, this couldn't be happening at a stranger time. The court's ruling might be a roadblock for Theresa May, but haven't we already had the referendum, and didn't these people win? Aren't they getting everything they want? Why are they so paranoid, so furious, so outraged, when there's no longer really anything standing in their way? This anger isn't really new, but the targets have shifted. The reactionary tabloids have always been swivel-eyed and apoplectic whenever it came to migrants or asylum seekers, travellers, benefits claimants, Muslims and queer people, demanding every kind of violence within and outside of the law. The liberal-metropolitan bourgeoisie was grudgingly, condescendingly tolerated, and that toleration was mutual – you laugh at the tacky tabloids, you might wear your "hated by the Daily Mail " badge, or call it the Daily Fail on Twitter, but that was that. Not any more: they don't just disdain nice sandal-wearing lefties now, they're lunging for blood. (Which could be a workable definition of fascism: it's what happens when the social violence that's always meted out against various broadly defined undesirables is turned inwards towards people who once thought of themselves as respectable.) All this demands outrage, and at long last there's outrage. A common theme is to ask if these papers know what they're doing. There have already been victims; only a few months ago a sitting MP was murdered in the streets by a right-wing fanatic who gave his name in court as "Death to Traitors, Freedom for Britain" – have they forgotten what this kind of hysteria leads to? They haven't forgotten. This is all very deliberate. It's a trap. The point isn't just to stir up fury and hatred on the right; the papers are fucking with you, filling their pages with outright fascism precisely so you can identify it. When they churn out invective against "traitors", or call for the insufficiently patriotic to be fought tooth and nail, or demand that anyone who disagrees with them be silenced, they know exactly what kind of associations this is bringing up – and then they can turn it around. Look at these out-of-touch paranoiacs, accusing us of being fascists, if you can credit it, when all we did was talk in fascist language, encourage fascist attitudes and propose fascist solutions. Who are the real crazies? They want one national spittle-flecked shouting match; everyone crazed and desperate, all the political unreason that undergirds the general discourse scrubbed of any patina of reason and gleaming on the surface. They want perpetual outrage, constant, swamping and pervasive. Why now? Because they can only pull this kind of trick once they've already won, when the outrage of a besieged and demoralised left is no longer dangerous. This leads to a kind of paralysing dilemma: the media's simpering totalitarians might want you to start spewing as much fear and terror as they do, but simply ignoring it is hardly an option either. After all, it's not like there's any meaningful difference between simple fascist propaganda and a calculated, contrived imitation; the result is the same, the ideology exists in its own articulation. The best response is not to abandon outrage, but to push through it, to move past the paralysis of correctly identifying everything and doing nothing, and start thinking about what is to be done. So the eccentric private interests behind some of Britain's biggest newspapers are taking on the language and signifiers of fascism to get what they want; now what? It's not as if the organised left doesn't have experience dealing with fascism, even if it's fascism of a pettier, more localised type. The Express might be better organised than the EDL, but when the Nazis try to march through our streets, there have always been people ready to tear up a few bricks from the pavement and chase them off. When the same thing happens on a national scale, all we need is a more sophisticated brick. @sam_kriss More from VICE: The Vote on Article 50 Gives Labour a Chance to Make Brexit Less Terrible Yes, But Which of Today's Newspaper Front Pages Is Most Hysterical of Them All? Article 50: What Happens Next in the Great Constitutional Brexit Meltdown?With more than one million signatures to recall Gov. Scott Walker, and another 845,000 to recall Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefish, organizers have taken the all-important next step with the handing in of petitions. While few doubted whether the signatures would be collected, groups have exceeded expectations. The one million signatures reportedly collected is roughly equivalent to 46 percent of the total voters in the 2010 election, in which Walker received 1.12 million votes (52 percent). Now comes the hard part, finding a candidate to challenge the controversial governor (more on that later). 2. Rep. Tamara Grigsby Milwaukee representative Tamara Grigsby was released from a hospital where she was receiving care for an unknown illness, and is now recovering at her home. In a statement released Monday following her hospital discharge, the office of Rep. Grigsby said, “In lieu of flowers, Rep. Grigsby requests that interested parties instead make a small donation to a Wisconsin organization representing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. To honor the Martin Luther King Day of Service, Grigsby prefers that, instead of flowers, the cause of social justice move forward.” We hope she continues to progress in her recovery. 3. Wisconsin manufacturing While we’ve been taking note of the decline of manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin over recent months, there’s encouraging news this week as aircraft manufacturer Kestrel Aircraft Corporation announced that the company will open its new headquarters and build a new plant in Superior, Wisconsin. Kestrel could add an estimated 600 jobs to the region. There was competition for this plant between Gov. Walker and Maine governor Paul LePage (R), and the company chose Wisconsin’s package, which includes more than $18 million in tax incentives through an “Enterprise Zone” set up by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. 4. Miss America, Laura Kaeppeler 23-year-old Laura Kaeppeler of Kenosha became the second Miss Wisconsin to win the Miss America pageant. The new Miss America won the talent portion with her performance of “Il Bacio,” and will be using her $50,000 scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in speech and language pathology. During Saturday night’s pageant, Kaeppeler introduced herself by saying, “If you’re watching, Aaron Rodgers, call me.” So far, that hasn’t happened. Whitefish Bay native Craig Counsell is calling it a career after a 15 years in the big leagues, the last five of which were spent playing for his hometown team. “It’s easy when you’ve got more softball teams calling you than baseball teams,” Counsell joked at his press conference. But Counsell won’t be done working in baseball; he’s been named special assistant to Brewers General Manager Doug Melvin. In other Brewer news, Nyjer Morgan is back for another year (#AHHH!). LOSERS 1. Democratic voters? Amidst all of the excitement this week from the Wisconsin Democratic Party and other recall groups hoping for Gov. Walker’s departure is the underlying problem of a viable candidate. While Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is currently polling as the (potential) primary frontrunner (and picked up two union endorsements on Thursday), many fear that Mayor Nice Guy won’t be able to bring it statewide. Same for Madison Democrat Kathleen Falk, who announced her candidacy this week. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel presented this graphic (for free!) outlining other potential candidates in a recall primary, including Assembly minority leader Peter Barca, state senators Tim Cullen and Jon Erpenbach, and former U.S. congressmen Steve Kagen and David Obey. While Obey in particular would be a compelling candidate, there doesn’t appear to be a candidate that recall-backers are rallying behind, and time is short. 2. Private sector jobs While the United states gained 212,000 jobs in the month of December, Wisconsin went the other direction, losing an estimated 3,900 private-sector jobs during that same time period. While the number of private-sector jobs created in the state is up 13,500 from a year ago, this is now the sixth consecutive month in which Wisconsin lost. 3. Pressure tactics As President Obama rejects the Keystone Pipeline proposal, not based on its merits or lack thereof, but because of GOP-controlled, House-led efforts to impose “a rushed and arbitrary deadline” for his decision. Obama said the timeline requirement “prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment.” 4. Wisconsinites on YouTube Wisconsin went viral this week, as Packer fan Casey Lewis had an epic drunken meltdown after the Packers’ loss, which she blamed on her sister Megan’s choice in fingernail polish and Packers attire. The video has made Lewis an internet sensation and has been a popular local media topic all week, as the video now has more than 1 million views. Even linebacker/gladiator Clay Matthews responded in a tweet, saying “D_mn you Megan and your sparkles!!” Ms. Lewis wasn’t the only web star this week, as Madison resident Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop (no, I didn’t fall asleep on my keyboard, that’s his name), who was arrested for excessive drinking and drug use, got the late night TV treatment from Jimmy Kimmel, which included a montage of local TV anchors attempting to pronounce the 30-year-old’s entirely ridiculous name. 5. Cheeseheads everywhere The Green Bay Packers’ quest to repeat as Super Bowl Champions came to an abrupt end on Sunday at the hands of Eli @#$%ing Manning and the New York Giants. Now that there’s been a few days to adequately digest the Sunday afternoon disaster, here’s where I think the loss ranks among the Pack’s worst playoff losses of the past 15 years: 1997: Super Bowl XXXII 2008: The overtime loss in the NFC Championship (Brett Favre’s last game as a Packer, back when we still cared about that stuff). 1998: The Jerry Rice fumble game (or as it’s known in San Francisco, The Catch II) 2003: 4th and 26. 2002: The Vick Game. Sunday’s loss to New York. 2004: Losing to the Vikings 31-17 in the playoffs after beating them twice in the regular season 2009: Packers/Cardinals shootoutNever Send a Symbol to do a Method's Job - Chalain Mar. 4th, 2008 08:10 pm Never Send a Symbol to do a Method's Job Chris Shea is destroying Ruby. (It's okay though. Everybody's doing it.) Chris just wrote a blog post called a better try -- chaining methods and nil. I can't really get behind his solution, but he raises some very good points, and I think he's asking the right questions. Before I continue, I should point out that I don't have a better solution, so I don't mean to be dinging Chris. I'm mostly writing this to point out a new aspect of the problem space here. The problem space, at least, is clear: writing @person && @person.name is not DRY. He dislikes Object#andand because it's too wordy (and I admit, I'm having trouble adopting it myself, even though I like it about the best of all the available options.) Chris' solution is to write a method called Object#try. You give it the name of a method as a symbol. If it works, it returns the result. Otherwise it politely returns (a non-whiny) nil. For example: @person.try(:name) returns the person's name... or nil. You don't have to guard the access to the person object. Nice and DRY! The problem is that it changes the syntax. You're no longer calling a method on the object, you're calling try and sending it a symbol. I look at that think, "why is person trying that symbol?". Hmm. But isn't that what we're doing behind the scenes with Object#andand? So maybe Chris' code is a bit more honest? No. It's just more explicit, and that's not the same thing. If sending a message is always more honest than calling a method, why call methods at all, ever? Because they express intent clearly. I don't like sending symbols when I could be calling methods if what I'm supposed to be doing is calling methods. While we're at it, I don't like Symbol#to_proc, either. But now I'm just being crotchety. It seems like the real problem here is that whiny nil is just too darn whiny. Wouldn't it make more sense to just make whiny nil shut up? The guys over at rubyenrails.nl had this idea a few days ago, too. Unfortunately, I don't like their solution any better. Actually, at its heart, their solution is identical to turtles, a bit of code I wrote a month ago. Only my version was way better: It could be toggled, it installed cleanly, it had a full suite of RSpec specifications, and everybody knew it was a joke. Who knows? Maybe my joke will turn out to be... well... practical. Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: Dark Designs - Podrunner 22 comments - Leave a comment From: jerith Date: March 5th, 2008 05:03 am (UTC) (Link) The nil.method_missing way was my first thought on encountering this, but it's too wide-reaching. What I actually want is for Ruby to know when I'm expecting a particular class and getting nil instead. Perhaps some kind of type annotation? That will have to happen deeper in the language, though. Reply ) ( Thread From: jerith Date: March 5th, 2008 05:46 am (UTC) (Link) It's essentially andand, but with a much shorter method name. One of the comments on your second link points to the solution I like best so far: http://coderrr.wordpress.com/2007/09/15/the-ternary-destroyer/ It's essentially andand, but with a much shorter method name. Reply ) ( Parent ) ( Thread From: reaverta Date: March 5th, 2008 07:04 am (UTC) (Link) Tell me again how Turtles! solves this particular problem. ...Other than as an IRC script, I mean. Reply ) ( Thread From: chalain Date: March 5th, 2008 03:09 pm (UTC) (Link) with_turtles { puts @person.name puts @city.state.country.name } The form you are familiar with, turtles!/no_turtles! is the global variant, that essentially makes the universe¹ run in turtles² mode. ¹ for
risks, a dynamic little understood by investors. Quinlan believes that climate change will decrease the supply of water available not only for human consumption, but also industrial use to dangerously low levels. Without water, which he calls the "lifeblood of the global economy," it will be impossible for economies to function, from the human toll to the simple fact that many industries are water-intensive. He cited a World Bank report that lays out just how dire the situation is: 1.6 billion people could be subject to serious water scarcity within 20 years, while global water demand could shoot up as much as 50% by 2050. Industrial water demand could increase 50% to 70% by 2050, according to World Bank estimates. India's difficult water situation over the past two years is the perfect example of this trend, according to Quinlan. Here's his breakdown (emphasis added): None other than India, the newly anointed growth champion of the world economy, is in the grips of a two-year drought that threatens the economic livelihood of more than 300 million people. Because water levels in India's 91 reservoirs are at their lowest levels in decades, agricultural output has declined, while electricity generation has plummeted. Dams are parched, factories are operating below capacity, and the lack of safe drinking water has put the health of millions of people at risk. Water wars have erupted between states, making the crisis all that more acute for the national government. Add it all up and the world's strongest emerging market is being laid low by a climate-induced water crisis. In order to alleviate these concerns, Quinlan said, governments and private firms will need to invest extensively in conservation and means to combat the global crisis, or risk it totally decimating growth. According to Quinlan's estimates, the world water industry already generates around $450 billion a year, and that is poised to increase as the globe confronts this issue. If that doesn't happen, there could be dire consequences. Quinlan concluded: Global climate change—or the increasing frequency and severity of droughts, floods and violent storms—has added another dangerous element and layer to the world's mounting water crisis. This slow-motion crisis of the past few decades is now accelerating, creating plenty of risks to global growth but also multiple investment opportunities.Amid the current political malaise, many have been speculating that a viable third party will rear its head in 2012. According to Ralph Nader, this “dark horse” might not be a new party at all but a coalition of existing lawmakers. What he foresees is a new dynamic in American politics, one where libertarian-conservatives unite with progressive-liberals on key issues, checking the power of the current corporatist regime that exists in DC. Appearing on Wednesday’s Freedom Watch w/Judge Napolitano, Nader reminded viewers that, “authentic Tea-partiers hail from the conservative-libertarian wing of the Republican party that has been so disrespected and corporatized by the likes of Bush and Cheney.” In truth, Ron Paul is the father of the Tea Party movement. His followers have staged Federal Reserve and anti-bailout protests with an 18th century motif long before their activities were co-opted by Fox News and Palin supporters. Story continues below Go Beyond the Two-Sided Narrative! Get IVN’s weekly round-up of news and information for independent-minded voters in your inbox. Thanks for signing up! An unknown error occured :( Please try again later First Name* Last Name* Email Address* I accept IVN's terms and conditions? Sign Up According to Nader, it will be the true progenitors of the Tea Party movement, the Paul-ites, that will forge strong ties with progressives and liberals on common denominator issues such as auditing the Federal Reserve, reducing military spending, and ending corporate welfare. “They’re gonna go after all these bloated, corporate welfare subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts,” says Nader. Lawmakers such as Bernie Sanders and Paul the elder, who put principle before party (apparently there are a few remaining), will alienate a lot of “corporatist Republicans” who’ve been “getting a unity in the past few years by putting party before principle,” Nader said. “Watch for that nexus that draws that line between libertarian-conservatives and corporatists.” Nader sees Ron Paul connecting with the “hyper progressive” Sanders to enact greater oversight of America’s private, central bank – the Federal Reserve System. Paul’s new title as chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology might provide the material support needed for such an endeavor. The libertarian think-tank, the Cato Institute, was also mentioned by Nader as a common intellectual authority for this new libertarian/progressive alliance. Will operating on principle alone effect real change in such a runaway system? Nader claims that the new coalition won’t have the numbers out of the gate to bring the government grinding to a halt, but will do enough to make a statement and show that they have a voice. The four-time Green party & Independent candidate for president believes the first legislation libertarian-conservatives and progressive-liberals will push through is “a strong whistle blower bill,” like one supported by libertarian-leaning Senator Charles Grassly.Staff at the VA Medical Center in San Diego manipulated wait time data to make it appear veteran patients received mental health care more quickly than they actually did, according to an investigation done by the Veteran Affairs Office of the Inspector General. NBC 7's Wendy Fry reports. (Published Thursday, March 31, 2016) Staff at the VA Medical Center in San Diego manipulated wait time data to make it appear veteran patients received mental health care more quickly than they actually did, according to an investigation done by the Veteran Affairs Office of the Inspector General. The investigation launched in 2014 after two VA Medical Center employees called the OIG office to report the misconduct. This followed national coverage of a wait time scandal in Phoenix where 35 veterans died while waiting for VA care. The Inspector General’s investigation, released Thursday, uncovered that medical schedulers were changing the date veteran patients requested to make it look like the department had shorter wait times. They also found many appointments were actually cancelled. “I basically had been diagnosed with ADHD and PTSD so I was getting some [help at the VA,]” Army vet Debra Eggeman-Steffen explained. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been getting anything from the VA in a long time, like I said because of a lot of the problems that the VA was causing me.” After waiting for mental health services for six months, another veteran became so frustrated that he tried to kill himself the report revealed. Antonio De La Rosa, a Marine Corps veteran who did two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, agreed there’s a huge problem. “There’s so many veterans here and with the issues going on veterans are committing suicide and we need to have more help and it probably wouldn’t happen,” De La Rosa told NBC 7. “I know there are a lot of programs out there where it’s actually useful to veterans because a lot of veterans are afraid to admit that they have an issue, one or two, they’re just embarrassed…The wait time there could be a whole lot better. The programs there could be a whole lot better.” “There’s some times when I have to go to the VA and I don’t even want to go because I’m like, you know what, they’re not going to do anything for me,” he said. “There’s tons of times when I need to go and I just don’t go because I feel like it’s pointless.” The Inspector General reviewed scheduling data for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, and as a result Ray Deal, Deputy Chief for Health Administration Service for the VA, said actions have been taken to make sure appointments are given in a timely manner. “These folks who were found in the reports to be working outside of the directive itself, we have absolutely conducted personnel action against them,” Deal said. “I’m not free to disclose what that is, but these folks were held accountable.” The number of schedulers has also been reduced and each scheduler is now audited on a weekly basis. The Inspector General’s report only focused on the mental health department of the VA. San Diego Representative Scott Peters released a statement on the investigation Thursday. It reads: “I’m disappointed and angry to learn the very type of VA malfeasance that I’ve railed against, that I’ve fought to eradicate, was happening here in San Diego. I’m particularly saddened to hear that another horrible wait time cover up contributed to a suicide attempt – which shows how desperately this veteran needed the help that was delayed by someone’s desire to put a sunny face on a dark problem. “Congress was rightly shocked into action after learning of ‘schedule fixing’ most notably in Phoenix but also in other regions. How anyone could think it was better to cover up that veterans in need weren’t getting the care they’d earned, rather than speak up, is appalling and an egregious abuse of trust." “I know VASDHS has acted to address these problems, and I commend them for taking the findings and recommendations made by the inspector general seriously. I will, however, follow up with Sec. McDonald to find out how it is that any of the people found responsible still have a job at the VA.”JSM, formally known as Joint Statistical Meeting, has become world’s largest annual statistical event since its inception in 1840. The meeting serves as a unique venue for faculties, students, and industry affiliations to exchange ideas, results, and insights gathered in the development and practice of the field of statistics. Topics of the meeting range from statistical theory and methodology to applications in areas like biology, medical studies, social science, and other related areas. Recent JSM conferences have attracted more than 5000 attendees from about 50 countries. Two Sigma sponsored the JSM 2017, which was held in Baltimore, MD. This year’s meeting boasted more than 500 sessions, covering a wide range of topics. Below, a group of Two Sigma statisticians provides an overview of some of the most interesting of the sessions and lectures on recent advances in statistics as well as on challenges statisticians face as we move forward. Highlights discussed include: Special lectures, such as “What’s happening in Selective Inference?” by Emmanuel Candes, and “Information-Theoretic Methods in Statistics” by Martin Wainwright, which covers novel topics in statistics that started to attract substantial interest in the statistics community recently. , such as “What’s happening in Selective Inference?” by Emmanuel Candes, and “Information-Theoretic Methods in Statistics” by Martin Wainwright, which covers novel topics in statistics that started to attract substantial interest in the statistics community recently. Special, late-breaking, and additional sessions, including one on “Computer Age Statistical Inference” by Bradley Efron and Trevor Hastie, attracted large audiences and stimulated interesting floor discussions. Special Lectures Wald lecture I-III: What’s Happening in Selective Inference? — Emmanuel Candes, Stanford University The lecture was a call to action for statisticians to meet emerging challenges in modern statistics resulting from rapid advances in technology in recent years. In particular, modern statistical inference for scientific discovery tends to be (1) post-selection, i.e., hypotheses are formed, revised, or drastically changed after data are collected and analyzed (hence the name selective), (2) large-scale, as it is not uncommon to have thousands of hypotheses being mined together, and (3) computationally intensive and analytically intractable, as complex models are becoming more widely adopted. How statisticians should embrace those changes has naturally become a hot topic of discussion inside the statistics community. For example, with machine learning models coming to center stage, even the most talented statisticians find deriving the null distribution of p-value—a simple task used to be done on paper—increasingly hard to tackle. Emmanuel Candes’ work provides an interesting approach to the aforementioned challenge in the context of high-dimensional variable selection problems (Barber and Candes, 2015): instead of calculating p-value for all the testing statistics, one simply manufactures knockoff variables, a “fake copy” of the dataset that mimics the correlation structure of the original features but is otherwise unrelated to the response, after controlling for the existing features (i.e., conditional independence). The same testing statistics are then calculated from those knockoff variables, along with the variable of interests, and a data-dependent threshold to control FDR is then calculated and shown theoretically and numerically to work well. The merit of the method lies in its simplicity and universal applicability, regardless of the complexity of the underlying model or the choice of testing statistics. I.e., it works in the same way for testing regression beta in a simple linear model or lasso as it does when dealing with variable selection in a complicated machine learning model like a neural network. Candes’ research has important implications for the future of statistical inference, as such new theories and principles are in great need to respond to the sweeping advances in science and technology we are experiencing today. Blackwell Lecture: Information-Theoretic Methods in Statistics: From Privacy to Optimization — Martin Wainwright, U.C. Berkeley The arrival of massive datasets for analysis in the new age of statistics has led to new issues in statistical inference. Some issues like curse of dimensionality, are well understood, while others, like the importance of privacy and related computational constraints, have just started to gain statisticians’ attention in recent years. To this end, Martin Wainwright covered two related topics in his talk: first, he provided a general characterization of the trade-offs between alpha privacy and statistical utility, where the statistical utility is measured in terms of minimax risk. The second half of the talk covered randomized sketching methods for approximately solving least-squares problems under convex constraints. The authors initially provided a general lower bound on any randomized method and then discussed a new method, named the iterative Hessian Sketch (Pilanci and Wainwright, 2016), which is shown to perform well as a measurement of distance between the approximate minimizer and the true minimizer. Medallion Lecture II: State-Space Modeling of Dynamics Processes in Neuroscience — Emery Brown, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Emery Brown gave an interesting talk on applying state-space point process modeling in neuroscience research. After presenting a brief overview of state-space point processes, Brown discussed a state-space model used to control medical comas (2-D linear state-space model with binary observations/Kalman filter) and showed that it is feasible to do so. The model contains an optimal feedback controller, a filter, thresholding, and a recursive Bayesian estimator. For example, given a target burst-suppression level, the system will control the administration of a drug (e.g., propofol level) to maintain the desired general anesthesia state using the closed-loop control system that he described. Special Sessions Computer Age Statistical Inference The two talks in this special lecture series were based on a recent book by Bradley Efron and Trevor Hastie: Computer Age Statistical Inference: Algorithms, Evidence, and Data Science (Efron and Hastie, 2016). Bayes, Oracle Bayes, Empirical Bayes — Bradley Efron, Stanford University Empirical Bayes, an idea pioneered by Herbert Robbins (Robbins, 1956) and Stein (Stein, 1956), has since enjoyed widespread success through its applications in many scientific fields. It philosophically bridges the frequentist and Bayesian ways of thinking, while practically achieving performance close to that of Oracle Bayes without requiring the knowledge of the values of underlying hyper-parameters (hence, in some sense, being viewed as optimal). However, most of the ongoing research focuses on certain loss functions, like mean-squared-errors, and it remains unclear how Empirical Bayes method behaves for general loss functions. This is a known deficiency of f-modeling, which focuses on modeling the marginal distribution of the data. As an alternative perspective, Efron called for putting more efforts into g-modelling, i.e., the modeling of the prior in the Empirical Bayes framework. Using several real-world datasets, the author showed that this alternative is a much-preferred approach (Efron, 2015) and may reshape the future of research in Empirical Bayes. Variable Selection at Scale — Trevor Hastie, Stanford University The lecture offered a brief overview of variable selection methods, such as best subset, forward stepwise, ridge, lasso, elastic net and relaxed lasso, and it provided a comprehensive comparison of those methods using a wide range of numerical experiments. The speaker first noted that there has been an interesting breakthrough in best-subset algorithms using mixed integer programming (Miyashiro and Takano, 2015), so it is feasible to compare best-subset methods with other variable selection methods in a lot of studies. The numerical comparisons using real or synthetic data (Hastie etc, 2017) indicate that best subset behaves like the forward stepwise method and works better in high-SNR cases, while lasso-type methods tend to perform better in low-SNR scenarios, with relaxed lasso emerging as the overall winner. Three Principles for Data Science: Predictability, Stability, and Computability — Bin Yu, U. C. Berkeley Prediction has become an increasingly important topic in the emerging field of data science. In recent years, we have seen a lot of success in applying machine learning methods to various areas. Bin Yu’s talk focused on the connections of “three principles of data science”: predictability, stability, and computability. The three principles are connected in many ways. On one hand, stability, with respect to data or model, is deeply related to the predictability of the model. On the other hand, all of the algorithms need to be computable to be useful in practice. As a concrete example, Bin discussed an ongoing project where a convolutional neural network (CNN) was applied to model measured activation of human brain neurons upon seeing different pictures. It was found that the first few layers of convolution play a critical role, and after the first few convolution layers are constructed, different algorithms can be used to construct the last couple of layers. Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) was used to search for the clusters of input pictures that maximize the output strength, a similar approach to that of Google’s Deep Dream project. There were also some interesting discussions about the relation between stability, computability and generalization performance. Bin mentioned that her ongoing research showed that convergence speed of an algorithm is deeply related to its generalization error, and there are cases when slower converging algorithms tend to have better generalization performance. Late-Breaking Session II: Hindsight is 20/20 and for 2020 From Euler to Clinton: an Unexpected Statistical Journey — Xiao-Li Meng, Harvard University This lecture was a call for caution in the application of statistics when working with so-called “big data”. The speaker discussed the use of a simple but subtle identity to measure the effective sample size when the selection variable (whether one is selected to participate in a poll) and the effect variables (whom the participant will vote for) are correlated. He found its application can lead to surprising results in practice, demonstrating that even a very weak correlation between the two can lead to a significant reduction in effective sample size. For example, a poll of 1.6 million participants has an effective sample size of only around 400 under a seemingly small correlation like 5%. One important takeaway from the talk is that the sheer size of data for analysis does not automatically guarantee statistical efficiency/validity. What is even worse, when “big data” is analyzed incorrectly, the speaker said, “the bigger the data, the surer we miss our target.” Additional Invited Sessions Inference for Big Data — Larry Wasserman, Carnegie Mellon University This talk was based on a recent paper about distribution-free predictive inference for regression (Lei etc, 2017), in which the authors propose a method that allows the prediction band to be constructed for the variable of interest using any form of the regression function (from simple linear regression to blackbox deep-learning models). The cornerstone of the proposed framework is conformal prediction. The method was shown to be distribution-free and to require only minimal assumptions, like i.i.d. of input data. The speaker also illustrated that the proposed method works in both the continuous case, where the resulting prediction band is usually an interval, and the discrete case, where the resulting prediction band is a set. He used numerical examples to show that the empirical coverage rate of the constructed prediction band matches well with the claimed one Overlapping clustering with LOVE — Florentina Bunea, Cornell University The speaker proposed a novel Latent model-based OVErlapping cluster method (LOVE) to recover overlapping sub-groups through a model formulated via matrix decomposition (Bunea etc, 2017). Assuming there are some pure variables that are associated with only one latent factor while the remaining majority can have multiple allocations, the model is shown to be identifiable up to label switching. The newly developed algorithm, named LOVE, estimates the clusters by first identifying the set of pure variables and then determining the allocation matrix and the corresponding overlapping clusters. Numerical studies, including an application of the methods to an RNA-seq dataset, are used to compare LOVE with other existing methods and show encouraging results. Rate-Optimal Perturbation Bounds for Singular Subspaces with Applications to High-Dimensional Data Analysis — Tony Cai, University of Pennsylvania The study of perturbation bounds has seen a wide application in many fields, including statistics, computer science, and quantum mechanics. In this work, the authors proposed that in singular value decomposition (SVD) separate perturbation bounds can be established for the left and right singular subspaces and showed the rate-optimality of the individual perturbation bounds. The new perturbation bounds can be applied to problems like low-rank matrix denoising and singular space estimation, high-dimensional clustering, and canonical correlation analysis. Robust Covariate-Adjusted Multiple Testing — Jianqing Fan, Princeton University The problem of large-scale multiple testing, where thousands of hypotheses are being tested together, has become the rule rather than the exception in the path of scientific discovery nowadays. This talk addressed two challenges commonly seen in this area of research: strong dependence among the testing statistics, and heavy-tailed data. To deal with the former challenge, the authors use a multi-factor model to model the dependence structure of the testing statistics. For the latter, a Huber loss is employed when constructing individual testing statistics. The proposed model was shown to control false discovery proportions, both theoretically and through numerical studies with simulated and real datasets. The authors also emphasized that the new method significantly outperforms the multiple t-tests under strong dependence and applies to cases where normality assumption is violated. Random Matrices and Applications Free Component Analysis — Raj Rao Nadakuditi, University of Michigan A standard problem in image processing is to unmix and reconstruct original pictures from a mixture of them. Leveraging the framework of random matrices, the speaker discussed a method called Free Component Analysis (FCA), which is analogous to the independent component analysis (ICA) used to unmix independent random variables from their additive mixture. In contrast to ICA, FCA searches for directions that maximize the absolute value of free kurtosis (Wu and Nadakuditi 2017), while ICA finds directions that maximize classical kurtosis. There is ongoing work letting FCA maximize free entropy instead of free kurtosis, which has shown significant improvement over free kurtosis maximizing FCA. The speakers noted that those methods are also different from other types of matrix decomposition algorithms, such as Robust PCA (Candes etc, 2011), which decompose a single matrix into a low-rank part and a sparse part. High-Dimensional Cointegration Analysis — Alexei Onatski, University of Cambridge Most existing cointegration tests, while working well in the standard paradigm of large N (sample size) and fixed p (number of parameters), are known to severely over-reject the null hypothesis of no cointegration in the new paradigm of high-dimensional statistics (Gonzalo and Pitarakis, 1999), where both N and p are large. The author studied the asymptotic behavior of the empirical distribution of the squared canonical correlations and found that that when the observation and dimensionality of the variables go to infinity simultaneously, the distribution converges to a Wachter distribution. Under sequential asymptotics (one goes to infinity first, before letting the other go to infinity), the limiting distribution follows Marchenko-Pastur distribution with parameter 2. Onatsky proposes a Bartlett-type correction to the observed phenomenon, based on a theory developed in a recent paper (Onatski and Wang, 2017). Computationally Intensive Methods for Estimation and Inference A Novel Exact Method for Significance of Higher Criticism via Steck’s Determinant — Jeffrey Miecznikowski, University at Buffalo In this work, the author proposed a new approach that applies a result generally known as Steck’s determinant (Steck, 1971) to directly computing the significance for higher criticism statistics. The advantage of this method is that it allows to assess higher criticism significance straightforward in the absence of simulation or asymptotic results. The approach is particularly useful when we use higher criticism with relatively low dimension. Such a scenario can be found in GWAS, where higher criticism is commonly used for signal detection within a gene that contains relatively few SNPs. Hypothesis Testing when Signals are Rare and Weak — Ke Zheng, University of Chicago In a linear regression model, ranking variables is a hard problem. This work (Ke and Yang, 2017) provides a novel approach to ranking variables, where the basic idea is first to use the design matrix to construct a sparse graph and then to use the graph to guide the ranking. The algorithm is easy to use and almost tuning-free (the tuning parameter only appears in the construction of the graph). The method is effective and provides much better ROC compared to other ranking methods.Update: Sony has now announced that “The Interview” will be available on YouTube, Google Play, and Xbox Video today, December 24th, at 1PM Eastern. The film will cost $14.99 to own or $5.99 to rent. Google Play Movies & TV is available for iOS on the App Store. The New York Times reported earlier today that Sony Pictures had approached Apple about the possibility of streaming the upcoming film “The Interview,” which features actors James Franco and Seth Rogen (who will also appear in the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic) as a US talk show host and producer tasked by the CIA with assassinating North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. Earlier this month, hackers with ties to North Korea breached Sony’s system, stole terabytes of data, and threatened physical attacks against theaters that showed the movie. Most national theater chains backed out of the premiere and Sony decided to scrub the entire affair. The studio immediately began searching for an on-demand service that would host the movie online, including iTunes. According to the Times: It remained unclear, however, whether any on-demand service would take “The Interview.” According to people briefed on the matter, Sony had in recent days asked the White House for help in lining up a single technology partner — Apple, which operates iTunes — but the tech company was not interested, at least not on a speedy time table. An Apple spokesman declined to comment. Sony was rumored to be planning to put the movie on its own streaming service, Crackle, but those reports were quickly denied. Several independent theaters petitioned to show the movie, and the studio agreed to move forward with a limited theatrical release on Christmas.It probably started when legendary programmer and software freedom activist Dr. Richard Stallman got upset when he found himself stuck with a Xerox printer, which came with a proprietary program that would not allow him to command his own programming into it. Ever since, Stallman, often known by his initials ‘RMS’, has been the voice of free software. On September 27, 1983, he announced the launch of GNU, which was a free software replacement for UNIX. RMS has described free software as an integral part of a free society. Apart from being considered one of the greatest programmers, he is also known for being outspoken about things he feels strongly about. He has never missed a chance to take digs at big companies like Apple and Microsoft, which do not give source code of their software. RMS formalised the GNU project and in 1992 he was successful in implementing GNU with a LINUX (then liberalised) kernel. He is also the founder of the Free Software Movement and campaigns against proprietary software and patents. Project GNU turns 33 today, and RMS continues his campaign for the freedom of software. Watch this video to know how it all started.James Wesley Marsters (born August 20, 1962) is an American actor, musician and voice actor. He is best known for his role as the English vampire Spike in The WB series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel. Since then, he has played the alien super villain Brainiac on the Superman-inspired series Smallville, Captain John Hart on Torchwood and terrorist Barnabas Greeley in Syfy's Caprica. He appeared in a supporting role in the film P.S. I Love You, as Victor Hesse in the Hawaii Five-0 reboot, Victor Stein in the Marvel Comics series Runaways, and as the voice of Zamasu in the Funimation dub of Dragon Ball Super.[1] Early life [ edit ] Marsters was born in Greenville, California, the son of a United Methodist minister and social worker.[2] He grew up with his brother, Paul, and sister, Susan, in Modesto, California. Dreaming about becoming an actor since he played Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh in fourth grade, Marsters joined the theater group at Grace M. Davis High School and acted in many plays, including musicals. After graduation in 1980, Marsters studied at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, California. In 1982 he moved to New York City to attend the Juilliard School, but left the program after two years.[3] Acting career [ edit ] Early roles [ edit ] Marsters moved to Chicago, where his first professional acting role was Ferdinand in The Tempest at the Goodman Theatre in 1987. In this production, he was rolled onto the stage strapped naked to a wheel. He also appeared with well-known Chicago companies such as the Northlight and the Bailiwick and with his own group, the Genesis Theatre Company. Marsters was nominated for a Joseph Jefferson Award for his performance of the lead role of Robespierre in the six-hour drama Incorruptible: The Life, Death and Dreams of Maximilian de Robespierre in 1989. In 1990, Marsters moved to Seattle and, with Liane Davidson and Greg Musick, formed the New Mercury Theatre. In this and other companies, Marsters was involved in a wide range of plays, including Teechers (a British play by John Godber), Anouilh's Antigone, an original work based on the Dr. Seuss books, and Shaw's Misalliance. In 1992, Marsters got his first acting job on Northern Exposure, in which he appeared for two episodes as a bellboy and a church minister. He has made guest appearances on television series such as Andromeda, as well as the independent films Chance (2002), Winding Roads (1999), and the USA Network movie Cool Money (2005). In 1999, he had a small role in the remake of House on Haunted Hill as a TV cameraman. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel [ edit ] It was his appearance as villain (and later anti-hero) Spike on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (first appearing in season 2) that attracted the attention of the general public. For the role, he put on a London accent and he received informal coaching from English co-star Anthony Stewart Head. Spike had been intended as a short role by creator Joss Whedon, who initially resisted Spike's popularity. "He made it very clear he did not want the show to be taken over by another romantic vampire," Marsters told 411Mania, adding "to Joss, vampires were supposed to be ugly, evil, and quick to be killed... when I was cast Joss did not imagine me to be popular; Spike was supposed to be dirty and evil, punk rock, and then dead." The massive fan response prevented his character from being killed off, however, allowing him a presence throughout the second season. There were no plans to bring him back as a regular until the character Cordelia Chase was moved to the spin-off show, Angel, and, as Marsters told 411Mania, "they needed someone to tell Buffy she was stupid and about to die, and they decided to bring me back". He thought he would not last as, being a vampire, he was restricted to night-time scenes and could not feasibly interact with the characters as often as Cordelia.[4] Instead, Spike would last until the very end of the show and become a romantic partner for Buffy. After the conclusion of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marsters carried Spike over to the Buffy spin-off show, Angel, also in a regular role (second title billing after David Boreanaz), although only in the fifth and final season of the show. Marsters was asked to keep quiet about this, as his return was intended to be a surprise, but the network promoted Spike's return as soon as it could in order to attract advertising.[4] In April 2004, following the end of Angel, Marsters had Spike's trademark bleached hair shaved off for charity live on television in On Air with Ryan Seacrest.[5] When the show was cancelled, there were plans for several TV movies. Talk of a Spike movie began in 2004[6] and Whedon still had plans into 2006,[7] before it was formally abandoned. Marsters had said he would only return to play Spike if the project took place within five years, feeling he would become too old to play the character (an immortal) after that: As long as I could do it within, say, the next four or five years; past that, I'm too old. Spike's a vampire, man, and I've got high standards. — James Marsters, TV Guide Interview, March 3, 2005 Aside from playing the character, Marsters co-wrote a comic book one-shot for Dark Horse Comics, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Spike and Dru.[8] After both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel ended, Marsters became active with the canonical comic book series of both shows on stories centering around his character. A canonical graphic novel set during the seventh season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike: Into the Light, written by Marsters himself, was released by Dark Horse Comics on July 16, 2014. Other work [ edit ] Marsters has narrated the audiobooks for The Dresden Files, a series of detective novels with a supernatural bent and was also contracted to narrate the fourth in the series, Summer Knight, in 2006. He reprised his reading of the series, including Proven Guilty, White Night, Small Favor, and Turn Coat, produced by Penguin Audio, and the Death Masks audio book which was released in late 2009. Blood Rites, Dead Beat, Turn Coat, Changes, and the side short story collection in the same universe, Side Jobs, were also recorded by Marsters. However, he did not do the Dresden book Ghost Story due to a scheduling conflict, leaving fellow Smallville alumnus John Glover to record it;[9] this caused a fairly noteworthy public outcry by audiobook listeners. He returned for the book Cold Days. On March 24, 2015, Jim Butcher announced that a new version of the Ghost Story audiobook is being released effective April 21, 2015 with Marsters returning as narrator in response to fan demands.[10] In 2005, Marsters filmed a thriller, Shadow Puppets, with Jolene Blalock. Late that year, Marsters appeared on the television series Smallville playing Dr. Milton Fine—the popular Superman villain Brainiac—in eight episodes throughout the show's fifth season. He reprised his role as Brainiac in a four-episode arc in the seventh season, and did a cameo voice-over in season eight. He returned for one episode in the show's final season.[11] On October 29, 2005, Marsters presented two performances of his own abridged adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth with American actress Cheryl Puente as Lady Macbeth, followed by question and answer sessions with the audience and acoustic concerts in London. In September 2006, Marsters' interpretation of Godber's Teechers was performed on the Queen Mary with two other actors in Los Angeles. This is a play he had received critical acclaim for as a stage actor prior to his television work. Marsters co-starred in the 2007 cinematic release of P.S. I Love You alongside Kathy Bates, Hilary Swank, and Gerard Butler.[12] Released in September 2007, Marsters starred in the direct-to-DVD animated movie, Superman: Doomsday, providing the voice of iconic villain Lex Luthor. The film received mostly positive reviews. In 2008, he guest-starred in Torchwood, a spin-off of the popular British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first appearing in the episode "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang",[13][14] as the nefarious omnisexual time traveller Captain John Hart. He reprised the role in the last two episodes of the second season. He portrayed "Piccolo Daimao" in the live-action film adaptation of the popular Dragon Ball manga and anime,[15] directed by James Wong and produced by Stephen Chow, which was released worldwide on April 10, 2009. On July 20, 2009, the film Moonshot aired on the History Channel in celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the 1969 moon landing. In this film, Marsters portrays Buzz Aldrin. On August 19, 2009, it was announced that he signed on for a role in Caprica as the terrorist leader Barnabas Greeley.[16] Also in August 2009, Marsters' science fiction western, High Plains Invaders aired on the Syfy Channel. In this alien invasion flick, Marsters portrays Sam Danville.[17] It was announced in August 2010 that Marsters would be joining the cast of Syfy Channel series Three Inches as a series regular portraying Troy Hamilton, a former government agent who now leads a team of superheroes.[18] On June 24, 2011, Marsters appeared in an L.A. Theatre Works radio production of The Importance of Being Earnest, in the part of Sir John Worthing, which aired on June 25, 2011.[citation needed] He has appeared on Supernatural in the episode "Shut Up, Dr. Phil", which aired October 21, 2011, alongside fellow Buffyverse co-star Charisma Carpenter. He also appeared in Warehouse 13 as Bennett Sutton, which aired in 2013. He also voices Zamasu in the Funimation dub of
Okay we're getting ridiculously hopeful now! But the semi-finalists this year get an extra €7.5m. The runner-ups will take an extra €11m on top of that and the winners between Juventus and Real Madrid will grab an extra €15m bonus. So the winners this year will have earned between €54m and €57m in prize money plus probably around €40m-€50m in market pool cash. An English winner would see that market pool increase even further and a victory would certainly be worth more than €100m in total. The spin-offs The return of the Champions League will also boost match day revenue at Anfield. Last season 31 home games generated about £62.4m in match day revenue, so around £2m each game. That figure per game will have increased considerably with the addition of the new Main Stand and the extra 8,500 seats and hospitality available. (Image: James Maloney) Champions League fixtures would no doubt be extremely popular with the corporate market. Making it to the Champions League may also trigger some bonuses for Liverpool with corporate sponsors who will be benefiting from the extra exposure around the world. Further deals could follow if that place in the group stages is confirmed. Conclusion While it's difficult to be absolutely certain on figures - performance payments were boosted by about 10% this year and might rise again - it is easy to see from the figures what a huge opportunity the Champions League offers for Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool. Top players come at huge cost but Europe's premier competition offers a huge incentive to go and get them and a huge return to help pay for them.BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A Lockwood man whose son is charged with shooting him over a drug debt has been sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for dealing methamphetamine. The Billings Gazette reports ( http://bit.ly/1gDGfZp ) U.S. District Judge Don Molloy sentenced 53-year-old Walter Jack White to nine years for possession of meth for distribution followed by three-and-a-half years on weapons charges. Molloy held White responsible for the distribution of 32.5 pounds of meth, a quantity he called "extraordinary." White's son, Brandon White, is charged with assault with a weapon and jailed on $150,000 bond. Court records say Brandon White told investigators he shot his father in January during an argument over a $10,000 debt. White told Molloy he got addicted to meth and when he tried to get out of selling it, suppliers threatened him.Image copyright PA Authorities are turning a blind eye to electoral corruption in the UK because of a desire for political correctness, a report on the issue has suggested. Former communities secretary Sir Eric Pickles said fraud may be overlooked because of "over-sensitivities about ethnicity and religion". He also said voters should provide proof of identity at polling stations. His review was commissioned by David Cameron in the wake of the Tower Hamlets election fraud scandal in 2015. In Sir Eric's report, which took 12 months to complete, he argues that "politically correct sensibilities" meant a blind eye was too often turned to voting irregularities in Pakistani or Bangladeshi communities in particular. Rushanara Ali, Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, acknowledged there had been "major issues" in Tower Hamlets which electoral officials "lack the confidence and expertise" to confront. "The communities affected are often the victims, being targeted by unscrupulous individuals," she said, calling for greater powers to be given to the "toothless" Electoral Commission. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sir Eric's report is the first of its kind to investigate election fraud in the UK Sir Eric's report said he had seen evidence of "pressure being put on vulnerable members of some ethnic minority communities, particularly women and young people, to vote according to the will of the elders, especially in communities of Pakistani and Bangladeshi background. "There were concerns that influence and intimidation within households may not be reported, and that state institutions had turned a blind eye to such behaviour because of 'politically correct' over-sensitivities about ethnicity and religion." Among his 50 recommendations are: Banning political activists from handling postal ballot papers Police cordons around polling stations if there is the prospect of intimidation The abolition of 'permanent' postal votes, to ensure that the ballot papers are only sent to electors who still reside at their address A new role for the National Crime Agency to tackle complex election fraud cases The Electoral Commission said it took "electoral fraud extremely seriously" and urged the government to "finally respond" to recommendations it has previously made including a call for voter ID. Cabinet Office Minister Chris Skidmore said "the government is determined to ensure that the electoral register is as complete and accurate as possible", and promised to look "closely" at Sir Eric's proposals. 'Insufficient evidence' In an Election Court hearing last year Lutfur Rahman was found guilty of election fraud, and was subsequently forced to step down as the mayor of Tower Hamlets in east London. Mr Rahman was accused of using "corrupt and illegal practices", and Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey made findings during the trial to suggest that grants had been given to Bangladeshi or Muslim groups in return for support. Mr Mawrey - who sat as a judge - said Mr Rahman, who has previously denied any wrongdoing, had "driven a coach and horses through election law and didn't care". However, earlier this year a Met Police investigation concluded it had found "insufficient evidence" that any criminal offences were committed. Image copyright AFP Image caption Lutfur Rahman was found guilty of election fraud last year Sir Eric said: "Last year's court ruling in Tower Hamlets was a wake-up call that state bodies need to do far more to stamp out corruption and restore public confidence. It was local residents who lost out from the unscrupulous politicians who bullied them and wasted their money. "Our nation has a proud heritage as the'mother of parliaments', yet the worrying and covert spread of electoral fraud and state of denial by some bodies threatens that good reputation. It is time to take action to take on the electoral crooks and defend Britain's free and fair elections." Sir Eric also expressed his dismay that criminal charges were not brought in the Tower Hamlets case, but the Met Police said there had been a "lengthy criminal investigation" before the decision not to prosecute was taken.At its Windows Phone summit, Microsoft set the tone by talking a lot about "shared core" — it's practically a new mantra. Here's one way we'll see that in action: a native game development platform based on DirectX. A "common platform" for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, which is to say there's a shared kernel across the platforms. Shared hardware drivers and the "hardware-based security" of Windows. More simply put, developers should be able to quickly port their games to Windows Phones without re-writing a lot of code. Kevin Gallo, who runs the Developer Platform for Windows 8, said that some of the tools game developers already use will be able to run on Windows Phone 8, including Havok and Autodesk. Andrew Bowell of Havok Technology took the stage to showcase its middleware — humans with hair that flips somewhat realistically. It's one that the company has shown off a few times in the past at various other developer events, and indeed its tools has been used on a number of high-profile titles over the years, across all platforms. Speaking of that ubiquity, Microsoft is also highlighting how native code simplifies porting apps between iOS and Android, as well. The SDK will be available to developers "later this summer." Check out our Windows Phone Summit live blog for more granular detail.A rally outside Brooklyn borough hall in support of the district attorney's plans to end prosecuting minor marijuana offenses on April 25, 2014 in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt for Agence France-Presse. The newly-passed $1.1 trillion federal spending bill also includes a bipartisan provision that signals the end of the federal ban on medical marijuana, the Los Angeles Times reported. The provision bars federal agents from raiding medical marijuana retailers in the 32 states and the District of Columbia where the practice has been legalized. It also protects hemp farms in Colorado. The amendment was written by two California congressmen, Sam Farr (D-CA) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). “This is a victory for so many, including scores of our wounded veterans, who have found marijuana to be an important medicine for some of the ailments they suffer, such as PTSD, epilepsy, and MS,” Rohrabacher said in a statement. The measure followed the Justice Department’s move last year to scale back prosecution against legal marijuana growers and distributors. The department issued a similar directive last week concerning Native American reservations that may also legalize the drug. However, marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I drug on a federal level. The “Cromnibus” bill, as it has been called, contains a separate provision that will also stop Washington D.C. from using taxpayer money to enacting its own legalization of medical marijuana. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the spending bill into effect this week. “The war on medical marijuana is over,” Drug Policy Alliance lobbyist Bill Piper told the Times. “Now the fight moves on to legalization of all marijuana. This is the strongest signal we have received from Congress [that] the politics have really shifted.” [h/t Roll Call]The five remaining Kemp's ridley sea turtles in New Orleans were released last week back into the Gulf of Mexico following a massive cold-stunning event this winter along the New England coast. They were the last of the 27 Kemp's ridleys transported Dec. 15 from the New England Aquarium to Audubon for treatment by the Louisiana Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program. Twenty-one of them were released into the Gulf back in January. One of the initial 27 turtles died of pneumonia, and then the five others weren't released until last Tuesday (March 17) because they needed more rehabilitation before returning to the wild. Typically, the endangered sea turtles migrate in the fall from the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast to warmer waters in the South. But if they don't make that migration before coastal water temperatures drop, they can suffer from hypothermia, also known as "cold-stunning." Symptoms of cold-stunning include decreased heart rate and circulation along with lethargy, followed by shock, pneumonia and possibly death, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And this winter in New England has been a particularly bad one, leading to about 1,200 cold-stunned turtles washing ashore on Cape Cod, compared to 50 to 200 turtles on a more typical year. Hundreds of them were admitted to the New England Aquarium in Boston, but that influx in new patients inundated the aquarium, prompting NOAA to reach out to other facilities for assistance, including the Audubon Aquatic Center. The Louisiana Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program works at the direction of NOAA and the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries as a response partner for stranded marine mammals and sea turtles. The program asks anyone who encounters an injured or stranded marine mammal or sea turtle to call 504.235.3005.Looking back: Microsoft Edge for developers in 2015 By Charles Morris Share Share Skype 2015 was a historic year for the web on Windows. Just a couple of weeks before the 20th anniversary of Internet Explorer 1.0, we broke from the past with our brand new browser for Windows 10, Microsoft Edge. Just five months later, there are over 200 million devices with browsers and apps powered by EdgeHTML across PCs, tablets, phones, and Xbox One. Today, we’d like to reflect on our progress in 2015 towards delivering a great rendering engine for web developers in Microsoft Edge, and share some of the metrics we track to evaluate how we’re doing against that goal. 2015: Building on a new foundation In 2014, we articulated our ambitions for what would become the new engine for Microsoft Edge when we shared our web platform priorities for Windows 10: getting users current, improving security, and delivering on both modern web interoperability and reliable backwards compatibility. Later that year, we took the first concrete steps when we shipped the first preview of our new evergreen engine (EdgeHTML). This new engine was a break from the past: including a new user-agent string, ending support for legacy document modes and other Internet Explorer-specific technologies like ActiveX, and aiming instead to focus on the “interoperable intersection” of APIs supported by modern browsers and sites across the web. In early 2015, we announced that Windows 10 would be a free upgrade with a brand new browser, Microsoft Edge. Microsoft Edge is kept up-to-date “as a service,” helping us to deliver on our promise to keep users current. Internet Explorer 11 would ship largely unchanged in Windows 10 for enterprises and other customers who depend on backwards compatibility. For the rest of 2015, we focused on building on our new foundation in time for Windows 10’s launch in July and the subsequent November update. We delivered: EdgeHTML diverged rapidly from Trident over the course of 2015, with nearly 1200 APIs added, nearly 1000 APIs removed, and over 5,000 interoperability fixes. So, how did we do? That sounds great, but doesn’t prove that we delivered the right set of platform improvements for our developers and end-users. There is no perfect measure for this, but numbers speak louder than words, so we’d like to share some of the metrics that we use to validate our progress. Are we making developer’s lives easier? All browsers expose overlapping API surfaces, many of which are described in web standard specifications. We gather data on the overlap between them using public interface API definitions. When we studied the data, two things became obvious: There were significant differences between all browsers and web standards specifications There was an opportunity to increase the overlapping API surface (the “interoperable intersection”) between browsers to make web developer’s lives easier. This animation shows how Microsoft Edge improved real-world interoperability in 2015, increasing the number of common APIs it shares with Safari and Chrome. Google Chrome 48 Apple Safari 9 Internet Explorer 11 4076 shared APIs 3769 shared APIs EdgeHTML 13 4724 shared APIs (+16%) 4157 shared APIs (+10%) Do websites “just work” in Microsoft Edge? We knew that we were taking a short-term risk by dramatically updating the user-agent string to ensure that we get content intended for other modern browsers and removing a broad swath of Internet-Explorer specific technologies. In 2014, our interoperability lead Frank Olivier drew a whiteboard graph predicting that after forking EdgeHTML, our initial web compatibility rate would fall well below that of IE11, get even worse as we finished removing IE-specific technologies, before climbing as we fixed interoperability bugs and added new interoperable features. To validate our decision, we ran a rolling test pass against top sites throughout 2015 to get a sense of how Microsoft Edge compatibility was doing. The result exactly matches the trajectory that Frank predicted: It shows that although we initially had a lot of work to do to handle the same content as other modern browsers, EdgeHTML 12 was roughly at parity with IE11 by launch in July and grew to be significantly more compatible when we released EdgeHTML 13 in November. Best of all, these compatibility improvements are “durable” and scale to the tail of the web, since they are not dependent on the CV list, which was previously used to force IE11 into older emulation modes in order to make many top sites work. Are we delivering new platform features quickly and predictably? In addition to making existing sites work, we also needed to deliver the next set of features that web developers are using to build the next generation of the web. With Windows shipping continuously and public early access via the Windows Insider Program, we’re now able to preview and deploy improvements to our platform faster than ever before, all without fragmenting the Windows customer base. As evidence, our first major update came only a few months after the initial release, with support for dozens of major new platform features like <picture>, ObjectRTC, and asm.js. Since we started tracking our roadmap in the open in April 2014, we can also use that data to track our progress of moving features through the stages of In Development -> In Preview -> Shipped. Here’s how we did in 2015: Another popular public metric used to track web standards feature support is HTML5test.com. While we don’t think it necessarily reflects what features should be prioritized next, it can be a useful indicator of overall progress. Here is how Edge arrived on the HTML5test.com charts in 2015: A similar third-party benchmark measuring support of ES6 features shows rapid improvement from IE11 to Microsoft Edge, which now has the highest number of ES6 features implemented of any stable browser: We also made great progress on the priority of improving security with powerful new features like module code integrity and app container sandboxing protect the user from potential threats both on the web and in unwanted or potentially malicious software. Although this post is focused on web developer-facing progress, we’d be remiss to not mention that we also delivered a new user interface for Microsoft Edge, built from the ground up for the Universal App Platform in Windows 10. This fresh start gave us the opportunity to make major innovations in performance, security, and user experience, including innovative end-user features like Web Notes, Cortana, and Continuum. Building Microsoft Edge in the open Another theme we emphasized in 2014 was the desire to bring more openness to the EdgeHTML development process, which manifested with initiatives like Platform Status and UserVoice. In 2015, we’ve made great progress opening up even more. Communicating what we’re up to We published over 70 blog posts here (and previously on the IE Blog) throughout 2015, covering everything from a guide to responsive images to an overview of the present and future of Web Components. We also introduced our new Microsoft Edge Dev site in May, including an all-new changelog (updated every Insider build), and a brand new “roadmap priority” measure on our Platform Status page. Participating in a 2-way conversation with web developers We hosted the Microsoft Edge Developer Workshop preview event, followed by our first annual Microsoft Edge Web Summit, which will be returning in 2016. Developers from around the world and from over 100 organizations joined us, along with thousands of livestream viewers, to hear the latest EdgeHTML plans directly from the engineering team and provide feedback directly to us. Our team also attended and spoke at dozens of web developer conferences around the world throughout 2015. For those that couldn’t make these events, we took feedback and questions via @MSEdgeDev which more than doubled its followers in 2015, and ran our busiest-ever tweet chats regularly. Web Standards We’re more involved than ever in web standards bodies, including spearheading the new Web Incubator Community Group, and lending our very own Adrian Bateman and Brian Terlson as chair of the new Web Platform Working Group at W3C and the new editor of the ECMAScript specification at TC39 (the standards body responsible for the evolution of JavaScript), respectively. Open Source We’ve dramatically expanded our open-source initiatives in 2015, including making all our Test Drive demos open-source on GitHub, new open-source tools like JS and developer documentation, and last but not least open-sourcing Chakra, our JavaScript engine. We’re grateful for the opportunity to learn from and give back to the open-source community. What’s next We are proud of what we delivered against our priorities in 2015: a new evergreen rendering engine, over 50 new or expanded platform features in stable releases, and a brand new browser—all while providing a new level of visibility into the team’s activities. Though the progress is very encouraging, we know there is plenty more to do. We have been listening to your feedback, meeting with customers and poring over data and telemetry to form an updated set of priorities for 2016. Check back soon for a follow up post with more details on what we have planned for the year ahead! ― Charles Morris, Principal Program Manager Lead, Microsoft Edge Updated June 28, 2018 9:23 amSome better-than-expected earnings reports helped pushed markets higher Friday. After a somewhat bumpy week, both the Nasdaq and S&P 500 logged their sixth straight week of gains. The Dow closed down slightly after topping the 14,000 hurdle a week ago. The Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 both rose between 0.3% and 0.5% Friday. The Nasdaq jumped nearly 1% as investors liked what they saw from AOL and LinkedIn. Markets have had a good run so far this year. The Dow and S&P 500 are both up nearly 7% and near their all-time highs, while the Nasdaq has gained nearly 6%. AOL (AOL) shares surged 7%, after the web portal reported revenue growth for the first time in eight years. Fourth quarter profits were in line with expectations. Shares of LinkedIn (LNKD) hit an all-time high, one day after the company reported a spike in membership. The online network targeted to professionals handily beat earnings and revenue estimates for the fourth quarter. Apple (AAPL) closed up 1.4% after the company said it would consider additional ways to return cash to shareholders. Related: Einhorn to Apple: Give us more cash! Shares of credit ratings agency Moody's (MCO) fell 8% on worries that the government might sue the firm over its ratings of mortgage securities. Shares of Moody's and of McGraw Hill, the parent company of its rival Standard & Poor's, have dropped precipitously this week. On Friday, McGraw-Hill's (MHP) stock dropped another 3%. Coinstar's (CSTR) stock tumbled 7%, after the company issued a weak outlook for the first quarter. In economic news, the trade deficit shrank in December to $38.5 billion, down from $48.6 billion the previous month, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Wholesale inventories for December dropped 0.1% compared to expectations that those inventories would rise 0.3%. Still that negative economic report did little to dampen investors' appetite for buying stocks. European markets closed up between 0.5% and 1.4%, after European Union leaders agreed on a budget deal. An EU Council spokeswoman told CNN the deal was reached after marathon meetings in Brussels, Belgium. Healthy growth in Chinese imports and exports last month also helped give global markets as lift, even as price pressures subsided. Related: Fear & Greed Index hovers at "extreme greed" Asian markets ended mixed. Japan's Nikkei lost 1.8%, amid worries voiced by Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso that the yen has weakened more than the government had hoped. Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.2% and the Shanghai Composite increased 0.6% in the final day of trading before an extended Chinese New Year holiday. Oil and gold prices rose slightly. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dropped slightly to 1.96%. The U.S. dollar moved slightly higher against the euro, but lost ground against the British pound and the Japanese yen.- Advertisement - Art provides a powerful way to connect with our inner selves because it communicates through symbols, which constitute the language of the soul. This symbolic language speaks to us through art's physical qualities of color, form, composition, and medium; it also communicates through an artwork's content. In this way, form and content combine to express spiritual or mystical meaning, giving art a sense of mystery and inviting us to return again and again for contemplation. Over time, art can reward us with new insights and touch our souls through beauty of form and meaning. (Image by Anne Nordhaus-Bike) Details DMCA Title image from the high definition video Capricorn: A Meditation for the Solstice by Anne Nordhaus-Bike - Advertisement - Capricorn: A Meditation for the Solstice has just been released, in time for this year's Solstice on December 21. The mystical art videohas just been released, in time for this year's Solstice on December 21. - Advertisement - This 10.5-minute HD video offers a peaceful, uplifting mix of spoken word narration with music, photography, painting, and motion graphics. Solstice Brings New Season, New Opportunities This year, the Sun leaves Sagittarius and enters Capricorn on Friday, December 21, at 5:13 a.m. CST (11:13 a.m. GMT). This shift brings the Solstice, a new season (winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern), and new opportunities to build an improved and abundant future on a firm foundation. - Advertisement - About the Video Capricorn: A Meditation for the Solstice explores the Solstice's spiritual significance as well as the significant opportunities available to everyone when the Sun enters Capricorn each year. The video's narration also provides background on the astrological sign Capricorn and shares insights about this sign's symbol, the goat, and other images associated with it. The narration closes with an inspiring meditation to help viewers understand Capricorn's lofty potential so they can aspire to expressing this cardinal earth sign's best qualities. Art, Music, & Motion Graphics Underscore Narration's Message To complement the narration, the video presents serene nature photography supporting the piece's winter theme. It also presents several colorful, original watercolors and oil paintings that help tell the Capricorn Solstice story as well as special motion graphics designed to convey astrological and mystical concepts. To ensure viewers enjoy these images fully, the video was created in full high definition (1920 X 1080) resolution. The Blue Mountains watercolor is one of many paintings appearing in the Capricorn Solstice video by Anne Nordhaus-Bike The video also features musical variations based on the hymn tune Cranham by Gustav Holst (popularly known as "Midwinter," as it was written specifically for the Christina Rossetti poem of that name). This tune can be heard during the video's opening in a solo piano version; a full orchestration with strings, choir, and bells appears during the video's final segments. Combined with the text narration, these artistic elements offer a complete experience that appeals to the senses as well as the emotions, mind, and spirit. In this way, the video speaks not only to the intellect but to the soul, allowing its mystical message to reach the higher self and convey what words alone cannot. Capricorn: A Meditation for the Solstice Available on YouTube, ANB Website The video is available on the ANBLivingInHarmony channel on YouTube. There, viewers can find more details on the video's text, artwork, and music by clicking the "Show more" link that appears in the text area below the video player. It also can be found on the ANB Communications website. To see the Capricorn Meditation video and other mystical, spiritual, and astrological videos, visit the Mystical Music Videos & Short Films section of the ANB Communications website. Making the Most of This Year's Solstice Take a few minutes now to enjoy this peaceful, uplifting video. Let yourself be inspired, especially by its closing meditation and music. Afterward, allow yourself a few moments to note what new inspirations have arisen in you. Snowy Fir Branch is one of several nature images appearing in the Capricorn Solstice video by Anne Nordhaus-Bike Capricorn: A Meditation for the Solstice video that day and to reflect on its themes. Also, consider how you would like to mark this occasion in order to make it meaningful for yourself and your family, perhaps by planning a walk in nature, going outside at night to gaze at the stars, or enjoying a special meal with friends. In addition, plan ahead for the Solstice on December 21. Set aside time to enjoy thevideo that day and to reflect on its themes. Also, consider how you would like to mark this occasion in order to make it meaningful for yourself and your family, perhaps by planning a walk in nature, going outside at night to gaze at the stars, or enjoying a special meal with friends. Whatever your plans, may this video enhance your 2012 Solstice experience, and may the day bring new light to all planes of your existence!This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess mental autonomy (M-autonomy) in this sense. Empirical data from research on mind wandering and nocturnal dreaming clearly show that phenomenally represented cognitive processing is mostly an automatic, non-agentive process and that personal-level cognition is an exception rather than the rule. This raises an interesting new version of the mind-body problem: How is subpersonal cognition causally related to personal-level thought? More fine-grained phenomenological descriptions for what we called “conscious thought” in the past are needed, as well as a functional decomposition of umbrella terms like “mind wandering” into different target phenomena and a better understanding of the frequent dynamic transitions between spontaneous, task-unrelated thought and meta-awareness. In an attempt to lay some very first conceptual foundations for the now burgeoning field of research on mind wandering, the third section proposes two new criteria for individuating single episodes of mind-wandering, namely, the “self-representational blink” (SRB) and a sudden shift in the phenomenological “unit of identification” (UI). I close by specifying a list of potentially innovative research goals that could serve to establish a stronger connection between mind wandering research and philosophy of mind. Introduction: The Relevance of Mind Wandering Research for Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of mind is not about mental states. It investigates the concepts we use to refer to mental states. The philosopher's job is mainly to clarify, differentiate and enrich existing concepts, and sometimes even to develop new conceptual tools to support ongoing research programs. Relatedly, the philosophy of psychology and the philosophy of cognitive science are not about psychological states or cognitive processing per se, but about the theories we construct about such states and processes, about what counts as an explanation, about what the explananda really are—and about how to integrate different data-sets into a more general theoretical framework. Here, I will offer three simple conceptual tools that may prove helpful: The notion of “mental autonomy (M-autonomy),” the distinction between personal and subpersonal states, and the concept of a “phenomenal self-model” (PSM). At the end I will introduce two new technical terms, the “self-representational blink” and the “unit of identification” (Box 1). BOX 1 Box 1. Glossary of Terms. This paper is composed of three parts. First, I will argue for the claim that one of the most interesting ways of conceptualizing mind wandering is by describing it as a recurring loss of autonomy, involving specific kinds of mental self-control. I will then show that for the largest part of our conscious lives we are not mentally autonomous cognitive systems. Part 2 will introduce the distinction between subpersonal and personal events, and argue for the claim that conscious thought should be conceived of as a subpersonal process, with personal-level cognition being the exception rather than the rule: roughly two thirds of conscious human cognitive activity can actually be described as a subpersonal process. Here, the central point is that the transition from subpersonal to personal-level cognition is enabled by a specific form of conscious self-representation, namely, a global model of the cognitive system as an epistemic agent. I argue that the phenomenology of mind wandering can be described as a change in certain functional layers of the PSM. Part 3 will take a closer look at the phenomenology of mind wandering, extracting two novel criteria for individuating episodes of mind wandering and lay the conceptual foundations for future research. Mind wandering and nocturnal dreaming (cf. Windt and Metzinger, 2007; Fox et al., 2013; Metzinger, 2013a; Wamsley, 2013) are both interesting to philosophers, because both involve sudden shifts in mechanisms of self-identification, rationality deficits, and a cyclically recurring decrease in M-autonomy that is not self-initiated and frequently unnoticed. Generally speaking, autonomy is the capacity for rational self-control, whereas the term M-autonomy refers to the specific ability to control one's own mental functions, like attention, episodic memory, planning, concept formation, rational deliberation, or decision making, etc. Here, my first claim is that the recurring loss of M-autonomy is one major characteristic of our cognitive phenomenology (Bayne and Montague, 2011), and that both research on dreaming and mind wandering have developed important research tools to investigate this hitherto neglected aspect further (like external probing, or systematic questions after sleep lab awakenings; see also Smallwood, 2013; Windt, 2013). What is Autonomy? The philosophical concept of “autonomy” has been investigated and refined since antiquity, mostly in the areas of political, legal, and action theory (Pohlmann, 1971; Buss, 2008; Christman, 2008). As it is impossible to even remotely do justice either to the historical literature or to current technical debates, I will, for the purposes of this contribution, first extract four defining criteria from traditional discussions to constitute a semantic precursor for a working concept of “autonomy.” Then, I will narrow down the resulting proto-concept to the domain of mental processes in order to ensure its compatibility with the specific phenomenon of mind wandering. By introducing the notion of “veto autonomy,” or the capacity for intentional inhibition, I suggest a new working concept of M-autonomy which, if successful, can be empirically grounded, gradually refined, and may prove heuristically fruitful in guiding future research. Autonomy is rational self-control. A standard, traditional account of human autonomy would say that autonomy is the ability to control one's own behavior in accordance with reasons and rational arguments. Second, autonomy is independence in the formation of one's own will, in the sense of at least potentially having a sufficient degree of independence from one's inner environment (e.g., biases, needs, demands, or past conditioning). It is also the capacity to establish and sustain individual goal-commitments and to impose rules onto one's own behavior as opposed to that of others. The idea of “self-governance” captures this semantic element on the social level; according to its historical roots in the political philosophy of Greek antiquity, “autonomy” can also mean opposition to and independence from an outer environment, a tyrant, or the goals, moral commitments, and already existing laws of tradition or one's social group. The third semantic element for autonomy is self-determination. This means being able to causally determine your own actions and the decisions that lead to them. The last semantic building block I want to select is self-formation: Here, the idea is that you only gradually become a person, a coherent self or rational subject, or even a self-governing agent in the true sense of the word—namely, by becoming more autonomous. Becoming autonomous in this sense is an ongoing process, and it can also be a normative ideal. In sum, rational self-control, a sufficient degree of independence to causally enable individual goal-commitment, “self-governance” and rule-setting, and causal self-determination are all properties that can (and should) be gradually achieved by a human being. They come in degrees, they can always be lost, and they are aspects of a process by which we become persons, that is, rational individuals with a coherent, conscious self-representation. Mental Autonomy There are not only bodily actions, but also mental actions. Deliberately focusing one's attention on a perceptual object or consciously drawing a logical conclusion are examples of mental actions. Just like physical actions, mental actions possess satisfaction conditions (i.e., they are directed at a goal state). Although they mostly lack overt behavioral correlates, they can be intentionally inhibited, suspended, or terminated, just like bodily actions can. In addition, they are interestingly characterized by their temporally extended phenomenology of ownership, goal-directedness, a subjective sense of effort, and the concomitant conscious experience of global self-control and agency. Let me distinguish the two most important types of mental action: ● Attentional agency (AA), the ability to control one's focus of attention. ● Cognitive agency (CA), the ability to control goal/task-related, deliberate thought. AA and CA are not only functional properties that are gradually acquired in childhood, can be lost in old age or due to brain lesions, and whose incidence, variance, robustness, etc. can be scientifically investigated. They also have a subjective side: AA (Metzinger, 2003a; 6.4.3, 2006, section 4) is also a phenomenal property, as is the case for pain or the subjective quality of “blueness” in a visual color experience (Metzinger, 1995). AA is the conscious experience of actually initiating a shift of attention, of controlling and fixing its focus on a certain aspect of reality. AA involves a sense of effort, and it is the phenomenal signature of our functional ability to actively influence what we will come to know, and what, for now, we will ignore. Consciously experienced AA is theoretically important, because it is probably the earliest and simplest form of experiencing oneself a knowing self, as an epistemic agent. To consciously enjoy AA means that you (the cognitive system as a whole) currently identify with the content of a particular self-representation, an “epistemic agent model” (EAM; Metzinger, 2013a) currently active in your brain. AA is fully transparent : The content of your conscious experience is not one of self-representation or of an ongoing process of self-modeling, of depicting yourself as a causal agent in certain shifts of “zoom factor,” “resolving power,” or “resource allocation,” and so on. Rather, you directly experience yourself as, for example, actively selecting a new object for attention. During mind wandering episodes we do not have AA, although these episodes can of course be about having been an attentional agent in the past, or about planning to control one's attention in the future. Other examples of situations in which this property is selectively missing are non-lucid dreaming and NREM-sleep mentation (Metzinger, 2013a; Windt, 2014), but
is also some sense in which the nearest tree occupies more of your visual field than the more distant tree” (p. 12). That sense is a qualitative sense, and Peacocke maintains that the qualitative difference is unmatched by any representational difference. Tye (1995) and others have rejoined that there are after all identifiable representational differences constituting the qualitative differences in the trees example. Tye points to the fact that one of the trees subtends a larger visual angle from the subject’s point of view, and he argues that this fact is itself (nonconceptually) represented by the visual experience. Lycan contends that perceptual representation is layered, and vision in particular represents physical objects such as trees by representing items called “shapes,” most of which are nonactual; in the trees case differing shapes are represented. Much more promisingly, Schellenberg (2008) appeals to “situation-dependent” properties of external objects, by perceiving which we also perceive the high-level properties of the same objects. Byrne (2001) merely observes that one of the trees is represented as being farther from the subject than the other. Peacocke’s second and third examples concern, respectively, binocular vision and the Necker reversible-cube illusion. On the former, see Tye (1992) and Lycan (1996). The latter has given rise to a distinctive recent literature. Aspect-perception and attention. The Necker cube is one of a growing family of alleged counterexamples involving aspect-perception or selective attention. Others include ambiguous pictures such as the famous duck-rabbit; arrays of dots or geometric figures which can be “grouped” by vision in alternate ways; or other displays which can be attended to in multiple ways. In each case, a single and unchanging figure that seems to be univocally represented by vision nonetheless gives rise to differing visual experiences. Representationalists of course respond by trying to specify distinct properties as characteristic representata in the differing experiences. For example, a “duck” experience of the duck-rabbit will represent the property of being a bill without representing that of being an ear; the “rabbit” experience will do the opposite. One way of grouping dots will mobilize the concept of a row but not that of a column, etc. Macpherson (2006) offers a rich survey of such examples and rebuts representationalist replies both existing and anticipated. One of the most interesting recent examples (not discussed by Macpherson) is offered by Nickel (2007): Figure 1 Figure 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Nickel says we can see an arbitrarily chosen set of constituent squares “as prominent.” For example, in Figure 1 we can see the squares corresponding to 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 as prominent, or alternately see 2, 4, 6, and 8 as prominent, without changing where we look and, it seems, while representing just the same figure and its elements all the while. In particular, we need not change the focus of our vision, but leave it on the center of Figure 1, yet have different experiences. The representationalist has several options here. First, focusing on Nickel’s phrase “see as prominent,” s/he could claim that a distance illusion is created, so that the “farther away” relation is represented; or, noting that the preposition “as” seems already to be representational language, s/he could appropriate Nickel’s own term “prominent” as designating a property and just leave it unexplicated. Second, the representationalist could insist that the figure is pictorial, and then invoke some version of figure-ground, or assimilate the case to seeing-as of some other sort (assuming s/he had already provided a representational account of seeing-as more generally). Third, s/he might reject Nickel’s assumption that the whole figure is actually seen at one time, writing off the contrary impression as what Noë (2004) calls “presence as absence.” And there are other possibilities, though each is bound to be contentious. Block (2010) offers cases in which shifts of attention seem to change sensory qualities (Carrasco (2006)). “The effect of attention is experienced in terms of appearance of contrast, speed, size, color saturation, etc. Attended things look bigger, faster, more saturated, and higher in contrast” (p. 44). Realism about contrast, speed and the rest being assumed, it would seem clear that if an attended thing looks (e.g.) bigger than its actual size, that is just a false or inaccurate representation. But Block takes pains to forestall that inference. Synaesthesia. Wager (1999) offers an interesting example of synaesthesia. Cynthia is a synaesthete who hears colors: When middle C is played, she has the nornal auditory experience, but she also experiences, in her visual field, “a six inch high by one inch wide bar of some determinate shade of red” (p. 269). Cynthia and her normal counterpart Norma have (obviously) experiences with different qualitative contents. Yet, Wager wants to say, all that is represented by the visual component of Cynthia’s synaesthetic experience is middle C, which is already represented by the normal auditory components; difference in sensory qualities without difference in intentional content. The obvious rejoinder is that Cynthia’s visual component is representing redness; vision is telling her that there is redness dead ahead, just as in the cases of after-images and hallucinated rodents. That is a big representational difference between her and Norma, and exactly the difference that the representationalist would predict. What are Wager’s grounds for denying that Cynthia is representing redness in addition to middle C? He adverts to the psychosemantics sometimes appealed to by certain representationalists (Dretske and Tye in particular), arguing that neither indicator/covariation semantics nor teleosemantics will predict that Cynthia is representing redness. (As he admits, “the extra qualia problem as I present it is not a problem for representationism per se, but rather for versions of representationism that accept causal tracking or certain types of teleological accounts of intentional content” (p. 276).) But this seems to have matters the wrong way around: If this psychosemantics or that one cannot predict that Cynthia is representing redness, that is an objection to the psychosemantics, not to the claim that Cynthia is representing redness, which claim is more credible than is any particular psychosemantics. Wager goes on to express doubt that any externalist (wide) psychosemantics will be able to predict Cynthia’s representing redness. But if he is right about that, the representationalist should reject externalist psychosemantics. Blurry vision. We must revisit that case, because it requires a wrinkle in the representationalist strategy. The normal representationalist move would be to say that the visual experience represents the relevant part of the world as being blurry, but here we want to concede that there is a phenomenal difference between seeing an object as being blurry and blurrily seeing a nonblurry object. Tye (2003a) points out that that difference can be characterized informationally: In the former case, as when looking at a blurry painting, vision represents the blurred edges as such, and just where they lie. But in the latter, vision provides less information, and fails to represent the sharp edges. Tye distinguishes similarly between nonveridically seeing a sharp object as blurry, which experience incorrectly represents the boundaries as fuzzy, and seeing the same object blurrily, which does not represent them, except to place them within broad limits. 4.4.3 Inversions Inversion examples in the tradition of Locke’s “inverted spectrum” form a special category of alleged counterexamples to representationalism. Some fit the foregoing model (same intentional contents, different sensory qualities), some do not. Lockean inversion was that of color qualities with respect to behavioral dispositions, which is regarded as possible by everyone except behaviorists and Wittgensteinians. To find an inversion counterexample to the representational theory, the objector would have to posit qualities inverted with respect to all representational contents, or, in the case of “mixed” or “quasi-” representationalism, qualities inverted with respect to all representational contents and all the relevant functional etc. properties. (It is important to see that the latter inversion hypothesis is much more ambitious and should be much more controversial than the original Lockean idea.) Shoemaker (1991) contends that this strong sort of inversion is possible, i.e., that sensory qualities could invert with respect to representational contents. But his only argument seems to be that such an inversion is imaginable, or conceivable in a thin sense. Since the representationalist’s claim is precisely that sensory qualities just are representational contents of a certain kind, but not that this is analytically or conceptually true, Shoemaker has given her/him no reason to think that the inversion is really, metaphysically, possible. (Also, it is too easy to think of color looks inverting with respect to mere representation; cf. the opening paragraph of Section 2. One has to try to imagine their inverting with respect to visual representation of the appropriate type.) Yet there are further inversion scenarios, supported by argument, that the representationalist must take seriously. Fish-heads. Building on an example of Byrne’s (2001), Levine (2003) supposes that there are creatures whose eyes are on opposite sides of their heads and whose heads are fixed, so that they never look at an object with both eyes. Now, imagine one such creature whose eyes’ lenses are color-inverted with respect to each other. (It is not that one lens has been inverted; the creatures are born thus mismatched.) It seems that identically colored objects simultaneously presented will look, say, green to one eye but red to the other. Yet the same worldly color property (i.e., a reflectance property of whatever sort) is being represented by each eye. Now, every eye is normal within the population, so neither can easily be described as misrepresenting the colors of red objects. Each eye just sees the colors differently, and so the difference is not exhausted by the common representatum. The first point to be made on the representationalist’s behalf is that, as Levine goes on to admit (p. 71), the eyes seem to be representing the world differently; “space appears differently filled on the two sides of the head.” Also, if the fish-head were able to turn and look at the same object first with one eye and then with the other and back again, the object would successively appear to it to be different colors. So we do not here have a case of phenomenal difference without representational difference. But there is still a puzzle. If the two eyes are representing different properties and neither is misrepresenting, and only the one surface reflectance property is involved, what are the two distinct representata? Several options are available. (i) One could try to find a basis for saying that one of the eyes is (after all) misrepresenting, though it is hard to imagine what basis that might be. (ii) As Levine points out, one could fall in with the view of Shoemaker (1994) mentioned in Section 2, that the eyes are representing distinct dispositions even though the dispositions are realized by the same physical properties. (iii) If the eyes are mutually color-inverted, then they differ functionally. A psychosemantics such as Dretske’s (1986) that makes essential reference to function might therefore distinguish representata here. (iv) To the extent that each creature’s two eyes differ functionally from each other, the creature has two different and nonequivalent visual systems. Perhaps, then, we cannot say that either eye represents its red object as red, or as green; the same reflectance property is one color for one of the visual systems and a different color for the other, as it might be between two different species of organism, and we do not know what those colors are. That the realizing reflectance property is the same in each case does not establish sameness of representatum, because that property may be a common disjunct of each of two distinct disjunctive properties that are respectively colors for the two types of visual system. Inverted Earth. Block (1990) appeals to an “Inverted Earth,” a planet exactly like Earth except that its real physical colors are (somehow) inverted with respect to ours. The Inverted Earthlings’ speech sounds just like English, but their intentional contents in regard to color are inverted relative to ours: When they say “red,” they mean green (if it is green Inverted objects that correspond to red Earthly objects under the inversion in question), and green things look green to them even though they call those things “red.” Now, an Earthling victim is chosen by the customary mad scientists, knocked out, fitted with color inverting lenses, transported to Inverted Earth, and repainted to match that planet’s human skin and hair coloring. Block contends that after some length of time—a few days or a few millennia—the victim’s word meanings and propositional-attitude contents and all other intentional contents will shift to match the Inverted Earthlings’ contents, but, intuitively, the victim’s color qualities will remain the same. Thus, sensory qualities are not intentional contents. A natural representationalist reply is to insist that if the intentional contents would change, so too would the qualitative contents. Block’s nearly explicit argument for denying this is that “qualia” (he fails to distinguish sensory qualities, sense (3), from their higher-order “what it’s like” properties, sense (4)) are narrow, while the intentional contents shift under environmental pressure precisely because they are wide. If sensory qualities are indeed narrow, and all the intentional contents are wide and would shift, then Block’s argument succeeds. (Stalnaker (1996) gives a version of Block’s argument that does not depend on the assumption that the qualities are narrow; Lycan (1996) rebuts it.) Three replies are available, then: (i) To insist that the visual intentional contents would not shift. Word meanings would shift, but it does not follow that visual contents ever would. (ii) To hold that although all the ordinary intentional contents would shift, there is a special class of narrow though still representational contents underlying the wide contents; sensory qualities can be identified with the special narrow contents. (iii) To deny that qualitative content is narrow and argue that it is wide, i.e., that two molecularly indistinguishable people could indeed experience different qualities. This last is the position that Dretske (1996) has labelled “phenomenal externalism.” Reply (i) has not been much pursued. (ii) has, a bit, by Tye (1994) and especially Rey (1998). Rey argues vigorously that “qualia” are narrow, and then offers a narrow representational theory. (But as previously mentioned, it turns out that Rey’s theory is not a theory of sensory qualities; see Section 4.5.) Note that Fregean as opposed to Russellian representationalism is well suited to (ii); even if the Russellian contents shift, the Fregean contents need not. Chalmers (2004) advocates such a view. Reply (iii), phenomenal externalism, has been defended by Dretske (1995, 1996), Tye (1995) and Lycan (1996, 2001). A number of people (even Tye himself (1998)) have since called the original contrary assumption that sensory qualities are narrow a “deep / powerful / compelling” intuition, but it proves to be highly disputable. Here are two arguments, though not very strong arguments, for the claim that the qualities are wide. First, if the representational theory is correct, then sensory qualities are determined by whatever determines a psychological state’s intentional content; in particular, the color properties represented are taken to be physical properties instanced in the subject’s environment. What determines a psychological state’s intentional content is given by a psychosemantics, in Fodor’s (1987) sense. But every known plausible psychosemantics makes intentional contents wide. Of course, the representational theory is just what is in question; but if one grants that it is independently plausible or at least defensible, the further step to externalism is not a giant step. Second, suppose sensory qualities are narrow. Then Block’s Inverted Earth argument is plausible, and it would show that either the qualities are narrow functional properties or they are properties of a very weird kind whose existence is suggested by nothing else we know (see Ch. 6 of Lycan (1996)). But sensory qualities are not functional properties, at least not narrow ones: recall the Bertie dilemma. Also, they are ostensibly monadic properties, while functional properties are all relational; and see further Block’s anti-functionalist arguments in Block (1978). So, either sensory qualities are wide or weirdness is multiplied beyond necessity. Of course, that dichotomy will be resisted by anyone who offers a narrow representationalist theory as in (ii) above. Although until the mid-1990s the assumption that sensory qualities are narrow had been tacit and undefended, opponents of wide representationalism have since begun defending the assumption with vigor. Here are (only) some of their arguments, with sample replies. (For a fuller discussion, see Lycan (2001).) Introspection. Block’s Earthling suddenly transported to Inverted Earth or some other relevant sort of Twin Earth would notice nothing introspectively, despite a change in representational content; so the sensory quality must remain unchanged and so is narrow. Reply: The same goes for propositional attitudes, i.e., the transported Earthling would notice nothing introspectively. Yet the attitude contents are still wide. Wideness does not entail introspective change under transportation. Narrow content. In the propositional-attitude literature, the corresponding transportation argument has been taken as the basis of an argument for “narrow content,” viz., for something that is intentional content within the meaning of the act but is narrow rather than, as usual, wide. The self-knowledge problem aforementioned, and the problem of “wide causation” (Fodor (1987), Kim (1995)), have also been used to motivate narrow content. And, indeed, any general argument for narrow content will presumably apply to sensory representation as well as to propositional attitudes. If there is narrow content at all, and sensory content is representational, then probably sensory states have narrow content too. Thus, sensory qualities can and should be taken to be the narrow contents of such states. Replies: First, this begs the question against the claim that the qualities are wide. Even if there are indeed narrow contents impacted within sensory states, independent argument is needed for the identification of sensory qualities with those contents rather than with wide contents. Second and more strongly, narrow sensory contents still would not correspond to sensory qualities in our sense. So far as has been shown, the redness of a patch in my visual field is still a wide property, even if some other, narrow property underlies it in the same way that (mysterious, ineffable) narrow contents are supposed to underlie beliefs and desires. Modelling a shift of qualities. If perceptual contents are wide and the environment is subject to change, we should expect a shift, even if the perceptual contents would not shift as readily as attitude contents would. Perhaps they would eventually shift after several centuries on Inverted Earth, if a subject could stay alive that long. But how would a distinctive quality even imaginably undergo such a shift? For example, suppose that a quality is supposed to shift from blue to yellow. A shift from blue to yellow might reasonably be supposed to be a smooth and gradual shift along the spectrum that passes through green. But it is hardly plausible that one would experience such a shift, or a period of unmistakable greenness in particular. Reply: We have no plausible model for a shift of everyday attitude content either. How would a type of belief state smoothly go from being about blue to being about yellow? Presumably not by being about green in between. So our presumed quality shift is no worse off than the attitudinal shift in this regard; if the present argument works for the former case, it also works for the latter, contrary to hypothesis. To this it may be rejoined that attitude contents are more tractable, in that they may yield to some view of aboutness according to which reference can divide for a time between contents such as blue and yellow. (E.g., Field’s (1973) theory of “partial reference.”) It is harder to imagine “divided” phenomenology. Modes of presentation (Rey (1998); Chalmers (2004) defends a similar view). There is no such thing as representation without a mode of presentation. If a sensory quality is a representatum, then it is represented under a mode of presentation, and modes of presentation may be narrow even when the representational content itself is wide. Indeed, many philosophers of mind take modes of presentation to be internal causal or functional roles played by the representations in question. Surely they are strong candidates for qualitative content. Are they not narrow qualitative features? Reply: Remember, the sensory qualities themselves are properties like phenomenal greenness and redness, which according to the representational theory are representata. The modes or guises under which greenness and redness are represented in vision are something else again. But it can plausibly be argued that such modes and guises are qualitative or phenomenal properties of some sort, perhaps higher-order properties. See the next section. Memory (Block (1996)). “[Y]ou remember the color of the sky on your birthday last year, the year before that, ten years before that, and so on, and your long-term memory gives you good reason to think that the phenomenal character of the experience has not changed…. Of course, memory can go wrong, but why should we suppose that it must go wrong here?” (pp. 43-44, italics and boldface original). The idea is that memory acts as a check on the sensory qualities, and can be used to support the claim that the qualities have remained unchanged despite the wholesale shift in representational contents. Reply: Memory contents are wide, and so by Block’s own reasoning they will themselves undergo the representational shift to the Inverted-Earth complementary color. Thus, your post-shift memories of good old Earth are false. When you say or think to yourself, “Yes, the sky looks as blue as it did thirty years ago,” you are not expressing the same memory content as you would have when you had just arrived on Inverted Earth. You are now remembering or remembering that the sky looked yellow, since for you “blue” now means yellow. And that memory is false, since on the long-ago occasion the sky looked blue to you, not yellow; memory is not after all a reliable check on the sensory qualities. (Lycan (1996) takes this line; Tye (1998) expands it in more detail.) Hardly anyone will accept all of the foregoing replies. But no one should now find it uncontestable either that sensory qualities are narrow or that they are wide. The matter is likely to remain controversial for some time to come. Some philosophers (e.g., Dretske (1995), Tye (1995)) use this troublesome expression simply to mean a sensory quality, and this is one of the two meanings it has had in recent philosophy of mind. But in the opening paragraph of this article, the phrase was introduced in the context, “‘what it is like’ for the subject to be in a particular mental state, especially for that subject to experience a particular phenomenal property [or quality],” which suggests that there is another sense (4) in which (when the mental state does involve a sensory quality) the “what it’s like” is something over and above the quality itself. In fact, since this second “what it’s like” is itself a property of the quality, it cannot very well be identical with the quality. Block (1995), like many other writers, fails to distinguish this from “phenomenal consciousness” in our original sense. But Carruthers (2000) elaborates nicely on the distinction: A quality in the first-order sense presents itself as part of the world, not as part of one’s mind. It is, e.g., the apparent color of an apparently physical object (or, if you are a Russellian, the color of a sense-datum that you happen to have encountered as an object of consciousness). A sensory quality is what the world is or seems like. But what it’s like to experience that color is what your first-order perceptual state is like, intrinsically mental and experienced as such. Here are two further reasons for maintaining such a distinct sense of the phrase. First, a sensory quality can be described in one’s public natural language, while what it is like to experience the quality seems to be ineffable. Suppose Ludwig asks Bertie, “How, exactly, does the after-image look to you as regards color?” Bertie replies, “I told you, it looks green.” “Yes,” says Ludwig, “but can you tell me what it’s like to experience that ‘green’ look?” “Well, the image looks the same color as that,” says Bertie, pointing to George Edward’s cloth coat. “No, I mean, can you tell me what it’s like intrinsically, not comparatively?” “Um,….” —In one way, Bertie can describe the phenomenal color, paradigmatically as “green.” But when asked what it is like to experience that green, he goes mute. So there is a difference between (a) “what it’s like” in the bare sense of the quality, the phenomenal color that can be described using ordinary color words, and (b) “what it’s like” to experience that phenomenal color, which cannot easily be described in public natural language at all. Second, Armstrong (1968), Nelkin (1989), Rosenthal (1991), and Lycan (1996) have argued that sensory qualities can fail to be conscious in the earlier sense of awareness; a quality can occur without its being noticed by its subject. But in such a case, there is a good sense in which it would not be like anything for the subject to experience that quality. (Of course, in the first, Dretske-Tye sense there would be something it was like, since the quality itself is that. But in another sense, if the subject is entirely unaware of the quality, it is odd even to speak of the subject as “experiencing” it, much less of there being something it is like for the subject to experience it.) So even in the case in which one is aware of one’s quality, the second type of “what it’s like” requires awareness and so is something distinct from the quality itself. It is the second sense of “what it’s like” that figures in anti-materialist arguments from subjects’ “knowing what it’s like,” primarily Nagel’s (1974) “Bat” argument and Jackson’s (1982) “Knowledge” argument, Chalmers’ (1996, 2003) Conceivability argument, and Levine’s (1983, 2001, 2010) Explanatory Gap arguments. To begin with the first of those: Jackson’s character Mary, a brilliant color scientist trapped in an entirely black-and-white laboratory, nonetheless becomes omniscient as regards the physics and chemistry of color, the neurophysiology of color vision, and every other public, objective fact conceivably relevant to human color experience. Yet when she is finally released from her captivity and ventures into the outside world, she sees colors for the first time, and learns something: namely, she learns what it is like to see red and the other colors. Thus she seems to have learned a new fact, one that by hypothesis is not a public, objective fact. It is an intrinsically perspectival fact. This is what threatens materialism, since according to that doctrine, every fact about every human mind is ultimately a public, objective fact. Upon her release, Mary has done two things: She has at last hosted a red sensory quality, and she has learned what it is like to experience a red quality. In experiencing it she has experienced a “what it’s like” in the first of our two senses. But the fact she has learned has the ineffability characteristic of our second sense of “what it’s like”; were Mary to try to pass on her new knowledge to a still color-deprived colleague, she would not be able to express it in English. We have already surveyed the representational theory of sensory qualities. But there are also representational theories of “what it’s like” in the second sense (4). A common reply to the arguments of Nagel and Jackson (Horgan (1984), Van Gulick (1985), Churchland (1985), Tye (1986), Lycan (1987, 1990, 1996, 2003), Loar (1990), Rey (1991), Leeds (1993)) is to note that a knowledge difference does not entail a difference in fact known, for one can know a fact under one representation or mode of presentation but fail to know one and the same fact under a different mode of presentation. Someone might know that water is splashing but not know that H 2 O molecules are moving, and vice versa; someone might know that person X is underpaid without knowing that she herself is underpaid, even if she herself is in fact person X. Thus, from Mary’s before-and-after knowledge difference, Jackson is not entitled to infer the existence of a new, weird fact, but at most that of a new way of representing. Mary has not learned a new fact, but has only acquired a new, introspective or first-person way of representing one that she already knew in its neurophysiological guise. (As noted above, the posited introspective modes of presentation for sensory qualities in the first-order sense are strong candidates for the title of “qualia” in a distinct, higher-order sense of the term, and they may well be narrow rather than wide. This is what Rey (1998) seems to be talking about.) This attractive response to Nagel and Jackson—call it the “perspectivalist” response—requires that the first-order qualitative state itself be represented (else how could it be newly known under Mary’s new mode of presentation?). And that hypothesis in turn encourages a representational theory of higher-order conscious awareness and introspection. However, representational theories of awareness face powerful objections, the perspectivalist must either buy into such a theory despite its liabilities, or find some other way of explicating the idea of an introspective or first-person perspective without appealing to higher-order representation. The latter option does not seem promising. And a further question raised by the perspectivalist response concerns the nature of the alleged first-person representation itself. It has become popular, especially among materialists, to speak of “phenomenal concepts,”and to suppose that Mary has acquired one which she can now apply to her first-order qualitative state; it is in that way that she is able to represent the old fact in a new way. Phenomenal concepts figure also in responses to the Conceivability and Explanatory Gap arguments. The Conceivability argument (Chalmers 1996, 2003) has it that “zombies” are conceivable—physical duplicates of ordinary human beings, that share all the human physical and functional states but lack phenomenal consciousness in sense (4); there is nothng it is like to be a zombie. The argument then moves from bare conceivability to genuine metaphysical possibility, which would refute materialism. According to the Explanatory Gap argument (Levine 1983, 2001, 2010), no amount of physical, functional or other objective information could explain why a given sensory state feels to its subject in the way it does, and the best explanation of this is that the feel is an extra fact that does not supervene on the physical. What the Knowledge, Conceivability and Explanatory Gap arguments have in common is that they move from an alleged epistemic gap to a would-be materialism-refuting metaphysical one. Though some materialists balk at once and refuse to admit the epistemic gap, more grant the epistemic gap and resist the move to the metaphysical one. The epistemic gap, on this view, is created by the “conceptual isolation” of phenomenal concepts from all others, and it is conceptual only rather than metaphysical. Stoljar (2005) calls this the “phenomenal concept strategy”. There are a number of distinct positive accounts of phenomenal concepts and how they work; such concepts are: “recognitional” (Loar (1990), Carruthers (2000), Tye (2003c)); proprietary lexemes of an internal monitoring system (Lycan (1996)); “indexical” (Perry (2001)); “demonstrative” (Levin (2007)); or “quotational” (Papineau (2002)). The phenomenal concept strategy is criticized by Prinz (2007), Chalmers (2007), Ball (2009), and Tye (2009). For further works and references see Alter and Walter (2007).Karma Revero revealed as deja-vu plug-in hybrid for the well-heeled Insert your choice of phoenix-from-the-ashes metaphor here, as Karma Automotive reveals the new Revero plug-in hybrid, and no we haven’t used an old Fisker photo. Hoping to drag profit, customers, and acclaim from the embers of ill-fated Fisker – which went down in flames, both euphemistically and literally – the reborn car company hasn’t strayed too far from the original car, or at least its design. In fact, park a Revero next to an original Fisker Karma and you’d be forgiven for not being able to tell the difference at first or second glance. That, the Karma team says, is entirely intentional. “The Karma Revero features updates to the timeless design,” the company declared today, “which is hailed by many consumers and media as one of the most beautiful vehicles ever.” Whether you’re a fan of the swoops and curves or not, there’s no denying that Karma has done plenty to bring the new car up to speed with what the rest of the EV and plug-in hybrid market is offering. That means a new infotainment system inside, through which the power of the gas engine and of the battery-powered electric motors can be monitored. It’ll also be where drivers can adjust the drive mode – to “Sport” for instance – and the power regeneration level, which controls how aggressive the reverse process of feeding power during braking back into the batteries is. Though you’ll be able to plug the Karma Revero into an outlet to charge it up, that’s not your only option. Solar panels cover the car’s roof and, the company says, are sufficient to actually power the the car. That’s notable because, while other vehicles have offered solar arrays as options, they’ve always been fairly half-hearted affairs which generally only provide sufficient juice to get the radio working. The original Fisker Karma’s exclusivity was near-guaranteed by virtue of its high price and strong competition in the echo-sedan segment from Tesla’s Model S. Karma Automotive looks set to continue in that trend, though is taking advantage of the small numbers with some hand-finished detailing. For instance, the Revero’s badges on the hood and trunk are individually hand-painted, something the automaker says will emphasize that the car really isn’t for everyone. Does the hybrid car market need another high-end option? There’s no denying that the Revero is a handsome beast, though only actual sales will tell whether the market is still there for it. We’ll know more in a little under a month’s time, when Karma Automotive puts the car up for reservations on September 8. MORE Karma AutomotiveBy Phil Harper - It was only two centuries ago that the people of Britain were living in a true age of discovery. Expeditions steered by ambition and a driving inquisitive force were sailing to find new land, new cultures, new foods and spices. What a wonderful time it must have been, to pander to that inner male that shouts “Go Forth Good Fellow! Discover all that is true and undiscovered!” Why do we do it? What drives us out of our caves and into the modern age? Are we hard coded to follow a path of discovery? In a world we knew so little about, what a fulfilling feeling it must have been to set foot on new land, but those days are gone, and there’s precious little left to explore. Bruce Parry, Bennedict Allen, and Ranulph Fiennes are part of a dying breed of men. A dying breed of role model. If men can no longer discover, then what are we men to aim for collectively? Richard Branson is going to put ordinary folk into space, but that’s no adventure, you just have to be rich to qualify. That’s no more an adventure than taking out a bank loan! Can’t he hide the tickets all around the world in a cryptic mission of discovery? Come on Branson you ruthless bastard, throw us a bone. Aliens? What about the search for extra terrestrial life? That’s an adventure we can all take part in surely? Just thinking about it conjures images of monitors displaying uber futuristic space imagery coupled with exciting blips of strange noises to a sci-fi 50’s soundscape. “What was that?!” you might shout, from the your darkened research bunker, “They’re trying to communicate! Watson, decode the signal and put it on screen!” The reality is a far cry from our inner desire for adventure, it’s a slow and cumbersome process in which nothing ever really happens. Even when something does happen, like you know, DISCOVERING A FRICKING SIGNAL, no one even tells anyone. Take for example Ragbir Bhathal, an astrophysicist at the University of Western Sydney, he actually heard one of these signals back in 2008. An actual real life signal from a planet other than our own. You’d THINK that would be interesting enough for an adventurous “BREAKING NEWS!” that interrupts television broadcasting, but we got nothing. Caution, procedure and process stood in the way. Way to ruin our collective sense of adventure science, thanks for nothing. So where do we men turn to satisfy our desperate need for discovery? Where can we try to make sense of our world and not have the red tape of science pooping our party? Around 15 years ago, a generation of young boys were presented with a new toy that claimed to harbour just about everything in the world… ever. “Wonderful!” we all shouted! “Adventure is just a click away!” My Everest Back in 1997 I remember
ones that don’t worry about that at all, and treat you like you’re going to be here forever. Lee is one of those guys.” Here’s a secret: Smith, a sixth-year veteran, wasn’t drawn to Richard because of his accent. The tight end, after practice one day last week, pointed to the rookie catching tennis balls from a machine. “There are a lot of rookies in there right now who have never played a down in this league taking a shower,” Smith said. “And this kid’s out here working. You know what I mean? You kind of gravitate toward certain kids, you respect them and their work ethic. He’s special.” During practices, Richard has shown some wiggle and a nose for the hole, and has been lining up with the third-team offense, behind starter Latavius Murray and fifth-round pick DeAndre Washington. Richard has even gotten to line up with starting quarterback Derek Carr a few times. It’s a long way from coming to the team’s rookie camp in May on a tryout, and getting a contract after it. “I am just trying to take advantage of every opportunity I am given, and hopefully more opportunities come,” Richard said. “ Raiders head coach Jack Del Rio has been impressed. “We have a lot of reps in camp. A lot of different guys get opportunities. Yeah, I would say he’s done a nice job with the looks he’s gotten so far.” Richard ran for 1,098 yards and 14 touchdowns on 185 carries (5.9 per carry) his senior year, and also had 284 yards and two touchdowns receiving. He thinks catching the ball is his strength. Richard didn’t think he did well in the Raiders’ offseason workouts, “because I wasn’t comfortable with the offense, but I am now.” He also did well for himself returning kickoffs Saturday, which improves his chances of making the roster. Richard, at 207 pounds, is three pounds heavier than Washington. Otherwise the rookies are carbon copies of each other. Both say being a smaller player works in their favor against defenses. “It’s definitely an advantage if you know how to use it,” Richard said. “It’s crazy how identical DeAndre and I are as far as size, weight and skill set. We use our size to our advantage, because guys can’t really see us behind the (offensive) line. We are very precise in our cuts and we have great vision.” While Washington was drafted, Richard wasn’t, and only two teams offered him tryouts (the Raiders and Bucs) because of his size. “I am just happy for the opportunity,” Richard said. “It’s definitely cool to be out here now with Derek Carr and Khalil Mack.” And it’s nerve-racking as well. “It’s just football all over again, that’s what I tell myself to calm myself down before practice,” Richard said. “I tell myself, ‘I’ve been doing this since I was 5 years old.’” And if that doesn’t do the trick, Richard will hear a deep voice yelling encouragement after a play. “I really appreciate Lee’s words,” Richard said. “He’s like my big brother now.” Vic Tafur is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vtafur@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VicTafurJohn Wes Townley (Photo11: Jerry Markland, Getty Images) Our series of weekly NASCAR driver interviews continues with John Wes Townley, who recently won his first career Camping World Truck Series race. Townley, 25, is eighth in the series standings with five races remaining. Q: If NASCAR allowed you to listen to music while you were racing, would you want to? A: I would. I guess the only problem would be obviously hearing your guys when they’re trying to talk to you. But that would be cool if you could have it to where once they got off the radio, the music would come back on. I think pilots have something similar to that. Would you go with motivational music or something to calm you? I’d say some hard rock. Something to pump you up, like some AC/DC. Q: Where did your first paycheck come from? A: Hmm. That’s a tough one. It would have to be RAB (Racing, where he ran his first full-time Truck season). Q: Who is an autograph you got as a kid that seemed to be a big deal to you at the time? A: Jeff Gordon. He was always my favorite driver growing up as a kid. Was it at an autograph session or in the garage? Where did you meet him? In the garage at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Do you remember much about it? I think he was talking to his crew chief or something. He was very nice, actually. Q: Where’s a place you’ve never been that you’d like to go visit? A: I would say Japan. Maybe go to Mt. Fuji. That would be fun. Q: Do people ever accuse you of being addicted to your phone? A: No. Actually, it’s the opposite. People are always on me about not being on my phone enough and not responding to people. That’s funny. So they’re like, “Hey, we can’t get in touch with you!” That kind of thing, yeah. I’m working on it though. Well, most people have to work on putting down their phones. Yeah. Q: If a genie promised you a championship in exchange for never being able to do your favorite hobby again, would you accept that offer? A: Ooh. That’s tough. I guess my favorite hobby would be playing guitar or playing the piano. But I feel like I’d say probably not. I know that as I get older, racers don’t race forever. They retire around 45 or 50. And playing the piano or playing the guitar is something you can do up until you’re like 80 years old or something like that. You can do it to relieve stress and make you forget about life. So I wouldn’t give that up. Q: What’s your preferred method of dealing with an angry driver after a race? A: Well, it depends on if I intended on doing it or not -- which is rare. Unless it’s like revenge or something like that, I’ll rarely ever move somebody or spin them out or anything like that. If it’s accidental and I legitimately am sorry about it, I’ll apologize. But if it’s a situation where there’s already like a grudge going on, I can be bad about fighting fire with fire and making the situation worse at times. (Chuckles) Q: Do you ever get mistaken for another driver or celebrity? A: No, I feel like I kind of have like a unique look to me. So I’ve never really gotten that before, actually. But people have thought I was – oh, what’s his name? It’s an actor. Oh, Ben Affleck. That’s the guy. Q: If you had a time machine and you could travel to any year and race, where would you go? A: What year was the big fight down in Daytona? Oh, the 1979 Daytona 500? Yeah. That’d probably be it. That’d be cool. Would you want to be part of the fight or just part of the race? Just the race. Because then I’d still have a chance of winning the race. If I was in the fight, I’m probably out of it. Q: Would you rather have the ability to fly or be invisible? A: Probably invisible if I could turn it on and turn it off. Otherwise, I’d want to fly. Yeah, it would be something where you could snap your fingers and turn invisible and then turn it off when you wanted. That’d be cool. I’d take invisible then. VIDEO: Townley celebrates first career Truck win Q: I’ve been asking each person to give me a question for the next interview. The last interview was with Ryan Blaney, and his question is: Can we all get free Zaxby’s gift cards since you won at Las Vegas? A: Hmm. That’d be a lot of Zaxby’s gift cards. Who is “all?” That’s the question. Q: And do you have a question I can ask the next driver? It’s David Ragan. A: Are you proud of where you’re from and would you change anything about it if you could? Q: Finally, how did this interview go on a scale of 1-10? A: Hmm. I’d say about a 9. I only give things a 10 if they're really spectacular. Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluckBitcoin ATMs could spring up across Greece as soon as October, as citizens and businesses become increasingly desperate to move their money despite capital controls. BTCGreece, which bills itself as the country’s first bitcoin exchange, plans to eventually install 1,000 ATMs nationwide, in partnership with European bitcoin platform, Cubits: “We are creating the ecosystem of bitcoin and blockchain solutions in the Greek market,” BTC Greece founder, Thanos Marinos told CoinTelegraph. “That will include the rollout of 1,000 ATMs and solutions for the e-commerce and tourism industry. Partnering with best of breed companies in the bitcoin space will enable us to provide the Greeks with solutions that will ease the difficulties of the capital controls.” Bitcoin is seen by some in Greece as a way to circumvent strict capital controls in the country that have been in place since June. Greeks are currently restricted to withdrawing no more than €60 (£42, or $66) per day, and are forbidden from moving money to foreign bank accounts. Business Insider wrote: “Partnering with best of breed companies in the bitcoin space will enable us to provide the Greeks with solutions that will ease the difficulties of the capital controls. Bitcoin adoption is happening and in a very fast pace. Bitcoin in Greece is not just hype but a solution to day-to-day problems of people and businesses under capital controls. Also, a key factor is that the trust of the traditional banking system is long gone and people are open to bitcoin.” Greek interest in bitcoin spiked earlier this summer amid fears that Greece would exit the euro, resulting in a price surge for the world’s most expensive cryptocurrency. Marinos claims to have received requests from 300 shops in Greece for bitcoin ATMs to be installed on their premises, with plans for the first ATMs to be rolled out in October. “During times of economic uncertainty, people invest in safe havens such as gold,” said Bitcoins Greece founder, Elenu Varela in a recent interview with IBTimes UK. “Nowadays, digital assets like bitcoin have joined that asset class. Because cryptocurrencies are global and do not rely on a healthy banking system, it is logical for people to stockpile them in times of uncertainty.” This article (Greece to receive 1000 Bitcoin ATMs) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commonslicense with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.comJUNEAU Alaska (Reuters) - Same-sex couples in Alaska should be eligible to receive death benefits when a partner dies despite a state ban on gay marriage, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled on Friday in its second decision in four months to favor granting benefits to gay couples. In ruling that a 1998 amendment to the state constitution forbidding same-sex marriage did not extend to barring death benefits for same-sex couples, the court overturned a decision by the Alaska Workers Compensation Board. The board had earlier denied a death benefits claim by an Anchorage woman, Deborah Harris, whose same-sex partner was fatally shot at work three years ago by a disgruntled employee at an Anchorage hotel where both were employed. The board, in denying the claim, had cited the state’s constitutional amendment defining marriage as “only between one man and one woman.” But the state Supreme Court ruled that utilizing a narrow definition of a widow to exclude same-sex partners “violates the surviving partner’s right to equal protection under the law.” “Debbie had a tragedy happen in her life – her longtime life partner was killed – then another tragedy was not being recognized for who she was – a life partner – by the legal system,” Harris’s attorney Eric Croft said, praising the ruling. “Financially this is important, but it’s important to recognize that same-sex couples deserve equal treatment,” he added. The ruling comes as a series of federal judges have knocked down state bans on gay marriage across the United States in rulings that, if upheld, could substantially expand gay marriage in the United States. Most of the rulings have been put on hold pending appeal. In the Alaska death benefit case, the state high court noted that Harris and her partner, Kerry Fadely, had been in “an exclusive, committed, and financially interdependent relationship” spanning more than 10 years, and had raised children from previous relationships. Attorneys for the Millennium Hotel and its insurance company declined to comment. In April, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled the same sex couples there must be afforded the same property tax exemptions for senior citizens and disabled veterans as are given to traditionally married couples.Retrospective - David Beckham’s Career Through The Lens of Drinking Champaign shower at English Premier League Champions with his first club, Manchester United Married to "power drinker" Victoria (Posh Spice) Adams "I'll take this endorsement check and buy a bunch of beer with it." David Beckham Pepsi pint glass. For beer, of course. Limited results for "Beckham drinking Real Madrid" Google Image Search! "Got Milk" ad (2006). Probably used a White Russian for the effect. Welcome to LA. Here's to the Hollywood lifestyle. A giant bottle of wine with Tom Cruise! "Water" chugging contest with Kaka during loan spell in 2009 and 2010. Potential "Irish" coffee run. Courtside beers at Los Angeles Lakers game (April 2010) Sneaky beers late night in Newcastle, Australia on LA Galaxy World Tour (November 2010) MLS Cup Champions (November 2011) Really taking in the Cup. Not enjoying the "free beer" from Toronto FC fans in a CONCACAF Champions League match (March 2012) Fruit smoothie Burger King commercial (2012) Always the model drinker. Elle UK photo shoot (May 2012) Having a giant, flaming shot of something at the 2012 Summer London Olympics. Tags: Beer, satire Check out all the great FBM gear in our "Swag Store". Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. DisqusHealth professional from South Australia who moved to city in 2013 identified by her family as one of seven people killed A 28-year-old Australian woman who ran to help others during the terror attack at London Bridge has been identified by her family as one of the seven killed. Kirsty Boden, 28, from Loxton in South Australia, was working as a health professional in London. In a statement, her family said: “Kirsty was loved and adored by her family, friends and boyfriend. She was the most outgoing, kind and generous person who loved to help people. Helping people was what she loved to do in her job as a nurse and in her daily life. “As she ran towards danger, in an effort to help people on the bridge, Kirsty sadly lost her life. We are so proud of Kirsty’s brave actions which demonstrate how selfless, caring and heroic she was, not only on that night, but throughout all of her life. Kirsty – we love you and we will miss you dearly.” They added that they would be making no further comment and asked for privacy to grieve. London attack: Sadiq Khan urges police to explain why they didn't act on attackers – live Read more Boden, who moved to London in 2013, was a keen traveller and in a blog described herself as “just your average dreamer, with a full-time job and a constant longing to go where I haven’t been”. Recent posts were from Milan, Sofia, Lisbon and Kiev, for the 2017 Eurovision song contest. Urging others to travel, she had written: “At the risk of sounding cliche, life is short and we should all use the time we have wisely,” The Age reported. Boden is one of four Australians said to have been caught up in the attack. Australian authorities are also working with British police to establish the whereabouts of Brisbane woman Sara Zelenak, 21, who is still missing. Seven people were killed and 48 wounded when three men launched the attack just after 10pm on Saturday local time. Police shot the three terrorists dead within eight minutes of the violence erupting. On Monday the Queensland families of two other Australians caught up in the attacks – Brisbane’s Candice Hedge and Darwin electrician Andrew Morrison – were taking comfort in news they were OK. Hedge, 34, underwent emergency surgery but is expected to make a full recovery after her attackers missed her windpipe and arteries. “She can’t think how she got so lucky because she thought she was going to die,” her grandfather Brian, who lives in Queensland’s Darling Downs, said after speaking to her by phone on Monday morning. “She said ‘Grandad you know I’m a Hedge and I’m a fighter, I’ll get over this’,” he said. Morrison was due to arrive back in Australia on Tuesday after receiving stitches for a stab wound he received while leaving a bar after watching the Champions League final. He said he believed a brawl was breaking out when “all of a sudden a guy comes up with a knife... stabs me there [motioning to his neck] I push him off and blood is going everywhere”. Morrison’s Gold Coast-based father Dave told reporters: “It could have been worse, a lot worse.” Australian Associated Press contributed to this story(CNN) -- The day Charles Moses Martin Goodrich entered the world, a new community was conceived. As the newborn breathed in life, his mother, Susan Goodrich, began to die. Less than 12 hours after having her son, the 46-year-old mother of four was gone. The cause was a rare amniotic fluid embolism. It was January 2009, and shell-shocked widower Robbie Goodrich was forced to immediately think of the baby's most basic need: milk. For $5 an ounce, he could have purchased frozen donor breast milk, the kind of sustenance he knew his wife wanted for the boy. There was talk of tracking down a wet nurse. A friend left a message offering to breast-feed the newborn herself. What evolved in the coming days still touches Goodrich. More than 20 mothers in Marquette, a city of 20,000 in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, volunteered to nurse baby Moses. All these months later, they're still at it. "It's been such an incredible outpouring of community love for this child of mine," said Goodrich, a 44-year-old history professor at Northern Michigan University, where his late wife worked, too, teaching Spanish and Portuguese. "This has certainly stretched the parameters of what is public. I've had to open the door to complete strangers, inviting them into the most private, intimate part of my life." Carrie Fiocchi, 29, was first to breast-feed Moses. She'd received a call from a nurse midwife who belonged to her Unitarian Universalist church. When she heard what had happened to the Goodrich family, both she and her husband, with whom she immediately shared the story, fell apart. They were first-time parents to a 6-week-old girl. They'd realize later that they had met Robbie years before. But in that moment, they didn't hesitate to help a stranger. The next morning, Fiocchi walked into Goodrich's home, where grieving family members had gathered in preparation for Susan's funeral, and took Moses into her arms. "It was awkward and very sad and really wonderful at the same time," said Fiocchi, who has nursed Moses at 9 a.m. every day since then, with daughter Siri in tow. Her husband, Matt, has developed a friendship with Goodrich and tags along with his wife and daughter at least once a week. He added, "Not being able to do anything myself, feeling kind of impotent, for me it was a matter of wanting to help and feeling privileged to be involved in any way." The inclination to volunteer similarly drove Kyra Fillmore, 31. "Ever since I became a mother, I've felt a connection with other mothers," said Fillmore, who has three children. "I was nervous. It was very emotional. I didn't know what to expect. But I felt like I needed to do this for Susan, even though I didn't know her." A handful of mothers did know Susan and loved her for her brilliance, wit and passionate spirit. A former student of Susan's from a decade earlier, Karla Niemi, 30, said that helping has brought her a sense of peace. And a former student of Robbie's who then became a close friend of the couple's, Sarah McDougall, 28, said that nursing Moses "gave me a way to be there for her and her family in a way I wouldn't have known how to do otherwise." It turned out that finding volunteers was the easy part, said Nicoletta Fraire, 35, who considered Susan her closest friend in Marquette and organized the effort. And they'd checked with specialists to know that what they were doing was safe. The difficult part, Fraire said, was working out logistics, especially in the beginning. Initially, there were seven women a day to juggle. Some of the moms had easy-to-remember set schedules, others had more staggered assignments, and then there were those on call. Many could travel to Moses, but some needed the baby to come to them. And donations for night feedings had to be gathered. Over the months, some women moved away, weaned their own children or became pregnant. New eager-to-help moms cropped up. Toss in occasional sicknesses and vacations, and the feedings -- which the group set out to continue for at least a year -- became a carefully orchestrated dance. A white board mapping out the choreographed schedule still stands in Goodrich's dining room. But making sure Moses was cared for, although complicated, was something Fraire wanted -- even needed -- to do. "I didn't see it as a hard job but mostly as something that's helped me fill the void," she said. "I did it for Susan. I know she would have done it for me." Not only have these women helped Moses, the steady flow of company -- which often includes kids and husbands -- has nurtured Goodrich, too. It has been a constant in his life and his home, where he's also raising Julia, his and Susan's 2½ -year-old daughter. Two older kids from Susan's first marriage live nearby with their biological father. "I don't know if you can make this year any easier," said Goodrich, who is emotionally still muddling through. "But I have people there to share it with me. And you can imagine, they're compassionate, empathetic people." Just as these moms have cuddled and nourished Moses, their own children feel embraced in the Goodrich home and often beeline to where the snacks are stored. Husbands read to Julia while their wives nurse the baby, and Robbie bonds with families who've become an extension of his own. Mothers who've stopped breast-feeding still check in and come by for regular visits. The group stays in touch on Facebook, by phone and over shared meals and walks. Friendships, outside the Goodrich household, have been formed. They all gathered to celebrate when Moses ate his first solids. "It's a valuable gift for everyone involved," said Tina Taylor, 39, who prolonged the nursing of her own youngest child so she could continue feeding Moses. "It's taught us the importance of family, community and sharing." Taylor and the more than two dozen other women who've nursed Moses know they cannot replace what was lost hours after he was born. But the father they've reached out to help says they've given his son something he could have never provided on his own. "He's a healthy, happy, well-adjusted boy," he said, "who has always known a mother's love."Well, once in a while, Smith goes to Church, and it is usually to his hurt. He hears a great deal of reasoning that seems strained to him, in which he is urged to believe many things to be true which in his heart he does not believe to he true. Now Smith tries to be honest. He does not confuse single facts with the whole truth. His ideas of the truth are in no wise pedantic, but he has a sense that the truth involves all the facts in their proper relation on the one hand, and a mind capable of grasping and coordinating them on the other. He does not live up to this ideal, and he knows that he could not reach it if he tried. With large example of his friends and neighbors, he does not try always to get all the facts about a subject into their true relation if this should operate to the disadvantage of his affairs. But he has no sense of a Larger Truth that is not so. He also hears in church that without Christ all is as nothing—and this has set him to thinking seriously to find out what his attitude really is in the matter. He has re-read his Bible, more especially the Sermon on the Mount, and even there he finds the rule does not work with him. He finds, for instance, that he must resist evil, that he must take thought of the morrow, that he must not give without discrimination. These are not offered as indicating that Smith is right, they merely indicate his point of view. You see the automatic assent that whatever is in the Bible is true, and that whatever Jesus said is of necessity right, has gone out of him. The emotional glow has faded away from dogma. He not only feels free to think alone and independently, but this appeals to him as his duty. He is doing his best, and he feels that he must be honest whether he is right or not. The unpleasant thought comes to him that the clergy are in the same boat as a lawyer conducting a case at court: that they have taken their retainer and are not free to present other than the one side. All the ethics of their profession inhibit them from the expression of views contrary to the dogma that they represent. Nevertheless he recognizes that their teaching has righteousness in view, and so far as he may be of aid to them in helping along the cause of righteousness, he is willing and glad to do so; but in matters of belief he wishes that they would let him alone. If others feel that they achieve merit by the faith that is in them, he has no objection; he neither argues against it, nor does he oppose them. In his heart he feels that it is better for him to work things out as may than to lie about what he does not believe. This is the substance of his resentment against the Church: that it urges him to affirm that which he does not believe to be true. The pressure upon him, however is very strong, so he goes to church again, and hears the usual appeal, demanding how anyone can resist the example of the only life that ever was lived without stain or flaw. But he knows that the preacher, no matter how honest he be, can only give record of about three years of that life, and assumes the rest. Surely there is nothing new in this knowledge; he has always known what he knows now, and so has substantially the whole Christian world. The facts remain just what they were. The difference lies in the angle of Smith's vision, in the order in which it seems necessary to him to arrange the facts so as to get a vision of the truth; thus, although he does not enter into any dispute about it, what the preacher says does not go into him.in Dennis Kucinich (Best Syndication) Is there a difference between a Single Payer health care system and Universal Health Coverage? You bet, and it is an important difference. A single payer system means there is one health insurance company, and that is typically the government. In contrast, a universal plan would require Americans to purchase insurance from health insurance companies. The leading Democratic candidates are proposing a Universal Health Care plan which would force Americans to purchase private health insurance. These proposals would not prevent the insurance company from denying claims but would require people to pay premiums to the insurance company. Universal Health Care would increase the profits for insurance companies. There is one candidate who advocates a single payer health care system. Dennis Kucinich is the only candidate for President with a plan for a Universal, Single-Payer, Not-for-Profit health care system. Kucinich’s would establish an arrangement similar to Medicare. What are the advantages to his proposed system? It would cover the estimated 46 million Americans without health coverage, but more importantly there would be no such thing as “pre-existing conditions”. By making the system a not-for-profit system, there should be no denied claims either. Kucinich is proposing the passage of HR 676 which is sponsored by Representative John Conyers. Kucinich says he co-wrote the legislation. Unlike the proposals by Hillary Clinton, Barrak Obama and John Edwards, his plan would eliminate the for profit insurance companies. HR 676 would allow for private non-profit companies though. Kucinich cites a study that found that less than one percent of our health care dollars are spent on lawsuits, while 31 percent is spent on administration. He says that the huge administrative and marketing costs would be eliminated. The savings might actually save us money, according to Kucinich. We could have “comprehensive coverage to every American without paying any more than we already do.” Sure the taxpayer already picks up the cost of the uninsured, but in many cases it is too late to save their life. The US already spends more money per person on health care than any other country in the world, and we rank 35th in life expectancy. But how long is the wait to see a doctor in these other countries with a single payer health car system? Amazingly, the wait is shorter than ours. Kucinich cites a study that found that we are less likely to be able to see a doctor the same day. “Same-day access to primary-care physicians in the U.S. (33%) is far less available than in the United Kingdom (41%), Australia (54%) and New Zealand (60%). (The) per capita spending for health care averaged $2,696 in countries without waiting lists and $5,267 in the U.S.” See what others are saying and join the discussion at our Forum By Dan Wilson Best Syndication News Writer Click Here For Health Insurance InformationYounger teenagers, “who we know are at highest risk,” often resist longer-acting methods because IUD insertion can be painful, and “they’re freaked out by the idea of an implanted device in their body,” Dr. Costello said. The new study, conducted at Washington University in St. Louis, involved teenagers at high risk for unintended pregnancy because they were sexually active or were planning to be within six months. About 18 percent had had an abortion, and 60 percent were using no birth control or using withdrawal or condoms — all methods with failure rates of more than 15 percent, said an author of the study, Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, an obstetrics and gynecology professor. Dr. Peipert said that because long-acting contraceptives have failure rates of less than 1 percent, they were discussed with teenagers before enrolling and as the first options listed. As further encouragement, the clinic could usually put in the implants or IUDs right away. The yearly pregnancy rate in the study was 34 per 1,000 teenagers, and the abortion rate was 9.7 per 1,000. Pregnancy and abortion rates for sexually experienced teenagers nationally were far higher — 158.5 and 41.5 in 2008. For all teenagers, the pregnancy and abortion rates were 57.4 and 14.7 in 2010. Teenagers using long-acting methods also stuck with them longer, most of them for at least two years. Like most contraceptive methods, long-acting ones do not protect against sexually transmitted diseases. In previously published research involving 7,700 females who were 14 to 45, researchers found little evidence that those who used them became more sexually active and found no indication of increased sexually transmitted diseases. Although teenage pregnancy rates have declined, they continue to worry experts, especially because teenage pregnancy often impedes women from rising out of poverty.SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A federal judge weighing a challenge by nudists in famously tolerant San Francisco to a measure aimed at curtailing public nudity questioned on Thursday whether city officials had fashioned the ban too broadly. Nudists gathered prior to a hearing on a lawsuit seeking to block implementation of San Francisco's ban on public nudity. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith U.S. District Judge Edward Chen suggested that the municipal ordinance, which was approved by a slim majority of the Board of Supervisors last month, could infringe upon the constitutional rights of nudists to free expression. Activists, who sued in November, are seeking an injunction to block the law from taking effect as scheduled at the beginning of February. The city is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed. “It could have been more narrowly tailored,” Chen said of the ban during a 90-minute hearing in federal court in San Francisco that was attended by about a half-dozen protesters who disrobed outside the courthouse despite chilly weather. The judge said he would take the matter under submission and issue a written ruling in the coming weeks. San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener introduced the ban to curb nudity in public places after residents complained about a daily gathering of naked men in Jane Warner Plaza in the city’s predominantly gay Castro District. Violators face fines of up to $100 for a first offense and $200 for a second. Three-time offenders would face up to a year in jail and a $500 fine. Nudity would still be allowed at permitted parades, fairs and festivals, as well as on beaches. “What we’re trying to do is protect the public from the secondary effects of public nudity,” Deputy City Attorney Tara Steeley told the judge during the hearing. Steeley said the law would protect passersby who would prefer not to see men’s genitals when running errands or taking children to school as well as help neighboring businesses, 85 percent of which have complained that the naked men scare off customers. But the judge countered: “Don’t we have to be careful in that area? The city couldn’t regulate ethnicity or political activity. Isn’t there a danger in allowing the audience to dictate?” Christina DiEdoardo, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said that the city had not demonstrated any harm from public nudity. “Where is a scientific study that says leaving the nudists alone is going to cause cancer in the hearts of San Franciscans?” DiEdoardo asked. “This is not the same as a law that bans smoking in public. No one I know has ever acquired cancer or any disease from walking down Castro Street and running into nudists,” she said. Protesters, meanwhile, said they weren’t prepared to abandon their fight no matter what Chen ruled. “I’m ready to go to the Supreme Court with this,” 43-year-old Gypsy Taub told Reuters. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll come up with creative solutions. We’ll protest. We’ll get arrested until they budge. “Non-sexual nudity is not a crime,” said Taub, who stripped down to yellow patent-leather boots and a paper hat demanding the recall of Supervisor Wiener.http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvenEvilHasStandards Even when you're a psychotic jester, the American way must be protected. Jayne, Serenity "I'll kill a man in a fair fight. Or if I think he's gonna start a fair fight. Or if he bothers me. Or if there's a woman. Or if I'm gettin' paid. Mostly when I'm gettin' paid... but eating people alive? Where's that get fun?" Advertisement: One of the easiest ways to highlight just how bad something or someone evil is: have an otherwise-remorseless villain reject it. It's often to show that a new villain is really bad if even Doctor Annihilation is appalled by them. Another way that it's used is to keep a villain safely on the "still sympathetic" side of the Moral Event Horizon; give him something that he simply will not do. It may be specifically invoked to prove that it's OK for our hero to work with villains who have standards when the need is great enough. This can be strange if handled badly, with one character objecting to someone's crossing a line even if they have crossed many, many others, leading to confusion and possibly an unintentional edge into Blue and Orange Morality. Why, after all, should a criminal think shooting a particular single orphan be worse than killing every single orphan in the Throwaway Country, or a serial killer be upset by petty theft, or...? This might be deliberate however, in order to show the Moral Myopia of the villains and make the viewers question what is right, what is wrong, and if there even is such a thing as more wrong. Also to show how complex human beings can be, what is acceptable for them and what drives them to make different choices in different scenarios. It is particularly ironic when two characters display this and their different understanding of morality by objecting to each other's crossing. Advertisement: The most common taboos of this type in contemporary Western works involve sexual violence or ill-treatment of children. Or both at once. Common gangster-story examples are to have the Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters, by contrast with the Ruthless Foreign Gangsters, refuse to sell illegal drugs or to be disrespectful and abusive in their treatment of the women who they pimp. If your story takes place in a Mob War where one side is slightly better than the other, it's most likely because the "good" side has standards. In older works, or historical fiction with authentic moral attitudes, common examples are breaches of Sacred Hospitality, treachery against one's leader, or general breaches of oaths. The trope title is frequently spouted by the Noble Demon, in order to justify his evil self-identification. The typical format of their declaration is usually along the lines of "I may be Y, but I am/am not an X Y!" Advertisement: The Complete Monster in particular has a tendency to provoke invocations of this trope on the part of other villains, due to having zero moral standards and generally being the absolute worst when it comes to villainy. I Gave My Word is another common variant, which may let the heroes agree to Combat by Champion. Some villains may maintain their standards through use of a Villainous Vow. Can lead to an Enemy Mine if the evil is another villain. Can also lead to a Pet the Dog moment. Can contribute to making an
with a qualifying ship, after last year’s tragedy we need to set a higher standard. This new system makes the Cup difficult to achieve. That challenge is what gives it its worth.” Verender continued to explain that over the previous seasons, there has been less emphasis on the regulation races. Viewership and attendance has been steadily declining as the only interest in the sport came from the Murray Cup competition itself. This new system would draw attention back to the season’s races as they become the battlegrounds for the racers to qualify for the Murray Cup. Points will be accumulated by the pilot, not the ship, which will allow racers to switch vessels during the season (or in the championship, should they qualify). For its inaugural year, Verender says the League will experiment with having points roll over between seasons, allowing racers to accrue the twenty points necessary to enter into the Murray Cup over several seasons. Once they enter (or “cash in”) their points for a shot at the Cup, the twenty points will be deducted from their MCRL Racer Profile. Non-regulation races, even ones that conform to MCRL standards, will not contribute to a racer’s qualifying points. Finally, Verender announced that MCR has reached an exclusive agreement with GSN Spectrum Broadcasting to relay all regulation races throughout the UEE and beyond. The agreement also secured broadcasting rights for smaller non-regulation races, but specifies that, while they will be available through the MCR directly, their Spectrum relay will be location-specific and subject to black-outs.Last week in our series on how to grow an edible garden, we talked about the basics of getting ready to plant. This week, for beginning gardeners, here are 15 of the easiest edible plants to grow. Your mileage may vary based on your hardiness zone, soil and sun conditions, and ability to control pests. But for at-home organic gardeners looking for a lot of bang for their time, energy, and knowledge buck, these 15 foods are a good place to start. Many of these plants do well when started from seed, especially in climates with longer growing seasons. That said, many are also easy to find as starters. Whether you're planting seeds or starters, they should come with specific instructions about soil pH, when and how far apart to plant, how much water and sun they need, and when to harvest. 1. Herbs Herbs—especially basil, cilantro, parsley, chives, and rosemary—will grow well almost anywhere. They're easily planted in a good-quality organic potting soil in smallish containers (12 inches deep by 12-inch diameter is plenty big), or plant them right in the ground around the perimeter of larger plants. You can't beat herbs for livening up your cooking. And given the prices some markets charge for small quantities of herbage, growing them yourself will save a whole lot of money. You can't beat the grow-it-yourself bang for buck ratio. 2. Tomatoes If you live in a slightly cooler climate, tomatoes do best when put in the ground as starters or small plants (which you can either buy or plant from seed indoors). Once they're in the ground in a spot with full sun, many varieties will be extremely prolific. For a strong root system, plant starters deeply, burying the stem up to the lowest leaves. The stems can sprout roots all along their length. 3. Radishes Radishes grow quickly and easily in the spring and fall. They can be ready to eat in about a month from the time you plant seeds. 4. Zucchini Zucchini grow so prolifically that they're the butt of many a gardener's joke. ("The only time we lock our doors around these parts is during zucchini season.") One or two plants should cut it for most people. The blossoms are as delicious as the squash. 5. Potatoes To grow potatoes, plant a potato. Seriously. You can buy seed potatoes in many varieties or even choose an organic potato at the market, cut a few chunks that have eyes, let them dry out for a few days, and plant them. Potatoes do best in raised beds with lots of nutrients in the soil. You can harvest some when they're tiny or wait until the end of the season when plants start to dry out for larger potatoes. 6. Onions Like potatoes, onions do best in a raised bed. You can grown them from "sets," small onions saved from the prior season, or from seedlings. 7. Peas Nothing beats peas for growing with kids. Both shorter and taller varieties like to climb. Plant early in the season on both sides of a trellis, in well-draining soil. By the time it gets warm, you'll be shelling away. 8. Lettuces Lettuce comes in so many varieties that you're sure to find one that meets your growing and eating needs. When it's very hot, most lettuces need some shade. Since they grow close to the ground, they're perfect to plant in the shade cast by taller plants like tomatoes and beans. 9. Beans Like peas, most beans like to grow up. They can do well when seeds are planted directly into warm soil with something to climb. Many bean varieties produce for weeks and weeks. They need full sun and plenty of water at the base. 10. Kale Kale prefers cooler temperatures and cool, wet soil but is otherwise unfussy. Start seeds more than a month before the last frost, since it takes a long time to produce full-grown plants. Start cutting leaves from the bottom, and kale should produce prolifically. 11. Tomatillos Tomatillos like it hot, but they'll grow well in many climates and soil conditions, at least for a short season. If you live in a cooler climate, start seed indoors or purchase starters. Like tomatoes, they want something to climb. 12. Broccoli Broccoli does well in climates with cooler nights and warm days. Since it is frost-hardy, you can plant it twice per season, putting starters in the ground once a couple of weeks before the last frost and again six to eight weeks before the first fall frost. It grows tall, so position it where it won't shade other plants. 13. Peppers Whether hot or sweet, peppers do best when planted in the ground as starters. They like warmth. Pick peppers at any size. As long as you pick a few early, the plant should be stimulated to produce plenty of fruit. 14. Carrots Grown in raised beds or even deep containers with loose, non-rocky soil, carrots do well. They like full sun but relatively cool soil, and consistent moisture. 15. Spinach Spinach grows well in cool weather, both spring and fall, but not so well in the heat of summer. If you want a lot, you have to plant a lot. You can harvest it like lettuce, either by picking the largest leaves when you're ready to eat them, or by cutting all the leaves back to leave about one inch of plant in the ground. If you choose the latter method, spinach will grow back several times throughout the season. What About You? Which edible plants do you have good luck with? Share your thoughts in the comments! This post may contain links to Amazon or other partners; your purchases via these links can benefit Serious Eats. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.Image caption Adel Imam's roles have varied enormously throughout his 40-year career A court in Egypt has upheld the three-month prison sentence given to leading comic actor Adel Imam for insulting Islam in his films and plays. Imam was also fined $170 (£105) by the court in the capital, Cairo. The 71-year-old was initially found guilty in absentia in February in a case brought by an Islamist lawyer, but was given a retrial. He may appeal. Imam's is the latest case concerning freedom of expression against a high-profile figure in Egypt. Two separate lawsuits accusing the Coptic Christian Telecoms tycoon Naguib Sawiris of blasphemy were dismissed earlier this year. Mr Sawiris angered conservative Muslims last year when he tweeted cartoons of Mickey Mouse in a beard and Minnie Mouse wearing a veil. The case brought against Imam by Asran Mansour, a lawyer with ties to Islamist groups, accused the actor of frequently mocking the authorities and politicians in his films and plays, and offending Islam and its symbols. Imam's movies regularly top the Egyptian box office and the types of roles he plays have varied enormously across his career. Adel Imam is not only an actor, Adel Imam is a symbol. Whether we like his films or not, whether we agree with him or not, that's not the question now Hend Sabri Mr Mansour was reportedly offended by the film Al-Irhabi (The Terrorist), in which Imam plays a radical Islamist; the play Al-Zaeem (The Leader), a comedy satirising Middle Eastern autocrats; and the film Morgan Ahmed Morgan, which sees a rich businessman stand for parliament. 'Legal nonsense' On Wednesday morning, Imam's lawyer confirmed he would appeal against the verdict, which he said was "given on the wrong legal basis". "My client's films were certified, not censored, by surveillance authorities before their release to the public," Sawat Hussein told the Reuters news agency. Fellow Egyptian film star Hend Sabri meanwhile told the BBC World Service's World Update programme that Imam's conviction was a "sad day" for "not only film-makers, but all artists and all liberals". "It's legal nonsense and it's ethical nonsense. We are all very upset. We are all going to react - we cannot stay silent after such a ruling," she said. "After the revolution that we thought would bring the best to Egypt and to the Arab World, the Arab Spring cannot be transformed into a nightmare. We cannot let it disappear without a fight." Ms Sabri - who starred alongside Imam in the film The Yacoubian Building - said there would be a major protest. "Adel Imam is not only an actor, Adel Imam is a symbol. Whether we like his films or not, whether we agree with him or not, that's not the question now." She added that people were beginning to censor their own work. "We are all scared. We are all scared about our freedom of speech and about the freedom of expressing ourselves and our ideas, and the freedom of our art."For other people named Benedict Arnold, see Benedict Arnold (disambiguation) This monument was erected under the patronage of the State of Connecticut in the 55th year of the Independence of the U.S.A. in memory of the brave patriots massacred at Fort Griswold near this spot on the 6th of Sept. AD 1781, when the British, under the command of the Traitor Benedict Arnold, burnt the towns of New London and Groton and spread desolation and woe throughout the region. Dedication plaque on Groton Monument in Groton, CT to victims of Arnold's slaughter following the Battle of Groton Heights Benedict Arnold (January 14, 1741 [O.S. January 3, 1740][1] – June 14, 1801) was an American military officer who served as a general during the American Revolutionary War, fighting for the American Continental Army before defecting to the British in 1780. George Washington had given him his fullest trust and placed him in command of the fortifications at West Point, New York. Arnold planned to surrender the fort to British forces, but the plot was discovered in September 1780 and he fled to the British. His name quickly became a byword in the United States for treason and betrayal because he led the British army in battle against the very men whom he had once commanded.[3] Arnold was born in the Connecticut Colony and was a merchant operating ships on the Atlantic Ocean when the war began in 1775. He joined the growing army outside Boston and distinguished himself through acts of intelligence and bravery. His actions included the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga in 1775, defensive and delaying tactics at the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain in 1776 which allowed American forces time to prepare New York's defenses, the Battle of Ridgefield, Connecticut (after which he was promoted to major general), operations in relief of the Siege of Fort Stanwix, and key actions during the pivotal Battles of Saratoga in 1777, in which he suffered leg injuries that halted his combat career for several years. Arnold repeatedly claimed that he was passed over for promotion by the Continental Congress, while other officers obtained credit for some of his accomplishments.[4] Others in his military and political circles brought charges against him of corruption or other malfeasance, but most often he was acquitted in formal inquiries. Congress investigated his accounts, however, and concluded that he was indebted to Congress, and he borrowed heavily to maintain a lavish lifestyle. Arnold mingled with Loyalist sympathizers in Philadelphia and married into one such family by marrying Peggy Shippen. She was a close friend of British Major John André and kept in contact with him when he became head of the British espionage system in New York. Many historians point to her as facilitating Arnold's plans to switch sides; he opened secret negotiations with André, and Peggy relayed the messages. The British promised £20,000 for the capture of West Point, a major American stronghold; Washington greatly admired Arnold and gave him command of that fort in July 1780. His scheme was to surrender the fort to the British, but it was exposed in September 1780 when Patriot militia captured André carrying papers which revealed the plot. Arnold escaped and André was hanged. Arnold received a commission as a brigadier general in the British Army, an annual pension of £360, and a lump sum of over £6,000.[5] He led British forces on raids in Virginia, and they burned much of New London, Connecticut to the ground and slaughtered surrendering forces after the Battle of Groton Heights—just a few miles downriver from the town where he had grown up. In the winter of 1782, he and Peggy moved to London, England. He was well received by King George III and the Tories but frowned upon by the Whigs and most Army officers. In 1787, he moved to Canada to a merchant business with his sons Richard and Henry. He was extremely unpopular there and returned to London permanently in 1791. Early life Benedict Arnold was born a British subject, the second of six children of Benedict Arnold (1683–1761) and Hannah Waterman King in Norwich, Connecticut Colony on January 14, 1741.[1][6] He was named after his great-grandfather Benedict Arnold, an early governor of the Colony of Rhode Island, as were his father and grandfather and an older brother who died in infancy.[1] Only he and his sister Hannah survived to adulthood; his other siblings succumbed to yellow fever in childhood.[7] His siblings were, in order of birth: Benedict (August 15, 1738 – April 30, 1739), Hannah (December 9, 1742 – August 11, 1803), Mary (June 4, 1745 – September 10, 1753), Absolom (April 4, 1747 – July 22, 1750), and Elizabeth (November 19, 1749 – September 29, 1755). Arnold was a descendant of John Lothropp through his maternal grandmother, an ancestor of six presidents.[8] Arnold's father was a successful businessman, and the family moved in the upper levels of Norwich society. He was enrolled in a private school in nearby Canterbury, Connecticut when he was 10, with the expectation that he would eventually attend Yale University. However, the deaths of his siblings two years later may have contributed to a decline in the family fortunes, since his father took up drinking. By the time that he was 14, there was no money for private education. His father's alcoholism and ill health kept him from training Arnold in the family mercantile business, but his mother's family connections secured an apprenticeship for him with her cousins Daniel and Joshua Lathrop, who operated a successful apothecary and general merchandise trade in Norwich.[9] His apprenticeship with the Lathrops lasted seven years.[10] Arnold was very close to his mother, who died in 1759. His father's alcoholism worsened after her death, and the youth took on the responsibility of supporting his father and younger sister. His father was arrested on several occasions for public drunkenness, was refused communion by his church, and died in 1761.[10] French and Indian War In 1755, Arnold was attracted by the sound of a drummer and attempted to enlist in the provincial militia for service in the French and Indian War, but his mother refused permission.[11] In 1757 when he was 16, he did enlist in the Connecticut militia, which marched off toward Albany, New York and Lake George. The French had besieged Fort William Henry in northeastern New York, and their Indian allies had committed atrocities after their victory. Word of the siege's disastrous outcome led the company to turn around, and Arnold served for only 13 days.[12] A commonly accepted story that he deserted from militia service in 1758[13] is based on uncertain documentary evidence.[14] Businessman Arnold established himself in business in 1762 as a pharmacist and bookseller in New Haven, Connecticut with the help of the Lathrops.[15] He was hardworking and successful, and was able to rapidly expand his business. In 1763, he repaid money that he had borrowed from the Lathrops,[16] repurchased the family homestead that his father had sold when deeply in debt, and re-sold it a year later for a substantial profit. In 1764, he formed a partnership with Adam Babcock, another young New Haven merchant. They bought three trading ships, using the profits from the sale of his homestead, and established a lucrative West Indies trade. During this time, Arnold brought his sister Hannah to New Haven and established her in his apothecary to manage the business in his absence. He traveled extensively in the course of his business throughout New England and from Quebec to the West Indies, often in command of one of his own ships.[17] On one of his voyages, he fought a duel in Honduras with a British sea captain who had called him a "damned Yankee, destitute of good manners or those of a gentleman".[18][19] The captain was wounded in the first exchange of gunfire, and he apologized when Arnold threatened to aim to kill on the second.[20] A 1766 political cartoon on the repeal of the Stamp Act The Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765 severely curtailed mercantile trade in the colonies.[21] The Stamp Act prompted Arnold to join the chorus of voices in opposition, and also led to his entry into the Sons of Liberty, a secret organization that was not afraid to oppose implementation of those and other unpopular Parliamentary measures.[22] Arnold initially took no part in any public demonstrations but, like many merchants, continued to trade as if the Stamp Act did not exist, in effect becoming a smuggler in defiance of the act. He also faced financial ruin, falling £16,000 in debt, with creditors spreading rumors of his insolvency to the point where he took legal action against them.[23] On the night of January 28, 1767, Arnold and members of his crew roughed up a man suspected of attempting to inform authorities of Arnold's smuggling. Arnold was convicted of disorderly conduct and fined the relatively small amount of 50 shillings; publicity of the case and widespread sympathy for his view probably contributed to the light sentence.[24] On February 22, 1767, Arnold married Margaret Mansfield, daughter of Samuel Mansfield, the sheriff of New Haven and a fellow member in the local Masonic Lodge.[25] Their son Benedict was born the following year,[26] and was followed by brothers Richard in 1769 and Henry in 1772.[25] Margaret died on June 19, 1775 while Arnold was at Fort Ticonderoga following its capture.[27] The household was dominated by Arnold's sister Hannah, even while Margaret was alive. Arnold benefited from his relationship with Mansfield, who became a partner in his business and used his position as sheriff to shield him from creditors.[28] Arnold was in the West Indies when the Boston Massacre took place on March 5, 1770. He wrote that he was "very much shocked" and wondered "good God, are the Americans all asleep and tamely giving up their liberties, or are they all turned philosophers, that they don't take immediate vengeance on such miscreants?"[29] American Revolutionary War Siege of Boston and Fort Ticonderoga Arnold began the war as a captain in the Connecticut Colony militia, a position to which he was elected in March 1775. His company marched northeast the following month to assist in the siege of Boston that followed the Battles of Lexington and Concord. He proposed an action to the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to seize Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, which he knew was poorly defended. They issued him a colonel's commission on May 3, 1775, and he immediately rode off to Castleton in the disputed New Hampshire Grants (Vermont) in time to participate with Ethan Allen and his men in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. He followed up that action with a bold raid on Fort Saint-Jean on the Richelieu River north of Lake Champlain. A Connecticut militia force arrived at Ticonderoga in June; Arnold had a dispute with its commander over control of the fort, and resigned his Massachusetts commission. He was on his way home from Ticonderoga when he learned that his wife had died earlier in June.[30] Quebec Governor Guy Carleton opposed Arnold at Quebec and Valcour Island. Quebec Campaign The Second Continental Congress authorized an invasion of Quebec, in part on the urging of Arnold—but he was passed over for command of the expedition. He then went to Cambridge, Massachusetts and suggested to George Washington a second expedition to attack Quebec City via a wilderness route through Maine. He received a colonel's commission in the Continental Army for this expedition and left Cambridge in September 1775 with 1,100 men. He arrived before Quebec City in November, after a difficult passage in which 300 men turned back and another 200 died en route. He and his men were joined by Richard Montgomery's small army and participated in the December 31 assault on Quebec City in which Montgomery was killed and Arnold's leg was shattered. His chaplain Rev. Samuel Spring carried him to the makeshift hospital at the Hôtel Dieu. Arnold was promoted to brigadier general for his role in reaching Quebec, and he maintained an ineffectual siege of the city until he was replaced by Major General David Wooster in April 1776.[31] Arnold then traveled to Montreal where he served as military commander of the city until forced to retreat by an advancing British army that had arrived at Quebec in May. He presided over the rear of the Continental Army during its retreat from Saint-Jean, where he was reported by James Wilkinson to be the last person to leave before the British arrived. He then directed the construction of a fleet to defend Lake Champlain, which was overmatched and defeated in the October 1776 Battle of Valcour Island. However, his actions at Saint-Jean and Valcour Island played a notable role in delaying the British advance against Ticonderoga until 1777.[32] During these actions, Arnold made a number of friends and a larger number of enemies within the army power structure and in Congress. He had established a decent relationship with George Washington, as well as Philip Schuyler and Horatio Gates, both of whom had command of the army's Northern Department during 1775 and 1776.[33] However, an acrimonious dispute with Moses Hazen, commander of the 2nd Canadian Regiment, boiled into Hazen's court martial at Ticonderoga during the summer of 1776. Only action by Arnold's superior at Ticonderoga prevented his own arrest on countercharges leveled by Hazen.[34] He also had disagreements with John Brown and James Easton, two lower-level officers with political connections that resulted in ongoing suggestions of improprieties on his part. Brown was particularly vicious, publishing a handbill which claimed of Arnold, "Money is this man's God, and to get enough of it he would sacrifice his country".[35] Rhode Island and Philadelphia General Washington assigned Arnold to the defense of Rhode Island following the British seizure of Newport in December 1776, where the militia were too poorly equipped to even consider an attack on the British.[36] He took the opportunity to visit his children while near his home in New Haven, and he spent much of the winter socializing in Boston, where he unsuccessfully courted a young belle named Betsy Deblois.[37] In February 1777, he learned that he had been passed over by Congress for promotion to major general. Washington refused his offer to resign, and wrote to members of Congress in an attempt to correct this, noting that "two or three other very good officers" might be lost if they persisted in making politically motivated promotions.[38] Arnold was on his way to Philadelphia to discuss his future when he was alerted that a British force was marching toward a supply depot in Danbury, Connecticut. He organized the militia response, along with David Wooster and Connecticut militia General Gold Selleck Silliman. He led a small contingent of militia attempting to stop or slow the British return to the coast in the Battle of Ridgefield, and was again wounded in his left leg. He then continued on to Philadelphia where he met with members of Congress about his rank. His action at Ridgefield, coupled with the death of Wooster due to wounds sustained in the action, resulted in his promotion to major general, although his seniority was not restored over those who had been promoted before him.[39] Amid negotiations over that issue, Arnold wrote out a letter of resignation on July 11, the same day that word arrived in Philadelphia that Fort Ticonderoga had fallen to the British. Washington refused his resignation and ordered him north to assist with the defense there.[40] Saratoga Campaign Arnold arrived in Schuyler's camp at Fort Edward, New York on July 24. On August 13, Schuyler dispatched him with a force of 900 to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix, where he succeeded in a ruse to lift the siege. He sent an Indian messenger into the camp of British Brigadier General Barry St. Leger with news that the approaching force was much larger and closer than it actually was; this convinced St. Leger's Indian allies to abandon him, forcing him to give up the effort.[41] Arnold returned to the Hudson where General Gates had taken over command of the American army, which had retreated to a camp south of Stillwater.[42] He then distinguished himself in both Battles of Saratoga, even though General Gates removed him from field command after the first battle, following a series of escalating disagreements and disputes that culminated in a shouting match.[43] During the fighting in the second battle, Arnold disobeyed Gates' orders and took to the battlefield to lead attacks on the British defenses. He was again severely wounded in the left leg late in the fighting. Arnold said that it would have been better had it been in the chest instead of the leg.[44] Burgoyne surrendered ten days after the second battle on October 17, 1777. Congress restored Arnold's command seniority in response to his valor at Saratoga.[45] However, he interpreted the manner in which they did so as an act of sympathy for his wounds, and not an apology or recognition that they were righting a wrong.[46] Arnold spent several months recovering from his injuries. He had his leg crudely set, rather than allowing it to be amputated, leaving it 2 inches (5 cm) shorter than the right. He returned to the army at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in May 1778 to the applause of men who had served under him at Saratoga.[47] There he participated in the first recorded Oath of Allegiance, along with many other soldiers, as a sign of loyalty to the United States.[48] Residence in Philadelphia The British withdrew from Philadelphia in June 1778, and Washington appointed Arnold military commander of the city.[49] Historian John Shy states: Washington then made one of the worst decisions of his career, appointing Arnold as military governor of the rich, politically divided city. No one could have been less qualified for the position. Arnold had amply demonstrated his tendency to become embroiled in disputes, as well as his lack of political sense. Above all, he needed tact, patience, and fairness in dealing with a people deeply marked by months of enemy occupation.[50] Arnold began planning to capitalize financially on the change in power in Philadelphia, even before the Americans reoccupied their city. He engaged in a variety of business deals designed to profit from war-related supply movements and benefiting from the protection of his authority.[51] Such schemes were not uncommon among American officers, but Arnold's schemes were sometimes frustrated by powerful local politicians such as Joseph Reed, who eventually amassed enough evidence to publicly air charges against him. Arnold demanded a court martial to clear the charges, writing to Washington in May 1779: "Having become a cripple in the service of my country, I little expected to meet ungrateful returns".[52] Arnold lived extravagantly in Philadelphia and was a prominent figure on the social scene. During the summer of 1778, he met Peggy Shippen, the 18-year-old daughter of Judge Edward Shippen (III), a Loyalist sympathizer who had done business with the British while they occupied the city;[54] Peggy had been courted by British Major John André during the British occupation of Philadelphia.[55] She married Arnold on April 8, 1779.[56] Shippen and her circle of friends had found methods of staying in contact with paramours across the battle lines, despite military bans on communication with the enemy.[57] Some of this communication was effected through the services of Joseph Stansbury, a Philadelphia merchant.[58] Plotting to change sides Historians have identified many possible factors contributing to Arnold's treason, while some debate their relative importance. According to W. D. Wetherell, he was: among the hardest human beings to understand in American history. Did he become a traitor because of all the injustice he suffered, real and imagined, at the hands of the Continental Congress and his jealous fellow generals? Because of the constant agony of two battlefield wounds in an already gout-ridden leg? From psychological wounds received in his Connecticut childhood when his alcoholic father squandered the family's fortunes? Or was it a kind of extreme midlife crisis, swerving from radical political beliefs to reactionary ones, a change accelerated by his marriage to the very young, very pretty, very Tory Peggy Shippen?[59] Wetherell says that the shortest explanation for his treason is that he "married the wrong person."[60] Arnold was a difficult personality, extremely ambitious and jealous, making many enemies and getting into troubles wherever he went in the United States, Britain, or Canada. He knew that he was distrusted and disliked by senior military officers on both sides. Washington was one of the few who genuinely liked and admired him, but Arnold thought that Washington betrayed him. Arnold was greedy and a spendthrift, and heavily in debt to London financiers. The British promise of £20,000 for the capture of West Point would have solved his financial crisis. In Philadelphia, he mingled with high society in a very expensive fashion, including many prominent families who had recently been quite friendly to the British during their occupation. The Shippen family was one of them, and he married their daughter Peggy. She previously had been courted by British major John André, who later was the head of the British espionage system. André was in charge of handling Arnold for General Clinton and the British high command. Peggy egged on her husband and collaborated in his treason, acting as a courier to André in New York City. Arnold had been badly wounded twice in battle and had lost his business in Connecticut, and that made him profoundly bitter. He grew jealous of several rival generals who had been promoted ahead of him and given honors which he thought he deserved. Especially galling was a long feud with the civil authorities in Philadelphia which led to his court-martial. Arnold was convicted on two minor charges of using his authority to make a profit. He was given a light reprimand by General Washington, which heightened his sense of betrayal, but he had already opened negotiations with the British before his court martial began. He later said in his own defense that he was loyal to his true beliefs, yet he lied at the same time by insisting that Peggy was totally innocent and ignorant of his plans.[61][62] As early as 1778, there were signs that Arnold was unhappy with his situation and pessimistic about the country's future. On November 10, 1778, General Nathanael Greene wrote to General John Cadwalader, "I am told General Arnold is become very unpopular among you oweing to his associateing too much with the Tories."[63] A few days later, Greene received a letter from Arnold in which he lamented over the "deplorable" and "horrid" situation of the country at that particular moment, citing the depreciating currency, disaffection of the army, and internal fighting in Congress, while predicting "impending ruin" if things did not change soon.[64] Biographer Nathaniel Philbrick argues: Peggy Shippen… did have a significant role in the plot. She exerted powerful influence on her husband, who is said to have been his own man but who actually was swayed by his staff and certainly by his wife. Peggy came from a loyalist family in Philadelphia; she had many ties to the British. She… was the conduit for information to the British.[65] Early in May 1779, Arnold met with Philadelphia merchant Joseph Stansbury[66] who then "went secretly to New York with a tender of [Arnold's] services to Sir Henry Clinton".[67] Stansbury ignored instructions from Arnold to involve no one else in the plot, and he crossed the British lines and went to see Jonathan Odell in New York. Odell was a Loyalist working with William Franklin, the last colonial governor of New Jersey and the son of Benjamin Franklin. On May 9, Franklin introduced Stansbury to Major André, who had just been named the British spy chief.[68] This was the beginning of a secret correspondence between Arnold and André, sometimes using his wife Peggy as a willing intermediary, that culminated more than a year later with Arnold's change of sides.[52] Secret communications One of Arnold's coded letters. Cipher lines by Arnold are interspersed with lines by his wife, Peggy. André conferred with General Clinton, who gave him broad authority to pursue Arnold's offer. André then drafted instructions to Stansbury and Arnold.[69] This initial letter opened a discussion on the types of assistance and intelligence that Arnold might provide, and included instructions for how to communicate in the future. Letters were to be passed through the women's circle that Peggy Arnold was a part of, but only Peggy would be aware that some letters contained instructions that were to be passed on to André, written in both code and invisible ink, using Stansbury as the courier.[70] By July 1779, Benedict Arnold was providing the British with troop locations and strengths, as well as the locations of supply depots, all the while negotiating over compensation. At first, he asked for indemnification of his losses and £10,000, an amount that the Continental Congress had given Charles Lee for his services in the Continental Army.[71] General Clinton was pursuing a campaign to gain control of the Hudson River Valley, and was interested in plans and information on the defenses of West Point and other defenses on the Hudson River. He also began to insist on a face-to-face meeting, and suggested to Arnold that he pursue another high-level command.[72] By October 1779, the negotiations had ground to a halt.[73] Furthermore, Patriot mobs were scouring Philadelphia for Loyalists, and Arnold and the Shippen family were being threatened. Arnold was rebuffed by Congress and by local authorities in requests for security details for himself and his in-laws.[74] Court martial The Norris Tavern, in Morristown, New Jersey, where the trial took place. The court martial began meeting on June 1, 1779 to consider the charges against Benedict Arnold, but it was delayed until December 1779 by General Clinton's capture of Stony Point, New York, throwing the army into a flurry of activity to react.[75] Several members on the panel of judges were ill-disposed toward Arnold over actions and disputes earlier in the war, yet Arnold was cleared of all but two minor charges on January 26, 1780.[76] Arnold worked over the next few months to publicize this fact; however, George Washington published a formal rebuke of his behavior in early April, just one week after he had congratulated Arnold on the March 19 birth of his son Edward Shippen Arnold:[77] The Commander-in-Chief would have been much happier in an occasion of bestowing commendations on an officer who had rendered such distinguished services to his country as Major General Arnold; but in the present case, a sense of duty and a regard to candor oblige him to declare that he considers his conduct [in the convicted actions] as imprudent and improper.[78] Shortly after Washington's rebuke, a Congressional inquiry into Arnold's expenditures concluded that he had failed to fully account for his expenditures incurred during the Quebec invasion, and that he owed the Congress some £1,000, largely because he was unable to document them.[79] A significant number of these documents had been lost during the retreat from Quebec. Angry and frustrated, Arnold resigned his military command of Philadelphia in late April.[80] Offer to surrender West Point Early in April, Philip Schuyler had approached Arnold with the possibility of giving him the command at West Point. Discussions had not borne fruit between Schuyler and Washington by early June. Arnold reopened the secret channels with the British, informing them of Schuyler's proposals and including Schuyler's assessment of conditions at West Point. He also provided information on a proposed French-American invasion of Quebec that was to go up the Connecticut River (Arnold did not know that this proposed invasion was a ruse intended to divert British resources). On June 16, Arnold inspected West Point while on his way home to Connecticut to take care of personal business, and he sent a highly detailed report through the secret channel.[81] When he reached Connecticut, Arnold arranged to sell his home there and began transferring assets to London through intermediaries in New York. By early July, he was back in Philadelphia, where he wrote another secret
BTC: 32.72080355 Fiat: 4622.98 11-10-2013 19:12 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 22.18584241 Fiat: 3132.28 11-10-2013 19:25 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 1.20620135 Fiat: 170.43 11-10-2013 19:37 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 35.24546975 Fiat: 4971.43 11-10-2013 19:43 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 8.17960154 Fiat: 1154.27 11-10-2013 19:52 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 48.91592187 Fiat: 6911.8 11-10-2013 19:59 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 41.61424986 Fiat: 5879.39 11-10-2013 20:13 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 10.46866514 Fiat: 1478.94 11-10-2013 20:23 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 20.43615363 Fiat: 2885.07 11-10-2013 20:37 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 5.84754135 Fiat: 820.8 11-10-2013 20:51 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 21.55738663 Fiat: 3034.17 11-10-2013 21:05 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 2.35397951 Fiat: 331.4 11-10-2013 21:14 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 49.8687948 Fiat: 7043.33 11-10-2013 21:27 - 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UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 10.46073388 Fiat: 1489.6 12-10-2013 12:58 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 30.44888714 Fiat: 4338.97 12-10-2013 13:06 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 4.28342592 Fiat: 611.92 12-10-2013 13:16 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 2.00097745 Fiat: 285.69 12-10-2013 13:25 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 3.65780869 Fiat: 521.24 12-10-2013 13:34 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 19.97123446 Fiat: 2837.57 12-10-2013 13:44 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 27.50354772 Fiat: 3914.88 12-10-2013 13:58 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 14.60807314 Fiat: 2075.08 12-10-2013 14:07 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 45.73380977 Fiat: 6496.29 12-10-2013 14:16 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 24.08175056 Fiat: 3416.34 12-10-2013 14:24 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 42.48307206 Fiat: 6033.32 12-10-2013 14:37 - UID: 658152 Type: buy Currency: USD BTC: 5.21068431 Fiat: 738.79 12-10-2013 14:47 - 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The ‘Melbourne Code card’ duly played!), but a more benign side this time is this uplifting tale. In the West we are generally aware of the power of plants to provide medicines; but we tend to forget that other cultures exploit a wider range of natural medicinal sources. Take for example TCM – Traditional Chinese Medicine – which makes more use of fungi than is common in, say, Europe. Bringing that ancient system bang up to date is news that the genome of Ganoderma lucidum has been sequenced by Shilin Chen et al. Ganoderma lucidum, commonly known as reishi, has been used in TCM for more than 2000 years and has many claimed health benefits. Now that its DNA is being deciphered it is hoped that this fungus can be exploited as a model system to provide insights into the production of bioactive compounds by fungi generally. And fungi have been prized for many properties, not least of which is the aphrodisiac qualities ascribed to yarchagumba or ‘Himalayan viagra’, the ascomycete fungus Ophiocordyceps sinensis. In fact, so prized is this product – which sells for more than gold – that it is in danger of being over-collected in the wild, in high-altitude areas of the Himalayas. Coupled to the fact that it survives by infecting and mummifying the bodies of moth larvae, its fortunes are firmly tied to those of its host species, which need to be appropriately managed. And, along with suggestions that diminishing natural supplies of the ‘vegetable viagra’ may be related to climate change, it’s no wonder that this fungus is considered endangered. Maybe this is another deserving candidate for full genome analysis so its medical secrets could be given up before it’s too late? And finally – news of the benefits of giving human medicine to plants. Apparently, just 1 mg of viagra (a compound more famously associated with erectile issues in gentlemen) is enough to make cut flowers ‘perk up’ and last for another week beyond their usual ‘shelf-life’, reports Tamara Cohen. Though why this ‘news’ item is 12 years after the original announcement of this outstanding work is a mystery in itself. Maybe it took that long for the claims to stand up to scrutiny…? Chen, Shilin, et al. “Genome sequence of the model medicinal mushroom Ganoderma lucidum.” Nature Communications 3 (2012): 913.Copyright by WDTN - All rights reserved DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) - The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency is putting Dayton on the list. Dayton is now one of four cities where the DEA is rolling out its new 360 program to tackle the opioid crisis from all angles. In 2016, the DEA implemented the 360 program in four cities, including Louisville and Pittsburgh. This year, they're choosing Dayton to be part of the program. 2 NEWS spoke with a representative from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office Monday about the potential success the program could bring to the Miami Valley. "You'll probably never stop it entirely as we haven't stopped a lot of things over the years," Montgomery County Criminal Intelligence Center Director Bruce Langos said. "But if we can reduce the amount of demand for the drug and at the same time we're attacking the supply side and we tighten that as tight as we can, then we're very likely to see results." The DEA 360 strategy addresses the opioid crisis from 3 angles; law enforcement, diversion control and community outreach. They believe by eliminating drug traffickers, raising awareness about over-prescribing, and building drug-free communities, they can curb opioid use in the areas hit the hardest like Montgomery County. The program is already seeing some progress in places like Louisville, where an after-school dance program for kids pairs choreography with drug education. "If you make it fun for them and make it interesting for them," Langos said. "And they learn something from it at the same time and you can do it in a fun way, then I think they capture it better." Montgomery County Criminal Intelligence Center Director Bruce Langos says they're also seeing progress in Pittsburgh, where the 360 strategy was also implemented last year. "They've done very well in the law enforcement community of fostering their partnerships," Langos said. "With all of the law enforcement agencies and then trying to attack the drug traffickers in a combined unified approach." Right now, Langos says it's too early to gauge the program's success, but he says anything with a clear focus and a straight-forward mission can only help curb the nation's opioid crisis. "This takes a while to have an overall effect," Langos said. "There's still a lot of work you have to do. The program continues on. This is not a flash in the pan activity. It's pretty progressive and consistent." The DEA will officially role out it's 360 strategy with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office on Thursday. We'll be there and be sure to let you know what happens.Hans Wagner, who has run the farm for 50 years, said he met all regulatory requirements, adhered to the industry's code of practice and had never been prosecuted for animal welfare offences. "The authorities come out here and there's no problem," he said. The government department responsible for animal welfare in commercial facilities confirmed two recent inspections did not find any breaches under animal cruelty laws. But activists from Animal Liberation Victoria said they found birds living in appalling conditions - in the two weeks after government health officials last inspected the farm - and removed several hens in need of veterinary care from cages. "It was filthy dirty," vice-president Patty Mark said. "We found sick and deformed hens left to die in cages. They were debilitated and exhausted, had severe feather loss and red-raw skin." Avian vet Corrie Pinkster, from the Melbourne Bird Veterinary Clinic, said she was hired by the activists to examine one of the chickens before it underwent surgery for an oviduct infection, a common condition affecting laying hens. "We actually removed 1.2 kilograms of pus from a bird that weighs 2.3 kilograms, so it was literally half her body weight," Dr Pinkster said. "It was a severe case. It would have been pretty obvious she wasn't in a good state and there's no way she would have been laying eggs at that point." Mr Wagner said staff swept the sheds daily and that while the dead birds shown in the images should have been removed immediately "mistakes are made sometimes". "Lots of things can kill chooks," he said. "I'm not going to say how many we lose a day, [but] it's not very many. There's always problems, we're talking about livestock." Mr Wagner, who has scaled down the operation from a 50,000-bird farm, said he bought thousands of chickens at a time and was unable to inspect them individually. He said feather loss was common among older laying hens as their stores depleted, and that it was not a sign of animal cruelty or poor living conditions. Chickens can also lose feathers for other reasons, such as pecking from other birds. Mr Wagner said he had filed a complaint with police about activists trespassing on his property and stealing chickens. "They don't like chooks in cages, basically that's what I have," he said. "They come here, they take pictures allegedly, as far as I'm concerned they could have even brought the birds with them." Animal welfare officers from the resources department gave Mr Wagner's farm the all-clear in December 2014 and late February. It is understood the farm was directed to make minor improvements to address concerns about conditions inside the sheds. Agriculture Minister Jaala Pulford's office said staff would visit the property again in April to assess the health and welfare of the chickens. Concerns about employee safety at the farm were also raised after the workplace watchdog received a complaint from activists about a large gap in the floor of one of the sheds, and cabling across walkways. WorkSafe said inspectors had visited the farm last week and identified a number of safety issues. "Interim measures have been put in place to ensure the health and safety of farm employees until the issues are resolved," a spokesman said. The RSPCA said the photos from Wagner's Poultry Farm highlighted the "extensive animal welfare problems" in cage systems. "It's time that these cruel and outdated systems be replaced with cage-free facilities," a spokeswoman said.The day before the election, we posted an article called ‘David vs Goliath’, about how small businesses in Thailand and around the world could defeat larger ones by being faster to adapt to the new media landscape – specifically in terms of social media marketing. We had the right title, but the week’s events proved that we had overlooked a much more dramatic case study to prove the point. Donald Trump’s single-handed demolition of the Republican Party and then the Democratic Party – and his complete victory over economic elites in the country, the entire media system, and all the prevailing forces in the American political system – is a David vs Goliath story if ever there was one. How did it happen? We published a case study of the US presidential race back in April, and we believe that every word of it remains worth reading and has stood the test of time. Now that the race is over and we have the full picture in view, it’s possible to conduct a complete autopsy. Our aim here isn’t to provide a political profile of the country, or even to take a stance on the substance of the candidates’ policy proposals, but rather to break down how indeed the unlikeliest of Davids wrestled down the ultimate Goliath. Put simply, the 2016 election came down to branding, messaging and social media performance. 11/8 was an Inside JobLet’s consider how we can set up proper initialization, security, and normalization for a basic Mongoose Schema for a web application user. We’ll be using a real-world example instead of the silly trivial examples people usually use in these tutorials. This tutorial is aimed at users who already understand how Mongoose/MongoDB works. Hopefully you understand what required, default, and unique schema attributes do already. Briefly look over the following example Schema: var User = mongoose.Schema({ color: { type: String, default: '#FFFFFF', validate: [isHexColor, 'color is not a Hex Color'] }, enableMessaging: { type: Boolean, default: false }, username: { type: String, required: true, unique: true }, password: { // there are many tutorials on encryption, so make sure you do it! type: String, required: true } }) function isHexColor(s) { return /^#([A-Fa-f0-9]{6}\|[A-Fa-f0-9]{3})$/.test(s) } Here we have a basic Mongoose Schema with a unique required username, a required password, a string attribute, and a boolean attribute. Let’s talk about how we can take advantage of Mongoose features to wrangle this data in an efficient manner. Using Validation Functions You’ll notice we use a validation function on our color attribute. This checks that whenever we try and save a color it is formatted properly as a Hex color. If it fails our check, mongoose will not save the document and return an error instead. You should use validation functions whenever you are dealing with restrictive/formatted data. Instead of writing the validation code for every api route, you can add it here in the Schema just once. This makes it easier to update, and lowers code repetition. Protecting Private Attributes and Sensitive Data When you use express to send a document to the client through res.send(), express will call toJSON to transform the document prior to sending it to the client. You can take advantage of this by setting up each Schema’s toJSON ‘s transform attribute to remove sensitive data that you don’t want the client to ever see. For example: User.set('toJSON', { transform: function(doc, user, options) { delete user.password return user } }) or you can use a whitelist approach User.set('toJSON', { transform: function(doc, user, options) { return { name: user.name, color: user.color } } }) Again, following the theme of code consolidation, we don’t want to be worried about having to delete sensitive data every time we do a res.send(). Instead we can define it here once, and never worry about it again! Using Virtual Attributes Using virtual attributes is a great way to help normalize and lower the amount of data you store in your database. For example, if we wanted to easily be able to access each users profile url, we could add a virtual attribute like: User.virtual('url').get(function() { return '/' + this.username + '/profile' }) Tip: You can include virtuals when sending your document to the client by using { virtuals:true } attribute within the set(‘toJSON’) object: Schema.set('toJSON', { transform:..., virtuals: true }) This way our client will have access to the url attribute as well! A Note on Querying Default Values Mongoose sends your queries directly to MongoDB, therefore it won’t know about default values that haven’t been saved to the db yet. This case only arises when you’ve added a new default attribute to a Schema after docs of that type have already been saved to the db. However, this tends to happen a lot in growing/changing applications and can save you headaches later on down the road. In our example if we added the color feature after hundreds of our users had already signed up, and tried query our database for users with { color: '#FFFFFF' }, then we might not get any of the original users unless their docs have been re-saved since we added that default value. So to combat this you can either forcibly add the default value to all users when you add a new attribute, or you can check for non-existent values as well. For example: $or: [ { color: { $exists: false } }, { color: '#FFFFFF' } ]Discovery Studying Evolution in Action Researchers apply biological and digital approaches to better understand underlying factors BEACON researchers design robots that cooperate to achieve a common goal. November 29, 2012 Evolution is not just something from the past. It also happens in real time. Bacteria mutate and resist antibiotics. Viruses reinvent themselves and elude new medications. Animals adapt their behavior in response to a changing planet. Traditionally, researchers have studied evolution by looking back, often using fossils and other relics to understand how organisms have changed over time in order to survive. It is an established and valuable approach. But it is not the only one. Thanks to new sophisticated computational technology, scientists now can combine field observations with digital evolution systems, enabling them to answer important biological questions, as well as solve non-biological problems using evolutionary methods. "It's not that what we're doing won't shed light on evolution over millions of years, but we also are able to study things we can actually observe with our eyes," says Erik Goodman, director of the BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, which is conducting much of this work. "We are looking at evolution in the real world." Computer software allows the researchers to create digital organisms, similar in some ways to real bacteria and viruses, for example, that can
most of us at everything,” Millan said. Lee started making his own money when he was 10, shoveling snow and cutting grass. He got a job stocking shelves in a small pharmacy when he was 11. He remembers working a lot after school, making pizzas for a while, taking tickets at a movie theater and pumping gas. Lee’s brother Yong Yang enrolled at a technical college and became certified as a mechanic. Eight years after landing in the United States, the brothers pooled their money and bought a Mobil gas station. They made enough there to buy a Texaco station. “I pumped gas for them and fixed flat tires,” Lee said. And they taught him all about car engines. When the brothers sold the gas stations to buy an auto repair shop, they made Lee a partner at Brothers Auto in Providence. That’s where the family would face its next great threat. It’s where Lee met Nou. DISOWNED AND SHUNNED BECAUSE OF FORBIDDEN LOVE... Nou and Lee Khang (Khang family) In the Hmong culture, clan members are like brothers and sisters. They’re forbidden from marrying members of the same clan, even if they aren’t actually blood relatives. A Khang could not marry a Kue. Couldn’t even date one. So when Lee told his younger brother Yer that he was going to go ask that pretty girl on the other side of the room to dance during a Hmong New Year’s party in Providence, R.I., Yer tried to stop him. “No, no, no, no, no,” Yer said. “She’s a Kue. We’re from the same clan. You cannot dance with her.” Lee smirked. “Oh yeah, watch me,” he said. Lee sauntered over, only to be turned down by Nou. “I knew he was a Khang, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to dance with him,” said Nou, whose family had also escaped Laos in the 1970s. “But he kept saying, ‘It’s no big deal,’ and he wouldn’t give up, so I danced with him.” Lee was 19, Nou was 16. The romance didn’t take flight until a couple years later, when they began seeing each other regularly in Hmong circles in Providence, where Lee was working and Nou was living. They began dating seriously. Actually, it was more like sneaking around, so family wouldn’t find out. But the family did find out. Lee’s mother heard about it and told Nou’s mother. “All hell broke loose after that,” Lee said. Nou was 20 by this time, in college, and Lee was 23, working as a mechanic. After word reached Nou’s mother, there was a showdown. “It’s wrong,” said Tru, Nou’s mother. “It’s a disgrace. Wait until your father gets home.” Nou panicked. She grabbed her purse and raced out the door. She ran away, hiding in a hotel room. Lee found her, but it took awhile for Nou to get up the nerve to return home. When Nou did, it seemed as if the whole Kue clan in Providence was waiting for her - brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins. “My father was a community leader, and they told us we were making him lose face,” Nou said. Nou was swept upstairs with the women, and Lee was surrounded downstairs by the men. Nou’s father, Xay Ge, was a former drill sergeant. “He told me if we were back in Laos, he would kill me,” Lee said. “He said I’d be 6 feet under.” With his long hair and leather jacket, Lee was altogether too Americanized for Nou’s father. Yet the younger man was undeterred. “There are some good Hmong customs, and there are some dumb ones,” Lee said. “This was about love. I knew in my heart we weren’t wrong. We weren’t related by blood. “We told them we were going to get married, even if they didn’t approve. They said, in that case, we disown you.” Lee’s parents were equally outraged. “I don’t want you carrying my name anymore,” Lee’s father said. “Find a new name.” Hmong custom requires a man to negotiate the price of a dowry to pay his bride’s family. The maximum amount allowed by Hmong rule at the time was $5,000. Rather than negotiate, Lee sold his Toyota Supra, marched into Nou’s house, peeled off $5,000 in cash and slapped it on the table in front of Nou’s father. It took more than a year, but both sets of parents eventually softened. “They saw how we were making a good life together,” Nou said. “Lee had his own business with his brothers, and I was beginning to teach.” When Nou became pregnant with Megan, it closed the gap with the parents. “They welcomed us back,” Nou said. Nou’s father held a reunion ceremony. As part of a Hmong custom, he tied a string to Nou’s fingers, a blessing that signified a new beginning. “It meant so much to me,” Nou said. LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER... Megan splits the first fairway with her tee shot in a practice round at Harmon Golf Club, her home course in Rockland. Mom’s at the wheel of the golf cart, Dad’s on the range giving a lesson to a local junior. “Dad’s a kid at heart, and we’ve had a lot of fun playing matches here,” Megan said. “Our smack talk is pretty good. Mom says she raised two children.” Nou didn’t really like the house they bought on the course, but Lee sold her on the nine-hole neighborhood facility as being the perfect place to groom Megan. It has a muni feel with a challenging layout and a good practice facility, all at a price the family could afford. “It used to be a pig farm,” Lee said. This wonderful golf journey the Khang family is making together may not be filled with the life-and-death challenges of Lee’s and Nou’s youth, but there are challenges nonetheless. Lee has been Megan’s swing coach, caddie and mental coach for a long time now, but it’s no easy trick balancing all of that with being a father. How do you go from pushing your player as a coach, to being under your player’s rule as a caddie? How do you blend being a father with all of that? It complicates family dynamics. After a rough day on the course not so long ago, Lee stunned his daughter. “I turned to her and said, ‘I hate you,’” Lee said. “She looked at me shocked, and then I said, ‘I hate you because you’re exactly like me.’ I told her we are both stubborn, and I wished she was more like her mom.” They laughed. “My dad makes the game fun,” Megan said. “He is crazy in love with golf, and he passed that on to me. We have great times together, but we bump heads, too.” Lee has been Megan’s caddie most of her two years playing the LPGA, but they’ve taken breaks from each other. They’re on a break now. Megan played the entire Asian swing with a new caddie, with Lee back in Massachusetts the whole time. She finished a career-best, T-3 last week at the Blue Bay event in China and is now inside the top 100 in the Rolex Rankings, at 96th. “It’s Megan’s life, and she needs space to grow,” Nou said. “She needs to start making her own decisions.” Megan says her mom is the glue that holds the golf and family pieces together. “She never lets us forget that family is more important than golf,” Megan said. “When Dad and I have disagreements, she has a way of getting us to see each other’s perspectives.” At 20 now, Megan is beginning to stretch her wings, to venture farther from the nest. “I like having another caddie sometimes so my dad can just be my dad,” Megan said. “But it’s hard, because nobody knows my game like he does, nobody can help me the way he does.” Lee agrees Megan needs space to grow up, but the coach and father in him will never stop wanting to help. That’s the challenge he faces now, as he tries to lighten his grip on the reins while still helping Megan improve. Lee wonders sometimes if he sheltered Megan too much from the hardships he and his wife endured growing up in Laos and then on welfare in the United States. He wonders if sharing more of the desperation he and Nou felt in their childhood would have given Megan an even greater edge today. “I didn’t want Megan to feel the pain and suffering we felt, where we didn’t always know where our next meal was coming from,” Lee said. “I protected her from all of that, and I shouldn’t have. “Megan has amazing talent, and she’s so kindhearted, but she’s still young and doesn’t understand how the real world works, or the real disadvantages we faced. Maybe knowing would have helped her play with a chip on her shoulder, maybe play with even more passion.” Nou hears that knowing Lee is shaped by the wanting of his youth, as well as the ambition and resourcefulness all that wanting created. “Lee doesn’t sleep much,” Nou said. “He is always thinking about ways he can help Megan, ways to help her with her swing. His mind is always working.” Lee said he had a heart-to-heart conversation with Megan before she left for Asia without him. “Things happen,” Lee said. “But I told her I hope she understands that my love is unconditional for her, that I will take a bullet for her, no matter how angry she might be with me or I might be with her.” That sounds like the same emotional compass the Khangs and Kues used to make their way out of the jungles of Laos and to find their way conquering all those obstacles lined up against them as refugees in a brave new world.A man searched for decades to find the newborn girl he rescued from likely death. Now, the mystery is finally solved. After nearly 60 years, the two reunited Sunday. Dave Hickman says it was by the grace of God that he heard a noise in the woods while he was hunting in southern Indiana at age 14. What he found there would change his life forever. Hickman recalled, "September 22, 1955, I'd been hunting with my grandfather. And I kept hearing a very odd sound. It wasn't the sound of a baby crying, it was more of a soft cooing sound. I said, 'I have to find out what this is.' So I started walking up the fence." "I got on top of the fence, I looked down, and there was a little baby. She was soaking wet. Her lips were blue. She was just wrapped in a towel. My grandfather said, 'We have to do something real quick, we have to get help for the baby'." Hickman and his grandfather called the authorities, who brought the newborn to a hospital where she was treated and given a name -- Roseann Wayne. A few months later, Hickman was given a moment to say goodbye. "They handed her to me and they said, 'She's being adopted next week.' They had her wrapped in a blanket. She was sound asleep. So I got to say goodbye to her." But Hickman could never forget that little girl, and he spent the next 58 years trying to track her down. In December of 2013, he decided to make one final attempt to find her. Retired Wayne County Sheriff John Catey said, "I got contacted by Mr. Hickman, wanting to know if I could figure out how find the girl that he had found in the woods." In less than two weeks, Catey called back with news. "(Catey) said, 'Dave write down this name and this phone number - Mary Ellen Suey and her phone number.' I said, 'OK John, I said who's that?' (He said) 'That's your little girl'," Hickman said. Mary Ellen Suey was re-named by her adoptive parents. And despite a lifetime of happy memories, she always wanted to learn the identity of the teenage boy who saved her life. Then last December her phone rang. It was Hickman. "I call him my hero here on Earth because if it hadn't been for Dave, I wouldn't be here right now," she said. Hickman said, "I heard her voice, and I said my name... and then I lost it." Suey said, "It was almost like I had known Dave for years." Ever since that call, Suey has wanted to meet her hero in person. On Sunday, she finally did. It was 58 years since they first met, but worth the wait. Suey said at the reunion, "It's kind of like Dave's my big brother I, I didn't know I had." Hickman said, "I've seen that image of her laying in the weeds, and me standing on top of the fence every day of my life. And I'll probably always see that, but at least now I know there's a happy ending." Authorities never determined who dumped Suey alongside the road. But amazingly, she says she's not angry at her biological parents for abandoning her. She instead chooses to focus on the wonderful life she's been able to live because of Hickman's actions on that day in 1955.This Feral Flying Pig is a beast of a cigar. Probably the most full bodied cigar that I've ever smoked. It's packed with strength and flavor. The complexity that you get from this cigar is fantastic. It's definitely not a smoke for someone early on in their smoking career. Initial Thoughts The Feral Flying Pig seems to be one of those cigars that you can never find. Everyone is all the cigar forums talks about them, and how great they are. For some they seem to have no issue tracking these cigars down, for others it’s like trying to find the Golden Ticket from The Willy Wonka Factory. Needless to say, I was extremely excited when I tracked down one of these cigars in Nashville. I’m going to guesstimate that I got this cigar close to 9 months ago and it’s been aging in my humi for that amount of time. I wanted to really hold onto it until I was ready to smoke it, because I haven’t been able to find anymore since. I’m not sure what struck me, but I decided today was the day I was going to smoke it and I went into my humi snagged it and was prepping myself. Now to be honest, Jeremy over at Blind Eye Cigar Review had given me one in the past that we smoked together. He’s a true Brother of the Leaf (#BOTL). So I knew what I was in for, so maybe that’s why I put off smoking this stick. I’m not sure. Official information about this Feral Flying Pig is fairly scarce on the Drew Estate website. Essentially it’s part of the Unico Series by Liga Privada. Originally they released the Liga Privada 9 Flying Pig which is a much smaller vitola than this particular stick. Then they began producing this stick, it’s not a one off production it’s a consistently produced product, just in small batches. Which is why they’ve become so difficult to get. Small Supply = Great Demand right? We all passed economics, I passed with a D, but no one cares, I still graduated right? Yeah that’s what I thought. So without further ado, let’s hop into this stick and get down to it! Looks This Feral Flying Pig is one of the coolest looking cigars on the market. It comes in a beautiful wooden box and each pig has it’s own slot in box. Once these cigars come out of the aging room they’re placed in these boxes like they are being custom molded again while en route for delivery. Very cool packaging in my opinion. The actual cigar is somewhat of a double figurado. It’s tapered at both ends and plumps to a nice 60 ring gauge for the majority of the barrel. At the head of the cigar there is a beautifully placed pig tail cap. It’s a fitting cap for this cigar since it is entitled with the word pig. I have a feeling that wasn’t done by accident. I’m also a huge fan of the band on this cigar. I wasn’t able to get a picture of the backside of the band because the retailer covered it with a barcode. So you’ll have to take my word for it, but there is a beautiful golden lion with the U for Unico series. The front of the band is similar to the Liga Privada 9 and T52 labels. Except it says FERAL in bold blue print. I’ve always been a big fan of these bands they have a very unique look to them that really sets them apart from all others. This cigar has a beautiful rich dark oily looking wrapper. It’s a Connecticut Broadleaf similar to the other Ligas that we’ve reviewed. It’s been aged and has that nice dark shine to it, that lets you know it’s a Liga Privada. There are very few visible veins on this cigar some nice bits of tooth up and down the wrapper. I’m loving looking at this cigar, but I’m also ready to fire it up. Function As I said above I’ve had this stick sitting in my humi for close to 9 months. So I’m fairly certain that it should be good to go in terms of the pinch test. However, I make sure to oblige it and give it the proper foreplay before I turn it into ash. Absolutely no soft spots it has a great bounce back on the filler. Now when it came time to remove the pig tail cap on this Feral Flying Pig, I didn’t want to bite it or pull it off. Because honestly, I don’t have that much experience with doing it and it I didn’t want to tear the wrapper. So I just used the ole capped back cutter to do the job. Once I started taking some puffs on this thing I knew it was going to be a great smoke. The pre draw almost too open. In fact it felt like there was an actual hole down through the barrel of the cigar. I didn’t mind in fact I would rather have that then it be too tight of a draw. So I think it’s time to actually put the torch to this and see what it has to offer. Smoking I used my standby Xikar Stratosphere to toast this tapered foot. It really didn’t need much toasting at all this Feral Flying Pig lit right up and began pouring out smoke like nobody’s bidness(yep that’s how I say it). The draw was so open it actually caused me to choke on all the smoke that I pulled through. So word to the wise, if you ever find these cigars be prepared to be pelted with smoke! I’m just saying, it’s gonna happen. As is the case with all the Liga Privadas, especially the Undercrown there is a ton of smoke that pours off this stick. The leaf that they use has such a high combustible rate its shocking. It puts these cigars in a league all their own. The first third smoked perfectly, I had a nice long ash that looks really cool because of the tapered foot. It held on for nearly an inch and a half. What I loved about the ash is that it was solid and sturdy and didn’t crumble once it hit the ashtray. Yes, I actually got it in the ashtray instead of on my pants this time. I know it was a big win for myself. This thing continued to burn perfectly all the way through the 2nd and final thirds as well. There was one point where I thought I might need to do a touch up this Feral Flying Pig, but I refrained and it worked itself out just fine. Now, onto the flavor! Flavor I know this is what everyone has been excited about and looking forward to. Well honestly, the flavor was excellent, but there were so many other intangibles that I loved about this cigar that I almost forgot to take note of the flavors. I know, doesn’t make sense, but it happens. On the pre draw I picked up some very earthy notes, there was some sort of hollow wood and charcoal flavors that were very interesting. Thats the best way that I can describe it, is hollow. The wood flavors weren’t over powering in fact it felt they weren’t even that warm or intense, just kind of hollow and thats how I wound up on the charcoal note. Very interesting how that works. Once I got it lit the spice began to build along with the body of the cigar. After having smoked this before I knew I was going to be in for a ride and I had already prepped myself for it. The flavors I got were very savory and spicy. There were hints of sweetness on the lips, but just an overall kick to the pants. It was an enjoyable kick to the pants, but still a kick none the less. During the second third I could really feel this Feral Flying Pig building up in strength. The retrohale brought out a nice black pepper to it that seemed to stick to the back of my throat. In fact, it’s still there while I’m writing this. Again the charcoal is still hitting along with the savory / meaty notes with hints of earth. It’s a very complex cigar and one that should definitely be smoked while sitting down. In fact you might want to just take a nap after this cigar because you might not be walking anywhere anytime soon. The final third was more of the same, but everything seemed to really build in terms of strength. I’m not sure if I’ve ever smoked a cigar this strong before. I’m still waiting on the Opus X, but damn this Feral Flying Pig is a beast. Just a word to some of you newer smokers out there. If you come across this stick, buy it, but wait to smoke it until you’re ready. I have a feeling it would turn most of you green if you tried smoking it early in your smoking career. That’s just my advice, take it or leave it. The most dominant flavor to me in this final third is the spice, it’s not an overwhelming habanero spice it’s a milder spice but it’s definitely there and I love it! Would I Buy It Again? Absolutely, if I can ever find them. Is It an Every Day Smoke? Absolutely not. Unless you just buy boxes and boxes. Its a special cigar, don’t smoke these everyday. Would I Buy a Box? Without a doubt. Conclusion This Feral Flying Pig is an incredible cigar. Definitely worth the hype that it has received. I was a little skeptical at first, but the way it builds in strength and complexity is almost indescribable. If you ever get ahold of this guy make sure and buy a couple to let them age and smoke them when you have some time to really enjoy them!Morgan Marshall and his wife decided their one-bedroom condo in East Vancouver wouldn’t be big enough to raise their two young boys. Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette. The Marshalls are a two-income household. Marshall, 34, is in sales. For their price range, the options for a bigger home were a two-bedroom condo in Vancouver, a townhouse in Port Coquitlam, or a house in Maple Ridge. Like many urban families, they faced choosing between a smaller home in the city or something bigger further afield. The Marshalls’ boys were two and three and growing fast when they faced the choice last year. A smaller home in Vancouver wasn’t going to do, they decided. “The minimalist idea is too much of a struggle,” said Marshall. “I wish we could handle it, but I don’t know if I could.” Car-oriented, distant suburbia wasn’t appealing either, even if it offered the chance for a bigger home. Then Queensborough came into the picture. The neighbourhood is officially part of New Westminster, but it’s on the south side of the Fraser River. This secluded spot on the eastern tip of Lulu Island, mostly taken up by Richmond, gives Queensborough a quieter charm. “I didn’t even know this was here,” said Marshall. Queensborough was a residential suburb for many decades, but about a decade ago a swathe of industrial land by the water was rezoned for new housing of all types: single-family houses, rowhouses, mid-rises, and a coming high-rise. There’s more brick, wood and colour here, unlike many glassy developments in Vancouver. There are porches, pitched roofs, and picket fences (though they’re not white). The area is tied together with parks, playgrounds, and leafy pedestrian pathways, with some paths along the shoreline. A rowhouse caught the couple’s eye. It had three bedrooms, two storeys, and things they wouldn’t have gotten in Vancouver for the price: a front door, a backyard, and no strata fees. So they bought it, and moved last summer. “It’s totally Pleasantville,” said Marshall. There’s a community garden, block parties, and plenty of friendly families. There is bus service, but it’s not always frequent and ends around 8 p.m. That means the Marshalls need a car to get to work and buy groceries. However, the densifying neighbourhood is still a strong pedestrian pocket amid Metro Vancouver’s low-density suburbia, and more development is on its way. Urban centres like Vancouver remain desirable, but they’re getting crowded and more expensive. The 2016 census revealed that Canadian suburbs are growing faster than their big city neighbours. Many immigrants are also choosing to settle in suburbia rather than cities. But does choosing the suburbs have to mean saying goodbye to the conveniences and lifestyle of the city? Urbanists are saying no. “Sprawl repair” and “retrofitting suburbia” have become popular terms in the past two decades. Many municipalities that have embraced suburbia in the past are taking action to transform their sprawls into healthier, more convenient and more diverse communities. ‘Leave your car keys at home’ There was great love for suburbs after the Second World War. They were viewed as family-friendly, spacious and the cleaner and safer alternative to cities. But urbanists began to criticize many of their once-desirable characteristics near the end of the 20th century. Suburbs are car-oriented, and that means highways and pedestrian unfriendly spaces. Suburbs are spacious, and that means they’re low-density, with tracts of single-family houses on large lots. Suburbs are monolithic, and residential neighbourhoods have nothing else besides homes. Infrastructure and service costs are high compared to urban cores, and suburbs have bigger carbon footprints. If suburbs have been defined by their lack of transportation and housing choices and lack of mixed-use areas, it makes sense that a smarter suburb would provide those choices and more diversity. Canadian urbanist Brent Toderian calls this transformation a “design game.” There’s a lot that already exists in the suburbs that can be tweaked to achieve those goals, he said. “The suburbs can change and get better without transforming every square foot of its built form,” said Toderian, Vancouver’s former chief planner, now a global consultant on city building. For example, neighbourhoods of single-family houses in Vancouver have added basement suites and laneway houses. Toderian calls this, respectively, “invisible” and “hidden” density, as you might not notice these changes from the street. He would like to see more “gentle” density: housing like multiplexes, townhouses and low-rises. At the very least, “you need to make the suburbs walkable,” said Toderian. “At minimum, you need sidewalks and street trees.” Toderian also recommends mixed-use suburban centres that have higher density and are pedestrian, bike and transit-friendly. This evolution doesn’t mean doing away with cars; it means offering more choices so driving isn’t your only option if you need to get to work or grab a carton of milk. These ideas were part of the new official community plan Toderian worked on for Abbotsford. The Fraser Valley municipality is aiming to shed its sprawling roots; the plan is called “Abbotsforward.” “We’re not going to increase the urban footprint,” said Mayor Henry Braun. “We’ve made a very conscious decision that we’re going to develop up.” This is especially important for Abbotsford, which has a lot of agricultural land that needs to be protected. It’s easier to make older areas, like traditional main streets, more urban. But car-oriented communities like Abbotsford are much harder. Abbotsford’s South Fraser Way is being pegged as a new centre for the city. It’s now a road flanked by flat seas of parking and strip malls that announce their offerings loudly with large signboards. Braun hopes owners of large lots will consider breaking up their land. The vision is to turn South Fraser Way into a “transit spine” for Abbotsford, with mixed-use projects, commercial space and mid-density housing along a road lined with boulevards and public spaces. There’s hope that this will attract both young people who had been seeking some of the amenities and experiences of downtown and older residents in Abbotsford’s residential neighbourhoods. “Some people in their 60s and 70s are saying they don’t need two or three cars anymore,” said Braun. “They want to buy a home downtown so they can walk.” An ad for condo townhouses in the South Fraser Way area by developer Onni reads: “Leave your car keys at home.” Suburban burden While there are criticisms of the suburbs, many residents still love them. “But they have to recognize the true cost of their choice,” said Toderian. “The truth is, their choice is not a neutral choice. It’s a highly subsidized choice.” After you look at the math, it’s hard to “un-know” the facts, he said. For example, an Ottawa think tank calculated in 2013 that Canadian suburbanites drive three times as much as urban dwellers, but only pay half the roughly $29 billion that Canadians spend on roads each year through fuel taxes, vehicle permits and other fees. (The rest comes out of general tax revenues.) The true cost of the suburbs, shown in data like this, is often hidden. Yes, land might be cheaper away from urban cores for the purchaser, but suburbs are expensive to service. The development of new neighbourhoods in sprawling Calgary cost all taxpayers $4,800 per new house, which amounted to about $33 million a year, according to Mayor Naheed Nenshi in 2012. Within those infrastructure costs were upgrades like a new off-ramp on a freeway and sewer improvements to meet the demand of new residents. Yet all Calgarians had to share the burden of this suburban expansion. Nenshi called them “sprawl subsidies.” His government has since worked to reduce them. There are other costs of suburbia: pollution, obesity, long commute times from congestions, and losses and injuries from collisions. “It’s a tough conversation to have, and it makes supporters of suburbs pretty defensive,” said Toderian. “But you have to have it if you want to be honest about the nature of our choices.” If suburbs don’t evolve, those costs are only going to get higher. According to the 2016 census, population growth in Metro Vancouver’s suburbs outpaced its main, pricier city. The Township of Langley was the fastest growing suburb since 2011, with a population increase of 12.6 per cent. Surrey gained the most new residents in the region at more than 49,600, a 10.6 per cent increase since 2011. Vancouver, in comparison, added about 27,900 residents, a 4.6 per cent growth. Toderian says that often the greatest roadblock to an evolving suburb is political rather than physical. The Key to a Family-Friendly City? Family-Sized Housing read more “The conversation needs to be about true costs and consequences, as well as opportunities to do density well with great design,” he said. “Because if not, politicians could just suggest to their constituency that they’re protecting their city from density and change. That’s a dangerous, false narrative. “There are many cities in North America that use the term ‘stable neighbourhood’ in their planning. It suggests you can protect a neighbourhood from change. You can’t. It either changes positively or negatively. “And when you speak with neighbourhoods and ask them what they want, you find out they want all sorts of change, or they’re worried about change. Maybe their neighbourhood is depopulating. Or their local school or shopping centre is under threat of closure. Or they want to downsize as an aging couple but there’s no smaller housing choice within their neighbourhood to choose from. “The best way to truly stabilize a neighbourhood is help it change for the better.”Right-wing Christian apologist Alex McFarland was on Dove TV’s “Focus Today” program yesterday to discuss the terrorist shooting in San Bernardino, California, earlier this week, which he blamed on abortion and gay marriage. “People are saying, ‘Why didn’t God prevent this?'” McFarland stated, “Look, we’ve for 45 years told God to leave us alone. Fifty-seven to sixty million babies aborted, now our Supreme Court has deviated from natural law to case law and we’ve redefined marriage … God forgive us for the murder of the unborn, God forgive us for kicking prayer out of public schools, God forgive us for making sodomy mainstream and redefining marriage.” “The greatest sin of all is abortion in our nation,” he continued, “and the judgment of God only escalate until we turn to the Lord.” Later, McFarland declared that President Obama supposedly refuses to fight radical Islam because he is secretly a Muslim. “In my heart, I’m going to be honest with you, I suspect he is a Muslim,” McFarland said. “I really do.”Over the last several months, Glenn Beck has veered back and forth between despondant cries that America is utterly doomed and joyous proclamations that the future is brighter than it has ever been. While one week he is screaming that America has gone insane and been engulfed by darkness, the next he is declaring that he and his audience were chosen by God to save the nation … and that is where he is now, as he asserted on his television broadcast last night that even though our entire society is on the verge of complete collapse, Beck remains optimistic because his audience of Tea Party activists are just the sort of people the Founding Fathers envisioned would one day finally create the perfect America. “I tell you now,” Beck said, “we are the people that our Founders saw, the wise and the honest. They knew it would fall apart, they knew the system would have to be re-booted and in 1822, [Thomas] Jefferson and [John] Adams are going back and forth and they said ‘yeah, but trust the people, trust the people, they’ll see what we were doing and they’ll do it better'”:Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Monday that he's concerned about the verbal exchanges between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, saying it would be "far better to lower the volume of rhetoric" and instead focus on longer term strategies in the region. Speaking in Washington at the Hudson Institute's conference on Countering Violent Extremism, Panetta said the rhetoric that Mr. Trump has directed at Kim only "increases the tensions level in Korea." "The tension has risen a great deal, and with that tension is the concern about a miscalculation or mistake that will ultimately escalate into a greater conflict," said Panetta. He suggested that the administration should now focus on "developing our strength and capacity in the region," which he said would include "better containment, greater deterrence and trying to deal with sanctions that can really have an impact on North Korea and its economy." Panetta said pressuring China to influence the North Koreans and get them to negotiate has "not proven very effective," but urged pushing for tougher sanctions on the regime. "I do think that if China is willing to restrict oil shipments and deal with some of the other commerical areas they deal with in North Korea, it can have an impact on the North Korean's economy," said Panetta. He also suggested an increase of military presence in the region and an ongoing support and development of security in South Korea and Japan, including developing a missile shield that can bring down any ICBMs launched toward the U.S. and its allies. While Panetta said it was a "dangerous world" that we currently live in, it's also one that "demands very strong U.S. leadership" to counter the "huge number of flash points" globally. With regard to Iran, Panetta would not say exactly where he stood on Mr. Trump's decision to de-certify the Iranian nuclear agreement, only saying "we ought to continue to enforce the agreement." But Panetta did say he was concerned about Mr. Trump punting the plan to Congress. "I'm a little concerned about that because Congress is having a hard time sometimes finding its way to the bathroom...I think [it is] far better for the administration, for the president to deal with these issues," said Panetta. He added, "I think now Congress should hopefully a develop a way to increase the enforcement of that agreement [with Iran] and tie sanctions to the enforcement of it." "If you fail to stick to your word, it sends a clear message to others that as a result of that, you can not trust America as a partner," Panetta said of the agreement. When asked to give an overall assessment of the Trump administration and Washington, D.C., Panetta said that he's never seen Washington in such dysfunction as it is today. "Both parties are in the trenches and don't want to come out and work together, and when they do they run in to barriers of one kind or another. This country will only survive if our democracy is able to find consensus and compromise…that's the essence of how our democracy works, and it operates by leadership or by crisis – if leadership is there and willing to take the risk…then we can avoid crisis…if not we will govern by crisis, and that's largely what we do today, so ultimately leadership has to step up," Mr. Panetta said. In the end he believes that change is going to come from the bottom up with a newly elected generation of leaders who actually want to govern and not just fight one another. CBS News' Katie Ross Dominick contributed to this report.Journalism has had a strange swing in regards to voice, style, and source in the last few years. Much of free lance journalism is done over the internet now, with large portions of contributors not necessarily being required any further evidence of an ability to write than maybe a BA in English or a limited portfolio. The seemingly rampant influx of writers who barely fact check, source, disclaim, or otherwise act professionally
rooms and restaurant all overlooking the Caribbean Sea. But, we did not really know what to expect from the diving, so today we were diving into the unknown. This week we are diving with Barbados Blue, run by local dive instructor and marine biologist Andre Miller, a PADI Ambassadiver. He and his team are looking after us really well, supplying a dedicated model to our group, as well as two other staff members and Andre himself captaining the boat. Our first day was to be one of the most famous dive sites in Barbados: Carlisle Bay. Carlisle Bay is hugely popular with both divers and snorkelers and as soon as you get into the water here you can see why. The dive site is made up of 6 wrecks, linked together in a large circle by cannons, anchors, pylons and other debris to guide you around. The wrecks themselves range from first world war casualties, to newly sunk wrecks, and this huge artificial reef system is attracting a significant amount of marine life. The deepest wrecks lie in around 20m of water and the shallowest come within 5m of the surface. It is a veritable playground for anyone that likes to spend time in the water. And with the water reaching 28°C, and vis ranging from 10-30m, who wouldn’t want to? The site is worth diving several times, and we hope to go back again, there is just so much to cover for both the wide angle and macro photographer. Our first day saw us dive all 6 wrecks, and see reef squid, turtles, seahorses, schooling fish and much, much more. It exceeded our expectations and we cannot wait to dive the signature wreck of Barbados, the Stavronikita, tomorrow… www.barbadosblue.com http://www.bougainvillearesort.com www.visitbarbados.org For more from Nick and Caroline, visit www.frogfishphotography.com.Borjas Concludes that Male Illegal Aliens Come Here to Work By David Henderson Borjas reports the good news on illegal aliens. Harvard economist George Borjas, who is fairly critical of immigration, wrote yesterday that he has concluded that most male illegal aliens come to the United States to work. He reports on the results of a study he did in which he teased out data from the Pew Research Center and the Current Population Survey. He writes: This paper provides a comprehensive empirical study of the labor supply behavior of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Using newly developed methods that attempt to identify undocumented status for foreign-born persons sampled in the Current Population Surveys, the empirical analysis documents a number of findings, including the fact that the work propensity of undocumented men is much larger than that of other groups in the population; that this gap has grown over the past two decades; and that the labor supply elasticity of undocumented men is very close to zero, suggesting that their labor supply is almost perfectly inelastic. Take a look at his graphs in the link. Specifically, of men aged 20 to 65: . 74% of native Americans (people native to America) were employed. . 81% of legal immigrants were employed. . 85% of illegal aliens were employed. His paper is here. By the way, George wrote the piece on immigration for The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.The controversial catch and kill policy was introduced as a trial this year around popular west coast beaches following a spate of fatal attacks. More than 170 sharks, mostly tiger sharks, were caught during the 13-week summer season, with 50 of the biggest ones destroyed. The state government has applied to national authorities to extend the policy, putting 72 baited hooks attached to floating drums one kilometre (around half a mile) off the busiest beaches between November and April until 2017. The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) is assessing the proposal, which has angered conservationists who say it flies in the face of international obligations to protect the great white shark. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said it had obtained a submission to the EPA from more than 250 of the world's leading marine biologists and researchers who said there was little science to back the policy. They included US marine biologist Elliott Norse, who worked for several presidents and was a key force behind the scenes in President Barack Obama's recent push to preserve vast parts of the Pacific Ocean, ABC said. "I think killing apex predatory sharks like tiger sharks is a terrible idea," he said. "Apex predators (animals at the top of the food chain) are really important in ecosystems and when we kill them what we often find is really bad things happen." Tiger sharks were not thought to be responsible for the six fatal attacks off Australia in the last two years, with great whites blamed. No great whites were caught in the trial. Another scientist, Jessica Meeuwig, said Hawaii was an example of drum lines having no effect on safety. "In Hawaii they spent 16 years killing tiger sharks through a hook and line programme very similar to what we're doing," she reportedly said in the submission that she coordinated. "And it had no impact on the number of incidents with sharks." The state government has said its policy -- which is based on the use of drum lines in Queensland, where there has been only one fatal attack at a beach using the baited hooks or nets since 1961 -- had restored confidence among beachgoers. However, the ABC said Western Australia Fisheries Minister Ken Baston was unable to point to any studies about the efficacy of drum lines. Submissions to the EPA are due to close on Monday.I’ll be honest, I’m in denial. School starts in a few weeks, and I don’t even want to think about it. This year marks a big transition for us. In June, Michael “graduated” from elementary school, and then a couple weeks later, he turned 13. In just a few weeks, he starts a new school, High School. Grade 7 was a tough year–academically, it was his most challenging year, and on top of that, there was a lot of pressure as he applied to get into a special program at his high school. After all that was over (and he was in), it was like we could breathe a sigh of relief, and we’ve been taking a bit of a breather from the pressures of school ever since. But soon enough, he’ll be starting his new school, and I’ll be back teaching again, as well, after taking the summer off. There’s a lot to think about, worry about, process through. So it’s important that we are well-fed during this time, and that we’re not fussing about food. We want to keep it simple and nourishing. I’ve teamed up with Save-On Foods to bring you a series of posts, both about how we are surviving this big transition, and also about some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned for coping along the way. One of the awesome things Save-On does that will make your life infinitely easier is grocery pick-up. You just go online, clickety-click, order what you need for the week, and then you just pick it up on your way home from work. For those of you who shop with kids, you will especially appreciate this. Not just the time savings, but you know if you take your kid with you to the grocery store, you are going to come home with things that were not on your list. That always happens. This way, it forces you to stick to just the things you need, making it slightly less realistic that you’ll find yourself binging on pizza-flavoured goldfish after they’ve gone to bed (speaking for a friend, pretty sure I’ve never done that ;-)) This first post is a recipe for breakfast cookies. I love these breakfast cookies. First of all, I enthusiastically support the eating of cookies. No matter what time of the day. So… cookies for breakfast?? Sign me up! Beyond that, though, they are actually pretty healthy. If you think about what goes into a bowl of oatmeal, you’ll find all of those ingredients here: whole grains, oats, and fruit. These cookies can be a choose your own adventure story. Feel free to sub out the cranberries, dates and apricots for dried fruits of your choosing. What do your kids like? Cherries? They would be amazing. Apples? Perfect (maybe add a little cinnamon, too). If your kids are not allergic, you could also add some nuts (walnuts, almonds or pecans) for some additional protein. For more recipes featuring aquafaba, check out my new cookbook: Aquafabulous!: 100+ Egg-Free Vegan Recipes Using Aquafaba (Bean Water). One of the things I love about my local Save-On is that they have a wicked bulk section. Sometimes finding these dried fruits is a challenge at the regular grocery store. And when you do find them, they can be stale from sitting on the shelf, or you may be forced to buy a big package of them, and not know what to do with the leftovers, when you just use say, a quarter of a cup. This entire recipe is basically sourced from the bulk section. The bulk section solves all of this. You just buy as much as you need, and, you can order bulk foods through the online service. And the variety of dried fruits at Save-On is pretty dizzying. In fact, I’d encourage you to experiment with different kinds, and then report back to me which combinations you liked the best. These cookies are a great, portable breakfast (too busy to eat breakfast? These are great for the car, or if you’re walking), or as a snack for recess or after school. Vegan Breakfast Cookies Ingredients ½ cup vegan butter ¼ cup aquafaba (the water drained from a can of chickpeas) ¼ cup applesauce ¼ cup maple syrup ½ cup brown sugar 2 tsp vanilla 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt ¼ cup ground flax ½ cup whole wheat flour 1 cup white flour 1 ½ cups large flake or steel-cut oats ¼ cup dried cranberries 6 dried apricots, chopped 6 pitted dates, chopped Method In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, place the butter, AF, maple syrup, brown sugar, applesauce, and vanilla. Mix well. Next, add in all the dry ingredients. Finally, add the dried fruit and mix well. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto cookie sheets and bake for 12 minutes. Remove from the cookie sheet and allow to cool on wire racks. These also freeze well, so feel free to freeze them in ziploc bags in the freezer, and just pull out as many as you need for the day. Makes about 2 dozen. This post is sponsored by Save-On Foods, but the recipe and opinions are my own. Save Save Save Did you enjoy this recipe? Subscribe today and never miss another recipe! We will never share or sell your email address. I agree to have my personal information transfered to MailChimp ( I agree to have my personal information transfered to MailChimp ( more information If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed (Visited 859 time, 1 visit today) Share this: Facebook Pinterest Twitter Email Google Tumblr Print RedditTeen Killed While Attempting To Rob Shopper for Legend Blue 11s Since word of a shooting at the Dayton Mall hit twitter, on Saturday, we have been following the story gathering details about the incident, but have waited for a formal release of information from the Police. Out of the respect for the family of the teen who was shot, we withheld running the story until the family was notified and that the Police released the information to the public. Out of respect for the teen killed and his family, we will not run any of the photos we received from the incident either. Police in Miami Township, in Montgomery County Ohio, said Jawaad Jabbar known by friends as “JJ”, age 16, was at the Dayton Mall Saturday with other teens attempting to get a pair of the Air Jordan 11 “Legend Blue” that went on sale Saturday morning. When Jabbar failed to get in line in time to get a pair of shoes, police said, he decided to rob someone who had the shoes. He approached two men just outside the mall and showed a gun according to eye witness accounts, police said. Sgt. Jay Phares said that one of the men Jabbar tried to rob also had a handgun, which he pulled out and fired one time. Jabbar was hit by the bullet and was pronounced dead a short time later. The other two teens fled the scene but were later apprehended by the police and are being held in juvenile detention in Dayton. Phares said it’s too soon to say what charges could be brought. Police have been in contact with and interviewed the victim of the attempted robbery who is a legal CCW license holder. No charges have been filed against him and his identity has not been revealed. The eye witnesses of the crime have also had their identity kept anonymous from public reports. This is unfortunate news to hear that a shoe would be so highly sought after that one would consider an act of crime like this to obtain a pair of shoes. As we have said before, keep calm, stay safe, they’re just shoes. RELATED STORIES: – Man donates his “Legend Blue” Air Jordan 11s to kid after waiting for 12 hours in line – Please Stay Safe – They’re Just Shoes – Highschooler Gives Lesser Fortunate Classmate Air Jordan 11s Air Jordan 11 “Legend Blue”CLOSE USA TODAY Sports' Sam Amick breaks down how the Warriors seem primed for revenge in this year's NBA Finals against the Cavaliers. USA TODAY Sports Kevin Durant looks on from the court in the first half of a game against the Indiana Pacers. (Photo11: Trevor Ruszkowski, USAT) OAKLAND – The noise that surrounds Kevin Durant is growing louder by the minute. But this isn’t the latest hot take about how the Golden State Warriors star is allegedly arrogant. Nor is this the chorus of nationwide boos relating to the lack of competition in the NBA playoffs, with Durant and his decision to leave Oklahoma City last summer being blamed by so many for this supposedly boring basketball. This is the sweet sound of joyful children, more than 200 of them spanned across Lincoln Square Park in downtown Oakland where Durant is unveiling four newly refurbished basketball courts on a recent off day. He towers over the youngsters who can’t stop looking at him, all of them giddy as Durant walks his 6-11 frame from hoop to hoop and takes a few casual shots. The iconic Oakland Tribune tower is in the background. Warriors legend Al Attles, the namesake of these very courts, is here too. A local columnist who grew up on these streets, Marcus Thompson of the Bay Area News Group, received a personal request from Durant to host this event and give it a familiar feel. Durant may have come up in the tough neighborhood of Seat Pleasant, Md. that’s almost 3,000 miles away, but it feels like he’s one of them. Kevin Durant unveiling four newly refurbished basketball courts in Oakland. (Photo11: Sam Amick, USA TODAY Sports) If you didn’t know the back story, about all the millions of fans and even some media members who were so enraged when he decided to head this way to play hoops, it’d be hard to imagine anyone being mad at this man. And if you think Durant is going to try to control this narrative that has him pegged as a ring-chasing wrecker of all that is good in the NBA, you’re sorely mistaken. Ask anyone who truly knows Durant, and you hear the same message: The man is in as good a mental place as ever right now. And truth be told, he worries less about what you think with every passing day. “I'm just at peace with myself; I'm at peace with myself as a basketball player, most importantly,” Durant told USA TODAY Sports recently. “I think this move, and the criticism that comes with this move, has made me zero in on what's the most important thing, and that's just playing basketball, working out every day, getting better, enjoying every single day as a basketball player. It made me really appreciate that. It made me go back to that. When you listen to the nonsense, then you start to really let it take control of your thoughts, that’s (not good), you know what I'm saying? So I just got back to the game.” The game had to save him, though. Just 10 months ago, Durant was paralyzed by the very noise he now ignores. Durant broke his own news, detailing why he was bound for The Bay in the Players' Tribune article that kickstarted the chaos. But for two days after his decision, he stayed inside a Hamptons mansion where free-agency meetings had taken place and shuddered at the thought of the scrutiny he would face. He would laugh weeks later about how he assumed the worst, how he wondered aloud among friends and family if he’d be treated like a modern-day O.J. Simpson or worse, as he said in mid-July, if someone would “just hit me with their car” if he walked outside. But once October hit, when the balls started bouncing and he learned little by little that new teammates like Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and all the rest were as genuine as advertised, the noise started to fade. Durant and Stephen Curry laugh during media day at the Warriors Practice Facility. (Photo11: Kyle Terada, USA TODAY Sports) “I had to get used to the attention,” said Durant, who averaged 25.2 points, 7.8 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 1.2 blocks per game as the Warriors became the first team in league history to enter the Finals 12-0 in the playoffs. “I wasn't used to this much attention, no matter if it was good or bad. I had to get used to that. And once I got used to it, it's like, 'Alright, let's roll with it. It's part of the journey.' Let's just go and play the game. That's the only thing that matters.” It certainly helps that Durant, who used to routinely respond to fan criticism on Twitter, has taken the minimalist approach to social media. He deleted his Instagram page and checks his Twitter mentions no more than once a month. YouTube has become his favorite platform. Durant has his own channel that offers a look at his life on the court and even inside his home. Like so many elite athletes today, he loves having creative control. But as Durant learned the hard way early on, he has no jurisdiction inside the road arenas where the noise and negativity knows no bounds. It was one thing to face fiery fans in Oklahoma City, where the Thunder faithful were clearly crushed by his departure and let their voices be heard in his two regular season returns. But an Oct. 14 preseason game in Denver? Durant couldn’t comprehend why so many non-Thunder fans acted as if he’d kicked their family dog. “A kid was behind the bench, and he was like, 'You sold everybody out! You're a coward! You're a p----, a b----!’” Durant said. “I was just like, 'Why are you this upset?' That's what I was thinking, and that's why I was talking back, I was like, 'Why are you so mad again? What's so important about this that you want to call me all these disrespectful names?' That (expletive) doesn't fly where I'm from, where any one of us are from. If he walked up onto you, and said that to you, you would confront him. I'm like, 'Where is this coming from?' “And then after a while, I just — it just became so normal, that it was just, 'What am I even worried about?' Because I know it's not real. ‘Why am I even responding to this?’” Little by little, his teammates noticed the change. Durant arrives before Game 4 of the Western Conference finals. (Photo11: Soobum Im, USA TODAY Sports) “A couple times early on in the year, he’d be jumping back at people in the crowd, folks right behind the bench,” Warriors forward David West said. “And then he just blocked it out, started focusing on the game, stopped letting it affect him. I mean it was bad on the road early on. I think once he just got past it, got focused on what we were doing, he just got comfortable.” Just like he was back in Seat Pleasant, or in his one season at the University of Texas, and Seattle and Oklahoma City. “At the core, he’s the same guy,” said Warriors assistant coach Ron Adams, who has been close with Durant since they spent two seasons together in Oklahoma City. “He’s got a lot more going on in his life. He’s had so much success, and the MVP award and all that sort of thing, so he’s busier. “(But) he’s just really a good human being, and I like how he loves the game. I like how he respects the game. I like how he respects the people who played the game in the past, and I like how he respects other players in the league. From a coaching standpoint, that’s so good to see. He’s very respectful of the game, and it helps make him who he is.” The noise gets tougher to navigate in the playoffs, though, so Durant finds himself fighting that urge again after a recent shoot-around in San Antonio. Already on this morning, he has heard about the criticism about his news conference the night before. After the Warriors’ Game 3 win in the Western Conference finals, Durant spent a nuance-filled minute answering a question about all the blowouts in this postseason. He offered an opinion from the player’s perspective, expressing an understanding of why fans prefer tight games and capping his candid comments by saying in a matter-of-fact tone, “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it.” Cue the simplistic headlines. Start the silly debates. Durant will clarify his comments the following day, and even apologize to fans who were offended. But what he won’t do, as he makes clear, is allow anyone to try and peg him as the poster boy for the NBA’s parity problem. Kevin Durant on the amount of blowouts this postseason: "If you don't like it, don't watch it." pic.twitter.com/WaqGEt93k5 — Kenny Ducey (@KennyDucey) May 21, 2017 “Like I'm the reason why (expletive) Orlando couldn't make the playoffs for five, six years in a row?” he said. “Am I the reason that Brooklyn gave all their picks to Boston? Like, am I the reason that they're not that good (laughs)? I can't play for every team, so the truth of the matter is I left one team. It's one more team that you probably would've thought would've been a contender. One more team. I couldn't have made the (entire) East better. I couldn't have made everybody (else) in the West better.” He stops himself. The noise is winning again. Peace, he remembers, must remain the priority. “I think it's just something every 28-year-old goes through in different forms with their life,” Durant explains. “I'm a basketball player, but somebody else might be working in business or might be fresh out of grad school. At different parts of your life, I just feel like there's a natural progression where you just feel at peace with yourself. "Certain stuff that used to bother you really doesn't bother you anymore. It's easier for me to kind of speak my mind, speak what I'm thinking because I now realize that I'm in control of my own destiny.” Follow USA TODAY Sports' Sam Amick on Twitter @Sam_Amick PHOTOS: Kevin Durant through the yearsUPDATE: 12/19/2015, 8:15 p.m. Jacksonville Police say they have arrested a suspect in the Friday night shooting at McDonald's. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Two teenagers are recovering from gunshot wounds at UAB Hospital after being shot Friday around 8:40 p.m. outside the McDonald's on Pelham Road in Jacksonville. Jacksonville Police Assistant Chief Bill Wineman tells ABC 33/40 that the victims were transported to Jacksonville RMC Hospital, where they were stabilized before being flown to UAB by Life Flight Helicopter. The conditions of the victims have not yet been released. Wineman identified the two victims as 18-year-old Abdul R. Khalilllah of Anniston and 19-year-old Ronnie M. Royal of Alexandria. Authorities are currently searching for a 16-year-old male whose identity is being withheld due to his age. According to Jacksonville police, the victims and the suspect were involved in an altercation at a basketball game and then left the area. A short time later, the parties involved showed up at the McDonald's Restaurant, words were exchanged and then a fight broke out. Police believe the 16-year-old, who's said to be around 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds, pulled out a handgun and began firing at the victims. The suspect and his friends fled the restaurant southbound on foot and then got into one of four vehicles leaving the scene. Jacksonville police say they will obtain two attempted murder warrants against the suspect. We're working for you to provide all of the information as it becomes available.Welcome to the world of post-Citizens United elections, where the results of elections can be seemingly bought and sold by corporate interests and the wealthiest Americans. Republican super PACs and other outside groups shaped by a loose network of prominent conservatives – including Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November’s elections for the White House and control of Congress, according to officials familiar with the groups’ internal operations. That total includes previously undisclosed plans for newly aggressive spending by the Koch brothers, who are steering funding to build sophisticated, county-by-county operations in key states. POLITICO has learned that Koch-related organizations plan to spend about $400 million ahead of the 2012 elections – twice what they had been expected to commit. It’s important to point out the $1 billion in outside money that is likely to be spent by Republican super PACs and other Republican-allied outside groups is in addition to the money spent by the traditional party apparatus – in this case the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee. The money spent by the Romney campaign and the RNC could be somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million, meaning that the amount of money spent to help Mitt Romney win the 2012 presidential election could total nearly $2 billion. That’s a heck of a lot of money to spend to win an election, and it doesn’t bode well for those of us who aren’t large corporations or the super-rich.Introduction VisionTek isn't the first name that will pop into your head when you think of video cards, but they have been around for what feels like forever now. The company is based in the United States with US-based technical support, something you don't see very often these days. The company makes RAM, VGA cards, SSDs, cables and accessories as well as upgrades for Macs and so much more. When it comes to VGA cards, VisionTek has products ranging from the lower-end Radeon R5 340 for $59.99, right up to the insane CryoVenom R9 295X2, which has some insane cooling system keeping it cool. There are plenty of products in between, with some Radeon R9 290X cards that feature a similar styled cooler to what we have here today with the R9 270X 2GB. Because I've only been the VGA Editor for a few months now here at TweakTown, this is the first product we've had from VisionTek. We hope to tighten that relationship as we shift closer to the Radeon 300 series that will launch in the coming months. Quick Specs VisionTek has a little bit of an increase on the Core and Boost Clocks on the Radeon R9 270X, with the reference GPU from AMD featuring a 1000MHz Core Clock and 1050MHz on Boost. VisionTek boosts things up a little, offering 1030MHz on the Core (up 30MHz) and 1080MHz on Boost (again, up 30MHz). Not too much, but every little bit counts, right? Availability & Price VisionTek sell their products on their own website, but you can always grab it from Amazon. At the time of writing, VisionTek lists it as $198.99 on their own website, while you can grab it from Amazon for $196.99. Not too bad, but let's see if it can justify its price when we get to the performance, especially when it's up against the GeForce GTX 960 from NVIDIA at $199. Shopping Information PRICING: You can find products similar to this one for sale below. United States: Find other tech and computer products like this over at Amazon's website. United Kingdom: Find other tech and computer products like this over at Amazon UK's website. Canada: Find other tech and computer products like this over at Amazon Canada's website. Right of Reply We at TweakTown openly invite the companies who provide us with review samples / who are mentioned or discussed to express their opinion of our content. If any company representative wishes to respond, we will publish the response here. Related Tags Got an opinion on this content? Post a comment below!Former U.S. Envoy: Snowden ‘Manna From Heaven for the Russians’ ASPEN, Colo. — The former U.S. ambassador to Russia says Edward Snowden’s continuing political asylum in Moscow has been an intelligence and public relations boon to President Vladimir Putin. Michael McFaul, who left Moscow in February, told a large crowd at the Aspen Ideas Festival here that Snowden "knows things that are useful to Russian intelligence" about the inner workings of U.S. eavesdropping and surveillance. While the former diplomat said that he had no particular information that Snowden, an ex-contractor for the National Security Agency, was sharing classified information with his Russian hosts, McFaul said the Russians were probably doing everything they could to glean secrets from Snowden. If a Russian intelligence operative with Snowden’s level of knowledge had showed up in the United States, he too would have been granted immediate asylum, McFaul said. "This was just manna from heaven for the Russians," McFaul said. Snowden has consistently denied suggestions from U.S. officials that he has given Russia classified information — either from a computer or based on what’s in his head — in exchange for asylum there. Nevertheless, McFaul said, even if Snowden isn’t sharing secrets, he handed Putin a political and PR victory by remaining in Russia. Putin embraced Snowden as a fellow spy in a television broadcast in April. And, McFaul said, Snowden has said little about Russia’s own aggressive surveillance operations, which he said include recording the phone calls of American diplomats and then posting them on the Internet. "From the Russian perspective, this has been great," McFaul told the conference. McFaul recalled a series of high-level meetings in 2013 following Snowden’s disclosures, when Obama administration officials huddled about how to contain the fallout from his revelations. McFaul took part in conversations via video teleconference, often late into the night Moscow time. "On a personal level, that guy really ruined my summer last year," McFaul joked about Snowden. But, he allowed, "The debate he raised is an important one" about the limits of U.S. intelligence gathering and personal privacy. McFaul didn’t predict how much longer Snowden might stay in Russia, but he said that the American fugitive "has options to come home" to the United States. In an interview with NBC News anchor Brian Williams in May, Snowden said that he would like to return and appeared open to the possibility of a deal with federal prosecutors that would allow him to avoid a long prison sentence. McFaul, who’s now a consultant for NBC News, said he helped Williams prepare for the Snowden interview. Turning to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, where a cease-fire ended on Wednesday with an eruption of violent clashes between the central government and Russian separatists, McFaul said that Putin could end the hostilities at any moment he chooses. If the Russian strongman were to appear on national television and tell separatist fighters battling Ukraine’s fragile central government to lay down their arms, the conflict "would be over in a heartbeat," McFaul said. McFaul dismissed suggestions that Putin wanted to effectively rebuild the former Soviet Union by taking over more territory. Instead, the diplomat said that Putin’s decision to conquer and annex Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula was driven by his fury over the collapse of the Ukrainian government and the ouster of then-President Viktor Yanukovych, a close Putin ally. In early 2013, McFaul said, Obama administration officials had been working hard to broker a peaceful settlement between Yanukovych and his political opponents. But when those talks ultimately failed and Yanukovych fled the capital, Putin concluded that the Americans had "duped him" and had helped install a new government that was hostile to Moscow. "That’s when [Putin] said, ‘To hell with them. I’m done worrying about what [the Americans and the Europeans] think of me,’" McFaul said. "And that’s when he decided to go into Crimea."President Barack Obama addresses the 2013 Planned Parenthood National Conference in Washington, Friday, April 26, 2013. (AP File Photo) (CNSNews.com) – Planned Parenthood is getting an extra infusion of taxpayer money this year, as some of its affiliated clinics are tapped to serve as "Navigators" for Obamacare.The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday that it is giving grants totaling $655,192 to Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa, Arkansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Montana and New Hampshire.Those clinics are among the 105 organizations that applied for "Navigator" grants to help people sign up for health insurance. HHS is spending a total of $67 million overall on the sign-up effort. According to HHS, "Navigators are trained to provide unbiased information in a culturally competent manner to consumers about health insurance, the new Health Insurance Marketplaces, qualified health plans, and public programs including Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program."Planned Parenthood of the Heartland in Iowa, which operates clinics in Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma, will receive $214,427. Intermountain Planned Parenthood or Planned Parenthood of Montana is getting $295,604. And Planned Parenthood of Northern New England will receive $145,161 to provide navigators to “assist patients and other consumers” in five counties in New Hampshire.All of those clinics provide abortions, according to their websites.Speaking at a Planned Parenthood conference in April, President Obama thanked the group for supporting the Affordable Care Act:"Now, I know how hard you worked to help us pass health care reform. You and your supporters got out there -- you organized; you mobilized; you made your voices heard. It made all the difference. But here’s the thing -- if Americans don’t know how to access the new benefits and protections that they’re going to receive as we implement this law, then health care reform won’t make much of a difference in their lives."So I’m here to also ask for your help, because we need to get the word out. We need you to tell your patients, your friends, your neighbors, your family members what the health care law means for them. Make sure they know that if they don’t have health insurance, they’ll be able to sign up for quality, affordable insurance starting this fall in an online marketplace where private insurers will compete for their business. Make sure that they know that there are plans out there right now that cover the cost of contraceptive and preventive care free of charge."As CNSNews.com previously reported, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's annual report for 2011-2012 says that its affiliated clinics performed 333,964 abortions in fiscal 2011, which works out to an average of one abortion every 94 seconds.Over two years, Planned Parenthood says, it has aborted 663,409 babies.The 2011-2012 report states that Planned Parenthood received $542.4 million in “government health services grants and reimbursements,” including “payments from Medicaid managed care plans.”Hmmmmm. I guess getting started on subscriptions was a good move! Coming up bloggers, musicians, and anyone else using a “like to download” set up appication on their facebook page or a similar app on their website will need to figure out a new method. According to facebook’s developers blog post they will be shutting that system down. Here are the wonderful highlights: “Developers should update their apps to comply with these policy changes by November 5, 2014 (90 days from today).” “You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.” So, if you are trying to come up by giving away things, that you have spent tons of hours on, in order to get the facebook fan base (and then reach 10% of said base, if you’re lucky)… you’re gonna have a bad time. I can predict blogs will move on to getting subscriptions instead of likes. This has seemed like the best move even before this announcement. The 10% reach was enough for me to make the call to start pushing email based subscriptions. Facebook just went on a verification rampage. I wonder if the two things were meant to coincide. :/ [source: developers.facebook]Nintendo designer and producer Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed to Rolling Stone that Pikmin 3 players will have the ability to control three different captains, each of which leads a group of Pikmin. During gameplay, players can switch between captains, which allows for a more strategic approach, according to Miyamoto. Pikmin 3 is scheduled to release this spring, exclusively for Wii U. “With Pikmin 3, you’ll have the ability to have three different captains or leaders of Pikmin groups and you can switch between them. So it sort of allows you to approach the game from a much more strategic position. The volume of work that you can get done within the timeframe has increased dramatically. And so that in and of itself really enhances the depth of strategy that’s available to you in that game.” -Shigeru MiyamotoMark Sanchez ended up going to the Jets practice facility yesterday — out
is 77, will still fly aboard the shuttle Discovery on Oct. 29. The study’s principal investigator, Dr. Charles A. Czeisler of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said in interviews over the weekend that he was surprised when he had to disqualify Mr. Glenn. ”He did not meet one of the medical criteria that was established for participation in our study,” Dr. Czeisler said. But he declined to specify the reason for the change, citing NASA’s rule forbidding disclosure of medical information without the subject’s permission. The experiments have been cited as the principal reasons Mr. Glenn is going into space for the second time. Mr. Glenn, an Ohio Democrat, won his seat on the shuttle flight by lobbying NASA for two years to fly as a human guinea pig for geriatric studies. [source] Of the experiments on Glenn, David Owen wrote, NASA hoped that these data might lead to the creation of “a model system to help scientists interested in understanding aging”—although no such model resulted from the mission, and no earthbound scientist not connected with the program ever asked NASA to produce one. (Besides, if the apparent similarities between aging and space travel really are meaningful, wouldn’t it have made more sense to conduct the experiment in reverse, by observing Earth’s plentiful supply of old people and then applying any lessons learned to the comparatively small population of shuttle passengers?…) [source] Other than the experiments on Glenn himself, STS-95 did the following: Sent cockroaches up to see how microgravity would affect their growth at various stages of their life cycle; studied a “space rose” to see what kinds of essential oils it would produce in weightless environment; at the suggestion of elementary school children, monitored everyday objects such as soap, crayons, and string to see whether their inertial mass would change in a weightless environment, contrary to 200 years of scientific findings; monitored the growth of fish eggs and rice plants in space; tested new space appliances, including a space camcorder and space freezer; and checked to see whether melatonin would make the crew sleepy [source] None of that was a joke. Those were the experiments conducted aboard STS-95. The application of all that research? Owen wrote, of the “space rose” experiment, According to [International Flavors & Fragrances Inc], exposure to microgravity during blooming led to an unspecified “shift in the scent” of the blossoms. “Essential oils” supposedly similar to those produced by the shuttle roses were later included, among roughly two dozen other ingredients, in a perfume (called Zen) made by Japan’s largest cosmetics company. The IFF press release announcing the breakthrough said: “This heavenly scent has come down to Earth in a product designed to enhance mood as well as to delight those who smell it. It also serves to remind us that reaching for the stars can result in down-to-Earth delights.” [source] None of that was a joke, either. So it was that after the Challenger accident in 1986, just 5 years after the first shuttle flight, the entire justification for the shuttle program was destroyed by the program itself. It would never fly routinely to space, there was little scientific reason to continue, and it would not support military or commercial payloads. Without paying customers, there was no possibility to achieve the promised cost-savings. By any measure, it missed the program goals by a tremendous margin. As we will see, the result of this and other factors was that even the most liberal cost estimates of the shuttle turned out to be well below the actual cost of the program. We will see that the economic promises made during shuttle development were dishonest, and that when properly counted, the space shuttle became the most expensive way of operating in space. Continue to Part II: Cost.The details of the tie-up with the US were given by the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for AYUSH, Shripad Yesso Naik in a written reply in Rajya Sabha. (PTI) India and US are collaborating for Research and Development (R&D) for the first time in the area of traditional medicine systems that will help treat various diseases. With regards to this, an India-US workshop on Traditional Medicine with a special focus on cancer was organized on in March this year. A US team comprising of experts from National Cancer Institute (NCI) took part in the two-day exhaustive workshop, that resulted in significant leads, says the Ministry of AYUSH. The details of the tie-up with the US were given by the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for AYUSH, Shripad Yesso Naik in a written reply in Rajya Sabha. This is part of the Ministry of AYUSH’s mandate to promote and propagate AYUSH systems of medicine across the globe. In order to achieve this goal, the Ministry of AYUSH has signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) for ‘Country to Country’ cooperation in the Traditional Medicines field. The idea is also to set up AYUSH Academic Chairs in foreign universities and educational institutes and establish AYUSH Information Cells in Indian missions abroad or Indian Cultural centres for the dissemination of authentic information about AYUSH systems of medicine. The Ministry aims to enter into MoUs with foreign institutes for undertaking collaborative research as well. Meanwhile, the government also plans to ensure availability of good quality herbs for making Ayurvedic medicines. For this, the National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB) has been promoting large-scale cultivation of herbs and medicinal plants in a mission mode under “Medicinal Plants” component of “Centrally Sponsored Scheme of National AYUSH Mission (NAM). The scheme for the cultivation of medicinal herbs and plants is being implemented through Mission Directors identified in different states and UTs.There’s no bigger game on Texas A&M’s 2015 schedule than the one that’s about to be played Saturday afternoon between the undefeated Aggies and top ten Alabama. It’s the contest that could seriously jump start A&M’s run to the SEC title game while it’s basically an elimination game for the Tide (just like every game for them from here on out. A&M defensive end Myles Garrett has 7.5 sacks and three forced fumbles this season for the Aggies Alabama is favored by 4.5 points and shut out the Aggies 59-0 last season in Tuscaloosa. However, despite being an underdog, the A&M team facing the Tide is much better than the one that got drilled last season and probably more akin to those that split a pair of entertaining contests with the SEC’s perennial powerhouse in 2012 and 2013. So, without further ado, here’s the five ways that the Aggies take down Alabama this upcoming Saturday. Generate explosive plays….I’ve already written an article about this but in every game that the Tide have lost since 2010 they have given up at least five explosive plays of over 13 yards. This number holds up regardless of where the game is played, the type of offense Alabama is facing, turnovers, special teams…it’s a constant. Teams that can vertically attack the weak spots of Alabama’s defense (outside the numbers in the passing game and inverted veer in the running game) are teams that usually generate enough big plays to win. That means that you have to hold the ball, protect, and take some shots down the field off of play action, even if you are not running the ball well. You might have to incur some sacks but the risk/reward is very promising. The Aggies generated five explosive plays against Alabama in 2012 despite allowing five sacks and won the game. Turnovers…most teams that lose the turnover battle lose football games. Everyone remembers that the Aggies were +3 in that category in 2012; what they forget is that they were -1 a year later when they lost. Alabama typically doesn’t turn over the ball a lot which makes it a lot harder to beat them. They run the ball, stop the run, and wear you down by playing a relatively risk free brand of ball. However, since the arrival of offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin, Alabama has started taking more risks on offense in order to try to match the spread offenses that are more prevalent in the SEC these days. In addition, their quarterback play has declined from A.J. McCarron (good game manager), Blake Sims (better game manager at home than on the road), and Jacob Coker (on pace to throw a dozen picks this season and already has two games with two picks). Coker isn’t the most mobile quarterback and his decision making hasn’t been very good. He’s also missing receivers like Amari Cooper from last season and his pass protection has been lacking at times as well. They’ve also had to play from behind against Ole Miss and Arkansas. Alabama’s turnover margin has slowly eroded over the years from +33 between 2010 and 2012 to +2 in 2013, -2 last season, and 0 this season. Is there any coincidence that they’ve lost five games in the past two and a half seasons? Probably not. Drew Kaser is averaging over 50 yards a punt this season On the other hand, Texas A&M is getting better at ball security as the season goes along. They’re now +2 for the season and +4 in the past two games. The defense has become opportunistic as they’ve improved their athleticism and length to the point that they get more people to the ball and are more likely to strip it. Defensive ends Myles Garrett and Daeshon Hall and nickel Donovan Wilson have forced eight fumbles this season. More importantly, quarterback Kyle Allen has zero turnovers in his past two games. He’s making better decisions and not taking the chances that he was earlier in the year. Running back Tra Carson hasn’t turned it over in the past two games either. A&M’s offense is going to be under a lot of pressure on Saturday but Alabama probably needs a short field this season more than they have in a while. If the Aggies don’t provide the Tide with those kinds of breaks, they’ll have to work that much harder to score points. Myles Garrett versus Cameron Robinson….the big left tackle for Alabama got beaten by Garrett in protection drills when both played in the 2015 Under Armour game. Robinson has a great pedigree but he has struggled at times this season with his hands and footwork, particularly against an inside rush. On the other hand, Garrett has emerged as a monster. He’s got length, get off, bend, and plays hard every down. Amazingly enough, despite a pre season worth of hype and ample evidence on film, people haven’t resorted to doubling him on a consistent basis (although they do chip him and use their hands quite freely with him). Many teams go entire series without lining up a running back to his side of the field to help out in pass protection. In addition, he’s improved his technique against the rush and can run down plays away from him. As a result, his numbers are staggering: 7.5 sacks, 9.5 tackles for loss, one pass broken up, and three forced fumbles. In addition, he’s got six quarterback hurries which means that even when he doesn’t get to the quarterback it makes it hard for someone to hold the ball and get it downfield on long yardage situations. That has contributed to A&M allowing opponents to convert just 30% of their third downs this season. He’s certainly capable of not just hurrying Coker into bad decisions but also stopping the run (something that A&M is vulnerable to). If Garrett rules this matchup, he can take away almost the entire side of the field, something that Alabama isn’t used to. Special teams….Alabama’s aren’t. They rank in the bottom half of the SEC in both punt and kickoff return yardage. They miss return specialist Christion Jones very badly as he either scored touchdowns himself or helped set the table for Alabama to have shorter fields offensively, both of which are essential to a team that wants to run the ball and not take risks on offense. However, the Tide’s deficiencies on special teams go across the board. They rank in the bottom half of the SEC in every special teams category save punt coverage. They don’t get downfield like they used to even though they’ve continued to recruit speed. Field goal kicker Adam Griffith is just 6 of 12 on the season and punter J.K. Scott is averaging TEN yards less a punt than A&M’s Drew Kaser. Again, for a team that wants to be conservative on offense and win close games, you have to be able to win special teams to generate the hidden yardage that can make the difference in a close game….and Alabama can’t do that these days. In contrast, much maligned kicker Taylor Bertolet has hit 9 of 11 field goals this season, is one of the better kickoff guys in the country, and has recorded 54% of his kickoffs as touchbacks this season. Punt returner Christian Kirk leads the SEC with nearly double the average per return of the second best player in that category. A&M’s recruiting has brought in the type of speed that has allowed them to cover kickoffs better than everyone else in the SEC save Vanderbilt. Between Kirk and Kaser, the Aggies are capable of flipping field position on opponents by at least an average of a first down per exchange which translates into the equivalent of multiple first downs over the course of a game. Home field advantage….Kyle Field is in the process of being restored to a place that’s one of the noisiest in college football due to an improved defense that no longer sucks the life out of home crowds rather than its recent reconstruction. The Aggies could be better against the run but the days when teams rolled up and down the field against A&M for 500 yards and seemed unstoppable appear to be over. When a home crowd stays in a game, they keep a team in a game emotionally. That’s important when the home team is under duress and needs some energy to make those crucial plays that separate the winners and losers. It’s especially important to a young team that still depends on a number of underclassmen to play key roles on offense and defense. Texas A&M’s fans have generated that type of energy this season when it needed red zone stands or to get the ball, even at neutral sites in Dallas and Houston. Although Alabama played extremely well with its season on the line at Georgia a couple of weeks ago and they did the same thing numerous last year (most notably at Arkansas and LSU), it’s the Aggies who stand to benefit more from their home field energy than Alabama does from their big game experience.Shots have been fired and three police officers have been injured during a raid on Islamic terrorist suspects in a Brussels house, which is linked to the recent deadly attacks in Paris, France which killed 130 people on November 13. The anti-terrorist raid took place in the Forest neighborhood which is close to Molenbeek, home of several people involved in the attack. Police were fired at,” said Eric Van Der Sypt, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor, adding that the search in the southern Forest district was “linked to the Paris attacks investigation”. Two suspects were on the run after the incident, according to local newspaper reports. A witness in the rue de Dries told RTLInfo: “There is incessant gunfire and its still going. My husband is holed up in the kitchen. You never know. We are scared of stray bullets. It’s still going.” Another said: “I heard policemen enter the street. An ambulance is there and emergency services are treating injured policemen. Now soldiers are coming into the houses. There are around 50 policemen. They are masked and are wearing bullet-proof vests. It’s a barnum,” she said. A third said: “There are around 20 police cars. Armoured vehicles have just arrived. All the cops have hand guns. A helicopter is flying over Forest. All the neighbouring roads have been blocked off.” More from The Political Insider via Telegraph The house is just 500 yards from the last place one of the terrorists was dropped off before vanishing on November 15. The two suspects are on the run, and the surrounding area has been cornered off with about 20 police cars and numerous armored vehicles. Local and federal police are on the scene… Shoot-out reported in Belgium capital Brussels following anti-terror raid – local media https://t.co/V6Mh5d7zzs — BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) March 15, 2016 Read this Next on ThePoliticalInsider.com Democrats Omar and Tlaib Become First to Sign Pledge to Impeach Trump This is a breaking news alert. We will share more details when they become available!Story highlights The District of Columbia has some of the strictest laws in the country for personal gun use In the wake of Rep. Steve Scalise's shooting, some lawmakers want to carry firearms in Washington Washington (CNN) Following Wednesday's attack on the Republican congressional baseball team, many credited the quick actions of two US Capitol Police officers in preventing a further tragedy. Some GOP lawmakers are calling not only for increased security personnel, but for the right to carry guns themselves. "The ability to protect ourselves individually, rather than having to rely on someone else is something that I cherish," Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan told CNN. "I would like the opportunity to be able to protect myself as a congressman." Bergman was on the field in Alexandria, Virginia, for a morning baseball practice when alleged gunman James Hodgkinson opened fire. House Republican whip Rep. Steve Scalise, a congressional staffer, a lobbyist and a member of the Capitol police force were shot, and at least two others were injured. As of Thursday afternoon, Scalise remained hospitalized in critical condition Rep. Chris Collins, a Republican from New York, said that prior to Wednesday's shooting, he used to carry his handgun on rare occasions. He says he now plans to carry it on him at all times. "I've had a carry permit for 30 years, and I would say off and on in different instances where I have, you know, felt it was appropriate, I would carry the weapon on myself," Collins said on CNN's New Day. "Certainly in the short term I'm going to go a step beyond just having it in the glove box in my car and I will be carrying." Read MoreRowan County Clerk Kim Davis, right, walks with her attorney Roger Gannam into the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky in Covington, Ky., Monday, July 20, 2015. Davis, who has said she cannot issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because it would violate her religious beliefs, is being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union on the behalf of two gay couples and two straight couples. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley) Kim Davis is in jail. That seems to be what both she and her attorneys wanted. Ms. Davis may be an elected Democrat, but she is first and foremost a Bible-thumper. She is convinced her job is Guardian of Morals according to the teachings of her fundamentalist sect. Under Kentucky law, Davis, as a public official, is obligated to fulfill all duties of her position. She refused. In addition, she actively prevented other employees from doing their jobs as well--all because she claims it violates her religious beliefs. Her attorneys, who are from an anti-gay group designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, have steered her wrongly in terms of the law. They are more interested in creating a martyr for their fund appeals than in giving good legal advice--which calls into question whether they should lose their law licenses for malpractice. Not only has Davis refused to do her job, she also used her position to forbid assistant clerks from doing their jobs as well. There are clerks in her office willing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Davis ordered them to refuse service to gay clients because her religion is anti-gay. Davis isn't just demanding the right to drag her religious beliefs into her job. She is also demanding county employees abide by her religious beliefs, as well as local residents, even those in same-sex relationships. One of her attorneys, Roger Gannam, claims: "Today, for the first time in history, an American citizen has been incarcerated for having the belief of conscience that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. And she's been ordered to stay there until she's willing to change her mind, until she's willing to change her conscience about what belief is." That is a bald-faced lie. Ms. Davis is in jail for contempt of court, not for her beliefs. Her attorney knows this, but the rubes on the Right, whose pockets they want to pick, don't know this. Gannam's statement isn't legally accurate, but it is good publicity for Liberty Counsel's fund appeal letters and e-mails. Davis maneuvered herself onto the cross and is now the martyr she sought to be. What she never understood was she was never acting on her own behalf as country clerk. Davis is a public official doing the work of government. Government should treat all citizens fairly. It doesn't, but should. Davis was not acting on her own behalf. She didn't issue marriage licenses; the county did. She issued them on behalf of the government. Since she was acting on behalf of the state,her own religious views are utterly immaterial. If they forbid her from doing the job, she had the moral obligation to step down. Davis has only been in this job a few months. When she took office, it was already widely known that gay marriage would be ruled on shortly. It was also widely speculated that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of marriage equality, especially given the almost unanimous lower court rulings. So, the "hazard" of having to issue same-sex marriage licenses was one she knew was a very real possibility when she took the job. She went into this with eyes wide open. The marriage license was legally valid because the Country Clerk issued it, not because Kim Davis issued it. She could resign and issue licenses all day long from her home, but that wouldn't make them legal. Kim Davis has no legal authority other than when acting as Clerk, and, when she is acting as County Clerk she is not acting on her own behalf. As this is the case, her personal religious views are utterly immaterial. The County itself does not hold religious views. State and religion are separate entities. If Ms. Davis is under the impression the County Clerk should have religious beliefs, she is mistaken. The County Clerk is an office, not a person. What Davis is doing in issuing a license is merely saying two people are legally qualified to enter a marriage. She is not sanctioning the marriage. She is not saying she approves of their choices. She is merely affirming they are legally qualified, nothing more. She is not approving of it, or disapproving of it. If she can't do her job, then she should resign. If Davis refuses to do the job she was elected to do, she should be impeached, which is the function of the Kentucky legislature. That the Republican dominated legislature refuses to do that is a disservice to Davis and to constitutional government. Local officials don't have the right to impose their religious beliefs on others.Back in March, 2001, I wrote a little fable about taxation for the op-ed piece of the Wall Street Journal. Several readers have asked me to post that fable here on the blog. Your wish is my command. At the bottom of this post, I’ll say a few words relating the fable to another recent blog post. ************** Once upon a time, a man went to work and earned a dollar. He used the dollar to buy a share of stock. The stock paid a dividend of 10 cents a year, 10% being the going rate of return in the land. Thanks to wise corporate management, the dividend eventually doubled to 20 cents a year, causing the stock price to double as well. The man sold his share for $2, which he put in the bank. Eventually, his children inherited the money and reinvested it in the same company. They used their 20-cent annual dividend to purchase goods and services, happily ever after. That was a fairy tale. Here is the reality: Once upon a time, a man went to work and earned a dollar. After paying state and federal income taxes, he was left with 50 cents. He used the 50 cents to buy half a share of stock. When the stock price doubled, he sold his half-share for a dollar, paid a 10-cent tax on the capital gain, and put the remaining 90 cents in the bank. Eventually, his children inherited the money, paid 50 cents in inheritance tax, and reinvested the remaining 40 cents in the original company. The company continued to earn a 10% rate of return, of which half went to pay corporate income and excise taxes. The children therefore received an annual dividend of 5%, which came to two cents a year. After paying personal income tax on the dividend, they were left with a penny a year in income. They used part of that penny to purchase goods and services, and the rest to pay sales taxes. Okay, that’s a worst-case scenario. There are many things the man could have done to reduce his family’s tax burden. He could have chosen an investment that paid no dividends. He could have held his stock instead of selling it, accepting some extra risk. He could have spent everything he had before he died. For that matter, he could have chosen not to go to work in the first place. But the fact remains that after a series of perfectly reasonable economic choices, this family lost 95% of its income to taxes. Ninety-five percent! From 20 cents a year down to a penny! How could such a thing happen? Simple: by taxing the same income five times. Some aspects of multiple taxation are widely recognized, but others aren’t. Everyone knows about the “double taxation” of corporate income: first when it’s earned and then when it’s paid out as dividends. But not everyone realizes that capital gains are always caused by expectations of future income. That means the capital-gains tax amounts to a third tax on income that’s already slated to be taxed twice. Taxing both dividends and capital gains is like fining drivers for speeding and then fining them again for having a high speedometer reading. More important, each of these taxes — along with the inheritance tax and, for that matter, any tax at all on capital income — is ultimately a disguised tax on labor. That’s because Marx was right: Capital is the embodiment of past labor. Today’s capital income is a deferred reward for yesterday’s hard work. Tax that reward and you’re taxing the work that made it possible. A tax on capital — whether it comes in the form of a tax on dividends, corporate income, capital gains or inheritance — is equivalent not just to a tax on labor, but to a highly discriminatory tax on labor. It penalizes the labor of the young (who have many years of saving ahead of them) far more heavily than the labor of the old (who tend to spend their income as it arrives). So not only are people penalized for working, they’re penalized doubly for working early in life. A tax on labor discourages work. A tax on capital discourages work disproportionately among the young, distorting saving decisions and retarding economic growth. So a tax on capital has all the disadvantages of an extra tax on labor, and more besides. Moreover, a tax on capital is a deceptive tax. When your income is taxed on five separate occasions, you’re less likely to notice the bite than if it’s taken all at once. Arguably, that allows politicians to get away with higher total tax rates than if they were forced to operate in the open. All of which suggests that we’d be better off with a single tax on labor income and no taxes at all on corporate income, dividends, capital gains or inheritance. A growing body of research in macroeconomics supports that suggestion. The main contributors to that research include Christophe Chamley of Harvard, Ken Judd of Stanford, Peter Diamond of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Patrick Kehoe at Penn, V.V. Chari at Minnesota and Robert E. Lucas at Chicago. Mr. Lucas is a Nobel laureate who has been recognized for 30 years as the world’s most thoughtful and influential macroeconomist. Here’s how he sums up the findings so far: When I left graduate school in 1963, I believed that the single most desirable change in the U.S. tax structure would be the taxation of capital gains as ordinary income. I now believe that neither capital gains nor any of the income from capital should be taxed at all. My earlier view was based on what I viewed as the best available economic analysis, but of course I think my current view is based on better analysis. Of course, further analysis will be forthcoming and the conclusions might change. But for now, the best thinking confirms common sense: Five taxes is at least four too many. ***************** And so ends my Wall Street Journal column. Now a little context: Last week, I explained that a tax on interest effectively taxes current and future consumption at different rates. In today’s fable, I’ve pointed out that a tax on interest effectively taxes current and future labor at different rates (penalizing labor when you’re young more heavily than labor when you’re old). There’s a general principle in economics that says everything ought to be taxed at the same rate. (That’s not an assumption; it’s the conclusion of an argument I’ve not provided here, though it’s in all the textbooks.) Last week, we saw that if you apply this principle to current and future consumption, there should be no tax on interest; today we saw that if you apply the same principle to current and future labor, there should still be no tax on interest.Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem. The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words "wrong region" came up on his screen. Although he mournfully had to put the popcorn away, he is unlikely to jeopardise the special relationship – or "special partnership", as we are now supposed to call it – by registering a complaint. A Downing Street spokesman said he was "confident" that any gift Obama gave Brown would have been "well thought through," but referred me to the White House for assistance on the "technical aspects". A White House spokesman sniggered when I put the story to him and he was still looking into the matter when my deadline came last night. By the way, when Obama's unlikely gift was disclosed, a reader emailed me to ask if Clueless was among the films. Funnily enough, it was not.President Obama is boasting of his economic legacy to the New York Times, asserting that his management of the economy was likely the best in modern history. “I actually compare our economic performance to how, historically, countries that have wrenching financial crises perform,” he said. “By that measure, we probably managed this better than any large economy on Earth in modern history.” But the financial headlines this morning paint a different story: The U.S. economy grew only 0.5 percent in the first quarter of 2016, the slowest pace in two years. Obama signaled discouragement that the media and the American people fail to appreciate what he has supposedly done to save the economy. “We were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing,” he told the Times. The president appeared irritated by the suggestion from R3epublicans that the economy was suffering under his administration. “I mean, the truth of the matter is that if we had been able to more effectively communicate all the steps we had taken to the swing voter, then we might have maintained a majority in the House or the Senate,” he insisted.For a show which has been described as featuring "two underwear models who fight demons" source, the men in the show are remarkably shy about showing some flesh. In fact, it has been remarked that fans are turned into modern versions of Victorian ladies, as many fans are known to grow faint when the boys where anything less than 3 layers of clothing. Dean Dean checks out his perky nipples after he returns from hell in Lazarus Rising Our first glimpse of a shirtless Dean is in the form of a shapeshifter shedding its skin! At the Paley Festival in 2006, writer John Shiban spoke about the gratification he got from coming up with scary concepts and effects. "A fan was watching the show and giving her impressions as she watched it, “Oh my god, Dean’s taking his shirt off!” And followed immediately by, "Oh my god, he’s taking his skin off!" I knew then that we had it. I was very pleased with that." Dean is sleeping without a shirt on when John Winchester makes direct contact with the boys for the first time. Dean gets his shirt (and more) off when he and Cassie get it on! Dean's chest is seen when he is dying, as the medical team works to revive him and the reaper Tessa tries to convince him to accompany her to the afterlife. Dean wakes up naked next to Carmen in the Wish-verse induced by the Djinn. Dean comes back from the dead, and takes a moment to check out his lack of hellhound scars and the new hand-shaped brand on his shoulder in a gas station mirror. Dean shirtless in Meta Fiction - although this actual shot appeared only in the promo Dean gets five minutes in Heaven - with an angel no less. In this tender love scene in the back of his beloved Impala, Dean takes off not only his shirt, but also his amulet while making love to Anna Milton. Dean has some morning loving with Lisa - oops no it's just a dream. But shirtless is shirtless! Despite Dean's commitment to safe sex, this encounter with an Amazon called Lydia got him shirtless and her pregnant, resulting in the birth of Emma. It's a long time before Dean gets his gear off again. Dean, troubled by the effects of the Mark of Cain takes an angsty shower. The three-week break between this episode and the last one was been dubbed #ShowerHellatus by fans on Twitter because of the images of Dean in the shower in the promo for the episode. You can view the shower scene here. Dean, or rather Demon Dean has a lunchbreak quickie with Anne Marie, the waitress in the dive (which seems to have accommodation), that Crowley and him have been living in whilst howling at the moon - which seems to involved karaoke and fussball. We see Dean shirtless - in bed, with a sheet around his waist. Later he stands up and puts his a t-shirt, but not pants - which Crowley points out with exasberation. You can view the bed scene here. Sam Sam in The Third Man. Apparently having no soul makes you look really ripped. Sam emerges from the shower wearing a towel. Sam and Madison get naked and bitey. He then has to shoot her. Just another example of the phenomenon known as Sleep with Sam Winchester and die!. You can read the original script of the Sex scene from Heart. A vast expanse of Sam's abs and a hint of nipple can be seen as Sam stitches his own bullet wound. Both Sam and Ruby get very naked and have very wrong and very hot hate sex. While consulting with Dr. Cara Roberts on a case, Sam takes his shirt off for entirely non-medical reasons. Sam wakes up naked in bed with Jessica, who actually turns out to be Lucifer. There was a deleted scene from the episode, a sex scene between Sam and Lindsey the woman he worked with in the bar, while he and Dean were on a break. A fragment of it aired in a promo for the next episode, confusing and disappointing many viewers. Soulless Sam does a series of chin-ups sans shirt in his hotel room. While Dean is being probed by fairies, Sam hooks up with a patchouli drenched hippie called Sparrow Jennings. In the process of having sex with Amelia, Sam takes his shirt off. Sam doesn't wear a shirt in his visions of Hell. Both Sam and Lady Toni Bevell are bereft of clothes in Sam's love hallucination. Castiel Castiel is literally ripped in Point of No Return Castiel tells Sam and Dean that the Green Room where Adam is being held is in Van Nuys, California, guarded by a number of angels. Castiel says he will fight off the angels, giving Dean and Sam time to get Adam. Dean notes that Castiel taking on five angels alone is basically suicide, and Castiel says he would rather face it than Dean failing (or saying yes to Michael). A common response to being pissed with Dean is for people to take their shirt off. Castiel then carves a Angel Banishing Sigil into his chest because he is a BAMF. He approaches the angels guarding the room, then rips off his shirt to invoke the power of the bloody sigil to banish the angels. Misha Collins on the sigils on his chest at Salute to Supernatural Chicago 2011: "People say it looked painted on? The truth is, I went through a hell of a lot for people to think it was just painted on. I’m permanently disfigured. I read the script, and they had an image there of how they wanted the sigil to look like, and I did it before coming in to shoot that morning at home with a straight razor. And then they had a special effects make-up person, unbeknownst to me, who is there for the day. Well obviously, they didn’t have to do anything, because I had already done it. But yeah, I guess they were planning to do some sort of prosthetic and make it look like it was carved in, but they didn’t have to because I had already done it. The shooting took a little longer than usual because I kept fainting from bloodloss. But I think you would agree, that it led to authenticity." source Castiel does laundry by stripping down to his boxers in a laundromat. He then decides to spend his money on food and drink instead, and leaves behind the precious Castiel's Trench Coat. Cas has sex with April who turns out to be a Reaper who tortures and kills him. But in a brief post-coital moment we do get to see his new tattoo.Occupy Wall Street is dead, at least as far as the chattering classes are concerned. But for Mahoma López, a deli worker at the Hot & Crusty bagel cafe on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, it’s very much alive. In late May, López and his coworkers won official recognition from the National Labor Relations Board to form a brand-new, independent union, the Hot & Crusty Workers Association. This virtually unprecedented victory in a hard-to-organize sector was accomplished in just a few months, on a shoestring budget. Along with leadership training from the innovative non-profit Laundry Workers’ Center, the campaign received crucial support from the Immigrant Worker Justice working group (IWJ) of Occupy Wall Street. IWJ stepped up pressure on the cafe chain through a series of actions
again. BOO. I don’t just sit there and yell at him. BOO. BOO. BOO AGAIN. BOO SOME MORE. He needs time to giddily worry. He needs time to think about what’s coming — to anticipate it, to ponder from where I may jump out. And then he needs that time to grow comfortable, mostly certain that the game is over and I in fact will not jump out at all and scare him. At which point, I drop down out of the ceiling covered in spiders. Firewatch knows that we need time. We need time to be tense, but also that we need time for that tension to unspool a little. The rope can’t always be tight. Sometimes it needs slack. (Want more fishing metaphor? You might catch more fish with a slack line than a tight one.) The ratchet, recoil and slack of the narrative allows us time to ponder questions, amplify our fears, play with characters, and ultimately grow comfortable in the narrative (often just in time for it to deepen our discomfort). It is an artful balancing act. Mystery Makes Tension This is a very simple thing, but important to understand: As I have said before, question marks are shaped like hooks for a reason: they drag us into the narrative. But Firewatch further proves that unanswered questions create tension. At the most fundamental level this is reflected by our very human fear of the dark. The dark is the unknown. The dark is the theoretically infinite. The dark is the ultimate unanswered question. The unknown is fearful. The unknown makes us anxious. And it doesn’t have to be anything huge, either. You go home and find your door unlocked. Or a knick-knack obviously out of place. It’s not actively sinister, and could probably be explained away by something fairly mundane — but without really knowing, your mind conjures an unholy host of options. Firewatch does this so well. Bits of trash left around. Someone watching you. Someone in your firewatch tower. The questions mount, and in classic storytelling fashion, answering one question with a half-ass-answer only offers up three more questions — the mysteries multiply like wet Gremlins. The Power Of Skipping Ahead Another thing I love about Firewatch — it isn’t afraid to pole-vault over its own narrative. You start off in standard day-by-day fashion, DAY ONE, DAY TWO, DAY THREE. Then next thing you know? DAY 9. DAY 15. DAY 33. DAY 64. And it’s like, whoa, what the fuck. Skipping ahead has three big advantages, I think. First, it cuts ahead of boring stuff. In games particularly, we expect to play out every moment. And novels sometimes dwell overlong on boring parts. Solution? Skip ahead! Second, it creates a mystery in and of itself. A jump in time leaves us wondering now not just about what is going to happen but what has already happened. Third, it lends us a sense of movement through time. It’s odd how that movement deepens my investment — it’s an illusion, but a functional one. While The Force Awakens is one of my most favorite cinematic experiences of recent memory, I was struck by how rushed it felt. Like the events of the story took two hours of my time in the theater and two hours of the characters’ time. Letting Rey and Finn have the Falcon in space for a full day or a week would feel more complete than having them immediately launch into space where HEY NOW THERE’S HAN and then HEY NOW THERE’S GANGS and HEY MAZ KANATA. Firewatch doesn’t play out the missing time — but it lets us know it happened. The One Firewatch Failure You could say a lot of things about the narrative and about the game (and even about how the narrative is the game), but the one place where the game falls down for me is in the conclusion of its story. And here, by the way, we are venturing deep upriver to SPOILER TOWN. ALERT AWOOGA LLAMA BLEAT WILD GESTICULATIONS WELCOME TO SPOILERS The game does a very good job at presenting us with deepening, simple mysteries that when viewed together seem to point to a larger… something. A conspiracy. A murder. A dangerous delusion. You’ve got missing teen girls. You’ve got a missing firewatch man and his son. There’s a mysterious research station behind a fence — and god, how elegant is that fence? It’s so simple! HERE IS A FENCE IN THE WAY WHERE YOU DO NOT EXPECT A FENCE TO BE. You get so mad at that fence! Fuck that fence! What’s beyond it? NNNGH I WANNA KNOW. Someone is listening to you. There’s an unexplored cave. And then there’s the characters’ backstories — Henry and Delilah are so perfectly realized and wonderfully acted, and you realize both are incomplete people whose lives are not mysterious but are filled with mistakes. Henry in particular has a wife who is at an early age falling prey to dementia and that’s really important because it is key to his character and key to how the character deals with these mysteries. Because he asks himself: am I the one falling prey to dementia? None of this stuff adds up. And as the characters become more paranoid about their situation, you as the player are forced to reckon with an unholy host of possibilities. Maybe there IS a conspiracy. Maybe there ISN’T and your shared paranoia with Delilah is driving you to commit terrible acts in service to an imagined attack. What about the missing kid? The teens? But ultimately what happens is that the details all add up to a fairly soft revelation — the missing boy and his father are still in play. The boy is dead and the father never left the park and he’s kinda gone south mentally, and he’s just been fucking with you. Which is fine. That works. But it works too easily. And you mostly figure that out by the time you get to the final act, and then you still have to get through the final act where you expect some further mystery or revelation — but mostly, everything is fine. The one twist is that we learn that Delilah lied on the radio and said that there never was any boy up there at all, which means his death is at least a little bit on her shoulders. The problem here is the order of that revelation. Learning that before you find the dead boy dampens the impact. If we instead learned it after, it would be a revelation rather than a soft unveiling. What this leads to is a bit of a glitch in the magic trick. Firewatch shows us the woman getting into the box. Then it spins the box around and around and it gets out the saw. The sawblades gleam. The woman cries out. Then Firewatch puts the saw away and the woman gets out of the box. Safe and unharmed, she toddles off the stage. TA-DA, it cries. Except there isn’t much ta-da. It’s maybe part of the point that the isolation and loneliness is not ideal for your mental state, and maybe running away from your problems just makes you invent new problems in their stead. Thematically it works, but narratively, it feels less than satisfying. It does not fulfill the promise of its premise. Okay, I guess? Neh? Meh? That said, the game is still one of the most amazing I’ve played. It is a — well, whatever the equivalent of a “page-turner” would be in the video game sense. It’s a great mystery and has some of the sharpest writing I have ever encountered in a video game format. I adored these characters. It was worth the time and worth the money, and just wandering around the beautiful Olly Moss-inspired wilderness is its own reward. I just wish that in terms of the story, the ending had more to give us — that it allowed us some final twist, some wink, some last ta-da. There is a betrayal, but it is gentle and sad and disappointing in its dullness. Do not let that be a counter, though, to you buying it. Buy it. Study it. Study it some more. Figure out what it does right and what it doesn’t do as well. Then make that work for your own stories, regardless of their form.This is a tutorial where you’ll learn how to work with predicates and relationships in Core Data. It is written by iOS Tutorial Team member Cesare Rocchi, a UX designer and developer specializing in web and mobile applications. Good news – by popular request, we now have a 4th part to our Core Data tutorial […] This is a tutorial where you’ll learn how to work with predicates and relationships in Core Data. It is written by iOS Tutorial Team member Cesare Rocchi, a UX designer and developer specializing in web and mobile applications. Good news – by popular request, we now have a 4th part to our Core Data tutorial series! :] In the first part of the series, you learned how to visually build a data model and show it in a table view. In the second part of the series, you saw how to import data from an existing database to populate an application with information. The third part of the series, you learned how to use NSFetchedResultsController to retrieve data from the object graph. Now in Part 4, you’ll learn how to deal with predicates and relationships. You’ll start by modifying the project to allow editing objects. Then you’ll introduce relationships into the project and learn how to build specific queries by using NSPredicate. If you’re already familiar with the basics of Core Data but just want to learn more about relationships and predicates, don’t worry you can still follow along. Just take a few moment to look over the starter project first. The starter project will be the finished project as it stood at the end of Part 3 of the series. You can grab it here. Now let’s continue our lovely relationship with Core Data! Getting Started: Editing, Not Just for Writers As a reminder, we left off in part 3 with a simple Core Data app that shows a list of banks that have failed in the US. A bit too long of a list for comfort! :] However, the list was read-only – no editing! So before we go any further, let’s add editing into the app. This will make the app more functional, all while teaching you about relations and predicates in Core Data. More precisely, you’ll introduce the functionality to add a bank to the list and to edit banks already stored in the database. Then you’ll make it possible to search the list for banks that meet certain criteria. If you just downloaded the project, extract the ZIP file to a location of your choice. Open the project in Xcode. To start with a clean slate, you’ll get rid of the procedure that imports the sqlite database. This way, our list of banks will be empty and we can add new ones with our soon-to-come editing capabilities. So go to FBCDAppDelegate.m, go to persistentStoreCoordinator and delete the following code. if (![[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:[storeURL path]]) { NSURL preloadURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"CoreDataTutorial2" ofType:@"sqlite"]]; NSError err = nil; if (![[NSFileManager defaultManager] copyItemAtURL:preloadURL toURL:storeURL error:&err]) { NSLog(@"Oops, could copy preloaded data"); } } In the same file, go to application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: and delete the following: NSManagedObjectContext context = [self managedObjectContext]; FailedBankInfo failedBankInfo = [NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"FailedBankInfo" inManagedObjectContext:context]; failedBankInfo.name = @"Test Bank"; failedBankInfo.city = @"Testville"; failedBankInfo.state = @"Testland"; FailedBankDetails failedBankDetails = [NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"FailedBankDetails" inManagedObjectContext:context]; failedBankDetails.closeDate = [NSDate date]; failedBankDetails.updateDate = [NSDate date]; failedBankDetails.zip = [NSNumber numberWithInt:12345]; failedBankDetails.info = failedBankInfo; failedBankInfo.details = failedBankDetails; NSError error; if (![context save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Whoops, couldn't save: %@", [error localizedDescription]); } // Test listing all FailedBankInfos from the store NSFetchRequest fetchRequest = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; NSEntityDescription entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"FailedBankInfo" inManagedObjectContext:context]; [fetchRequest setEntity:entity]; NSArray fetchedObjects = [context executeFetchRequest:fetchRequest error:&error]; for (FailedBankInfo info in fetchedObjects) { NSLog(@"Name: %@", info.name); FailedBankDetails details = info.details; NSLog(@"Zip: %@", details.zip); } And with those few clicks and keystrokes, the project is clean! It no longer imports any data from a batch procedure or inserts data when the application is launched. Build and run, and you should see an empty table view, as follows: Now you can set about making it possible for users to add data as they see fit. Now add two buttons to FBCDMasterViewController. One will be used to add a new bank, and the other will show the search view. In FBCDMasterViewController.m, add the following code to the bottom of viewDidLoad. self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemAdd target:self action:@selector(addBank)]; self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemSearch target:self action:@selector(showSearch)]; Let’s focus on addBank first. Add the method to the end of FBCDMasterViewController.m (but before the final @end): -(void)addBank { FailedBankInfo failedBankInfo = (FailedBankInfo )[NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"FailedBankInfo" inManagedObjectContext:managedObjectContext]; failedBankInfo.name = @"Test Bank"; failedBankInfo.city = @"Testville"; failedBankInfo.state = @"Testland"; FailedBankDetails failedBankDetails = [NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"FailedBankDetails" inManagedObjectContext:managedObjectContext]; failedBankDetails.closeDate = [NSDate date]; failedBankDetails.updateDate = [NSDate date]; failedBankDetails.zip = [NSNumber numberWithInt:123]; failedBankDetails.info = failedBankInfo; failedBankInfo.details = failedBankDetails; NSError error = nil; if (![managedObjectContext save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Error in adding a new bank %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } } The above code is pretty similar to the code you deleted before. You create an instance of FailedBankInfo and you populate the properties with values. One of the properties is an instance of FailedBankDetails, which you set as the “details” property. Finally, you save the context to make sure the insertion is committed to the database. If you run the application now, you should notice that the table view gets updated correctly with the new instance without requiring a call to reloadData. How come? This is due to the these functions, both inherited from previous versions of the project: controller:didChangeObject:atIndexPath:forChangeType:newIndexPath: This takes care of four possible changes to the table view: insertions, deletions, updates and moves. controllerWillChangeContent: This simply “alerts” the controller of upcoming changes via the fetched results controller. Deleting Banks Now that you’ve got the ability to add a bank, let’s add deletion as well! You can enable that by adding the swipe-to-delete functionality, built-in to table views. You just need to add two methods. The first new method simply indicates which cells in the table are editable. You can either add the following code below tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:, or you can uncomment the pre-existing commented-out block of code for the method: -(BOOL)tableView:(UITableView )tableView canEditRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath )indexPath { return YES; } The second new method, also to be added to FBCDMasterViewController.m, is tableView:commitEditingStyle:forRowAtIndexPath:. Again, there is a commented-out section of code for this, but instead of using it, replace that code with the following: -(void)tableView:(UITableView )tableView commitEditingStyle:(UITableViewCellEditingStyle)editingStyle forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath )indexPath { if (editingStyle == UITableViewCellEditingStyleDelete) { [managedObjectContext deleteObject:[self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]]; NSError error = nil; if (![managedObjectContext save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } } } As before, there’s no need to refresh the table view! It’s all handled by the fetched results controller, which notifies the controller that changes have occured. Build and run, add a few banks, and swipe one of the cells to show the delete button. Tap the button, and you’ll see the record deleted and the table view refreshed! Editing Banks At this point, new banks are added using “static” content. Now you’ll incorporate the ability to edit the details of a bank. To handle this, you’ll build a new view controller. Right-click on the project root and select New File/Cocoa Touch/Objective-C Class. Name the controller SMBankDetailViewController and make it a subclass of UIViewController. Also make sure that a XIB is generated. Now open SMBankDetailViewController.xib to add a few components. The view will be pushed by a view controller, so you might want to visualize the space taken by a navigation bar. With the view selected, tap the fourth icon in the inspector (the right sidebar) and set the top bar to “Navigation Bar.” Then drag four text fields and two labels to the view, and lay them out as in the following screenshot: You might want to edit the placeholder text of the input fields so it’s clear what’s what – you can use the above screenshot as a reference. Later on in this tutorial, you’ll set the tags on the labels as well. While you’re at it, add a date picker component. This will be displayed when necessary via code to edit dates. For the moment, place the picker outside of the visible area of the view. The Y of the picker should be set to 420. With the picker selected, switch to the Size Inspector tab on the right sidebar and set its position as follows: Now it’s time to write some code to display the new view. In SMBankDetailViewController.h, add the following import statements below the existing #import line: #import "FailedBankInfo.h" #import "FailedBankDetails.h" Then add the following properties and methods before the final @end: @property (nonatomic, strong) FailedBankInfo bankInfo; @property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UITextField nameField; @property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UITextField cityField; @property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UITextField zipField; @property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UITextField stateField; @property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UILabel tagsLabel; @property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UILabel dateLabel; @property (nonatomic, weak) IBOutlet UIDatePicker datePicker; -(id)initWithBankInfo:(FailedBankInfo ) info; Next, in SMBankDetailViewController.xib, hook up each outlet you defined with its corresponding component. You can do this by selecting the File’s Owner (which is the SMBankDetailViewController class), switching to the Connections Inspector in the right sidebar, and dragging from each outlet to the relevant control on the view. At the top of SMBankDetailViewController.m, right below the @implementation line, synthesize all the properties as follows: @synthesize bankInfo = _bankInfo; @synthesize nameField; @synthesize cityField; @synthesize zipField; @synthesize stateField; @synthesize tagsLabel; @synthesize dateLabel; @synthesize datePicker; Also add two private methods to the class continuation above the @implementation line, as follows: @interface SMBankDetailViewController () -(void)hidePicker; -(void)showPicker; @end initWithBankInfo: is pretty simple: it assigns an instance of info to the view controller. Add it below the existing initWithNibName:bundle: method implementation: -(id)initWithBankInfo:(FailedBankInfo )info { if (self = [super init]) { _bankInfo = info; } return self; } Then add the following to the end of viewDidLoad to set a few parameters like the title, the right navigation item and a few gesture recognizers: self.title = self.bankInfo.name; // 1 - setting the right button self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemSave target:self action:@selector(saveBankInfo)]; // 2 - setting interaction on date label self.dateLabel.userInteractionEnabled = YES; UITapGestureRecognizer dateTapRecognizer = [[UITapGestureRecognizer alloc] initWithTarget:self action:@selector(dateTapped)]; [self.dateLabel addGestureRecognizer:dateTapRecognizer]; // 3 - set date picker handler [datePicker addTarget:self action:@selector(dateHasChanged:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged]; In section 1, the right button on the navigation bar triggers a save action. The operation in this case is easy: set the values of the bank info as the values specified in the components, and save the context. Add the code for it to the end of the file (but before the final @end): -(void)saveBankInfo { self.bankInfo.name = self.nameField.text; self.bankInfo.city = self.cityField.text; self.bankInfo.details.zip = [NSNumber numberWithInt:[self.zipField.text intValue]]; self.bankInfo.state = self.stateField.text; NSError error; if ([self.bankInfo.managedObjectContext hasChanges] &&![self.bankInfo.managedObjectContext save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Unresolved error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } [self.navigationController popViewControllerAnimated:YES]; } The second tap detector (in section 2 above) calls the method showPicker. Add it to the end of the file: -(void)dateTapped { [self showPicker]; } The third selector (section 3) changes the value of the date label according to the selected value in the date picker. Add the necessary code again to the end of the file: -(void)dateHasChanged:(id)sender { NSDateFormatter formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init]; [formatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterMediumStyle]; self.dateLabel.text = [formatter stringFromDate:self.datePicker.date]; } viewWillAppear: sets the values of the text fields and labels according to the instance of bank info associated with the controller. Add the following code below viewDidLoad: -(void)viewWillAppear:(BOOL)animated { [super viewWillAppear:animated]; // setting values of fields self.nameField.text = self.bankInfo.name; self.cityField.text = self.bankInfo.city; self.zipField.text = [self.bankInfo.details.zip stringValue]; self.stateField.text = self.bankInfo.state; NSDateFormatter formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init]; [formatter setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterMediumStyle]; self.dateLabel.text = [formatter stringFromDate:self.bankInfo.details.closeDate]; } Finally, you’re left with the implementation of the two private methods. Add the code for those to the end of the file: -(void)showPicker { [self.zipField resignFirstResponder]; [self.nameField resignFirstResponder]; [self.stateField resignFirstResponder]; [self.cityField resignFirstResponder]; [UIView beginAnimations:@"SlideInPicker" context:nil]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:0.5]; self.datePicker.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeTranslation(0, -216); [UIView commitAnimations]; } -(void)hidePicker { [UIView beginAnimations:@"SlideOutPicker" context:nil]; [UIView setAnimationDuration:0.5]; self.datePicker.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeTranslation(0, 216); [UIView commitAnimations]; } The above code shows or hides the date picker, as necessary. Before showing the date picker, the first responder for all text fields is resigned, thus effectively dismissing the keyboard if it was visible. To test your new view, you need to push it onto the navigation stack when a cell is tapped. In FBCDMasterViewController.m, add the following import statement at the top: #import "SMBankDetailViewController.h" Then replace the existing placeholder for tableView:didSelectRowAtIndexPath: with the following: -(void)tableView:(UITableView )tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath )indexPath { FailedBankInfo info = [_fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]; SMBankDetailViewController detailViewController = [[SMBankDetailViewController alloc] initWithBankInfo:info]; [self.navigationController pushViewController:detailViewController animated:YES]; } Now you’re ready to see the first big change to your app! Run the app and create a few instances of banks. Each bank record is editable, including the close date. To save data, hit the save button; to discard changes, just tap the back button. Notice that the date picker and the keyboard never obstruct each other. Changes are reflected in the list of banks with no need to refresh the table view. Pretty cool, huh? Relationships, But Not the Dating Kind In database terminology, a relationship is a “connection” between two entities. It’s often translated into everyday language using the verbs to have or to belong. Think of the classic example of employees and departments – an employee is said to belong to a department, and a department has employees. In database modeling, relationships can be of three types: one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many. This property is usually referred to as cardinality. In the example from the previous section, there is already a relation modeled in Core Data: the one between FailedBankInfo and FailedBankDetails. This is a one-to-one relationship: each info object can have exactly one details object associated with it and vice versa. The graphical view stresses this point by connecting the two entities with one single arrow line. In other words, these two only have eyes for each other. :] Whenever you define a relationship, you have to specify the following: Name: This is just a string identifying the name of the relation. Destination entity: This is the target or the destination class of the relation. For example, the relationship that goes from an employee to the department can be called “department.” In this case, the employee is called the source and the department is the destination. Cardinality: The answer to the question: Is the destination a single object or not? If yes, the relation is of type to-one, otherwise it is a to-many. Assuming that in your scenario an employee can belong to just one department, the “department” relation is a to-one. Inverse relationship: The definition of the inverse function. It is pretty rare to find a domain where this is not needed. It is also a sort of logical necessity: if an employee belongs to a department, it means that that department has employees. An inverse relation just switches the “direction” of the original relation. In your example, a department can have more than one employee, so this is a to-many relation. As a general rule, a one-to-many relation has a many-to-one inverse. In case you want to define a many-to-many relationship, you simply define one relation as to-many and its inverse as a to-many as well. Make sure you define an inverse for each relationship, since Core Data exploits this information to check the consistency of the object graph whenever a change is made. Delete rule: This defines the behavior of the application when the source object of a relationship is deleted. For the delete rule in #5 above, there are four possible values: Nullify is the simplest option. For example, if you delete a department, the “department” value of each employee previously belonging to that department is set to null. Nobody is fired :] No action means that, when you delete a department there is no change to the “department” value of each employee. They just keep thinking they have not been fired :] Cascade may have side effects, so you should use it carefully. If you select cascade as the delete rule, then when you delete the source object it also deletes the destination object(s). So, if you’re shutting down a department but want to keep the employees, you should not use cascade. Such a rule is appropriate only if you want to close a department and fire all of its employees as well. In this case it is enough to set the delete rule for department to cascade and delete that department record. Deny, on the other hand, prevents accidental deletions. If you’ve set deny as the delete rule, before you can delete a department you have to make sure all its employee instances have been deleted or associated with another department. Delete rules have to be specified for both sides of a relationship, from employee to department and vice versa. Each domain implements its own business logic, so there is no general recipe for setting delete rules. Just remember to pay attention when using the cascade rule, since it could result in unexpected consequences. For example, if both department -> employee (to-many) and employee -> department (to-one) are set to cascade, the deletion of a user triggers the deletion of a department which in turn fires back the deletion of all its employees! It is likely you don’t want that. In this particular case, the deletion rule for employee -> department should be set to nullify. Note: Even though you access a relationship via dot syntax, as if it were a property, it isn’t: instead it corresponds to an actual query in the database. To maximize the performance of your application, remember this when you devise your data model and try to use relationships only if necessary. Adding a Many-to-Many Relationship Now you’re going to extend your data model by adding a new entity, connected to the info object with a many-to-many relationship. In a real-world scenario, you probably wouldn’t model data this way. You’re doing it in this tutorial only to cover a complex situation with predicates (see below). The first step is to add a new entity. Open FailedBankCD.xcdatamodeld and add a new entity named “Tag.” Then add a single attribute to it, “name” (1). Then add a relationship, named “bankdetails,” whose destination is FailedBankDetails (2) and set its type to to-many (3). The delete rule is the default, nullify (4). This means that if a tag is deleted, the “linked” detail objects are not deleted but simply lose a tag. To define its inverse, select FailedBankDetails (1), add a new relationship called “tags” with Tag as the destination, and set the inverse to bankdetails (2). As above, this is a to-many relationship (3) with a delete rule of nullify. You should end up with the following graphical model, where FailedBankDetails acts as a sort of bridge between FailedBankInfo and Tag. With all three entities selected, open the Editor menu item and choose “Create NSManagedObject Subclass…” Then select your project folder as the save destination. Select “Replace” when asked to overwrite the definition of the previous classes. A new class, named Tag, will pop up in your project tree. Note: Sometimes, (quite often, in fact :p) Xcode will mess up the code generation and add a second instance of existing Core Data entities to the project tree. If this happens to you, select one set of instances and delete them, but choose to remove references rather than to trash the files. There’s actually only one set of physical files – so if you trash them, the other set of links might not work either. At this point, you have changed the Core Data model, so your app will not be compatible with the old model on your device. There is a way around this with Core Data migrations, but that is a topic for another tutorial ;] For now, just delete the app off your device/simulator to get rid of any old files. The next step is to build a view to create/edit tags associated with an instance of FailedBankDetails. Tag, You’re It! This new view controller will facilitate the creation of new tags and associating them to a bank details object. Create a new class that extends UITableViewController and name it SMTagListViewController by right-clicking the root of the project and selecting New File…\iOS\Cocoa Touch\Objective-C class. Remember to check the box to create the accompanying XIB file. Replace the contents of SMTagListViewController.h with the following: #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> #import "FailedBankDetails.h" #import "Tag.h" @interface SMTagListViewController : UITableViewController <UIAlertViewDelegate> @property (nonatomic, strong) FailedBankDetails bankDetails; @property (nonatomic, strong) NSMutableSet pickedTags; @property (nonatomic, strong) NSFetchedResultsController fetchedResultsController; -(id)initWithBankDetails:(FailedBankDetails )details; @end You import two needed classes, mark the view controller as implementing the UIAlertViewDelegate, and you add three properties: the bank details that refer to the previous screen, a set to collect the picked tags for the current details, and a results controller to fetch the whole list of tags. Finally, you add a method to initialize the component with an instance of details. At the top of SMTagListViewController.m (below the @implementation line), synthesize the properties and implement initWithBankDetails: @synthesize bankDetails = _bankDetails; @synthesize pickedTags; @synthesize fetchedResultsController = _fetchedResultsController; -(id)initWithBankDetails:(FailedBankDetails )details { if (self = [super init]) { _bankDetails = details; } return self; } The fetched results controller is defined to load all the instances of tags from the context. Add the code for it as follows to the end of the file (but before the final @end): -(NSFetchedResultsController )fetchedResultsController { if (_fetchedResultsController!= nil) { return _fetchedResultsController; } NSFetchRequest fetchRequest = [[NSFetchRequest alloc] init]; NSEntityDescription entity = [NSEntityDescription entityForName:@"Tag" inManagedObjectContext:self.bankDetails.managedObjectContext]; [fetchRequest setEntity:entity]; NSSortDescriptor sortDescriptor = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"name" ascending:NO]; NSArray sortDescriptors = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:sortDescriptor, nil]; [fetchRequest setSortDescriptors:sortDescriptors]; NSFetchedResultsController aFetchedResultsController = [[NSFetchedResultsController alloc] initWithFetchRequest:fetchRequest managedObjectContext:self.bankDetails.managedObjectContext sectionNameKeyPath:nil cacheName:nil]; self.fetchedResultsController = aFetchedResultsController; NSError error = nil; if (![self.fetchedResultsController performFetch:&error]) { NSLog(@"Core data error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } return _fetchedResultsController; } The above is pretty similar to previously defined fetched results controllers – it’s just for a different entity. Replace the existing viewDidLoad with the following: -(void)viewDidLoad { [super viewDidLoad]; self.pickedTags = [[NSMutableSet alloc] init]; // Retrieve all tags NSError error; if (![self.fetchedResultsController performFetch:&error]) { NSLog(@"Error in tag retrieval %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } // Each tag attached to the details is included in the array NSSet tags = self.bankDetails.tags; for (Tag tag in tags) { [pickedTags addObject:tag]; } // setting up add button self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithBarButtonSystemItem:UIBarButtonSystemItemAdd target:self action:@selector(addTag)]; } Here you run a fetch operation and populate the set of pickedTags that are attached to the instance of bankDetails. You need this to show a tag as picked (by means of a tick) in the table view. You also set up a navigation item to add new tags. Add the following below viewDidLoad: -(void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated { [super viewWillDisappear:animated]; self.bankDetails.tags = pickedTags; NSError error = nil; if (![self.bankDetails.managedObjectContext save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Error in saving tags %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } } When the view is closed, you save the set of picked tags by setting the tags property of bankDetails. Now add the following code to the end of the file: -(void)addTag { UIAlertView newTagAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"New tag" message:@"Insert new tag name" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:@"Cancel" otherButtonTitles:@"Save", nil]; newTagAlert.alertViewStyle = UIAlertViewStylePlainTextInput; [newTagAlert show]; } To add a new tag, you use an alert view with an input text field. The code above will display an alert asking the user to insert a new tag: To handle all actions for the alert view, add the following delegate method to the end of SMTagListViewController.m: -(void)alertView:(UIAlertView )alertView clickedButtonAtIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex { if (buttonIndex == 0) { NSLog(@"cancel"); } else { NSString tagName = [[alertView textFieldAtIndex:0] text]; Tag tag = [NSEntityDescription insertNewObjectForEntityForName:@"Tag" inManagedObjectContext:self.bankDetails.managedObjectContext]; tag.name = tagName; NSError error = nil; if (![tag.managedObjectContext save:&error]) { NSLog(@"Core data error %@, %@", error, [error userInfo]); abort(); } [self.fetchedResultsController performFetch:&error]; [self.tableView reloadData]; } } You ignore a tap on the cancel button whereas you save the new tag if “OK” is tapped. In such a case, instead of implementing the change protocols to the table, you fetch the result again and reload the table view for the sake of simplicity. Next replace the placeholders for numberOfSectionsInTableView and tableView:numberOfRowsInSection with the following: -(NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView )tableView { return 1; } -(NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView )tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section { id <NSFetchedResultsSectionInfo> sectionInfo = [[self.fetchedResultsController sections] objectAtIndex:section]; return [sectionInfo numberOfObjects]; } This is pretty straightforward – there is only one section, and the number of rows is calculated according to the results controller. Next, modify tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: as follows: -(UITableViewCell )tableView:(UITableView )tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath )indexPath { static NSString CellIdentifier = @"TagCell"; UITableViewCell cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier]; if (cell == nil) { cell = [[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier]; } cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone; Tag tag = (Tag )[self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]; if ([pickedTags containsObject:tag]) { cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryCheckmark; } cell.textLabel.text = tag.name; return cell; } This shows a checkmark if a tag belongs to the pickedTags set. Finally, replace tableView:didSelectRowAtIndexPath with the following: -(void)tableView:(UITableView )tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath )indexPath { Tag tag = (Tag )[self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath]; UITableViewCell * cell = [self.tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:indexPath]; [cell setSelected:NO animated:YES]; if ([pickedTags containsObject:tag]) { [pickedTags removeObject:tag]; cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone; } else { [pickedTags addObject:tag]; cell.accessory
the power of the 50 states' current 535 voting members. Republican Congressional representatives will put up an even stronger fight because the District of Columbia is notoriously Democratic. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy As former Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich candidly explained of statehood earlier this year, "That's just more votes in the Democratic party." But "We are not going to wait," adds Strauss. "Tennessee, California, Alaska, Michigan and Oregon did not wait for enabling legislation – they pursued statehood in advanced. We are going to be ready on Day 1."Farmer and founder of Glastonbury Festival Michael Eavis has sparked new speculation about the third headline act following a talk last night at London's Victoria & Albert Museum where he discussed music, politics and the history of the festival. After the session Eavis hinted that the Sunday headliner consisted of two acts to be announced. The next announcement is set for the 1st June and will be a "big one". When further pressed he also apparently revealed the bands involved were "most likely" British and that Coldplay's Chris Martin was involved. eFestivals revealed last year that our sources had suggested Martin was to headline but we were then told by Emily Eavis that they were not the final headlining act this year. Last night's V&A event coincided with the 45th anniversary of Earth Day (which takes place on Tuesday 20th April) which was celebrated last weekend in Washington in the White House’s backyard. The outdoor concert saw acts including My Morning Jacket, Train, Fall Out Boy, and Mary J Blige play to an audience that was estimated to exceed 300,000 people, and was headlined by No Doubt who were joined on stage by Usher, and Will.i.am and Global Citizen’s curator for the next 15 years, Chris Martin. Chris Martin has always been a leading light in the 'Drop The Debt' campaign and is the figurehead of the humanitarian group's 15-year campaign to help 1.2 billion people currently living in poverty globally. Global Citizen and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals hope to put new actions in place to help make poverty history by 2030 and asks citizens across the world call for a just and fair world trade. Earlier this year he told journalists, "I’m Chris, I’m from the band Coldplay, some of you probably have slagged us off in your magazines. I always felt that, as a musician, we show up for one day for a cause and we really believe in what we’re talking about, but then the next day we have our own concerns. I want to try to have a more long-term relationship between artists and people who are really trying to affect change in the world." This year marks a big milestone for end global poverty and climate change events wiith Live Earth - The Concert for a Climate in Crisis returning this summer with a European date set for Paris on Saturday 18th July 2015. It's possible that Glastonbury's brace of headlining acts or possibly an augmented supergoup may head up that event too. eFestivals is wondering if that could include No Doubt whose 2015 comeback gig last weekend was the first in a planned series of nearly a dozen festivals for the band this year, six of which have been announced in the USA in May and September. The band also last appeared at the festival back in 2002. Speaking at the Grammys back in February, No Doubt lead singer Gwen Stefani, said, "We did do some music, and we have some stuff on file, and we'll probably be doing some more, and we have about five big shows coming up and some festivals". This year also marks the 30th year of Live Aid, and its possible that Chris Martin could appear alongside an act or acts that graced that bill, with some of the more wild suggestions from fans including members of Queen, or Pink Floyd. Although at this stage just about anything is possible, we just don't know. However, it's clear the Festival organisers do, and we'll just have to wait and see in June who it will be. Acts confirmed so far include Friday headliner Foo Fighters, and Saturday headliner Kanye West, with Father John Misty, Courtney Barnett, Lionel Richie, Patti Smith & her band, Florence + The Machine, Pharrell Williams, Alt-J, Motorhead, Mary J Blige, Alabama Shakes, Paloma Faith, The Waterboys, The Fall, George Ezra, Rudimental, Deadmau5, The Vaccines, The Maccabees, Suede, The Chemical Brothers (live), Belle & Sebastian, Clean Bandit, Jungle, Jamie XX, Gregory Porter, Super Furry Animals, Jon Hopkins, Sharon Van Etten, Kate Tempest, Wolf Alice, Perfume Genius, Fat White Family, La Roux, Death Cab For Cutie, Kasai Allstars, FFS (Franz Ferdinand & Sparks), Modestep, Circa Waves, Peace, Young Fathers, The Moody Blues, Chronixx, Mavis Staples, FKA Twigs, Caribou, Goat, Future Islands, Run the Jewels, Hot Chip, Flying Lotus, Azealia Banks, Todd Terje, Ryan Adams, Spiritualized, Roy Ayers, The Mothership Returns: George Clinton, Parliament, Funkadelic & The Family Stone, Jamie T, Ben Howard, Mark Ronson, Ibeyi, Rae Morris, Enter Shikari, Lianne La Havas, Jessie Ware, Death From Above 1979, Years And Years, Sleaford Mods, Charli XCX, The Pop Group, Catfish & The Bottlemen, Ella Eyre, Hozier, and the entrants for the Emerging Talent competition Declan McKenna, Shields, K.O.G & the Zongo Brigade, MoD, Princess Slayer, Lucy Kitchen, Isaac Lee-Kronick, and Jakl. This year's sold out Glastonbury Festival runs for five full days from Wednesday 24th until Sunday 28th June 2015 across over a 1,000 acres of beautiful countryside at Worthy Farm, Pilton in Somerset. As ever, entry includes a free programme. Once again, the Festival will be raising more than £2 million in funds for Oxfam, Wateraid, Greenpeace and and hundreds of other worthy causes, both local and international. The full complete line-up will not be announced until next month. Expect something like 2,000 performances at over 100 venues including music, cabaret, theatre, circus, a fantastic Kidz area, poetry, green crafts and information, site art, decor, and loads, loads more... much more than just the music, so make sure you check it all out! As usual eFestivals will bring you the very best-sourced rumours, allowing festival-goers to see who is playing long before the bands are formally announced - keep your eyes on the Glastonbury 2015 rumours, updated as we receive information. latest on this festival Glastonbury Festival 2019 festival details last updated: Today, 07:17am your chance to play at Glastonbury Festival 2019 via the annual Emerging Talent Competition last updated: Tue 22nd Jan 2019 Janelle Monae to headline Glastonbury Festival's West Holts stage last updated: Mon 7th Jan 2019There are hundreds of devices to choose from when you’re considering a new desktop computer, laptop or mobile device. We’re overwhelmed by all of the choices we have, but choice is good. When it comes to computing, as far as operating systems, there are three huge players: Microsoft, Apple and Google. Yes, Google. A curious thing happened during Chrome’s rise to being the most-used browser – an operating system was born. Perhaps that was the plan all along, one can never truly know with Google. What I do know is that when you’re on the go, especially with a laptop, the primary piece of software that everyone uses is the web browser, so why not build an operating system on top of it? That’s exactly what Chrome OS is and it’s starting to make its way to consumers. Google has announced strong partnerships with hardware manufacturers like Samsung and Acer to build affordable (not cheap) laptops built for a world that accesses information in the cloud. When I say the cloud, I mean, email, files, web surfing, chatting and social networking. These things are all done very well through the browser and not through an installed desktop application. You’d be hard-pressed to find something that you can’t do through the browser, and need actual installed software for. For me, it was using Spotify to listen to music, but that’s being sorted out as we speak. I sat down with the Chrome OS team to discuss its evolution and current iteration and came away quite impressed. The OS Chrome OS is an open-source operating system built on many of the things that you might be using already with the Chrome browser. Everything is quite familiar, with the full integration of all of Google’s core products: Drive, Chrome, Gmail, Play, Plus, and of course Search. If you use Google products, then using Chrome OS will be an extremely natural experience for you. Everything runs pretty quickly on the device that I’m using right now, the latest Samsung Chromebook. I find that I’m not looking to drag and drop things onto a desktop, because it gets messy. Instead, everything is held in an internal filesystem that can be dragged and dropped anywhere, including Google Drive. This makes for moving files between systems super simple. Since all of the things you would probably want to do are available via Chrome extensions, you’ll be able to evolve your environment as new things become available. Speaking of super simple, I was able to open this laptop, log in with my Google credentials, and start using it as if it were my tablet or phone within three minutes. Since everything is synced, it doesn’t matter what device you’re using in a Google world. It just works. And more importantly, it’s easy to iterate on, on the fly. Caesar Sengupta, Product Management Director on Chrome OS at Google, told me: The story for Chrome OS starts way back. It starts with the browser, Chrome. Google’s a web company: We push the boundaries of the web; everything we do is largely on the web. One of the things we realized early on was the web wasn’t keeping up with the potential of what the web could be. We were building apps like Gmail and Google News – rich and vibrant. Browsers weren’t able to handle it. And the web is a platform that allows you to deploy globally without installation. You could pick up any machine login and work. In order to build fun and sexy stuff, you have to build on it. The Hardware The hardware itself, like I mentioned, the Samsung Chromebook, looks strikingly similar to the MacBook Air. Yes, start your complaining about copycatting now, that’s not the point. It’s light, runs quickly, and does exactly what you’d want to do. Especially if you rely on a web browser a lot. Here are full details about what’s inside: 11.6’’ (1366×768) display 0.7 inches thin – 2.42 lbs / 1.1 kg Over 6.5 hours of battery 1 Samsung Exynos 5 Dual Processor 100 GB Google Drive Cloud Storage2 with 16GB Solid State Drive Built-in dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n VGA Camera 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0 HDMI Port Bluetooth 3.0™ Compatible It’s pretty impressive, but who cares about all of that. It just works, and it works quite well. Regarding its strategy in rolling out Chromebook hardware over the past year, Group Product Manager Ryan Tabone told me: The point of the prototype was to develop the software. Samsung and Acer shipped devices last year – same form factor but based on Atom. We basically just offered these devices online. The people who were ready for it, came to it. We realized at Google this journey is going to take us some time. The world is moving into these ecosystems. For a web company to have hardware, it was an area we needed to have a strong offering in. The Price Price is one of those things that trips everyone up. We know what an iPhone costs, kind of. We know what an iPad and a Surface costs. Prices are expensive to some and cheap to others. This particular Samsung Chromebook is $249. You can call it cheap, or you can call it inexpensive. I’ll go with the latter. The nice part about machines at that pricepoint is that you can get them into the hands of kids. In fact, Google is seeing pretty good traction in schools that are picking up Chromebooks for entire classrooms. They’re easy to administer from a high level and low-priced enough if they were to get broken, stolen or lost. Also, I tend to break things or drop them in toilets. Don’t ask. In that case, running out and picking up another laptop that I can be up and running on in a matter of minutes in my exact previous state is pretty priceless. So let’s call this thing inexpensive, shall we? Sengupta had this to say on the price: There was a core group of people who were using these as additional computers, for other people in the family, like my wife. She does a lot but does it all online. Tabone had a good point: When have you ever thought of giving someone a computer as a gift? Never. The Point Computing doesn’t have to be difficult, it should be fun and efficient at the same time. You can do both, and Google does a wonderful job of facilitating that with its current suite of products and services. Even if you’re not an Android phone user, which I’m not, you can still find value in Chrome OS. From a usability, price, and compatibility perspective, it’s difficult to find another operating system on hardware that runs this well, and without so little effort to actually make it work. Basically, you won’t be getting tons of calls from mom and dad on how to use it. That’s good for us, but for them too. It’s empowering. You should use technology, it shouldn’t use you. And the best technology finds itself getting completely out of the way. If you use the Chrome browser, you’ve already been testing it, you just didn’t know it. Chrome OS won’t change the way that you compute, it’ll just make it easier.At the moment, we can safely assume that majority – if not all – the contents within Netflix catalog come from outside of Malaysia. That will change soon as the company has confirmed that several Malaysian TV shows will be made available for its subscribers very soon. This is made possible through a recent content agreement deal with Double Vision Sdn Bhd which is one of the most well-known production house in the country. Interestingly, these TV shows will not only be shown to Malaysian subscribers but also to all Netflix members throughout the world. In other words, this means that more than 86 million Netflix members will be able to watch these Malaysian TV shows wherever they may be later this year. Among shows that have been confirmed to be part of Netflix catalogue soon are all seven seasons of English comedy series, Kopitiam as well as two seasons of the Chinese period drama, Age of Glory. However, no actual roll date has been announced by either companies. Nevertheless, we feel that it is great that Malaysian made contents have received some love from Netflix and who knows, this might lead to great things in the future. (Double Vision Image: Google. Kopitiam Opening Montage: Douglas Lim @ YouTube) 14 4 3 1 7Nicole Kidman with her on-screen husband Alexander Skarsgard in Big Little Lies. For the uninitiated, Big Little Lies follows the fortunes (and barely concealed misfortunes) of a wealthy sorority of mothers whose children all attend the same public school. Someone has been murdered, but so far we don't know who or by whom, and the show takes place mostly in flashback, cataloguing the weeks leading up to the murder (which takes place at a parents' trivia night sponsored by the school). If this premise sounds melodramatic, well, it is. But beyond the flash of its inciting incident, Big Little Lies very quickly establishes itself as a complex and introspective character piece first, and a juicy murder mystery second. Indeed, the murder itself seems like background drama, a cluey "way in" to the carefully closeted interior lives of its five female stars. Periodically we track Witherspoon's spitfire Madeline, Kidman's pensive and beautiful Celeste, bolshy Renata (Laura Dern), spiritual hipster Bonnie (Zoe Kravitz) and newcomer Jane (Shailene Woodley) from episode to episode. Each woman has some gripping drama or secret that is inextricably linked to her womanhood – so we get five nuanced interrogations of how women in the world (or in this particularly privileged, quasi-fantasy world) navigate just being women. Madeline fears the loss of connection with her children as they grow up and age out of being interested in her. Renata struggles with her controlling and assertive nature, which for a woman comes across as "bossy" and ghoulish. Bonnie struggles to assert herself among more combative and cynical acquaintances, while still retaining her own spirit and values. 'We were frustrated because there wasn't the roles for us'... Nicole Kidman (right) in Big Little Lies with Shailene Woodley (left) and Reese Witherspoon. Then there's Jane, who after a horrific sexual assault is determined to fight against the intrusion of shame and victimhood; and Kidman's tragic Celeste, who is trapped in an ultra-violent, hyper-sexualised marriage, and who is introduced in the premiere episode to strains of Charles Bradley singing "I'm a victim... of loving you". (On the whole, the show has brilliant and shrewdly executed music selections.) The performances are magnificent; each of these women are doing some of the best work of their careers in this series. It helps that they are given composite material and complete, three-dimensional characters to work with (a rarity for women actors in general, especially those over the age of 40, as two thirds of these leads are). However, it's not surprising so much as disappointing to discover that the initial reaction to Big Little Lies, from a bulk of male critics who reviewed it, was to dismiss the series as escapist frivolity. Labelled as "trashy", "soapy", even "a sham", the responses to this series speak worrying volumes about the way male critics (and male audiences) perceive work that chooses to centre itself on women's lives and interests. Aside from the fact that Big Little Lies is far too real and raw to be considered a "soap opera" – I don't know how many soaps these guys are watching (but may I remind them that Passions, an actual soap opera, includes a doll that has come to life and acts as a sidekick to the show's villain, Tabitha) – these assessments of the show are both condescending and dismissive. Melodrama, trash, and soap opera are the genres historically marketed towards women and, whether or not this is true, they are generally considered to be soft, silly and indistinct. Big Little Lies is none of those things; it's hard as nails and compellingly specific. Take, for instance, Celeste's domestic violence storyline, which is portrayed with care and heartbreaking confidence by Kidman and the terrifying (and terrifyingly handsome) Alexander Skarsgård as her abusive husband, Perry. The story has been lauded not just by critics, but also by domestic violence prevention professionals and therapists, for its unflinching specificity and its magnification of issues women face all over the world, across all different social and economic stata. Big Little Lies is not afraid to "go there" – it addresses the sexual component of domestic violence (an uncomfortable area many people would like to avoid considering); and it asks the big, awkward question: Why doesn't she leave him? The answer, we find out, is so much more complicated than what we fear when we wonder why victims of DV do not leave their partners: there is love there, there is an element of compulsion, of attraction, even of safety that keeps Celeste from striking out on her own to save herself. Regardless of privilege, the issues Madeline, Jane, Celeste et al grapple with are shockingly universal. When one in four women have experienced sexual assault in their lives, Jane's history of sexual violence is achingly, uncomfortably familiar. The truth about critics who dismiss Big Little Lies as a "compendium of clichés about upper-middle-class angst" is that they're uncomfortable or unfamiliar with actually having to give these sorts of stories – women's stories – attention. Big Little Lies is what's considered "prestige TV": It's produced by a high-end cable network; it features tentpole stars, including four Oscar-nominated female actors; it's directed by an Oscar-nominated director (Jean-Marc Vallée). It's expensive, well-produced and compellingly rendered for television. For men who are not used to women's stories, or indeed female characters, of this high calibre, (because they are so often relegated to "middle brow" realms where male critics don't have to engage with them) the only way to respond is to dismiss it all as "stock characters and situations", or "soapy melodrama that's more annoying than entertaining".Published on 10 November 2009 17:04, Adelina Marini, Sofia The Swedish presidency again called on EU member states to take all necessary actions to ensure an agreement for the establishment of a micro financial supervision body. After today's ECOFIN Council the Swedish finance minister vigorously warned that by the December session of ECOFIN there must be an agreement. "If we want to make sure that we do not want to run on new financial unbalances and new financial bubbles, a new financial infrastructure built on the Larosiere report and the important work of the Commission, is what we need at the December Council", Mr. Borg added. He reminded that the goo exit from the crisis needs a new financial infrastructure. He also praised the progress achieved at ECOFIN on the establishment of macro supervision. As a result of the financial crisis which showed considerable weaknesses in the financial supervision system not only in Europe but globally as well, the EU took several initiatives, which grew into a legal package in September. This package includes regulations which have a direct impact and do not need to be harmonised in national legislation. The package envisages the creation of 3 new European supervision bodies which will supervise now not only the banking system but also insurance, social securities and securities. The European Council for Systemic Risk will be responsible for the macro supervision in the EU. However, the Council will only have analytic functions and will see for the development of bubbles and financial imbalances. Its conclusions, though, will be only advisable. The biggest problem appears to be the micro supervision. There is a lot of resistance from a number of EU member states. Those are countries with more liberal financial markets like Britain and Luxembourg. For this type of supervision it is planned a European System of Financial Supervisors to be established whose decisions will be legally binding. Bulgaria in general supports the creation of supranational supervision bodies which will work in a system with the national ones. For now it is not quite clear how the decisions will be taken - either by a normal majority or by a qualified one. The idea of these supervision bodies is to react in cases like the following: if a mother bank starts withdrawing money from its branches, let's say, in Bulgaria, this body will have the right to warn the financial institution in question. If it does not take any measures, then Bulgaria might ask the Commission for help. The countries which complain that such supervision will seriously tie their hands if they want a more flexible financial policy in case they need it. But, on the other hand, the availability of such supervision might prevent such a need, the supporters of a tightened control say.Powered by solar panels and sustained by a half-acre plot of farmland, these 12 connected buoyant platforms together form an autonomous off-the-grid dwelling for the couple that built the complex over the course of more than 20 years. Located off the coast of Vancouver Island in Canada, Freedom Cove, as it is called, has everything one could wish from a dream home including pools, beaches, gardens, greenhouses, galleries, towers, workshops and guest rooms Its creators, artists Wayne Adams and Catherine King, spend their time painting, writing, carving and making music as well as entertaining guests – visitors are welcome in the summer, but can only reach this remote location by chartering special boat taxis. Like the science-fictional floating city of Armada in China Mieville’s novel The Scar, each piece is tied together and seems to have been accrued almost organically over time. Living off the land (and water), the couple fishes for food off the sides of the platforms and grow their own vegetables and fruits in a half-acre farm area above. An array of solar panels provides energy with generators used for backup. “A retired ballerina, Catherine maintains these floating gardens while Wayne’s incredible sculptural talents support them. The gardens host frequent visits from whale and bear watching groups in the area. Guests leave with a candle casted from the moulds of various sculptures. They live on a very meagre annual income. “Derbyshire's Blue Lagoon dyed black to deter people taking a dip in water that is nearly as toxic as bleach Families have been swimming in the Blue Lagoon for decades Water could cause thrush, skin complaints and severe stomach problems The water also contains car wrecks, dead animals, excrement and rubbish Local council has now dyed it black to prevent swimmers entering water For more than a decade, families with young children have swam in the disused quarry known as the Blue Lagoon, attracted by its tropical-looking water. But despite its appearance, the water held a dangerous secret - it is almost as toxic as bleach. Now, in a bid to prevent people from bathing in the disused quarry at Harpur Hill, near Buxton, Derbyshire, the council has taken the incredible step of dying it black. Dangerous: This disused quarry in Derbyshire - known as the Blue Lagoon - has been dyed black to prevent people from swimming in it Damaging: Parents and children have swam in the waters of the Blue Lagoon for more than a decade. But the water is almost as toxic as bleach Tropical: This picture shows how the Blue Lagoon looked before it was turned black The water, which has a pH level of 11.3, is so dangerous it could cause fungal infection such as thrush, skin complaints and severe stomach problems. Signs also warn swimmers that the water contains car wrecks, dead animals, excrement and rubbish. However, when the weather warms up, swimmers largely ignore the warnings - prompting the drastic action to transform its colour. Local business owner Rachel Thomas said she thought changing the colour of the quarry water has already made a difference. Grim: The water also contains car wrecks, dead animals, excrement and rubbish Mess: Rubbish bottles are pictured surrounding the waters of The Blue Lagoon Hazardous: This warning sign was placed near the Blue Lagoon, but some swimmers still decided to take to the dangerous water Ms Thomas said: 'It’s not pretty any more. They don’t think they’re on holiday in the Bahamas any more, they know they’re in Harpur Hill. 'It was absolutely beautiful to look at but was horrendously dangerous.' The incredible blue colouring of the water is caused by the surrounding limestone rocks which leach calcite crystals into the water, turning it turquoise. Worrying: Many signs warn people against entering the water. But despite this swimmers often ignore the advice during warmer weather Unpleasant: This sign also details some of the nasty health problems which people can pick-up from swimming in the water The alkalinity comes from calcium oxide, a white powder which would have originally been left around the site as a by-product of the quarrying process. Councils have no powers to prevent trespass because the land is privately owned and the water can’t be drained into the water supply because it is so toxic.Yet another study that confirms the urgent need to switch to cleaner energy sources for health reasons. Here we have unborn children affected by the air pollution their mothers breathe. Burning fossil fuels releases polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which we all breathe in but these chemicals affect the mental development of unborn children. Other new studies show smog causes increases in heart attacks, and reduces blood’s ability to transport oxygen. So why the high-profile fight over climate change and urgent need to reduce fossil fuel use? Might it happen that fossil energy companies desperate to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of proﬁts, actively encourage (if not directly fund) confusion regarding the inconvenient scientiﬁc results on climate and public health? — Stephen [UPDATE: “Urban air pollutants may damage IQs before baby’s first breath, scientists say” – Environmental Health News July 26, 2010] April 2010 — A study by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH) carried out in Krakow, Poland has found that prenatal exposure to pollutants can adversely affect children’s cognitive development at age 5, confirming previous findings in a New York City (NYC) study. Researchers report that children exposed to high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Krakow had a significant reduction in scores on a standardized test of reasoning ability and intelligence at age 5. The study findings are published today online in Environmental Health Perspectives. PAHs are released into the air from the burning of fossil fuels for transportation, heating, energy production, and from other combustion sources. “The effect on intelligence was comparable to that seen in NYC children exposed prenatally to the same air pollutants,” noted Frederica Perera, professor of Environmental Health Sciences and director of the CCCEH at the Mailman School of Public Health, and senior author. “This finding is of concern because IQ is an important predictor of future academic performance, and PAHs are widespread in urban environments and throughout the world.” “These results contribute to the cumulative body of published evidence linking ambient air pollution levels and adverse health effects in children and are clearly relevant to public health policy,” says Susan Edwards, study lead author. via Children’s cognitive ability can be affected by mother’s exposure to urban air pollutants. 44.109380 -79.120461“Those guys have your back 100 percent. They know how to motivate me. They were checking in on me, calling me every day when I wasn't there, making sure that I'm feeling good. They still check in with me all the time. “The program that they've built for me has gotten me back better than I've ever been.” For DeVito, the road to recovery from his torn Achilles wasn’t one he had to go through alone, as perennial Pro Bowl linebacker Derrick Johnson also suffered a torn Achilles in that dreadful Week 1 loss to the Titans. While it can never be seen as a positive for two of your leaders on defense to be injured, the fact that they were able to go through the rehab process together might have benefitted them both. "With the type of leader that [Derrick Johnson] is and the example that he sets, I was able to try to compete with him and catch up to him in these drills, which is difficult to do,” DeVito explained. “This is one of the most athletic, competitive guys in the NFL and I get to train with him and compete with him every day to get back, so man—that was incredible. “If I had gone through this process without him, I'd be in a totally different place.” One thing is for certain; the Chiefs are in a better place because DeVito and his family wanted to stay a part of the Kansas City community. Not just because of what he’s able to contribute on the field, but because of the example he sets and leadership he provides to a young football team. Mutual respect between a player and the organization, combined with the support of a community has put the Chiefs in a better position than they would have been if that weren’t the case. It’s truly a synergy that manifests itself on Sundays in the fall at Arrowhead, a time DeVito is excited to experience in uniform once again.If they weren’t so venal– and so adapt at taking very good care of themselves– you might feel sorry for Republican members of Congress. Here they have been spending all month worrying if voters are going to connect the dots between massive campaign "contributions" from Big Oil (almost a quarter billion dollars since 1990– 75% of it to Republicans, most of the rest to the Republican wing of the Democratic Party) and the policies that brought on, at least in part, the high gasoline prices. But with the threat still looming that the Democrats might actually expose them by helping voters connect those dots, suddenly there’s a new challenge facing them: massive donations of VECO bribes that Stevens spread around the Republican caucus. So far none only a few of the GOP senators who took the tainted money have agreed to give it back. And Stevens has been quite the little money launderer. He’s donated a cool $725,000 directly to the NRSC so they’d be able to pay for their little operations, like stealing the 2002 New Hampshire Senate race for John Sununu. But he’s also been handing out VECO and other tainted funds all across the corrupt party. This year alone some of the beneficiaries of Stevens’ shady Northern Lights PAC have included: Lamar Alexander (R-TN- $10,000) John Barrasso (R-WY- $10,000) Saxby Chambliss (R-GA- $10,000) Norm Coleman (R-MN- $10,000) Susan Collins (R-ME- $10,000) John Cornyn (R-TX- $5,000) Elizabeth Dole (R-NC- $10,000) James Inhofe (R-OK- $9,000) Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $7,500) Pat Roberts (R-KS- $10,000) + $5,000 more to Roberts’ Preserving America’s Traditions PAC Gordon Smith (R-OR- $10,000) John Sununu (R-NH- $10,000) Roger Wicker (R-MS- $5,000) Don Young (R-AK- $10,000) Over the years, Stevens has redistributed immense sums of money– bribes– to Republicans. Now they don’t want to give the money back, of course. Yesterday, Tom Allen’s campaign let Maine newspapers know that $20,000 has gone into Susan Collins’ coffers, although she kicked back $5,000 to Stevens. That seems to be a pattern with him. He gives some of his ill-gotten gains to other Republicans and then they give part of it back to him. In guess this is perfectly acceptable in Washington, where these crooks make their own incredibly lax rules. Yesterday afternoon Jeff Merkley pointed out that over the years Stevens has doled out $39,000 to Gordon Smith. Merkley isn’t asking Smith to return the tainted money to Stevens (who needs it for his legal defense team); he’s asking him "to donate the money to charities to help provide health insurance to Oregon children." Smith refused at first but with Merkley pounding him he finally agreed to turn over a small portion of the tainted dough. Meanwhile Smith has taken more than $300,000 in campaign contributions from oil and gas interests, while delivering $18 billion in tax giveaways for oil companies and opposing measures to end excessive speculation on oil prices. I doubt he’ll give any of that back. And what about Collins, Sununu, Cornyn, Coleman and the rest of the crooks? Yesterday Jim Slattery pointed out that Stevens and his crooked PAC "donated $19,785 to Kansas Senator Pat Roberts. In 2005, Roberts voted in favor of Steven’s wasteful $230 million ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ in Alaska. "This is precisely the reason why so many people are sick and tired of old Washington politics," Slattery said. "After 40 years in Washington, Roberts is willing to take money from a friend and then vote in favor of that friend’s pet project. "Kansans deserve better," Slattery said. "Kansans deserve a senator who will put their needs ahead of those in Alaska." Slattery called for Roberts to donate the money to charity. "As chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, Roberts should immediately donate an amount equal to the contributions he received from Stevens to a local charity." Roberts has refused to give up a dime. Ditto for James Inhofe, who has also been part of this money laundering scheme and won’t divest himself of any of it. [Cross-posted at Down With Tyranny.]There are various payment processing rates that apply to credit and debit card transactions. Visa and MasterCard do not publish their rules and regulations or the payment processing standards required to get the lowest interchange rate. It’s up to credit card processing companies to understand and implement them to their merchants’ benefit. A high downgrade rate may indicate that your processor does not know the standards, or may be reluctant to implement best practices or new rules changes. The application of these rates is based on a variety of factors related to the particular circumstances of the sale and the way the payment is processed, as well as on the type of the card that was used. Typically payments processed in a card-not-present environment (e.g. online or over the phone) are assessed higher processing fees than payments processed in a face-to-face setting. Payments made with regular consumer types of cards are generally processed at lower rates than payments made with rewards, business-to-business or commercial cards. Debit cards are processed at lower interchange rates than credit cards. In order to simplify the pricing for their merchants, the majority of the processing companies have elected to use various tiered pricing models (two-tiered, three-tiered, six-tiered, etc.). There are three general classifications used in the various tiered pricing models: Qualified Transaction (also referred to as the Swiped Rate) This is the rate charged per each transaction when the card is physically swiped through a credit card terminal. When a transaction is processed in accordance with the rules and standards established in the Payment Processing Agreement, signed by the merchant and the processing bank, and It involves a regular consumer credit card, It is processed at the most favorable rate. This rate is called a “Qualified Rate” and is set in the merchant’s Payment Processing Agreement. The Qualified Rate
has labored to raise the $1.6 billion required to secure bail for its founder and chief. The court rejected the lawyers’ proposal that the company pay the sum in installments or that he is held on ‘house arrest’. The assets sales may finally help free the tarnished Sahara and in turn help repay some of the millions of small town and rural Indian investors who deposited their life savings with Sahara’s ‘chit funds’, a financial instrument that was subsequently banned by SEBI. The controversial businessman has lived the high life, hobnobbing with politicians and movie stars, sponsoring India’s cricket team and co-owning a Formula One team. He once owned an airline. The tycoon bought a controlling stake in New York’s historic Plaza Hotel in November 2012 for a reported $575 million and London’s Grosvenor House for $726 million in end 2010. He purchased the Dreams Downtown Hotel for $220 million. Sahara had hoisted the Indian flag on these hotel properties and talked of Indian pride. The hotels are mortgaged to the Bank of China. According to one estimate, the iconic Grosvenor Hotel in Mayfair in London alone could now fetch upwards of $1 billion.David Stockman’s Scathing Indictment Of GOP Fiscal Policy Twenty-five years after retiring as President Reagan's Budget Director, David Stockman is back with a scathing indictment of Republican fiscal policies over the past four decades. Doug Mataconis · · 26 comments David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s first Budget Director, has a rather devastating critique of Republican economic policies going back some 40 years in today’s New York Times: IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase. More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes. Barry Ritholz summarizes the basic charges of Stockman’s indictment, although the entire article is definitely worth reading in full regardless of which side of the argument you’re on: • The total US debt, including states and municipalities, will soon reach $18 trillion dollars. That is a Greece-like 120% of GDP. • Supply Side tax cuts for the wealthy are based on “money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesiansism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.” • Republicans abandoned the belief that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — government, trade, central banks private households and businesses. • Once fiscal conservatism was abandoned, it led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. • The Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement. • Who is to blame? Milton Friedman. In 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold. • According to Friedman, “The free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.” What actually occurred was “impossible.” Stockman calls it “Friedman’s $8 trillion error.” • Ideological tax-cutters are what killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion. • America’s debt explosion has resulted from the Republican Party’s embrace, three decades ago, of the insidious Supply Side doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts. • The GOP controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006: Combine neocon warfare spending with entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects and you end up with a GOP welfare/warfare state driving the federal spending machine. • It was Paul Volcker who crushed inflation and enabled a solid economic rebound — not the Reagan Supply Side Tax cuts. • Republicans believed the “delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.” • Over George W. Bush 8 years in office, non-defense appropriations gained 65%. • Fiscal year 2009 (GWB last budget): Tax-cutters reduced federal revenues to 15% of GDP — lower than they had been since the 1940s. • The expansion of our financial sector has been vast and unproductive. Stockman blames (tho but not by name): 1) Greenspan, for flooding financial markets with freely printed money; and 2) Phil Gramm, for removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. • The shadow banking system grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008 (see Gramm, above). • Trillion-dollar financial conglomerates are not free enterprises — they are wards of the state, living on virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets. • From 2002 to 2006, the top 1% of Americans received two-thirds of the gain in national income. Now, Stockman is no stranger to being a bit of a gadfly in Republican circles. Less than a year after he had taken to the office, he was famously “taken to the woodshed” by President Reagan after being quoted in a long Atlantic article making comments critical of the very policies he was charged with implementing. Stockman stayed in office until 1985 and largely disappeared from public life at that point, however he has resurfaced recently as a strong critic of the policies his party has implemented over the past decades: Stockman is especially severe on his former House colleague Dick Cheney, who as vice president insisted: “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” “There are big questions about how good Dick’s view of foreign policy was,” Stockman tells me, “but his possible errors there are nothing compared to how far off base he was in economic policy. That is a clueless statement, and symptomatic of why I hold the Republican Party so responsible for the mess we’re in. The Republican Party is supposed to be the conservative party. The Democratic Party is supposed to be the irresponsible party. But somehow we lost that.” Indeed, and I think it’s on that simple point — rather than on his critiques of Friedman’s monetarism which may or may not be historically correct — that Stockman is most right. At some point along the way, the GOP lost its way when it came to fiscal conservatism. If it ever actually had it. Republicans came close during the Reagan era, but even Ronald Reagan was not strong enough to even try to take on the New Deal or the Great Society. For example, instead of eliminating the Department of Education, as he had promised during his Presidential campaign, Reagan ended up turning it into a bully pulpit and increasing the budget. Today, that Department is as secure in it’s existence as any other in the cabinet. Then, when the GOP took control of Congress in 1994, and the White House in 2000, the desire to use the levers of power to create “compassionate conservatism” won our over any semblance of fiscal conservatism. Instead of tax cuts and spending cuts, we got tax cuts along with a trillion dollar entitlement program, a massive expansion of the Federal Government’s role in education, and two wars. That’s not fiscal conservatism it is, as others have said, fiscal insanity. Stockman closes with what he foresees as our near-term economic future: The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing — as suggested by last week’s news that the national economy grew at an anemic annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter. Under these circumstances, it’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever. Indeed. As much as some might protest, it would appear that the Keynesian impulse in the GOP that started with Richard Nixon never really went away.LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Consumers who illegally download copyrighted films, music or television shows might see their Internet speed slowed or access restricted under an industry anti-piracy effort announced on Thursday. A sign of Verizon Wireless is seen at its store in Westminster, Colorado April 26, 2009. REUTERS/Rick Wilking U.S. Internet service providers, including Verizon Communications Inc, Comcast Corp, Time Warner Cable Inc, Cablevision Systems Corp and AT&T Inc agreed to alert customers, up to six times, when it appears their account is used for illegal downloading. Warnings will come as e-mails or pop-up messages. If suspected illegal activity persists, the provider might temporarily slow Internet speed or redirect the browser to a specific Web page until the customer contacts the company. The user can seek an independent review of whether they acted legally. Internet access will not be terminated, according to a statement from the industry partners behind the effort. The coalition includes groups representing movie studios, independent film makers and record labels. The group argues that content piracy costs the U.S. economy more than 373,000 jobs, $16 billion in lost earnings and $3 billion in tax revenue each year. Industry officials said they thought most people would stop copyright violations once they were warned about illegal activity. The warnings also might alert parents unaware of their children’s activity. “We are confident that, once informed that content theft is taking place on their accounts, the great majority of broadband subscribers will take steps to stop it,” James Assey, executive vice president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, said in a statement. Two consumer groups said the effort had the “potential to be an important educational vehicle” to help reduce online copyright infringement, but voiced concern about the sanctions. “We are particularly disappointed that the agreement lists Internet account suspension among the possible remedies,” the Center for Democracy & Technology and Public Knowledge said in a statement. The groups said it would be “wrong for any (Internet service provider) to cut off subscribers, even temporarily, based on allegations that have not been tested in court.” The Obama administration welcomed the industry effort. “We believe it will have a significant impact on reducing online piracy,” Victoria Espinel, the U.S. intellectual property enforcement coordinator, wrote on the White House blog. The administration expects the organization that implements the program to consult with advocacy groups “to assure that its practices are fully consistent with the democratic values that have helped the Internet to flourish,” she added.In Chinese tradition, a ghost marriage ( Chinese : 冥婚; pinyin : mínghūn ; literally:'spirit marriage' ) is a marriage in which one or both parties are deceased. [1] :99 Other forms of ghost marriage are practiced worldwide, from Sudan, to France since 1959 (see Levirate marriage, Ghost marriage in Sudan and Posthumous marriage ). The origins of Chinese ghost marriage are largely unknown, and reports of it being practiced today can be found. [2] Chinese ghost marriage was usually set up by the family of the deceased and performed for a number of reasons, including the marriage of an engaged couple before one member's death,[3]:29 to integrate an unmarried daughter into a patrilineage,[1]:82 to ensure the family line is continued,[3]:29 or to maintain that no younger brother is married before an elder brother.[3]:29 Previously engaged Edit Upon the death of her fiancé, a bride could choose to go through with the wedding, in which the groom was represented by a white cockerel at the ceremony.[3]:29 However, some women were hesitant since this form of ghost marriage required her to participate in the funeral ritual, mourning customs (including strict dress and conduct standards), take a vow of celibacy,[3]:29 and immediately take up residence with his family.[1]:91 A groom had the option of marrying his late fiancée, with no disadvantages, but there have been no records of such weddings.[3]:29 Women and ghost marriage Edit Providing a deceased daughter with a patrilineage Edit When it comes to death customs, an unmarried Chinese woman has no descendants to worship her or care for her as part of a lineage.[4]:127 In every household, an altar is prominently displayed with the spirit tablets of the paternal ancestors and the images of the gods. A married woman's tablet is kept at the altar of her husband's family.[5] However, should a woman of eligible age pass away unmarried, her family is prohibited from placing her tablet on the altar of her natal home.[1]:83 Instead, she will be "given a temporary paper tablet, placed not on the domestic altar but in a corner near the door."[1]:83 Hence, the important duty of Chinese parents in marrying off their children[6]:254 becomes increasingly important for their daughters. Since women are only able to acquire membership in descent lines through marriage,[7]:148 ghost marriage became a viable solution to ensure that unmarried, deceased daughters still had "affiliation to a male descent line"[1]:82 and could be appropriately cared for after death. Another death custom concerning an unmarried daughter prohibited her from dying in her natal home. Instead, a temple or "Death House"[1]:82 for spinsters was built or families take their daughter to a shed, empty house, or outlying buildings to die.[1]:82 Living, unmarried daughters Edit Not only did the Chinese customs concerning death greatly burden the family, but an unmarried daughter became a source of great embarrassment and concern. In Charlotte Ikels "Parental Perspectives on the Significance of Marriage" she reports, "Traditionally, girls who did not marry were regarded as a threat to the entire family and were not allowed to continue living at home. Even in contemporary Hong Kong, I was told that unmarried women are assumed to have psychological problems. Presumably no normal person would remain unmarried voluntarily."[6]:254 For girls who choose to remain unmarried, "bride-initiated spirit marriage" (or a ghost marriage initiated by a living bride) was a successful "marriage-resistance practice"[1]:92 that allowed them to remain single while still being integrated into a lineage. However, it did come with some negative connotations, being called a "fake spirit-marriage" or referred to as "marrying a spirit tablet", and a way to avoid marriage.[1]:92–93 Continuing the family line Edit If a son died before marriage, his parents arranged a ghost marriage to provide him with progeny to continue the lineage and give him his own descendants.[8] "A man in China does not marry so much for his own benefit as for that of the family: to continue the family name; to provide descendants to keep up the ancestral worship; and to give a daughter-in-law to his mother to wait on her and be, in general, a daughter to her."[8] Occasionally, a live woman is taken as a wife for a dead man, but this is rare.[3]:29 The ceremony itself took on characteristics of both a marriage and a funeral, with the spirit of the deceased bride being "led" by a medium or priest, while her body is transferred from her grave to be laid next to her husband.[3]:29 If the family was "suitably rich to tempt a [living] girl,"[3]:29 the ghost marriage might profit them with the asset of having a daughter-in-law. Since a daughter is not considered "a potential contributor to the lineage into which she is born," but rather "it is expected that she will give the children she bears and her adult labor to the family of her husband,"[4]:127 the wife of a deceased son would benefit her husband's family by becoming a caregiver in their home.[6]:255 Once the deceased son had a wife, the family could adopt an heir, or a "grandson",[3]:29 to continue on the family line. The purpose of the daughter-in-law was not to produce offspring, as she was to live a chaste life, but she became the "social instrument" to enable the family to adopt.[1]:100 The family preferred to adopt patrilineally related male kin,[1]:95 usually through a brother assigning one of his own sons to the lineage of the deceased.[9] The adoption was carried out by writing up a contract, which was then placed under the dead man's tablet.[9] As an adopted son, his duties were to make ancestral offerings on his birth and death dates, and he was additionally "entitled to inherit his foster father's share of the family estate."[9] Requests from the afterworld Edit Ghost marriages are often set up by request of the spirit of the deceased, who, upon "finding itself without a spouse in the other world,"[3]:29 causes misfortune for its natal family, the family of its betrothed,[3]:29 or for the family of the deceased's married sisters.[10]:141 "This usually takes the form of sickness by one or more family members. When the sickness is not cured by ordinary means, the family turns to divination and learns of the plight of the ghost through a séance."[10]:141 More benignly, a spirit may appear to a family member in a dream and request a spouse. Marjorie Topley, in "Ghost Marriages Among the Singapore Chinese: A Further Note," relates the story of one 14-year-old Cantonese boy who died. A month later he appeared to his mother in a dream saying that he wished to marry a girl who had recently died in Ipoh, Perak. The son did not reveal her name; his mother used a Cantonese spirit medium and "through her the boy gave the name of the girl together with her place of birth and age, and details of her horoscope which were subsequently found to be compatible with his."[11]:71 Other instances of ghost marriage Edit Because Chinese custom dictates that younger brothers should not marry before their elder brothers, a ghost marriage for an older, deceased brother may be arranged just before a younger brother's wedding to avoid "incurring the disfavour of his brother's ghost."[11]:29 Additionally, in the days of immigration, ghost marriages were used to "cement a bond of friendship between two families."[11]:30 However, there have been no recent cases reported.[11]:30Only a few families control our politics, government and country. In fact, only 178 families control our political system, according to the 2014 study of Julio Teehankee, college dean at De La Salle University in Manila. Around 75 percent of the members of Congress and around 80 percent of the governors and mayors belong to political dynasties, according to the 2014 study of Ronald Mendoza, director of the Asian Institute of Management’s Policy Center. ADVERTISEMENT These dynasties have captured Congress and the leaderships of local government units. They have become a “major obstacle” to progress in the rural areas. Too often, public funds and other resources intended to develop the rural areas get hijacked by corrupt local politicians and do not reach the people. As a result, the wealth and businesses of politicians often flourish, while their constituents remain poor. One of the findings of the Mendoza study is that poverty is highest in areas controlled by political dynasties, with a few exceptions. Thus, even if many of these dynasties have been in power for decades, and their members simultaneously occupy positions of leadership in their areas, poverty in these areas remains high. The same is true at the national level. Political dynasties have also become a “major obstacle” to national development and progress. Because the dynasts have captured Congress, they determine what laws to pass. They would not pass a law to abolish the pork barrel system because they and their relatives in the LGUs are the biggest beneficiaries of it. They would not pass the freedom of information or antidynasty bills because these are against their interests. Political dynasties are a worsening problem. In the 1980s, it was unheard of for spouses or for a parent and his/her child to become the mayor and vice mayor of a town or city. Today, it is the trend—and it is increasing at an alarming rate. Perhaps at least 20 percent of our LGUs today have this notorious tandem of husband-wife and parent-child as governor-vice governor or mayor-vice mayor. If the 20 percent becomes 70 percent, ours will become a totally failed democracy; it will become a “familicracy,” a system where a few families control our political system, government and country. In the 1970s, there was only one dictatorship in the country: the Marcos dictatorship. Today, we have many “small dictatorships” in the form of political dynasties. In business or in any organization, leadership is paramount. The rise and fall of a nation, or a community, depends on the leadership. While a good president can do a lot, it is still the leadership of the representatives, governors and mayors that spells progress in the countryside. The tragedy is that many of our leaders have become a big part of our problems. Our tragedy is that, despite our Christianity, we have some of the most unchristian leaders. Our tragedy is that many, if not most, of our leaders do not truly love our people. They do not see God in their fellow Filipinos, though more than 80 percent of them are Christians, and despite the fact that one of the most fundamental teachings of Jesus Christ is: “Whatever you do to the least of your neighbors, you do to Me.” If our next president will not consider the political dynasties and the pork barrel system as a big part of our problems, the situation in our country will get even worse. The dynasties will consolidate their political fiefdoms. The pork barrel system will continue to feed the dynasties. Public funds intended for the poor in rural areas will continue to be hijacked by corrupt politicians under the pork barrel system. Our GDP may continue to grow, but the growth will continue to be noninclusive. ADVERTISEMENT What is needed in the countryside is leadership—sincere, competent and dedicated leadership in the LGUs. What our country truly needs is a leader who clearly sees corruption as a problem and understands that the leaders who engage in it and the evil system that allows it are the bigger part of the equation; a leader who clearly sees that political dynasties are a big obstacle to our development and progress; a leader who clearly sees that the corruption in the pork barrel system is the most hideous of all, for the public funds are set aside by law for the people, and stealing them is stealing food, medicines, books, schools and roads from our people. Jose Rizal talked of a “social cancer” in Philippine society during his time. But the Spanish colonizers, the major cause of this cancer, left the country more than a century ago. Yet the cancer has remained, and it is worsening. A cancer is caused by a few bad cells that keep multiplying until they become the dominant cells in one’s body. That’s what is happening in our society today. The few bad leaders in our society are the major cause of our present-day social cancer. They are in control of our politics, Congress and LGUs. Their insatiable greed for wealth and power cause our people to suffer. They are destroying our society. We must find a solution to our present-day social cancer. We must find a way to heal our nation. Support the People’s Initiative for the Abolition of the Pork Barrel System. This will do away with the carcass that feeds political vultures. Alex Lacson (alexlacson12@gmail.com) is the author of the book “12 Little Things Every Filipino Can Do To Help Our Country.” RELATED STORIES Anti-political dynasty bill to affect many aspirants in 2016 polls–solon Evaluate candidates carefully, junk the dynasts Read Next LATEST STORIES MOST READOn the eve of its 15th World Cup, rugby league has suffered the humiliation of missing out to pole dancing, foot golf, dodgeball and kettlebell lifting in its bid to be recognised internationally as a sport. The embarrassment comes just days after league's top official, Rugby League International Federation CEO David Collier, announced he was stepping down from the post. World game: The Rugby League World Cup is about to start, but it's not recognised internationally as a sport. Credit:AAP The RLIF has been repeatedly frustrated in its bid to be recognised as a distinct sport from rugby union, which would allow it access to government funding and insurance for players in many countries where this is denied. In the United Arab Emirates self-administered rugby league is illegal, in South Africa it has been told it must be run by rugby union authorities and Morocco police have shut down matches. The Global Association of International Sports Federations (formerly SportAccord) general assembly in Aarhus, Denmark, has announced it had accepted arm wrestling, dodgeball, foot golf, kettlebell lifting, poker, pole sports and table soccer as observers.Cedar Wright, Alex Honnold, and Sean Leary in the Palisades of California, on the 2013 Sufferfest. More than 70 ascents of El Cap. The Nose in 2 hours, 36 minutes. A speed record on the Salathe. Three El Cap routes in less than 24 hours. El Cap and Half Dome all free in a day. Big wall first ascents in Patagonia, Baffin, and Antarctica. Hundreds of wingsuit jumps from most of these formations. Any one of these accomplishments would be a crowning lifetime achievement for most climbers. Who is this badass? It’s not one of the “big names” in climbing, though it should be. My friend Sean “Stanley” Leary flew under the radar while accumulating one of the most impressive Yosemite climbing resumes of all time. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website This past spring, Sean leapt off a cliff in Zion National Park like he had done hundreds of times before. He flew in a wingsuit at more than 100 mph into a notch, then, it is presumed, entered a shadow, lost visibility, clipped a tree, and as BASE jumpers somewhat callously put it, “He went in.” In that viciously unfair, bullshit moment, I didn’t just lose a climbing partner and friend, I lost my climbing mentor, the one person, who more than any other, shaped the direction of my life. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website I was a full-on gumby and had only been climbing three months when I met Stanley for the first time, at a fungus-filled, full-moon, bonfire beach party on Moonstone Beach near Humboldt, California. A friend introduced us as “both climbers,” and later that evening I was pseudo-belaying Sean as he toproped up a swirling, melting face. This was the beginning of perhaps one of the sketchiest climbing mentorships of all time. With few motivated climbers to turn to, Sean really had no choice but to take me under his wing. The tutelage that followed won’t be found in Freedom of the Hills, and it would probably give the AMGA cold sweats. My first lesson from Stanley occurred on our first full day out. He “guided” me up my first “lead climb,” a free solo of an 80-foot 5.9 on Moonstone Beach. “You’ve got this dude; just relax,” he coached me, as I fought a wicked pump and deadpointed for jugs more than 40 feet off the ground. That day, I learned to breathe and relax in the face of danger, a highly underrated skill. By the time I started leading with a rope, it actually seemed pretty mellow. Stanley introduced me to each aspect of climbing in about the most unorthodox way possible. It was often too rainy in Humboldt to climb, unless you were willing to climb in the rain, so that we did—ALL THE TIME. I learned that just because conditions aren’t perfect, it doesn’t mean something is unclimbable. I’ve put this lesson to good use in places like Baffin and the Karakoram. Sean instructed me that it was prouder (and more efficient) to skip as many bolts as possible while sport climbing, and even better to solo the route. As I learned to trad climb, he taught me that it was more honorable to place only stoppers. He methodically threw me onto dangerous and difficult climbs. Slowly but surely, I took on “Stanley style,” a risky approach to climbing defined by heart-racing thrills and near misses. A year into my “dementorship,” we bolted a ground-up first ascent on a local limestone crag, using only one very small hook and a hand drill, because “rap-bolting is for pussies.” We both took 60-foot whippers in the process. I slowly learned to trust my abilities, to recognize the difference between just being scared and being in true danger, and to be quite comfortable on runouts and sketchy gear. This was not your inherently safe, homogenized, “belay card” gym-climbing education. Sean introduced me to an adrenaline-filled gladiator sport where every day could be your last. Soon I was soloing 5.10 on a daily basis because… that’s what Stanley did! Really, the lessons were as numerous as they were dubious. I learned that you could save good money on climbing shoes if you only used them when you absolutely couldn’t do the route in your bare feet. The same went for chalk. I learned that toproping was much more exciting if the rope was pulled up in 15-foot increments. I learned that if the climber is about to deck, the belayer must run at full speed to keep that from happening. Somewhat miraculously, I survived Stanley’s tutelage. All the sandbagging, soloing, and runouts had shaped me into a fast, bold climber. Later, I would put that patented “Leary boldness” to good use, setting my own speed records on El Cap and pioneering scary first ascents on the Sentinel. I almost certainly wouldn’t have a professional climbing career today if it hadn’t been for this warped dementorship. Even more important than climbing lessons, Sean educated me on the dirtbag ethic, or as he once put it, “the bullshit-free lifestyle.” He taught me that doing what you love was true success. He took me to Joshua Tree and Yosemite, and instilled in me a deep respect for these sacred places. He introduced me to countless climbing characters, and encouraged me to follow my big wall dreams. “Just move into your truck and climb,” he suggested, after I graduated from Humboldt State with a bachelor’s in English. That’s what I did. Stanley convinced me that this was an acceptable and normal course of action for someone who loved to climb. At some point along the path, I was no longer the pupil. I had become Sean’s equal in sketchiness, and when we teamed up, it was a guaranteed epic. Ironically, one of the standout examples of our unique partnership took place on one of the easiest routes in Yosemite. Sean and I had spent the day wallowing in a lethargic Yosemite summer stupor, all too common when you live there. A controlled burn had injected the “ditch” with a dark, caustic, and apocalyptic haze. But Stanley had an idea. A cloud of mosquitoes buzzed hungrily around our heads as we jogged toward Nutcracker, a five-pitch 5.8 and one of the most popular climbs in the Valley. “I can’t believe a bear broke into my car,” I lamented, as I swatted a mosquito. “You did have an empty can of herrings in your car,” Sean pointed out. “Details, details,” I retorted. “Alright, on three-two-one.” Stanley clicked his stopwatch, and we relinquished to the spastic maniacs within. We darted up through the swirling smoke with blistering speed. The 5.8 layback on the first pitch went by in 30 seconds. Stanley’s feet skated and scratched as he halfclimbed, half-dynoed up the route. This was a ridiculous, alarming, and lung-blasting pace, but I wasn’t going to let him dust me. I huffed guttural gasps and felt like I might vomit at any moment, but I stayed on his heels. If Sean fell, I would almost certainly be ripped off the face. This only egged Sean on to go faster. Sweat and sunscreen stung my eyes as I launched onto a mantel. We were climbing pitches faster than most people set an anchor. This was stupidly dangerous and absurd! But you know what? It was fucking awesome. Sean turned Nutcracker into a race course. I was hyperventilating and dizzy to the point of passing out and teetering backward off the cliff. Less than six minutes later, we lay at the top of the route, coughing and gasping the thick smoky air. For a fleeting moment, we were heroes (or at least felt like heroes). For several weeks after that, I had a chronic cough. The lessons with Sean continued, and that day drove home the fact that a shitty day can easily be transformed into an awesome one in a matter of minutes. It’s your call. A couple weeks later, we accomplished the first free ascent of the Porcelain Wall, onsight in a day, at 5.10d X. What stands out in my mind is that Stanley padded his way up a 140-foot 5.10 friction slab with no protection for the entire stretch! “That would be a classic pitch if we had bolts,” he joked. Sean was one of the boldest climbers I have ever climbed with, right up there with Honnold and Potter. Eventually I got the chance to repay Sean for the life of adventure he had gifted me, but not in a way I would ever have wished. That winter, Sean lost the love of his life, Brazilian climber Roberta Nunes. On their way to Moab, the car rolled, and she died in his arms. I raced to see Sean in Moab. Understandably, he was a complete mess and no fun to be around. Totally dark. I cooked him food, got him out climbing, and tried to keep him occupied. At times, I thought he might kill himself. He’d lower off a pitch and start sobbing. At one point he had an outburst. “What’s the fucking point?!” he screamed, as he threw his phone and wallet into the desert, then took off in his car. I fretted for hours, confronting the reality that I might not see him alive again. Slowly, Stanley clawed back to life, and soon took an obsessive interest in BASE jumping. He channeled his loss and grief into learning a new and dangerous sport. It wasn’t long before he had jumped El Cap and Half Dome. Sean was still an emotional mess. I didn’t really like the idea of BASE jumping, but I couldn’t deny that it seemed to be therapeutic for him. “Every time I jump, I have to pull the cord and save my life,” he confided in me. Sean had promised Roberta that, if she died before him, he would scatter her ashes in Patagonia, where she loved to climb. Sean carried those ashes and the pain of her death with him for two years, unwilling and unable to let go. Finally, he made it to Patagonia with Renan Ozturk and myself. Despite crap weather and endless winds, we managed to put up a first ascent, and Stanley became the first person to wingsuit off El Mocho. He packed Roberta’s ashes in the chute. When it opened, Roberta returned to the mountains she loved. In Patagonia, Sean finally let go of his pain. He began to laugh and then even love again. I was so happy to see him marry a sexy and whip-smart medical student named Mieka. Stanley married a doctor, and I married a lawyer. “Dirtbags like us need sugar mamas,” I joked with him. Right before he died, Sean was enjoying a personal renaissance. He was starting to get some of the recognition and support he deserved, including trips to Baffin and Antarctica with Leo Houlding, and some well-earned sponsorships. He was pioneering numerous legal BASE exits in North America and working on a cutting-edge free climb on Mount Watkins with Jimmy Hayden. He was also going to be a father. I’ve lost some of my best friends to climbing, and if I’m honest, I’m still confused and conflicted by that. We were supposed to be old farts talking shit and trading war stories some day. Sean’s death made me furious. Fuck BASE jumping, I thought. But as reality set in, I had to accept the fact that if Stanley had played it safe, he wouldn’t have been the guy I loved and respected. Stanley lives on in the countless climbing and life lessons I learned from him, and I continue on the trajectory that Stanley created for me. Before he died, Sean helped Steph Davis with her healing process after she lost her husband, Mario, to BASE jumping. “Right now your grief is this giant gaping hole with sharp edges, but as you move forward in life, the edges soften and other beautiful things start to grow around it, flowers and trees of experiences. The hole never goes away, but it becomes gentler and sort of a garden in your soul, a place you can visit when you want to be near your love.” I miss you and love you, Stanley. Here’s to raising hell in the garden. Cedar Wright is a professional climber and contributing editor for Climbing. Beware of him honing his Stanley style at a crag near you.Jun 17 2015 5:30PM GMT Tags: Thanks! We'll email you when relevant content is added and updated. Following Follow IBM Thanks! We'll email you when relevant content is added and updated. Following Follow Mainframe Thanks! We'll email you when relevant content is added and updated. Following Follow PC Thanks! We'll email you when relevant content is added and updated. Following Follow Storage You know that you’re getting old when you start finding stuff you actually used in museums. I was reminded of this on a recent trip to Seattle, where we visited the Living Computer Museum. Like the Experience Music Project, but not nearly so flashy,
the panel. Easy peasy. The last and final thing I’d like to do I have to wait until the weather gets warmer, and that’s to spray a clear coat over the whole thing to completely and totally seal it in. I want to make sure this thing is close to indestructible. Final thoughts-I do have some more ideas for it to make it better.My oldest made the suggestion of adding brass corners to the panels.With the warmth of the wood stain, brass looks amazing against it.I did find some decorative brass corners online for about $2.99 for a pack of 4.They screw into place, and I think they would totally set off the whole thing.I also have a couple of magnet strips to add to the tops of a couple of the panels.On one of the Instructables I found ages ago, a guy had done that to one he’d built and I think it’s brilliant.Rip’s always trying to find ways of getting his stuff a little better organized at the table and out of the way.With the magnet strips he could put paper clips on the top of a map/character sheet/NPC card/etc. and then tack it to the panel.Easy peasy.The last and final thing I’d like to do I have to wait until the weather gets warmer, and that’s to spray a clear coat over the whole thing to completely and totally seal it in.I want to make sure this thing is close to indestructible. Anyway, I hope I didn’t ramble too much and you found this to be useful. This was a fun project to work on and I’m so glad he loves it. I have to take care of my favorite DM ya know. ;)Crawford has also published the autobiographical work Parcel Arrived Safely: Tied With String, which covers the changes in his career over the multiple decades. Since 1987, he has served as the leader of the Sick Children's Trust as well and acted as a public face for the British social cause organization. [1] During his early years, Crawford divided his time between the army camp in Wiltshire, where he and his mother lived during the war, and the Isle of Sheppey off the coast of Kent. The isle was where his mother had grown up and where Crawford would later live with his mother and maternal grandparents. He attended St Michael's, a Catholic school in Bexleyheath which was run by nuns who Crawford later described as not being shy in their use of corporal punishment. At the end of the Second World War, his mother remarried, this time to a grocer, Lionel Dennis "Den" Ingram. The couple moved to London, where Crawford attended Oakfield Preparatory School, Dulwich, where he was known as Michael Ingram. His mother's second marriage was abusive, according to Crawford. [6] Crawford was brought up by his mother, Doris Agnes Mary Pike, and her parents, Montague Pike and his wife, Edith (née O'Keefe), in what Crawford described as a "close-knit Roman Catholic family". His maternal grandmother was born in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and lived to be 99 years old. [2] His mother's first husband, Arthur Dumbell "Smudge" Smith, [3] who was not his biological father, was killed, aged 22, on 6 September 1940 during the Battle of Britain, less than a year after they married. [4] [5] Sixteen months after Smith's death, Crawford was born, the result of a short-lived relationship, and given his mother's surname, which was that of her first husband. Beginning Edit He made his first stage appearance in the role of Sammy the Little Sweep in his school production of Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera, conducted by Donald Mitchell,[7] which was then transferred to Brixton Town Hall in London. He auditioned, unsuccessfully, for the role of Miles in Britten's The Turn of the Screw - the role being given to another boy soprano, David Hemmings; but it appears that Crawford's audition sufficiently impressed Britten as in 1955 he hired him to play Sammy, alternating with David Hemmings, in another production of Let's Make an Opera, this time at the Scala Theatre in London.[8] He also participated in the recording of that opera (as Michael Ingram, singing the role of Gay Brook) made that same year, conducted by the composer.[8][9] Then in 1958 he was hired by the English Opera Group to create the role of Jaffet in another Britten opera, Noye's Fludde, based on the story of Noah and the Great Flood.[7] Crawford remembers that it was while working in this production that he realised he seriously wanted to become an actor. It was in between performances of Let's Make an Opera and Noye's Fludde that he was advised to change his name, "to avoid confusion with a television newsman called Michael Ingram[s] who was registered with British Equity".[10] He went on to perform in a wide repertoire. Among his stage work, he performed in André Birabeau's French comedy Head of the Family, Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn, Bernard Kops's Change for the Angel, Francis Swann's Out of the Frying Pan, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and Twelfth Night, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, The Striplings, The Move After Checkmate and others. At the same time, he appeared in hundreds of BBC radio broadcasts and early BBC soap-operas, such as Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School, Emergency - Ward 10, Probation Officer, and Two Living, One Dead. He appeared as the cabin boy John Drake in the television series Sir Francis Drake, a 26-part adventure series made by ITC starring Terence Morgan and Jean Kent. He made his film debut in 1958 with leading roles in two children's films, Blow Your Own Trumpet and Soapbox Derby, for The Children's Film Foundation in Britain.[11] In 1961 Michael Crawford appeared in an episode of One Step Beyond called "The Villa" in which he played a character experimenting with strobe lights. Crawford appears in the only surviving episode of the 1960 British crime series Police Surgeon alongside Ian Hendry. This series would spawn the much better-known The Avengers. Early adult career Edit At age nineteen, he was approached to play an American, Junior Sailen, in the film The War Lover (1962), which starred Steve McQueen. To prepare for the role, he would spend hours listening to Woody Woodbury, a famous American comedian of the time, to try to perfect an American accent. After The War Lover, Crawford briefly returned to the stage and, after playing the lead role in the 1963 British film Two Left Feet, was offered a role in the British television series, Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, as the Mod-style, tough-talking, motorbike-riding Byron. It was this character that attracted film director Richard Lester to hire him for the role of Colin in The Knack …and How to Get It in 1965. The film was a huge success in the UK. Lester also cast him in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and How I Won the War, which starred Roy Kinnear and John Lennon (during the filming of which he lived in London with Lennon and his first wife Cynthia, and Gabrielle Lewis).[12] Crawford starred in The Jokers (directed by Michael Winner) with Oliver Reed in 1967. Broadway debut Edit In 1967, he made his Broadway début in Peter Shaffer's Black Comedy with Lynn Redgrave (making her début as well) in which he demonstrated his aptitude and daring for extreme physical comedy, such as walking into walls and falling down staircases. While working in the show, he was noticed by Gene Kelly and was called to Hollywood to audition for him for a part in the film adaptation of the musical Hello, Dolly!. He was cast and shared top billing with Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau. Despite becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 1969, it failed to recoup its $25 million budget at the box office. It went on to win three Academy Awards, was nominated for a further four (including Best Picture), and is now considered to be one of the greatest musical films ever.[13][14][15] His later films fared less successfully, although Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in which he played the White Rabbit, enjoyed moderate success in the UK. After performing in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and with offers of work greatly reduced and much of his salary from Hello, Dolly! lost, reportedly due to underhanded investments by his agent,[10] Crawford faced a brief period of unemployment, in which he helped his wife stuff cushions (for their upholstery business) and took a job as an office clerk in an electric company to pass the time between. During this difficult time, his marriage fell apart and divorce followed in 1975.[10] Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em Edit Crawford's acting career took off again after he appeared on the London stage in the farce No Sex Please, We're British, in which he played the part of frantic chief cashier Brian Runnicles. His performance led to an invitation to star in a BBC television comedy series about a childlike and eternally haphazard man who causes disaster everywhere he goes. Crawford was not the first choice for the role of Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. Originally, the part had been offered to comedy actor Ronnie Barker but after he and Norman Wisdom had turned it down, Crawford took on the challenge, adopting a similar characterisation to that which he used when playing Brian Runnicles. Cast alongside him was actress Michele Dotrice in the role of Frank's long-suffering wife, Betty, and the series premiered in 1973. Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em soon became one of the BBC's most popular television series. Initially, only two series were produced, from 1973 to 1975, while the show's creators felt that it should stop while at its peak. There was a brief hiatus until popular demand saw it revived for a final series in 1978. The immense popularity that followed the sitcom was due perhaps to the unusual amount of physical comedy involved. Crawford said he had always been a fan of comedians such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy, as well as the great sight gags employed in the days of silent film, and saw Some Mothers as the ideal opportunity to use such humour himself. He performed all of his own stunts during the show's run, and never used a double.[10] 1970s Edit While he was playing in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, Crawford was approached to star in the musical Billy (based on the novel Billy Liar), which opened in 1974 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. This was his first leading man role on the West End stage and helped to cement his career as both a singer and showman. The part was demanding, requiring proficiency in both song and dance, and in preparation for the role, Crawford began taking both more seriously, studying singing under the tutelage of vocal coach Ian Adam and spending hours perfecting his dancing capabilities with choreographer Onna White.[10] Billy gave the many fans of Crawford's portrayal of Frank Spencer an opportunity to see him in a broadly similar role on the stage, and was a considerable hit (904 West End performances). After the closing of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, Crawford continued to perform in plays and musicals, starring in Flowers for Algernon (1979) in the role of Charley Gordon, based on the book of the same title. He pursued another role on a very short-lived ITV sitcom, Chalk and Cheese, as the slovenly, uncouth Dave Finn. The show did not go over well with his fans: the popularity of Crawford's portrayal of Frank Spencer, and the similar Billy Fisher character, had left him somewhat typecast, to the extent that they could not accept his very different role as Dave Finn. Crawford abandoned the show during its first series and returned to theatre work.[10] 1980s Edit Condorman Edit Crawford starred in the 1981 Disney comedy/adventure film Condorman, playing an eccentric American comic book writer and illustrator named Woody Wilkins who is asked by his friend at the CIA to help a Russian woman to defect while acting out the fantasy of bringing his comic book creation, Condorman, to life.[16] Critics panned the film. On their television show, critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert featured the film in their round-up of the year's worst films pointing out the less-than-special effects such as the visible harness and cable used to suspend Condorman in the air and the obvious bluescreen effect. The film performed poorly at the box office but years later gained a cult following among Disney fans.[10] Barnum Edit Also in 1981, Crawford starred in the original London production of Cy Coleman's Barnum (1981) as the illustrious American showman P.T. Barnum. He trained at the Big Apple Circus School in New York City to prepare for the ambitious stunts, learning to walk the tight-rope, juggle and slide down a rope from the rafters of the theatre. After further training for the second opening of Barnum, he was awarded a British Amateur Gymnastics Association badge and certificate as a qualified coach.[10] Barnum opened on 11 June 1981 at the London Palladium, where it ran for 655 performances. Crawford and Deborah Grant headed the cast. It was well-received, becoming a favourite of Margaret Thatcher as well as the Queen Mother. Crawford earned his first Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical on the London stage. After the initial production of the show, he worked extensively with Torvill and Dean, and can be seen rinkside with them as they received their "perfect six" marks in the 1983 world championships for their 'Barnum' routine.[17][18] In 1984 a revival of Barnum opened in Manchester at the Opera House, ending the tour at the Victoria Palace in the West End. In 1986 this production, with a new cast, though still headed by Crawford, was recorded for television and broadcast by the BBC. Crawford's Barnum is one of the longest runs by a leading actor. The Phantom of the Opera Edit In 1984, at the final preview of Starlight Express, Crawford happened to run into the show's creator, Andrew Lloyd Webber. Lloyd Webber had met Crawford socially several times and remembered him from his work in Flowers for Algernon. He informed Crawford that he was working on a new project based on a Gaston Leroux novel and wanted to know whether he was interested. Crawford said he was, but the show was still in the early planning stages, and nothing had been decided. Several months passed, during which Lloyd Webber had already created a pitch video featuring his then-wife Sarah Brightman as the female lead Christine, and British rocker Steve Harley as the Phantom, singing the title song in the manner of a contemporary new wave video. Crawford was turned off by that, supposing the songwriter had chosen to do a "rock opera"-inspired spectacle in lieu of a more traditional operatic musical.[10] Since casting Harley, however, Lloyd Webber had also begun to regret his artistic choices. As production continued on the show, the bulk of the score was revealing itself to be far more classical and operatic, entirely unsuited to Harley's rough, contemporary voice. Wanting instead a performer with a more classic, melodic voice, as described in the original book, he began yet another search for the perfect actor to play his Phantom. Crawford's landing of the role was due in large part to the coincidence that Sarah Brightman had taken lessons with the same vocal coach as Crawford. She and her husband had arrived early for her lesson, and it was while waiting that they chanced to hear Crawford practising the aria Care Selve, from the opera Atalanta by Handel. Intrigued, Lloyd Webber asked Ian Adam who his student was. Soon after, Crawford was called in for an audition and was hired virtually on the spot.[10] Many critics were sceptical; Crawford was still largely pigeonholed as the hapless Frank Spencer, and questions were asked about Crawford's ability to manage such a vocally and dramatically demanding role. In 1986, he began his performance in London at Her Majesty's Theatre, continuing on to Broadway in 1988, and then Los Angeles in 1989. He played the role for two and a half years and over 1,300 performances, winning an Olivier Award (Best Actor in a Musical), a Tony Award (Best Performance by an Actor in a Lead Role, Musical), a New York Drama Desk Award, and a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Distinguished Achievement in Theatre (Lead Performance).[19] During the run of Phantom in Los Angeles, Crawford was asked to perform "The Music of the Night" at the Inaugural Gala for President George H. W. Bush in Washington, D.C., on 19 January 1989. At the gala, Crawford was presented with a birthday cake (it was his 47th birthday). On 29 April 1990, after three and a half years and over 1,300 performances later, Crawford left the show. He admits to having been saddened at his departure, and, during the final Lair scene, altered the Phantom's line to "Christine....I loved you...", acknowledging that this was his final performance.[20] 1990s Edit At the request of Liz Kirschner, wife of film producer David Kirschner, he obtained the role of Cornelius in 20th Century Fox's animated film Once Upon a Forest, which was produced by her husband. During his voice over sessions, Michael stated that he had a terrible time singing one of the musical numbers called "Please Wake Up". This was because he had to struggle not to cry when this was being completed, as the scenario was that his character Cornelius was singing to a child who was on the verge of death. The film was released in cinemas over the summer of 1993. 1993 also saw the release of his special, A Touch of Music In The Night, to coincide with the release of his new album of the same name.[citation needed] In 1995, Crawford created the high-profile starring role in EFX, the US$70 million production which officially opened the 1,700-seat MGM Grand Theatre in Las Vegas. The Atlantic Theater label released the companion album to EFX. Early into the run, Crawford suffered an accident during a performance (which involved him sliding from a wire hanger from the back of the theatre all the way to the stage and then jumping down 12 feet (3.7 m) to the stage itself) and left the show to recover from his injury, which resulted in an early hip replacement operation.[21] 2000s to present Edit Crawford had a short comeback to Broadway as the Count von Krolock in the short-lived musical Dance of the Vampires (2002–03). He originated the role of the morbidly obese Count Fosco in Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White, which opened at the Palace Theatre, London in September 2004. However, he was forced to leave the show three months later because of ill health caused by dehydration resulting from the enormous fat-suit he wore during the performance. He spent several months recuperating and was thus unable to reprise the role on Broadway.[22] He learned he was suffering from the post-viral condition myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), which debilitated him for six years.[23] He moved to New Zealand, both to be near his daughter and her family in Australia[24] and to convalesce from his illness.[25] In 2006, Crawford attended the Gala Performance of the stage version of The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway at the Majestic Theatre to celebrate the show's becoming the longest-running musical in Broadway history (surpassing the run of Cats). He was delighted with it, stating this was the first time he had been an audience member of any of the shows he had done.[26] On 23 October 2010, Crawford attended the celebratory 10,000th performance of The Phantom of the Opera in London alongside composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. Crawford spoke of his own memories of the first performance 24 years ago, and was then presented, along with Lloyd Webber, with a special cake to commemorate the landmark achievement.[27] Beginning with previews in February 2011, Crawford originated the part of the Wizard in the new Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical version of The Wizard of Oz at the London Palladium, which had its official opening on 1 March 2011.[28] He stated on This Morning: Sunday, on 14 August 2011, that he had signed on for a further six months in the show.[29] He left the production on 5 February 2012; the same day as co-star Danielle Hope played her final performance as Dorothy. From 14 February, Russell Grant took over the role.[30] On 2 October 2011 Crawford made a special appearance during the finale of The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall — a fully staged production of the musical at the famous London venue — marking 25 years since the show received its world premiere. Although reunited with Sarah Brightman, he did not sing as he had just finished performing in a matinee of The Wizard of Oz at the London Palladium.[31] In February 2016 the BBC announced that Crawford and Dotrice would be reprising their roles in a one-off special of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, to be broadcast as part of the Sport Relief charity fundraiser event.[32] Crawford starred in the new West End musical The Go-Between which premiered on 27 May 2016 at Apollo Theatre.[33] He appeared in the 60th anniversary performance of Britten's Noye's Fludde in London in 2018, performing the Voice of God, and recalled in a BBC Radio 3 interview Benjamin Britten's valuable support in his early career.[34]Let me start off by saying, I was originally using a Razer Lycosa Mirror Edition Keyboard. While my previous keyboard was nice, it felt like a toy compared to the Razer Black Widow Ultimate. I purchased the Battlefield 3 edition of this keyboard; it looks so cool. Others are complaining of sticky keys, while I have not experienced this, it is likely an issue with the first generation of models off the production line I assume. The keys are actually quite loud compared to a normal keyboard, but I personally enjoy the sound and feel of the keys over an average keyboard. If you want all the bells and whistles of a gaming keyboard with mechanical keys get this; if you don't like the loud keys(cherry mix blues) get a keyboard with(cherry mix black keys)which are quiet. I am overall very happy with this product and recommend it highly. Others may have had issues, but it was likely first general models that had issues. If the product does not meet your standards or feel it was advertised untruthfully, you can return it for your money back. Positives(+) 1. Heavy 2. Elegant 3. Mechanical Keys 4. Cherry Mix Blue Keys(This is a matter of personal opinion and taste.) 5. Keys are not glossy which would make gaming uncomfortable. 6. Thick and quality wrapped cable. 7. Comfortable(This is a matter of personal opinion and taste.) 8. Software drivers work well. 9. Macro keys. 10.Quality built keyboard(It feels solid as a rock.) Negatives(-) 1. May be difficult or take some time to adjust to having the macro keys on the left side of the keyboard, but I got used to it withing 3-4 days. 2. Strange function key setup. 3. Could be a bit wider/bigger overall.(Not a real negative, but a matter of personal opinion.)[1] Salvia researcher Griffith said the intensity of the experience creates a dysphoria that causes people not to return to the drug. Mazatec people performing a Salvia ritual dance in Huautla de Jimenez An entheogen is a class of psychoactive substances that induce any type of spiritual experience aimed at development.[2] The term entheogen is often chosen to contrast recreational use of the same drugs. The religious, shamanic, or spiritual significance of entheogens is well established in anthropological and modern contexts; entheogens have traditionally been used to supplement many diverse practices geared towards achieving transcendence, including white and black magic, sensory deprivation, divinatory, meditation, yoga, prayer, trance, rituals, chanting, hymns like peyote songs, and drumming. In the 1960s the hippie movement escalated its use to psychedelic art, binaural beats, sensory deprivation tanks, music, and rave parties. Etymology [ edit ] The neologism entheogen was coined in 1979 by a group of ethnobotanists and scholars of mythology (Carl A. P. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Richard Evans Schultes, Jonathan Ott and R. Gordon Wasson). The term is derived from two words of Ancient Greek, ἔνθεος (éntheos) and γενέσθαι (genésthai). The adjective entheos translates to English as "full of the god, inspired, possessed", and is the root of the English word "enthusiasm." The Greeks used it as a term of praise for poets and other artists. Genesthai means "to come into being." Thus, an entheogen is a drug that causes one to become inspired or to experience feelings of inspiration, often in a religious or "spiritual" manner.[3] Entheogen was coined as a replacement for the terms hallucinogen and psychedelic. Hallucinogen was popularized by Aldous Huxley's experiences with mescaline, which were published as The Doors of Perception in 1954. Psychedelic, in contrast, is a Greek neologism for "mind manifest", and was coined by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond; Huxley was a volunteer in experiments Osmond was conducting on mescaline. Ruck et al. argued that the term hallucinogen was inappropriate owing to its etymological relationship to words relating to delirium and insanity. The term psychedelic was also seen as problematic, owing to the similarity in sound to words pertaining to psychosis and also due to the fact that it had become irreversibly associated with various connotations of 1960s pop culture. In modern usage entheogen may be used synonymously with these terms, or it may be chosen to contrast with recreational use of the same drugs. The meanings of the term entheogen were formally defined by Ruck et al.: In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be shown to have figured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated entheogens, but in a looser sense, the term could also be applied to other drugs, both natural and artificial, that induce alterations of consciousness similar to those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional entheogens. Ruck et al, 1979, Journal of Psychedelic Drugs[4] History [ edit ] Entheogens have been used by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Some countries have legislation that allows for traditional entheogen use. However, in the mid-20th century, after the discovery of LSD, and the intervention of psychedelic therapy, the term entheogen, invented in 1979, later became an umbrella term used to include artificial drugs, alternative medical treatment, and spiritual practices, whether or not in a formal religious or traditional structure. Ancient times [ edit ] [5] Today the vast majority of extracted mescaline is from columnar cacti, not vulnerable [6] Flowering San Pedro, an entheogenic cactus that has been used for over 3,000 years.Today the vast majority of extracted mescaline is from columnar cacti, not vulnerable peyote R. Gordon Wasson and Giorgio Samorini have proposed several examples of the cultural use of entheogens that are found in the archaeological record.[7][8] Hemp seeds discovered by archaeologists at Pazyryk suggest early ceremonial practices by the Scythians occurred during the 5th to 2nd century BC, confirming previous historical reports by Herodotus.[citation needed][9] 1950s – present [ edit ] [10] Laboratory synthetic mescaline. Mescaline was the first (1887) psychedelic compound to be extracted and isolated from nature (from peyote). There now exist many synthetic drugs with similar psychoactive properties, many derived from the aforementioned plants. Many pure active compounds with psychoactive properties have been isolated from these respective organisms and chemically synthesized, including mescaline, psilocybin, DMT, salvinorin A, ibogaine, ergine, and muscimol. Semi-synthetic (e.g., LSD) and synthetic drugs (e.g., DPT and 2C-B used by the Sangoma) have also been developed. Alexander Shulgin developed hundreds of entheogens in PiHKAL and TiHKAL. Most of the drugs in PiHKAL are synthetic. Religious movements [ edit ] Entheogens used by movements includes biotas like peyote (Native American Church), extracts like Ayahuasca (Santo Daime, União do Vegetal), the semi-synthetic drug LSD (Neo-American Church), and synthetic drugs like DPT (Temple of the True Inner Light) and 2C-B (Sangoma[11]). Both Santo Daime and União do Vegetal now have members and churches throughout the world. 2C-B is an entactogen commonly used at public places, like rave parties. Psychedelic therapy [ edit ] Psychedelic therapy refers to therapeutic practices involving the use of psychedelic drugs, particularly serotonergic psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, mescaline, and 2C-i, primarily to assist psychotherapy. MAPS has pursued a number of other research studies examining the effects of psychedelics administered to human subjects. These studies include, but are not limited to, studies of Ayahuasca, DMT, ibogaine, ketamine, LSA, LSD, MDE, MDMA, mescaline, peyote, psilocybin, Salvia divinorum and conducted multi-drug studies as well as cross cultural and meta-analysis research.[12] Controversial entheogens [ edit ] Alcohol [ edit ] Ancient religions [ edit ] Alcohol has sometimes been invested with religious significance. Celtic polytheism In ancient Celtic religion, Sucellus or Sucellos was the god of agriculture, forests and alcoholic drinks of the Gauls. Ancient Mesopotamian religion Ninkasi is the ancient Sumerian tutelary goddess of beer.[13] Dionysian Mysteries In the ancient Greco-Roman religion, Dionysos (or Bacchus) was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy, of merry making and theatre. The original rite of Dionysus is associated with a wine cult and he may have been worshipped as early as c. 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks. The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques (like dance and music) to remove inhibitions and social constraints, liberating the individual to return to a natural state. In his Laws, Plato said that alcoholic drinking parties should be the basis of any educational system, because the alcohol allows relaxation of otherwise fixed views. The Symposium (literally, 'drinking together') was a dramatised account of a drinking party where the participants debated the nature of love. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, a cup of wine is offered to Demeter which she refuses, instead insisting upon a potion of barley, water, and glechon, known as the ceremonial drink Kykeon, an essential part of the Mysteries. The potion has been hypothesized to be an ergot derivative from barley, similar to LSD.[14] Osiris Egyptian pictographs clearly show wine as a finished product around 4000 BC. Osiris, the god who invented beer and brewing, was worshiped throughout the country. The ancient Egyptians made at least 24 types of wine and 17 types of beer. These beverages were used for pleasure, nutrition, rituals, medicine, and payments. They were also stored in the tombs of the deceased for use in the afterlife.[15] The Osirian Mysteries paralleled the Dionysian, according to contemporary Greek and Egyptian observers. Spirit possession involved liberation from civilization's rules and constraints. It celebrated that which was outside civilized society and a return to the source of being, which would later assume mystical overtones. It also involved escape from the socialized personality and ego into an ecstatic, deified state or the primal herd (sometimes both). Paganism Some scholars[who?] have postulated that pagan religions actively promoted alcohol and drunkenness as a means of fostering fertility. Alcohol was believed to increase sexual desire and make it easier to approach another person for sex. Modern religions [ edit ] Esoteric Buddhism Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche introduced "Mindful Drinking" to the West when he fled Tibet.[16][17] Christianity Many Christian denominations use wine in the Eucharist or Communion and permit alcohol consumption in moderation. Other denominations use unfermented grape juice in Communion; they either voluntarily abstain from alcohol or prohibit it outright.[citation needed] Judaism Judaism uses wine on Shabbat and some holidays for Kiddush as well as more extensively in the Passover ceremony and other religious ceremonies. The secular consumption of alcohol is allowed. Some Jewish texts, e.g., the Talmud, encourage moderate drinking on holidays (such as Purim) in order to make the occasion more joyous.[citation needed] Bahá'í Faith Bahá'ís are forbidden to drink alcohol or to take drugs, unless prescribed by doctors. Accordingly, the sale and trafficking of such substances is also forbidden. Smoking is discouraged but not prohibited. Usage [ edit ] Use and abuse [ edit ] Entheogens have been used by individuals to pursue spiritual goals such as divination, ego death, egolessness, faith healing, psychedelic therapy and spiritual formation.[18] "Don Alejandro (a Mazatecan shaman) taught me that the visionary experiences are much more important than the plants and drugs that produce them. He no longer needed to take the vision-inducing plants for his journeys."[19] There are also instances where people have been given entheogens without their knowledge or consent (e.g., tourists in Ayahuasca),[20] as well as attempts to use such drugs in other contexts, such as cursing, psychochemical weaponry, psychological torture, brainwashing and mind control; CIA experiments with LSD were used in Project MKUltra, and controversial entheogens like alcohol are often mentioned in context of bread and circuses. Religious use [ edit ] Black magic [ edit ] In some areas, there are purported malevolent sorcerers who masquerade as real shamans and who entice tourists to drink ayahuasca in their presence. Shamans believe one of the purposes for this is to steal one's energy and/or power, of which they believe every person has a limited stockpile.[21] Peyotism [ edit ] A Native American Peyote Drummer (c. 1927) The Native American Church (NAC) is also known as Peyotism and Peyote Religion. Peyotism is a Native American religion characterized by mixed traditional as well as Protestant beliefs and by sacramental use of the entheogen peyote. The Peyote Way Church of God believe that "Peyote is a holy sacrament, when taken according to our sacramental procedure and combined with a holistic lifestyle".[22] Prohibition [ edit ] Some religions forbid, discourage, or restrict the drinking of alcoholic beverages. These include Islam, Jainism, the Bahá'í Faith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Church of Christ, Scientist, the United Pentecostal Church International, Theravada, most Mahayana schools of Buddhism, some Protestant denominations of Christianity, some sects of Taoism (Five Precepts and Ten Precepts), and Hinduism. The Pali Canon, the scripture of Theravada Buddhism, depicts refraining from alcohol as essential to moral conduct because intoxication causes a loss of mindfulness. The fifth of the Five Precepts states, "Surā-meraya-majja-pamādaṭṭhānā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi." In English: "I undertake to refrain from meraya and majja (the two fermented drinks used in the place and time of writing) to heedless intoxication." Although the Fifth Precept only names a specific wine and cider, this has traditionally been interpreted to mean all alcoholic beverages. Technically, this prohibition does also not even include light to moderate drinking, only to the point of drunkenness. It also doesn't include other mind-altering drugs, but Buddhist tradition includes all intoxicants. The canon does not suggest that alcohol is evil but believes that the carelessness produced by intoxication creates bad karma. Therefore, any drug (beyond tea or mild coffee) that affects one's mindfulness be considered by some to be covered by this prohibition.[citation needed] Judaism and Christianity [ edit ] Many Christian denominations disapprove of the use of most illicit drugs. The early history of the Church, however, was filled with a variety of drug use, recreational and otherwise.[23] The primary advocate of a religious use of cannabis plant in early Judaism was Sula Benet, also called Sara Benetowa, a Polish anthropologist, who claimed in 1967 that the plant kaneh bosm קְנֵה-בֹשֶׂם mentioned five times in the Hebrew Bible, and used in the holy anointing oil of the Book of Exodus, was in fact cannabis.[24] The Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church confirmed it as a possible valid interpretation.[25] The lexicons of Hebrew and dictionaries of plants of the Bible such as by Michael Zohary (1985), Hans Arne Jensen (2004) and James A. Duke (2010
unfettered liberty to do with it as you choose, is the true measure of success. Your time must be extracted from the formula of making money. No matter how skilled you are at transferring your knowledge to others, if you are paid on an hours for dollars basis, your ability to expand your business will eventually plateau. You will run out of time. The successfully self-employed have made this realization and concentrate the majority of their time and effort on the single greatest secret of self-employment: generating passive income. Passive income is achieved by applying what you know into a package that can be designed and built once, and then repeatedly sold over and over again. Finding a unique way to promote and sell this knowlege is the key. Passive Income Examples: Useful books and guides, time saving computer applications, etc. #4 – Success is About Knowing What You Want Self-employed success is not the byproduct of working your way up from the ground up. It’s based on knowing what you want, understanding your abilities and implementing them diligently to achieve your goals. There are plenty of people who get laid-off from their 9 to 5 day job and end up making millions in a few short years of self-employment.The revelation that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE used a private email account for government business breathed new life Tuesday into a congressional investigation of Benghazi. Republicans seized on the news to defend their probe of Clinton’s actions in the lead-up to and aftermath of the deadly 2012 attacks against the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya. ADVERTISEMENT Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said the development will likely require Clinton to make several appearances before the panel, possibly stretching the investigation into 2016. “This revelation, which we have known about … may well lay the groundwork for additional conversations with the secretary in some setting or another,” Gowdy told reporters at a press conference. GOP strategists say the new revelation ensures scrutiny of Clinton’s handling of Benghazi well into the presidential year. “The bad news for Mrs. Clinton is it just raises all sorts of questions. What’s in those emails? Is this why they wanted to halt the Benghazi investigation?” said Vin Weber, a Republican strategist who advised Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “It’s hard to see how this comes to a quick, clean end,” Weber added. “I think it just drags on.” Clinton’s camp signaled it viewed the issue seriously by releasing two statements arguing that she had complied with the letter and spirit of the law. “Like secretaries of State before her, she used her own email account when engaging with any department officials,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said. “For government business, she emailed them on their department accounts, with every expectation they would be retained.” Clinton’s staff recently shared 55,000 pages of emails with the State Department in response to its request for records, but congressional investigators believe they withheld some documents, raising the possibility that material relevant to their investigation is being kept secret. Republicans on both sides of the Capitol called for Clinton and her aides to turn over to Congress all private emails she sent and received through a private account during her tenure in the Obama administration, which lasted from 2009 to 2013. “Our interest is in gaining access [to] all the documents,” Gowdy said. “We want her emails and her documents that are relevant to Benghazi.” Gowdy said discovery of the private emails gives his panel new impetus to fulfill its task of reviewing all policies, activities and decisions that took place before, during and after the attacks. “You cannot do that if you do not have all of the documents that would be in the care, custody or control of the secretary of State at the time,” he said, noting that not even the State Department has access to these documents. Gowdy declined to speculate on whether Clinton or her aides would face prosecution for not preserving emails on government servers as mandated by the Federal Records Act. Democrats in recent months have called on Gowdy to wrap up his probe, arguing that all relevant questions about the attacks have been thoroughly reviewed. Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the select committee, pushed back against Gowdy’s description of the private email account as a game-changer. “It has been public for several years that Secretary Clinton used her personal email account, apparently following the pattern of previous secretaries of state,” he said in a statement. “Although Secretary Clinton has produced her emails to the State Department, it is unclear from press reports whether previous Secretaries have done the same.” But Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s first press secretary, said on NBC’s “Today” that he did not understand why Clinton used her personal account exclusively while at State. “I think it’s something they’re going to have to explain in good measure today and probably figure out how to get a lot of those emails, or as many as they can back into the archive,” he said. He called the revelation “highly unusual” because the White House told employees they needed to preserve all of their emails on official accounts. Gowdy said his committee would approach Clinton, her attorneys and her email providers to obtain the records. His panel plans to send out preservation letters this week instructing Clinton and her camp to preserve any emails that might be relevant to its examination. The news prompted Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to suggest he might join the effort to obtain Clinton’s correspondence. “It’s certainly a violation of the code of conduct of people that are serving in government,” he said. “Obviously, we’re going to have to demand access to those quote ‘private’ emails. There’s no other way to approach it. You need all full information about Benghazi.”The main Kohl's headquarters building is located in the Silver Spring Corporate Park in Menomonee Falls. Credit: Mark Hoffman By of the When Kohl's Corp. said it was dropping plans to develop a $250 million corporate headquarters, the public was left in the dark about whether the company would return $2 million that Menomonee Falls provided to help finance the project. That question remains unanswered nearly a week after the announcement. But there's a scenario unfolding in which Kohl's, with annual sales of more than $19 billion, would keep the money. The development agreement between the company and village requires that Kohl's return the money, said Randy Newman, Village Board president. "That's the black and white legal thing," Newman said Tuesday. "But, on the other side, they are a large part of the community. We want to work with them on future development." The Village Board could change the development agreement to allow Kohl's to keep the $2 million — perhaps in recognition of money the company spent to design the corporate campus, he said. That canceled development was planned for Woodland Prime business park, near Good Hope Road and Appleton Ave. In one scenario, Newman said the design work already done by Kohl's could include detailed plans for laying out parcels and new roads, which the village could use to help with other projects at Woodland Prime. "There's a value to that," Newman said. But Steve Welcenbach, president of the Menomonee Falls Taxpayers Association, said the retail chain should give the money back to the village. He opposed the original grant for Kohl's, and opposes similar grants for other companies. "It's a loser for everybody else in the community," Welcenbach said. Kohl's received the $2 million payment last year after promising to develop its new corporate campus at Woodland Prime. The $2 million was part of $12 million the village agreed to give Kohl's. The agreement, which the Village Board unanimously approved in July 2012, required the first payment to be made by Oct. 1 of that year. Five more $2 million grants were to be paid annually once the project was substantially completed. In return, Kohl's promised to develop buildings totaling around 900,000 square feet, with a total equalized value of $90 million. That value just reflects the real estate, and not the equipment and fixtures in the buildings, as well as other company capital spending on the project. But those plans vanished last Thursday, when Kohl's announced it was dropping the Woodland Prime project. Instead, Kohl's is taking a far less costly approach of using existing buildings, including two buildings the company is buying at or near Silver Spring Corporate Park. The company's headquarters is at that Menomonee Falls business park, which is north of Silver Spring Drive between Pilgrim and Marcy roads. The details of the $2 million payment and other issues "are under review," Village Manager Mark Fitzgerald said in an email. "We need some time to sort through it all and figure out the tactical details." Fitzgerald declined to comment further. Newman said he doesn't think Kohl's would leave Menomonee Falls. But he also said the competition among other communities seeking to attract a company like Kohl's, which has around 5,000 corporate headquarters employees, is "intriguing." Any change to the development agreement would require a public vote by the board. Newman said he expects the board to discuss Kohl's at its Dec. 16 meeting. Kohl's, which in 2012 rejected a possible move to downtown Milwaukee's Park East strip, said it wouldn't proceed with the Menomonee Falls project without the village cash, according to the development agreement. Change not explained Kohl's, which has reported disappointing financial results over the past year, has declined to provide an explanation for its decision to drop the Woodland Prime project, or a spending estimate on its planned investments at Silver Spring Corporate Park. Nor has the company responded to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's emails and phone calls about whether it will return the $2 million village grant. Under the development agreement, the village also promised to spend more than $13 million on new roads, sewers and other public improvements at Woodland Prime to accommodate the Kohl's headquarters. That money hasn't been spent, and that work remains on hold. In addition, the village last year swapped parcels and a building it bought at Woodland Prime, together valued at $8.95 million, for the company's $9 million back office building at N54-W13901 Woodale Drive. The village still plans to use that building as a Department of Public Works facility after Kohl's moves employees from there to Silver Spring Corporate Park. Kohl's is keeping the Woodland Prime building but is required by the agreement to give the vacant parcels, totaling around 103 acres, back to the village. Under a separate agreement with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., Kohl's could still receive state tax credits through 2023 in connection with expanding its headquarters. WEDC said in 2012 the company must retain its current corporate workforce, create 3,000 more corporate jobs and invest $250 million in new and existing headquarters facilities to get up to $47.5 million in tax credits. Another $15 million in tax credits is available if the company hires more employees after it has received the initial tax credit award. If Kohl's ultimately spends less than $250 million on its headquarters, or hires fewer than 3,000 corporate employees, the company will receive proportionately fewer tax credits, said WEDC spokesman Mark Maley. Facebook: facebook.com/JSBusiness Twitter: twitter.com/TomDaykinby Eli Clifton Over the past week, Republican opposition to the Iran deal has devolved considerably. Senate Republicans spent the week in chaos, raising uncertainty about whether their measure of disapproval would even reach a key procedural vote (Senators agreed to a cloture vote at 3:45pm today), holding a rally with notorious Islamophobe and birther Frank Gaffney and, in a bizarre lack of self-awareness, trotting out former Vice President Dick Cheney for a speech opposing the deal at the American Enterprise Institute, the same institution where neoconservatives met for their “black coffee briefings” to plan how to win the “war of Ideas” after 9/11 and the de-Baathification of Iraq. Much media attention from that event focused on Patrick Clawson, research director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, attempting to violently grab a demonstrator’s banner. The banner read “Cheney Wrong On Iraq Wrong on Iran,” a reference to Cheney’s certainty about the existence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and the former VP’s reemergence as a prominent opponent of diplomacy with Iran. That apparent obliviousness to the past, particularly by those who advocated for the invasion of Iraq over a decade ago, was in the spotlight again today. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) took to the floor of the Senate to decry the nuclear deal with Iran as a betrayal of Israel, “damning the Middle East to holy hell” and explaining why the Ayatollah isn’t celebrating by “dancing in the street”: “He just doesn’t believe in dancing.” Graham is a high-profile hawk and, along with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), one of the Republican party’s most outspoken and influential foreign policy voices. So what he said next is truly surprising: Graham appeared to blame the 9/11 attacks on Iran: I have no idea why you believe the Ayatollah doesn’t mean what he says, given they way he’s behaved. If they will shoot their own children down in the streets to keep power, what do you think they’ll do to ours? And the only reason three thousand people died on 9/11 is they couldn’t get the weapons to kill three million of us and they’re on course to do it now. We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack. At the time of their travel through Iran, the al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation. The 9/11 Report looked at the possibility of Iranian involvement and concluded that while some of the hijackers transited through Iran: If Lindsey Graham has some new evidence, he should probably share it with the public. On the other hand, taking the most hawkish anti-Iran positions, even at the expense of the truth, might be a political ploy. Graham’s presidential campaign is a total flop (he’s currently polling around 0 percent). He reportedly speaks frequently with Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson and, in April, after a glass of wine, claimed he was a favorite of pro-Israel donors. The desperate bid to link Iran to 9/11 may be just the type of thing a donor like Adelson—who wants to drop nuclear bombs on Iran—might respond to by infusing the Senator’s campaign with some cash. Graham may have to make increasingly outlandish statements if he hopes to garner any media attention, resuscitate his dying presidential campaign and maintain his access to anti-Iran deal GOP donors. With no accountability for the lies that led to the Iraq war, the strategy looks unlikely to have a downside.September 24, 2014 When I first started hiking and the question, "So what'd you do this weekend?" came up from co-workers, the answer was inevitably met with a series of concerned follow-up questions implying my sanity was not up to snuff. "Aren't you worried about getting lost?" they'd ask. Or "What happens if you break your leg out there?" or "What about the grizzly bears that ride mountain lions and throw rattlesnakes at people?"I asked some of my outdoorsy friends - from novices to experts - which mental blocks most often keep new hikers from hitting the trail... and why they're all wrong.By far, the most common concern was of the animal variety, with bears and cougars getting top billing. This might not surprise you, since most of the time when you're reading a rare headline about a trail it's not "Hiker Enjoys Pleasant Day on Trail," it's "Couple Fends off Mountain Lion Attack on Popular Trail - Click Here For Shocking Photos That Will Change Your Life."Anyone who spends time in the outdoors knows that even though development and environmental pressures have increased animal attacks, they are also still unbelievably rare occurrences. Since 1890, there have been 110 fatal bear attacks in the wild reported in North America and only 25 from cougars - the vast majority of which were preventable and avoidable. For perspective, there have been 452 fatal dog attacks reported in the US alone in that same time period, and 30,800 Americans were killed by cars in the year 2012... yet very few people panic about getting into a car or walking their puppy.The next biggest hurdle I've found is a general sense that the new hiker feels he or she isn't "ready" for hiking. They don't have all the newest gear, they don't know the trail, they're worried about going too slowly (or worried about making you go slower than you're used to). The big, untold secret of hiking is - for all its expensive gear and epic destinations, it's still basically just walking around outside. New hikers should trust that the person taking them hiking knows what they're doing; and experienced hikers should pick a trail that suits their guest's needs first.I've already written about ways to convert friends to hiking buddies (save that 25-mile trek for another time!) but it's best to go onto the trail with zero expectations. It's OK to take breaks, it's OK to hike slowly, and it's OK if you don't reach the summit. It's also OK to lend some gear to your friends if they're considering hiking in their Toms - you probably know what they need better than they do!Finally, the unfortunate next most common complaint seems to be a fear of leaving behind the creature comforts of civilization - air conditioning, cell service and - gasp - the Internet.I get it - if you're not used to being away from those things it can be easy to start craving them when they're not around. But that craving is exactly why you need to ditch that stuff once in a while. Not only will turning those things off open your eyes to a vast world hidden right in front of your face - but you'll also appreciate them more if you take a little break from them.And hey, you can always just tag your photos #latergram when you get home.Casey is a regular contributor to the Sierra Social Hub as part of #TeamSierra. Learn more about hiking on his site: Modern Hiker.The embattled Greek government faces another strike – this time from journalists. Greek state television staff have begun work stoppages to protest what they say is increasing government censorship. The country has been shaken by two separate scandals in quick succession, in which authorities were seen as being heavy-handed and using selective justice to punish political dissenters. One concerns presenters Marilena Katsimi and Costas Arvanitis, who were suspended “indefinitely” from a popular current affairs morning show carried by national broadcaster ERT. The suspension came after they criticized right-wing interior minister, Nikos Dendias. ERT workers staged a walkout during scheduled programming on Tuesday morning and said they will organize 24-hour rolling strikes until Katsimi and Arvanitis are reinstated. Marilena Katsimi and Costas Arvanitis (Image from greekhermes.files.wordpress.com) Dendias was recently forced into an embarrassing turnaround over accusations of police torture of left-wing anti-fascist protesters, who were detained during a motorcade protest against racism a month ago. Several days later, a report, supplemented with photos, appeared in the UK’s Guardian newspaper claiming that the demonstrators were beaten, spat on and denied water while in custody. The interior minister initially branded the accusations as false, and said the government should sue the newspaper for "defaming Greek democracy”. But later, a medical evaluation confirmed that the activists may in fact have been abused. This became the subject of the following exchange on Katsimi and Arvantis’ show: Mr. Arvanitis: Is Dendias going to resign now? M. Katsimi: I do not think so. Mr. Arvanitis: And now what? Will he say he is sorry? M. Katsimi: I do not know … Within an hour of the broadcast, Aimilios Liatsos, ERT's head of news, demanded to see the transcript, and then replaced the presenters without even talking to them. Liatsos released a statement saying Katsimi and Arvanitis “violated basic journalistic ethics” with “unacceptable insinuations” that “did not give the minister a chance to respond”. Katsimi said that the explanation amounts to an attempt to muzzle free discussion of politics, and says amidst economic turmoil, the government is trying to bring the media to heel. “We have been critical of ministers in the past from all parties, and there have been complaints to the management before but this is new,” she told the Guardian. "Everywhere in media people are being fired, but at ERT they are hiring. The government want people who agree with their position and they want to hire their friends." Nikos Dendias has now told parliament that the complaints of activist detainees will be investigated. Immigrants to Greece and Greek citizens hold anti-nazi banners at Piraeus, southwest Athens, on September. Some journalists complain that abuses against them were not covered thoroughly in the Greek media.(AFP Photo / Angelos Tzortzinis) Slow justice, quick justice The second high-profile incident centers on Kostas Vaxevanis, an investigative journalist arrested on Sunday, facing up to a year in prison and a €30,000 fine, for breaking data privacy laws. His crime, publishing the notorious “Lagarde list” containing the names of 2,059 Greek account holders in HSBC’s Swiss bank. The list, initially stolen by a bank employee in 2007, has been used by tax authorities throughout Europe to identify tax evaders (who often use foreign accounts to avoid detection) and was passed onto then finance minister George Papaconstantinou in 2010. In the eyes of many in Greeks, what followed defies belief. Papaconstantinou claims that he passed the disk on to an assistant, whom he refuses to name, who then may have given it to a different government agency. The agency then returned it to Papaconstantinou’s successor, who once again appeared to have mislaid it. When parliament formed a committee to decide what to do with the list last year, to weary public ridicule no one in the government could find it for several weeks, until the Prime Minister remembered that he had a copy. Not a single person on the list was questioned and no cases were opened. Now, the contents of the list are considered to be moot, as financial insiders claim that all the leaked accounts were closed, or renamed. But when Vaxevanis finally published the list in his Hot Docs magazine last week – naming politicians, shipping tycoons and celebrities but not their account numbers or the amount of money they hold – he was arrested immediately, being escorted out of a radio station in the middle of a program "Instead of focusing on investigating the validity of the so-called Lagarde list … they focus on the prosecution of a journalist who, in doing his job, dared to publicly reveal information that allegedly is included in the list," said the Athens Bar Association, the union of top Greek lawyers, in a specially-released statement. The journalist has also been supported by Reporters without Borders and the OSCE. Vaxevanis wrote a column in his defense in the Guardian, saying that he believed that revealing the document was in the public interest after a sustained period of government inaction, and that the list “has poisoned political life in Greece, with political and financial blackmail taking place in the dark rooms of corrupt power”. According to Greek legislation, journalists can be exempted from privacy laws if it can be proved that their revelations served the public. Vaxevanis criticized the local media, noting that Greek journalists often had to go to foreign publications to get their views heard. He also lashed out at the political and the judicial establishment, ending his column with the proclamation that “justice is in thrall to politics”. Vaxevanis has two days to prepare a defense against the charges ahead of the next court hearing on November 1.Hannah Broido writes “ch” on her mini-whiteboard in large, neat letters, using a green dry erase marker. Sounding out the consonants with her first grade mentee, or “scholar,” who also happens to be named Hannah, she then wipes the letters off the board and follows them with a succession of words that all contain the “ch” sound, from “sketch” to “catch” to “bench.” She is preparing her student from Oakland’s Sankofa Academy to read Chad is the Champ, a book featuring this sound. Broido tutors with an organization called Reading Partners, a group that advances child literacy by partnering with elementary schools across the nation and, in particular, at 30 sites in the Bay Area. Broido, a UC Berkeley student in her third year with the program, said her favorite part is seeing the progress of her mentees. “The first two years I worked with the same kids, and now I’m following the same ones,” she said. “Just getting to see that progress. And also, they open up to you.” Reading Partners is just one organization that works to advance literacy in Oakland. Dozens of others promote the same cause, and they are connected by a larger umbrella organization called the Oakland Literacy Coalition (OLC). The coalition launched in 2008, and is a project of the Rogers Family Foundation, a private group that supports education in Oakland. “The foundation was funding a lot of literacy organizations, and quickly realized that there was no formal structure in place for those organizations to come together and collaborate,” said Christina Johnson, program associate for the coalition and literacy program associate at the Rogers Family Foundation. They believe their work is crucial in Oakland elementary schools because the literacy rate is very low. In Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), only 42 percent of third graders are reading at their grade level, according to the Oakland Reads 2020 Baseline Report. Oakland is not alone in these numbers. According to the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, two-thirds of U.S. fourth graders and four-fifths of those from low-income families are not reading proficiently nationwide. Oakland has joined 130 other communities nationwide that aim to increase reading proficiency levels by 2020; its specific initiative called the Oakland Reads 2020 campaign. The Oakland Reads 2020 Baseline Report, a study conducted by the Urban Strategies Council that analyzed OUSD data from 2010-2013, identified an achievement gap based on race, ethnicity and gender, with third grade Latino and African American boys scoring lower than other groups. “Only eight percent of third grade English Learners became proficient by the end of the year in 2012–13. More than half of Latino students and more than one-third of Asian students are English Learners,” the report’s authors concluded. And, according to the report, 30 percent of OUSD students are English Language Learners. The study also noted several salient factors affecting literacy. Among them, almost three-quarters of students within OUSD qualify for free or reduced lunch, a measure of a family’s socioeconomic status—students who come from low-income backgrounds are less likely to have access to resources and academic opportunities than their more affluent peers. Overall, the coalition members believe four main factors contribute to literacy levels: school readiness, school attendance, summer learning, and family engagement, which means that parents are actively involved in their children’s education and emphasize the importance of reading. Johnson particularly pointed to health-related absences as a factor in low literacy, and noted that many students suffer from asthma as a result of the high levels of pollution in their neighborhoods. “Asthma’s one of the biggest causes for absences, and so, if someone doesn’t have access to high-quality medical care, and is suffering from a chronic condition like asthma, we know that can play a lot into their poor attendance,” she said. “Another thing can be dental infections, which you wouldn’t think would be a big deal for attendance, but it actually is one of the main causes for students to miss school—or if they’re in school, to be distracted because they’re in pain.” According to the Oakland Reads report, 11 percent of students in kindergarten through third grade were “chronically absent,” which is defined as missing 10 percent or more of school days. Another 23 percent were considered “at risk,” which means missing five percent to nine percent of schools days. Summer learning was also a big factor in students’ academics, Johnson said. “We know that low-income students are more likely over the summer to just sit home, or—they’re doing nothing while their more affluent peers would be more likely to go into an enrichment program,” she said. “And so the low-income student’s more likely to lose ground over summer, and fall even further behind.” Parent engagement is crucial “just for students to know that reading is important and something that we should all be doing every day,” said Johnson. Because the coalition firmly believes that parent engagement is an essential component to student success, they encourage parents to volunteer in classrooms or chaperone their children’s field trips, even if these events are not associated with literacy organizations. Brittany Love, a volunteer coordinator within the OUSD who works in the Family and Community Engagement Office, furthers this idea of parent engagement by pushing parents to be leaders in their schools. Parental roles vary from behavior managers in the classroom to literacy program volunteers to new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) positions within the district. “In my team they build parent leaders, have workshops, really try to make it so schools are a place where parents have a voice,” said Love. “And they know that they’re embraced and that they’re part of the decision-making at the school.” Another factor that has been a big push for OUSD is simply the amount of time that students spend reading. Dr. Devin Dillon, Chief Academic Officer of OUSD, said that while the district can not control the amount of time students spend reading outside of school, they are trying to increase how much time they spend reading in the classroom through engaging them in literature and through improving student access to books. In addition, she hopes to expand the definition of teaching “literacy” to students to include teaching “language,” or vocabulary and verbal expression. “We’re all teachers of language,” said Dillon. “Because we recognize that kids come in as English Language Learners, but also kids from poverty come with a million-word deficit into school.” Dillon is referring to a study conducted by two University of Kansas researchers that found that by the age of 3, children from high-income families have heard and experienced 30 million words more than children from low-income families. The Oakland Reads 2020 campaign aims to double the percentage of third grade students in the district reading at grade level to 85 percent by the year 2020. Why is third grade such a pivotal year? OLC coordinators cite a 2012 study called Double Jeopardy, which was conducted by Donald Hernandez, a sociology professor from Hunter College and the City University of New York, in association with the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It followed 3,975 students born between 1979 and 1989. The study found that students who are not reading at grade level by the end of third grade are four times more likely not to graduate high school than their peers who are proficient readers. Third grade is a pivotal year for student literacy because after this point, students transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” other subjects. Fourth grade students are expected to be able to analyze texts and apply them in all their classes. But from kindergarten until third grade, students are learning the foundational skills, like sounding out phonics or identifying sight words, that will allow them to read fluently, said Cassie Perham, the OLC program manager. “Once they go into fourth grade, they need to be able to read in order to learn more advanced subjects, be able to do math word problems, or access a science lesson,” she said. “Or study their history, or whatever it might be. You have that shift of learning to read, to reading in order to learn.” “Students that aren’t reading proficiently by the end of third grade, are statistically more likely to have trouble in the rest of their school education, statistically more likely to drop out or fall behind, have trouble catching up, and learning the rest of the subject matter,” Johnson agreed. The Double Jeopardy study particularly focuses on how students growing up in low-income communities are affected by the literacy problems that have become apparent by the time they reach third grade. “The combined effect of reading poorly and living in poverty puts these children in double jeopardy,” the study states, meaning jeopardy of dropping out of school and failing to graduate. But members of the OLC are heartened by recent improvements in reading scores they have seen since the coalition was established. In 2014, 36 percent of OUSD students scored proficient or advanced on the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SRI), an assessment of whether students are reading at grade level or not. In 2015, that percentage increased to 42.8 percent. “After years of scores either slipping or holding steady to seeing these really dramatic improvements” was really terrific, said Perham. She noted too that after disaggregating the data to look at different student demographics, African American students’ scores had increased by 10 percent. The Oakland Literacy Coalition now consists of approximately 60 organizations that are all working to improve literacy among Oakland students. Many of them, like Reading Partners, pair volunteers with students at school sites during the school day and during after-school programs. This program was founded 16 years ago at Belle Haven Elementary School in East Menlo Park, California. After initially serving only one school, said Michelle Torgenson, the executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area Reading Partners, “We’re here today, 16 years later, a national organization, and we serve 200 elementary school partners, 11,000 students across the country. And we are in 13 different metropolitan areas.” At the Sankofa Academy site, the day is broken up into eight 45-minute tutoring sessions, from 9:00 a.m. until 4:45 p.m. During these sessions, students from kindergarten through fourth grade who are behind in reading come up to Reading Partners’ second floor alcove and work individually on their reading skills with tutors. In this alcove, books abound. Some are neatly arranged in bins labeled “Books with Animal Characters” or “2nd Grade Core Read Aloud.” On the table next to Broido and her mentee, a whiteboard reads “Celebrate Latino Literature Week” next to yet another bin, this one filled with bilingual paperbacks with titles like Calling the Doves: El canto de las palomas. Broido’s mentee Hannah reads Chad is the Champ aloud, sounding out the “ch” words that fill the book. Katherine Koller, program manager of Reading Partners in the East Bay, stops by as she circulates around the tutoring sessions, suggesting to first grade Hannah that she point to words while reading. “That’s a good way to make sure you’re reading carefully,” she says. As the day ends, some tutors pile up vocabulary cards, others put books away. Tutors start filling out exit forms that track their scholars’ reading progress. Koller cleans up supplies and dismisses students. One student gives her a book report to be turned in for a sticker that will go alongside her name on the “Take Reading Home Checklist,” a chart listing the names of all students in the Reading Partners program, with stickers alongside their names for each completed book report. Tutors tell their mentees “Good job!” as the students trickle out to go home. Not only does the OLC try to remove barriers to reading, but also to volunteering. Johnson noted that the price of volunteer clearances, authorization for volunteers to work with students that is required by the state of California, which include tuberculosis testing and fingerprinting, can amount to almost $100. “Small organizations don’t really have the budget to reimburse volunteers, or if they did, it was a substantial amount of money every year,” she said. “We also knew that it’s a big barrier for entry for volunteers.” To remove this barrier, the OLC holds a volunteer training event twice a year. Prospective volunteers can get fingerprinted, have their tuberculosis tests performed and read, and learn how to engage students in literary activities. Over 200 people showed up at this school year’s first training, on September 28, proving to be a strain on the facilities—the volunteer line wound its way down the stairs of the East Bay Community Foundation Conference Center, almost to the exit. “It’s growing dramatically,” said Perham, of their volunteer base. “We have to come up with a new space next time, which is an awesome problem to have.” One of the prospective volunteers milling around the conference center was Michelle Leonce Cooker. “My daughter just began attending Lincoln Elementary in Oakland, and so that was the reason why I wanted to become a volunteer,” said Cooker, while simultaneously keeping track of her daughter Melina, who was wandering around the food and coloring tables. “And it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get all the requirements done, the TB test and the fingerprinting.” Broido came into Reading Partners initially through another OLC-affiliated organization called BUILD. For one year, the two organizations operated side-by-side at Sankofa Academy until they decided that it would be more functional to collaborate. Now BUILD mentors at this site, like Broido, mostly tutor students through the Reading Partners program. She began tutoring two and a half years ago. “I just saw it on a campus flyer one day,” she said, “and I worked with kids in high school and I wanted to keep doing it, so I joined it and just stuck with it.” For OUSD schools, volunteers provide much-needed support and are key to the success of the Oakland Reads 2020 campaign, according to Dillon. “A lot of times, a teacher with a class of 24, it’s very difficult to provide the kind of intensive interventional support that a student needs,” said Dillon. “It’s not impossible, but it is a challenge. Volunteers are critical in supporting our efforts at improving literacy instruction, and really improving literacy outcomes for kids.” The Oakland Reads 2020 Baseline Report has proposed five focal points for the campaign, in response to the study’s pinpointed areas of concern: groups that have the lowest reading scores, the specific needs of English Language Learners, early years of development, the alignment of supports with what specific groups need, and socioeconomic-related challenges. Both the OUSD and OLC have taken decisive actions
for the Catholic Church. But the general public is presumably already won over by his charisma. SPIEGEL ONLINE: What about the celibacy rules under Francis? Berger: There is currently a lot of movement on this, which is also supported by conservative forces. But from a pedagogical standpoint, nothing will really change. The prohibition of sex remains the most important factor of the Church's power.Editor’s note: This essay is an excerpt of the new book A Memoir of the Missile Age: One Man’s Journey (Hoover Press) by Vitaly Katayev (1932–2001). Katayev joined the Defense Industry Department of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in 1975, after fifteen years as a designer in the Soviet defense industry, ultimately rising to deputy head of defense under Gorbachev and serving until the department was disbanded in 1993. Almost all my life, I worked for the military-industrial complex. I not only observed the development of the Cold War processes but participated in them. I worked in design bureaus and was a specialist in aviation and missile systems, during which time I joined the communist party. After that I worked as an instructor, head of a sector, and then deputy head of the Central Committee Defense Department. There, I supervised issues related to sea-based strategic weapons and was involved with various government defense agencies in crafting military policy and negotiating weapons reduction. As part of the interdepartmental working group, I directly participated in international talks, working out security concepts and preparing texts of treaties. All this gave me a special insider’s view of arms development and limitation before and after the dissolution of the USSR. The economy used to be divided into specialized subdivisions in the Soviet Union, including light industry, machine-tool construction, instrument-making industry, agriculture, and others. Branches that produced military products were grouped separately into the military-industrial complex. This group comprised nine ministries—Aviation, Machine-Building, General Machine-Building, Defense Industry, Radio Industry, Medium Machine-Building, Communications, Ship-Building, and Electronic Industry—as well as all institutes, design bureaus, and plants which developed and made armaments and military technology. The key feature of the military-industrial complex in the Soviet Union was the fact that the enterprises that made up the backbone of the defense industry belonged to the state. This was the situation until the Soviet Union disintegrated. The Soviet military industry was always completely closed. Specialists had no right to talk about their work. They had to sign a written statement to this effect. They are going to their deathbeds sworn to secrecy. Because of this, a most interesting period of history, unfortunately, is disappearing with this generation, without any prospect for recovery. I believe it deserves more interest from scientists and historians. Absence of factual information about the military-industrial complex in the Soviet Union led to all kinds of myths and legends about huge military expenses, about the Soviet military-industrial monster, about a state within a state. A lot of such lies were made up to stir the public interest, but not for merely idle purposes. The image of a powerful military-industrial complex was created and maintained by joint efforts of the Soviet and foreign special services. These myths played into the hands of both sides. Foreign analysts always inflated the Soviet military potential, envisaging a higher rate of allocations for their own use in a military confrontation. At the same time, the Soviet leadership presented the power of the military-industrial complex as a worthy counterbalance to threats coming from abroad. Besides—and this was the most important reason for flexing muscle—the Soviet Union’s economic difficulties could be written off as a consequence of the “tremendous” military expenditure. The usual pattern was at work: when a leader is having difficulties, it is very convenient to unleash a small war using a plausible pretext. The Cold War and potential enemy strikes served as such a pretext. Frankly, the shroud of secrecy surrounding the Soviet military-industrial complex played into the hands of American industry and similarly benefited other nations opposing Moscow. The secrecy did not do much for the Soviet Union itself, however. It had to try to live up to the high level of military and industrial power attributed to it, to live up to the level of a projected confrontation. Many years of practical work of military-industrial institutes and design bureaus demonstrated that fresh ideas, new technologies, and new designs could emerge in the course of students’ research or diploma design work. However, most of these ideas remained on paper. They got implemented only when their authors grew to become leaders capable of promoting the implementation of their early ideas (for example, ships on underwater wings or new designs of planes). Another reason that a decision on military production might be made was providing work for some concrete plant, for example. Keeping workers working was thought to be cheaper than restoring their lost technological skills after a break. The absence of a comprehensive approach to implementing projects was a big drawback of organizing work at different military-industrial plants. The main attention was paid to the product that was being made and the newest technologies but not to the quality of capital assets, though about 15 to 20 percent of the annual investment was spent on them. For example, in the general machine-building industry, at one of the plants, a lot of money was spent to build a very complex installation for testing in conditions of weightlessness. However, at the same plant, barrels for tank guns were made on equipment used in the 1940s and ’50s. The straightness of the barrel was checked by an old man. If he was ill, the guns were just not made. It was done like this: the worker took a barrel and looked through it toward an illuminated piece of paper on the wall. If he saw that the barrel was not quite straight, he would bend it a little using a hand press. The most interesting element of this technique was the sheet of paper on which the local smart alecks drew erotic scenes. The administrative-command system of the centralized leadership of defense enterprises didn’t stimulate them to grow. Growth of an enterprise depended on whether the director and the chief designer were ambitious people or not, and this depended on their personal aspirations. But the director knew that his enterprise would always remain a cell in a rigid military-industrial-complex structure. The system did not make enterprises compete for quality. They knew the state would never let them perish; that their plants would surely get orders. The Central Committee and regional bodies would see to that. The directors of the defense enterprises were very powerful. Among them were Supreme Soviet deputies, Heroes of Socialist Labor, and highly skilled economists. But their high status was effective and suitable only for survival in the Soviet system in which the employer, buyer, and investor were one and the same entity—the state. After the Soviet disintegration, the plants that had no experience of work in market conditions were abandoned by the state. The directors found themselves playing the role of circus bears who were let out into the wild woods. Their skill of riding a bicycle was of no use in the forest. The picture of outdated equipment, status-based leadership, and noncompetitive production was the same in consumer-oriented industries. Annually, the military-industrial complex handed over to other industries about one hundred thousand sets of documents on modern technologies. The Buran alone provided six hundred new technologies. But no feedback process was worked out, with rare exceptions. Strange as it might seem, the social factor influenced the quality of military hardware. Scientific achievements in the Soviet Union, however, reached a high level. Money was allocated for this. We were not lacking in the newest military technologies. On the contrary, some of the newest effective technologies for killing people had to be stopped for human reasons, so that they wouldn’t spread. Laboratories that achieved these high scientific results were carefully cleared away. Scientific-technical progress was nurtured on the ideas of designers. This I know as a direct participant in the construction of small local systems and large, complicated strategic systems. Having successfully crossed the thresholds of basic research and development, new technology would often stall at the third stage—implementation and construction were not done on the same high level. Workers, technologists, and designers didn’t provide high-quality work. There was a constant gap between a concept and its implementation in the form of a product. Bad quality began at the initial stage of production—the ore was of bad quality; metals and other materials were of bad quality. Then, even the worst technologist couldn’t be laid off from a plant. If this happened it caused a lot of problems for the head of the plant. It was believed that laying people off made the criminal situation in the country worse. This couldn’t be allowed. Let a delinquent work, even badly, but under a watchful eye. Everybody was obliged to work. The unemployed were caught and made to get jobs. This was the state policy; this was the policy of the party. For these reasons, many goods produced in the Soviet Union couldn’t be competitive on the world market. These weaknesses took their toll on military hardware as well. Deviation of materials characteristics from the standard made designers use more materials than they actually needed. For example, all flying machines in the Soviet Union were of poor quality in terms of weight compared with those in the West. The design and decorative coating were of low quality, and the specific load capacity was two times worse. This is why they were made twice as big. But this approach was impractical in radioelectronics. A chip couldn’t become more reliable if made two times bigger in size. We had to install two or three chips. Here the Soviet Union was lagging behind. For similar reasons, European military specialists considered tanks and self-propelled artillery made in the Soviet Union to be less effective than those made in the West. In the military-industrial complex there existed a system of leading design bureaus and prominent specialists in each key area: aviation, space systems, combat rockets, and ABM and air defense systems, particularly strategic rockets. This group of enterprises emerged under Khrushchev, who thought that rockets could solve all military problems. There appeared temporary favorites among rocketmen due to competition between professional clans, personal relations, and the particular ambitions of leaders of state. Decisions on rockets were made without taking into account their military-political significance. Making decisions was not such an easy job for Soviet leaders because they had to reach some consensus. For a long time the Soviet Union did not have an official military doctrine. There were only a number of personal approaches. The army was not clearly defined; each defense minister regarded the army in his own way. Nobody tried to figure out how many weapons the army really needed. This led to poor understanding of the production capacity that would be sufficient for the military industry. The Ministry of Defense was always asking for as much military equipment as possible. Gosplan, the state planning agency, set deliveries on the basis of the country’s economic possibilities; however, it gave priority to military orders. The military-industrial complex was obliged to annually increase its overall production by at least 2 to 3 percent, so production of specific weapons was not stopped even after the military’s needs had been met. Also, a great number of design bureaus and plants made duplicates. The theoretical grounds for this was having capacity in the event of war, as well as creating competition, but, in fact, there was no competition in the Soviet command economy, where all enterprises were owned by the state and such free-market forces did not exist. The use of weapons was not properly thought out, either. The Central Committee Defense Department exercised strict control over production of weapons. However, once they were produced and handed over to the army, all control ended. Theoretically, the army was supposed to have its own body of control—its chief political department, which had the rights of a department of the Central Committee—but this was only theoretical. Control over the armaments was not a big concern of the army’s chief political department. All planning related to arms was a spontaneous process, but nobody was willing to admit this. In fact, this statement may arouse disagreement even now, but long-term planning, with the exception of individual cases, proved to be inadequate. Even accounting for medium- and short-range rockets was not organized properly in the army. When we began to count these rockets for arms control treaties, we had to correct the figure we announced several times—we were unable to count, and account for, all of them, even though a nuclear rocket is hardly a needle in a haystack. At last, in the mid-1980s, the Soviet military doctrine was worked out, and, in 1987, it was put into effect. The foundation of this doctrine was defense sufficiency. It attempted, for the first time in the history of our country, to outline the Armed Forces, along with deliveries of weapons and military equipment and, consequently, their production. That is, we were able to understand what military production capacity the country needed. This doctrine helped overcome some psychological barriers about the stockpiling of weapons and the continuous process of its production. More attention began to be paid to the production of consumer goods at the military plants; production of consumer goods began to grow, approaching the level of military production. In the 1970s, military-industrial plants took up consumer-goods production only after they had met the military targets (at first, manufacturing facilities used raw materials that were waste products from different defense orders). Defense plants were given the following instructions at that time: yield of civil manufacturing has to be at least as high as the total wage fund of an enterprise. Seven out of nine defense industry segments reached that level in two to three years. This period also saw changes in conscription terms and revisions of military-equipment supply plans on the domestic and foreign markets. Science-intensive production was used not only for military purposes. In 1988, military-industrial complex enterprises accounted for 40 to 50 percent of consumer goods production. In 1990, the figure was 58 percent, and, by 1991, it was 60 percent. These enterprises produced 100 percent of television sets, tape recorders, cameras, and sewing machines; 97 percent of refrigerators and deep freezers; 70 percent of vacuum cleaners and washing machines; 50 percent of motorcycles; and 22 percent of civil aviation planes, tractors, automobiles, tramcars, railroad carriages, ships, oil rigs, medical equipment, and diesels. It should be noted that fridges produced at the Krasnoyarsk plant, which also made sea-based strategic rockets, were sold in thirty countries around the world. In order to increase the quality of the goods, experimental work was needed. In 1988, consumer-oriented research and development in the defense industry reached 25 to 28 percent. In 1988, 240 enterprises of machine-building for light and food industry were assigned to military-industrial complex ministries. This was done to improve the quality of processing equipment, which regularly had been losing 30 percent of the product. The Soviet military-industrial complex’s capital assets were worth 108 billion rubles in 1985 prices, which accounted for 5.9 percent of all the Soviet economy’s capital assets. The government allocated 11 to 12 percent of capital investment to defense enterprises in the last years of the USSR, but this was not sufficient to maintain an advanced technical level. The value of the capital assets in defense at this point was not large because the defense industry part of the machine-tools and equipment sector was considerably worn out. Many plants used old equipment, even of World War II vintage. Capital investment was mainly channeled into new special equipment for laboratory work. The percentage of the country’s total key material resources consumed by the military-industrial complex (VPK) for military-equipment production purposes was as follows: ferrous metal-roll, 6.0 percent; steel pipes, 1.7 percent; aluminum roll, 25.0 percent; timber, 5.5 percent. What was the military-industrial complex’s share in the USSR economy? In the mid-1980s about 135 million people were engaged in the Soviet economy, which amounted to half of the country’s population. All together, there were 5,100 design bureaus and technical institutes in the USSR and 3,200 scientific institutions, including 32 scientific complexes of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The military industry was concentrated at 1,770 defense-industry enterprises with a workforce of 10,450 people. This included 450 research-and-development and 250 design organizations. Eighty percent of these were situated on the territory of the present Russian Federation. Taking into consideration all these figures, we could say that the military-industrial complex approximately accounted for 8 to 9 percent of all the employment, scientific, and production potential of the Soviet Union. Readers may be disappointed by these figures, but this is the truth. I’d like to draw attention here to the fact that all the figures I use are not taken from newspapers; they are real figures I used in my work. Today, they are important historical data. Not everything was well organized in the military-industrial complex. It was a conservative and fragile system which didn’t allow for dramatic organizational movements. In some ways it resembled an elephant in a china shop. Since about 80 percent of military production was concentrated in the area of the present Russian Federation, in other regions there were separate major scientific divisions, such as the Paton Institute of Electric Welding in Ukraine and the Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics (which developed electronic calculating machines), enterprises developing rocket technology, aviation, armored equipment, and radioelectronics. Latvia had the Institute of Organic Synthesis, which developed substances on the basis of bioorganic chemistry or gene engineering. Belarus had heavy automobile building. However, besides Russia, the biggest defense enterprises were developed only in Ukraine and Belarus—in those republics which were never expected to secede from the union. Besides those people working within the military-industrial complex, another 546,000 were engaged in producing military goods in civilian branches of the Soviet economy. Still another 388,000 were engaged in maintaining and running military technology in the Ministry of Defense. All in all, about 8.4 percent of all the working people in the Soviet Union worked in the military-industrial complex. It accounted for over 20 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Fifty-five percent of the overall defense workforce was engaged in the production of military equipment in the defense industry; the rest were busy in consumer goods production or working in the social sphere. Out of all industrial workers engaged in military production, 33.7 percent worked in the aerospace complex; 20.3 percent worked in radio engineering, electronics, and communications; and 9.1 percent worked in shipbuilding. Also, 14.1 percent of the military-industrial workforce were engineers and scientists; 77.4 percent were factory workers; 7.1 percent were managers; and 1.4 percent were service workers. In the 1960s, Brezhnev raised salaries in defense-industry scientific branches by 20 to 30 percent. Social problems at the enterprises were solved much more easily. It was important to take into account the fact that over fifty cities and towns of the USSR were almost entirely connected with the military-industrial complex. These increased salaries lasted fifteen to twenty years. In the 1980s, the salaries of defense industry workers began to gradually lag behind those of workers in other industries. At this period in time, the international tensions began to ease. The army had received all the main armaments. This led to cuts in military orders and the beginning of stagnation in military production. There also existed a psychological factor for people working in the military-industrial complex, which not everyone was able to bear easily—the burden of secrecy. It was not easy to maintain a strict regime of technological discipline, meet rigid requirements for quality, and endure severe control. When money ceased to be an incentive and the social safety net was not as reliable as it had been, skilled workers began to trickle away.NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A child is rushed to a U.S. emergency department every 45 minutes with an injury that’s related to a falling television, according to a new study. “These are occurring primarily to younger children… When (the TVs) start coming toward them, they don’t realize the danger,” said Dr. Gary Smith, the study’s senior author and president of the Child Injury Prevention Alliance. Previous research has found that TVs are involved in child injuries, and that the frequency may be increasing. But according to the report published on Monday in Pediatrics, those studies were mostly small case studies, and the information was becoming out of date as the style and average number of TVs in U.S. homes has been changing in recent years. For a more recent look at TV-related injuries in U.S. children from 1990 through 2011, Smith and his colleagues used a database of emergency department visits at a nationally representative sample of hospitals The researchers found that about 381,000 children and teenagers were treated in U.S. emergency departments for TV-related injuries during that time. More than half of the injuries were caused by falling TVs, another 38 percent were caused by children running into the units and about 9 percent were caused by other situations, including televisions being moved from one location to another. The majority of the injuries were to boys and about 64 percent of the injuries were to children less than five years old. Two-year olds were the age group most likely to be hurt. There were six deaths. The head and neck area was the most common site of injury, and cuts, bruises and concussions the most common types of injury. The overall rate of TV-related injuries held steady at about 17,000 per year over the 22-year period. The percentage of injuries related to “striking” TVs fell dramatically over time, however, while the rate of injuries caused by falling TVs doubled from about 1 per 10,000 children in 1990 to about 2 per 10,000 children in 2011. Although homes have more TVs now than years ago, Smith said that doesn’t explain why injuries related to falling TVs were increasing but not injuries from running into the units. “What we’re finding is when those second and third TVs are being brought into these homes, the (older and bulkier units) are being moved and put in other parts of the home that are unsafe,” said Smith, who is also director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. For example, as more people buy flat-screen TVs, their older and bulkier units are being put in bedrooms or playrooms on top of dressers, bureaus, drawers and armoires, which may tip over because they were never designed to support TVs. “TVs need to be strapped or anchored to the wall. I think that’s our biggest problem right now. Many parents are unaware that TVs can be so life threatening if it topples over and falls on top of your child,” Smith said. Dr. Marvin Platt, who has researched TV-related injuries but wasn’t involved in the new research, said he hopes pediatricians take an active stance on this issue. “I think there needs to be much more education to the public and I feel that can be done. Secondly, I think there needs to be legislation or regulation to have TVs secured to surfaces,” said Platt, a retired forensic pathologist and pediatrician in Akron, Ohio. “Unless they take measures to bolt these things down, they’re going to fall,” he said. Smith said the new study may underestimate the number of TV-related injuries, because it only captured injuries seen in emergency departments. There may be some injuries that were treated at home or in doctors’ offices. The ER data used by the researchers also wouldn’t record most deaths related to falling TVs, though Smith’s team does note in its report that according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 215 children died of injuries caused by a falling TV between 2000 and 2011. “If you have a TV at home - it doesn’t matter if it’s a flat screen or (cathode ray tube model) - that TV must be anchored to a wall,” Smith said, adding that people can find additional information on his organization’s website preventchildinjury.org. SOURCE: Pediatrics, online July 22, 2013.Feeling Safe - Short Meditation The Feeling Safe Short Meditation is the perfect meditation for people, who don't have much time to spare. You can easily use it in your lunch break or whenever you need a quick ‘I am safe; I can do this’ reassurance. Your browser does not support the audio element. This short meditation is included in the Feeling Safe guided imagery meditation. Click here for more information... This item is also included in our Soothe and Nurture value bundle. Click for more information... A few words about this Short Meditation... Everyone benefits from meditation and relaxation, even if it's only for a few minutes. If you can find 10 minutes to spare, then this meditation will help you relax, improve your confidence and ease any anxiety. In this meditation Susanne introduces you to her ‘Comfort Hold’, which is a gesture that you can use any time of day, any time you feel overwhelmed or any time you simply need a little reassurance. The 'Comfort Hold' is a gentle reminder that you are strong enough to deal with any situation. Keep ExploringThe Pelicans will need “significant progress” over the final four weeks of the season to save coach Alvin Gentry’s job, according to Sean Deveney of The Sporting News. The organization is more likely to keep GM Dell Demps, but that isn’t guaranteed, Deveney adds. The Pelicans were considered favorites to grab the West’s final playoff spot after the February 20th trade that brought DeMarcus Cousins to New Orleans. However, the team has gone just 4-6 since the deal and sits five games behind Denver with 15 left to play. A scout tells Deveney “the writing is on the wall” concerning Gentry’s future, but management isn’t demanding a playoff appearance for him and Demps to stick around. The front office understands that a transition period was necessary for Cousins and Anthony Davis to get used to playing together and to change from an up-tempo strategy to a twin towers approach. Cousins is averaging 20.9 points per game in New Orleans, down from 27.8 with the Kings, and his shooting percentage has dropped from 45.1 to 42.1. Working in Gentry’s favor may be a lack of proven talent in the coaching market. The team is believed to want someone to serve as both a coach and team president, and there may not be anyone available who has merited that dual role. Gentry, who has one year left on his contract at $3.3MM, faced similar rumors early in the season. A November 13th report said it might be a matter of days until a coaching change after the Pelicans started the season 1-9. However, Gentry was able to get the team on the edge of the playoff race and save his job, at least temporarily. Gentry has a 57-92 record in nearly two seasons on the Pelicans’ bench, and the team has made the playoffs just once in Demps’ five seasons as GM.Matthew H. Johnson is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University. As an archaeologist, his main interests are in Britain and Europe (1200 to 1800 A.D., particularly castles and traditional houses) and archaeological theory. Earlier this month he gave a lecture at Loyola University in New Orleans on “How Castles Work”. We interviewed him by email: You are interested in landscape archaeology – what kind of questions are you trying to answer? I’m interested above all in human life and change in human societies. There is a temptation in landscape archaeology to obsess about this field boundary or that trackway or those humps and bumps or this lovely church or those houses. It’s very easy to forget that the one true end of archaeology is to understand and account for humans in the past. Those humps and bumps were made by someone! It’s their voices we should be seeking to listen to, first and foremost. And archaeology for me is about everyone, whether queen or priest or peasant or landless labourer – all left traces in the material record, whether or not we still know their names. That being said, the endless fascination with landscape archaeology is the way the little details of the landscape reward very careful observation and dissection. I love walking through the landscape and trying to understand what I am looking at, fitting it into a bigger picture. The first thing I do with my students from Northwestern, when we stand in front of an English landscape, is to get them to look at and describe very carefully (and in very simple terms) what they think they are seeing, before we move on to what it all might mean. It’s that process of close observation followed by question-and-answer that is so distinctive about landscape archaeology. The questions that have most preoccupied me in the past revolve around the transition from medieval to early modern rural landscapes, which one might gloss as about the move from feudal to nascent capitalist forms of agricultural and social organization. I have tried to trace this shift not just in the fields, but also in the changing forms of houses great and small. But one of the challenges of landscape archaeology is its infinite regression – you can’t understand how for example open-field landscapes changed with postmedieval enclosure unless you look at different forms of field system and their distribution, which entails going back to the early Middle Ages and even further back to the prehistoric and Roman periods. You just presented a lecture about ‘How Castles work’. The prevailing notion about castles are that they functioned primarily as a military post. What are you finding in your research that tells a different story about the function of castles? What I and others have argued in the last couple of decades is that the military view of castles is not wrong, but that it is only part of the story. Castles also acted as stage settings for people of different kinds of social status and identity. They acted as a backdrop for some of the most complex and meaningful activities in medieval society – the hunt, feasting in the great hall, the exercise of lordship and of justice. Castles were surrounded by elaborate designed landscapes, landscapes that carefully manipulated different views of and from the castle. Critics have tried to frame this new view of castles as somehow anti-military, but I think this misses the point. In the Middle Ages, violence and social structure were implicated in each other at every level, from the ritual of the hunt to the structures of jousting and formal combat to the use of castles in territorial conquest and war. In my talk ‘How Castles Work’, I’m trying to take this debate to another level. We have had the castle-as-military and the castle-as-stage-setting; I’m exploring here the castle as a political-economic institution, as controlling flows through the landscape. I’m talking here not just about obvious flows – the complex hydraulics of moats, fishponds, mill leats and other water features are well known – but flows of goods, of animals and of humans. So it’s a material and an economic view of the castle, getting away from older debates which have become rather sterile in my view. At least that is the hope! You focus on Bodiam Castle, which is one of England’s most iconic medieval buildings. Why is that a good example of a castle that was built to be more than just a defensive fortification? Bodiam is a classic case study in the military-versus-social debate. Military theorists cite its location, close to the coast and beyond to France, and its date, built in the 1380s at a time in the Hundred Years War when the French had been raiding nearby ports like Rye and Winchelsea. They also cite its licence to crenellate of 1385, which cites its purpose as defence against the king’s enemies. Charles Coulson and others questioned the nature of the licence, seeing it rather as a largely honorific document, and questioned in detail whether the architecture of the castle could be militarily effective. It’s also been suggested that the castle was surrounded by an elaborate designed landscape, in which people approached the castle along causeways flanked by sheets of water. I’ve been working at Bodiam with teams from Northwestern University and the University of Southampton, in partnership with the National Trust. Our view is that we need to move beyond the military/social debate and above all see the castle in its local and regional context. We also need to look beyond the 1380s. So Bodiam is among other things a multi-period site; we found the course of the old Roman road whose intersection with the river was so important, and we looked also at the postmedieval history of the castle. We did a topographical and geophysical survey of the area around the castle and found a landscape of work – traces of iron and/or ceramic production, the mill, millpond and mill leat, the harbour… So the castle and landscape of Bodiam that we are exploring is neither simply an ornamental garden nor simply a defence against the French; it’s a complex multi-period site whose regional context and location is crucial. Do you have any publications that will be coming out soon where people can read more about your research? People can read more about the work at Bodiam and other sites (and leave comments!) at http://sites.weinberg.northwestern.edu/medieval-buildings/; links to forthcoming articles on Bodiam are posted there. I wrote a book on castles, Behind the Castle Gate, and Ideas of Landscape came out in 2007. I’ve also written about vernacular houses. I’m currently working on a new book on castles which I hope will be out in two to three years! Amazon.com Widgets Amazon.com Widgets Smartphone and Tablet users click here to sign up for our weekly emailEva Swidler is an environmental political economist and social historian. She teaches at Goddard College and the Curtis Institute of Music. Connections, both real and hoped for, between the labor movement and environmentalists have been news for at least fifteen years now. The possibility of such a connection came into wider view at the Seattle World Trade Organization protests in 1999, when alliances between trade unionists and other protest groups made headlines with catchy phrases like “Teamsters for Turtles”—or, more prosaically, the “blue-green alliance,” in reference to blue-collar workers joining with green ecological activists. Despite the once-exciting and novel possibility being now institutionalized in such organizations as the Labor Network for Sustainability, the Blue-Green Alliance, and SustainLabour, the thrill seems to be gone for mainstream environmentalist discourse, and labor has largely faded from view. To be fair, the environmental movement has incorporated labor into its thinking in some ways. “Green jobs” for the building trades are often cited as a social benefit of retrofitting structures for energy efficiency or new energy technologies, to prove that reducing energy consumption and carbon production need not harm the working class. Environmentalists point to the health hazards that workers face in environmentally toxic environments—farmhands handling pesticides, workers manufacturing chemicals, miners—as destructive to humans and the larger ecology alike. A general willingness to campaign for workers’ rights alongside environmental responsibility is evident, as a sort of acknowledgment of the moral rectitude of fellow activists. Meanwhile, and in return, ecological activists hope that workers will take up environmental issues as part of a broad progressive agenda, creating a patchwork alliance. Some environmentalists have even located capitalist dynamics at the heart of contemporary environmental destruction, while nevertheless failing to conclude that anti-capitalism is the way forward. The “voluntary simplicity” movement, zero-growth advocates, or the Transition Town movement all identify constant growth and ever-expanding consumption as motors of environmental destruction. Yet none of these groups seem to see the people whose labor enacts that destruction as key to their fight. Union and labor activists understand the issue somewhat differently. They recognize the connections that environmentalists draw between dangerous work and the pollution that that work produces, or between energy efficiency plans for buildings and the employment those plans create. But labor often wants to claim a more central role in the fight for a sustainable world. SustainLabour, the International Labour Foundation for Sustainable Development, says: “Workplaces are at the center of production and consumption, therefore they should be central locations in any effort aimed to change production and consumption patterns at local, national and international levels.” Yet even this organization focuses on familiar ways of linking workers and ecological destruction: training workers on chemical risks, campaigning for green jobs, or urging climate change researchers to consider the most vulnerable populations in their analysis. The Blue-Green Alliance likewise pushes for infrastructure works, efficiency initiatives, and funding to subsidize fuel-efficient vehicle production. Such campaigns to counter the incessantly repeated shibboleth of “jobs versus the environment” are important, but the strain of being so reasonable appears to have consumed labor’s radical potential: to save the planet by challenging capitalism, profit, and even work itself. Radicals hardly do better. In her recent bestseller This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Naomi Klein claims the anti-capitalist mantle of the book’s title and gives a brief shout-out to the idea of the shorter work week as an important strategy to reduce climate change. In interviews, she explains that shorter work weeks could reduce the size of the economy and thus limit environmental destruction, while still allowing for necessary production. They would also give people more time to live in less consumptive ways—to grow kitchen gardens, or to cook at home, or to walk and bike places instead of driving. Juliet Schor and organizations like the Take Back Our Time Network and the New Economics Foundation have all said the same for years. Rather than the so-called “productivity dividend” (the greater economic capacity that results from constant increases in worker productivity) going toward greater profits for capitalists, or occasionally to slightly higher wages, annual increases in worker productivity could lead to a decrease in the amount of time that people work, while leaving the quantity of goods and services produced unchanged. Voilà, a steady-state economy. Unfortunately, calls for a shorter work week tend to sidestep the thorny question of just who will make it happen. After all, a call for shrinking economies is effectively a rejection of capitalism and the profit motive itself—and that will take a fight. If the goal of that fight is to reduce work hours, then workers seem like the strongest candidates to take it on. But the discourse around the shorter work week makes no mention of a labor movement, unions, or the working class. This vision seems to presume that people of all classes will get together and talk to their neighbors, then overthrow the world economy: a simplistic, just-do-it voluntarism meets anti-capitalism. But meanwhile, the prime concerns of working-class movements over past millennia (beyond sheer survival) have been struggles over time and leisure, and only the working classes have ever had success on that front. Clearly the working-class fight against work and for leisure is a missing keystone in the struggle to defend nature against incessant growth. In his classic 1967 article “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism,” E. P. Thompson described English workers’ everyday struggles against the capitalist regimentation of life. Workers of many sorts resisted the very designation of time as the proxy for work, and time measurement as the measure of labor; people
prospects in national elections are in Michigan that one of the party's leading potential candidates for the Senate next year would trail in a hypothetical match up with a twitter handle," wrote PPP in an accompanying statement. "That sort of climate for Republicans may be why it's been hard to get top tier candidates into the race for the open Senate seat there next year." @HuffPostDetroit Anyone with a MySpace profile who wants to preserve Medicare could beat Justin Amash. — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) June 11, 2013 The imminent retirement of Sen. Carl Levin (D.) opens up a seat in Michigan, which hasn't elected a Republican to the Senate since Spence Abraham in 1994. On the left, candidate and current Rep. Gary Peters is leading 41 to 36 percent in a recent poll against Teri Lyn Land, a Republican and former Michigan Secretary of State, as well as the first GOP candidate to enter the race. @billmurphy That said, I'd spend my campaign talking about how great Gary Peters is. — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) June 10, 2013 Rep. Mike Rogers (R), who has weighed making a Senate bid of his own, said recently that it would be difficult to chair the House Armed Services Committee while campaigning for a statewide seat. A recent post by Tim Alberta in the National Journal cast even more doubt on the idea of Rogers casting off his powerful House seat to run for Senate, noting, "to everyone around Rogers -- and probably to the lawmaker himself -- the move just doesn’t add up." That creates a possible opening for Amash, who tweeted in May: "Huge long-term harm to #MIGOP if we put up unelectable anti-liberty, pro-corp welfare #MISEN candidate. I won't let that happen w/o a fight.” Looks like he got that fight. Thanks to you who've asked if you can donate to my campaign against @repjustinamash. Let's see what the congressman decides first. — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) June 10, 2013 The PPP poll didn't just cover politics. In a nod to the Michigan respondents, they asked voters this question -- if it sounds familiar, readers may have heard in the intro to Detroit rapper Eminem's "Lose Yourself," filmed for the movie "8 Mile." Q: If you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip? While 60 percent of Michigan voters say they would capture it, 7 percent say they would let it slip. And 34 percent are still unsure, though not the person behind the @LOLGOP account. @huffpostdetroit Capture it. I didn't go to Cranbrook. — LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) June 11, 2013 (Both the villain in Eminem's "8 Mile" and Mitt Romney attended Cranbrook, a tony Michigan private school.) Hat tip: EclectablogOhio Gov. John Kasich on Wednesday warned that Republicans in Congress would face consequences on Election Day if they tried to shut down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood. “The American people are going to shake their heads and say, 'What's the problem with these Republicans?' ” the 2016 hopeful said during CNN’s main-stage GOP presidential debate Wednesday. “I am not for shutting the government down because I don't think it's going to work out.” ADVERTISEMENT Kasich’s stance on defunding Planned Parenthood puts him in direct contrast with firebrand 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 (R-Texas), a fellow presidential candidate. Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is also running for the White House, have urged GOP leaders to defund Planned Parenthood even if it risks a government shutdown — something GOP leaders have strongly opposed. Instead, Kasich said, the decision to defund Planned Parenthood should be made by governors: “I think there’s a way to get this done,” he said. Given a similar question, Cruz declined to answer questions about his strategy to defund the government. “I'm proud to stand for life,” he said. “We need to stop surrendering and start standing for our principles.” Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard executive and only woman on the stage, delivered an impassioned attack against Planned Parenthood. The healthcare provider has come under attack this summer for a series of videos that were filmed undercover over the use of fetal tissue obtained from abortions. “This is about the character of our nation,” Fiorina said. “If we allow Obama to veto this bill, shame on us."When Microsoft’s Hololens comes out, it won’t be the only device involved in the Windows Holographic platform. In a surprising move, Microsoft has opened up the Windows Holographic platform to other VR makers like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, who wants to join in. Microsoft recently posted an entry about its plans of Mixed Reality in its Windows Experience Blog detailing what Microsoft did in Computex 2016. “Today, we announced that Windows Holographic is coming to devices of all shapes and sizes from fully immersive virtual reality to fully untethered holographic computing. Today we invited our OEM, ODM, and hardware partners to build PCs, displays, accessories and mixed reality devices with the Windows Holographic platform.” — Terry Myerson, Microsoft So by the time that the Hololens and Windows Holographic comes out, it comes out in a big way, that is, if everyone Microsoft invited to the party comes in well-dressed. It would be awesome for everyone else to be into Microsoft’s promising Windows Holographic technology. Those invited include Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Asus, Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI and HTC. It was the HTC Vive featured in the Hololens commercial they showed at Computex. It was quite surprising to see the girl using the Hololens contact the HTC Vive gamer while he was playing a game via Clippy-like AI assistants reminiscent of Skeetz, the robotic companion of the DC superhero Booster Gold. Such an AI app in itself would be amazing, especially for the lonely worker out in the field. Wouldn’t it be great to have an AI smarter than Siri, Cortana and Alexa combined? However, it would look real awkward walking around the office talking to thin air. The only indicator that you haven’t regressed to your seven-year-old self is the hololens headset. The commercial showed the HTC Vive guy as a polygon figure amidst the realistic representation of other Hololens users. The HTC Vive guy sees everyone else in the same polygon mode. Whatever the representation, it would be amazing to allow VR headsets initially designed for entertainment to be used in business applications. To allow them to collaborate with other workers on certain projects in what it calls Mixed Reality where VR users can also see what Hololens users see and even call up Windows Holographic commands. It’s reminiscent of Microsoft giving Apple II users business clout through its SoftCard add-on. This time, Microsoft is sharing its Windows Holographic APIs to other tech players to allow them to design collaborative business and communication apps into their own VR platforms. The presentation also shows the potential of the technology to break down language barriers between users through real-time translation. The supervisor got the request for assistance in another language and translated speech bubbles appeared when the Japanese boss began talking. But let’s not take Microsoft’s presentation literally as those apps aren’t really available yet. The presentation is also highly theoretical but very inspiring, to say the least. There’s great potential in this project if Microsoft doesn’t screw it up or let it go if it doesn’t turn out to be profitable. It’s still too early to speculate on Microsoft’s plans on Windows Holographic. It’s a different beast than Windows Phone with different management. Even though it’s not out yet, it may be the best implementation of VR/AR technology out there and could really change the future of computing. “The big news in our presentation today was a look forward to the future of computing, where the physical and virtual worlds intersect in all new ways and create further scale for the Windows platform.” — Terry Myerson While Microsoft seems sincere in sharing the Windows Holographic experience, which theoretically will allow workers to collaborate using different headsets and even transform one’s living room into an interactive game without the Hololens, The company may be positioning itself to profit from what’s already out there, namely the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Facebook, which owns Oculus Rift, is not named as a partner, but it may just be a matter of time. It’s very smart of Microsoft to recognize the potential proliferation of virtual headsets by 2020. It’s also a very smart move which actually benefits the other players involved. Speaking of other players, Microsoft also just opened up Windows Hello technology to the masses. Older computers without fingerprint readers and Realsense webcams can take advantage of Windows Hello security through USB fingerprint readers and USB Realsense cameras. The Windows Hello API will also be available to phone and wearable manufacturers. Users will be able to unlock their PCs through fingerprint readers on their phones or fitness bands. Microsoft Holographic technology is already being used by companies such as Volvo, Lowe’s and NASA through functioning Hololens units. They could expand their AR operations cheaply by taking advantage or Microsoft’s Mixed Reality initiative by purchasing cheaper HTC VR headsets and developing apps in-house.I find many aspects of life today to be pretty neat, owing largely to the wide array of fun and functional gadgets we have at our disposal. While easy to lose sight of and take for granted, the radical improvements made to information technology over my lifetime have been astounding. For instance, I now carry around a powerful computer in my pocket that is user-friendly, capable of accessing more information than I could feasibly process in my entire lifetime, and it also allows me to communicate instantly with strangers and all over the globe; truly amazing stuff. Of course, being the particular species that we are, such technology was almost instantly recognized and adopted as an efficient way of sending and receiving naked pictures, as well as trying to initiate new sexual or. While the former goal has been achieved with a rousing success, the latter appears to still pose a few more complications, as evidenced by plenty of people complaining about online dating, but not about the ease by which they can send or receive naked pictures. As I’ve been turning my eye towards the market these days, I decided it would be fun to try and focus on a more “applied” problem: Specifically, how might online dating apps and sites–like Tinder and OkCupid–be improved for their users? The first question to consider is the matter of what problems people face when it comes to online dating: knowing what problems people are facing is obviously important if you want to make forward progress. Given that we are species in which females tend to provide the brunt of the obligate parental investment, we can say that, in general, men and women will tend to face some different problems when it comes to online dating; problems which mirror those faced in non-. In general, men are the more sexually-eager : Accordingly, men tend to face the problem of drawing and retaining female interest, while women face the problem of selecting mates from among their choices. In terms of the everyday realities of online dating, this translates into women receiving incredible amounts of undesirable male, while men waste similar amounts of time making passes that are unlikely to pan out. To get a sense for the problems women face, all one has to do is make an online dating profile as a woman. There have been a number of such attempts that have been documented, and the results are often the same: Before the profile has even been filled out, it attracts dozens of men within the first few minutes of its existence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the quality of messages that the profiles receive can also liberally be considered less than optimal. While I have no data on the matter, almost every women who has talked with me about their online dating experiences tends to remark, at some point, that they are rather afraid of meeting up with anyone from the site owing to a of being murdered by them. Now it is possible that such dangers are, for whatever reason, being overestimated by women, but it also seems likely that women’s experiences with the men on the site might be driving some of that fear. After all, many of those same women also tell me that they start off replying to all or most of the messages they receive when they set up a profile, only to quickly stop doing that owing to their sheer volume or unappealing content. There are also reports of men becoming verbally aggressive when turned down by women, so it seems likely some of these fears about meeting someone from the site are not entirely without merit (to be clear, I think women are probably no more likely to be murdered by anyone they meet online relative to in person; it’s just that strangers online might be more likely to initiate contact than in person). The problems that men face are a bit harder to appreciate for a number of reasons, one of which is likely owing to the fact that they take longer to appreciate. As I mentioned, women’s profiles attract attention within minutes of their creation; a rather dramatic effect. By contrast, if one to make a profile as a man, not much of anything would happen: One would be unlikely to receive messages or visitors for days, weeks, or months if one didn’t actively try to initiate such contact oneself. If one did try to initiate contact, one would also find that most of it is not reciprocated and, of the replies you did receive, many would before progressing into any real conversation. If men seen a bit overeager for contact and angry when it ceases, this might owe itself in part to the rarity with which such contact occurs. While being ignored might seem like a better problem to have than receiving a lot of unwanted attention (as the latter might involve, whereas the former does not), one needs to bear in mind that without any attention there is no dating life. Women might be able to pull some desirable men from the pool of interested ones, even if most are undesirable; a man without an interested pool has no potential to draw from at all. Neither is necessarily better or worse than the other; they’re just different. That said, bickering about whose problems are worse doesn’t actually solve any of them, so I don’t want to get mired in that debate. Instead, we want to ask, how do we devise a possible resolution to both sets of problems at the same time? At first glance, these problems might see opposed to one another: men want more attention and women want less of it. How could we make both sides relatively better off than they were before? My suggestion for a potential remedy is to make messages substantially harder to send. There are two ways I envision this might enacted: On the one hand, the number of messages a user could send (that were not replies to existing messages) could be limited to a certain number in a given time period (say, for instance, people could send 5 or 10 initiate messages per week). Alternatively, people could set up a series of multiple screening questions on their profile, and only those people who answered enough questions “correctly” (i.e., the answer the user specifies) would be allowed to send a message to the user. Since these aren’t mutually exclusive, both could be implemented; perhaps the former as a mandatory restriction and the latter as an optional one. Now, at first glance, these solutions might seem geared toward improving women’s experiences with online dating at the expense of men, since men are the ones sending most of the messages. If men aren’t allowed to send enough messages, how could they possibly garner attention, given that so many messages ultimately fail to capture any? The answer to that question comes in two parts, but it largely involves considering why so many messages don’t get responses. First, as it stands now, messaging is largely a costless endeavor. It can take someone all of 5 to 60 seconds to craft an opening message and send it, depending on how specific the sender wants to get with it. With such a low cost and a potentially high payoff (dates and/or sex), men are incentivized to send a great many of these messages. The problem is that every man is similarly incentivized. While it might be good for any man to send more messages out, when too many of them do it, women get buried beneath an avalanche of them. Since these messages are costless to send, they don’t necessarily carry any honest information about the man’s interest, so women might just start ignoring them altogether. There are, after all, non-negligible search costs for women to dig through and respond to all these messages–as evidenced by the many reports from women of their of starting out replying to all of them but quickly abandoning that idea–so the high volume of messages might actually make women less likely to respond in general, rather than more. Indeed, judging by their profiles, many women pick up on this, explicitly stating that they won’t reply to messages that are little more than a “Hey” or “What’s up?”. If messaging was restricted in some rather costly way, it would require men to be more judicious about both who they send the message to and the content of those messages; if you only have a certain number of opportunities, it’s best to not blow them, and that involves messaging people you’re more likely to be successful with in and in a less superficial way. So women, broadly speaking, would benefit by receiving a smaller number of higher-quality messages from men who are proportionately more interested in them. Since the messages are no longer costless to send, that a man chose to send his to that particular woman has some signal value; if the message was more personalized, the signal value increases. By contrast, men would, again, broadly speaking, benefit by lowering the odds of their messages being buried beneath a tidal wave of other messages from other men, and would need to send proportionately fewer of them to receive responses. In other words, the relative level of for mates might remain constant, but the absolute level of competition might fall. Now, it should go without saying that this change, however implemented, would be a far cry from fixing all the interactions on dating sites: Some people are less attractive than others, have dismal personalities, demand too much, and so on. Some women would continue to receive too many unwanted messages and some men would continue to be all but nonexistent as far as women were concerned. There would also undoubtedly be some potential missed connections. However, it’s important to bear in mind that all that happens already, and this solution might actually reduce the incidence of it. By everyone being willing to suffer a small cost (or the site administrators implementing them), they could avoid proportionately larger ones. Further, if dating sites became more user-friendly, they could also begin to attract new users and retain existing ones, improving the overall dating pool available. If women are less afraid of being murdered on dates, they might be more likely to go on them; if women receive fewer messages, they might be more inclined to respond to them. As I see it, this is a relatively cheap idea to implement and seems to have a great deal of theoretical plausibility to it. The specifics of the plan would need to be fleshed out more extensively and it’s plausibility tested empirically, but I think it’s a good starting point.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Environmental Protection Agency has told several lawmakers it aims to end late on Friday a freeze on grants and contracts that had been ordered by the White House, congressional aides said. FILE PHOTO - Environmental Protection Agency signs that read "DO NOT play in the dirt or around the mulch" are seen at the West Calumet Complex in East Chicago, Indiana, U.S. September 16, 2016. REUTERS/Michelle Kanaar/File Photo The freeze has led to widespread concerns in states and cities about whether there would be delays in efforts to monitor and clean up toxic pollution, particularly lead pollution in drinking water, that would put the health of Americans at risk. The Trump administration on Monday asked the EPA to temporarily freeze grants, contracts and interagency agreements pending a review. The EPA allocates $4 billion in contracts annually on projects ranging from cleaning up polluted industrial sites to testing of air and water quality. The concerns were acute in Flint, Michigan, where children for years have been exposed to dangerous levels of lead in drinking water. After Representative Dan Kildee, whose congressional district includes Flint, and Michigan’s two U.S. senators wrote to President Donald Trump asking whether programs would be delayed, the EPA told them that grants to clean up the water would be uninterrupted. Congress last year approved $100 million to clean up water in Flint. The EPA told some lawmakers it was continuing to award environmental program grants and revolving-loan fund grants to states and tribes and was “working quickly to address issues related to other categories of grants,” aides said. But Flint and other cities exposed to lead poisoning remain concerned about testing. “The people of Flint also rely on other EPA contracts to conduct independent water testing and provide expertise when it comes to ensuring water quality,” said Mitchell Rivard, a Kildee spokesman, who was waiting for news from the EPA and Trump about those programs. An official from another Midwestern city that has suffered lead poisoning, speaking on condition of anonymity, said local politicians had asked the EPA if programs would be slowed but had received no answers. A former EPA head of grants said the freeze was troubling because it showed a “total lack of communication about it with states, tribes and communities.” “They’re supposed to be EPA’s partners in keeping people safe and health, so they should have been consulted, or at least warned,” said Karl Brooks, a former acting assistant administrator at the agency. If every polluted community has to push politicians to write letters to the EPA, the agency “will be spending most of its time answering congressional letters and not getting lead out of water or mercury out of our air,” he said.We did it. We are so wrecked in our feels right now that we can barely lift our arms for a victory fist pump. Especially Masterjoe. Just look at him, poor guy. We want to thank everyone who shared, everyone who cared, and everyone who backed us financially. We are not going to post any Stretch Goals for this project. You all have done so much for us already. That is enough. There still some time left so any additional pledges will simply be used to improve upon what we've already set for the podcast. If this is your first time on our Kickstarter page, please take a look around and see what all the hype is about. Thank you so much. Thank you so freaking much, heart pieces. Because of you, this little dream of ours is going to happen! Hey! Listen! Heart Piece Podcast is a free, PG-13, weekly relationship-based podcast for gamers! Whether you're simply looking to make new friends, searching for that last piece of heart in your life, or if your relational HP is getting low, we've got you covered. Follow Heart Piece Podcast on Facebook and on Twitter to stay informed! What & Why? Our audio podcast will serve to meet the interpersonal needs of gamers via a weekly, holistic relationship advice talk show. We will focus on romantic and platonic relationships and use the power of human speech to start a dialogue about how to build and maintain healthy relationships in and out of the gaming community. Oddly enough in the digital world of 2015, there is a general social disconnect that many gamers experience online and offline, in-game and in real life. Many people feel alone, isolated, hopeless, or awkward socially. We've forgotten how to relate to each other, how to make friends, how to find love, how to be good to each other. That's part of what makes events like MAGfest, Comic-Con, and PAX so great for gamers, but conventions like that are far and few between and sometimes they can be too expensive to attend. This weekly podcast will help bridge the gap and meet gamers where they are on a day-to-day basis. How? Each week we will analyze and discuss relationship themes from a plethora of video games (The Legend of Zelda, The Sims, Animal Crossing, etc.), make comparisons between the games and real life scenarios, and outline the application of any lessons to be learned from those games. The podcast will also feature Q&A, empowering listeners to voice questions about their own circumstances and receive unbiased advice in a safe environment. Lastly, we will share success stories from gamers who have found relational bliss to encourage those who haven't. Several gamers have established life long friendships via gaming communities like Smash Bros., Pokémon, or Monster Hunter. Several married gamers met while playing an MMO such as World of Warcraft or by engaging in some other gaming-related activity, like cosplay. Your life and priorities change as you grow older, but you shouldn't have to compromise your love of gaming to find love or to have satisfying relationships. Demos Here's a short audio sample of a segment we created for this podcast called Boost or Brake. The name comes from Starfox 64. We ask each other short, yes or no questions and see what the other person would either Use the Boost to Get Through! or Use the Break! Feel free play along with us: Each episode of the Heart Piece Podcast will be about 40-60 minutes long so you can easily listen in the morning, during the commute to work, in between classes, or even on your lunch break. We know the struggle. We're busy too! Here's a full length demo that we recorded back in January to test things out. Give it a listen while you check out the rest of our Kickstarter page below! Who are we? We are probably the most illustrious married gamer couple you've never heard of. We are, Masterwife & Masterjoe! Just look at that engagement photo! Someone call Reggie. And yes, we were playing Mario Kart 7. If you couldn't tell by her smile, Masterwife is winning. Masterwife is Desinia Miller. LvL 26 RAmarl. Host of the show, PhD student at UNC, and firm believer in naps. Masterwife is the ultimate yang to Masterjoe's ying. Her favorite game franchise of all time, next to the Legend of Zelda of course, is Gears of War. She played 1-3 as Dom (tear Madworld). One day, Masterwife vows to play the final installment in the series, Judgment Day, but alas, her Xbox 360 has met with a terrible fate. Twice. Good thing she's got A Link Between Worlds and Majora's Mask 3D to keep her occupied. That is, if she can ever pull away from the real final boss: Graduate School. Masterjoe is Joseph Miller. LvL 26 RAmar. Talkative co-host, professional graphic designer, and fellow naptivist. Legend has it Masterjoe was born with a golden controller in hand. That rumor has largely dispelled, but the fact remains, Masterjoe is pretty freaking good at video games. When he's not HOO-HAH-ing opponents in Smash Bros. with Zero Suit Samus on Twitch or obliterating all manner of monster in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, you can usually find Masterjoe at work, sleeping, or otherwise unconscious. Even still, the only thing Masterjoe wants to be the very best at, like no one ever was, is a husband to Masterwife. We're not experts. We have no style, we have no grace, and our faces— well they're actually pretty normal for the most part. The point is, we're not shrinks. We're just regular people like you who have found a way to make being gamers work in our own relationship. And honestly, that's what makes this podcast so great! We're going to use our own everyday experiences to inspire our listeners to build, maintain, and/or improve their relationships with their friends, families, and each other, but we're going to learn from you all as much as you'll learn from us. Why Kickstarter? Because it's dangerous to go alone! Your donation will serve to support what we need for one year's worth of podcasting. This includes sound equipment for a 2-person cast, podcast hosting fees, backer rewards, PO box (snail mail rocks!), and website + domain fees for one year. You can check out a detailed breakdown of the budget at the bottom. The nice thing is, since this is Kickstarter, we are prepared to bestow upon you glorious loot for your touching acts of heartfelt generosity! We're especially excited to elicit the charming Krysti Pryde to contribute to our backer rewards. Krysti, whom some of you may recognize as a finalist in season 3 of Sony's The Tester™, will be making sure all of our backers feel the love with one of her trademark Smooches that you won't be able to get anywhere else. We'll be tracking our progress in heart pieces. Rumor has it you need 4 for a full Heart Piece Podcast and we've got 2 pieces so far, so be sure to help us spread the word! Budget Breakdown We want to do this right. We're aren't going to record 20 episodes and then hang up the towel, Game Over. We've already got loads content and there's plenty more where that came from. With the right equipment, website and hosting platforms, and quality rewards for our backers, we're going to build some great relationships with you all and produce an amazing podcast.Common sense is the best thing you can take on holiday, but it also pays to have insurance. Fake friends, unexpected wake up calls and public wi-fi are just some of the ways you can be caught out by scammers overseas, Southern Cross Travel Insurance warns. New Zealand's biggest online travel insurer gets to see the biggest tourist traps because those caught out by scam artists overseas claim their losses when they get back home. Unless people are extremely foolish, those losses are likely to be covered by their insurance, though that is generally a small consolation for a ruined holiday. Southern Cross Travel Insurance covers the travel plans of nearly 300,000 Kiwis each year, so there aren't many scammer tricks chief executive Craig Morrison hasn't heard of. "Unfortunately scammers exist wherever you are in the world," Morrison says. "The best thing you can take with you on holiday is your common sense. When that fails is when it pays to have insurance. "These are only a handful of the pitfalls shady scammers try on with tourists," Morrison says. "A good thing to remember is to keep the common sense you'd use at home with you on holiday. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." Tourists must also remember that travel insurance is there to pay for losses resulting from "unexpected" events. Falling victim to a scam is often unexpected, but if travellers do things that are extremely foolish, their travel insurer may end up declining a claim. It also pays to research the country you're going to and any problems other tourists have faced there recently. Pickpockets Visitors to the Louvre are a target for light-fingered thieves. Photo: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters These are a plague in some big cities. Morrison says you may be enjoying the sights when a friendly local points out that you have bird poo on your shoulder. They even help clean off the mess - while helping themselves to your wallet. The back pocket is not the place for a wallet. Zip-up pockets, slash-proof backpacks, and hidden pouches are all precautions that can make you a tough target for pickpockets. An expensive dinner Dining out is safer than ordering in. Photo: 123rf.com Morrison warns that no matter how hungry, tired or jet-lagged you are, never order food from a takeaway menu slipped under your door. You'll probably never see any food, worse still the person on the other line now has your credit card details and can remove a large amount of money from your account. A better idea is to dine in at local restaurants or order room service. Open wi-fi Handy service, but is someone harvesting your passwords while you use that free wi-fi? Photo: 123rf.com It doesn't take a genius to set up a wi-fi hub. While you're browsing the net, someone can access your personal information and passwords. Be careful about connecting to generic networks with names like "free wi-fi", or "free coffee shop wi-fi". It you're wanting secure wi-fi find a server that requires a password. Fake friends Friendly locals are a joy to travellers, but telling the goodies from the baddies isn't always easy. Photo: 123rf.com Beware of lovely locals outside attractions offering rosary beads, sticks of rosemary, friendship bracelets and rings. They're not complimentary, and these friendly locals will soon be demanding money and making a scene so you'll pay them to go away. Front desk diligence Is that really reception calling? Photo: 123rf.com Preying on the tired is particularly immoral, says Morrison. This scam happens late at night, or early in the morning, with "reception" apologising for the late call and asking you to verify your credit card details. Unwittingly you read them out and go back to sleep. Imposter police These are real Vietnamese police. Beware demands for "instant" fines. Photo: 123rf.com Not all policemen around the world are what they seem, says Morrison. "If you're ever stopped by someone in an official looking uniform who tells you you've broken the law and must pay an instant fine, see this for what it is – a bribe. Keep your temper, try to walk away or insist on settling things at the station." The waiting game Vibrant markets are interesting places, but keep your wits about you. Photo: 123rf.com This is common in countries with strong cash economies, Morrison says. "You'll buy something in cash and the cashier slowly, often painfully, counts your change. Impatiently you grab your change and walk off only to find the cashier has pocketed some." Corrupt cabbies New Zealand cabbies are generally trustworthy. Those high standards aren't always matched overseas. 13rf.com "This scam is not new and is ever-evolving with many travellers having lost their luggage to shady taxi drivers the minute they start their holiday", says Morrison. A few tips include keeping your baggage in sight at all times or watching it being loaded into the car, negotiating a fare before you get going and knowing where your end destination is.As a wine lover, I try to take every opportunity to try local wines anywhere I travel. I bicycled around some wine districts in New Zealand sampling some of their excellent wines. I partook in Chile and Argentina. I ran through Europe quickly… just to avoid getting bogged down for weeks drinking great wine, though one night I partook of much wine and reminisced about previous travels. I’ve even written a specific post on my first excellent wine. Suffice it to say that I take every opportunity to partake. But I did not expect to be sampling excellent wines during this trip to the Middle East. It has turned out to be one of the many things that I have been pleasantly surprised by in this part of the world. Domaine des Tourelles was one of the three wineries that I toured in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Is it the oldest wine merchant in Lebanon, with wine sales going back to the 1860s and production shortly after. Domaine des Tourelles produces about 200,000 bottles of wine and the same number of arak (the liquor of Lebanon) at this wonderful winery. They have produced wine through the Lebanese Civil War and during the latest brush up of conflict in 2006. I was quite impressed. I tasted a number of their wines — the 2010 rose and white options and the 2008 red wine under their general winery label – but want to specifically mention one that struck me as completely excellent and truly worth the effort to go out and find, wherever you are: the 2007 Marquis des Beys. It was a full-bodied red, rich, and full of cherry and plum flavor. It is a Cabernet Sauvignon/Syrah blend with a touch of tannin to it. It would age incredibly well, but even at its young age, it was a truly fabulous wine. First class — as was the entire tasting. For my foodie friends and chocolate lovers… at the end of the wine tasting was this little charm. Oranjanine Triple Sec… in a white chocolate cup.DELAND, Fla., July 10 (UPI) -- A DeLand, Fla., woman said she thought she had been hit by an errant firecracker while dining with her friends on July 4th, but days later she visited a doctor who found a bullet embedded in her leg. Heather Charlebois was just sitting down at a cafe late Saturday night when she felt a sting on her leg. She and her boyfriend cleaned up her wound in the restaurant's bathroom, but not seeing any blood, they figured she must have been burnt by a firecracker. "My first thought was somebody hit me, slapped me open handed really hard on my leg and pinched me, but it did not make any sense because I didn't see anyone," Charlebois told The Daytona Beach News-Journal. Four days later, when the pain still hadn't gone away, she visited a doctor, who ordered an X-ray and found a.38-caliber bullet embedded about 4 centimeters into her thigh, she told WESH-TV in Orlando, Fla. DeLand police are now trying to figure out who shot the bullet. "Well, it's safe to say that at the moment we don't know where it came from," said DeLand police Sgt. Chris Estes. "There is no indication a gun was fired in close proximity to where she was sitting at this point so, another theory is that it was fired into the air from a distance." In the meantime, doctors say the bullet is too close to a major artery in Charlebois' leg, so they're leaving it where it is. "I feel very fortunate," Charlebois said. "I have four kids and we have been through a lot."fullscreen continue view fullscreen close The Tenement Museum has a strict "no photo" policy, as they believe it takes away from the visitor experience—"We are trying to facilitate an interactive experience with our visitors. It really is what makes us unique," the Museum's Jon Pace told us. "All the tours we offer are led by an educator." That all changed last night, however. For one night only, the museum allowed cameras inside for their Snapshot event. During two separate sessions, participants (see: #tenementsnaps) were allowed free reign on each floor, and along the way could document the Museum’s re-created homes and historic German beer saloon. Photographer Tod Seelie was there, and captured some beautiful shots from all corners of the museum. Click through for a look. If you were unable to make it, this isn't the
in China 2025’ plans to transform the ‘world factory’ into a strategic base of ‘intelligent’ manufacturing. Productivity per worker must rise – which often translates as fewer jobs in industry. In the city of Dongguan, which has a $30-million annual fund to boost firms’ productivity, 87,000 workers were replaced by robots between 2014 and 2016. In Zhejiang province, two million lost their jobs between 2013 and 2015. On a roll What this robotic future may mean for industrial workers can be understood by looking at the country’s largest exporter of high-tech consumer electronics and the world’s largest electronics assembler – Taiwanese-owned Foxconn Technology Group. Foxconn gained worldwide notoriety for poor working conditions in its factories that allegedly led to a spate of worker suicides in 2010. The tragic loss of 14 lives did not seem to impact the industrial empire – the company’s fortunes have been on a roll. After reaching 100,000 employees in 2003, Foxconn expanded by leaps and bounds to more than 700,000 in 2008 and proved resilient during the global economic downturn, continuing to expand its global labour force, which reached a million in 2011 and 1.3 million in 2012. In the production process, workers occupy the lowest position, even below the lifeless machinery Then comes the turning point: in 2015 Foxconn’s total labour force dropped back to around a million, and by the end of 2016 further still to 873,467. Meanwhile, its annual profits soared, reaching an unprecedented $4.9 billion.1 In revenue terms, Fortune Global 500 ranks Foxconn – also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry – 27th, hot on the heels of Amazon.com. When it replaced 60,000 workers with robots in one factory, Foxconn boasted to the BBC that it is aligning itself with Beijing leaders who seek to upgrade the technological levels of Chinese workers: ‘We are applying robotics engineering and other innovative manufacturing technologies to replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees; and through training, also enable our employees to focus on higher value-added elements in the manufacturing process, such as research and development, process control and quality control.’ But technical skills training for a few aside, the majority of Foxconn workers continue to toil day and night with slim prospect of upgrading. Much more likely is the prospect of replacement by ‘Foxbots’. Advert Foxbots, known as ‘harmonious men’ in the company’s lingo, are the products of the Tsinghua-Foxconn Nanotechnology Research Centre. With long-term collaboration with Tsinghua University, by the end of 2016, Foxconn had registered 79,600 patents in cutting-edge areas of heat transfer, optical coating technology, electrical machinery, semi-conductor equipment and mobile computing services.1 It has risen from being an electronics contractor to a robot producer. Foxconn’s founder and CEO Terry Gou is dreaming of fielding a comprehensive fleet of Foxbots. In January 2012, during a week-long planning workshop at its Taipei headquarters, Gou made senior executives watch the Hollywood film Real Steel, about boxing gone high-tech with human boxers replaced by steel robots. Gou was excited by this glimpse of the robotic future. His ambitions for the company extend far beyond low-margin manufacturing into smart cars, big data technology, medical and healthcare electronics, automotive battery technology, telecommunications services and retail e-businesses. In July 2014, as Foxconn opened a new production base in Guiyang, provincial capital of Guizhou in southwest China, he put it bluntly: ‘We don’t want to go back to traditional, labour-intensive jobs. Simple and boring… We want to rely on high technology. We want to depend on efficiency. Technology and efficiency are the new future.’ China leads in industrial robots Estimates for select countries/regions, in thousands of units Beneath the machines Meanwhile, human labour gets increasingly channelled into dead-end jobs, such as spraying, welding, pressing, polishing and printed circuit board assembly. They have become attendants to the Foxbots, which are quicker and more efficient than human beings. Unlike England in the early 19th century, workers do not destroy machinery to protest against deskilling and displacement. But their resistance can be no less extreme than that of their predecessors in the satanic mills. Foxconn worker Xu Lizhi ended his life on 30 September 2014. He was 24 years old. A native of rural Guangdong, his multiple attempts to find employment that would allow him to escape from the assembly line, such as a position as a librarian in the factory, had failed. There was to be no upgrade for him. Xu was a gifted poet, and one of his poems speaks of the insignificance of human life when machines are the new lords and masters. A Screw Fell to the Ground A screw fell to the ground In this dark night of overtime Plunging vertically, lightly clinking It won’t attract anyone’s attention Just like last time On a night like this When someone plunged to the ground — Xu Lizhi, 9 January 2014 Apple, for whom Foxconn is the biggest supplier, claims that it is dedicated to ‘educating and empowering supplier employees’, and highlights that ‘every workday should include opportunity and enrichment’. But one Foxconn worker viewed the opportunities very differently: ‘In the production process, workers occupy the lowest position, even below the lifeless machinery. Workers come second to, and are worn out by, the machines. But I am not a machine.’2 To accumulate human capital – a crucial element of the ‘Made in China 2025’ developmental plan – China’s leaders are expanding investment in vocational training. The official goal of China’s Ministry of Education for 2020 is to recruit 23.5 million students – that is, 50 per cent of the nation’s senior secondary student population – into three-year vocational programmes. But what if student interns are not learning any useful skills? Foxconn used 150,000 of them during the summer of 2010 alone. When the government mandatory internship programme is manipulated by profit-maximizing companies (and their global buyers) as ‘a vehicle for channeling youths into the precariat’,3 the robotic future of China and the world will lead to an undesirable place. Meanwhile, those who are losing their jobs to automation or fleeing the worsened work conditions as a result of it, are seeking their luck in China’s swelling service sector. Unfortunately, ‘informal’, low-tech and low-end service sector workers are struggling to make a living wage. By contrast, a small elite of knowledge workers such as IT professionals and creatives receive growing premiums in a digital age. The polarization of labour deepens, with non-standard work arrangements (temporary, contract, and part-time work) increasingly becoming the new norm. Jenny Chan is an assistant professor of sociology at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and an advisor at Hong Kong-based Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM). Foxconn, ‘2016 Social & Environmental Responsibility Report’, 2017, foxconn.com ↩ My interview transcript. ↩ Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. ↩Scotland has already scrapped so-called right-to-buy schemes and Wales is pushing through reforms to do the same. It’s now also time for England to stop allowing council tenants to purchase their homes at discounted rates. The English love of home ownership is well known, which is why, in his party conference speech last week, chancellor Philip Hammond announced an additional £10bn to extend for the existing help to buy scheme for housebuyers. Cash windfalls for a few lucky buyers might win their vote, but the majority must surely recognise that both the right to buy and help to buy schemes are economically and morally reprehensible. The disaster in housing supply is increasing social and intergenerational inequality. In London, where housing problems are acute, 27% of residents (2.3 million people) live in poverty, and more than half are in a working family. The capital’s recorded homeless population of 170,000 is now more than double that five years ago. The UK housing market's perfect storm, and five steps to avoid it \| Larry Elliott Read more Since right to buy was introduced in 1980, 2m properties have moved into the private sector and most are simply not being replaced. That’s 2m fewer homes local authorities can use to house those most in need. It’s ludicrous to suggest that in a time of crisis, we should be selling state-owned homes to those who live in them. It’s even more ridiculous to suppose that they should come with a discount – potentially more than £100,000 – on the purchase and retention of any future value uplift. Right-to-buy reform urged as council leaders fear for social housing Read more We’ve inverted an economic rationale that saw local authorities providing almost 30% of the total housing stock as affordable homes in 1980 to only 8% today. In doing so, we’ve gone from more than 80% of housing subsidies being supply-side in 1975 to support the construction of social homes, to more than 85% of subsidies being on the demand-side by 2000, helping people to purchase – including the help-to-buy scheme introduced in 2014. The result has been less building and inflated demand, reflecting an expectation that the state should largely withdraw from an active role in housing provision. Though it is delayed until April 2018, the government still remains committed to extending the right to buy to housing associations. Accounting for 9% of total stock, this could double the future impact of the policy. The could also cost the Treasury £5.8bn a year, money that could be better spent facilitating construction. Right-to-buy reform urged as council leaders fear for social housing Read more Then there are practical problems arising from the sale of homes. Right to buy has introduced a mix of tenures into council portfolios. Private leaseholders and renters are now interwoven among tenants. Approximately 40% of homes sold under the right-to-buy scheme are owned by private landlords; some are rented back by those receiving housing benefit. There are few controls over who occupies these homes and how, and there is no statutory right to enter properties, to inspect alterations or living conditions. With an undeniable need to build more housing in England, to sell homes that are purposefully built and available for those in need is absurd, bereft of logic and utterly irresponsible. It’s time to stop subsidising home ownership. Instead, let’s ensure state resources are deployed as long-term assets. England must now join the other nations of Great Britain and scrap both right-to-buy and help-to-buy schemes. Jonathan Manns is director of planning at global real estate consultancy Colliers International. Sign up for your free Guardian Housing network newsletter with comment and sector views sent direct to you on the last Friday of the month. Follow us:@GuardianHousing Looking for a housing job, or need to recruit housing staff? Take a look at Guardian Jobs.Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane believes new manager Louis van Gaal will be a success at Old Trafford. Netherlands manager Van Gaal, 62, has signed a three-year contract to take over after this summer's World Cup. Keane says the Netherlands coach can revive United's fortunes after a seventh-placed Premier League finish. Roy Keane's Manchester United record Active: 1993-2005 1993-2005 Appearances: 326 326 Goals: 33 33 Premier League titles: 7 7 FA Cups: 4 4 Champions League titles: 1 1 Community Shield wins:: 4 4 Intercontinental Cups: 1 "It's been a tough season for United, [but] fingers crossed he'll do the business - I'm pretty sure he will," Keane said. The Dutchman, who has won titles with Ajax, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and AZ Alkmaar, will become United manager after leading the Netherlands in Brazil. "He is obviously a top manager with lots of experience. His contract was up with the national team, so that fell into place nicely," Keane added. United sacked Moyes in April, less than a year after he replaced Sir Alex Ferguson as manager. Midfielder Ryan Giggs, 40, took charge for the final few weeks of a campaign that saw the club miss out on European football for the first time in 25 years. Republic of Ireland assistant manager Keane, 42, who won 17 trophies in a 12-year playing career at Old Trafford, feels that Van Gaal will need to undertake a significant rebuilding of the United squad. "Of course it's a big job. They need some players - I've said they need five or six players [but] they will bounce back. They are Manchester United."Women convicted over'repugnant' genital mutilation of two girls'showed no remorse' Updated Two women convicted over a genital mutilation procedure on two girls have shown no remorse and only offered "qualified, ambiguous and self-serving" apologies, a NSW court has heard. Former midwife Kubra Magennis, 72, and the mother of the victims, who cannot be named, were convicted in November of mutilating the two sisters in separate procedures. The procedure, known as "khatna", involves nicking or cutting a girl's clitoris in the presence of several female elders and is considered a rite of passage by some members of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community. The case is believed to be the nation's first successful prosecution over female genital mutilation. A third offender, senior community leader Shabbir Mohammedbhai Vaziri, was found guilty of acting as an accessory after the fact by directing community members to lie to police about the practice. Addressing a sentencing hearing in the NSW Supreme Court, crown prosecutor Nanette Williams said the girls were "effectively voiceless" in the face of their mother and Magennis. Ms Williams said full-time imprisonment was the only appropriate punishment and would act as a deterrent to others in the community. The charges carry a maximum penalty of seven years' jail. She said female genital mutilation was "repugnant to a civilised community". None of the offenders had shown any remorse, she said, and they had only given "qualified, ambiguous and self-serving" apologies. "These women should be there protecting the children," Ms Williams said. "On the contrary, they took advantage of their position of trust and power. "There is no evidence whatsoever that the offenders have acknowledged that there was some injury as a result of their actions." Procedure designed to'make women more marriageable' Ms Williams told the court the children had experienced pain as a result of the "nick or cut" they endured, adding that the procedure was designed to inhibit sexual pleasure. "Available evidence strongly suggests this was never any form of benign procedure," she told the court. "It has to do with... a sexual repression of women to make them more marriageable." The court also heard Vaziri had lied to police, telling officers he had never heard of female genital mutilation, and did not know if it was performed in his community. Stuart Bouveng, representing Magennis, acknowledged there was no evidence of the women's contrition, but said the long-term impacts of the procedure were minimal. He also said the crown case did not give any assistance to the court on the objective seriousness of such an offence. The case is expected to return to court later this month. AAP/ABC Topics: courts-and-trials, law-crime-and-justice, sydney-2000, nsw, australia First postedNot since a surge in the polls at the end of the Republican National Convention two months ago has Donald Trump been this close to winning the White House. But Trump has less margin for error than his Democratic rival, as his lead over Hillary Clinton in a number of swing states is slim. According to the CBC's Presidential Poll Tracker, Clinton is currently averaging 44.7 per cent support among decided voters, compared with 42.8 per cent for Trump. The edge Clinton continues to hold over Trump has diminished rapidly — standing at well over six points in August and a little more than three points two weeks ago. That lead now sits at just 1.9 points. While Clinton was already trending downward, the combined impact of her "deplorables" comment and her health issues surrounding a diagnosis of pneumonia may have contributed to her numbers dropping further. In polls conducted since her near collapse at a Sept. 11 commemoration, Clinton has averaged a lead of 1.3 points over Trump. Those same pollsters had her ahead by 2.2 points during the previous two weeks. Polling by Morning Consult suggests that Clinton's health issues may be a problem for her. While the survey found that 70 per cent of respondents considered Trump's health to be average or better, just 50 per cent thought the same thing for Clinton. And though 49 per cent of respondents said her health issues had no influence on their voting intentions, 24 per cent said it made them less likely to cast a ballot for Clinton, including a tenth of self-identified Democrats and a quarter of independents. In a tight contest, those are important numbers. And the unsuitability of the other person will likely continue to be the focus of each campaign. A recent Angus Reid Institute survey found that about half of Clinton and Trump supporters are voting for their candidate primarily to keep the other candidate out of the White House. Florida and North Carolina now the tipping points Clinton's lead in the electoral college has also narrowed considerably. From 341 projected votes two weeks ago, Clinton is now projected to win 303 electoral college votes, with Trump taking 235. If Trump wins all of the current swing states, he could take as many as 299 votes. He needs 270 to become the next president. At the moment, all that stands between Trump and the White House are two states: Florida and North Carolina, whose combined 44 electoral college votes are enough to swing the election to the Republican candidate. In both of these states, Clinton is currently projected to be leading by a very narrow margin. Four of the six most recent polls in Florida put the gap at three points or less. In North Carolina, the last three polls have all put the margin at two points or less. Trump's wobbly electoral map It would not take much to push Trump over the top in Florida and North Carolina and into the White House. But this assumes he can hold on to the other swing states in which he leads. In Colorado, Nevada and Ohio, Trump is currently projected to be ahead of Clinton by two points or less. Read more of <a href="https://twitter.com/308dotcom">@308dotcom</a>'s analysis of the U.S. election here: <a href="https://t.co/fr6XWmscqP">https://t.co/fr6XWmscqP</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/pnpcbc?src=hash">#pnpcbc</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/uspoli?src=hash">#uspoli</a> <a href="https://t.co/GB9NGUJ54T">https://t.co/GB9NGUJ54T</a> —@PnPCBC While Nevada has been a toss-up state for months, Colorado and Ohio have been trending toward Trump. He has led in four of the last six polls in Ohio, turning a state in which Clinton led by an average of three points in August into one where Trump is able to put up five-point leads in individual polls. (Trump is also projected to be ahead in New Mexico, but this is largely due to a recent Ipsos/Reuters poll that appears out of step with earlier surveys done in the state. Future polling will determine whether or not this small-sample poll is an outlier.) Multiple electoral routes These states give Clinton some options in putting together an electoral map that excludes Florida and North Carolina. But the danger for Clinton is that states tend to move together — if she is losing Florida and North Carolina on Nov. 8, she is unlikely to be pulling ahead in other swing states. But other options do exist for both candidates. Trump could make a play for the Democratic-leaning Northeast and Midwest, where the polls are getting tighter in such states as Maine and Michigan. Conversely, Clinton could try to make a play for the South, holding Florida and North Carolina and moving ahead in Georgia, where polls continue to show smaller-than-expected margins. Hillary Clinton campaigns in Philadelphia on Monday. (Matt Rourke/Associated Press) That these electoral calculations are being made once again demonstrates just how competitive this contest has become. Little over a month ago, Clinton held wide leads in enough states to put her over the 270-mark comfortably. At this stage of the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Barack Obama was enjoying wider leads over his Republican opponents than Clinton is today. She's still in front and still the favourite to win. Trump's numbers may fade, as they have done before. But the likelihood of a Trump White House, with the election fast approaching, has never looked greater. The Presidential Poll Tracker includes all published mainstream surveys, a list of which can be found here. The polls are weighted by sample size and date, as well as the reliability of each pollster as rated by FiveThirtyEight.com. The electoral college is projected by applying the same weighting standards to state-level polls and combining this with a uniform swing model, based on how the current national polling average compares with the 2012 presidential election. Surveys included in the model vary in terms of sample size and methodology and have not been individually verified by the CBC. A full methodological explanation can be found here.Somewhere around midnight, as Francisco Cabrera lined a baseball into left field and Sid Bream chug-a-chug-chugged around third base and then spilled underneath the tag of a catcher nicknamed Spanky, thereby euthanizing a generation’s worth of baseball in Pittsburgh, my friend JB briefly lost control of his faculties. It was a Wednesday night, October 14, 1992, Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, bottom of the ninth, and JB stood alone in a dorm room the size of a walk-in closet, brandishing a 7-iron for channel-changing purposes (his remote control was broken). As soon as it was over, as soon as Bream scored the winning run for the Braves and completed a three-run comeback, JB took aim at a bottle of Rolling Rock and perpetrated a senseless act of violence against what was then western Pennsylvania’s finest pale lager. Still, it’s what happened next that JB cannot explain, except to say that he is a Pirates fan. He knew that the pitcher who had given up the final hit, Stan Belinda, grew up in a town not far from the college he attended, and so some deep-seated sense of rage and helplessness drove him to pick up the white pages, turn to the B‘s, and find a listing for Belinda in Port Matilda, Pennsylvania. JB dialed the number, and a woman answered. “When Stan gets home,” he said, “you tell him we’re proud. Real proud.” He hung up, feeling satisfied, feeling as if he’d somehow exorcised the demons that had welled up inside him, and that he’d done it without resorting to profanity or overt threats, and that this blast of withering sarcasm spoke to the heartbreak of an entire city. This was the end for the Pirates, and everyone knew it, and JB was merely channeling that frustration: The left fielder who had airmailed a wayward throw toward home plate in an attempt to nail Bream, one Barry Lamar Bonds, had no intention of re-signing in Pittsburgh. The starting pitcher in Game 7, Doug Drabek, would soon be gone, too. The franchise — having lost three straight years in the NLCS — was on the verge of a death spiral, and the sense of resentment about this missed opportunity was palpable in a region that prides itself on the transformative powers of its sports teams. Maybe that’s what drove JB to pick up the phone that night; I don’t know, and I honestly don’t think he knows, either. What JB could not have realized is that this sense of impotence about his hometown baseball club would endure into his late 30s. Anyway, a few seconds after he hung up on the Belindas, JB’s phone rang. “Did you just call here?” a man said, his words brimming with a rage of their own. These were the fledgling days of *69, and JB, jarred back to reality, promptly freaked out. He said no, hung up, and then left his phone off the hook for the rest of the evening. “I guess,” he told me, “I had more snark than balls.” It is easy to blame the Pirates’ 19 consecutive losing seasons — a record for any professional sports franchise in North American history — on the lingering inequity between large- and small-market franchises. But in Pittsburgh, there is a stunning thread of ineptitude that has carried over through multiple ownership groups, through countless bad signings and lopsided trades and mystifying draft picks and a move to one of the most picturesque stadiums in the major leagues. These foibles are encapsulated in a shorthand that diehards have transformed into a covert language of the accursed: “Operation Shutdown” and “Bottled-Water Gate” and “Sausagegate,” not to mention the varied fiascos associated with names like Jeromy Burnitz (one in a long line of disgruntled veterans to pass through town), Dave Littlefield (the comically inept general manager), and John Van Benschoten (one of many failed pitching prospects). There was the Aramis Ramirez trade and the Matt Morris trade and the Chris Young trade; there was that time Oliver Perez landed on the disabled list after kicking a laundry cart and there was that time Ian Snell asked to be sent to the minors. There were failed marketing slogans (“We will …,” whose open-ended ellipsis allowed fans a repository for every frustration — as in, “We will … bypass Matt Wieters in the 2007 draft in favor of Daniel Moskos” ) and failed mascots (a foot-tall leather camel named Doug, who briefly occupied the clubhouse in 2000) and failed draft picks (“We feel comfortable projecting him as a no. 3 starter,” Littlefield said after choosing Bryan Bullington with the no. 1 overall pick in the 2002 draft — ahead of seven future first-round All-Stars). There were the “Freak Show” Pirates of 1997 (total payroll: $9 million), who nearly won the division despite finishing four games under.500 and starting Kevin Polcovich at shortstop, and there were the 2000 Pirates, a squad that owner Kevin McClatchy forecast to win 90 games (they lost 93). There were 89 losses under Jim Leyland and 93 under Gene Lamont and 100 under Lloyd McClendon and 95 under Jim Tracy and 105 under John Russell and 90 under current manager Clint Hurdle last season. “There was one point when I considered jumping ship as a fan,” says Pat Lackey, a member of the Lost Generation of Pirates fans who haven’t experienced a winning team since the Weekly Reader was their primary source of information. “They weren’t really terrible yet, but those Cleveland teams were awesome. And somebody bought me an Indians T-shirt, and I wore it to Little League practice one day. The coach said, ‘What is this? You’re a Pirates fan!'” Lackey was 7 years old on that October night in 1992 when Bream scored the winning run. His parents wouldn’t let him stay up until midnight to watch the finish. He leaped out of bed the next morning, found his father in the bathroom shaving, and asked, “Did we win? Did we win?” And the look his dad gave him was the first in an interminable series of disappointments. He was too young to comprehend that this game was a watershed for the franchise. At school that day, a friend made a disparaging remark about Belinda and Lackey replied, “We’ll just go back and win it next year.” Years later, for his own fulfillment, he started a blog called Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?, inspired by the charismatic center fielder who, after Bream crossed home plate, sat down in the grass with his cap tipped over his eyes like a man on a bender. On the blog, Lackey has encapsulated nearly every Pirates game in the mid to late 2000s; until recently, it was a Dostoyevskian chronicle of despair that he’d thought about giving up on multiple times. Last year, the Pirates’ record went above.500 around the All-Star break, landing the team in unfamiliar territory: first place. But, just as quickly as they rose, the team fell to pieces in the second half of the season. Over the winter, Lackey focused on his Ph.D. studies in biochemistry and barely thought about baseball at all. That collapse brought to mind all sorts of questions about recidivism and self-abuse, but even though Lackey lives in North Carolina now, something wouldn’t let him stop blogging. Something kept him coming back to Pittsburgh, to the one professional sports team in the City of Champions that existed, for his entire adult life, as little more than an afterthought. There is no place in America quite like Pittsburgh, if only because of the way people talk. This is a city that popularized the phrase “jagoff,” which I can tell you from firsthand experience is as satisfying a road-rage insult as any two-syllable term in the English language. This is a city where a pair of morning DJs made a living for many years by brilliantly mocking the collective voice of their own fan base. This is a city where “yinzer” — the term for a hard-core Pittsburgher, derived from “yinz,” as in “Yinz wanna go dahntahn and drink some Ahrn City” — is tossed about with both pride and revulsion, in the same way “hipster” is utilized in Brooklyn. Put it this way: All those years of Rust Belt struggle made the people of this town pretty self-aware about how they are perceived. Pittsburgh is a football town first, of course, and its relationship with the Steelers (“Stillers”) is well chronicled. The Penguins won their first Stanley Cup with Mario Lemieux in 1991, at about the same time the Pirates began their post-Bream tailspin, and so for many years, there was hardly a need for the Pirates to exist except in that slim window between the Stanley Cup playoffs and the first day of Steelers training camp. Even in the early 1990s, they could not sell out playoff baseball games and an All-Star Game at (the admittedly cavernous) Three Rivers Stadium; before PNC Park was built on the North Side waterfront in 2001, there were recurring questions about whether the Pirates might leave town altogether. “Before the 1970s, this was a baseball town,” says Anne Madarasz, director of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum. “A dedicated, serious baseball town.” Baseball in Pittsburgh dates back to the 19th century, but the first turning point came in 1909, when Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss, a Kentucky bourbon distiller, built Forbes Field in Oakland, an up-and-coming section of the city being developed by Andrew Carnegie. He believed his park could appeal to a more upscale clientele; his critics labeled it “Dreyfuss’s Folly.” But Forbes Field sold out on Opening Day, and the Pirates won the 1909 World Series, and 51 years later, in that same ballpark, Bill Mazeroski drove a 1-0 pitch from Ralph Terry over the left-field wall to win Game 7 of the World Series over the Yankees. It is a moment they still commemorate every October 13 by playing the broadcast of the game over a loudspeaker at the site of the outfield wall of Forbes Field. That sentimental attachment to sports is what carried Pittsburgh through the lean times. When the city began to redefine itself as the steel mills moved out, the Steelers were a model NFL franchise, but there were enough people who remembered the Mazeroski home run or the Roberto Clemente years or the “We Are Family” World Series champion Pirates of 1979 that Pittsburgh refused to completely let go of its relationship with baseball. In order to maintain their status as a first-class city, they needed a baseball team as much as they needed a world-class symphony. And so they never fully gave in to apathy: The failures of the Pirates have always bothered people, even as those failures have dragged on for a generation. There is a reason all the sports teams in Pittsburgh wear black and gold; in some way, they are inexorably linked, and so the Pirates’ mounting losses contrasted with the comeback of Pittsburgh itself over the past two decades. Here was this beautiful new ballpark, in this revived North Shore neighborhood: Why can’t we get the product right? “People care enough to get mad about the things that went wrong,” Madarasz says. “That’s Pittsburgh — we try and we try and we try, until we succeed.” On that night in 1992, as JB brandished a short iron in his college dorm room, the only Pirates pitcher with a disease named after him positioned himself in a locker room lined with plastic sheeting and stocked with champagne. The Pirates led 2-0 going into the bottom of the ninth in Atlanta, and Steve Blass was a color commentator on the Pirates’ radio and television networks. He stood alone in the visitors’ clubhouse, microphone in hand, and watched the inning unravel. And then he stood in a broadcast booth for the next 20 years and watched the franchise unravel. There may be no one in Pittsburgh who understands the psychology of snowballing defeat more vividly than Blass: In 1972, he was an All-Star pitcher with the Pirates. Then he lost control of his ability to throw a baseball, for reasons that never fully revealed themselves. He wasn’t the first one to experience this syndrome, but he became its namesake (Rick Ankiel, Steve Sax, and Chuck Knoblauch have all suffered from Steve Blass disease in the years since) and its most famous sufferer after Roger Angell profiled him for The New Yorker in 1975. He transformed himself into a nimble broadcaster, witty and self-deprecating and stubbornly old-fashioned (“What the hell is BABIP all about?” he asks me at one point), and he insists that he still adores his job, despite bearing witness to years of ignominy. “There were nights when I’d think, ‘I don’t know if we’re awful, but we’re playing awful,'” he says, sitting with me in the press box at PNC Park. “When you get beat 12-1, and you’re never in it, and you’re watching them play catch-up ball every night … night after night, year after year … ” Blass has lived in Pittsburgh for 40 years, and he credits the city with rescuing him. Nineteen seasons of defeat is nothing compared to the couple of years of hell he went through at the end of his career. Bad decisions, bad luck, bad management: All of the above have afflicted the Pirates, but Blass refuses to ascribe it to mysticism or voodoo, because he’s been down this psychic road before. “It’s not a curse,” he says. “It’s baseball.” Hopefully,” Sid Bream is telling me, “a little bit of the Bream curse can be gone soon.” Before Bream became an Atlanta Brave, he was a Pittsburgh Pirate, and he imagined he would be a Pirate for years to come. He arrived in the city in 1985 just as a cocaine scandal swept through the Pittsburgh clubhouse, implicating a barbecue chef, a freelance photographer, and the man who played the Pirate Parrot mascot, and leading to a series of trials that forced players like Tim Raines and Keith Hernandez to detail their drug habits to the nation. It was a dark moment for the city, and for baseball itself; in the wake of it, the Pirates chose to remain in their founding city rather than relocate, and acquired a group of young prospects in order to rebuild the franchise. By 1990, that team — with no starter older than 29 — won the National League East and lost in the NLCS to the Reds. “The next day, I remember management said, ‘Bream is our first priority to sign for 1991,'” Bream says. “I assumed I would get a multi-year contract of some sort. But their negotiations weren’t even close to market price. So Atlanta gave me a good contract, but my wife and I still were having a very difficult time leaving Pittsburgh. After we said yes to the Braves, we stayed up all night long, and I cried my eyes out. I called my attorney and said I wanted to stay in Pittsburgh. “We tried to go back to the Pirates. We said, ‘We’ll take your offer if you give me a no-trade clause.’ Because what would stop them from signing me and then turning around and trading me to the Braves with that contract? And they said no.” And so Bream left for Atlanta. When he hit a grand slam against the Pirates in 1991, he says, it was the least enjoyable grand slam he’d ever hit in his life. In ’92, when he crossed home plate in Game 7: “I was just doing my job.” Bream’s career ended after the 1994 season. He is calling me from his home, from a place called Zelienople, which is 30 minutes north of Pittsburgh. He always knew he’d move back, and Game 7 did nothing to change that desire. Every day, when he goes out in public, he hears from at least one person about that odyssey from second base to home plate on Cabrera’s single; oddly, the man who inserted the dagger into the franchise is still largely beloved in Pittsburgh, because the people understand that it is not his fault, because the people understand that Sid Bream feels the same pangs and aches that they do. “Money’s always been an issue for the Pirates,” he says. “I might burn some bridges, but when a city builds a ballpark for you and you’re not willing to do a whole lot to put a winner onto the ball field? The players know when you’re trying to win and when you’re not trying to win. “But I hope they go out and win the Central Division this year.” When I visited Pittsburgh in July, the Pirates were clinging to second place in the division, a game and a half behind the Reds. Barring a monumental collapse, they will finish this season with a winning record for the first since 1992, and as I write this, they continue to hover on the cusp of their
but you can at least enjoy imagining what could have been with such a talented supporting cast and creator on hand.Public finances over the next five years are looking £27bn better than they were in July, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The improvement is due to a combination of better tax receipts and lower interest payments on debt, Chancellor George Osborne said in his Autumn Statement. It means the government can borrow £8bn less over the next five years. It also means there can be £12bn more investment in capital projects. The OBR now predicts a small fall in the amount the government will borrow in the current financial year from £74.1bn to £73.5bn. Many analysts had expected the forecast of borrowing this year to increase. The comparable figure has increased since July because of statistical changes to the treatment of housing associations. The OBR expects borrowing of £49.5bn next year, £24.8bn in 2017-18 and £4.6bn in 2018-19 before the government moves to a surplus of £10.1bn and £14.7bn in the following two years. A large proportion of the £27bn improvement in the public finances comes from a correction in the model that the OBR uses to predict the government's VAT take. It decided that it was being too pessimistic about how much would be raised through VAT. The effect of correcting this error was considerable: it means an extra £11.5bn by 2020-21, which more than pays for the £9.4bn it is costing the exchequer to scrap its policy of reducing tax credits. 'Persistent problem' The forecasts for economic growth were barely changed, with the figures for 2016 and 2017 being raised from 2.3% to 2.4% and from 2.4% to 2.5% respectively. The predictions for 2019 and 2020 have both been cut from 2.4% to 2.3%. The chancellor said the forecasts remained relatively high despite the expectations for growth in other countries and world trade being revised downwards. "The weakness of the eurozone remains a persistent problem [and] there are rising concerns about debt in emerging economies," he said. The full OBR report shows that without the policies announced in the Autumn Statement, the public finances would have very nearly broken even in 2018-19, a year earlier than the chancellor plans, with a deficit of only £200m. After taking into account the policies just announced, there is now a deficit of £4.6bn expected. Statement and Spending Review 2015 Presented by Chancellor George Osborne, the Spending Review sets out what government spending will be over the next four years, while the Autumn Statement is an annual update of government plans for the economy. Special report: Full in-depth coverage of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement Documents: Link to full Autumn Statement and Spending Review documents via HM Treasury What it means for you: How the Autumn Statement and Spending Review will affect your finances Watch: The BBC's TV coverage begins on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel at 11:30 GMT, with BBC Radio 5 Live coverage from 11:55 GMT“Into the Badlands” has been renewed for a second season, AMC announced Tuesday. The show will return for a 10-episode second season, premiering on AMC in 2017. The show delivered the third highest-rated first season in U.S. cable TV history. “With its deep dive into authentic martial arts, the visually stunning ‘Into the Badlands’ proved to be unlike anything else on television,” said Charlie Collier, president of AMC, SundanceTV and AMC Studios. Also Read: 'Into the Badlands' Showrunner on Season Finale: 'There Is No Easy Way Out' “Co-creators and showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar, along with a talented team of producers, cast and crew, brought us an artfully crafted series,” he continued. We’re eager to return to the world of barons and blades and spend even more time with these compelling and evolving characters across an expanded second season.” The show follows Sunny (Daniel Wu), the top warrior for a savage tyrant named Quinn (Martin Csokas), who rules over an empire in a dystopian future. But a boy named MK (Aramis Knight) may hold the key to Sunny’s escape from a life he has come to hate. From AMC Studios, the series was created by showrunners, executive producers, and writers Gough and Millar. Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg, director David Dobkin, fight director Stephen Fung and Wu also serve as executive producers. “We can’t imagine any other network bold enough to embrace a show like this,” said Gough and Millar in a joint statement. “We are incredibly grateful to Charlie, Joel and the entire AMC team for taking this leap of faith with us and we look forward to continuing the journey into the Badlands!” Also Read: 'Into the Badlands' Star Daniel Wu on Season Finale: 'A Big Bomb Is Going to Drop' The show stars Wu, Csokas, Knight, Oliver Stark, Emily Beecham, Orla Brady, Sarah Bolger, Ally Ioannides, and Madeleine Mantock as Veil.P artly as a consequence of my natural rambunctiousness, I’ve spent a total of five months over the past few years of incarceration being held in 23- to 24-hour-a-day Special Housing Unit confinement cells, collectively and informally known as “the hole,” at three different prisons and in stints ranging from six to 60 days; indeed, my first three Intercept columns were composed from the SHU over at Federal Correctional Institution Fort Worth. But as these were given over largely to rambling self-promotion and some rather intemperate attacks on several contemporary novelists, I’ve never gotten around to providing a real sense of what it’s actually like to live in one of these federal dungeons. The chief thing to keep in mind is that dungeons vary. The most fundamental division lies between those in which inmates are kept singly in cells along a corridor set off from the rest of the prison and purposefully denied human contact to one extent or another, and those in which two prisoners are kept together in such cells, usually with a window or metalwork grill on the door through which inmates can communicate with others in their corridor via the age-old medium of shouting. The first — known as solitary confinement to everyone but prison officials, who’ve gradually replaced the term with an assortment of euphemisms — is often conflated in the public mind with the second, lesser-known setup, but at any rate the nature of one’s detention is such that human contact is either intentionally and elaborately absent or haphazardly and excruciatingly omnipresent. Even within these two categories, one finds a great deal of variation from institution to institution, but day-to-day SHU life at FCI Fort Worth should make for a useful baseline. There, a weekday begins at 6 a.m. when the lights in one’s cell come on. A few minutes later the rectangular slot in one’s door is unlocked and a guard pushes in a plastic tray containing breakfast along with a couple of little plastic bags of milk. It’s rather dehumanizing, this matter of having to drink milk out of bags like a common Canadian, but getting breakfast in bed every day makes up for it. Fifteen minutes later the guard comes back and takes up the trays, and then one of his colleagues will walk down the hall jotting down the names of those who want to go outside for one’s permitted daily hour of weekday recreation. Having compiled the list, the guard goes back to his station and tries to arrange things such that incompatible inmates aren’t placed together in the same recreation cage. This sort of reminds me of the old riddle about the farmer who has a fox and a rooster and a bag of corn but can only take one at a time across the river in his boat and the fox will eat the rooster and the rooster will eat the corn if either pair is left together unattended (the solution, incidentally, is to shoot the fox, because it’s a fox). If you are indeed going to rec that morning, the guard opens the hatch and you back up to it and put your hands through to be handcuffed, and then your cellmate does likewise regardless of whether or not he’s going out as well, as the door isn’t ever supposed to be opened until both occupants are cuffed. When the door does open, you walk out backward before being patted down and scanned with a hand-held metal detector, led out to the courtyard, placed in one of several large cages with your scientifically designated playmate, and then uncuffed through the slot in the gate. After an hour of kicking around a deflated basketball while yelling old Symbionese Liberation Army slogans at the other prisoners, you’re cuffed back up through the gate slot and returned to your cell. A bit later we get lunch, and then dinner a few hours afterward, followed by mail. Three days a week we’re cuffed up and taken to the other end of the hall for showers. On weekends we generally don’t leave our cells at all. It’s a schedule that leaves prisoners with a great deal of free time, much of which tends to be spent in sleep or exercise. The chief workout routine in the SHU, as well as in jail units and other locales where even improvised equipment can be hard to drum up, is something called burpees, which entails an alternating series of push-ups, squats, and leg thrusts and which I refer to as Berbers because “burpees” is vulgar. Not that I do them anyway, or any other exercise, and I’ve never approved of excessive sleeping, either, for life is not meant to be spent in rest, but rather in conflict or preparation for future conflict. T here is one common SHU activity in which I do happily participate, though, simply because it’s something that can’t be done elsewhere and naturally I’m trying to experience all the touristy prison things before my release just in case I don’t come back for a while. The SHU is the only place of which I’m aware where it’s socially acceptable to yell random nonsense where other people can hear it. Now, much of the yelling that people do through gaps under the door or the crack between the door and its mounting or the metal grills that serve as windows in some units, as the case may be, is entirely purposeful communication consisting of gossip, plots, threats, lyrics, Symbionese Liberation Army slogans, vows, requests, and commercial offers, and this sort of thing will go on throughout the day, with peak times occurring after meals and other periods when everyone tends to be awake (as to how those commercial offers are accepted, there is a process known as “fishing” or “shooting the line” by which small items may be transferred among inmates, but a full column’s description will be required to do it justice; suffice it to say that string and persistence are involved). But in addition to all of this more or less mundane intercourse, there’s also a wholly distinct and inimitable element of shouting-for-the-sake-of-shouting. Some of this takes the form of memes; at Seagoville Federal Detention Center, for instance, the guards once brought in a drunk off the compound who, after being placed in his cell, spent the next hour banging on the door and yelling out some sloshy, inconsequential narrative that he would punctuate every few sentences with the refrain, “They hear me but they don’t FEEL me, though!” Thereafter this phrase became a very popular meme that would be shouted out several times a day; it had been incorporated into the vibrant oral culture of our particular SHU corridor. But SHU shouts can be, and often are, more or less apropos of nothing. I myself was fond of drinking six or seven lukewarm cups of the freeze-dried instant coffee we can buy from the weekly commissary cart, going up to the door grill, and calling out in a raspy, feminine voice, “My brother is coming … with MANY FREMEN WARRIORS” about 20 or 30 times in a row, often capped off with a triumphant, “Meet the Atreides Gom Jabbar, grandfather!” And it wouldn’t occur to anyone to inquire as to why I’d done this; people in the SHU wake up every morning with a sort of preternatural awareness that someone could start yelling out lines from David Lynch’s highly underrated 1984 film version of Dune at any moment and will either assume that the yeller needed to do this to feel self-actualized or, alternatively, that he’s one of the untold thousands of mentally ill prisoners whom U.S. prison authorities have allowed to languish in punishment cells for years on end (though in my case, people tended to recognize me by voice as the guy who was always kicking around the deflated basketball and calling for death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people). A side from sleeping, screaming, and exercising, there’s also reading. Federal SHUs generally have book carts that are rolled up the hallway once a week; inmates crouch next to their door slots to view the selections and point to what they want. Prison book carts are always exciting, tending to be largely composed of donations from ancient rural branch libraries that have just given up and closed down or whatever, such that one can always expect to find a stray gem or hilarious oddity. On one occasion I grabbed an award-winning 1962 volume on Jefferson by Dumas Malone in which the claim that the third president engaged in a sexual relationship with the slave Sally Hemings is dismissed as “wholly unwarranted.” But my best find to date remains the early ’80s sci-fi novel I came across a couple of years back in which the U.S. has fallen under a dystopian theocracy after having rather unwisely elected a Mormon president. Fortunately, SHU inmates are allowed to receive books through the mail from commercial retailers just as we can in the prison itself, with the only difference being that we can’t get hardcover books lest we use them to make shanks. When the editors at The Intercept sent me a hardback copy of the new Jonathan Franzen tome Purity last year, I was only given it after a guard tore off the cover. This was a rather upsetting thing to have witnessed, though halfway through the narrative I was kind of wishing he’d finished the job. I try to keep a copy of something by Hegel with me at all times as well, not so much with the intent of reading it straight through, but rather as a means by which to play a little game I’ve invented called Shut the Fuck Up, Hegel, You Fucking Fraud. What you do is, you flip to a random page in any volume of Hegel’s works and look for the inevitable instance of hyper-oracular nonsense, such as this line I just randomly came across from page 129 of Lectures on the Philosophy of History: The spread of Indian culture is prehistorical, for history is limited to that which makes for an essential epoch in the development of spirit. On the whole, the diffusion of Indian culture is only a dumb, deedless expansion, that is, without a political act. The people of India have achieved no foreign conquests, but have been on every occasion vanquished themselves. Then you write in the margin, “Shut the fuck up, Hegel, you fucking fraud.” And from page 51: What spirit really strives for is the realization of its own concept; but in so doing it hides that goal from its own vision; it is proud and quite enjoys itself in this alienation from itself. “Whatever, douche.” I ndeed, to live in the hole is to be thrust into a world in which everything must be repurposed and all possibilities pursued. One day I decided to compose a list of unnecessary people throughout history and had jotted down Ezra Pound, the Emperor Aurangzeb, Carlos Mencia, Charles IV, and Gary Bauer when it became clear that I’d cast my net too wide, at which point I abandoned the project. Instead I tried to decide which city I’d destroy if I had the chance, other than Houston. I eventually decided on Singapore, which I feel has been setting a bad example for the other cities. SHU time is a time for remembrance. I thought of all the strange and interesting people I’d met throughout my incarceration, such as the fellow who would conclude all of his assertions with the phrase, “Even a small child knows that.” Among the things a small child knows, it seems, is that sentences handed down for conspiracy to distribute methamphetamines tend to be much harsher in Texas than in California and that a particular guard who works the morning shift is kind of a dick sometimes but not always. There was also the guy who feted me with coffee and candy bars during a weeklong transit stop at a local jail, at one point showing me the program from his father’s funeral a few years prior; the cover bore a photo of a man dressed all in yellow, right down to his cape and top hat, and who apparently went only by the name Yellow Shoes. As noted in the program text, Yellow Shoes was survived by well over 30 children. His father had been a famous East Dallas pimp, my friend explained, somewhat unnecessarily. Now he himself had been indicted as a drug dealer when in fact he was a pimp like his father before him, something he planned to explain to the judge at the first opportunity. Frankly, I’d say he had a strong case. Finally, SHU inmates also spend some variable portion of each day reflecting on the astonishing degree of injustice they’ve had the chance to observe, as well as cultivating a healthy contempt for the system that perpetrates that injustice and the society that continues to permit it. Some months ago I asked The Intercept to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the Bureau of Prisons in pursuit of all records pertaining to yours truly in hopes of documenting further instances of government misconduct to add to my collection. Recently the BOP provided us with 175 pages, all of which we’ve posted online — including the fully one-third that the BOP has completely redacted. Tellingly, some clear and potentially criminal wrongdoing actually crops up even among those pages that the agency has not gone so far as to completely blank out, as we’ll see in a moment. First, let’s get the vital statistics from Ben Brieschke of the BOP’s notoriously shady South Central Regional Office, who prepared the cover letter: After a careful review, we determined 89 pages are appropriate for release in full; 28 pages are appropriate for release in part; and, [sic] 58 pages must be withheld in their entirety. Most of these redactions are being justified under two FOIA exemptions, one of which is intended for those files or portions thereof “which would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions,” with the other pertaining to those bits of information “which could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or personal safety of an individual.” This latter consideration certainly sounds serious, and one can get a sense of the peril to which BOP staff are forever subject by the fact that first names are blocked out with the “(b)(7)(F)” box throughout these documents, lest they be tracked down by violent ex-prisoners or what have you. One can likewise get a sense that even the BOP doesn’t buy its own bullshit in this regard by the fact that it has failed to block out the first name of a member of the BOP’s Special Investigative Services (SIS) security division, and in another document has left in the typed-out first, last, and middle names of some dozen other officers and staff, an act of negligence that — what was that phrase again? — “could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or personal safety” of the individuals it itself has just fully identified, if we take the BOP’s own word for it (though in my infinite benevolence, I’ve asked The Intercept to block out the names in question, for all men know of my great regard for the comfort and well-being of American law enforcement officials). Of course, the reality is that despite these names having sat on the internet for weeks before I came across the regional office’s slip in my paper copies and had them redacted, no one has been endangered by the BOP’s incompetence here, as the (b)(7)(F) exemption is less a necessary security measure than it is a convenient smokescreen by which to cover up its own misconduct. And at many institutions, employees tend to be less wary of inmates than they are of the administration itself; when medical staff at several BOP prisons spoke to USA Today earlier this year about the bureau’s despicable tendency to regularly use them as prison guards rather than, say, having them work full-time providing the medical care that’s already in short supply, all of those coming forward chose to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. S peaking of retaliation, have a look at this inmate progress report prepared by two Fort Worth staff at the end of August 2015 in which I am commended for my “good sanitation” and continued FRP payments (the monthly restitution I’ve been ordered to pay to my corporate “victims”). Elsewhere it’s noted that I’m “currently participating in the GED program” (until recently the BOP refused to acknowledge that, in addition to my good sanitation, I’m also a high school graduate; as a result I had to sign up for high school equivalency classes). And here are the signatures of the staff members in question, S. Vanderlinden and M. Gutierrez, along with my own, perhaps not terribly impressive signature. Now take a look at this other document composed 12 days later, after I’d been thrown in the hole again, and signed by the very same two staff members, which I was never supposed to see. Now it seems that I’ve shown “poor institutional adjustment,” “poor program participation,” and even “poor living skills” — true enough if we’re talking about signature design — and thus must be moved to a medium security prison immediately. This would be my new favorite illustration of the casual criminality that has long marked the BOP’s operational culture had I not also acquired this other, even more extraordinary specimen — the latest response from the BOP regarding the Administrative Remedy complaint I filed over a year ago regarding the retaliatory seizure of my email access, the first of a string of bizarre incidents at Fort Worth that would culminate in the confiscation of my notebook outside the law library. As I’ve noted before, the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1986 — passed during a period in which U.S. domestic policy was being determined largely on the basis of questionable anecdotes — requires that inmates who wish to sue the BOP and its employees first complete an arcane and multilayered regimen of paperwork to the satisfaction of the BOP and its employees. Inmates who find that the process itself is being violated by the BOP and its employees are free to file another complaint for review by the BOP and its employees. Astonishingly, this process is not always free from abuse by the BOP and its employees. When we last checked in on my own complaint about my email access having been seized by BOP Washington liaison Terrance Moore an hour after I’d used it to alert a journalist to BOP misconduct, the regional office had rather despicably claimed that my appeal had been late, even though it clearly hadn’t, as the failure by the warden’s executive assistant Jerry McKinney to respond to my BP-9 form within 20 days of the day he logged it in, as well as his failure to request the 20-day extension to his own deadline until well after his first deadline had passed, as well as his failure to meet even that extended deadline, allowed me to consider this a rejection at the institutional level and freed me to proceed to the regional level, as is noted in the BOP’s own policy guidelines — except that I couldn’t, because, as I’ve also documented via forms signed and dated by McKinney himself, McKinney failed to return the original documents to me for another month despite messages I sent over the internal staff notification system requesting that he do so. Finally he brought me back a triply late and thus invalid rejection — even handing it to me nine days after the date it was signed, as is again documented by his own dating and signature. The regional counsels know this fully well, and also know that just a few days later I was placed in the SHU and thereafter shipped to Oklahoma for processing and then to my current prison, where I filed my regional appeal as soon as I received the box containing my legal papers. They know this because, as I learned recently when I complained that the BOP was now apparently violating the law by holding some of my mail for nearly two weeks, I’m on some ultra-rare and secretive classification known as “Inmates of Greatest Concern,” which requires that everything I do be monitored and scrutinized for the benefit of some unspecified outside agency. Nonetheless, the region rejected my appeal due to it being “untimely,” made an inappropriate request that I obtain “staff verification” that this wasn’t my fault from staff at a prison I am accusing of systematic retaliation and whom I have no means of contacting since I’m no longer housed there, and demanded that my appeal be reduced to a single typewritten page and resubmitted, all within 15 days of the date of this rejection, which just happened to be 15 days prior to my receipt of it. Thus I’d been given zero days to comply, including mail time. I documented the entirety of this in a column months ago and wrote back to the region’s legal counsel, explaining in detail why his requests were impossible. Several weeks later I received another rejection notice in which the counsel ignores my explanations and maintains that I missed the deadline, although he himself seems confused as to when that deadline actually was since he lists it as having fallen on two different dates. And just so I understand that the zero days thing wasn’t a mistake, the rejection notice is dated December 4 — and they’d delayed mailing it to me such that it didn’t even arrive at the warden’s office until December 29. This time, then, I’d been given negative 10 days to comply. M y email access was finally reinstated several months ago by the security staff at my current prison, who immediately determined that there was no legitimate reason why I shouldn’t have it; my continued pursuit of this process is intended to force an admission of wrongdoing from the BOP as well as to illustrate how it actually operates. This, after all, is the only procedure by which my 200,000 fellow federal inmates are able to protect the last human rights remaining to them, whether they’ve been subject to ongoing retaliation, or they’ve been kept in the hole for years on end contrary to law and all decency, or they’ve been beaten while in handcuffs, or they’ve been denied basic medical care — all issues that have been encountered by people I’ve known and interviewed over the past few years. Here’s a list of grievances logged in at Fort Worth in 2014 and 2015, which we’ve obtained via another FOIA request; keep in mind that for every complaint filed, there are dozens of incidents that go undocumented because veteran inmates are aware of the near impossibility of getting heard by the court under a system that can be violated without consequences. Imagine spending a year in the hole due to a mistake, trying all the while to get a court to order your release, and getting back a demand that you include two extra copies of a document and that you do this six days ago. This sort of thing happens regularly, throughout the system, although the problem appears to be particularly systematic in this regional district. The truly disturbing part is not that this happens in the first place, but rather that it will likely continue happening despite now having been fully documented. For it is not just the prisons that are broken, but the media as well. To help illustrate the manner in which the press has become largely incapable of performing its necessary watchdog role even when large parts of its job are done for it, and how certain parties have managed to benefit from this state of affairs, next time we’ll discuss why it is that I happen to be in prison. We’ll also talk about a man named Peter Thiel. As it happens, these subjects are very much intertwined. Quote of the Day: “At the very outset we have the antithesis between the goal of the state as the abstract generality on the one hand, and the abstract person on the other; but when subsequently, in the course of history, personality gains the ascendant, its breakup into atoms can only be held together externally; then the subjective power of rule comes forward as if summoned to fulfill this task. For abstract legality is this; not to be concrete from within, not to have organization from within; and this, having come to power, has only an arbitrary power as contingent subjectivity as what moves it, as what rules it; and the individual seeks in the developed private law solace for his lost freedom. This the purely secular reconciliation of the antithesis.” — Fucking Hegel Drawing by Paul Davis. Fee donated to Barrett Brown’s legal defense fund.BENGALURU: “I’m a soldier and messenger. I don’t regret what I’ve done,” Mehdi Masroor Biswas, 24, told an advocate as a posse of policemen escorted him out of court hall 49, Civil Court Complex, Bengaluru, on Thursday.Mehdi, arrested for operating a pro-ISIS Twitter handle, was remanded to 15 days in police custody by special judge Somaraju. One of the advocates asked Mehdi outside the courtroom, “Why did you do this, man?” Mehdi replied he had no regrets.His parents were present in the courtroom. West Bengal-born Mehdi was as a management executive in an MNC, and allegedly worked as an ISIS propaganda activist, tweeting and retweeting thousands of messages. Arrested in the early hours of Saturday, Mehdi was produced before court on Thursday when his five-day police custody ended.The court complex was a fortress in the afternoon. Ten police inspectors in plainclothes, led by ACP Thammaiah, Central Crime Branch, arrived in five vehicles with Mehdi around 4.05pm. As Mehdi walked in, the court hall was packed with advocates. Curious lawyers and other clients peered through every available inch of the windows.Thammaiah sought Mehdi’s custody for 25 more days as police officers had to crosscheck thousands of tweets, download them and take him to other states or countries, if needed. Disallowing police to take him outside the country, the judge granted 15-day police custody with a caveat that Mehdi be produced in the same court at 3pm on January 2.Leaning towards Mehdi, judge Somaraju said: “Police say they need more information from you and have sought 25 days of custody. I’m handing you to police custody for 15 days, and they will bring you to this hall on January 2 afternoon.” Mehdi, who was 15 feet away, nodded with a smile. “Only in case of emergency and based on requirement, will police custody be extended further,” the judge added.The proceedings lasted 55 minutes. The CCB team submitted 1,000-plus pages of documents, saying they contained vital findings of the investigation. “We need to take Mehdi to other states — particularly, Bihar, West Bengal and Maharashtra. We’ve come across links between Mehdi and some persons staying in these states,” CCB sources claimed.IOTA is an open platform that can ensure data integrity for free at higher volume than any blockchain can. Therefore it has natural potential in agritech to secure data about the crop. Paragon and IOTA today announce a partnership aimed at creating a transparent, verifiable database to help the cannabis industry move towards greater legitimacy. By incorporating IOTA’s unique approach to cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technology, Paragon hopes to deliver a faster technology with lower fees. Paragon will build a fully verifiable database to track prescriptions, and data on batches of cannabis (such as their farm of origin, or THC levels). “IOTA is an open platform that can ensure data integrity for free at higher volume than any blockchain can. Therefore it has natural potential in agritech to secure data about the crop,” IOTA’s Co-Founder David Sønstebø said, “We support Paragon’s efforts to create a legitimized and auditable provenance for agricultural crops.” The first version of Paragon will be built on the Ethereum blockchain, as previously announced, and then it will transition to a hybrid with IOTA, with technical assistance provided by the non-profit IOTA Foundation. Whereas blockchains rely on every node in the network having a full copy of the database and verifying the data, in IOTA’s distributed ledger, peers keep only the data needed, and transactions are verified by a couple of randomly-selected peers. This lightweight design allows IOTA to process transactions faster than Bitcoin and Ethereum. Currently, IOTA is the fifth largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of over $2.6 billion. To learn more about Paragon’s plans to revolutionize all things cannabis with blockchain, read the white paper here. Paragon will sell 100 million ParagonCoins for $1 each from September 15, 2017 through October 16, 2017. ParagonCoin will begin trading on cryptocurrency exchanges in November 2017. To stay up to date with Paragon’s upcoming announcements, join their community Slack channel here. For media inquiries, or to schedule an interview, please contact Donald Berlin at Voyage Resources: don(at)voyageresources(dot)com or call 303-589-5774. About Paragon Paragon is a distributed ledger for the marijuana industry and supply chain. Paragon’s blockchain-backed network will enable secure and transparent record-keeping for doctor registries, medical cards, and prescriptions. The protocol can also be used to log data pertaining to cannabis products, including time of harvest, origin, organic status, CBD/THC content, and sustainability. CEO, Jessica VerSteeg, former Miss Iowa US, and a star of the reality TV show, The Amazing Race. Egor Lavrov, Chief Creative Officer, is a serial entrepreneur, who sold his first business for $2 million at the age of 16. Paragon’s team includes alumni from Facebook, Google, Cisco, and Y-Combinator. Rapper The Game sits on Paragon’s advisory board. About IOTA IOTA is a next generation public distributed ledger that goes beyond regular blockchain by deploying an entirely new architecture based on directed acyclic graph (DAG) called Tangle. The IOTA protocol get rid of fees, scaling and centralization issues that have plagued blockchain since incarnation. In the Tangle ledger every user is also a validator, giving rise to an entirely self-regulating maximally decentralized network. This makes it an ideal transmission platform for ensuring and distributing data with tamper proof guarantee. IOTA was founded by blockchain pioneers David Sønstebø, Sergey Ivancheglo, Dominik Schiener and Serguei Popov and is already recognized as the world leader in Internet-of-Things, as well as being ranked top 5 crypto only 2 months after release. IOTA is developed by the non-profit open source IOTA Foundation with headquarters in Germany and Norway.I WOULD not have guessed that we'd be replaying last year's script here in 2011, but the similarities to the recovery and policy dynamic this year and last are striking. Last year, early signs of a strong recovery fizzled amid external shocks, and a long waiting game ensued as writers watched for hints of a Fed response while the economy slowly deteriorated. This year, early signs of a strong recovery seem to be fizzling amid external shocks, and writers are beginning to wonder whether the Fed will respond again. There are a couple of key differences, however. One is that the American recovery is better established this year than it was last year. The labour market, while still very slack, has been improving steadily. The economy has several more quarters of expansion under its belt. And while there is the hint of a negative trend in the economic data, it's not nearly as pronounced as was the case last summer. The Fed tries to avoid reacting to temporary blips, and there are reasons to expect a second-half turnaround. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. The other key difference is the inflation environment. While core inflation in America is dormant and long-run inflation expectations actually fell from April to May, a rise in commodity prices pushed up headline inflation figures early in the year, leading some economists to call for tightening. At the New York Fed, Gauti Eggertsson says the Fed won't repeat the mistakes of 1937: What we call “the Mistake of 1937” was, in broad terms, a decision by the Fed and the administration to implement a series of contractionary policies that choked off the recovery of 1933-37 and brought on the recession of 1937-38, one of the worst on record. What is particularly noteworthy is that the inflation fears that triggered the Mistake of 1937 were largely driven by a rally in commodity prices. These circumstances invite direct comparison with our own time, when a substantial recent rise in commodity prices (which now seems to be abating somewhat) stoked inflation fears and led some commentators to call for an increase in the federal funds rate. The question for the contemporary reader is this: If we could transport a modern-day economist back to 1937, would he or she have made the same mistake? My suggested answer—admittedly somewhat hopeful—is no. I base this view on the fact that most economists today distinguish between the temporary movements in the consumer price index that stem from volatility in commodity prices and the movements that reflect fundamental inflation pressures. Hence a modern economist most likely would have identified the price rise in 1936 and 1937 as a temporary upswing in commodity prices that did not signal a significant increase in overall inflation. Well, maybe, maybe not. So what might the Fed do? Jon Hilsenrath recalls Ben Bernanke's statements at his April press conference: Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled in April that the hurdle to more "quantitative easing," as it is known, is very high and Fed officials have done nothing to indicate that Mr. Bernanke's guidance has changed as economic data has worsened in recent weeks. In an April news conference, Mr. Bernanke said the tradeoffs that would come with additional purchases were becoming unappealing. "It's not clear we can get substantial improvements in [employment] without some additional inflation risk," he said. Mr Bernanke said at the time that the trade-offs to additional easing are less attractive than they previously were, and so new purchases were unlikely. But he also said that the trade-offs would shift if economic deterioration resumed. And if inflation expectations resume a sustained fall, then the balance of forces may move strongly in favour of additional action. My sense is
roiled in a sexual harassment scandal wherein State Sen. Tony Mendoza is accused of inappropriately inviting an intern to spend the night at his apartment. Mendoza and de León live together in that apartment. California has a “top two” primary system, so the Democrats Feinstein and de León may end up running against each other in both the June 5, 2018 primary and the Nov. 6, 2018 general election.Oct 22, 2012; Toronto, ON, Canada; Toronto Raptors center Jonas Valanciunas (17) tries to block out Milwaukee Bucks center Joel Przybilla (10) as they eye a rebound at the Air Canada Centre. The Raptors beat the Bucks 104-95. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports Former Trail Blazer Joel Przybilla has retired from NBA basketball at the age of 34. The 7’1” center played for the Trail Blazers from 2004 to 2011, and again in the 2011-2012 season after a brief stint with the Charlotte Bobcats. Przybilla last played for the Milwaukee Bucks in 2012-13. He now resides in the Milwaukee area, where he began his NBA career in 2000. Ex-Gopher Joel Przybilla from Monticello retires after making nearly $45 million over 15 seasons in NBA, residing near Milwaukee. — Charley Walters (@Charley_Walters) August 24, 2014 Przybilla is fondly remembered in Portland for his tough style of play, his “got your back” attitude, and his most prominent nickname: The Vanilla Gorilla. Playing 13 NBA seasons (two college) is quite a feat and I am pleased to see that he was able to retire without destroying his body too badly, despite the physicality that defined him as a player. Follow @DavidMacKayNBAFollow RipCityProjectYour browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF Yesterday, Seattle Seahawks corner/provocateur Richard Sherman used a mandated media availability (and a life-sized cardboard cutout of Doug Baldwin) to mock the NFL for fining Marshawn Lynch $100,000 for refusing to talk to reporters two weeks ago, for blatant hypocrisy, and for expecting its athletes to behave like shit-eating brand robots. This was all pretty funny, but it left observers with a burning question: Who will defend the brands? Thankfully, post-human ESPN business reporter Darren Rovell will defend the brands. ("Sure, the league won't allow you to have alcohol sponsorships while it profits from its relationship with Anheuser-Busch, but you get a little bit of that sponsorship cash in your non-guaranteed contracts. I promise!") Advertisement You'd think Rovell would love an athlete talking about his brands, but since it comes at the expense of a bigger brand, he can't. He respects the brand food chain too much.The following article was published in the January-February 2014 NewsNotes. Swiss citizens recently gathered enough signatures to guarantee a referendum* on a guaranteed minimum monthly income of around US$2,800 for every citizen of the country regardless of their income from other sources. The idea of a "universal basic income" (UBI) is gaining popularity across the world as it appeals to people of various political persuasions. People with a liberal or progressive outlook are attracted to the UBI’s potential to end hunger and decrease economic inequalities while also diminishing environmental destruction. It can also guarantee survival for workers in an economy that no longer produces work for all. As computer scientist Jaron Lanier pointed out, Kodak, the iconic photography company, employed 140,000 people with middle class incomes at the height of its power. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012, the same year that Instagram, the company that now helps people share pictures, sold for $1 billion while employing only 13 people. It is an extreme example of a larger trend of technological advances displacing workers. We are able to create much more with fewer people. In order to maintain adequate levels of employment, most countries have chosen to deal with this excessive production by producing and consuming more and more. Yet as resources become scarcer and we run out of room for our wastes, it is clear that this is no longer a real solution. To guarantee a basic minimum income for all would assure that even while not employed in paying work, a person would be able to survive. According to the Global Basic Income (GBI) Foundation, "A basic income seems to be the only reform proposal that we currently have, which solves the contradictions in our present economic system and policy, and which will enable a gradual transition to a sustainable and social economy." It would be especially effective if done in conjunction with resource taxes such as a carbon tax or land use fees that make resource usage more expensive. The GBI Foundation argues further that "[f]orcing people to do hard, underpaid work by threatening them with poverty or even starvation in case of non-compliance, is a practice that has no place in a democratic, free society. Many people nowadays are unhappy with their work and lives, because of this practice. It constitutes a constant incursion on the democratic values of our societies and on human dignity. The dependence on work for survival gives richer people and companies too much power over people with little money. A basic income would reduce this imbalance in power. It would end at least extreme forms of exploitation," as workers would no longer be so desperate to accept whatever work was available. "Apart from the fact that the conditions and quality of paid work would improve through the introduction of a basic income, it would also lead to a revaluation of unpaid work. A lot of important work that people do is not paid, such as raising children, household work or voluntary work for social organizations and people in need. A basic income is a recognition of the fact that most people who don’t have an official, paid job are nevertheless doing important work." Conservative economists and libertarians also see positive aspects to a guaranteed basic income. Friedrich Hayek argued on the simplicity and efficacy of the UBI: "There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth which ours has achieved the first kind of security [certainty of a ‘given minimum of sustenance’] should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom." It could take the place of a host of expensive, bureaucratic and questionably effective welfare programs with a simple system that could be run by a computer. According to the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner, "The federal government spent more than $668 billion on over 126 anti-poverty programs in 2012. When you add in the $284 billion spent by state and local governments that amounts to $20,610 for every poor person in America." Many also appreciate how a UBI would do away with the paternalistic incentives in current welfare programs that discourage marriage, as two people currently receive lower benefits as a married couple than as single people. It would also remove the up to 100 percent marginal tax rates on earned income faced by people in current welfare systems. The government removes a significant portion, or even all, of any additional earned income removed from their benefits, making work less attractive. An interesting debate between conservative economist Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley about the UBI can be viewed on the Atlantic magazine’s website (Icons of the right debate a Guaranteed Minimum Income, Nov. 20, 2013) where Friedman lays out the conservative reasons for supporting the idea. Brazil was the first country to pass a national basic income law in 2004. It aims to gradually implement the law, beginning with granting a monthly income of US$33 to its poorest citizens in a program called Bolsa Familia (Family Basket). It is not a true UBI, which places no demands placed on recipients, as children are required to have their vaccines up to date and have at least an 85 percent attendance record at school. Much of the money for the program comes from oil revenues making it similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund, in place since 1982, which pays a dividend for every Alaskan citizen not convicted of a felony with money from a tax on oil production. Smaller pilot projects in Canada, Namibia, and India have shown that a UBI not only decreases poverty, but helps increase school completion rates and lower hospitalization rates. Despite many warnings that the money would discourage work, only mothers of young children had reduced levels of paid work. The effects of any UBI will depend on the details of each program, level of payment and other circumstances, but the Swiss example will be closely watched by other countries considering implementing similar programs. It may seem hard to imagine, but as the GBI Foundation argues, "A few centuries ago almost no one would have believed that universal suffrage or social security systems like the ones we have today would be possible. Yet, here we are." * updated from original versionPage Content A registered medical marijuana user who was fired by her employer for failing a drug test can proceed in state court with her disability discrimination claim, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled. It's a groundbreaking case in Massachusetts that will probably have implications outside the state, according to Matthew Fogelman of Fogelman & Fogelman in Boston and New York City and Adam Fine of Vicente Sederberg in Boston. Fogelman and Fine served as co-counsel for the plaintiff in the case (Barbuto v. Advantage Sales and Marketing, LLC, No. SJC-12226, Mass. (July, 17, 2017)). The state high court has said that marijuana used for medicinal purposes is just as lawful as other medications used by employees and should be treated as such, Fogelman said. If someone is taking medication and can perform the essential job functions; is not impaired on the job; and is ready, able and willing to work, the employer must engage in an interactive process and provide a reasonable accommodation unless that accommodation would cause an undue hardship for the employer, he added. [SHRM members-only HR Q&A: What laws should companies be aware of when implementing a drug testing program?] The Court's Decision The ruling is the first of its kind from a state's highest court, explained Dale Deitchler, a management-side attorney with Littler in Minneapolis. As in many other states, the Massachusetts medical marijuana law doesn't expressly provide employment-related protections for marijuana users. But the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court focused on language in the medical marijuana act stating that lawful users can't be "denied any right or privilege" for such use. Under the state's disability discrimination law, employees have the right to seek a reasonable accommodation. "If a medical marijuana accommodation was deemed a facially unreasonable accommodation, the employee would be denied a 'right or privilege' under the law solely because of medical marijuana use," the court said. The employee in the case, Cristina Barbuto, used marijuana off duty to help manage symptoms caused by Crohn's disease—a gastrointestinal condition that can be debilitating. She said that she used it two or three times per week, in the evening after work, and never before or during work hours. Among other things, the employer claimed that all marijuana use is a federal crime—therefore an accommodation for such use is facially unreasonable. But the court disagreed. "Under Massachusetts law, as a result of the act, the use and possession of medically prescribed marijuana by a qualifying patient is as lawful as the use and possession of any other prescribed medication," the court said, adding that the employer should have explored with Barbuto whether there was an alternative medication she could use that isn't prohibited by the company's drug policy. The court denied the employer's motion to dismiss the claim but has yet to make a ruling on the merits of the case. Michael Clarkson, an attorney with Ogletree Deakins in Boston who represented the employer, said the employer is still weighing its options. "We have not yet had the opportunity to litigate the plaintiff's … claim on the merits, but we are confident that our client acted in accordance with the law." Implications Fine noted that the case is narrow: It involves an employee's medical marijuana use outside the workplace with no impairment on the job, and it doesn't involve a safety-sensitive position. But he hopes the ruling will cause employers to re-evaluate their drug testing policies, consider their reasons for testing and understand the importance of engaging in an interactive process—particularly for medical marijuana use. Most state courts that have ruled on the issue have sided with the employer. For example, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that as long as marijuana is illegal under federal law, the state law does not apply. Under federal law, marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I drug with no accepted medical use. However, a Rhode Island Superior Court judge recently held that an employer couldn't refuse to hire a medical marijuana cardholder who revealed that she would fail a pre-employment drug test. [SHRM members-only multistate coverage: Multistate Employer Resources] As for the Barbuto ruling, it is only binding in Massachusetts, but it opens the door for similar decisions by other state high courts, Deitchler said. Almost every state has a disability discrimination law, and other state supreme courts could potentially find the Massachusetts court's reasoning persuasive, he added. Tips for Employers The Massachusetts court made it clear that employers don't have to accommodate on-duty use or impairment, even by registered medicinal users. For lawful off-duty use, Deitchler said, employers need to make sure they are engaging in an interactive process. "Does medical marijuana use inhibit the employee's ability to perform the job or pose a significant safety risk?" he asked. If so, it may pose an undue hardship for the business. Employers may want an occupational health specialist to perform an assessment, and they may want to work with the employee's doctor to determine a reasonable accommodation, he added. Deitchler said employers can create acknowledgement forms that are tailored to state law. Employees should acknowledge that medical use is genuine and that they are not going to use onsite or perform work while impaired. Whether such an acknowledgement will hold up in court isn't clear, but it is better to make the effort and try to curb workplace safety risks, he added. Fogelman said employers should evaluate why they are testing for marijuana at all. He noted that it may be required or recommended for certain safety-sensitive fields or industries, but it might not make sense for other workplaces or jobs. In Colorado, where medicinal and recreational marijuana use are legal, many employers are dropping marijuana from their drug-testing panel altogether, Fine said. "As the stigma on marijuana use declines, we are seeing a national trend where employers are focused on impairment instead of general drug testing," he said, noting that a focus on impairment is a better indicator of what employers are really concerned about: performance issues and safety risks in the workplace.On November 2 a protest demonstration was held in Lahore by the Labour Party Pakistan to denounce the jail sentences imposed on six leaders of the power loom workers' movement in Faisalabad. By Khalid Mehmood and Farooq Tariq November 2, 2011 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Power loom workers in Faisalabad in mid-2010 went on a series of major strikes and demonstrations. Six of their leaders were arrested by the police. Once in detention, they were additionally charged under anti-terrorist legislation. The six have now been sentenced to a total of almost 490 years' jail (served concurrently). This is a clear message of how "anti terror" laws are used against workers. The Labour Party Pakistan is calling for demonstrations outside Pakistan embassies and consulates around the world. Anti-terrorist court judge Mian Muhammad Anwar Nazir on November 1, 2011, sentenced six leaders of the Labour Qaumi Movement (LQM, the organisation of the power loom workers in Faisalabad) under terrorism charges in Faisalabad. On average, each of the six were sentenced -- on seven charges -- to 81 years in jail, a total of almost 490 years! As all the jail sentences will begin at the same time, each labour leader will spend at least 10 years in jail. Four LQM leaders Akbar Ali Kamboh, Babar Shafiq Randhawa, Fazal Elahi, Rana Riaz Ahmed were arrested on July 22, 2010, by Faisalabad police after a strike called by power loom workers for a 17% increase in wages as per an announcement of the government. Two other leaders, Muhammad Aslam Malik and Asghar Ali Ansari, were also arrested under the same charges four months ago. They were accused of burning down a factory during the strike. This is a fabricated charge. The facts are that on the day of strike, July 20, 2010, gangsters in the pay of the factory owner in Thekri Wala started shootng at the workers who were leaving the factory to demand better wages. Some workers dared to go inside the factory and forced the gangsters to stop firing. After workers left for the city to attend the main rally, the owner set fire to one room, claiming that the workers had burnt the factory. During the trial, the workers' advocate asked if the factory had been burned down then how was it able to be operating again two days later? The arrests of the workers under terrorism charges and sentences by the court are the result of a notorious campaign by the factory owners, district administration and local politicians against the rising power loom workers' movement in Faisalabad. Punjab government’s actions against workers are increasing with every day. Appointments of Aftab Cheema and Nasim Sadiq to senior police positions in Faisalabad last year by Shehbaz Sharif was mainly to control the rising workers' movement. These two officers made many promises with the LQM leadership to re-investigate the case against the arrested workers but did not fulfill these promises. Instead they have supported the owners of the power looms in their actions against workers. More than 100,000 power loom workers in Faisalabad district went on strike on July 20, 2010, for an increase of wages that had been announced by the government during the presentation of budget 2010-11. The government announced 17% rise in the minimum wage for the private sector workers. The LQM in Faisalabad, Jhang and other districts had been in negotiations with power loom owners for three weeks. The power loom employers would not accep these just demands and started spreading poisonous propaganda against workers by labelling them as terrorists. The four leaders of the striking workers were then illegally arrested without and kept in police lock-up without any charges. It was reported that during the strike, the workers remained peaceful but the owners of factories and their henchmen and police remained violent against the striking workers. The owners and their henchmen resorted to violence by throwing stones and bricks at the peaceful march of workers from one side of the protest, while police used tear gas shells on the workers from the other end. Twenty-five workers were injured including Tahir Rana, president of LQM Faisalabad district, who was critically injured. Around 100 workers were also arrested. The media reported that thousands of workers from different areas of Faisalabad district marched despite a police ban on public gatherings. As the workers began their march, gangsters of power loom owners started firing at the striking workers in Sudhar area of Faisalabad. Sudhar is the suburb of Faisalabad where a big number of power loom factories are located. This area had been a battle ground between workers and owners for three years as the workers organised themselves effectively in huge numbers there. The Labour Education Foundation condemns decision of sentencing workers under terrorism charges for raising voice wage increase. We believe that only way out for workers in the present setup of capitalists and feudals is to organise more and more workers and to develop movements across Pakistan. On November 2 a protest demonstration was held in Lahore by the Labour Party Pakistan to denounce the jail sentences imposed on six leaders of the power loom workers' movement in Faisalabad. The Labour Qaumi Movement leaders are members of Labour Party Pakistan (LPP). In January 2010, they organised a massive workers and peasant conference at the famous Dhobe Ghat in Faisalabad on the eve of the LPP's fifth congress in the city. More than 10,000 participated in this massive gathering. In April that year, the chairperson of the LQM contested a by-election for a Punjab assembly seat and won a reasonable vote of around 9 per cent. All this was not acceptable to the ruling PMLN party in Punjab and its law minister Rana Sana Ullah Khan. They decided to target the movement. It is now clear that the PMLN leadership in Faisalabad alongside the police and judiciary is out to crush the labour movement. Never in the history of Pakistan have such harsh sentences been imposed on labour leaders for an incident they were not involved in. Anti-terrorist laws are frequently used against protesting industrial workers in Punjab. Thirteen trade union leaders are facing such charges of terrorism. Their real crime is fighting for a better life for their members and demanding higher wages. The Punjab government is all out to crush any trade union movement in factories which is challenging their authority. The Faisalabad workers are being singled out by the Punjab government because they are political and they are members of Labour Party Pakistan. We are not giving in. Please protest where ever you are. Please take up the case in your organisations and pass a resolution to condemn the jail sentences and issue public statements to the newspapers. The Labour Party Pakistan is calling for demonstrations outside Pakistan embassies and consulates around the world.We are people of this generation, bred in the most hedonistic society the world has ever known, housed now in over-mortgaged tract homes, and looking uncomfortably to the world we leave to our children. We were born in the days when the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire, a college degree was the ticket to the middle class, and being born American meant that unlimited opportunity was your birthright. We saw the Soviet empire fall, and realized that we had geared our entire society to prepare for a war that no one had dared fight. Our college degrees hang on our walls, but though our mental horizons have been expanded, our economic opportunities have not. We were told that success does not matter if you are black or white, male or female, and while the political successes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and even Sarah Palin seemed to vindicate this philosophy, it does not obviate the fact that opportunity for all still means that most of us are doomed to lives of obscure mediocrity. The dot-com boom and bust, the current depression, the unwinnable wars in Asia, all have convinced us the truth of the anthems of our youth. We are here now, and we are not entertained. Future historians will note that American society peaked in the late 1960s. Culturally, this is a foregone conclusion. We listen to our parents’ music and call it "classic rock," a canon that can be approached but never surpassed. When we think of art, we think of Warhol and Rothko. Our top-selling cultural products have names like "Star Wars" and "Star Trek"—nostalgic Baby Boomer dreams that one day man will dance amongst the heavenly spheres, whereas in reality we have come crashing down, Icarus-like, in fiery debris. After the sun-bright Baby Boomer generation flared into supernova, it collapsed into a black hole. We knew all this long ago. We were called the "slacker" generation. But how could we not be, after Free Love turned to AIDS, we saw Peace commodified and sold for junk bonds, and realized the calls for "revolution" were nothing more than the mewling of infants begging to be indulged? Our coming-of-age movies were "Reality Bites" and "Fight Club." Our famed irony and sarcasm were not a sign that we value nothing: They were self-defense in a world where nothing is valued. This is the world the Baby Boomers, the so-called flower-children, have left us: A world poisoned by me-firstism, by NIMBYism, by I-got-mine-ism. Our parents' generation has rebutted the hard work and sacrifice of our grandparents with short-term thinking and situational morality justified by Excel spreadsheets. We grow into middle age not surrounded by prosperity and security, but by our doubts and fears. Even as the rich have gotten richer, we have seen our standard of living fall. The middle class is barely reproducing itself, bifurcated into those barely treading water and those on an endless paper chase after useless honors. Our hopes have been dashed, our dreams sold for firewood to keep warm and hold back the wolves for one more night. I should end this essay on a note of hope, or at least a call to action. Such would be the traditional coda. However, I cannot find it within me to do so. The myth of Progress is dead; all we have to look for is a mediocre world of diminished expectations. Somewhere along the way, someone might have tricked us into caring or having hope, but we have come to realize that the current "crisis" is not the result of a great country hijacked by a cabal of free-market capitalists: It is, in fact, the new baseline. Things are not going to get better; all we can do is hope they will not get worse. We take from this the great lesson learned by abused children everywhere: It hurt less when we didn't care. Posted January 1, 2009 3:54 AM This is nothing new. Nothing is original. Society, people, thoughts are all cyclical....to say this is the most hedonistic culture ever is to say the Romans were Puritans....to say that the world is not going to get better is just another repeats of doomsdays and naysay that have happened throughout history. The fact is that mankind will all ways grow and wane and grow again until the day that God decides we have had enough....or a big space rock hits us....whatever comes first. Posted by: S at January 4, 2009 8:18 AM This is nothing new. Nothing is original. Society, people, thoughts are all cyclical....to say this is the most hedonistic culture ever is to say the Romans were Puritans....to say that the world is not going to get better is just another repeats of doomsdays and naysay that have happened throughout history. The fact is that mankind will all ways grow and wane and grow again until the day that God decides we have had enough....or a big space rock hits us....whatever comes first. Posted by: S at January 4, 2009 8:18 AM A more honest and true view of our societies position than i have ever heard. No wonder so many people are either depressed or medicating. Posted by: Sean at January 4, 2009 8:34 AM damn good essay brutha. to add to your pessimism, all i can say is "smoke em if you got em". Posted by: bogart momo at January 4, 2009 9:08 AM Look out, you've been Farked. May god have mercy upon your soul. Also, nice. Posted by: Anon at January 4, 2009 9:14 AM HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA.. Hilarious. Posted by: David at January 4, 2009 9:18 AM meh. Whine some more ya big baby. Posted by: Rob at January 4, 2009 9:30 AM Your notion of the 60's and reality is based on media. Culture was mass produced on the television on 3 channels and everyone was exposed to it and it was the largest generation. You can look at the fragmentation of media and see the cultural 'decline' is highly correlated with this. The truth is we've gotten over aggrandizing and oversimplifying things. In 1966 the vietnam death toll for American's was 27,915 people. Life is more than what is on tv. The people who died in war, because of their race, or for whatever reason in the 60's probably would look at your blog and disagree with what you have to say about living during 'the peak.' Posted by: Ziad Hussain at January 4, 2009 10:00 AM Wow, talk about WHINY! Grow a pair, son. Posted by: Ralph D. Wunderllama at January 4, 2009 10:08 AM US will pass the crisis and will move on higher, is the only country in the world where dreams can become reality Posted by: catalin at January 4, 2009 10:53 AM thank you Posted by: Theadeaus at January 4, 2009 11:25 AM Dangit, I came up with the term "me-firster" 20 years ago and I never get credit. Where's my money!? How's that for "me-firsting?" Good essay, you plagiarist. / kidding, good essay, really, but I did come up with the term after going to highschool with the wealthy who were feckless selfish scum that got Porsches as 16th birthday gifts. I drove a station wagon. Posted by: Curt at January 4, 2009 12:13 PM So get up and do something about it. Posted by: X at January 4, 2009 12:21 PM What utter crap. Posted by: jms at January 4, 2009 12:35 PM You're a'mewling' idiot. Posted by: Dork at January 4, 2009 1:20 PM I look at the world, and see it as the result of affairs set in motion long before the Baby Boomers were even thought of. We live in a new century - a new millenium - that still resounds with the echoes of the most dynamic, violent, astonishing century in human history, a time when the progress of the new collided with the institutions of the old. It saw the fall of old empires and the rise of new ones, at rates unprecedented in human history, with consequences being visited now. One thing that history has taught however is that humans remain the same. We all share the same fundamental hopes and dreams, the same fears and failings, not only globally, but throughout time, too. In time, it will fall to the so-called'slacker' generation to recognise and act (when the time will come) on picking up the pieces, patching up the holes and weaving a new social tapestry, proving to the world that far from being a generation of do-nothing layabouts, we are the most sensible, level-headed, responsible and mature generation ever seen. Many generations react to ones from before. The dynamics of the 1960s largely represent youthful reaction to the war generations that preceded them. The new generations inherit a world that has been ravaged, used, abused, ignored and violated. We however belong to a generation raised in the shadow of images brought back from space of a world fragile and alone, a 'grand oasis', precarious and delicate, vulnerable and ultimately very, very precious. It is my fervent hope that with this new-found perspective and wisdom, we will better take care of that which takes care of us. The Baby Boomers are a great lot, and I wish them all the very best, for it is they who lay the foundations for us, just as it is us who lay the foundations for those to come after us. It is up to us to make things better, not because we want to appear as a better generation than any before, but because we have been raised with the sensibility that not only if something is worth doing it is worth doing well, but because one must do whatever needs done, and done as best as it can be. Modern institutions are crumbling, outdated sensibilities are dissolving, a new era beckons and it is us that will be responsible for modelling the new infrastructure to take us into that future. The future is as bright as we want it to be, and care to make it. The current strife is merely the pendulum swinging a little too far one way. This is what happens when extremists are in charge. Rest assured, lessons are being learnt. The trick is to remember those lessons when the time comes, as those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. David (born 1969) Posted by: David Sander at January 4, 2009 1:45 PM You live in an age of miracles and wonders and all you can do is complain that it can't go on forever. Things will get worse for some, better for some. In the end there are a lot of people on a finite world. Those efficient in their needs will prosper. Posted by: NoName at January 4, 2009 2:13 PM yep, still self obsessed. Still a loser. Still no hope....for you! The rest of us are moving onward and upward. Posted by: anon at January 4, 2009 2:24 PM I've read your essay. Someone's a little depressed! Yes, I study the news, trends the world is taking, history, game theory, and in some ways take it as a hopeful sign that things are all 'gone mad'. It is this madness that will breed us a new century and the more insane it becomes the grander the outcome. So bring on the fires, the floods, the wonderment. We're all dying of the same things and you assume here and now, that you can know the shape of the future from this past laid out behind us? You know the world has it's ups and downs, it's goods and bads. We live now in the best century so far for humanity. By simple numbers we are dying less than ever before and the so called 'riches' which we decry as so vastly unfair and horrible because they are not hours and are not being used to benefit the majority are only numerical values. What do you want? To be a rock-star amongst billions of rock-stars? To have great adventures and swing your sword around? Are you a victim of this great, fantastic, beautiful madness? Good. Be a victim. Lay still. They like it when you lay there too convinced of the inevitability of the Hells you're in to squirm. Tell me what you want. Say it's all terribly unfair, tell me how horrible and pitiful it all is and how we're all gonna die then run in circles waving your hands. Maybe one day that'll work. When you have something to actually do...a suggestion, a methodology, even possibly an inspired vision of futures beyond our ken...come back. Write another essay and on some other New Year give it to us and who knows? You might change the world. Posted by: Chessie at January 4, 2009 2:25 PM What do you mean we? It's just you. Posted by: Dave at January 4, 2009 2:48 PM My comments are at my site. Posted by: Annoyed White Male at January 4, 2009 2:52 PM You said it better than I ever could. Posted by: KittyLitter at January 4, 2009 2:56 PM Nice read, it's 10:14 in the morning. I'm trading my coffee in for a bottle of wine. Cheers =) Posted by: oxentrot at January 4, 2009 3:15 PM If it broke do something to fix it then and stop whining about it. Posted by: kingfish2004 at January 4, 2009 3:19 PM To respond to reality with despair and apathy is the worst offense against the world around you. To have no hope is lower than having misguided hope. Even though the Baby Boomer generation has created such failure, to wail and despair and turn you back on reality is a far greater offense. By this you will never accomplish anything other than to poison the hearts of your fellow man. Posted by: Rolander at January 4, 2009 3:24 PM the begining of the end was when Ronald Raygun was elected in 1980. for 8 years he hounded us about 'getting government off the backs of business" and "government IS the problem" and "cut taxes" and "cut more taxe" especially for the Rich/Big Business. and Deregulation was the catch phrase he used so much. well, we're reaping the rewards for all those tax cuts and Deregulation. Thanks, Ronnie Posted by: Neo at January 4, 2009 3:33 PM Ken Mondschein, are you a baby boomer? If you are, that would explain this article..... Posted by: george at January 4, 2009 3:56 PM Classic rock and Star Trek are the pinnacle of American culture? Right... I mean, maybe you think that's true, but I hardly think that historians will agree with you. You seem to have missing the birth of a culture new, vibrant, and novel, which didn't happen in the 60s. In fact, you're participating in it right now. It happened in the mid 90s, and it's internet culture. Historians won't be talking about TOS, they'll be talking about Dr. Horrible. Posted by: Renee at January 4, 2009 4:04 PM "American society peaked in the late 1960s" Peak year of the baby boom was 1957. Thus, the late 1960s saw an average baby boomer age of around 12 years old. The earliest boomers were just starting off in adult life. Kind of hard to blame the boomers, isn't it? Very few boomers I know have done well economically. It's easy to blame an entire generation for today's problems. I propose looking at the USA in general and specifically the economic aspects through a different lens; a belief that perhaps the USA has been and is in the throes of class warfare with a minority of elite class ultra-wealthy and politically powerful Americans usurping the many separate aspects that comprise the whole that is the USA to the benefit of the few. Posted by: Obbop at January 4, 2009 4:15 PM We have great circuses though - with billion-dollar Colosseums in which our gladiators fight and sacrifice themselves for our amusement. There is plenty of bread, and cheese, and beer. Our legions are unmatched on the field of battle. I'm even learning to play the fiddle - here, have a listen! Posted by: Corey at January 4, 2009 4:15 PM Oh, dear. Another tiresome whine from a Gen-X slacker who took all the opportunity
here. Clouds over Moscow is mind-blowingly good. I really hope they are the next big thing because there is a real emphasis on the technicality and complexity of the music. There are a few bands that are doing this, and are really amazing at it. Syas will perform an album release party at the Skylark in West Seattle on May 26 at 8 p.m. Download Stained Glass at http://syas.bandcamp.com/This article contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. For an explanation of our Advertising Policy, visit this page A couple weeks ago, I posted a question: why are you hesitant to invest? At the time, the market was in turmoil, with huge volatile swings daily in the market. I got quite a few interesting responses,and wanted to share the reason about why you, the reader, don’t invest or are hesitant to. I was surprised to see how many of the responses fell into the following general bucks. Here are the reasons and my thoughts. The Reasons Not To Invest Volatility Here’s what you said: “the up’s and down’s are too much”, “the going is tough”, “600 point drops spook me”, “things seem so up and down” My thoughts: I think volatility can be a huge factor. However, it is the ability to buy assets low that give some people advantages over other investors. If you dollar-cost average into the stock market (maybe through a 401k), you would buy at the lows as well as the highs. Also, you invest for the long term. As such, you seek gains over long periods of time, not just the short term swings. Uncertainty What you said: “People are afraid of the unknown” My thoughts: I agree that people are afraid of the unknown. However, my challenge would be why is investing unknown? Lack of education, overwhelming options (the next fear), or maybe volatility (see above). Or maybe the uncertainty comes from a fear of how the markets naturally act. Asset prices rise AND fall, and I think too many people become complacent in rising prices. Overwhelming Options What you said: “People are overwhelmed with all the options”, “There is no education about what to do”, “I wouldn’t know where to start” My thoughts: I agree that there are a lot of options out there with minimal education. Financial education in America is lacking at home and at school. As a result, too many people are making poor financial decisions. I think that both corporate America and government America need to work to improve the financial literacy of America. This means teaching basic finance skills (including investments), and legislating opt-out 401k enrollment (instead of the current opt-in system). Not The Biggest Priority What you said: “lack of extra funds”, “I still don’t have enough of an emergency fund” My thoughts: This is a perfectly valid reason to not invest. Investing is a long term priority. You may need to pay off debt, or build an emergency fund, before you even consider investing. Plus, you should only invest with funds you don’t need to access for a long time (say 20 years or more). That way, you can absorb the volatility in the market. Final Thoughts In this stock market, there are a lot of reasons to be hesitant to invest. However, by not investing in tough times, you usually miss the gains that follow during the “recovery” of the economy. If you don’t regularly invest, you risk breaking the cardinal rule of investing: buying high and selling low. If you think that education is a roadblock, read up! There are so many great resources available to get started. I wrote The College Student’s Guide To Investing, which is a great start. Finally, keep investing simple. You don’t need crazy products or random specialty funds. Keep it to index funds that track the big names you’ve heard on the news. Only once you feel comfortable should you look beyond these choices. Readers, what are your thoughts?There are 15 active users currently online. Comments RSH: Time Traveling with Alex Lifeson Red Hot Rock Magazine May 2014, Issue No. 1 by Richard Adam Kern Click Any Image to Enlarge Conversation conducted March 5th, 2014 RUSH IS A DECADES-LONG cultural phenomenon; a curiosity to the mainstream, a god-like presence to their millions of fans. The group has somehow found a way to sell out arenas the world over and release countless gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums while still remaining a cult band. The evolution of Rush's music over the years is astounding, as is the devotion and loyalty of the band's fans, waiting for each and every creation with bated breath to experience the music's new manifestation. The Canadian group, each member a prodigy in his own right, is a sublime representation of musical perfection. Possibly because of the complexity of Rush's music, the band members are often painted as uberself-serious purveyors of their craft. While the composition and performance of their classic, but eternally contemporary, music is never taken lightly, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Peart are nothing if not full of good humor and looking for the next subject for their laughter. Alex is, more often than not, the one to provide the source material for his longtime friends' and partners' amusement. During the many conversations I have enjoyed with Alex through the years, he has provided me with more than a chuckle or two. In both of the following interviews, one from yesterday and one from some years back, the two of us discussed the release of audio and video recordings capturing the concert tours that followed Rush's most recent groundbreaking studio albums, Snakes & Arrows and Clockwork Angels, as well as a wide-ranging array of Rush-related topics. RED HOT ROCK MAGAZINE: Hello, Mr. Lifeson! How is everything? ALEX LIFESON: Good! How are you, Ritchie? RHRM: It's fantastic to be speaking to you once again. AL: Ha ha. Thank you. RHRM: I am not going to keep you for too long because I know that you are on vacation now and you do not really want to be talking to me. But I will give myself a little pat on the back and take a guess that you are speaking to me because it is me. Ha ha. AL: Ha ha. There you go. RHRM: The first subject that I would like to speak to you about, because I know that this is the most important thing to you and the other members of Rush, is the future. At this point in time, I know that you are on a break. But are there any plans as to album activity or touring or anything? AL: Yeah. You know, you're right. We're on holiday and we sort of decided when the tour ended that we weren't really gonna think about what we were going to do for at least a year. We really needed to take a break. We were working pretty steadily for a lot of years, but particularly the last four or five years. And we really needed an opportunity to clear our heads and catch our breaths. We haven't discussed it too much, but that's just us. All around us, everybody's making plans for us. And it looks like we'll probably be going out next spring. Spring, 2015. So, we haven't discussed anything about the show or about the material or any of that stuff. But we're sort of aiming towards that as the start date for the next tour. But that'll be, I guess, our 41st anniversary tour or 40th plus, whatever. And we'll see how it goes. We need to stay healthy until then, though. Ha ha. RHRM: I had been reading, I don't know if it was with you or with Geddy, that it's more important to take a rest. A 41st or 42' anniversary tour is just as good as a 40th anniversary tour. It's even better because it means you have made it two more years. Ha ha ha. AL: Yeah, that's right. Ha ha. RHRM: It will actually be 41 years since the first album or since Neil joined. Because you and Geddy have been together since the late '60s, haven't you? AL: Yeah. We started in September of '68. So, it's a few more years for the two of us. But we kind of have gotten, you know, fixed on that date since Neil joined, now that we are here 40 years later, as being sort of the start of everything, That's when we started touring America and releasing all of our records and... But yeah, Ged and I have six years on top of that. RHRM: So what you are planning loosely is maybe a tour. You are not thinking of going back into the studio for another album? AL: Well, we haven't discussed it at this point. So, anything's possible. I'm just saying that if there is a tour, it's most likely to start next spring. Whether we record any material from now until then, I really have no idea. Geddy's off in Australia and Neil's doing his thing. I'm gonna be traveling for the next six weeks or so. So, we really want to break ourselves away from it for now. But I'm sure sometime mid-summer, I would guess, we'll probably get a little more serious about what we are going to do direction-wise. RHRM: Now let me ask about this studio albums box that came out. It's actually the fourth studio albums box. This one covers the later years. In this box was a reissued remix of the Vapor Trails album. And it came out on its own, as well. Why, at this point in time, did you guys decide to go back in and kind of revamp that album? AL: Well, it always bothered us, particularly Geddy, 'cause we'd spent fifteen months working on that record. It was such a fragile experience. We were all walking on eggshells, you know. Neil didn't know if he was ready to come back. And there was a lot of stuff that we had to go through. After spending that length of time, we were just burned out on it. And unfortunately, the mastering was not done within the kind of limits that we would expect. So, it always bothered us. Geddy felt responsible because he had gone in during the mastering. So, he felt like it was on his watch, that he let us down. And then it really bothered him for a long, long time. So, we were very open to the idea of eventually revisiting that album and seeing if we could just get what we always heard out of that record. And David Bottrill really did a great job. He made it all sound like it sounded when we were writing and recording the record. And that's all we really wanted to get back to. So, it was worth that exercise for us to give us a little piece of mind for that album. That's really an important record for us, you know, coming back after a very, very difficult period. And I think it stands out as one of our most important pieces of work because of that. You know, the band, we were very fragile. We went through a great deal of emotional ups and downs making that record. So, we just really had to give it the proper send-off, you know. So, that's why we did that. RHRM: The DVD and CD live album bonanza for the Clockwork Angels tour was released recently. The string section that joined you on this tour was a fantastic addition to the sound of the band and a lot of the material that you played. Geddy must have been in ecstasy because he finally had his wish granted for an enhanced band, something that he has wanted for a number of years. Ha ha. AL: I think that we were all waiting for the right opportunity for that to happen. And using strings on the record just made it that much easier to go through the logistics of having somebody travel with us and having a string section with us, you know, nightly. All of us were totally into it. RHRM: You have been telling me for many years that Geddy has been kind of pushing every once in a while to add a fourth member to make it a little easier for him onstage. I guess adding all of those other textures makes it easier, especially for you and Geddy. AL: Yeah. A little bit. Ha ha. Not a lot, but a little bit. Ha ha. RHRM: I had no idea what to expect, as to the setlist, when I went to see you on this tour. I don't like getting online beforehand to check that out because not knowing is part of the whole experience. I was so surprised that you played so much '80s music. Besides playing most of the new album, how did you decide to focus so much on your '80s output? AL: It just kind of happened that way. It was kind of a controversial period for us and it was an opportunity to, you know, come back with some rearrangements and have a little more power in the guitar. And a little more power, in general, in the presentation of those songs from that era. And it just kind of shifted that way. In rehearsals, we tried some other stuff But it didn't really inspire us. But it was kind of fun to revisit those...that period. Right from "The Body Electric" right through Power Windows and Hold Your Fire. RHRM: Instead of having to rely so much on keyboards, having the string section fill in those textures was interesting. AL: Yeah, that was great. RHRM: And Neil performed three drum solos each evening. Doesn't that guy get exhausted during the shows? I am a drummer. If I played one-tenth of one of the solos that he played, I would be ready for the hospital. AL: He's a very driven guy, so he musters up the energy and willpower to get through it. But I think, for him, doing three shorter songs was actually a little easier on him than doing one massive one. But, ha ha, I'm pretty sure he's pretty tired at the end of a show. RHRM: As part of the 40th anniversary celebration, there is a reissue coming out of your first album, the self-titled one, from when John Rutsey was your drummer. Anything you would like to say about that reissue? What's going to be on there? Have you guys gone back and added anything or done any type of remixes or anything? AL: It was just remastered. It was remastered at Abbey Road. It's going to be available on vinyl, on 200-gram vinyl. I think it's from the original tapes, actually, the original master tapes. I think there's a poster, there's the original artwork, there's a digital download. So, it's a whole thing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of that first record. And in the mastering, I think, from what I understand, it's a little warmer, it's a little more present in the mid and the bottom end. I'm sure it will sound really quite good. Ahh, that was such a long time ago. RHRM: Are there going to be any unreleased tracks on there or is it going to be just the original album? AL: It's the original album. There are no bonus tracks on that. I mean, there are no bonus tracks from that era. There is nothing, really, from then that we recorded that didn't make it on there. Ahhh, that's not really true. We did record a couple of other things on the original version of that first album. And when we went in with Terry Brown, we dropped a couple of songs, like "Not Fade Away" and "You Can't Fight It", which was the b-side of the original single "Not Fade Away", and replaced it with newer material. I think "Need Some Love" and maybe "Finding My Way". I can't quite remember, but we had some problems technically with the original engineer/producer that we worked with. And we went to Terry to kind of save it. And he did do that. And at the same time, we dropped a few songs and recorded some newer songs. So, I suppose, somewhere, those original few songs are floating around somewhere. But I'd kind of forgotten about that, actually. RHRM: I think I know what your answer is going to be, but... Any chance of a first album run-through on Rush's next tour, with Neil? AL: No. No. RHRM: I kind of figured that. But I will push you as I do every time I speak to you that you should consider going back and playing A Farewell To Kings from the beginning to the end. Ha ha. You also have a signature Alex Lifeson acoustic guitar coming out. Please speak a little bit about that and what guitarists out there can expect. AL: On the last tour, I had a couple of the PRS's, the Paul Reed Smith acoustics, on the road with me. I got to know them and we wanted to collaborate on something for a while. So, they approached me with a version of that acoustic guitar that would be more specific to my needs. So, we went back and forth. We worked on a design together and came up with a body that's a little shallower. So it's a little less resonant, which makes it a little easier to handle onstage on high volume. They did some beautiful trim work on it. The guitar sounds fantastic. Quite a lightweight guitar. So, it's very comfortable to play and to hold. And we released it at the NAMM show in January. So, I think Paul Reed Smith is in production now for it and I'm looking forward to it. RHRM: Do you have any idea when it's going to be out there in the stores? AL: I'm guessing within the next month or so. I don't really know for certain, but they really pulled out all the stops to get the first production model available in time for that show. So now that that's all over with, I'm sure that they've gone into larger production. It's going to be a small production. It's one of their elite series instruments. So, I don't know if they'll make a lot of them. But they're certainly beautiful guitars and well worth having. RHRM: While we are on the subject of acoustic guitars, you and I have discussed in the past the possibility of your one day going into the studio and recording an instrumental acoustic album. Is that still on your radar at all? AL: I don't think so, to be honest with you. I'm enjoying my time off. And every time I sit down and try to do something musical, I mess around a little bit and then I kind of lose interest. I don't seem motivated to jump into anything right now. I guess I'm a little afraid of the commitment. You know, it's a lot of work and I'm enjoying so many other things in my life right now. Travel with my wife... We haven't really been able to do in a long time. I've got two new young grandkids that I love spending time with. So, my life is pretty full right now. I don't feel the need to do a solo record or anything like that. I've had some requests to work with some people. And they're all fabulous musicians. And one side of me says, "Yeah. You should take advantage of the opportunity." And the other says, "You know what? Enjoy your life. You worked hard for so many years. Now you have an open space for a bit. Don't clutter it up." So, that's kind of the school of thought that I have right now. RHRM: And Rush works so hard when you get together, both on the production of albums and then on the tours that you do. It must be so strenuous doing those shows. AL: Well, I'd probably be more amenable to the idea of doing something solo if I knew that we weren't going back to work at this point, like in a year from now. It's gonna be like a slow-rising tidal wave come September, October. And it'll just keep rising until we are actually out on tour. And it's gonna be very, very demanding. We're a little older. It's gonna be tough. And so we have to be really prepared for it and be in good shape and good health to do all of the things that we want to do. It's hard being in this band and playing for three hours. It's very, very demanding. So, I don't want to clutter everything up right now. RHRM: I was just going to mention that you do three-hour shows. And the type of music you play, it's not like you are doing three-minute pop songs. So, we talked about your signature acoustic guitar. When is the signature double neck coming out? Ha ha ha. AL: You know, I am doing something with Gibson. Just a limited series of, you know, like an Alex Lifeson double neck. They don't have a lot of people that are promoting these sort of things. Jimmy Page and myself, I think, are probably the only two that are connected with that particular guitar. But I think they want to do a short series of that guitar based on my white double neck. And we'll have some fun with it, I think. RHRM: Ha ha ha. I was just joking with you. But there really is one coming out! AL: Yeah. We're developing it now, in fact. RHRM: I love those guitars. I visited the Gibson factory. To watch the construction of those double neck guitars, it's the most incredible process to watch them being developed from scratch to the point where there is a finished product. So, then you have to play "Xanadu" on the next tour. AL: Hmmm. I think so. Ha ha. RHRM: I understand that you have been doing some painting. AL: Yeah, I do paintings for the Kidney Foundation. I do one annually. I keep meaning to go beyond that a little bit and continue doing it. But one thing or the other always pops up. I'm part of a program they have where they get artists... When I say artists, I mean writers and actors and musicians and sports people. It's called A Brush Of Hope and everybody does this little painting. They provide the paint for you. And you do a little painting and it goes onto an auction on ebay and they raise well-needed funds that way. So, I've been a part of that for five or six years now. And I do an annual painting. And we're fortunate enough to have enough interest from Rush fans all over the place. And I've been able to raise, oh I guess, about 200,000 dollars so far in my time with them. RHRM: You've also been doing some acting. You were in the film, Suck. You have appeared on Trailer Park Boys. And the whole band was in I Love You, Man. Any chance that we are going to see you appearing in any more films down the road? AL: Yeah, those things come up every once in a while. And if they look like fun or they're not too demanding, then I like to do them. But no offers currently. RHRM: The stage films you do for the Rush shows are great. The characters you develop are hilarious. AL: Yeah. That's a riot doing that stuff. RHRM: Rush finally got inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame last year. This is something that Rush fans have been hoping for forever. There are so many bands that deserve to be inducted way before they finally are. Rush was one of them. Yes and Deep Purple are two others. But you were finally inducted. What was the experience like on that night, being up on that stage, playing and knowing that you were being inducted? AL: Well, it was very positive. I think we felt a little indifferent to it before the fact. But once we got there, I think the turning point for us was the jam rehearsal the night before. We were on the stage with all of these other great musicians that we admire. And I guess we've had some influence on some of them. So, there was such a community amongst all of us that was really special. And it occurred to me then that the whole idea of this museum, this Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame thing was not a bad idea. And so long as it's very inclusive, that it's open to all forms of rock music, then it's a good thing. And now that so many have been inducted and everybody gets a vote, it's becoming much broader. Yes and Deep Purple were at least up for nominations this year. And that's a positive step forward. So, I think it'll get better and better as it gets broader and broader. RHRM: I always mean to ask you this. I was too young when 2112 first came out. And I'm just wondering how certain individuals may have reacted to the cover art because they may not have looked any deeper into the meaning of the drawing than what they saw at first glance. Do you remember if there was any type of backlash stemming from a misunderstanding of that album cover? AL: I think that it was misconstrued by the right to mean that we were more in that mind-set. The tougher press was the English press, the left-wing press, like New Musical Express at the time in the '70s. They thought we were fascists. Ha ha. But there's barely a political bone in our bodies. We were just telling a story about a guy who finds a guitar and he's standing up to The Man. Ha ha. Like all of us that came through the '60s had felt. But I don't remember, I don't recall, the U.S. press being particularly political about it. RHRM: I always say that if you go far enough in either direction, you end up in the same place. Ha ha. AL: That's very true. That's very true. RHRM: Time to let you go. Please go back and enjoy your vacation. The best to your family. Love to the other guys in the band. AL: Thanks, Ritchie. RHRM: Thank you, Alex. Goodbye. AL: Bye bye. RED HOT ROCK MAGAZINE: Good afternoon! ALEX LIFESON: Hey, Ritchie!? RHRM: Yes, sir. AL: Ha ha. Hi, it's Alex. How are ya? RHRM: Hey, how's it goin'? AL: Good! I'm getting an echo on my voice OK. It's gone now. RHRM: Sometimes that happens in one direction with overseas calls. But if it's gone, maybe it's not the phone connection. Maybe it's in your head. That wouldn't surprise me taking into consideration some of the contents of this DVD. AL: Ha ha. Maybe so. Ha ha. It's a lot of fun for us to do that sort of goofy stuff. RHRM: I absolutely love it. The band has always shown the presence of that wacky edge over the years, but it seems to really have come to the fore lately. AL: Yeah. I think that we're trying to develop something there. Ha ha. I don't know what it is exactly, but it's nice to give that side of the band that's less serious and goofier some more attention. And we're getting into these little filmettes that we're doing like "What's That Smell" and those sort of things. RHRM: The audio on Snakes & Arrows Live is simply magnificent. It's crystal clear and powerful. The first two discs, which are entitled "Live In Holland", have a subtitle, "(Isn't that weird?)". This question also appeared in the booklet for the Snakes & Arrows Live CD. To what does that refer? AL: This was a little idea of Geddy's and I don't think it is going over well because I am getting asked about it all of the time. The villain from the last Austin Powers movie, Goldmember, was Dutch. After everything he said, he'd say, "Isn't that veird"? We thought there would be a greater connection to it, that more people would get it. But that's all we get asked about now. "What does that mean exactly? What are you saying"? If we would have spelled it "veird” instead of "weird", maybe more people would get it. RHRM: There has been lots of interactivity with chickens on this last tour and in the "What's That Smell" film segments included on the DVD. Where does Rush go from here...onstage turkey and duck roasters, live animals onstage or maybe popcorn poppers? AL: Well, I can't speak for what goes on stage left, but it's always a surprise what they come up with. RHRM: Have you guys adopted Jerry Stiller? He keeps on popping up and he's as brilliant as ever. AL: Well, we're certainly looking after his old-age retirement pension. RHRM: Ha ha. Who is performing what you refer to as "Bombay Limelight", the eastern version of "Limelight"? Where did you find the musician that recorded that and who is he? AL: I think it's somebody in-house with the film people. You know, they have sound designers that do little quirky sounds and things like that. RHRM: I thought it might have been you until I read the credits. AL: I wish it was! And I'm going to try and make a point of doing it next time. RHRM: It's a nice treat that you included the material on the third disc from Atlanta from the last leg of the Snakes & Arrows tour. These are selections that had not been performed during earlier shows in 2007, but that I was fortunate enough to catch when I saw you play in Hershey, Pennsylvania this past summer. It's nice to get an extra dimension to the tour. AL: Doing "Ghost Of A Chance" on the last leg of this tour was a real treat for us. We really enjoyed playing it. RHRM: The guitar tone that you captured on that version of that song is just gut-wrenching. It's such a great version. AL: We love playing it. RHRM: An amazing thing about Rush is that whereas most bands that have been around half as long as Rush are caught in a cycle of diminishing returns, you release Snakes & Arrows, which is probably my personal favorite album from the band in twenty-five years or more and, onstage, you are all even better players than before...if that's possible. And the three of you really appear to be enjoying yourselves immensely onstage playing together, maybe more than ever. AL: That is exactly the case. I think we are very confident and very relaxed. I think that comes with maturity. We feel really good about our playing. This is the best we've played ever, I think. We're very tight and just on top of our game. So, it's a great feeling. At this point, this is really uncharted territory. There are not too many rock bands around after so many years. We're in our mid-fifties and it's not easy to play a lot of this material. But we seem to be in a very good place in terms of our abilities these days. It's a good feeling for us. RHRM: What I enjoy so much about the band these days, having seen you so many times over the years, is that the band has become more "tight, but loose", to use a term that was always applied to Led Zeppelin. Rush has always been a very tight unit, but there is a looseness that you have been gaining over the last few years. AL: Yeah. I think again, it's just being comfortable and confident. So you can play with a little more abandon or don't feel as restricted or the need to be so consciously tight. You know what's going to happen and you just let it flow. It's a very internal, difficult thing to explain. But our playing has become fluid. It's not so much a looseness as it's a fluidity. And I can hear it in the drums. I can hear it in Geddy's playing. Certainly in my playing. It's less rigid. RHRM: On the last few tours, Rush has been traveling internationally, much more so than in past years. I understand that this has to do somewhat with a change in Neil. Has he been enjoying touring more lately than he has in the past? AL: Yeah. I would say that he has been enjoying it more. You know, he's a very avid cyclist...motorcyclist. So, he has had the opportunity to ride his motorcycle all over the place. Throughout Europe in the fall, which is a very nice time. So, I think so long as he is happy outside of the arena, then he doesn't mind being anywhere. RHRM: A very important question....What is done with all of the chickens that you cook on stage? Are they put to good use? Ha ha. AL: Ha Ha. Well, they're not real chickens. RHRM: They're not? AL: No. Ha ha. I wish they were. But, unfortunately they're not. They are very reasonable facsimiles, but I wouldn't want to chew on one. Although I have had chicken that probably tasted like one of those. RHRM: Ha ha. So, the question that I am sure you do not wish to hear and, no it's not about an album from thirty years ago...It's about the future. Is Rush thinking of visiting a studio again in the near future? I am sorry for asking you this because I understand that you probably need a break. Doing interviews to promote this DVD doesn't really allow a real break. Most people don't realize the amount of work that a band needs to do outside of just playing music. AL: You are absolutely right. We have been working steadily and very hard for, well, the last seven or eight years. Numerous tours, albums, DVDs. When we're not touring or in the studio, we're putting these DVD's together. You know, I really signed off only a few weeks ago on the audio. So, that's how tight it all is in terms of production for this kind of stuff. We need to take a break. We're all quite exhausted by the tour and the responsibilities of the band. We have a lot of stuff going on. The DVD has just come out, we were in a film that's being released, a couple of little film things that I did, all sort of Rush-related stuff. So, it's gonna buy us a little bit of time. I'd like to think that we're gonna have at least until late summer off, completely free of thinking about the band. And then we'll come back into it so much fresher, I think. And I think we need to refresh with whatever we do next, whether we go back into the studio to do a new record or go back on tour or whatever it is that we end up doing. But right now, we just need to get refreshed, really. RHRM: What was that film that you mentioned? AL: It's a film called I Love You, Man.. It's a major Hollywood release, a comedy by the people who did The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, you know, that whole genre of films. It stars Paul Rudd. We just play... The two main characters have a common interest in the band, we'll say. It's bordering on the fanatic. But it all plays into one of the characters getting married and not having a best man and looking for somebody. And he finds a guy whose main interest is Rush. As his is. And what develops from there. Apparently, it's very, very funny. We haven't seen anything yet. They've had a couple of screenings recently now that they've finished the actual production. RHRM: All three of you are in it? AL: Yeah. We actually play in it. RHRM: OK! Fantastic! Back to the future, (producer) Nick Raskulinecz has stated that he would love to continue working with you and that he would like to record a double album next time around. Have you heard anything about that and is that anything that you would be interested in doing? AL: Well, I've only heard it every time I talk to Nick. RHRM: Ha ha. AL: Ha ha. Yeah, Nick has very big plans for us. Whether we'd be ready for something like that or interested, we'd have to see, you know, down the road. I absolutely would love to work with Nick again. I don't think there's any question about that. What it is exactly that we would do, who can tell? The industry changes, the demands change, almost daily. So, a year from now, I'm not so sure what we'd end up doing. I know Nick has talked about us thinking about taking a few steps backwards and thinking about doing a sort of concept piece of, you know, very long songs. But a double set, I don't know. We'd have to really think seriously about something like that. RHRM: Besides the live albums, the band has never recorded a double studio album. The concept thing... Of course, all longtime Rush fans would dream of something like that, but I don't get the feeling that that is something that the band is very interested in doing. AL: Well, you know, we did it at a different stage in our lives. Lyrically, all of our records have been concept albums. So, I guess what he is talking about and perhaps what some of those fans that long for those old days talk about are those long, involved pieces. But, I just don't know if we are there. And I couldn't imagine even thinking about it until the first day of writing, whether that would be something that we would want to do. He talks about a double record. I say, "What is a double record set? Do you mean a double disc set? Do you mean two hours of music?" Well, I think that's over the top. I think already that CDs are too long. There's too much information there. I think that's what's kind of killed them. When albums were forty minutes, you had a very bordered length of time to develop a musical piece that really worked. But, I think sixty or seventy minutes is a long time for people to be interested in one thing.
real half-time locker-room period on game day, the Patriots’ balls stayed in the bag, slowing their warm-up. Each ball was removed only seconds before it was tested. Exponent even documented that. Patriots’ footballs were at just the pressure Exponent’s research said they should be if one accounts for the warm-up being slowed because they were in a bag. Exponent research vindicated the Patriots. Exponent lied about how to interpret their research. This conclusion from Exponent (which is the only one that really matters) is a lie: In both the Non-Logo Gauge and Logo Gauge simulations, … subject to the discovery of an as yet unidentified and unexamined factor, the measurements recorded for the Patriots footballs on Game Day do not appear to be completely explainable based on natural causes alone — Exponent report, page 61. Exponent used clever wording to sneakily disavow simulating the warm up properly. In the earlier steps of the “game-day” simulations, they vouched for replicating the use of bags to match game day. But for the critical part, the halftime locker-room simulation, they used trick wording to commit only to using the same gauges. There was no lie by Exponent until Exponent feigned inability to explain the Patriot ball pressures. For a somewhat deeper explanation (but not as deep as in my amicus brief), see my letter to Professor Marlow. For beyond-a-reasonable-doubt proof, see the amicus brief below. NFL has argued it can be “wrong” and still be immune from the judge having the power to overturn the decision (source: Rich Levine post: Silly Deflategate has taken a serious turn). But NFL didn’t argue that they are allowed lie about the fundamental question: was air removed. Is that their next argument? For those who say the earlier drafts, or the one erroneously left up on 8/25 at the time Professor Blecker first tweeted about it, the actual one the court put on the docket (added below 8/26, 8:24am) is vastly improved. Change history: 9/22/2015: Updated the brief. Again no consequential change. Technically, it turns out that the conclusion about the Patriots-Colts pressure differential, which was always a moot point relative to the question of whether the Patriots’ balls had the right pressure, was an intentional deception but not a lie. Legally speaking, the final conclusion of Exponent (item 13 on page 68) never claimed that the patriots-colts pressure differential was inexplicable. Instead, legally, it only claimed that the source of the explanation did not lie within the in-game events. Of course it didn’t: the explanation was the combination of the difference in pressures when measured by the ref pre-game, and especially in the different handling of the Patriots and Colts balls during the half-time period in the locker room. The locker room period (rather than the game events) provides the explanation that had seemed missing. 9/11: Noted that the Judge posted my letters, and that the letters may have had an impact. 9/9: Updated title of post to reflect current use of the info. Moved download links to the top and posted minor correction to the brief. 8/27: Tests of actual balls warming up (slowly) in a bag by Mike Greenway, found on his website www.deflateGateDeflated.com, in his “Exponents (sic) fundamentally flawed research” link as of 8/28/2015 6:56PM EDT (dated July 19) confirms nicely the 4x slower in-bag warming I predicted theoretically in the amicus brief. As of the time noted, I disagree with some things Mike says is wrong with the Exponent report. I contend that the Exponent data and research is good, and that it just needs a reasonable adjustment to the simulation to reflect the lower warming rate on game-day as compared to Exponent’s simulation. Result: Exponent’s own data vindicates the patriots. Credit due: Mike did identify the in-bag issue (before I noticed it on my own) and he even did a test!!!! I believe I was unique in identifying the accurate way to use this to show Exponent lied in their conclusion, and to further use the Exponent data to prove that the Patriots did not remove air from the footballs. I believe I’m also unique in totally shredding the “ref was wrong on the gauge” argument by the NFL (proving that Exponent believed none of the reasons Exponent gave against the ref) and to show that had Exponent changed Exponent’s Colts-timing assumption to better match reality, Exponent’s own data affirmed that the ref was right about the gauge use. 8/26/2015: 7:50pm: court says judge not considering any (contrary to Judge’s clerk earlier in day) 8/26/2015: 11:10am: Overnight mailed follow up letter. Responds to new NFL contention that bias or getting facts wrong is not grounds to overturn. Response: even if so, colluding with Exponent to lie on the central issue is grounds to overturn. Also called out the trick wording that was omitted from the original request letter for the sake of brevity but was discussed in the brief page 35 and 36. 8/26/2015 9:10am: Court confirms judge will review request letter submitted with the actual brief. Hopefully he will also read the brief.Dennis Murray, president of Marist College since 1979, announced Saturday that he will retire in 2016. (Photo: Courtesy photo) Dennis Murray, the longtime and influential president of Marist College, will retire when his contract expires next year, the college announced Saturday. His retirement will be effective June 30, 2016. He will remain active in the college's affairs as President Emeritus and as a professor of public policy. "For the past 36 years, it has been my honor and privilege to serve as president, and during that time we have been able to accomplish extraordinary things," Murray wrote in a message to the Marist community. "The college today is a strong institution with exciting plans for the future, and for that reason, it seems like a logical time for new leadership." Since becoming president in 1979, Murray has overseen significant growth and transformation at the private, liberal arts college. • Total assets increased from $22 million to $576 million during his tenure. • Endowment increased from $500,000 to $221 million. • Enrollment increased from 1,842 to 6,365 students, even as the acceptance rate became more selective. Prospective students and parents listen to Marist College tour guides in the rotunda area of the student center on campus in the Town of Poughkeepsie on Friday, October 10, 2008 (Photo: Kathy McLaughlin) • In 2014, just 38.5 percent of more than 9,700 applicants gained entrance to Marist, compared with 78 percent of 1,624 applicants in 1980. • The campus has been reshaped under his leadership, growing from 93 to 224 acres. • Athletic teams moved from the National Collegiate Athletic Association's second division to Division I status, and added nine new teams. In a statement, Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro praised Murray for a commitment to excellence that "extends into every corner of our community." "An academic, economic and community leader, Dennis Murray's impact will be long lasting and Dutchess County is exceptionally grateful," Molinaro said. "I look forward to our continued work together." Steve Saland, the former state senator from Poughkeepsie, said the institution's transformation has been profound. "I remember Marist College when I was a kid in high school," said Saland, who graduated from Poughkeepsie High School in 1961. "If anybody would have told me then, that Marist College would become the highly respected institution that it is now, and that the campus would be this breathtakingly beautiful campus it is now, I would have asked them what they were smoking or drinking." Murray's scope of influence extends far beyond the college's campus set along the banks of the Hudson River. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, center, walks along the Rondout Creek in Kingston with co-chairs of the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council on Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012. Mid-Hudson Regional Co-Chairs are Dennis Murray, left, Marist College president and Leonard S. Schleifer, MD, President & CEO, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. (Photo: Journal file) A leading voice among policymakers, Murray has served as co-chair of the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council, one of 10 regional councils created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2011. In his message, Murray expressed his gratitude to the college and local communities for being part of the Marist's growth. He said that while there will come a time to reflect on the institution's achievements, his attention over the next year and a half will remain focused on the work at hand. That work includes construction of a new science and allied health building and development of a new physician assistant program, as well as a major new student housing project. Read or Share this story: http://pojonews.co/1D8em5iid Software has just released a new patch for DOOM that adds support for Vulkan. Naturally, we went ahead and tested some scenes that were performing poorly under OpenGL 4.5. And we are happy to report that id Software has nailed it as DOOM runs way, way, way better under the Vulkan API. As we wrote in our PC Performance Analysis, there were some scenes in DOOM during which our GPU usage was dropping for no apparent reasons. “Now while DOOM runs exceptionally well on the PC, we did notice some optimization issues (that could be very well due to the OpenGL API). As we can see in the following screenshot, our GPU was underused for no apparent reason. In this scene – and other outdoor scenes – our GTX980Ti was not used to its fullest, even though we were not VRAM or CPU limited. Yes, we were still above 90-100fps, however it appears that the game does not fully utilize the GPU in specific scenes. It will be interesting to see whether these scenes run better with Vulkan.” As you can see, that scene ran with 100fps in OpenGL 4.5. Well, that same scene ran with 160fps in Vulkan. Yeap, we’re talking about a 60fps performance boost, which sounds unbelievable. Not only that, but the game is now able to “properly” scale on multiple CPU cores. Below you can see the CPU scaling of our Intel i7 4930K on both OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan. As you can see, Vulkan was able to take advantage of all of our six CPU cores. On the other hand, and while the game scaled on our hexa-core under OpenGL 4.5, it relied mostly on a single CPU core. All in all, DOOM runs incredibly well under Vulkan. All of the optimizations issues that we reported in our PC Performance Analysis are now fixed thanks to it, so kudos to id Software. Below you can find some more comparison screenshots between OpenGL 4.5 (left) and Vulkan (right).It is easy to predict what is coming up for the next year but thinking further out is always a challenge. In this blog post I am going to look at advances made in 2015 that will impact us in 2025. [easy-tweet tweet=”Daniel Thomas, Founder of @Comparethecloud speaks his thoughts on how developments of 2015 will relate to 2025″ via=”no”] Quantum Computing IBM this year announced a major breakthrough in Quantum Computing that allows for the detection and measurement of both kinds of quantum errors simultaneously; and the introduction of a square Quantum bit circuit design. Impact in 2025 Quantum computing when put into full commercial use will allow for the solving of questions that have always eluded mankind. Whilst initially the technology will be seen as malevolent due to the ability to destroy current cryptology (although it solves this issue also) we will see more general use in 2025 akin to how we use devices today. Brain 2 Brain Comms Brain to Brain communication has already had a significant breakthrough in 2015 where two brains were linked for a question and answer experiment. Impact in 2025 Is this the start of the Humanification we blogged about in 2013? How will our children learn in 2025? Will we see today’s education methods dismissed as archaic? Are we looking at the rise of education algorithms that teach according to the subject’s capacity to learn? Brain to Brain communications has the potential to disrupt all learning institutions and methods, all traditional education establishments would have to reevaluate their curriculums. Information on a subject or problem solving capacity would be instantly downloadable into the brain directly. How will this allow for a measure of intelligence? An example I use from 2015 is the question of should a child need to learn maths to an advanced degree when calculators and a plethora of devices already perform this function? [easy-tweet tweet=”How will our children learn in 2025? Will we see 2015 education methods dismissed as archaic?” user=”comparethecloud”] Nuclear Fusion Nuclear technology is a much maligned and frowned upon source of energy. An example being the Japan earthquake receiving 10x more attention once the Fukushima reactor was in danger. Nuclear fusion is best described as the harnessing of sources as powerful as the sun. The advancement of this technology could revolutionise how we consume and manufacturer power. Impact in 2025 The European Unions first reactor of the type is coming online in 2020 five years into this journey will we see alongside the use of Superconductors and miniaturisation of systems a dramatic change in how we power our data centres, homes and industrial units. Is this the first step towards a positive climate change revolution? The Robot becomes our friend? (Or does it) It is frankly amazing when you travel or speak with people from different cultures. An example being the Japanese who have always seen robotics as an aid and friendly advancement. My personal view is the difference in our generation has been the portrayal of Robotics. In Japan we have the friendly looking Honda Asimo, compare Asimo to the mean looking predator drones and destructive terminator robots we view in Western Cultures, with the destructive stereotype burned on our children’s brains by the continued growth of gaming consoles. Impact in 2025 We already have robotic hoovers, robotic industrial workers and a robotic seal that comforts the elderly in japan (yes really). As Artificial Intelligence increases we will see the use of more ‘learning’ capability and automation and freedom of robotic ‘services’. Note I said ‘services’, it is my view that repetitive tasks such as domestic cleaning will be ‘service based’ the same way we order a taxi now. By this time drones would of become sufficiently robust and accurate to allow for home deliveries and automation of shopping services. Q. Will robots be evil? A. Are we talking about Robots or the artificial intelligence that drives them? This is the fundamental question we should ask. Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence has made significant leaps and bounds in 2015 mainly fuelled by the cheap abundance of computing resource, miniaturisation of devices delivering more power and soon the introduction of commercial Quantum computing. Big data and analytics have also been significant investment growth opportunities couple with machine learning it means 2015 has left us with the building blocks for advancement in human history like no other time since the industrial revolution and electrification of industries. [easy-tweet tweet=”Artificial intelligence has made significant leaps and bounds in 2015″ user=”comparethecloud” hashtags=”AI”] Impact in 2025 The military forces of this world will always take technologies and abuse them for nefarious purposes. My view on the malevolent predictions of AI is that we have had nuclear weapons ever since 1946 and these have been improved on drastically since that time, have we seen a nuclear holocaust? In 2025 what we will see is a destruction of any industry that relies on a repetitive task such as accountancy or medical AI will be the ‘brains’ behind all our devices all of our choices all of our health services and above all our social views. The issue with such a thing is that we believe everything and trust whatever is ‘on our screens’ as humans we will need to use our intellectual capacity to move beyond ‘acceptance’ to challenging. The question that I ponder is this, AI and its mechanical cousin robotics to be truly aligned to human capability requires the one thing that during this Christmas s time we all possess ‘Humanity’. Humanity, thoughts, feelings and emotions will never be replicated until humans become a ‘hybrid’ with machines. I believe in 2025 that we will advance legacy technologies from 2015 such as pacemakers, ingestion tablets and other areas but will not be ready until 2035 for the true singularity by this time protections would be put in place. [easy-tweet tweet=”Humanity, thoughts, feelings and emotions will never be replicated until humans become hybrid with machines”] What will our homes look like in 2025? The Internet of Things or IoT is already beginning to shape how we interact with devices around us. From devices that measure our heart rate constantly and the steps we take during our day to sleep devices that measure quality and length of sleep. M2M or machine to machine, sensors that move beyond the current RFID chips to smart low power devices will allow for computations and measurements in every aspect of our lives. Whilst many of these things are here today by 2025 we would of mastered the computational and algorithmic aspects to create a perfect balance. Therefore every device we own will be ‘smart’ from the TV we watch to the earpiece we wear. Our interaction will be seamless thought controlled and tuned to our every whim and need by smart algorithms that run our lives. The biggest cause of waste and loss in any environment is the ‘friction’ between objects. Imagine if the Japanese bullet train was powered in a vacuum on magnetic rails with no friction? Our homes and device could harness this centuries old magnetic technology to provide effortless moving of devices and heavy objects. Add to this the embryonic advances in graphene and nanotubes and molecular based engineering, could we have self forming objects crafted and formed in minutes in front of our eyes. “For each of our actions there are only consequences.” As we move into 2016 let us all look back at what has been from a technology standpoint, one of growth but still one of unfulfilled promise. Maybe in 2025 I could look back at this article and laugh at its inaccuracies, remember though when cinema was first displayed people ran out of the theatre thinking the train was going to hit them. Predicting the future is not easy but then neither is looking at the past. My final quote is from British Scientist James Lovelock, an unsung national treasure. “For each of our actions there are only consequences.” And last but not least a big thank you to those that inspire me, the team at Compare the Cloud, Simon Porter, Ian Jeffs, Andy Johnson, Rob Davies, Matt Lovell, Doug Clark, Omer Wilson, Michael Andrew-Foote, Gordon Davey, David Fearne and Alan Baxter a Secondary School teacher who forced a loud unruly dyslexic child to make circuit gateways during numerous detentions (you’re my hero).Pakistan is a predominantly (96.28%) Muslim country (Census-R 2004) carved out in 1947 by partitioning British India. As the naming process in Pakistan is strongly influenced by Islam, high-ranking clergy and religious scholars (ulema) play an important role in selecting children’s names. They also determine whether a name is Islamic or not. In some cases, especially with increasing emphasis on Islam in Pakistani society, traditional names are changed to conform to the clergy’s definition of what is an appropriate Islamic name. Names are also changed if they are believed to be inauspicious and some names are chosen for their supposed mystical influences on personality, life chances, and even one’s unborn siblings. Considering their importance in Pakistani society, it is regrettable that the number of scholarly studies addressing this phenomenon is limited. Review of Literature The pioneering study of Punjabi names is by Richard Temple (1883: 2), who collected his data in the “Ambâlâ District and neighbourhood, where the Hindu element largely predominates.” However, Temple devotes a whole chapter (ch 4: 40–51) to Muslim names which is partly relevant even today for a scholar of Pakistani names. W F Sinclair’s (1889) essay, though lacking in detail, mentions that prestigious titles (or “caste” names) such as Syed “from Prophet Mohammad’s family,” Khan “chief” and Sheikh “chief”—all proclaiming foreign descent—have actually been appropriated by local Muslim converts because such titles make it possible to claim a high social status. Unfortunately, the only study purporting to be on Muslim names—Colebrooke (1881)—merely adds to the literature on Muslim (mostly Arabic) names on which there is a lot of contemporary material: Jordan (Abd-el-Jawad 1986), Kuwait (Yassin 1978), Turkey (Spencer 1961), Central Asia (Abazov 2007) and nicknames as family names among the Arabs (Goitein 1970). Colebrooke, therefore, does not add to our knowledge of South Asian Muslim names. The only major study of Muslim names which also looks at South Asian names, though in passing, is Annemarie Schimmel’s Islamic Names (2005). However, Schimmel’s study is actually on Arab (and some Turkish) names and most of her observations are about the incorrectness of South Asian Muslim names on account of ignorance of Arabic (Schimmel 2005: 25, 28, 62 and throughout). Another interesting study, and the only one on name-changing among Indian Muslims in order to merge with the Hindu majority, is by Theodore Wright (2006). An article on place–names in Pakistan does mention personal names insofar as they pertain to urban landmarks but does not focus specifically on personal names (Siddiqi and Bastian 1981). While there are no scholarly studies of personal names in Urdu or any other language in Pakistan, there are lists of names for babies which are sold at train and bus stops (Ahmad and Ahmad 2008; Mohsin 2010; Sheikh nd; Baloch nd; Raza 2003). There are also prescriptive books which appeal to Islamic teachings about naming babies (Qasmi 2007). These too are not scholarly studies of Pakistani names, so the gap in our knowledge of contemporary Pakistani names, beliefs about them, naming practices, and the influence of Islam on them remains to be filled. What follows is an attempt to fill this gap in knowledge by giving a brief description of Pakistani naming practices and popular beliefs about names. Methodology Most of the information for this brief article was obtained through the ethnographic method of personal observation, conversations with people about names and in-depth interviews of informants from the cities, small towns and villages of Pakistan. These interviews were taken from March 2011 till the middle of 2013. In most cases they were open-ended, including conversations involving names but also touching upon other subjects, though more structured interviews, including telephonic ones, were also taken. Only those interviewees and informants have been identified in the section on references who specifically requested to be named. Others have either not been names at all or pseudonyms have been used for them. Though this study is mostly based on qualitiative methods of research, a sample of 4,423 names taken from the Christian community in the diocese of Lahore has been used in it. These were taken from the Forman Christian College in Lahore. Moreover, a survey of a sample of the population was carried out through questionnaires in Urdu and English which were distributed to 400 people. However, only 372 filled them out in one location at a single sitting. Out of these, 57 had to be discarded as they were not legible. Thus only 315 questionnaires have been used for analysis in this study. The respondents were selected through non-random convenience sampling. However, most of them (264) were students to whom questionnaires were given in classrooms. The author came across the other 108 respondents during fieldwork. The respondents are from the cities of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, and Hyderabad and the villages near these cities. It was not possible to go to Quetta because of the ongoing ethnic conflict there; so there is no representation from Balochistan. However, a number of Baloch residents in Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi filled out the questionnaires. To save space, a detailed profile of the respondents has not been given and only the responses relevant to this article are incorporated. Structure of Pakistani Names Names of Pakistani Muslims neither follow the Arabic structural pattern described by Annemarie Schimmel nor the British and American one comprising a personal, middle and family name. Arab names have a kuniya, nasab, nisba and laqab. Kuniya refers to being a parent, that is, Abu (father of) or umme (mother of); nasab means being the son (-ibn) or daughter (-bint) of; nisba is one’s affiliation to a place or sometimes a profession (al-Iraqi means a person is from Iraq); and laqab is a positive alternative name or nickname, for example, sadiq (truthful) (Schimmel 2005: 1–13). Moreover, the British and American pattern of using a family name is also not firmly established in all parts of the country. Indeed, like the Tamils (Britto 1986: 349) and the Hindus of North India (Vatuk 1969: 256) Pakistanis have varying surnames. Choosing a Name Names are chosen from the internet among the urban computer-literate people, from lists of names in Urdu books in the cities. In the villages names are available with elders, lower clergymen (maulvis or mullahs) as well as books. When a child is expected, lists of names are drawn up by the elders of both the sides of the family. The parents too have a list and, increasingly in urban families at least, their choice is respected. The question concerning naming in the survey mentioned above and the responses of the respondents are given in Table 1. In short, the father’s side dominates in bestowing names upon children as, indeed, one would expect in a male-dominated society. In some cases more elaborate procedures of choosing names are followed. For instance, the Quran is opened and the first letter of the seventh line is taken. To this the numerological value of the date of birth is sometimes added and a name is chosen. Ugly, disgusting or ridiculous names are not allowed in Islam but were traditionally used nevertheless to save the child from the “evil eye.” Some are still found in the rural areas though they have disappeared in the cities. Such names are mentioned by Temple who points out that the name khairati (of charity) meant that a child was given to a mendicant (faqir) and then begged back in charity (Temple 1883: 27). Some such names—ghasita (dragged), kala (black), khadera (dragged)—are still in evidence in rural society. To indicate a lower onomastic level these pejorative names are all in Urdu, not the more prestigious Arabic or Persian. Interestingly enough, Shamim Saifullah Khan, former principal of Aitchison College in Lahore and a scion of the famous Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s extended family of Charsadda, told the present author that he was given a female name Shamim (which means breeze in Persian) as he was the eldest boy and had to be saved from the evil eye.1 Most people give ego-boosting, likeable names as our survey indicates (Table 2). Both social norms and Islamic injunctions prohibit names which would expose the child to ridicule or discrimination (Abu Dawud 1997: Book 41, No 4930) and also “offensive nicknames” (Abu Dawud 1997; Book 41, No 4944). It is well known “that the child who bears a generally unpopular or unattractive name may be handicapped in his social interactions with peers” (McDavid and Harari 1966: 458). Thus names are positive though, of course, they are shortened or turned into nicknames which may be less likeable. Islamic Influence on Naming Books in Urdu, mentioned earlier, contain lists of names, mostly Arabic ones, which have a symbolic significance as the language of Islam. Table 3 (p 71) indicates this trend. A strongly held belief is that names should have a meaning. However, the results of the author’s survey indicate that most people do not actually know the meanings despite their desire to do so (Table 4, p 71). Predictably, Arabic emerged as the major language of Pakistani Muslim names (70.35%); Persian comes next with 21.61% names and Urdu, the official language of the country, has a share of only 3.52%. Turkish has an even smaller share of 1.01% and other languages, such as Pashto, Sindhi, etc, came to 3.52%. Onomastic Consequences of Islam Most books by Islamists and the traditional ulema begin with Islamic injunctions on naming and some also give the names of god and Prophet Muhammad. The common identity-marker of the Muslim identity in Pakistan is the name of Muhammad. This is probably because Prophet Muhammad advised Muslims to keep his name (Bukhari 2003) and the names of the Prophets mentioned in the Quran. The Prophet also said that “the names dearest to Allah are Abdullah and Abdurrahman” (Abu Dawud 1997: Book 41, No 4932). And, indeed, traditional naming does follow these guidelines. In the last 25 years, however, especially since the rule of General Zia-ul-Haq (1977–88) Pakistani society has become more religious. This has had onomastic manifestations also. There is much more interest in names and the stricter interpretations of Islam are increasingly becoming vocal about correct Islamic naming. For instance, a recent book on Islamic names for the Muslim diaspora in Europe and North America condemns traditional practices of naming as un-Islamic (Qasmi 2007: 12). This book also prohibits all nicknames and names based on natural objects like qamar (moon), badar (moon), and gulab (rose) unless they have an Islamic component (which are the 99 names of god, 99 names of Prophet Muhammad, names of his mother, wives, daughters and companions, the names of the prophets mentioned in the Quran, etc) (Qasmi 2007: 13). It especially goes out to outlaw Parvez because the Iranian monarch of that name tore up the Prophet of Islam’s letter when it was presented to him (Qasmi 2007: 14). The ulema also emphasise the use of abd (slave of) saying that this component must not be left out when using one of the 99 names of god but is not permitted for any other name. Thus, while raheem and rahman both mean “compassionate” in Arabic, the former is a name for both the Prophet and god while the latter is only for god. Thus, in the strict interpretation of Islam, while abd can be omitted before Raheem (merciful) it cannot be omitted before Rahman (compassionate) which should always be Abd ur Rahman (slave of the compassionate one). Such purist injunctions are being disseminated by the Muslim clergy in the religious seminaries (madrasas) of Pakistan. Among others, an electrician in Rawalpindi, who had studied in a madrasa in Karachi, told the present author that he had changed his name from Mohammad Akbar (Mohammad is great) to Abdul Akbar (the slave of the great one) on the grounds that the word “great” can only be used for god and one can only be a slave of god and not that of the Prophet.2 Thus traditional names from folk Islam which invoke Prophet Mohammad or saints as givers of children are frowned upon by the stricter interpreters of Islam. Such names are Mohammad Baksh (given by Mohammad), Rasul Dad (given by the Prophet), and Peeran Ditta (given by the saints). One effect of increased emphasis on Islam is the intolerance shown by Muslims towards Pakistani Christians who have, therefore, started using Muslim names to avoid persecution (Rahman 2012; Khalid 2013). To investigate these trends, a sample of 4,423 names of educated, middle-class people from the Christian community in Lahore was obtained. Those between the ages of 21 years and 59 years were compared with a subset of 282 younger people from the same community between the ages of four years and 20 years to determine which cohort had more components of names shared with Muslims. The author used his own judgment to determine whether a certain component of a name was used by the Muslim community or not. The results are in Table 5. In short, the use of Masih (the messiah) has decreased among the educated middle class in the younger generation though, of course, the working classes and the rural areas still retain this Christian identity marker. Moreover, in this survey of the Christian community of Lahore, the Christians use nominal components shared with Muslims. Indeed, those who use purely Christian names (that is, no component is shared with Muslims) have decreased from 18.47% to 4.61%. Those using at least one Muslim name, which can be used at certain places or with Muslim companions, were 76% in the older generation but have now increased to 95.03% (figures obtained by adding the first and second rows). Interviews bear this out in poignant detail. For instance, two janitors working in the Quaid-i-Azam University at Islamabad said that when they revealed their real names with Masih endings, they were stopped by the police and interrogated. That is why, even without any formal change of names in their identity cards, both use the Muslim surname Nazeer.3 Rural Names However, all names of Pakistani Muslims are not Islamic. In the rural areas names are often based upon natural objects and phenomena in several communities, such as the Palestinians (Atawneh 2005: 155–59) and the Irish (M’Clure 1879), and this is the case in Pakistan’s rural areas and the working classes. Flowers, trees, fruits, rivers, sea, plants and the days of the week as well as months and important events of the yearly cycle provide names for nearly all rural communities, including those of Sindh.4 Names common to all areas of Pakistan based on natural objects and events of life are as follows: Flower-related names: gul (flower), phool (flower), chanbeli (fragrant flower), kanwal (lotus), yasmin (jasmin), gulab (rose), etc. Plant-related names: boota (plant); ashjar (trees), shajar (tree). Animal-related names: asad (lion), arsalan (lion), sher (lion), fahad (leopard). Related to birds: tota (parrot), shaheen (eagle), baaz (falcon). Related to geographical objects: darya (river), samundar (sea), pahar (mountain), badal (cloud). Related to precious stones: lal (red stone), heera (diamond), zamurrad (emerald), neelam (blue stone). Related to precious metals: sona (gold), chandi (silver). On the days of the week: Itwari (of Sunday), Peeru (of Monday), Mangal (Tuesday), Jumrati (of Thursday), Juma (Friday). On religious events: Eid (feast day celebrated twice a year), Ramzani (of the month of fasting); Shubrati “of a sacred night,” etc. However, not all names are shared by all communities in Pakistan. For instance, the name Shubrati and Ramzani are mostly found among the working class, Urdu-speaking immigrants (Mohajirs) from India. These names are not used by urban, educated people and are being phased out even in rural areas. Beliefs about Names Beliefs about names do not necessarily follow the teachings given in the canonical texts of Islam. One belief, for instance, is that certain names are bhari (heavy) or inauspicious. While the ulema argue against such beliefs, others suggest “Islamic antidotes” to the negative influences of names. Ghulam Jilani Barq, an intellectual and writer of pre-partition Punjab, writes in his autobiography that a Pandit told him that, being born on a Saturday, he was unfortunate. There was a Hindu antidote to this presumed bad luck but he preferred an Islamic one which was to take out the numerical value of his own name through Abjad,5 find names of god with the same value, and then repeat these names as frequently as possible (Barq 1982: 178). Name-changing because of the belief that some names are inauspicious was reported as the results presented in Table 6 indicate. Among the many instances of name-changing on account of bad health, one is that of an educated family of a prominent academic, who was a sickly child, so his name, which was Pervez, was changed.6 In the rural areas informants report that names are changed even if married couples quarrel excessively.7 Upon probing, the belief in the effect of names on people’s lives turns out to consist of a set of allied ones with subtle differences. One form is that the name is inauspicious and if one changes it, the evil effects it was causing would be avoided. The other is that names are not responsible for misfortunes of this kind as the events of one’s life are predestined. However, they do have an effect upon one’s personality. In other words people with names like Sher (lion) will be brave and so on. These beliefs differ according to the sect of Islam one belongs to.8 The majority of Pakistani Muslims are Sunnis, but there is a sizeable Shia minority also. The Sunnis are further divided in sub-sects called Barelvi, Deobandi, and Ahl-i-Hadith.9 The ulema belonging to all these opinions were interviewed. All agreed that names do have an effect on the personality. However, the Barelvi ulema said they advised change of name if the meaning was bad. The
ciance. For when future historians look back, they may well see the summer of 2014 as a watershed marking the end of the post-Cold War order, and the birth of a new and far more dangerous era of religious extremism and regional instability. In the long term, the roots of the current crisis on Europe’s borders, from the cities of eastern Ukraine to the deserts of the Middle East, lie in the hubris and folly that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, a quarter of a century ago. When the Wall came down in the autumn of 1989, it marked the end of a long, dangerous but relatively stable stalemate between the democratic West and the communist East. When the Wall (Checkpoint Charlie in the Wall) came down in the autumn of 1989, it marked the end of a long, dangerous but relatively stable stalemate between the democratic West and the communist East To the politicians of the day, capitalism had been vindicated, while Marxism had spectacularly failed. Yet what is now clear is that in the following 25 years, the nations of the West, giddy with naive triumphalism, palpably failed to lay lasting foundations for the future. To take an obvious example, instead of working to establish a stable democracy in post-communist Russia, the US and Britain allowed Russia to slide into anarchy under Boris Yeltsin and then towards autocratic tyranny under Vladimir Putin. Instead of working to establish a democracy in post-communist Russia, the US and Britain allowed Russia to slide into anarchy under Boris Yeltsin and then towards autocratic tyranny under Vladimir Putin (above) And in the Middle East — by far the most fractured, dangerous and strategically important region on the planet — Western policy during the 1990s and 2000s now looks like a disaster. Instead of coaxing stable but authoritarian regimes such as Egypt and Syria towards democracy, the West preferred to prop up elderly tyrants like Hosni Mubarak and Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current Syrian president. That was folly enough. Even worse, however, was the catastrophically reckless decision by George W. Bush and Tony Blair to topple the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein without carefully laying the foundations for a post-Saddam regime. Deposing Saddam Hussein was a catastrophically reckless decision by George W. Bush and Tony Blair Alas, we all know the result: an unending saga of car-bombings, sectarian uprisings and bloody massacres. And now that Islamic State militants have carved out their own territory in western Iraq, the very survival of the country seems highly unlikely. Mr Blair may deny any responsibility for the carnage in Iraq, but he is in a minority of one. As his former protégé David Miliband admitted last week, it is ‘clearly the case’ that the bungled occupation of Iraq undermined the foundations of the state, shattered any legitimate authority, and played a key role in creating the carnage we are seeing today. It is little wonder, then, that so many people in the West have turned inwards, preferring the comforts of isolationism to the hard choices that come when you engage with the world. And perhaps it is not surprising that Barack Obama and David Cameron, reacting to the shameful hubris of the Blair-Bush years, would rather order a new round of drinks than order their troops into battle. But, as history shows, you simply cannot wish the problems of the world away. The last great age of isolationism, after all, was the 1930s, when Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were in their bloody pomp. We all know how that turned out. Indeed, while Mr Obama’s mantra — ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ — may sound like an understandable reaction to his predecessor’s oafish blundering, it is no substitute for a foreign policy. The last great age of isolationism, after all, was the 1930s, when (left to right) Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were in their bloody pomp As his former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, recently put it: ‘Great nations need organising principles, and “Don’t do stupid stuff” is not an organising principle.’ If you are wondering, by the way, what Britain’s organising principle is, then I am afraid I don’t have an answer. Ever since David Cameron came to office in May 2010, he has swung from one extreme to another. At first, he seemed an avowed anti-interventionist, insisting that democracy could not be ‘dropped from the air by an unmanned drone’. Yet when revolution broke out in Libya in 2011, the Prime Minister promptly sent in the RAF to bolster the rebels, claiming that the alternative would be to ‘pull up the drawbridge’. Similarly, Mr Cameron was a passionate advocate of intervening in the Syrian civil war, despite the glaring absence of either credible allies or a plausible exit strategy. As his former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, recently put it: ‘Great nations need organising principles, and “Don’t do stupid stuff” is not an organising principle’ Indeed, when Parliament blocked his bid to intervene, he sounded uncannily like Tony Blair, snapping that his opponents would ‘have to live with the way that they voted’. The odd thing, though, is that for all Mr Cameron’s rhetoric, his Government has spent the past four years cutting our Armed Forces. Despite the growing crises to Europe’s south and east, the Government remains intent on trimming Britain’s regular Army from 102,000 soldiers to just 80,000. Only a few months ago, the former head of the Army, General Lord Dannatt, warned that ‘with a resurgent Russia, this is a poor moment for the U.S.-led West to be weak in resolve and muscle’. Alas, I fear that ‘resolve and muscle’ are the last things that Vladimir Putin sees when he contemplates Britain today. What makes all this even more worrying is that I believe the world is a more dangerous place today than at any time since the early 1980s, when West confronted East across the stark frontiers of the Cold War. In Russia, for example, I believe there are disturbing parallels with the events that followed the end of World War I in Germany. Of course Vladimir Putin is not Hitler and Russian nationalists are not the Nazis. But like Germany in the 1930s, Russia seethes with resentment at its perceived humiliation at the end of the Cold War. And just as many Germans found reassurance in Hitler’s promises of renewed greatness, so many ordinary Russians, their minds warped by the Kremlin’s propaganda, are itching for revenge against their supposed enemies in the West. So many ordinary Russians, their minds warped by the Kremlin’s (above and St Basil's Cathedral) propaganda, are itching for revenge against their supposed enemies in the West Given Russia’s vast gas reserves, enormous army and fearsome nuclear arsenal, all that makes for a genuinely terrifying combination. And if the parallel with the 1930s holds, then I can barely bring myself to contemplate what might happen next. The terrible events in Syria, Libya and Iraq are part of a pattern, too. The story beneath the recent revolutions in the Middle East is a toxic combination of a surging population, a stagnant economy, an authoritarian political culture, deep sectarian tensions and a festering sense of anti-Western resentment. Our politicians had no excuse for not knowing this was coming. Indeed, as long ago as 1994, I remember reading a controversial article in the U.S. magazine The Atlantic Monthly, by foreign policy thinker Robert D. Kaplan, entitled The Coming Anarchy. Mr Kaplan argued that far from ushering in a liberal utopia, the end of the Cold War would be seen as the beginning of something much more dangerous. In the long run, he argued, ‘scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease’ would make the world a far deadlier place. Given that he specifically mentioned Syria, Egypt and Iraq as future trouble-spots, Mr Kaplan deserves a pat on the back for his prescience. By and large, I am not a great fan of military interventions abroad. Our recent history, after all, is littered with disasters, from Suez (above, Port Said during the crisis) in 1956 to Iraq in 2003 The tragedy, though, is that the leaders of the West were not paying attention. I do not believe they are really paying attention now, either. If they were, they would have acted much more decisively when President Putin snatched Crimea and incited his thugs into rebellion in eastern Ukraine, and they would certainly have acted more quickly in Iraq. By and large, I am not a great fan of military interventions abroad. Our recent history, after all, is littered with disasters, from Suez in 1956 to Iraq in 2003. It is sheer hubris to believe that we are policemen to the world, and sheer naivety to believe that every story can have a happy ending. But when they have clear objectives and a universally agreed exit strategy, interventions can work. We were right to protect the Kurds from Saddam Hussein in 1991 and right to stop Slobodan Milosevic’s massacres in Kosovo in 1999, just as we were terribly, shamefully wrong to have sat on our hands in Bosnia. The truth is that Western foreign policy has not had a clear direction or decisive leadership since the end of the Cold War. President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were reckless to topple Saddam Hussein without having any apparent idea what to do with a post-Saddam Iraq Putting aside Tony Blair’s messianic waffle about reordering the world in our own image, we have no idea what our governments stand for, what their priorities are, and where and when they think it necessary to intervene. In the past, leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher — or, indeed, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt — spelled out their priorities with absolute moral clarity. True, you may well argue that things were easier for them because the issues were clear-cut: a straight choice between good and evil. But history suggests that true statesmanship lies precisely in setting out that choice: in taking a moral stand and lifting the fog of ambiguity. That was what Churchill did when he warned of the horrors of Nazism, and what Reagan did when he called the Soviet Union an evil empire. What we need now are leaders of the same stamp — men and women with a clear sense of moral conviction, but also a keen awareness of the balance between caution and inaction, idealism and realism, decisiveness and recklessness. Unfortunately, we have somehow landed ourselves with a generation of political leaders who are more interested in enjoying their holidays than in securing the future of the West.So much for being 40 and fabulous. The decade when women are supposedly in the prime of their life appears to be one in which they have most anxieties in the bedroom. They were found to be more concerned about their bodies than those in their 50s, 60s and 70s – with their fears having an impact on their sex life. Women in their 40s were found to be more concerned about their bodies than those in their 50s, 60s and 70s – with their fears having an impact on their sex life (file photo) Researchers from the US questioned more than 500 women aged between 40 and 75 and found that the two greatest concerns were diminished or no interest in sex and painful intercourse. Among all respondents, sexual health concerns ‘somewhat decreased’ their ability to enjoy their relationship. But it was women in their 40s who suffered the most negative effects on their love life, according to research from the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Centre. For respondents aged 40 to 69 years, feeling better about their bodies was the most frequent response when asked what would increase satisfaction with their sex life. All the age groups agreed that sexual activity was important to their overall quality of life, with the exception of women in their 70s. The survey found that 52 per cent of respondents had not discussed their sexual concerns with their doctors. Of those women who did, 70 per cent indicated that they had to initiate that conversation with their GP. Dr Sheryl Kingsberg, chief of the division of behavioural medicine at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Centre and lead author of the study, said: ‘This survey sheds light on how women feel about the impact of sexual health concerns on their overall quality of life. Survey found that 52 per cent of respondents had not discussed their sexual concerns with their doctors (file photo) ‘Although the women in this study felt that their sexual satisfaction could improve, the majority remained happy with the quality of their partnered relationships, demonstrating that sex may become less of a determinant of overall relationship satisfaction over time.’ Dr JoAnn Pinkerton, executive director of the North American Menopause Society, said: ‘This study additionally confirms that better communications are needed between healthcare providers and their middle-aged women patients to address sexual function concerns.’ The results of the survey will be presented at the 2016 annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society in Orlando. The menopause can be one cause of painful intercourse for women in middle age. But many women suffer soreness because they are not aware that it is a medical condition caused by falling hormone levels, a study found. The condition, vulvar and vaginal atrophy (VVA), occurs due to thinning and drying of the vaginal walls because of lowering of oestrogen in the blood. An internet-based survey of 1,858 post-menopausal women in the US with symptoms of VVA, was specifically designed to assess women’s awareness of the condition and their behaviours and attitudes associated with its treatment. In the survey, 81 per cent of respondents said they were not aware that VVA is a medical condition. And more than two-thirds said they were not familiar with most of the prescription VVA products. Study lead author Michael Krychman, of the Southern California Centre for Sexual Health, said: ‘Women remain naive to the safe and effective treatment options that are currently available and are still, for the most part, underinformed and undertreated.’Physician racial bias can negatively affect Black patients’ reactions to racially discordant medical interactions, suggesting that racial bias is manifested in physicians’ communication with their Black patients. However, little is known about how physician racial bias actually influences their communication during these interactions. This study investigated how non-Black physicians’ racial bias is related to their word use during medical interactions with Black patients. One hundred and seventeen video-recorded racially discordant medical interactions from a larger study were transcribed and analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software. Physicians with higher levels of implicit racial bias used first-person plural pronouns and anxiety-related words more frequently than physicians with lower levels of implicit bias. There was also a trend for physicians with higher levels of explicit racial bias to use first-person singular pronouns more frequently than physicians with lower levels of explicit bias. These findings suggest that non-Black physicians with higher levels of implicit racial bias may tend to use more words that reflect social dominance (i.e., first-person plural pronouns) and anxiety when interacting with Black patients.Here's a hard fact about free speech: vindicating it in American courts takes either money (and lots of it), or lawyers willing to provide pro bono help. Right is right, and law is law, but court is court — and winning in court generally requires competent representation, which is ruinously expensive for normal people. It's not fair, it's not right, but it's true. Therefore the vitality of the First Amendment depends not just on the law, but on the service of lawyers like Troy Sexton of Motschenbacher & Blattner LLP in Portland, Oregon. Last August I put up the Popehat Signal seeking pro bono help for an anti-telemarketing blogger who writes at the Telecom Compliance News Press. The blogger was sued by an attorney named F. Antone Accuardi, who claimed that the blog falsely associated him with companies involved with robocalling and other telemarketing violations. Troy Sexton stepped up. He filed a motion under Oregon's anti-SLAPP statute in response to Accuardi's complaint, and this March, he prevailed. Accuardi's complaint is here, Sexton's anti-SLAPP motion is here, and the Magistrate Judge's lengthy and detailed order granting the anti-SLAPP motion is here. Sexton's work was absolutely top-notch. The main basis of the judge's order is that the blog's comments of Accuardi were statements of opinion based on disclosed and linked facts about the companies and Accuardi's connections to them, and therefore protected by the First Amendment. It's a very thorough opinion and worth a read if you're interested in First Amendment and anti-SLAPP issues. This is a tremendous victory for the blog, and for Troy Sexton and his firm. Sexton has a motion for fees pending; though he stepped in pro bono, I hope that he winds up collecting at his full rate from Accuardi. I am more free, and so are you, because people like Troy Sexton are willing to step up and contribute their time and skill. Please join me in congratulating him. Last 5 posts by Ken WhiteSunContract is an energy trading project from Slovenia that will utilize blockchain technology to raise funds and bring efficiency and transparency to the energy market. SunContract promises to build a decentralized energy trading market. Energy market At first glance it might sound silly that someone would build a platform for energy trading on the blockchain, however with so many energy/blockchain projects popping up lately this seems like a highly potential future use case of a blockchain. Right now the traditional electricity market works in such a way that the power plant generates electricity and sends it to the grid where a (smart) meter collects all the necessary data. Distribution system operator (DSO) and Transmission system operator (TSO) handle transportation of electricity in the grid and guarantee that your TV works and your phone is charged. The next part of the middleman chain is the retailer. Retailers buy electricity for a relatively low price from power producers and resell it with a high margin to end consumers. Usually, the retailer’s name is on the invoice you receive every month. Classical retailers have problems with inefficiency and high costs related to late payments and bureaucracy. In this system, small customers pay high fees while the service they get is not very user friendly. How will SunContract work? SunContract strives to modernise the energy sector that is known to be rigid and slowly evolving. However, that does not mean SunContract will have to build a new grid or build new power plants. The focus of SunContract is on optimising retailer’s work and make it less costly and more user friendly. Investments into infrastructure would be too expensive. Lowering the margin of the retailer will drive down price of electricity for the end user and small producers will get a higher compensation. End customer and small producer will bid on SunContract’s trading platform and settle internally, meaning that SunContract will act as a pool of independent producers and consumers. The beauty of this system is that it does not need new grids – it uses existing distribution lines, (mostly) existing meters, power lines and is managed by established operators. The SunContract pool empowers small producers and customers to trade freely in the electricity market – not without middlemen, but without the unnecessary ones. SunContract plans to attack the unnecessary middlemen in the energy sector much like Bitcoin attacked the unnecessary middleman in finance. SunContract’s team believes that the future of energy markets is in renewable technologies and storage capacities. Big part of the team is well established in the energy sector so it undoubtedly has the ability to build great products. CEO of SunContract, Gregor Novak, was already involved in development of first Slovenian energy exchange as the head of IT. There are several other specialists in the team that will help with their expertise in IT, finance, security and blockchain – look them up on their website. Decentralization Right now the electricity is (mostly) produced in big power plants that use high voltage power lines to transmit electricity over long distances. Building high voltage transmission network is expensive and has problems with loss of electricity. Most of these plants use polluting energy sources such as coal, which is a threat to the environment. SunContract’s main focus will be on solar and other renewable energy. This kind of reminds us of what Tesla and SolarCity are doing – Elon Musk surely knows what he’s doing. Solar power plants are one of the most environmental-friendly sources of energy and the photovoltaic technology is advancing rapidly. Solar energy production is more and more efficient every year. Moreover, storage capacities are improving each year – perhaps SunContract will tap into energy storage as well in the long term. SunContract token sale started on June 28th and will last until Ethereum block number 4104830 is mined – approximately at the end of July. Funds are being raised via a Smart Contract that accepts Ethers (ETH) in a transparent way. At the time of writing, SunContract has already collected over $1.2 million from over 900 different participants. 1 Ether will net you 11,500.00 SNC tokens in the first week of the token sale. You can read more about the project on their official website – https://suncontract.org/ – or you can join their Slack channel https://goo.gl/HqHzP9.When trying to assess the most valuable player on a team, a common pitfall is to look for its best player. For a team like EDward Gaming, support Tian "meiko" Ye is rarely considered next to giants like Kim "deft" Hyukkyu and Ming "clearlove" Kai. clearlove has gained a lot of international recognition thanks to a meta that celebrates strong junglers, while deft, as ADC, deals 32.1 percent of his team’s damage on average. They are certainly EDward Gaming’s strongest individual players. But the advantages they are able to consistently turn into wins don't come from nowhere. Arguably, a team's MVP is the player who controls the flow of the game and creates the most opportunities for the team to succeed — who is able to set up and create multiple openings for victory. For EDward Gaming, that person is meiko. Based on how much recognition clearlove has been getting recently, the natural conclusion made by someone who hasn't watched a lot of EDG matches is that he's a heavy play-making jungler. But it's his followup plays that truly stand out. As a jungler, clearlove focuses much more on farming and counter-ganking, turning the bottom lane after an opponent's engagement. When he controls the enemy jungle, he does so only after vision has been placed. As for deft, he was much less aggressive before coming to China. meiko’s ruthlessness in lane and his control of the flow of the 2v2 have facilitated deft's development as a more punchy laner. Among LPL bottom lanes, deft and meiko’s greatest strength is their synergy, particularly in how they control their wave to set up a bait or a thoughtful invade. Unlike many duos, they’ll make plays for early advantages even in weak lane matchups. As the World Championship draws near, bottom lanes and junglers will figure prominently in analysts' rankings. With the popularity of Teleport and weaker bottom turrets, bot will be the lane to control in the early game. Rather than opening up the map through the mid lane, the bottom lane will be where victory starts and trickles upward, spreading in rashes of vision throughout the map. Does the team control bottom lane through a jungle advantage, or control the jungle through a bottom lane advantage? That will be a near-semantic distinction to draw when classifying Worlds contenders. For EDward Gaming — a team with some of the best players in jungle, ADC and support roles — the line is especially blurred. But more often than not, they control the jungle by establishing a lead in the bottom lane first. Photo credit: 刘一村 There are a few methods they tend to use to achieve early bottom lane control, and almost all of them revolve around meiko. The first involves controlling the wave on the bottom side of the map in order to place vision, an approach they used in the first game of their LPL semifinal against Team WE. deft and meiko pushed out the lane aggressively, engaging WE in a trade and using the threat of their Tahm Kench to head off an Alistar all-in. The pressure was successful, forcing their opponents back and allowing meiko to place a ward at the entrance to WE’s bottom-side jungle. That ward spotted Xiang "Condi" Renjie, and clearlove invaded WE’s jungle to force out Condi’s flash, which gave EDG easy control of bot side. On the surface, it looked like the play came from clearlove’s initiative and aggression, but it was meiko and the bottom lane that made it possible. In a variant on this strategy, meiko and deft will use their control of the lane and the vision they set up to prepare a pincer on their opponents. They will push out the lane quickly to place a ward in the second bottom lane bush, then let the enemy team build up a large minion wave, intentionally avoiding last hits. As their opponents push forward, Chen "mouse" Yuanhao Teleports in to flank. In some cases, after they exert control on the wave, meiko and deft will allow the enemy team to push back in order to bait them into a dive and set up an easy counter-gank for clearlove. This situation can lead to problems, however, if EDG have the weaker jungle matchup or don't properly expect the first gank. For example, in Game 3 of WE vs EDward Gaming, and meiko, deft and clearlove set themselves up for a gank or jungler and duo lane 3v3 in the bottom tri bush. But when Condi initiated, WE’s burst killed meiko almost immediately, and in the followup, EDG lost clearlove as well. Even if the jungle matchup is even or favors EDG, when meiko and deft are too greedy in a weak 2v2 matchup, the entire team struggles. In their second game against Saint in Week 9, meiko and deft made their usual play for early bot lane control, but as Kalista and Alistar against Sivir and Nami, they lost the trade. The game became an uphill battle, though EDG did eventually win. These early pushes make or break EDward Gaming. Knowing this, meiko and deft will frequently look for early opportunities to invade and get an edge before even getting to lane. Even at Worlds in 2015, meiko commented that studying the early game was something EDward Gaming did frequently. That came in especially useful against H2K, when they predicted an early invade. Invades like this were seen throughout the LPL season, but surprisingly, they tended to be led by the bottom lane, rather than clearlove. meiko highlighted his thought process at the press conference after the LPL final when he explained why he decided to invade Royal’s jungle in Game 2. "When I sent to their bush," meiko said, "Taliyah didn't come, so I could judge that there wasn't a ward there." From that, meiko judged RNG wouldn’t anticipate the invade, and knew it was time to strike. Photo credit: 刘一村 Playing around vision and keeping track of vision timers appears to be one of meiko's greatest strengths. If he pings a ward, he and the rest of the team are good at keeping track of when it will die, and he rarely roams in that area until it expires. Part of the reason EDG have been more successful on their blue side is that it’s easy for meiko to walk up the river and place a ward near the enemy blue buff on red side, which helps EDG with map control substantially. Whereas, on red side, roaming to get vision of the blue-side red buff is riskier. It’s really important to underscore that clearlove, in contrast with a jungler like Royal Never Give Up’s Liu "Mlxg" Shiyu, is much less likely to initiate a gank or some other action without knowledge of the enemy jungler. He understands that he needs to keep himself and his laners ahead, so he avoids getting trapped in situations where the enemy team can counter-gank him or counter-jungle while he ganks. For this style of play, it's crucial to have either a good mid laner or support to secure vision and back up invades. Lee "scout" Yechan, who's playing his rookie split, has been more of a beneficiary of clearlove than a facilitator. The jungler has prioritized ganking mid much more this split, despite his reputation for favoring bottom lane pressure — in the summer playoffs, he averaged a nearly 50 percent mid-lane gank rate in the first 10 minutes of every game. clearlove hasn't had a whole lot of choice in the matter. scout was heavily focused by Condi and WE mid laner Su "xiye" Hanwei in the semifinal, and afterward a distraught clearlove commented in the press conference that he felt WE’s mid and jungle were "stronger than ours." In the final, clearlove adapted by ganking mid early in two out of three games. He even hovered around the mid lane looking for a gank opportunity without actually finding one — twice — which he didn’t do for either top or bottom throughout either series. Though EDG's map control begins on the bottom side, holding mid remains important. Luckily, with meiko’s agency and vision control, EDG’s bot can set up risky trades while clearlove focuses his pressure on mid. It’s a system EDG may apply more often at the World Championship. If that’s the case, any early lead EDG gain falls at meiko’s feet. meiko and deft’s control of the bottom wave also provides the best opportunity for mouse to get ahead in top lane. By placing wards to set up Teleport opportunities, mouse is less isolated. That helps to make up for the lower priority clearlove has placed on top lane — across nine games in semifinals and finals, clearlove only ganked top once, and mouse averaged a CS deficit relative to his opponent of 6.27 at 10 minutes for the entire summer split. With the way EDG plays, top lane will be a natural liability, but if meiko and deft can push out the wave and bring it back to turret reliably after placing a ward, mouse will have a strong bottom lane to fall back on to get back into the game. On the other hand, this puts even more pressure on meiko’s shoulders. Following the laning phase, meiko serves as the primary initiator in teamfights, and his peels for deft have been instrumental. Two games that stand out in my mind are his Nami game against Royal Never Give Up in the summer regular season, and his Bard game (despite EDG's loss) against RNG in the spring final. In both games, Royal had more answers in their draft, but EDG were able to rely on meiko to reset fights. He managed surpass expectations, in particular outperforming legendary support Cho "Mata" Sehyoung. Photo credit: 刘一村 Those who didn’t watch LPL closely this year expect Mata to still be the greatest support coming out of the region. Though Mata has bested meiko in wards placed per minute, he hasn’t worked as efficiently with his jungler and ADC, and he hasn’t been able to extend his presence to the rest of the map as effectively, getting caught out in solo warding missions more frequently or attempting foolish 1v2s after Jian "Uzi" Zihao backs. Some of meiko’s greatest moments this season were against Mata, invoking a comparison few dare breathe aloud. Last year, meiko was still a rookie for EDG. He rose to the occasion at the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational with the most consistent performance of any player on the team. Despite this, he lived in the shadow of giants, and observers scrambling to find a player to blame for the team's faults settled on meiko. This time around, meiko’s synergy with deft will be hard to ignore. Perhaps the most exciting thing about EDG is how well their bottom laners complement one another. meiko’s aggression is augmented by deft’s positioning, and this allows EDG to get lane advantages early. Sometimes their greed can backfire, and they end up in a disadvantageous position, but as long as meiko finds an opportunity to roam, EDG react well. The team's unstable setup phase has meant they have averaged a smaller gold lead at 10 minutes relative to other Chinese teams heading to Worlds. But once meiko places the necessary vision, EDG become a team that reacts incredibly well to information, snowballing at an increasing rate throughout the next 10 minutes of the game. Royal’s focus on the bottom side of the map whenever they face EDG isn’t just about keeping deft down, it's about preventing meiko’s roams as well. The key to defeating EDG is keeping meiko in lane and not allowing EDG to control the wave. As soon as meiko has freedom, he can set up wards that allow EDG comeback opportunities in the mid game. From there, meiko’s synergy with deft in teamfights allows the AD carry more freedom to position aggressively. With the highest kill participation on the team at 73.5 percent this summer, meiko facilitates most of the action in EDG's games. Almost nothing the team does doesn’t go through meiko, whether it's setting up wards or instigating an engagement. Throughout much of his career, clearlove has struggled to find a balance between his natural farming style and the need to create early game advantages for his team. With meiko this year, that balance has been much easier to strike. Not only is meiko EDG’s primary playmaker and MVP, he’s the best LPL support heading to the World Championship. At MSI 2015, during meiko’s rookie year, his coach Ji "Aaron" Xing said, "He’s not a support who’s content to be just a support. I think he will at the very least become on par with Mata… All he’s lacking is some experience." Photo credit: 刘一村 A year and a half later, meiko has proven himself instrumental to EDward Gaming’s domestic victories. He has overcome Mata this summer, even with the playing field level and teams of similar talent around them. But Mata still has the legacy. He’s earned his respect internationally. Despite meiko’s past stability on the international stage, if he truly wants to aim higher, he’ll have to earn the same respect. Teams at Worlds will study EDG’s games and realize how important meiko’s role is in the team’s success. Teams that tunnel in on clearlove without understanding meiko’s role will fail. meiko is not without his flaws — observant competitors will devise ways to pin him down and limit clearlove’s ability to act. He approaches trades with deft as if it doesn’t occur to him that they could lose, and sometimes they do. It’s easy enough to exploit with a strong support matchup. With more teams looking to counterpick support in red side last pick, this shouldn't be overlooked. With all three of EDward Gaming’s stars performing better than they ever have, and a meta that favors them, meiko will still be the make or break factor in EDG’s final placement. No matter the outcome, viewers will know he isn’t just a footnote. Photos from 刘一村's album. Kelsey Moser is a staff writer for theScore esports who fervently believes EDG are out of excuses for not making semifinals. You can follow her on Twitter.In recent days, there have been a few Eagles beat writers who have been promoting the idea that Michael Vick will not be the team's starting QB on opening day. CSN Philly's Geoff Mosher mentioned in a mailbag that Vick "could be a roster casualty if [HC Chip Kelly] is sold on Nick Foles and the promise of Matt Barkley." In another mailbag, Mosher said that he believes Foles and Barkley have a better chance to start than does Vick. Jimmy Kempski of the Allentown Morning Call said that Vick "was outplayed by Nick Foles in OTAs and minicamp" and went on to say that Foles "got the ball out quicker, was generally more accurate, and is putting receivers in a better position to get yards after the catch." Kempski added that Foles "looks far better" that he did a year ago, and that he has "come a long way," especially with his deep throws. As for Barkley, Kempski was complimentary, but said that competing with Foles, Barkley "has a pretty steep uphill climb to win a starting job." CSN Philly's Reuben Frank dedicated a full column to making the case that Foles will be the starting quarterback, saying that he is "better at making quick decisions under duress," has "tons of upside" and is "more accurate." He said that if it is truly an open competition, then Foles "will be the Eagles' starting quarterback on opening day." What does this mean for your fantasy draft? Well, we no longer believe that Vick has a good chance to be the team's starter, so we've moved him down to #26 in our QB rankings. He's an interesting upside QB2 if he wins the job, but at this point in the offseason, that's in serious doubt. Someone asked me on Twitter whether Foles would be a high-end QB2 if he won the job and my initial feeling is that he'd merely be a low-end QB. Here's what we know about Foles and Chip Kelly's offense: 1. In the last two seasons coaching the Oregon Ducks, his offense ran the ball 63.4% of the time. Granted, many of those runs were called with the Ducks sitting on a comfortable lead, and the Eagles won't be in that position nearly as often. He'll have to call more passes now that he's in the NFL, but it's clear that he likes to run the ball, so the Eagles are likely to be a run-first team. 2. LeSean McCoy is one of the most talented running backs in the league. Of the 39 RBs with at least 300 carries in the last three seasons, McCoy has the 6th highest YPC (4.75). In addition to McCoy, Bryce Brown proved to be a capable lead back, racking up 347 yards in two games against the Panthers and the Cowboys with McCoy sidelined. 3. The Eagles' QB position is one of the most fluid on the entire roster. While Vick and Foles are considered the two most likely candidates to start in Week 1, the team said it had a 1st round grade on Matt Barkley, scooping him up in the 4th round. It appears that the team believes that Barkley is the QB of the future in Philadelphia. With all this uncertainty
, and a skull that supported large jaw muscles. It may have hunted like raptorial killer whales, which use their teeth to tear off flesh (See Nature's video). Co-author Klaas Post of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam in the Netherlands stumbled across the fossil in November 2008 during the final day of a field trip to Cerro Colorado in the Pisco-Ica Desert on the southern coast of Peru — an area that is now above sea level owing to Andean tectonic activities. The fossils were prepared in Lima, where they will remain. Moby moniker The name given to the creature combines the Hebrew word 'Livyatan', which refers to large mythological sea monsters, with the name of American novelist Herman Melville, who penned Moby-Dick — "one of my favourite sea books", says lead author Olivier Lambert of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. Four-way view of the ancient raptorial sperm whale's skull and mandible. G. Bianucci (University of Pisa) The authors think that Leviathan, like the extinct giant shark, preyed on medium-sized baleen whales, which were between 7 and 10 metres long, smaller than today's humpback whales and widely diverse at the time. The authors speculate that Leviathan became extinct as a result of changing environmental conditions. "Top predators are very sensitive to the changes in their prey," Lambert says. Changes in number, diversity or size of baleen whales, as well as the climate cooling that occurred at around Leviathan's time, would have had dire impacts. The creature's surviving cousins — Physeter, pygmy and dwarf sperm whales — are specialized deep-diving squid hunters that occupy a different ecological niche from Leviathan. According to vertebrate palaeontologist Lawrence Barnes at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, this discovery demonstrates that sperm whale-like cetaceans were much more diverse in the past and that the modern sperm whale and pygmy sperm whales are the "only surviving vestiges of a larger evolutionary radiation of related whales in the past". Battering rams All sperm whales have characteristically large foreheads to hold their'spermaceti organ', a series of oil and wax reservoirs buttressed with massive partitions of connective tissue. Scientists have long thought that this organ helps sperm whales to dive deeply to feed. The curved 'basin' atop Leviathan's snout suggests that it also had a large spermaceti organ, even though it probably did not dive to feed. The authors speculate that, if Leviathan hunted baleen whales near the surface, the large spermaceti organ existed long before modern sperm whales became specialized for foraging squid at depth. ADVERTISEMENT The organ could have served other functions, such as echolocation, acoustic displays or aggressive head-butting. "Spermaceti organs could be used as battering rams to injure opponents during contests over females," says evolutionary morphologist David Carrier of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. According to Carrier, at least two nineteenth-century whaling ships were sunk when large males punched holes in their sides with their foreheads, Carrier adds, and Leviathan may have used forehead ramming to dispatch its prey.Imagine this, you are talking to your friend at the mall or at your home but then your Android smartphone is secretly recording your conversation. It’s not doing this on its own though as it has been injected with a malware so that other people can spy on you or even copy the data that is on your device. That’s a scary scenario right? But this is actually happening right now without the knowledge of the owner of the Android device and it is being conducted by the Federal Bureaue of Investigation. The Wall Street Journal has reported that law enforcement personnel of federal agencies are resorting to tools that are usually being used by hackers to gather information on suspects. Spying on a suspect using this method requires a court order and even with this it still isn’t a reliable method to be used on a tech-savvy suspect. This is because the Android smartphone must first be infected with a malware which can be done when the person involved clicks on a shady link or opens an attachment. People with tech backgrounds usually don’t fall for this trap. A former U.S. official with knowledge on this matter says that the agency does not usually resort to this method. It is only being used if it involves organized crime, counterterrorism, or child pornography. Criminals today are using communication technology that is difficult to intercept which is why the FBI is using hacking tools. These tools are either developed internally or are bought from private companies. One major feature of these tools is that it can activate the microphone of an Android device and record any nearby sounds. The same tool also works on laptop microphones which can be used to record conversations. If you’ve got nothing to hide then this really won’t be a problem however if you’re particular about your privacy then it’s best to avoid having malware infecting your smartphone. Installing a mobile security software on your device is one way to make it more secure. via wsjConst. Daniel Woodall was named early Tuesday as the Edmonton police officer who was shot and killed while serving an arrest warrant in west Edmonton Monday evening. Edmonton Police Chief Rod Knecht confirmed Woodall and Sgt. Jason Harley, 38, were shot by someone inside the house at 186th Street and 62nd Avenue just after 8 p.m. MT. The suspect's house was on fire sending flames and black smoke into the sky. (Mark Harvey/CBC News ) Harley sustained a non-life threatening gunshot wound to to the back. He was treated and released from hospital. Woodall, 35, was an officer with the Edmonton Police Hate Crimes Unit who was originally from Great Britain. He died at the scene. "A wife is without a husband tonight and two young children are without a loving father," Knecht said."This is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions." Both officers were attempting to arrest a suspect for criminal harassment. Knecht confirmed that the arrest was related to a hate crimes matter. The suspect's house was on fire and burned to the ground. A suspect is not in custody but Knecht doesn't believe there is any danger to the public. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/EPS?src=hash">#EPS</a> is no longer looking for a suspect. This is the last update we will be posting until the morning's news conference. Thank you. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/yeg?src=hash">#yeg</a> —@edmontonpolice Police were warning the public to stay away from the area for hours due to an active shooter situation. News of the officer's death prompted people to turn on their porch lights and tweet under the hashtag #EPSStrong. The last member of the Edmonton Police Service to be killed on the job was Const. Ezio Faraone who was shot after a botched bank robbery in June 1990.General Michael Hayden appeared with CNN’s Don Lemon late Tuesday night, and called Donald Trump Jr.’s latest comments on the expanding Russia investigation “scary” and “an appeal to the heart of autocracy.” President Donald Trump’s son spoke before a group of conservative college students in Florida on Wednesday, and spoke extensively about the investigation into his father’s former campaign ties to Russia, calling it a “rigged system” and declaring “there are people at the highest levels of government that don’t want to let America be America.” Lemon played a clip of Don Jr.’s remarks for Hayden, before asking the general if he thought Don Jr. was pushing conspiracy theories about the U.S. government. “I have to confess when I first heard that earlier this evening — that was a little scary scary, that is an appeal to the heart of autocracy, and challenging the patriotism of those folks who work in the United States government,” Hayden replied. When asked why the president’s son would make such comments, Hayden said he wasn’t sure if Don Jr. has been “marked by cool, calm judgment in his public utterances in the past,” but said that his comments suggest that “in their heart of hearts they don’t think this investigation is going to a happy place, at least not a happy place from their point of view.” Hayden noted that he is not “predicting criminal indictments about collusion or anything like that.” “But as the investigation goes on, we learn more and more about the synchronization of activities of the Trump campaign, including by the president’s son, by Wikileaks and the actions of the Russia federation.” Watch above, via CNN. [image via screengrab] — Follow Aidan McLaughlin (@aidnmclaughlin) on Twitter Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Aug. 11, 2017, 8:33 AM GMT / Updated Aug. 11, 2017, 2:04 PM GMT By Jane C. Timm President Donald Trump on Thursday repeated his past claim that the American people are the most heavily burdened with taxes in the world, while critiquing Congress for failing to move more quickly on his legislative agenda to cut them. "We pay more tax than anybody in the world, we’re going to reduce taxes," Trump said from his Bedminster, N.J., golf resort where he is spending what the White House calls a "working vacation." His claim is not true, no matter how many times he says it. "Two years later, and I’m still answering this one," the Tax Foundation's Director of Federal Projects, Kyle Pomerleau, told NBC News. "The answer is still the same: No, the United States is not the highest-taxed nation in the world." Let's look at the facts: America’s tax revenue is 26 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is significantly lower than the average 34 percent other developed countries pay relative to their GDP, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Denmark, France and Sweden are among those nations that top America on taxes. The U.S. tax burden per capita — $14,115 — also is below average in relation to other developed nations, as well, data from the Tax Policy Center shows. By the numbers, the U.S. corporate tax rate is on the high side, but deductions bring it back down to the average range worldwide, experts said. "We are nowhere close to the top," Alex Raskolnikov, a professor of tax law at Columbia Law School, told NBC News, speaking broadly of the nation's overall tax burden. Related: Where Did Trump Dig Up 45,000 Mining Jobs? Tax experts told NBC News it isn't fully clear what Trump is referring to in his statement. If he is talking about the total amount of taxes paid, then, yes, America's tax coffers do take in more money than any other nation. But would that be a reasonable measure to back up the claim that the U.S. is the highest-taxed nation in the world? The experts said: No. Daniel Shaviro, a professor of taxation at New York University Law School, called that measure of the tax burden "nonsensical and meaningless." CORRECTION (Aug. 11, 2017, 10:05 a.m.): An earlier version of this article misstated the name and title of an expert at the Tax Foundation. He is Kyle Pomerleau, not John. His title is director of federal projects, not federal budgets.It wasn't clear what kind of car Pirro was driving or whether she had any passengers. Fox News host Jeanine Pirro was ticketed for driving nearly 120 mph in upstate New York, according to authorities. The "Justice with Judge Jeanine" host was pulled over after a state trooper clocked her going 119 mph in a 65 mph zone at about 1:15 p.m. Sunday, according to New York State Police spokesman Beau Duffy. Authorities said Pirro was stopped in Nichols, a Tioga County county town near the Pennsylvania border. It wasn't clear what kind of car Pirro was driving or whether she had any passengers. Pirro said in a statement through Fox News she had been driving for hours to visit her ailing mother and didn't realize how fast she was going. She says she will "pay the consequences." The ticket is returnable Jan. 8. Pirro was a judge in Westchester County before being elected the county's first female district attorney in 1997. She has hosted "Justice with Judge Jeanine" since 2011. Copyright Associated Press / NBC New YorkBy now you should be used to this - I’m going to make a placeholder thread, once the stream is up I’ll update it with notes as usual. Kid Ultra Concept art Modeled version (unfinished) Character details. Kid Ultra’s shot an enemy after a teammate was scrapped in order to make @Jythri look bad. In reality it was reactive rather than proactive, in addition it was useless in single player. Character legendary Heal Power, Max Shield. Special Effect times you ultimate and increases healing and damage for 10 seconds after you exit. Skins Skins will be retroactively added for operations - that means KU will get the Red and Black and Red and Gold skins from Attikus and the Thrall Rebellion. Helix Shift Code 9KCJT-JHHJ6-ZCTJH-RKFT3-ZRWSX Gold Skin 9CWTT-5SZT6-HCJJZ-RWRJ3-JR9BX Anything else Gearbox went full 8 bit for the streamArsenal youngster Chuba Akpom has been talking to Arsenal Player about the challenges of coming up through the ranks at Arsenal, the pressure of playing in front of the Emirates crowd as well as his idea of the key to achiving success. Below there are a few of the main excerpts of the interview which is live on the Arsenal site now. “If you put your mind to it, anything’s achievable. Where I’m from, it’s a tough upbringing so everyone from my area has a strong mentality.” The 19 year old also alluded to his childhood being the driving force behind his competitive spirt and never say die attitude, “When we used to play football you wanted to win otherwise there would be a scrap, there would be something going on, so I’ve a strong mentality. I’m super, super competitive and it’s good to have a winning mentality. Anything you want to do, if you put your mind to it and work hard, you can do it.” The youngster clearly considers a good mentality a key component to success, “You’ve got to have that belief in yourself. I love the saying ‘you are what you believe’. If you believe you’re a champion, you’re going to train like a champion. You’re going to run like a champion and do everything like a champion. It’s like an extra boost.” Akpom, who recently signed a long term contract extension with the Gunners, also explained the huge jump from playing academy games to playing in front of one of the UK’s biggest football crowds. “From training through the reserves and playing matches with the reserves, you’re playing at the Emirates in front of 60,000 fans. It’s a really big step, then you’ve got people watching on TV and it’s global. Everyone’s watching so it’s a lot of pressure but you’ve got to do it, it’s got to be done.” Akpom has looked very lively whenever he has been involved of late, lets hope the youngster can sieze his chance and make himself a permenant fixture in Arsene Wenger’s plans. Follow us on twitter @Arsenation and Like our Facebook page!WASHINGTON (CNN) -- House Democrats will propose a new stimulus package to "rebuild America" and "help the middle class," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, announced Monday. The package will have some of the same features as one passed earlier by the House but rejected by the Senate, she said, including "aid to the states" on healthcare, food stamps and unemployment. Last week Pelosi estimated the package could cost as much as $150 billion. Rep. John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who leads his part in the House, criticized the Democrats' plan in a letter to Pelosi Monday. "Nothing currently being discussed by the majority as'stimulus' will stabilize the economy long-term," he said, citing press reports about Democratic plans. "Nothing being discussed will ease the uncompetitive nature of our nation's tax rates. Nothing being discussed will bring a single dollar of private capital into our markets, which would help stabilize and restore American families' savings and retirement accounts. And nothing being discussed will help small businesses compete and thrive." Pelosi and other top House Democrats met a panel of leading economists Monday morning, including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, now a Harvard professor. Allen Sinai of Decision Economics said bluntly the U.S. economy is in recession and the world economy is in recession, but given the Democrats' efforts, things would be better next year. There has been no official declaration of a recession, but the body that makes such determinations - the National Bureau of Economic Research - usually makes them retroactively, based on broad measures of economic activity.There are currently about 6000 Bliss words. The Bliss language design allows creating new words according to well defined rules for words or concepts that are not yet available. The language has its own grammar, which is expressed graphically by the so-called operators. The grammatical features are important. They give the user an opportunity to express nuances in a sentence with proper grammar and thus be able to communicate with Bliss as in spoken or written Swedish. Bliss is a graphical language that has existed in Sweden since the 1970s. Bliss is a language of logical structure and the foundation is a set of graphical elements that combine to form a Bliss word. Bliss words are assembled into a vocabulary that is used in daily communication and/or written communications remotely. About image formats Bliss words can be downloaded in different image formats. Choose the image format that is best suited to your dynamic communication program or a text document. SVG SVG is a vector-based image format. Vector-based image formats are able to enlarge and shrink the bliss words, without the image deteriorating in quality. However, not all programs supports SVG. JPG Jpeg images can be downloaded in two sizes, small jpeg (200x200 pixels) and large jpeg (400x400 pixels). If they are resized they lose quality. Many dynamic communications programs supports this image format. EMF EMF is a vector-based format suitable for word processing, eg Word, because they are of high quality both on the screen and when printed. Can be enlarged with no loss of quality. WMF WMF is a vector-based older format still used in many dynamic communications programs. EPS EPS is a vector format that can be enlarged and provide high quality when printed. EPS images are suitable for print media and billboards, and can also be downloaded without text. PNG PNG is an image format that is suitable for web sites.Professor David Jentsch is a highly respected UCLA neuroscientist who specialises in the study of addiction, one of the most widespread and serious medical problems in our society today. Sadly, by devoting his career to finding out how to better treat a condition that ruins – and all too often ends – many millions of lives in the USA and around the world every year, David has found himself, his colleagues, and his friends and neighbors under attack from animal rights extremists whose tactics have ranged from harassment, stalking and intimidation, to arson and violence. Did this extremist campaign persuade David to abandon his research? No chance! In 2009 David responded to the extremist campaign against him and his colleagues by helping to found Pro-Test for Science to campaign for science and against animal rights extremism at UCLA, and has been a key contributor to Speaking of Research, writing articles on the role of animal studies in the development of new therapies for addiction, what his studies on rodents and vervet monkeys involve, and how addiction research can help us to understand obesity. This week the NIH’s National institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has published an excellent article on David’s ongoing research entitled “Methamphetamine Alters Brain Structures, Impairs Mental Flexibility”, which highlights the importance of non-human primate research in identifying how addiction alters the brain and why some individuals are more prone to develop damaging methamphetamine dependency than others. You can read the article in full here. Human chronic methamphetamine users have been shown to differ from nonusers in the same ways that the post-exposure monkeys differed from their pre-exposure selves. The researchers’ use of monkeys as study subjects enabled them to address a question that human studies cannot: Did the drug cause those differences, or were they present before the individuals initiated use of the drug? The study results strongly suggest that the drug is significantly, if not wholly, responsible” This knowledge of how drug use disrupts brain function will be crucial to development effective clinical interventions for methamphetamine addiction, and the huge scale and devastating impact of methamphetamine use makes it clear that such interventions are desperately needed, as David highlights in the article’s conclusion. Methamphetamine dependence is currently a problem with no good medical treatments, when you say a disease like methamphetamine dependence is costly, it’s not just costing money, but lives, productivity, happiness, and joy. Its impact bleeds through families and society.” At a time when animal rights activists in many countries are pushing to ban addiction research involving animals, the NIDA article on the work of David and his colleagues shows why this work is so valuable, and just what would be lost if animal rights extremists are allowed to have their way. Speaking of Research To learn more about the role of animal research in advancing human and veterinary medicine, and the threat posed to this progress by the animal rights lobby, follow us on Facebook or Twitter.WASHINGTON -- Haven't registered to vote? Do it now. Haven't gotten around to updating your voter registration? Do it now. Aren't absolutely sure you're registered correctly? Reregister now. Tell everyone else to do it, too. And consider today your deadline. Those are the core messages behind National Voter Registration Day, a broad-based, nonpartisan effort to turn Tuesday, Sept. 25, into a national day of action and push people to register to vote before it's too late for the November election. "As a basic organizing principle, having a date as a deadline seems to work really well," said Dan McSwain, a spokesman for the coalition of more than 1,000 groups. According to the coalition, 6 million Americans didn't vote in 2008 because they missed a registration deadline or didn't know how to register. State deadlines vary widely, but if you register today, you're definitely in time. And everything would-be voters need to start the process is available online, at the National Voter Registration Day website. There are also events being held across the country and celebrity spokespeople. "If you are registered to vote, the best thing you can do is share it on social media," McSwain said. "We're asking everyone to share this as much as possible." To that end, there's a Twitter hashtag, #925nvrd; a Facebook page; and a Google Hangout, just for starters. Blogging on HuffPost on Monday, Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States, noted that 24 percent of Americans who are eligible to vote are not registered, but close to 75 percent of those registered to vote will actually cast a ballot. "Imagine what our elections and country might look like if we did a better job of registering more voters," she wrote. "Voter registration is the key to getting Americans participating in the political process." MacNamara's suggestion for National Voter Registration Day: "Take a picture of yourself with your voter registration application or wearing an 'I'm registered' sticker, and post it on Facebook or Twitter in order to encourage your friends to get registered." In some states, the voter registration process can be done entirely online, but in most, after filling out the information on the National Voter Registration Day website, you'll need to print out something, sign it and mail it in. A recent survey found that more than half of the young people who were first eligible to cast a presidential ballot in 2008 do not know today whether they are registered to vote at their current address. McSwain encouraged people who aren't absolutely sure of their registration status to reregister at their current address. "It can't hurt. It doesn't break any rule," he said.The Subtle Game of Race Strategy - a High Speed Chess Match When the Track Action Hits a Lull - Check Out the Masters' Moves Unlike in many other forms of auto racing, a Formula 1 race often has long periods in which very little track action appears to be taking place. That is, there may not be much passing and wheel-to-wheel fighting. But it's often during these apparently quiet moments that the biggest stakes are being played out in race strategy. And it is in following, or even second-guessing, that strategy that the spectator discovers a whole new, passionately interesting element to the race apart from track action. The Elements of Strategy Strategy may be broken down into the following aspects: tyres, fuel level, pit stops, engine revs, grid position and the nature of the specific track itself. Depending on the way these elements are used and calculated, the winning car is not always the fastest in terms of raw speed or passing on the track. Budapest: A Case Study in Strategy If a race lasts 70 laps, like the Hungarian Grand Prix, then a strategic scenario might go as follows: if the two cars most likely to win are those that start from first and second positions, they will also probably have two different strategies. The winning strategy will be the one that best takes advantage of the track features. Passing another car on the Hungaroring is notoriously difficult, as it is a narrow, dusty and winding track. This means most drivers try to pass during the pit stops, using strategy instead of raw speed. Imagine Fernando Alonso scored the pole position in his McLaren-Mercedes, while Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari started second, although it was faster all weekend. This likely happened because Alonso used the softest choice of tyres, and perhaps less fuel. Softer tyres are faster, but they wear out more quickly than a harder tyre. Raikkonen, by contrast, has used the harder tyre, and with more fuel on his car, it is heavier and therefore slower. But the Ferrari's tyres and fuel will last longer than those of the McLaren, allowing Raikkonen to stay out on the track longer before his first pit stop. It may even allow him to make only one pit stop to two pit stops for Alonso. Making pit stops to change tyres and refuel may take over half a minute. While Alonso takes his pit stop, Raikkonen can make up the lost ground on the Spaniard so that when Alonso returns to the track he is behind the Ferrari. When Raikkonen returns from his pit stop later on, he will do so ahead of Alonso. A Driver Too is a Big Part of Race Strategy Strategy not only requires calculation from the team, it also requires perfect execution by the driver. At precisely the moment his team asks him to, he must speed up and pass straggling cars. His pit lane entry and exit must be perfect to reduce the time of his pit stop. Strategy as Viewing Pleasure For many spectators strategy is a source of aesthetic pleasure, as watching a game of chess is to a Grand Master. Although there is not much action on the board in a chess game, it is the mental action of outwitting the adversary that pleases the spectator. "In some ways race strategy is the same as chess," said Ross Brawn, the strategist behind most of Michael Schumacher's 91 victories at Benetton and Ferrari. "You know which direction you want to go in, and then try to be three or four moves ahead to try and outwit the opposition." Back to TopThe Observer’s Ken Silverstein reports: Donald Trump is wildly unpopular with coastal elites, but few despise him as feverishly as the Hollywood Brigades, led by Meryl Streep, and the late night comedian squadrons, headed by The Tonight Show’s Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, and Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver. … The hypocrisy really gets ratcheted up with John Oliver, the No. 1 darling to so many liberal anti-Trumpies, who regularly attacks GOP tax schemes as giveaways to the rich and detrimental to the poor. (Again, that’s an apt description, but they evinced less rage about Obama’s economic and tax policies, which also funneled money upward to an extreme degree.) For years, Oliver has criticized the estate tax, which defenders, in a smart linguistic move dreamed up by Frank Luntz, long ago labeled the “death tax”; and the tax code’s raft of loopholes that benefit special interests he identified as oil companies and hedge fund managers. Oliver even briefly established the bogus Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption to draw attention to tax-exempt status granted to churches and charities. Back in July 2014, in an episode in which he lamented the Wealth Gap in America” (which has resulted in the richest one percent of Americans controlling 20 percent of annual income), Oliver said, “At this point the rich are just running up the score…What sets America apart is that we are actively introducing policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy,” such as tax cuts and loopholes like trusts. So it’s a little surprising to discover that just months before, Oliver had a tax attorney set up two revocable trusts, one for him and one for his wife, to hide the couple’s purchase of a $9.5 million Manhattan penthouse. Then he used a tax loophole created by Donald Trump himself back in the 1970s, when the current president was merely a prominent New York real estate developer and aspiring celebrity author. …Photo It takes effort to maintain a sense of seasonality with asparagus, given that it has become a year-round product. But right now even the stuff in supermarkets may come from a local source — so that the stalks snap rather than bend when you apply pressure and the aroma and flavor are fresh rather than simply strong. Still, even the best asparagus needs something, even if it’s as little as olive oil and lemon. Hence the following below, with the best cooking methods — steaming (or poaching; in the case of asparagus, they’re roughly equivalent); roasting; grilling (or broiling, which is always an alternative, because the broiler is nothing but an upside-down grill); and stir-frying — and flavors well suited to each. There are several varieties of asparagus, including white, which is, in my experience, overrated. (You Northern Europeans may yell at me all you like; I’ve tried it everywhere.) The most relevant difference for most of us is thick versus thin, and you can use either in any recipe here. In the 1990s, I considered skinny asparagus far superior to fat, because it requires no peeling and cooks in a flash. A few years ago, I began to better appreciate the delicious snap of thick spears as well as their relative sturdiness. Certainly if you’re steaming or grilling, thick is the preferable type. It really should be peeled; it will look, taste and bite more nicely if you take the time. And with thick or thin, you can snap the bottoms off or go the easier route and just chop off the last inch or two with a chef’s knife. You might prefer asparagus crisp-tender or softer than that; either way, it’s done when you can pierce the thickest part of a spear with a sharp knife without much resistance. This might take less than five minutes for very slender asparagus, twice that long for thick. (Roasting is the slowest of the cooking methods here.) For all of these recipes, use 1 1/2 to 2 pounds to serve four people, and as always, add salt and black pepper to taste. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 1. STEAMED With Brown Butter Put asparagus in a covered pot with an inch of water (they may stand, lean or lie flat) and turn heat to high. Put 2 to 4 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan over medium heat; stir occasionally until foam subsides and butter turns nut brown. When asparagus is done, drain, drizzle with butter and serve.Advertisement U.S. Military Wants Ability to Jump Air Gaps, Attack Isolated Systems According to a 15 January report by Defense News, the U.S. Army is looking to create sophisticated new techniques in cyberwarfare that solve a problem created by a well-known moment of success. It is looking for a way to remotely penetrate the defenses of industrial control systems—even if they are supposedly isolated from the Internet by so-called air gaps. Stuxnet, a cyberwarfare tool unleashed by the United States and Israel, used multiple zero-day exploits to inject malicious code that caused centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility to spin out of control. But it wouldn’t have gotten in the door if someone hadn’t carried it in on a USB flash drive. In the wake of revelations about the cyberattack, operators of secure systems such as Natanz have stiffened their security. Among the new protocols are bans on connecting thumb drives and other external storage devices to ostensibly secure systems. So now the Pentagon is interested in new ways to infiltrate isolated computer systems without gaining physical access. Defense News cites sources familiar with the program who say that the Army’s Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD) met with representatives from about 60 organizations to start figuring out how to, for example, send malicious code through the air into an enemy facility from a van parked outside or a drone hovering far above. Pay Attention, Class Speaking of security updates, administrators at an unnamed U.S.-based power plant clearly didn’t get the memo. The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) reported in a just-released quarterly report that the power generating facility was shut down after malware infiltrated its turbine control systems and engineering workstations. The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, wouldn’t reveal the name, location, or type of plant, but said that the malicious code was introduced by a contract employee using a USB drive to perform software updates. And get this: None of the computers were equipped with antivirus software. Why, you ask? The reasoning, at least until recently, was that because industrial control systems in such facilities aren’t connected to other networks, malware couldn’t get in. The problem wasn’t discovered until the contractor noticed glitches in the operation of the USB drive. A cursory check by the IT staff at the power plant revealed that it was infected with a two different types of malware. CERT says it removed the malicious code from the control systems and workstations and offered some recommendations for tightening security there. I imagine the first recommendation was: Get a clue. Is Your Identity Worth Stealing? According to an old saying, beggars can’t be choosers. But it seems that thieves have no such governing principles. A Security Week article reports the discovery of a new phishing technique that courts a preselected group of victims and doesn’t bother infecting the machines of people who are not on the so-called “bouncer list.” According to researchers at EMC’s RSA Security division, attackers begin with a list of email addresses and assign each person on the list a unique user ID. When someone stumbles upon the Web page hosting the malware, the site first checks to see if the person has been assigned an ID number. If so, the browser is directed to the phishing page; if not, the user is shown a “404 page not found” message. Being selective, say security experts, allows the perpetrators of such schemes to attack many “quality” victims without setting off the alarms that would be triggered by casting a wide net. The RSA researchers say each of these schemes typically targeted 3000 people. “Obviously quality data fetches a higher price in the underground,” Daniel Cohen, RSA’s head of business for online threats, told Security Week. He added that these attacks are most likely the work of someone looking to sell the information for profit rather than an illicit end user. Malware Comes Calling Via Skype As if phishing schemes and other come-ons weren’t leading to enough online havoc, CSIS Security Group, a Denmark-based IT security firm, has reported in a blog post that Shylock, a malware program designed to steal credentials for online banking accounts, has been armed with a new propagation method. A new plug-in added to the program this week allows it to send messages and files through Skype, then cover its tracks by deleting them from Skype’s history folder. Addding to the plug-in’s stealth is its ability get in and out without triggering the warning and confirmation request that a user normally sees when a third-party program tries to connect to Skype. Researchers already knew that Shylock could copy itself to removable drives and local network shares Observers suspect that the move to use Skype as a transmission mechanism is related to Microsoft’s announcement that it plans to scrap its MSN Messenger service on 15 March. Microsoft advised users to switch to Skype. Also important, from the cybercrook’s perspective, is the ability to use Skype to reach any point on the globe instead of being mostly limited to small regions because users of infected machines tended to connect with a limited circle of friends. Hacker Prosecutors Face Scrutiny On 11 January, Internet pioneer and activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide at age 26. He was facing the prospect of a 35-year prison sentence if convicted of violating the United States’ federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). In the wake of Swartz’s death, the prosecutors in the case—and MIT, whose systems Swartz used to pull off the misappropriation of thousands of subscription-based scholarly papers—have been tried in the court of public opinion. Swartz supporters and other observers say the potential punishment did not fit the crime. In a petition on the White House's website started on 14 January, some legal experts indicated their desire to see the government initiate a review of the CFAA that would result in a more nuanced application of the 1986 law. The statute “makes it illegal to knowingly access a computer without authorization, to exceed authorized use of a system, or to access information valued at more than $5,000.” But the petitioners note that the law was originally intended to bring the hammer down on hackers aiming to steal for personal gain or to sabotage systems. Neither of those motives was behind Swartz’s caper, they point out. "The government should never have thrown the book at Aaron for accessing MIT's network and downloading scholarly research," the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in a 14 January blog post. Hanni Fakhoury, staff attorney at EFF, told Computerworld that “Over the years,
to be able to complete most chapters at their own pace and not have to wait for a battlegroup to form up in order to continue. While most chapters will require just the help of a few friends to complete some will be able to be completed solo, and a select few will still require multiple groups. Regardless of the chapter’s difficulty, all steps will be battlegroup credit. Finally, with the conclusion of this campaign we’ll be launching a comprehensive revamp of an entire expansion. Updated lore, enemies, dungeons and of course, loot! With this revamp, we’re most excited about introducing a new system for obtaining and potentially upgrading loot found elsewhere in the game; as a solo player. More details about the upcoming campaign will be found in the 1.122C Live Patch notes (coming next week!) and as it unfolds we’ll be releasing more details on the revamp of the soon-to-be-revealed expansion content! This is certainly something we’ve considered! There are many “high traffic” areas that have already been given some obstacles and features for smaller forces to use such as the milegates, the many standing and fallen towers, ruins, and staircases on Ellan Vannin, the removal of monsters from some of the Roman ruins in Hadrian’s Wall, new fallen trees and wooded areas in Emain Macha, and the new mountainous paths in Odin’s Gate. That said, we’re absolutely open to adding some more so long as they don’t inhibit the larger forces too much from their objectives. Just send us some feedback on where you’d like to see them and we’ll absolutely take a look! We toyed with re-incorporating guild-bounty points into a more robust keep claiming and upgrading system but decided against it for now. Perhaps in the future we can add that in if desired. For the merit points, there are already some valuable bonuses that can be put up and many high realm rank guilds are actually seeing a lack of available merit points. We’d like to address that issue prior to giving any other bonuses to spend the merit points on. In short, your shield specialization, dexterity stat, and +shield skills are the determining factors for landing shield styles. Your other weapon specializations do not affect your penetration chance when using shield styles. So yes – one could spec 50 shield, 0 weapon and land your shield styles just fine! That said, “weaponskill” doesn’t really determine defense penetration for “normal” weapon specs either but is rather an index value that takes into account things like your spec, stats, +skills, and your class’ inherent ability with that weapon line to give you an idea of how well you might stack up against others. Additionally, the weaponskill value displayed on your character’s attribute page is only for your “normal” or “main” weapon specialization. This means if a Thane adjusted their Sword, Hammer, or Axe specialization it would update its value but it wouldn’t if they adjusted their Shield spec. You can test this by fully respecializing and then training up your Shield spec. You will see that the displayed weaponskill value does not change. For Shield spec, there is a hidden “shield weaponskill” value that gets adjusted based on your shield spec, +skills, and your dexterity stat but again, that weaponskill value doesn’t directly determine your defense penetration, anyway. For landing melee styles, the front and rear arcs of a target are each 60 degrees wide and each of the side arcs are 120 degrees wide. Meaning if your target stood facing due north, you could land frontal positional styles on them if you are standing north of them, facing due south, and are within a 30 degree angle to the east or west of their position. For spell casts, the frontal arc is 180 degrees – meaning if you are facing due north, you can cast on a target standing 90 degrees from you at due west AND on a target standing 90 degrees from you due east, without moving your character’s facing. Additionally, the frontal arc for melee defenses like parry and (non-360/advanced) evade is 120 degrees; for block it is 180 degrees. These shots’ miss rates should already be fixed in patch 1.122C which is currently on the Pendragon server. Please give them a test! The recent survey was a huge success! We were heartened by both the number of respondents and the responses themselves. In short, there appears to be an appetite for some sort of alternative ruleset server. Our team is continuing to flesh out and iterate on the the best approach to deliver one that accomplishes the following goals: Closely meets the most-desired ruleset based on survey results. Can be released in a reasonable timeframe. Allows our team to continually develop and update the Live servers. Ensures the Live servers' remain engaging in the near term after the launch of an alternative ruleset server with the long-term aim of increasing their population. We won't release an alternative ruleset server unless it can meet ALL of those goals. We will be doing a more targeted, follow-up survey in the coming weeks once we are confident in our plan. Until then, stay tuned! This week's Grab Bag is a right mix of questions, and a good read. So grab a cuppa and a minute, and read on!Thanks to everyone who sent in questions, keep 'em coming! You can send in your questions through our Grab Bag submission form On to the info!LOS ANGELES -- President Donald Trump's budget proposal would cut funding for an earthquake early warning system for California, Oregon and Washington. The system being developed in conjunction with various universities is intended at providing critical seconds of warning when an earthquake has started and potentially dangerous shaking is imminent. Veteran seismologist Lucy Jones says the loss of federal funding would stop the program. A version of the ShakeAlert system has been undergoing testing but still needs more seismic sensors installed in Northern California, Oregon and Washington. California Rep. Adam Schiff tells the Los Angeles Times it's unacceptable to stop the program just as its system is being built out. The proposed funding cuts for the next fiscal year starting Oct. 1 would be from the U.S. Geological Survey's budget.Over the next several weeks, we’re spotlighting the top 20 3D Jam experiences chosen by the jury and community votes. These spotlights will focus on game design, interaction design, and the big ideas driving our community forward. From the creator of LICHT little adventure, VR demo Press Bird to Play made a big impression thanks to its evocative atmosphere and engaging mini-games, landing 10th place. In today’s spotlight, creator Gerald Terveen talks about his old-school gaming inspirations, and upcoming work on a new title called VR Adventure. PBTP uses a unique scaling mechanic: tiny hands, massive movements. What’s the appeal of this mechanic to you? The longer one uses motion controls, the better you get at it. And just as many gamers like to up the resolution of their gaming mice, I like to reduce hand movements to a minimum. This doesn’t only help prevent “gorilla arm” from having your arms moving through space all the time, it also gives you a much deeper reach into the virtual world. In PBTP, I always love to see new players getting surprised by the ability to reach objects far away or to touch the ceiling. What’s your artistic process in designing virtual places that people will want to inhabit? I think I use a different approach from most game designers because I’m not able to create my own models. Instead, I’m working with stock models I purchase. I treat Unity, my development platform, just like a box of Lego – where all the models I already bought get reassembled into the world I create. When I made LICHT, I only used the models that come with Unity, so the world was made from cubes and spheres. Now I have a diversified collection of models from great artists all over the world that fit a fantasy setting similar to the games I played as a kid/teenager. By combining these assets, I can create my own unique version – for example, the elevators in PBTP use elements from five different artists. Much like your earlier work with LICHT, PBTP uses light and shadow in striking ways. How does this influence how people experience games? I always felt that light and shadow are great tools to add a level of realism to games. They give a virtual world spatiality and objects a simple way of interacting with their surroundings. That and it’s just so much fun to play with in development. Tell me about your vision and ambition for VR Adventure. I’m not a trained game developer, but someone that just decided “now is the time” after the Oculus Rift Kickstarter was a success. So my vision of what I want to make and my ability to make it still have to close in on each other. If I really get it done the way I would like it, then it will end up being a first-person Zelda: Ocarina of Time-like game with influences from Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, and Monkey Island. But it’s still too early to say for sure – right now, VR is in the early stages and we don’t even know what options will be available. For now, I’m still creating smaller experiences to figure out the best ways to implement motion controls in VR while working on the world of VR Adventure on the side. Playing PBTP in first person, for example, is an interesting experience – but I have not yet solved the problem of navigating the character to my satisfaction without using a controller in addition to Leap Motion. Want to watch VR Adventure unfold? Check out Gerald’s progress at vradventure.wordpress.com.ATLANTA — Pat Neshek is not only a baseball player, he is also a baseball fan. "I read the box scores," he said. When Neshek checks out the standings these days, he sees that his old team, the Houston Astros, is the best in baseball, and his current team, the Phillies, is the worst. Does it make the 36-year-old relief pitcher long to be back in Houston? "God, no," Neshek said with a look of mild horror crossing his face. Neshek joined the Phillies in a November cash deal. Essentially, it was a salary dump for the Astros. The Phillies assumed Neshek's $6.5 million salary for 2017 and bought themselves some bullpen stability, not to mention a potential July trade chip that has recently added some shine. "It was a great trade for both of us," Neshek said. "They got to shed some salary. I got to get out of there and do more." Neshek had an All-Star season with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2014 and signed a three-year deal with the improving Astros before the 2015 season. He pitched in 66 games in 2015 and 60 last season but did not enjoy his role. "I kind of became a bit player there," he said. "In '15, I did a lot of eighth-inning stuff and I think I was second or third in the league in holds, but I had a bad final month where they kind of just gave up on me. In '16, I just became a sixth-inning righty specialist guy and it was awful. I knew I could do a lot more. So when the trade (to the Phillies) happened I was thrilled. This was the best thing that happened to me in a few years. "I can understand why (the Astros) did it. They have a bullpen that’s pretty well-stocked over there. So I'm real happy to be out — if not I would rather have been a free agent than gone back there, which may sound crazy but it gets to the point where you just want to do more. I would almost rather retire than do a role like I was doing for them. It was miserable." Neshek is anything but miserable with the Phillies. He's enjoyed his time with the club immensely and would like to hang around and see where the team's rebuild goes. But that's probably not going to happen. He is pitching his way out of a Phillies uniform. When Hector Neris wobbled in the ninth inning Tuesday night, manager Pete Mackanin summoned Neshek for a two-out save. Neshek got that save — his first in two years — on five pitches. The performance left him at 22 innings for the season. He'd allowed just 13 hits and two runs while walking just four and striking out 21. "Relieving is a really tough business," Neshek said. "Confidence and getting on a roll is a big part of it." Contending teams are always looking for veteran bullpen help at the trade deadline. General manager Matt Klentak knew that when he acquired Neshek. Ditto for Clay Buchholz, Howie Kendrick, Michael Saunders and Joaquin Benoit, all veteran offseason pickups who were seen as potential mid-season trade chips. Buchholz is out for the season with an elbow injury, Kendrick missed more than a month with an abdominal injury, Saunders has struggled offensively and Benoit, currently on the disabled list, has had ups and downs. Of the group of players added over the winter, Neshek has emerged as the best trade chip. Does he expect to be moved? "I would say yes," he said. "It would be really cool to stay around here. I like it here. I feel very comfortable here. But if that happens …" He paused. "I'm sure it will happen," he said with a laugh. It's unclear what Neshek will bring back, but his value will only rise if he continues to pitch well. His role with the Phillies is evolving. While Mackanin would like to eventually see Neris lock down the closer's job, Neshek was set to fill the role on Wednesday night — the Phils lost 14-1 to the Braves and did not need a closer — and could get the call in the coming days if a need arises. "People make a big deal about who the closer is," Neshek said. "You kind of pitch into those roles. "I'm just out there competing. It's me against that hitter. I'll go over the hitters' weaknesses and try to attack." For now, that'll be with the Phillies.Global Support for Principle of Free Expression, but Opposition to Some Forms of Speech Americans Especially Likely to Embrace Individual Liberties Although many observers have documented a global decline in democratic rights in recent years, people around the world nonetheless embrace fundamental democratic values, including free expression. A new Pew Research Center survey finds that majorities in nearly all 38 nations polled say it is at least somewhat important to live in a country with free speech, a free press and freedom on the internet. And across the 38 countries, global medians of 50% or more consider these freedoms very important. Still, ideas about free expression vary widely across regions and nations. The United States stands out for its especially strong opposition to government censorship, as do countries in Latin America and Europe – particularly Argentina, Germany, Spain and Chile. Majorities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East also tend to oppose censorship, albeit with much less intensity. Indonesians, Palestinians, Burkinabe and Vietnamese are among the least likely to say free expression is very important. While free expression is popular around the globe, other democratic rights are even more widely embraced. In Western and non-Western nations, throughout the global North and South, majorities want freedom of religion, gender equality, and honest, competitive elections. Yet the strength of commitment to individual liberties also varies. Americans are among the strongest supporters of these freedoms. Meanwhile, Europeans are especially likely to want gender equality and competitive elections, but somewhat less likely than others to prioritize religious freedom. The right to worship freely is most popular in sub-Saharan Africa. Across all regions, people who say religion is very important in their lives are more likely to value religious freedom. Even though broad democratic values are popular, people in different parts of the world have different ways of conceptualizing individual rights and the parameters of free expression. Publics tend to support free speech in principle, but they also want limitations on certain types of speech. While a global median of 80% believe people should be allowed to freely criticize government policies, only 35% think they should be allowed to make public statements that are offensive to minority groups, or that are religiously offensive. Even fewer support allowing sexually explicit statements or calls for violent protests. Americans, however, are more willing than the rest of the world to tolerate these forms of speech. Large majorities in the U.S. think people should be able to say things that are offensive to minority groups or their religious beliefs. About half (52%) say this about sexually explicit statements, and more than four-in-ten (44%) think calls for violent protests should be allowed. These are among the main findings of a new Pew Research Center survey, conducted in 38 nations among 40,786 respondents from April 5 to May 21, 2015. When Can Government Stop the Media from Publishing? Overall, global publics oppose government censorship of the media, except in cases of national security. There is widespread agreement that media organizations should be able to publish information about large political protests in the country – across the nations polled, a median of 78% say this. Vietnam is the only country where fewer than half (42%) hold this view. Most (a global median of 59%) also think media groups should be able to publish information that might destabilize the national economy. The Middle East is the regional outlier on this question – a median of just 44% in the region say the press should be allowed to publish economically destabilizing information, while 51% believe the government should be able to block these types of stories in some circumstances. Globally, a median of just 40% think media organizations should be able to publish information about sensitive issues related to national security, while 52% believe it is acceptable for the government to suppress such information. But opinions vary widely across countries and regions. Latin Americans and Europeans tend to think the press should be allowed to publish sensitive national security information, while Middle Easterners, Asians and Africans mostly oppose this idea. On this issue, most Americans support government limitations on press freedom – 59% say the government should be allowed to stop this type of publication. Ranking Countries on Support for Free Expression To further explore how countries compare on views about free expression, we constructed an index based on respondents’ answers to five questions about allowing specific types of speech, as well as three questions about whether the media should be allowed to publish certain types of information (see Appendix A for more details on the index). Analyzing the data in this way reveals that Americans are the most supportive of free speech and a free press. Several European and Latin American nations also emerge as relatively strong supporters, as do Canada, Australia and South Africa. Meanwhile, Senegal, Jordan, Pakistan, Ukraine, Burkina Faso and Vietnam are at the bottom of the index, indicating relatively low levels of support for free expression. Prioritizing Internet Freedom In many nations the internet has created an important new public space where debates about political and social issues thrive. Even though internet freedom ranks last among the six broad democratic rights included on the survey, majorities in 32 of 38 countries nonetheless say it is important to live in a country where people can use the internet without government censorship. Across the 38 nations, a median of 50% believe it is very important to live in a country with an uncensored internet. Intense support for internet freedom is highest in Argentina, the U.S., Germany and Spain – roughly seven-in-ten in these four nations consider it very important. It is lowest in Burkina Faso and Indonesia (21% very important in both countries). Internet freedom tends to be especially important to younger people, as well as to those who say they use the internet at least occasionally or own a smartphone. There is a strong correlation between the percentage of people in a country who use the internet and the percentage who say a free internet is very important, suggesting that as access to the Web continues to spread around the globe in the coming years, the desire for freedom in cyberspace may grow as well.MIAMI – A Christian pastor’s prayer to open a faith-based shelter for the homeless has been answered thannks to an immigrant Muslim doctor who offered a generous donation on Christmas Eve. “For a long time, I’ve wanted to do something in our community for the homeless,” Pocatello kidney doctor Naeem Rahim, who co-founded the JRM Foundation with his brother, Fahim Rahim, told Idaho State Journal on Tuesday, December 27. Naeem said he was in Miami when he saw a news story with a photo of Jacqualine Thomas, pastor of Praise Temple of God in Pocatello, in front of the house she hoped to convert to a homeless shelter in Pocatello. Thomas has been on a quest to gain financial support from area residents to help turn her dream of a faith-based homeless shelter, Big Momma’s House, into a reality. Thomas faced a January 28 deadline to secure a $30,000 down payment on an existing home and property at 916 E. Sublette Street in Pocatello. Naeem, his wife Amna, and three sons, Mustafa, 16, Musa, 14, and Hasan, 8, finished their evening meal on Christmas even when he shared his desire to help Thomas with her quest to establish Big Momma’s House. With the full blessing of his family, Naeem made the late night call to Thomas. “I told her God told me to call her,” Naeem said. “I said, ‘Big Momma, we’ll take care of it.’” It was 11:30 pm when she received the call from doctor Naeem saying he would provide the $23,000 she needed to make a down payment on Big Mamma’s House. “I thought someone was joking,” Thomas said. “Now I can’t stop crying.” “I heard God in his voice,” Thomas said about the phone call from Naeem. Both natives of Pakistan, Naeem and Fahim Rahim came to Pocatello in 2005. They attended New York Medical College and completed their training in internal medicine and nephrology. In 2010, both brothers received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.Over a thousand titles -- chiefly independent games -- have vanished from the Xbox Live marketplace this morning. A Microsoft spokesperson has responded to queries confirming the problem as a technical error and a fix is now underway.The missing titles were first spotted by a number of indie developers including Milkstone Studios, which noticed several of its Xbox Live Indie Games titles had vanished from the storefront. "We're missing 16 of our 25 games," the developer tweeted More games continued to vanish "by the minute," with the number of games on the XBLIG storefront dropping from 2,100 to just 949. Larger titles from the Xbox Live Arcade section of the storefront, such asand, have also been reported as missing."We're aware there is an issue affecting the Xbox Games Store that has temporarily removed some content including Xbox Live Arcade and Xbox Live Indie Games titles," said a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement. "This is a technical glitch and we're working to fix the issue as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience."Gamasutra has been able to confirm the bug as affecting both console and online storefront. Some DLC packs and Smartglass apps for missing games have remained available in the store, although availability seems inconsistent -- for instance,'s Necromancer and King add-ons remain present, but the Pink Knight and other packages seem to have been removed along with the core game.IRNSS navigation satellite launched to provide GPS-like services in India Last night, India successfully sent the satellite IRNSS-1A into space on one of its own rockets, making it the first of seven that will provide the country with a GPS-like navigation system. The rocket – called the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-C22 – was sent into space from the Satish Dhawan Space Center a little before midnight, marking “a new era of space applications [in India],” according to the Indian Space Research Organization. The IRNSS-1A is now under the control of the Mission Control Facility, which will steer the satellite to its final destination using on-board motors. When in place, the satellite will be the first of a system to provide the citizens of India, as well as those positioned within about 1500 kilometers of the country’s boundary. Like GPS, Glonass, and other similar systems, IRNSS will be used to provide navigation that is accurate to within 20 meters, and will be used by both citizens and the nation’s defense network alike. While specifics on how some of its use was not given by the ISRO, it was stated that IRNSS will be used for aerial, marine, and terrestrial navigation purposes, and will help with activities like disaster relief when necessary. In total, this project costs in excess of the equivalent of $230 million, and is a work against the clock. The IRNSS-1A satellite, according to ISRO, has a lifespan of one decade, and the entire navigational system will not be complete and fully functional until all seven planned satellites are positioned in space. Because of this, any delays that take place in launching the rest of the satellites will reduce the amount of time the full system is in place before the first satellite – and each subsequent one – must be replaced. Said an official with the ISRO: “All the seven satellites of the IRNSS are identical and the space agency will be rolling them out. Already the second one is getting ready for the year end or early 2014 launch. Only when all the seven satellites are up in the space the whole system will come into play. The earlier we have the full system it is better for all. For instance by 2015, the first satellite – IRNSS-1A – will be nearly one-and-a-half years old and its remaining life span will be eight-and-a-half years.” SOURCE: In Today Image via IBTimesThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Patient safety in surgery has historically suffered from a lack of physician-driven initiatives aimed at recognizing, preventing and mitigating medical errors and surgical complications [1]. In spite of a multiplicity of global patient safety initiatives, mandatory safety protocols and the introduction of surgical safety checklists, we continue to fall short of protecting our patients from preventable harm [2–6]. This unrecognized problem has escalated so far that medical errors currently rank as the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States [7, 8] (Table ). Strikingly, in the 21st century, we still have to come to terms with the absurd reality that it is significantly safer to board a commercial airplane, a spacecraft, or a nuclear submarine, than to be admitted to a U.S. hospital [9–14]. What can surgeons do to protect their patients from the hidden dangers of an imperfect health care system? The most intuitive solution is to avoid complications originating from surgical treatment that may not be indicated or beneficial for patients in the first place. In other words, avoiding unnecessary surgery could be considered the most pragmatic approach towards reducing preventable surgical complication rates. Table 1 1. Heart disease (~614 000 deaths per year) 2. Cancer (~591 000 deaths per year) 3. Medical errors (~440 000 deaths per year) Open in a separate window What do we mean by unnecessary surgery? We define this as any surgical intervention that is either not needed, not indicated, or not in the patient’s best interest when weighed against other available options, including conservative measures [1, 15]. From a historic perspective, the threat of unnecessary surgery has been publicized as far back as the 1950s, when Dr. Paul Hawley, the Director of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), stated that “the public would be shocked if it knew the amount of unnecessary surgery performed (…)” [16]. More than twenty years later, in 1976, the American Medical Association (AMA) called for a congressional hearing on unnecessary surgery, claiming that there were “2.4 million unnecessary operations performed on Americans at a cost of $3.9 billion and that 11,900 patients had died from unneeded operations (…)” [17]. In 2016, the existence of unnecessary surgery remains a daunting reality that continues to expose our patients to an unjustified surgical risk [18]. For example, multiple clinical trials have shown that spinal fusions for back pain do not lead to improved long-term patient outcomes when compared to non-operative treatment modalities, including physical therapy and core strengthening exercises [19, 20]. In spite of these insights from high-quality trials, spinal fusion rates continue to dramatically increase in the United States [18]. Another relevant example is arthroscopic partial meniscectomy, one of the most commonly performed surgical procedures in the world [21]. This minimally invasive surgery allows treating internal knee damage through small percutaneous skin incisions, with a fast-track postoperative recovery period. In the United States alone, surgeons perform approximately 700,000 arthroscopic partial meniscectomies every year. Strikingly, a recently published prospective randomized controlled trial (“Finnish Degenerative Meniscal Lesion Study”/FIDELITY trial) that assessed patient outcomes after arthroscopic meniscal trimming compared to sham surgery revealed no benefit for patients from the routine surgical procedure at 12 months follow-up [22]. Actually, considering the risk for patients sustaining a severe intra- or postoperative complication, no surgical procedure should be considered “routine” from the patient’s perspective [23]. Yet, until present, a change in practice has not occurred, and arthroscopic meniscectomies continue to be performed on hundreds of thousands of patients in the United States every year [24, 25]. Consider this provocative analogy: If surgery were a pharmaceutical drug, the procedure would be required to undergo scrutiny of testing its safety and feasibility in phase 1 and 2 trials. Subsequently, its efficacy would have to be proven in prospective randomized controlled trials prior to approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [18]. Yet, the FDA does not regulate surgical procedures. Common sense would impose the expectation that whenever new level 1 evidence disproves a benefit for a certain surgical procedure, the ineffective practice would be called into question and abandoned immediately. This is obviously not the case in the field of surgery. The title of this editorial asks, “Why do surgeons continue to perform unnecessary surgery?” To phrase it another way, one might pose the question, “Why would a reasonable surgeon consider performing unneeded surgical procedures?” From a surgeon’s perspective, two distinct answers appear intuitive: We perform surgery because we have been trained to do so and because “we have always done it this way” or we simply do not know any better. In German psychology, this behavior is analogous to a historic entity termed “Funktionslust” [ 1 ]. We are incentivized to perform surgical procedures, either for financial gain, renown, or both. As representatives of the most privileged and rewarding profession on Earth, it is our duty as surgeons to be unwavering patient safety advocates. This mandates that we recognize the common - yet extremely dangerous - incentives of unnecessary surgery and their potentially deleterious effects on our patients. Once these “hidden threats” are recognized and mitigated, surgeons can begin to foster a transparent culture of shared decision-making and thereby form a true partnership with their patients [26]. Under this evolving paradigm, patients are encouraged to participate in the choice of their treatment based on the best available scientific evidence, while surgeons take into consideration and respect their patients’ personal values, fears, and expectations [26]. By embracing patient safety as a core responsibility for surgeons, we have the opportunity of eliminating the “phantom menace” of unnecessary surgery and the associated risk of preventable patient harm. This responsibility is not negotiable. The onus is on us.FM96, London, Ontario, Canada's Best Rock radio station, last week conducted an interview with actress, model, and glam rock icon Bobbie Brown. You can now listen to the chat using the SoundCloud widget below. Bobbie Brown's autobiographical tell-all "Dirty Rocker Boys: Love, And Lust On The Sunset Strip", will go on sale on November 26 via Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The 288- page hardcover was co-authored with California-based journalist Caroline Ryder, who wrote the 2010 autobiography of champion motocross racer Ashley Fiolek, "Kicking Up Dirt" (HarperCollins). Before "American Idol", there was "Star Search". Before there were sex tapes, there were sexy videos. And before there was Pamela Anderson, there was Bobbie Brown. "Dirty Rocker Boys: Love, And Lust On The Sunset Strip" is the outrageous true story of a Louisiana beauty queen who became an L.A. Goddess, and the dozens of celebrity encounters, rock stars, and tumultuous affairs that followed — Tommy Lee, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kevin Costner, Slash, Dave Navarro, and more. In 1987, America tuned in each week to hear Ed McMahon announce Bobbie Brown as their choice as "Spokesmodel Champion." She soon landed on the Sunset Strip, and the dream girl seemed to be on her way to a dream life, taking Hollywood by storm as the ultimate video vixen in WARRANT's infamous "Cherry Pie" video. Her future seemed as bright as her smile, but the world of privilege and adoration was filled with demons, drugs, and a downward spiral of self-destruction. In "Dirty Rocker Boys: Love, And Lust On The Sunset Strip", Bobbie takes us on a journey of debauchery, excess, fame, and hair products; detailing how touring the world with music royalty can sometimes lead down a rocky road towards redemption. Brown is starring in a new reality series called "Ex-Wives Of Rock", which premiered in August 2012 on the Canadian network Slice and was co-produced by the former FEMME FATALE frontwoman Lorraine Lewis. Narrated by Shannon Tweed, wife of KISS bassist Gene Simmons, "Ex-Wives Of Rock" chronicles the lives of video vixen Susan Dixon (ex-wife of WARRANT bassist Jerry Dixon); Brown (ex-wife of WARRANT frontman Jani Lane); drummer and Tommy Lee's sister, Athena Lee (ex-wife of SCORPIONS drummer James Kottak); and Sharise Neil (ex-wife of MÖTLEY CRÜE frontman Vince Neil) as they struggle to succeed as mothers, business women, friends and spouses after the party's ended and the glory days are over. Interview (audio):A 60-year-old man who spent more than three decades behind bars for crimes authorities now say he didn't commit was released from a Virginia prison on Friday. Wearing jeans and sunglasses, Keith Allen Harward shook hands with prison guards as he walked out of the Nottoway Correctional Center with his brothers and attorneys. He called his lawyers his "heroes" and choked back tears, saying he wished his parents, who both died while he was incarcerated, could see him as a free man. "That's the worst part of this whole deal," he said. Story continues below advertisement Harward's release came a day after the Virginia Supreme Court agreed that DNA evidence proves he is innocent of the 1982 killing of Jesse Perron and the rape of his Perron's wife in Newport News. Harward was a sailor on the USS Carl Vinson, which was stationed at the shipyard close to the victims' home at the time of the crime. A security guard identified Harward as the man he saw entering the shipyard wearing a bloody uniform, but the woman never identified him as her attacker. The prosecution's case relied heavily on the testimony of two experts who testified that his teeth matched bite marks on the woman's leg. No other physical evidence linked Harward to the crime. The Innocence Project got involved in Harward's case about two years ago and pushed for DNA tests, which failed to identify Harward's genetic profile in sperm left at the crime scene. The DNA matched that of one of Harward's former shipmate's, Jerry L. Crotty, who died in an Ohio prison in June 2006, where he was serving a sentence for abduction. The reliability of bite-mark evidence has come under increased scrutiny in recent years, but is still used in courts. An Associated Press investigation in 2013 found that at least 24 men convicted or charged with murder or rape based on bite marks found on victims have been exonerated in the U.S. since 2000. The Associated Press story was based on decades of court records, archives, news reports and filings by the Innocence Project. "We've learned nothing if we continue to use this evidence even though we know it has no basis in science," said Dana Delger, an attorney with the Innocence Project. Harward said he's looking forward to having some fried oysters as soon as he can. Beyond that, he's not sure. He's planning to go to North Carolina, where his family lives, and learn how to adjust to life outside of prison. His brother's kids will have to teach him how to use a computer, he said. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement "I've got to start my life over again," Harward said.Today (or rather yesterday), I was at the Texas Bitcoin Conference in Austin. It was awesome. I met a legion of capable individuals working in the Bitcoin space. But when I finally had a chance to sit down and read and talk about my experience online, I could only find people buzzing about how Newsweek had found Satoshi Nakamoto. The article has, of course, now been debunked, but I am still peeved at Newsweek. They wasted a really good day for internal Bitcoin community education. Unless they were hoping for a quick fix or a rebranding, Newsweek’s owners should also be peeved. No credible news organisation would have published this article. And since an in-credible news organisation is just a tabloid, Newsweek has just lost the readership who reads this article and discovers the truth. This article is the front page story of their new first print edition. So, nice work there. Mistakes were made aplenty in the printing of this article. One minor mistake would be to identify someone when there is no good reason to disrespect their privacy. Another mistake would be masquerading as your subject in order to obtain private records. This is clearly illegal and, to me, morally wrong. To me, the real first mistake is that finding Satoshi isn’t even really a newsworthy pursuit. I suppose it sells well, though. But enough about those mistakes; I’ll let
vote Yes, especially the No2AV Yes2PR ones, perhaps the result would have been very different. This is what I mean when I say that a defeat for Yes was not inevitable. People point to the split of the Labour party on the issue as a reason why a No vote was inevitable. What it actually shows is how effective the No vote were at lobbying Labour, which is something Yes should have been doing as well. d) Ditch the anti-politics message It was rubbish and didn’t work. e) Use Nigel Farage more and take advantage of a mailshot with post paid for. As I’ve said above. f) Try and turn it into a referendum on David Cameron It’s clear that Nick Clegg was a complete liability for the Yes campaign. I don’t have the exact statistics to hand, but I reckon that every time he spoke, Yes lost 5000 votes. What we had to do was turn the referendum on Cameron instead. To quote Eddie Izzard, “If No wins than Clegg gets a bloody nose, if Yes win than David Cameron gets a bloody head”. Tory blogs were making it quite clear what dire consequences Cameron would face if there was a Yes vote. Would Labour voters have needed much persuading to inflict these dire consequences on him? Instead, our campaign said nothing. Because, you’ve guessed it, it was incompetent. Only Labour Yes did so, and we could easily have tailored adverts like these for “ordinary” voters as well. g) Focus on bread-and-butter issues We all know that the No campaign adverts were despicable. However, the creator of the “dead-baby” advert, Dan Hodges, is more right than wrong here in this post. He also argues that the Yes campaign lost this referendum rather than the No campaign winning it. This is his logic for the baby advert: When I helped created the baby campaign, it was partially because I was trying to frame the issue in a way that people worrying about their jobs, their mortgages and cuts to their services could relate to. I was desperately trying to make relevant a subject that 99 per cent of the public find a complete, utter, total irrelevance. Now I find the advert, as I’m sure many of you do, morally abhorrent. Yet there is surely a way for the Yes campaign to have framed the referendum in those terms too: “Do you care about the NHS? Do you want to have more say in how it’s run? You should have some more say in how you elect your MP then.” We are a Parliamentary democracy. We need electoral reform for better representation, so we can decide who cuts, and how much they cut, better. After all, much more than 50% of people in May 2010 voted for parties who promised slower cuts to those happening right now, but that is in no way reflected in the Parliamentary arithmetic. Why on earth did the Yes campaign not attempt to do that? I’m sure you can guess by now… h) Kicked the local Lib Dems’ arses into gear The Conservatives put their mighty party machine behind a No vote. It would have been nice for the Lib Dems to do the same, as opposed to gently encourage a few activists to give out Yes leaflets and hope for the best. I’m sure it would have been less resourced than the one run by the Tory’s but the fact that not all those who voted Lib Dem last year voted Yes last Thursday shows that not enough was done to win over all the Lib Dem support. What about the lies of the No campaign? All this means that, although it would be nice to blame everything on the lies and misinformation put out by the No campaign, and the unpopularity of Nick Clegg, that doesn’t seem wash for me. We had money, but it was spent badly. Labour was split so badly because little effort was made to lobby them (and Labour MPs were put off voting Yes because of our central message). Our message wasn’t getting through, because it was rubbish. Nick Clegg is unpopular, but so is David Cameron. The No campaign was terrible, but as many people were put off by their tactics as voted No because of their lies. You can’t blame a defeat of this scale on one horrible poster, and ignore all the other stupidity that went on with our campaign, even if it is very frustrating that there’s no way of sanctioning the No campaign for putting a figure on posters all around the country that even they have admitted was made up. The fact is that we cannot say there was a big conspiracy against us that stopped us winning. If you blame the press, or the No campaign’s money, or the “structures in society” for a No vote, you’re basically saying there’s nothing we could have done. You might as well blame the lizard people, or the Jews, for us losing. Whereas we have agency. That’s the crucial thing. We could have run a much better campaign and won. To say otherwise is foolhardy and risks not learning the lessons that I’ve spelled out in this blog post. Worst, it would be an abdication of responsibility. The future of electoral reform Even if we’d’ve had a much-improved Yes campaign, it may still have lost. As I wrote above, it was dealt a very difficult hand, and played it badly. Even if it still lost narrowly, A defeat of 55-45, could have been spun credibly as “Well, this motion only failed because more would prefer PR to AV”, since the pro-reform vote would have split three ways: Yes, No and Meh. A loss on this scale buries the prospect of reform of the House of Commons until about 2040 at least, surely? I assume so. There are two main possible scenarios here that I can think of. The first is that a No vote means the two-party system is entrenched. The Lib Dem vote shrinks, or the party splits, and its votes are redistributed between the Conservatives and Labour. First Past the Post is kept, and although electoral reformers won’t be happy, it won’t be another 30-35 years before anyone even dares to speak of reform again. The second is that the trends we’ve seen since the mid-1970s continue. More people vote for parties other than Labour or Conservative. A sizable minority (say 10-15%) still vote for the Lib Dems, whilst UKIP and the Greens gather more and more votes. This means we see more coalitions, or parties winning parliamentary majorities on yet-smaller minorities of the vote. If that happens, the calls for some form of PR could come around quicker than you think. However, I’m not sure any government would actually change an electoral system that had served them so well (c.f. Labour 1997). There are other short-term consequences that I’ll hopefully write about later this week. This post is long enough as it is. If anyone still wants to read more on the AV referendum, as well as those pieces already linked to this, by No2AV’s press officer, is well worth reading. Conclusion I hope anyone reading this from Central Office (if they do read this) isn’t too offended by this post. I’ve tried to be as constructive as possible. What I want people to take away from this is the fact that the result wasn’t out of our hands. This referendum was winnable, if we’d done things slightly better. That, surely, should cheer us. Even if AV passed, it was going to be the first step of a long journey. Sadly, the journey for political reformers seems a lot longer now than it did on May 4th. What’s most important is that we learn our lessons from this referendum and remember that we do have the power to change things. We do have agency, and there’s no big conspiracy stopping us from changing things. As FDR might have said, had he been involved with the Yes campaign, the only thing we have to fear is our incompetence. AdvertisementsFor Brian McGacken of Farmingdale, New Jersey, an evening of loud sex resulted in a 10-year prison sentence for growing marijuana. On Feb. 17, 2007, New Jersey state troopers arrived at McGacken’s home, responding to an anonymous 911 call complaining of screams coming from McGacken’s home. McGacken explained the noise was a bout of loud sex; his girlfriend appeared at the front door and corroborated his claim. But officers searched his home anyway, and found enough marijuana — including potted plants — to put him away for 10 years on charges of producing a controlled substance. Appealing the conviction, McGacken argued that, once police knew the noise was consensual sex, they no longer had reason to search his home. But the appellate panel at the Superior Court of New Jersey disagreed. On Monday, they dismissed McGacken’s appeal, stating that “the potential for harm was too severe for the police to accept an explanation for loud screaming that could have been a cover-up of its true source.” The ruling stated in part: The police are not required to accept the explanation that a person answering the door gives for a distress call. While loud sex may have been a plausible source of screaming, that explanation was not so reliable that the police acted unreasonably in investigating further…. Moreover, by first questioning defendant and his girlfriend, the troopers discounted the possibility that someone may have made a false report of screaming. Defendant did not deny that screaming had occurred in his residence. His admission made it unnecessary for the police to seek corroboration to establish the reliability of the anonymous 911 call. “The screaming, confirmed by the police to have occurred, gave [the police] an objectively reasonable basis to believe that a limited investigation was necessary to determine whether anyone else was in the home and in need of aid,” explains the NJ Family Issues blog. “While loud sex may have been a plausible source of screaming, that explanation was not so reliable that the police acted unreasonably in investigating further.” Law.com reports that McGacken initially took few steps to prevent the police from entering his home. When he was asked for identification, he went upstairs to retrieve it and “did not object when a trooper followed him.” On the second floor, the trooper smelled raw marijuana and saw McGacken use his foot to push a tray under a couch. Asked what was on the tray, McGacken admitted it was marijuana. In the bedroom, the trooper saw bagged and loose marijuana as well as growing plants. Arrested, McGacken consented to a search of his home, resulting in the seizure of 12.5 ounces of loose and bagged marijuana, 15 plants and marijuana-related equipment and paraphernalia. McGacken is serving a 10-year sentence with no possibility of parole for 39 months.Michelle Netterstrom, whose three children attend Prussing, said she feared her children were dead Friday morning after a carbon monoxide leak forced the school to be evacuated. [DNAinfo/Heather Cherone] JEFFERSON PARK — Angry parents Monday night demanded that Chicago Public Schools officials immediately replace the boiler that flooded Prussing Elementary School with carbon monoxide gas Friday morning, sickening nearly 80 students and nine teachers. Several parents broke down in tears at the emergency meeting of the Prussing Local School Council as they recounted learning that their children had been hospitalized after breathing in the poisonous fumes that spewed from the school's boiler when it malfunctioned. Two mothers of preschool students said their children inhaled so much of the gas that they became mentally confused and could not identify themselves or recognize their mothers. Michelle Netterstrom, whose three children attend the Jefferson Park school, demanded that CPS Executive Director of Facilities Leslie Norgren look her in the eye while she described fearing that her two sons and daughter were dead while waiting outside the school Friday morning. "This boiler should have been replaced yesterday," she shouted, prompting loud cheers and applause. Anna Alvarado, the CPS chief of schools for the Far Northwest Side, said the district was working hard "to get to the bottom of what happened Friday morning" and prevent it from happening again. "We failed your children," Alvarado said, adding that the district had not lived up to its goal of putting students first. "I know that's what you are all thinking, and you are right. We put your children in danger." Additional staff has been assigned to Prussing to monitor the boiler, and eight carbon monoxide detectors have been installed throughout the school. On Friday, the school had no carbon monoxide detectors, which are not required by state law or city ordinance. Local School Council president Michele Rodriguez Taylor said the boiler has been in disrepair since January 2013, when the first in a litany of complaints was made to district officials about its poor condition. "Many of us are angry," Rodriguez Taylor said. "And we have every right to be." The boiler passed its annual inspection on July 22, a district spokesman said. On Sept. 11, Prussing failed an inspection by city officials because of the boiler, and Principal George Chipain asked district officials to replace the school's heating system. "No more Band-Aids," Rodriguez Taylor said. "I want a new boiler." The council also requested that district officials assign an engineer to the school at 4650 N. Menard Ave. five days a week to monitor the boiler. An engineer is now on duty at Prussing only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Chipain said. While CPS officials at the meeting said they would inform CEO Forrest Claypool of the Local School Council's request for a new boiler, many parents said that response was unacceptable. Phil Huckelberry, a member of the council, said Claypool should have attended the meeting himself, rather than sending representatives, a remark that drew loud applause. Members of the council vowed to petition the Chicago Board of Education at its Nov. 18 meeting if officials do not agree this week to replace the boiler. Some parents said they would not send their students to school until the boiler is replaced, fearing for their safety. Ald. John Arena, whose 45th Ward includes Prussing, said he would not have allowed the school to reopen if he was not confident that the boiler had been repaired and was now in good working condition. He also promised to push CPS officials to find the money to replace the boiler, which he said was 100 years old. District officials said all who had been sickened by the carbon monoxide leak had recovered. The symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning include headaches, weakness, dizziness, nausea vomiting, shortness of breath, confusion, blurred vision and loss of consciousness. Several students fainted Friday morning, prompting school officials to call 911. Firefighters found 200 parts per million of carbon monoxide gas in the school's air, far higher than what is considered a safe level, officials said. While Chicago Fire Department officials reported that 71 students and seven adults were taken to the hospital, Chipain said his records showed 80 students had been hospitalized along with nine staff members. Several parents said Monday night they took their children to the hospital Friday afternoon and evening after they developed symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. Other parents said they were frustrated and angry by the lack of communication — or confusing messages — from school and district officials. Some parents said they waited for hours at Smyser Elementary School in Portage Park, where uninjured students were taken, to pick up their children, only to find out they were still at Prussing Elementary School. Parents with medical bills stemming from the incident should contact the school for information about how to file a claim with the district, Chipain said. For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:President Rodrigo Duterte makes a personal appearance at a synagogue in Metro Manila to apologize to Jews for his Hitler remarks Published 9:45 PM, October 04, 2016 MANILA, Philippines – "Please accept my apology. It will never happen again," said President Rodrigo Duterte to a gathering of Jews, prompting applause and even a standing ovation. "That is why I am here, to say I'm sorry because I respect the Jewish people," he said during his speech on Tuesday, October 4, during the Rosh Hashanah or the Jewish New Year celebration at the Beit Yaacov Synagogue in Makati. Duterte said his controversial remarks comparing his drug war to Adolf Hitler's extermination of the Jews was "not intended" and was just "a play of the tongue." "It was just a mental slip of the numbers of 3 [million] and Hitler's [number]. It had nothing to do with the memory of the Jews because in my country we do not tinker with memories of our ancestors. It was just a play of the tongue," he said. Duterte had already given a public apology last October 2 after the remark sparked international outrage. WATCH: Jewish community applauds #PresidentDuterte for apology for Hitler remark, gives standing ovation pic.twitter.com/84IAQ9a544 — Pia Ranada (@piaranada) October 4, 2016 The Philippine President, known for his colorful threats and tirades against world leaders like US President Barack Obama and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said the Jews never heard a word of insult from him before. He even managed to establish a personal connection by saying he is connected to their people through his former wife, Elizabeth Zimmerman. "For the life of me, you have never heard of a single word. As a matter of fact, my wife, Zimmerman, she was a descendant of an American Jew," said Duterte. The President, known for his extemporaneous speeches, admitted he had junked the prepared speech given to him for the Jewish event. "I'm sorry, that's why I did not read my speech because it does not show my emotion…It cannot transmit the emotions which I would like to give to you," said Duterte to laughter from his audience. WATCH: #PresidentDuterte personally apologizes to Jewish community for his Hitler remark pic.twitter.com/rZ3BH1CdZW — Pia Ranada (@piaranada) October 4, 2016 But they laughed harder when he said he would only buy defense equipment from Israel, where many in the audience hail from, instead of the United States. "In the matters, I said of arms, I said, 'Do not buy from anyone except from Israel.' Why? Because we have excellent relations and if you send us this gadget they will not include a bug there that for them to listen also to what we're saying. If I get it from America, you are talking in secret – blah blah blah – and they are listening before you buy it," said Duterte. He even likened himself to longtime Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. With a hint of admiration, Duterte said, "You have a President, Netanyahu. He does not even allow himself to be corrected in public." "America? He does not listen to America. 'Just shut up, we have our own problem.' But can they ever chastise Netanyahu? No, he will never allow it. Me, I will not," he added. Netanyahu is known to have strained ties with Obama. 'Sincere' apology Paul Rosenberg, president of the Jewish Association of the Philippines, said he found Duterte's apology sincere. "I think it was quite clear that I think it was sincere," Rosenberg told Rappler right after Duterte left the synagogue. Asked if he found the apology sufficient, he said: "What more can he do? You can't do more than apologize." WATCH: Jewish Association of PH President Paul Rosenberg says he found Duterte's apology'sincere' pic.twitter.com/xVcUvIuW3t — Pia Ranada (@piaranada) October 4, 2016 Moshe Alkobi, the cantor or person who leads Jewish prayers, said he also believed in Duterte's apology. "[The apology] looked like it came from his heart. You don't need a speech, so it was talking emotionally and it touched my heart. I believed it 100%," he told Rappler. Asked if he thought Duterte's apology was enough, he said he thought so. "Because he did not mean to say something bad and we believe in our friendship so I believe it was enough," said Alkobi. WATCH: Israeli Jew Itamar Gero on what he thought of #PresidentDuterte visiting his synagogue to apologize pic.twitter.com/Tf5IxU6zZy - Pia Ranada (@piaranada) October 4, 2016 Itamar Gero, an Israeli Jewish and a member of the Israel Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines, thinks Duterte's remarks about Hitler may have been due to fatigue from his demanding schedule. "I think to begin with he didn't mean to offend. I think you know, you can just imagine the schedule of the President, flying around, conferences, different countries and then people are just asking you questions you have to answer, you're not always at the top of your thoughts," said Gero. He told Rappler he found Duterte's apology "heartfelt." "Honestly, I didn't feel like he was really after the Jews. Obviously, the guy is not a racist, I never heard of that sort before so there's really no reason for him to start with the Jews," said Gero. After giving his speech, Duterte entertained requests for him to pose for photos with members of the Jewish community. – Rappler.comAfter reading the title of this article, many of you probably are thinking that this post must be some kind of extremely early April Fools joke. After all, most laser sintering machines, which work with metal alloys, cost upwards of $1 million, some even much more than that. Back in July of this year, we saw a company called MatterFab announce their entrance into the realm of more affordable powder bed fusion metal 3D printers. Although a price was not announced, speculation still has these printers priced well above what most individuals could afford (likely $80-$120k). Today, a Perth Australia-based company, called Aurora Labs may have just opened the metal laser sintering 3D printer space wide open with the launch of a Kickstarter project for their S1, S2, and S2+ 3D metal printers. There is no doubt that if the cost of metal 3D printers were to come down in price to under $10,000 that the world would change as we know it. There are only so many applications one can use printed plastics for. The ability to fabricate metal objects at the push of a button, from one’s own garage could be transformative, not only for the manufacturing industry, but society as a whole. This is why, if legitimate, the Aurora 3D printer Kickstarter project may be one of the most exciting projects we have seen yet. The company is working on three different printers, starting at just $4,499 AUD (approximately $4,000 USD) for the S1, if you are one of their earliest backers. All three printers are capable of printing with a variety of metals, including: 316 Stainless Steel 420 Stainless Steel Inconel 625 Inconel 718 Hastelloy C Brass Bronze Mild Steel Over a dozen others The main difference between the various printers, the S1, S2, and S2+, are their sizes, number of powder rollers, and price. Below is a quick comparison: S1 – Build Envelope: 150mm x 150mm x 200mm, 2 powder feeders – Kickstarter Price: $3,998 USD S2 – Build Envelope: 150mm x 150mm x 200mm, 3 powder feeders – Kickstarter Price: $6,219 USD S2+ – Build Envelope: 180mm x 180mm x 500mm, 3 powder feeders – Kickstarter Price: $7,110 USD Currently the printers can all use, both direct metal laser sintering, as well as powder bed fusion techniques. The S2 and S2+ will be capable of printing with multiple metals at once, and according to the company their internal testing showed that objects printed with these three machines had a 99.5% density level, similar to a high quality casting. “We see a time in the near future where every engineering workshop has a couple of these and most homes have one as well,” stated the company. “With this machine people can build a 10,000 pound (4,500 kg) thrust rocket motor – for about the price of a plasma TV ($500-$1,000) in materials.” If this company does come through, it will certainly make waves within the industry. They have also stated that they are working on a selective laser sintering system for these printers, as well as a capability to print with plastics and ceramics as well. Let’s hear your thoughts on these incredible machines. Have Aurora Labs, and their founder David Budge actually figured out a way to bring metal 3D printers into the home affordably? Discuss in the Aurora Labs metal printer forum thread on 3DPB.com. Check out the company’s Kickstarter pitch video provided below.This is an article I wrote for the engineering business press in the UK. It is being issued as a general PR piece by my company. Normally I write fascinating technical articles as spray nozzles but I thought I’d try an use my business to do some good for the cause of autism. It is an article about how the autistic mind can often excel in the fields of engineering so is entirely relevant to my normal target audience in my work related writings, namely engineers and engineering managers. If anyone reading this knows anyone working in those fields please help spread the word. This is an important message to get out there. Whilst the article below focuses on the strengths of the autistic mind when applied to engineering this is by no means the only area in which autistic people can excel. There are many success stories in the arts, computer science and other areas. Sure some careers will be made more difficult by autism but with many jobs the differences in the autistic brain can actually be turned into an advantage. So often the media only focuses on the disadvantages of autism and this article is my way of highlighting the strengths of the autistic brain and hopefully get some decision makers in engineering companies to see the opportunity to hire autistic talent. Once again: please share and link this with anyone who you might think is in a position to act on the suggestions of this article. A waste of talent What would you think if I told you that there was a group of people within our society that probably contained amongst their members some of the greatest scientists, inventors and engineers humanity has ever produced? Amongst its members are likely to be Einstein, Tesla and Newton as well as many of the techies that were responsible for the dotcom boom and the explosion of Silicon Valley into the world’s most concentrated area of business wealth. I presume you would, as engineering / technical companies, want a way to identify this group of people and to get them to work for your business if possible. What if I then went on to tell you that only 15% of this group actually find full time work as adults? Would you think I was talking nonsense? Or would you be worried as to how we can allow this waste to happen? The more business savvy amongst you might immediately see this as an opportunity ready to be exploited and I would agree entirely. The group I am talking about is the autistic people in our society. A group that now makes up about 1 in 100 people in the UK. A group that is generally willing and able to work but is woefully under-utilised in the workplace. More specifically it is a group whose minds are often particularly well suited to engineering work. What is autism? Autism is a hugely varied condition and a full detailed explanation of all its manifestation is beyond the scope of this article but very briefly: Autism is defined as a social communication disorder. We run into some problems right off the bat with that definition. A “disorder” implies that something is “wrong” with autistic people, that they are disabled or less capable than normal “neurotypical” folks. This is incorrect. Whilst some autistic people are disabled by their condition, for many autistic people their autism is a better viewed as a difference in brain wiring neither better nor worse than a normal brain. As with any difference, though, there will be strengths and weakness. The contention of this article is that the strengths of the autistic brain often significantly outweigh the weaknesses when it comes to working in the engineering sector. The strengths of the autistic mind The media often focuses on the weaknesses of the autistic mind. These weaknesses do need to be considered as they impact heavily on having an autism friendly work place but first I want to highlight the potential strengths of autistic people. Specifically the strengths when it comes to working in the engineering disciplines. 1 An ability to think and see differently The different brains of autistic people mean they can often approach problems in a way that neurotypical people don’t even consider. They will often bring design concepts to engineering problems that have not been thought of before. On the grand scale of human achievement we have people like Einstein and Newton who made their ground breaking contributions to science by thinking things that lesser mortals were incapable of. There is nothing intuitive about general relativity. It took a different kind of mind to break free from the prevailing thinking. Einstein and Newton showed strong autistic traits although neither were formally diagnosed. Clearly not every autistic person is going to be making earth shattering scientific discoveries, it takes a rare genius to do that, but on a smaller scale this ability to think differently can be immensely valuable. Would having autistic brains on the design team that can come at a problem from a different angle be of value to most firms? Could a more neurologically diverse team solve more problems, innovate better and thus have a competitive advantage? I suggest that they would and it seems the CEO’s of Silicon Valley agree as their use of autistic talent is well publicised. 2 Thinking in pictures Many autistic people have an amazing ability to visualise complex objects and literally think in pictures rather than words. A particularly good example of this is a lady named Temple Grandin. She has a PhD in Animal Science and has worked designing slaughter houses and animal handling systems for decades. Her designs revolutionised this industry, made it far more humane and efficient. She is also autistic and her mother was told that she would never learn to talk or lead an independent life. Temple attributes her engineering success to her ability to “think in pictures”. She sees how the cattle will move and react and she instinctively knows how the cattle runs and chutes need to be structured to keep them calm and moving. She literally sees her designs in her brain and then translates them into engineering drawings. Of course we all visualise to a certain degree but often the autistic mind will often have superior picture thinking capacity. Does this ability to think in pictures sound like the type of thing that an engineer might find useful? Again I would posit that it is of great utility. 3 Focus Many autistic people have an uncanny ability to focus intensely on a problem for hours at a time without tiring of it. Silicon Valley is full of autistic computer coders who will pull 24 hour shifts making or debugging lines of computer code. Not many neurotypical people can match this level of focus. For those tight engineering deadlines does this not sound like a big asset for any firm? The perfect combination With these traits it is almost certainly true that there are many potential superstar engineers who are currently unemployed because their autism also presents some significant barriers to gaining employment. So the savvy engineering firm who is on the lookout for new talent only needs to learn how to overcome these barriers to tap into this talent. This to me seems like an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage in the recruitment market. The question then is how do we make autism friendly work places? Making autism friendly work places Unfortunately it is beyond the scope of this article to cover this topic in full but a few pointers can be given as well as some suggested further reading for those who wish to embrace this opportunity fully. The interview process The social communication issues faced by autistic people can make an interview particularly stressful for them. This means they often interview quite poorly when compared to neurotyopical people. If, however, certain modifications to the interview process are made then it is perfectly possible to “see through” the autism and assess the ability of the candidates to actually do the job. Which after all is what it is all about! The work place Certain allowances may need to be made in the work place. The hustle and bustle of an open plan office may be incredibly distracting for an autistic person who has sensory processing issues (a common problem with autistic people). In some cases UV lights and other humming electrical equipment can be deafening to the autistic mind. Quiet working places or the ability to work from home will often solve these problem. Team working Autistic people often work better alone. When working in a team it is better to assign to them discrete tasks within the team that can be completed individually. Obviously in many situations collaborative working will be required. In these cases it is often better to develop some key workers who understand their autistic colleagues well and ensure that it is those workers who collaborate on tasks with them. Throwing an autistic person into a team of strangers to work with is probably not a great idea. They can, however, form very good close working relationships with people they have developed trust with. Flexible hours Being autistic in a neurotypical world is tough. Many autistic people have told me that the effort of interacting “normally” or trying to behave neurotypicaly mentally exhausting. They need to “act” every day of their lives. Sometimes this results in burnout. A good employer needs to understand that sometimes autistic people will require down days to recharge. This is not to say they need to work fewer hours it is simply the recognition that from time to time home working or a day off to recharge may be necessary. With some flexible working patterns, though this downtime can be made up by additional hours at other times in the week. Precise instructions Often autistic people struggle with loose or open instructions. If, however, they are given clear goals and instructions then they will tap into that autistic focus and get the tasks done effectively and efficiently. Most neurotypical people tend to enjoy having the freedom to interpret tasks on their own and tackle problems in their own way. Often autistic people will need some help starting and structuring a task but once they understand exactly what they need to do they will excel. In some respects they actually respond well to micro-management, which is of course a common complaint from most workers! So why am I writing this? The short answer is that I have a son with autism. He’s not even 5 yet so is a little too young to be worrying about a career in engineering just yet but there are thousands of his older peers who face bleak employment futures. Only 15% of autistic adults are in full time employment in the UK. This compares to 43% of adults with disabilities in general. This, of course, is an emotive and worrying issue for me as a father but I also see this as a complete waste of talent. Taking off my father hat and looking at this objectively as the owner of a company in the engineering sector this is an opportunity to find great new engineers. Now my company is not a huge company we primarily offer advice and products around spray technology and nozzle. We are small and specialist so we don’t employ hundreds of engineers by any stretch of the imagination but when we are next hiring our company will be autism ready. Will the next person we hire be autistic? The law of averages says probably not. But we will be able to make allowance for autistic candidates so we won’t discount them by mistake. If you want to learn more then there are some resources linked below and I am always more than happy to speak to any fellow business owner or their hiring managers who want to learn more about making autism friendly work places. My hope is that by the time my son gets to working age that 15% employment figure will have vastly improved. Further reading The National Autistic Society’s Employment Training Team can provide support and training to managers, colleagues and employees with autism. You can contact them to discuss your requirements on employment.training@nas.org.uk or call 020 7704 7450 http://www.autism.org.uk/working-with/employment-services/training-and-consultancy.aspx The TUC has quite a lengthy guide to autism in the work place http://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/Autism.pdf AdvertisementsMOSCOW (Reuters) - An upgraded Russian unmanned spacecraft successfully linked up with the International Space Station on Sunday on its second attempt to test a new docking system, Russia’s space agency said. The docking set aside doubts over the new Kurs-NA rendezvous system that will deliver astronauts and future cargoes to the orbital station after a botched first test when the equipment malfunctioned due to low temperatures earlier this week. The operating system functioned properly after it was allowed to warm up, according to a statement from the U.S. space agency NASA. Kurs-NA is an upgrade of the Kurs docking gear used for years on Russia’s manned Soyuz and robotic Progress spacecrafts. The system consolidates five antennas into one, has updated electronics and is designed to improve safety and use less power, according to NASA. The Progress ship re-docked with the Pirs module at 0100 GMT (9 p.m. EDT on Saturday), the Russian space agency Roscomos said in a statement, for a brief final stay before the single-use craft, laden with space station trash, is due to burn up on re-entry over the Pacific Ocean on July 30. Since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttles last year, the United States has been dependent on Russia and is paying $60 million per person to fly astronauts to the ISS, a $100 billion research complex orbiting 240 miles above Earth. Moscow is struggling to restore the prestige of its once-pioneering space program after a string of launch mishaps last year, including the failure of a mission to return samples from the Martian moon Phobos. Six astronauts are currently aboard the orbital outpost: American Sunita Williams, Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide and Russian Yury Malenchenko joined cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and US astronaut Joseph Acaba earlier this month.Your first name A Missouri man who shot and killed a Kentucky state trooper during a traffic stop Sunday was an apparent Black Lives Matter sympathizer who protested in the days after the shooting death of Michael Brown last year and attended the 18-year-old’s funeral, social media posts show. Joseph Thomas Johnson-Shanks, 25, shot Kentucky State Police Trooper Joseph Cameron Ponder after a high-speed chase on Interstate 24 at around 10:30 p.m. local time Sunday. Johnson-Shanks fired into Ponder’s cruiser at the end of the 10-mile chase, striking and killing the rookie trooper. Johnson-Shanks fled the scene but was found in a rural area Monday morning. He was shot and killed after failing to comply with officers’ commands to drop his weapon, law enforcement officials said. Johnson-Shanks is from Florissant, Mo., a St. Louis suburb near Ferguson, where Brown was fatally shot by police officer Darren Wilson
arrested for spying on women in a Burger King bathroom is back in jail after police claim he was peeping into people's homes around Swartz Creek. John Robert Riley was arraigned Jan. 30 on a charge of first-degree home invasion, two counts of surveilling an unclothed person and assaulting/resisting/obstructing a police officer following an investigation by the Swartz Creek and Mundy Township police department. Riley, 23, was taken into custody after police began receiving multiple complaints of a person peering into windows around the Swartz Creek area. Deputy Police Chief Clolinger said police first received a complaint Nov. 20 from the Winchester Village subdivision for a possible peeping Tom. Two additional complaints were later received for similar situations, according to Clolinger. Detectives began investigating the case, but they caught a break when a Michigan Department of Corrections probation agent, Denise Dutoi, said the description of the suspect matched a probationer she was overseeing. "Her intuition was correct, and working in conjunction with the Swartz Creek and Mundy Township authorities, a GPS tracking device was placed on the suspect's car," said MDOC spokesman Chris Gautz. "Two days later, he was arrested after being observed engaging in criminal behavior." The home invasion charge was sought after Clolinger said officers allegedly observed Riley enter a home's garage. Going on a few grainy photos, a brief description of the suspect and her knowledge of offenders she has supervised in the past, led her to act on a hunch. Riley was previously arrested in 2011 after he attempted to view two female coworkers as they used the women's bathroom at a Frankenmuth Burger King. He was ordered to serve five years of probation. A 17-year-old identified Riley as the man she saw looking up at her from beneath the door of the public bathroom stall. He was already on probation at the time of the Burger King incident after pleading guilty to surveilling an unclothed person in Tuscola County in 2010. Riley is currently lodged in the Genesee County Jail on $50,000, bond. He is due back in court Feb. 11. His attorney, William Ivey, could not be reached for comment.New Orleans Saints running back Khiry Robinson (29), Saints vs Vikings 2014 New Orleans Saints running back Khiry Robinson (29) gets through the Minnesota Vikings defense for yardage during the game at the Superdome in New Orleans, Sunday, September 21, 2014. (Photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com / The Times-Picayune) (David Grunfeld, NOLA.com \| The Times-Picayune) Six summers ago, Khiry Robinson left his hometown in central Texas for a junior college in Minnesota only 100 miles south of the Canadian border. It was the first stop on what would become a long journey with an unlikely destination. Never highly recruited, Robinson played two positions at three off-the-beaten-path colleges over five years. He contended with a serious knee injury and was scarcely noticed before the NFL draft. Last Sunday, Robinson's high-stepping, tackle-breaking 18-yard touchdown run on Sunday gave the Saints a 37-31 overtime victory over Tampa Bay and became the most-watched highlight of Robinson's career. "I'm going to be honest, I don't want to say I wasn't expecting to score, but I wasn't expecting it to happen like that," Robinson said. "I just tried to pick a hole and picked the hole I saw first. I ended up in the end zone." A few minutes later, Robinson disappeared from the locker room, eluding the cameras encamped outside his locker. "Man, it still feels like a dream. That's why I'm always running from cameras," Robinson said Monday. "I'm not used to it yet." The dream is one of the unlikeliest even on a Saints' roster filled with undrafted success stories. Signed as an undrafted free agent by the New Orleans Saints last year, Robinson failed to impress coaches in summer workouts. He seemed destined to become one of the dozens of largely anonymous camp bodies who come and go each August. But something clicked in training camp. He made the team and his role expanded as the Saints neared the postseason. This year, an injury to Mark Ingram gave Robinson a chance to be the team's featured back. It's been a wild ride for a player unaccustomed to such attention. "Now, I'm looking at thousands of fans," he said, comparing his current life with his previous one. "Then, I'm looking at cows and dust." TEXAS HOMETOWN Robinson played high school ball at Belton High School in Texas, a small town just outside of Temple, which is Belton's longtime rival. Everyone in Texas played football, Robinson said, but he also excelled at track, winning district championships in the triple jump and long jump. Although he was athletic, he wasn't necessarily a star in high school, Robinson said. "I always second string or it was, 'Put Khiry in in the third quarter,'" Robinson said. "I felt like it was all part of the journey. It was always going to be bittersweet when I made it. I'd rather have it that way anyway." Robinson was a second-team offensive and defensive player in his district during his senior year. Impressive, but not enough to get noticed in an area where future recruiting wunderkind Lache Seastrunk was just crowned "newcomer of the year." Most of Robinson's recruiting interest came from small schools. Academics required him to start in junior college, and the best option was 19 hours and 1,300 miles away. A YEAR IN MINNESOTA Mesabi Range Community College is about an hour north of Duluth in the town of Virginia, Minn., yet the roster of the Norsemen is filled with players from the South. Many arrived like Robinson did, without visiting or making a trip. Coach Dan Lind is up front with prospective students. "This is a small, rural northern area with trees and lakes....If they'd like to come up and visit, they certainly can. But a lot of the kids come from nothing." For many of the players, football was a way out, a chance to go to a safe, structured place for a couple of years and get on track academically for a four-year college. Lind learned about Robinson the way he did most of his players, through a long network of coaching contacts. In this case, Robinson's attempt to enroll at an NAIA college in Kansas fell through due to academics. The coach contacted Lind, who found a place for him. "We got him and we were glad we did," Lind said. Mesabi Range head coach Dan Lind He remembers Robinson as an unpolished 18-year-old with a challenging past. "There's not a lot of trouble to get into here," he said. "He needed juco. He needed to mature, like many kids do. He needed to grow up." The Norsemen needed a running back, and Robinson was plugged into the role from Day 1. He finished 2008 with 160 carries for 893 yards and 13 touchdowns. His team won the Minnesota College Athletic Conference title after Robinson scored five touchdowns in the semifinal game. That was Robinson's only year at Mesabi. Robinson wanted a chance to get back to Texas and the higher profile Blinn College offered him a better chance to get noticed. "He wanted to give it a shot at scholarship program," Lind said. "I told him, 'Good luck and I hope you make it.'" MOVING ON Although 2009 was one of the most magical years in Blinn history, Robinson is largely absent from it. While quarterback Cam Newton was leading the team to a juco national championship, one year before he would leave Auburn to the big-college national title, Robinson was recovering from an ACL injury. That, he said, was the only moment he doubted his NFL dream. Back from the knee injury and moved to safety, Robinson still excelled in 2010. He led the team with 79 tackles but longed to play running back. "I was like, 'Damn, I'm not a running back. I always had a dream of playing running back,'" Robinson said. "I kind of thought about it in a spiritual way. You've got to keep faith and believe in what you do, and believe in who's in control. At the end of the day, that's what I did, and ended up here." West Texas A&M, in Canyon, near Amarillo, gave him the opportunity to play offense in addition to defense. Quickly it became clear that running back was his calling. Robinson rushed for 669 yards and 11 touchdowns in 2011 and then rushed for 1,621 more in 2012, breaking a single-season West Texas A&M record held by Eugene "Mercury" Morris. THE NFL AND THE FUTURE Robinson's old track skills paid off in NFL evaluations, and his raw numbers helped draw attention. New Orleans Saints running back Khiry Robinson (29) scores a TD in the fourth quarter as Seattle Seahawks free safety Earl Thomas (29) defends during a NFC divisional playoff game at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Jan. 11, 2014. (David Grunfeld, Nola.com / The Times-Picayune) He signed with the Saints after going undrafted. Although Robinson eventually played his way onto the roster, coaches weren't immediately impressed during summer workouts. But that changed during training camp. "His transition wasn't smooth initially," said Saints coach Sean Payton. "He's a physical runner and it was hard to see that at all (during the summer)...When the pads came on for him, he became a much different player than we envisioned, just in regards to his style. It's hard to see that when you're not in pads." After getting a dozen carries in Week 4 against Miami, Robinson was used sparingly in the running game until the end of the 2013 season. Robinson scored the Saints' first touchdown in the playoff loss at Seattle and finished with a season-high 13 carries and 57 yards. Robinson set new career marks last Sunday in the victory over Tampa and is averaging five yards a carry in 2014. Although starter Mark Ingram could return from a hand injury as early as the Oct. 19 game at Detroit, the Tampa Bay game could offer a glimpse of the Saints' future. The team declined to exercise the fifth-year option on Ingram's contract, making him a free agent after this season. That would leave Robinson to take over Ingram's role as primary back. "As a group, that's our job to pick up where we left off," Robinson said "I'm sure when Ingram gets back, we'll be even better. 'HE PLAYED ANGRY' Robinson returned to Texas for a couple days of visits during the off-week. Asked to name an influence that he might reconnect with during the break, Robinson named his mother but struggled to identify anyone else. "I never really had a role model other than my family," he said. "My mom was a strong person. I just watched what she did and the struggles she went through." Robinson said his mom is "sometimes" surprised at his success. "My mom knew I was pretty good. My family, they really didn't know. In Texas, everybody plays football growing up," he said. Lind, Robinson's old coach at Mesabi, said he was great athlete, but not an exceptional one. "At 18 years old, he only ran a 4.69 for us," Lind said. "We had other athletes who were comparable as far as height and weight." In that sense, Robinson's ascension to the NFL is surprising. But then Lind thinks back to the other things he remembers about his young player. "Sometimes it's what's inside that counts," Lind said. "He played angry. He was dedicated. Some kids these days want to win but they don't want to work. That wasn't him."A Phoenix man inspired to create an all-terrain wheelchair so his disabled wife could go on camping trips has teamed up with the NFL to gift veterans his so-called 'Tankchair'. Inventor Brad Soden was left distraught ten years ago when his wife Liz broke down in tears because she couldn't travel with their five kids to the country and resolved to solve the problem not just for her, but for others in the same situation. Despite having no formal engineering training, Sodden created the first tankchair in his own garage using caterpillar tracks instead of wheels, so that driver could traverse most types of terrain, including low lying water and even snow. Scroll Down for Video Revolutionary: Brad Soden with two versions of his 'Tankchair' which retails for up to $15,000 and has brought joy to hundreds of wounded and disabled veterans 'When you're in a wheelchair, it’s not just your problem,' said Soden to AZFamily. 'It’s a family problem because the family has to deal with it.' 'My poor wife. She tried to keep going and the wheelchair kept getting stuck,' he said. 'Our kids trying to push her, and get her going, and she started crying, said go on without me, and I just found that unacceptable.' His first attempt at a modified wheelchair for his wife was based on an off-road cart, but he abandoned this because they would not be allowed at the majority of campgrounds nationwide because of their noise and restrictions on gas. Devoted husband: Brad was determined to allow his wife Liz to be able to come camping along with their five children His father-in-law was the one who gave him inspiration when he asked, 'Wouldn't it be cool if you could put tracks on that like a tank?' Soden, who had prior military experience as an infantryman who worked on tracked vehicles, used trial and error before his first genuine prototype was presented to his wife. 'The 10 million jumbo watt smile she had on her face when she came back from her hike was worth every minute I spent in the garage putting it together,' said Soden to KTAR. Since then, Tankchair has expanded to improve the design of his invention with the help of Arizona firm, NPC Robotics and began selling the chairs. He noticed that a large majority of his clients for his customized chairs were injured servicemen and women. Celebrity backers: Bill O'Reilly with Brad and Liz (left) and Brad with Pearl Jam lead singer, Eddie Vedder Relief: Each chair is customized to the user's specifications and cost upwards of $15,000 and are all assembled in Brad Soden's own garage Each tankchair is built to order and costs around $15,000 and many of the parts are assembled by Soden in his own garage. According to the Washington Post he has built versions that incorporate a fishing rod and a text-to-speech system for one man who was unable to speak. Another version was built for a cop complete with an LED Incapacitator, which induces vomiting in suspects by flashing a pulsating light at them. 'The best part about building that one,' he said to the Washington Post, 'was that it helped the injured client, who was a cop, get back being a cop again.' Joy: This veteran has taken delivery of his own 'Tankchair' and is now getting ready for his test-drive All weather terrain: The beauty of the tank chair is the ability to traverse all manner of outdoor environments Inspiration: Brad was consulted by the makers of the Pixar smash hit movie Wall-E So original was his idea that Soden was approached by the makers of the Pixar film Wall-E, who wanted his help in directing their artists to get the correct feel for the titular hero. And over the next few weeks, Soden will be traveling the country delivering five new tankchairs to veterans backed by an NFl Hall of Famers initiative to get more disabled servicemen and women the chairs. Since his wife's accident 15-years-ago, Soden has developed his chair to the point where he is testing a new model that could be capable of traveling up to 30 mph. He calls it the Speedster according to the Washington Post, likening it to a Ferrari, whereas he calls the tankchair a 'truck'. 'For the longest time, we’ve been used to wheelchairs that limit people,' said Soden to the Washington Post.Lorenc Peter Elfred Freuchen was a 6’7” tall walrus-spearing, peg-legged, anti-Semite-clobbering Danish explorer and badass old-school 1900s explorer who wore a fucking awesome coat made of polar bear fur, rocked a seriously epic beard, rode a dogsled 1,000 kilometers across the Greenland ice cap in the 1910s, killed a wolf with his bare hands, escaped a Nazi death warrant at the height of the Third Reich, amputated his own fucking gangrenous toes with a pair of pliers (and no anesthesia), and starred in a goddamned Oscar-winning movie – which was based on a book that he wrote. And this guy was so over-the-top awesome that he played the fucking villain in a movie that was loosely based around his own autobiography. He was also the fifth person to win the jackpot in the TV game show The $64,000 Question, published thirty books, founded two Adventurer’s Clubs, and his biography is called The Vagrant Viking. Need more proof? Check this shit. One time he was caught in a blizzard and ended up being buried alive in an inescapable cocoon of ice so tightly packed around him that he could barely move. After 30 hours trapped in a frosty tomb the size of a large suitcase this behemoth Dane escaped certain death by molding his own shit into a fucking knife and using it to carve through a solid wall of ice, then crawled another three hours back to base camp like something out of The Revenant meets Everest meets goddamn Shawshank Redemption. Oh, yeah, and he looks like this: Freuchen with his third wife. His coat is made from the fur of a polar bear that he killed himself. Peter Freuchen was born in Denmark in February 1886 (his birthday was exactly 130 years ago last Tuesday). He studied to be a doctor at some pretty swanky Danish schools, but order and structure and living indoors in the civilized world like a fucking chump wasn’t what Freuchen was put on this earth to do, and after getting in trouble quite a bit in school (he wrote in his awesomely-titled autobiography The Vagrant Viking something along the lines that “the first victims of my hunter’s instincts were my early instructors”) Freuchen peaced out and said fuck people, I’m going to go explore the damn wilderness. He signed on with every Polar expedition he could, and became obsessed with exploring the uncharted wilderness of Greenland and the North Pole. In 1906, at the age of 20, he and his buddy Knud Rasmussen sailed as far north as they possibly could, then got out of the ship and traveled 600 miles across the frozen wastes of Greenland on a damn dogsled just to see what was out there. They met the Inuit, who were awesome, traded with the natives, learned the language, and then went on badass co-op hunting expeditions to spear walruses, whales, wolves, seals, polar bears, and other insane things. That looks pretty cold. Freuchen also went on sea-and-land expeditions to places like South Africa, Siberia, and a few other inhospitable wastelands where no person should ever be able to survive (ok, maybe South Africa isn’t that bad, but they do have hella Great Whites and that shit freaks me out), but Freuchen’s heart was in Greenland. So in 1910 he returned, went as far north as he could bear, and then set up a trading station where he could live among the Inuit. He named his two-person town Thule, after Ultima Thule, which was a marking used in medieval cartography to denote anywhere that was beyond the borders of the known world. This is an aerial photograph of Thule today: In Thule the daily mean temperature this time of the year is twelve degrees below zero. Negative-twelve. Fahrenheit. As an average daily temperature. And we are talking 1910, when you didn’t have windbreaker jackets and wetsuits and Gore-tek thermal shit. This motherfucker was wearing furs, leather, and wool to keep warm. That’s it. At one point, his cabin was so could that his breath was turning to ice and lining the inside of the cabin. After he burned through all of his coal, the got smaller and smaller from all the condensation until it was so cramped that he could barely stand up. Freuchen lived here for like the next decade, learning fluent Inuit and accidentally becoming basically the world’s first and foremost expert on the native peoples of Greenland. He married an Inuit woman and had two children, who were given the alphebet-heavy names of Mequsaq Avataq Igimaqssusuktoranguapaluk and Pipaluk Jette Tukuminguaq Kasaluk Palika Hager. Freuchen’s grandson would become the first person of Inuit descent to be elected to the Canadian Parliament. Today Thule is home to a friggin’ United States Air Force base. They have aircraft, fighters, and radar listening posts, and it’s home to the 12th Space Warning Squadron, which I think is either something designed to provide early-warning detection against either Russkie ICBMs and/or Cylon Basestars. Freuchen and his wife in the 1910s. She joined him on many of his early expeditions. Thule served as the home base for seven expeditions between 1912 and 1933. The First Expedition, in 1912, involved crossing a thousand kilometers across Greenland just to prove to Commodore Peary that the North Pole wasn’t separated from Greenland by a river. Both Freuchen and Rasmussen almost died on the trip, but they became national heroes overnight for their accomplishment. Freuchen’s first wife died of the Spanish Flu in 1921, and he returned home to Denmark for a while. He began writing for a newspaper called Politiken (it’s still around today), and began working on the first of the nearly 30 books he would publish in his career as a bestselling author. Most of his works were focused on Inuit culture and badass man shit like killing bears and surviving in a climate where your piss can practically freeze mid-stream, but he also wrote about the oceans, sailing, and put out some cool hardcore “dude kills everyone in a fit of vengeance” fiction stories like the ones you see in those old awesome 1920s pulp magazines. In 1924, Freuchen married a friggin multi-millionaire, who was the heiress to a huge fortune because her folks ran the most successful margarine business in Denmark (I’m not making this up). Her parents liked Freuchen so much that when they founded a new magazine in 1925, they made Freuchen the editor-in-chief. The magazine is still in circulation today – it’s the longest-running magazine in Danish history. But don’t go thinking Freuchen was going soft just because he was a millionaire best-selling uthor who lived in a massive estate on his own private island (even though that totally did happen). He kept making trips back north and going on badass expeditions, including the one in 1926 that I referenced in the poop story earlier. Basically, Freuchen was exploring the Northern reaches of Greenland when he got caught out in a hardcore insane blizzard storm: He took cover beneath a dog sled, but the snow and ice overtook him and he was trapped. The ice was so tight against him that his beard froze to the ice, meaning that if he wanted to turn his head he had to fucking yank a piece of his beard out. After 30 hours of trying to claw and punch his way to safety, Freuchen ingeniously and hilariously chiseled through the wall of ice with a fucking shank he fashioned from his own shit, crawled three hours back to base, took off his socks, saw his fucking toes had gangrene, and then amputated his toes with a pair of pliers and a hammer. Without anesthesia. When he got back to safety he had his leg amputated. He had a peg leg for the rest of his life. This did not stop him from going back to Greenland. A lot. One of Freuchen’ books about the Inuit was turned into a movie in 1933. Telling the tale of a fictional Inuit warrior’s adventures in the Arctic, the film’s dialogue was entirely in Inuit with English subtitles. Freuchen wrote the story, translated the dialogue, was an interpreter on the set, helped the film crew survive on set, and played the movie’s villain. It won an Academy Award, which is awesome, even if the Oscar was for “Best Film Editing” which really isn’t something that Freuchen was actually involved with at all whatsoever. Either way, an awesome side note is that during the premier of Eskimo, Freuchen apparently picked up Nazi director Leni Reifenstahl (Hitler’s favorite director, btw), held her over his head, and spun around in a circle, laughing his ass off. She did not enjoy this. He couldn’t even use the excuse that he was wasted at the time, because Peter Freuchen never drank. Freuchen founded “The Adventurer’s Club” in Denmark in 1938, a cool place for cool dudes to sit around and smoke cigars by a fireplace in an awesome wood-paneled room with animal heads on the walls. But unfortunately Denmark was having some Nazi problems around this time, which pissed off Freuchen quite a bit. According to what I’ve read, any time someone would say some anti-Semite shit around him, Freuchen would stand up to his full height, walk right up to the dude, and intimidatingly say something along the lines of, “I’m Jewish. What are you gonna do about it?” When the Germans took over Denmark, Freuchen was part of the Danish Resistance. He hid refugees, subverted Nazi operations, and pissed off Hitler so hard that the Germans arrested him and sentenced him to death. Freuchen escaped, fled to Sweden, and continued undermining the Nazis. Because if an icy coffin isn’t going to kill him, the Nazis weren’t either. In 1945 Freuchen moved to New York City and married his third wife (the one pictured above), Dagmar Cohn. Dagmar was a fashion illustrator who worked with Vogue, and the pair settled down in NYC to wait out the rest of the war. Nearly 60 years old by now, Freuchen joined the New York Explorer’s Club, another cool hangout spot, and today they have a big painting of him mounted on the wall between the taxidermied heads of exotic African wildlife. Freuchen became friends with Mae West, bench-pressed Jean Harlow at a party once, and in 1956 he became only the fifth person to win The $64,000 Question (they asked him about the Seven Seas… big mistake). Peter Freuchen died of a heart attack in 1957, just three days after completing his final book. He was 71 years old. His ashes were scattered over Thule, Greenland. Links: Kottke.org American Digest International Policy Digest AnOther Magazine The Verge Full Text of Freuchen's AutobiographyIn honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I’m excited to have a bit of news to share on one of my all-time favorite attractions, Pirates of the Caribbean here at Magic Kingdom Park. This classic Disney attraction, which inspired a four-part film franchise, has undergone a few changes in recent years due to the success of these movies. First, Captain Jack Sparrow made his debut at the attraction, then Captain Barbossa (pictured above) appeared aboard a pirate ship. More recently, the ghostly apparitions of knaves Davy Jones and Blackbeard have materialized. Our friends at Walt Disney Imagineering dropped us a line today to let us know that something from the most recent film, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” is about to be added to the attraction here at Walt Disney World Resort. Can you guess what it is? Updates to the attraction will be made overnight, so Pirates of the Caribbean will remain open to guests during park hours. Keep a weather eye on the Disney Parks Blog for more details! Read more news from Magic Kingdom Park in the posts below:A contentious plan to replace a parking lot in Chinatown with several high-rise towers spurred about 150 opponents to march to city hall on Friday. The proposed development includes a building almost twice the height of existing ones in the area to be built on the site of a parking lot that sits between Second Avenue and Third Avenue S.W. just west of Centre Street. One of the protesters, Louise Guan, says the city and developers have not done a good enough job of communicating and being transparent about the plans. The area's distinct culture must be preserved, she said. "The history of Chinatown is over 100 years," she said. "So at this time, we would like to protect it, not just have something suddenly change." After months of meetings, the city recently altered the guidlines for the project, calling for the it to be 60 per cent residential and to include Asian or Chinese architectural elements. City council will debate the project on Monday. Coun. Druh Farrell, who put forward a motion in April to delay council's decision on the project until December, says it's important to get this right. "We want to ensure a strong Chinatown," said Farrell. "Part of that is to ensure that we see development in Chinatown. I think... additional residential is absolutely critical for Chinatown. We don't need more office towers." The future of this Calgary Chinatown parking lot will be discussed at city council Monday. (Google Earth) But opposition to the project remains — including concerns that the buildings will be too tall for Chinatown. Terry Wong with the Chinatown Community Stakeholders Committee says the area needs new development but a 30-storey building is not a good fit. "Two, 30-storey towers on Third Avenue would just dwarf the rest of Chinatown and cause significant change to our cultural distinctiveness," he said.Today, in violation of its previous commitments and international law, Russian military vehicles painted to look like civilian trucks forced their way into Ukraine. While a small number of these vehicles were inspected by Ukrainian customs officials, most of the vehicles have not been inspected by anyone but Russia. We condemn this action by Russia, for which it will bear additional consequences. The Ukrainian government and the international community have repeatedly made clear that this convoy would constitute a humanitarian mission only if expressly agreed to by the Ukrainian government and only if the aid was inspected, escorted and distributed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). We can confirm that the ICRC is not escorting the vehicles and has no role in managing the mission, a condition that all parties had agreed would be required. Under the agreed terms, the mission should have been accomplished by sending a small number of inspected trucks in to drop their supplies and return to Russia within 24 hours by the same approved route by which they entered. That is not what is taking place. As we and governments around the world have said all along, Russia has no right to send vehicles, persons, or cargo of any kind into Ukraine, whether under the guise of humanitarian convoys or any other pretext, without the express permission of the government of Ukraine. The primary barrier to the delivery of the humanitarian aid has been the lack of security guarantees from the Russia-backed separatists. Russian military vehicles piloted by Russian drivers have unilaterally entered the territory controlled by the separatist forces Russia has been training, supplying, and reinforcing for months. The Ukrainian humanitarian assistance convoy was prevented from delivering much needed assistance to Luhansk city. At the same time as Russian vehicles violate Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russia maintains a sizable military force on the Ukrainian border capable of invading Ukraine on very short notice. It has repeatedly fired into Ukrainian territory, and has sent an ever-increasing stream of military equipment and fighters into Ukraine. As a result, the international community has been profoundly concerned that Russia’s actions today are nothing but a pretext for further Russian escalation of the conflict. We recall that Russia denied its military was occupying Crimea until it later admitted its military role and attempted to annex this part of Ukraine. Russia’s decision today to send in its vehicles and personnel without the ICRC and without the express permission of the Ukrainian authorities only amplifies international concerns about Russia’s true intentions. It is important to remember that Russia is purporting to alleviate a humanitarian situation which Russia itself created – a situation that has caused the deaths of thousands, including 300 innocent passengers of flight MH17. If Russia really wants to ease the humanitarian situation in eastern Ukraine, it could do so today by halting its supply of weapons, equipment, and fighters to its proxies. This is a flagrant violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity by Russia. Russia must remove its vehicles and its personnel from the territory of Ukraine immediately.The 2017 college football season technically started last Saturday, when Colorado State beat the brakes off Oregon State, Rice tried really hard against Stanford, and new South Florida head coach Charlie Strong almost got fired at the end of the first quarter against San Jose State until his Bulls ultimately rallied to win pretty easily. All of that is fine and well, but like every other red-blooded American, I don’t consider the college football season to be truly underway until I throw on ESPN and see Lee Corso acting a fool, Kirk Herbstreit overselling the genius of a man who goes by “Bear” and wears a drive-thru headset, and someone like Kenny Chesney predicting the scores of MAC games as drunk kids in the background try to get cameramen to notice their signs emblazoned with dick jokes. College GameDay isn’t a television show so much as it’s an announcement of autumn’s arrival, not unlike Halloween or collectively cheering against the Yankees. Sure, Corso has gotten a little nuttier, Herbstreit’s frosted tips have darkened, and Chris Fowler looks a lot like Rece Davis these days. But there’s no denying that there’s a special charm to what GameDay brings to the college football experience, especially when the show is COMIIIIIINNNGG TO YOUR CITTTAAAAAYYYYYYY. On Thursday, that CITTTAAAAAYYYYYYY will be Bloomington, Indiana, home of the Indiana University Hoo—wait, WHAT? GameDay is kicking off the new season by coming to Indiana? For football? Is this real life? IT'S REAL.@CollegeGameDay will be LIVE inside Memorial Stadium, airing from 6-8 p.m., on August 31st! #BreakThrough ⚪️ pic.twitter.com/mLZ3mU6keg — Indiana Football (@HoosierFootball) August 3, 2017 Well I’ll be damned. This might just be the biggest moment for Indiana football since Purdue’s entire program was flushed down the toilet when Kyle Orton fumbled against Wisconsin in 2004. No, seriously. I don’t think the general public understands just how bad Indiana football is. I mean, I’m sure that most people are vaguely aware that the Hoosiers have sucked, but the extent to which is remarkable. Consider this: Indiana’s first football team was formed in 1887, one year before Jack the Ripper started killing prostitutes in London. The Hoosiers have won only three bowl games since. Alabama has won more national championships in the past eight years than Indiana has won bowl games in the past 130. The Jacksonville Jaguars have won more playoff games in the past 21 years than Indiana has won bowl games ever. The Hoosiers haven’t been ranked in any version of the AP poll since 1994 and have had only one winning season since 1995 (when they went 7-5 in the 2007 regular season before getting their asses kicked by Oklahoma State in the Insight Bowl). Meanwhile, the Cleveland Browns have posted two winning seasons since 1995, and they didn’t even exist for three of those years. I know what you’re thinking. Of course Indiana sucks. It’s a basketball school! This is an excellent point, which is why I should mention that North Carolina and Duke each have more 10-win seasons in the past four years than Indiana has ever had, Kentucky beat top-ranked LSU in 2007 and was ranked no. 8 in the AP poll for a couple of weeks that fall, UCLA has been ranked in the top 10 at some point in eight of the previous 20 seasons, and Louisville boasts the defending Heisman Trophy winner. Michigan State has had a top-10 team at some point in each of the past seven seasons; Kansas won a goddamn BCS bowl (Never forget: Kansas has more BCS bowl wins than Notre Dame); Arizona has defeated more top-10 opponents under Rich Rodriguez than Indiana has under every coach it's had since World War II; UConn became an FBS program in 2000 and already has as many bowl wins as Indiana; and Syracuse’s storied history includes legends like Jim Brown and Greg Paulus. That’s how bleak things have been for Indiana football. The best player in program history (running back Anthony Thompson) played in 37 NFL games and scored just six touchdowns. The most famous player in school history (Antwaan Randle El) set all sorts of records for total yards (passing and rushing) and touchdowns, yet still went just 16-28 in his four years in Bloomington. I can’t stress it enough: Football season exists at Indiana solely for students to prepare their livers for basketball season. Which brings me to the present, with no. 2 Ohio State visiting Bloomington and bringing the eyes of the college football world with it for what feels like the biggest Hoosiers football game of all time. Regardless of whether that label is accurate (it’s not—the 2014 game against Purdue to determine who was the Big Ten’s worst team was far more important), the point remains: Indiana fans may try to trick themselves into believing that Thursday could signal the beginning of a new era. It’s easy to get mesmerized by this idea that maybe—just maybe—the Hoosiers can pull off the miracle upset with all of America watching, raise the program’s national profile, and finally get something cooking in Bloomington. I would offer this bit of caution to Indiana fans: Don’t do that. Since College GameDay started broadcasting from college campuses in the fall of 1993, unranked teams have hosted the show in the lead-up to a game against a ranked opponent 14 times. Unsurprisingly, the hosts have gone 3-11 in those contests. (The three wins were Miami beating no. 3 UCLA in 1998, Oregon upsetting no. 6 UCLA in 2000, and USC defeating no. 5 Stanford in 2013. Both Miami and USC had multiple future first-round NFL draft picks on
Qwickrazor has done it again and this time he has released a new exploit for 3.55fw. The game that is needed for this exploit is Mimana Iyar Chronicle for the US as of right, now the JP version is on the back burner until more testing is done. So now is your chance to get ecfw on your PSVita or PSTV if you missed out on the last exploit. Now the email trick has been patched in 3.55FW. So just like the previous releases for PHP, PuzzleScape and so on which you can read here. Now you are going to transfer both saves to the PSVita or PSTV via CMA or Qcma and follow the readme below. README: “Just run Mimana Iyar Chronicle and load game save then press Triangle to bring up menu. Go to settings and go to Party then go back and go to Positions. If not done in that order then the exploit will not work. You should see 1 of 3 colors: red (failed to open pboot) yellow (failed to install pboot), or green. If it flashes green then backup the Mimana Iyar Chronicle game to your PC via CMA or Qcma then restore it back to your Vita. You should now see ARK in the Live Area where Mimana Iyar Chronicle was previously, you should now be able to run ARK from there.” Download: Mimana Iyar Chronicle Download mirror: Mimana Iyar Chronicle Now if you want to you could swap out the pboot for the TN-V11 but I wouldn’t recommend it. Your best bet is to go with Ark and then you could place the TN-V11 pboot into any other psp game you would like. Just make sure you backup your game first before you do any of this, so you can always have the original game before you inject the pboot into Mimana Iyar Chronicle. Let’s not forget to thank qwikrazor87 as this wouldn’t be possible, to enjoy these easy to use bubbles. You can donate to him via pay pals here www.paypal.com every little bit show how much we enjoy his work. source:The GSM Association organizes the annual Mobile World Congress and along with it the traditional Global Mobile Awards (its 19th edition this year). More than 175 independent analysts, journalists, academics and subject matter experts throughout the world participated in the judging process. The entry deadline was November 29, 2013, so it's generally last year's products that get awarded every February. There's a multitude of categories, some of which may sound pretty obscure unless you are in the telco business, so we've shortlisted the few categories that we think would matter most to mobile phone enthusiasts (such as ourselves). The HTC One was named the Best Smartphone in the past year. The other nominees, which were considered, were the Apple iPhone 5S, the LG G2, the Lumia 1020 and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. Last year's winner was the Samsung Galaxy SIII. "The HTC One remained one of the most advanced smartphones throughout 2013. Its great design and excellent user interface continue to provide a differentiated user experience, standing out from the competition." The Nokia Lumia 520 was announced as the Best Low-Cost Smartphone (sub-$150 wholesale price). The rest of the considered nominees were all Android smartphones and included the Lenovo A390T, the Samsung Galaxy Young, the Sony Xperia E, and the Xiaomi Hongmi. "A smartphone that hasnt compromised on quality a trailblazer for Nokias low-cost efforts." The Nokia 105 was announced Best Entry-level or Featurephone. The other nominees were the Nokia 208, the Nokia 515, the Nokia Asha 210, and the Nokia Asha 503. Last year the winner was the Nokia Asha 305. "Outstanding value for money, with impressive durability and battery life, this is driving mobile penetration into further markets." The Apple iPad Air was pointed as the Best Mobile Tablet. The other nominees were the Apple iPad mini 2, the Google Nexus 7 (2013) and the Sony Xperia Tablet Z. At last year's awards it was the original Google Nexus 7 made by Asus. "The iPad Air packs class-leading performance in an attractive and svelte frame, while its ecosystem has an undisputed advantage in the number of format-optimized apps." LG was named the Most Innovative Device Manufacturer of the Year. Last year that was Samsung. "Impressive across the board with ground-breaking innovation LG is flexing its technological muscle." The FiLIP wearable locator and phone watch for kids, sold exclusively by AT&T in the US, was announced as the Best Mobile-Enabled Consumer Electronics Device. Sony's SmartWatch 2 was another wearable device among the nominated for this category. Last year it was the Samsung Galaxy Camera that won this one. "The FiLIP is a new breed of self-reliant wearable device that is a simple way for kids to reach their parents, and for parents to find their children quickly and easily. FiLIP affords parents peace of mind with the ability to quickly call and locate their children. This is a really well designed product fulfilling a clear market need and making a complex solution very simple for the user." As for the mobile app awards, DEVICE 6 was announced as the Best Entertainment App (Gaming, Music, Sports, Video), CityMapper was called the Best Overall Mobile App, while CamMe was named the Most Innovative Mobile App. You can check out the full list of winners here. Be sure to check back with us tomorrow, February 26, as that's when the Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet at Mobile World Congress 2014 will be announced. Which one would you pick? Via \| SourceWorry Dolls are tiny, hand-crafted dolls from Guatemala. The dolls are clothed in traditional Mayan costumes and stand one-half to 2 inches tall. Guatemalan artisans bind pieces of wood together or twist together short lengths of wire to create a frame and fashion a torso, legs, arms, and head. By winding cloth and yarn around the frame, the artisans give the doll shape. They use scraps of traditional woven fabric to make the doll costumes and wind more yarn to create the head, hair, feet and hands. Sometimes, they add a tiny woven basket or other traditional implements. Finally, they place a set of 6-12 dolls in tiny wooden boxes or cloth pouches for sale. The indigenous people from the Highlands in Guatemala created Worry Dolls many generations ago as a remedy for worrying. According to the Mayan legend, when worrying keeps a person awake, he or she tells a worry to as many dolls as necessary. Then the worrier places the dolls under his or her pillow. The dolls take over the worrying for the person who then sleeps peacefully through the night. When morning breaks, the person awakens without the worries that the dolls took away during the night. A variation of the legend instructs a person to tell the dolls her worries then place them in their cloth pouch or wooden box before going to bed. Shamans Market offers these dolls in several variations, including, the tiny ones in a pouch or box and the larger 2” in sets of 12 alone or in a traditional Guatemalan drawstring pouch. The Story In the hills outside a small city, lived an old man with his daughter, Flora, and her two children, Maria and Diego. Like most Guatemalan people they had no electricity and no running water. They lived together in a small, one room thatched hut of mud and wood. The home was heated with a large fire in the middle of the room. Grandfather had taught them all to be excellent farmers just like their Mayan ancestors. This year was very bad, as a drought had prevented most of the crops from growing. Even though the ancient Mayans had developed methods of building giant underground storage tanks to hold water just in case of drought, this farm had none. Despite being very poor, the family was usually happy. They all worked very hard and they were thankful for the colorful clothes that Flora was able to make them. The children enjoyed and learned much from their grandfather’s stories. They all worked together to survive. They would all wake up with the Sun and tend to the fields, just in case it rained. Then they would spend time gathering lots of firewood. Maria and Diego would then go to school for the day. It was hard for them because the teacher taught in Spanish which was not what they spoke at home. Some of their friends were there, but several of them didn’t go to school because they needed to stay home and help their parents. Because of the drought, it was very hard to gather enough food for the day. For dinner, the children would grind some maize and Mom would use it to make tortillas for the family. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t prevent them from getting hungry the next day. After dinner, when the chores were done, Mother would go back to weaving and the children would kiss the hands of Grandfather and bow to him as they asked him to tell one of his stories. As grandfather told his story they would lay back in their hammocks and listen. Grandfather’s stories were the best because they were true. His stories had been handed down word by word from his grandfather and his grandfather’s grandfather. Diego had already heard the stories enough to repeat them, but he would have to wait until he had children who wanted to hear them. They listened proudly to their heritage as grandfather described how the ancients had mapped the stars long before anyone else in the world. They were captivated by hearing that their ancestors had developed mathematics long before anyone else in the world. The Mayans developed the concept of zero being a number. The Mayans had a system based on 20 as opposed to the modern system of 10. Maria liked the way grandfather would count to twenty by wiggling her ten fingers then her ten toes. Best of all was when grandfather would describe the silly things. They giggled out loud as he would describe people tying boards to youngster’s foreheads because they believed a flat forehead to be a sign of beauty. Diego almost fell out of his hammock as he laughed at his grandfather acting out how the ancients used to hang a bead of wax in front of their baby’s eyes in order to make the child cross eyed. They thought it was another sign of beauty. As sleep was almost near for his grandchildren, grandfather would describe how the ancient Mayans would perform sacrifices or bloodletting as an offering to any one of their 166 gods. At this point in the story, Maria would always reach up and shake Diego’s hammock to try and scare him. It always worked. The scream was also a signal to mom that it was time to put the weaving away and go to sleep. Flora put all her wonderful cloth into a basket underneath her son’s hammock and went to bed. While sleeping, Maria dreamed of flying with a Quetzal, a long tailed bird which is the national bird of Guatemala. In ancient times the bird was thought to be a spiritual protector of the chiefs and it was a capital offense, punishable by death to kill one. Diego heard Maria making bird noises in her sleep and looked over the edge of his hammock to make fun of her. He was immediately startled by the outline of a thief grabbing his mother’s cloth and running out of the house. “A — A ROBBER!” Diego screamed. His mother and grandfather woke up startled. “Where?” Maria asked. “He just ran out with all mother’s cloth!” Sure enough, the cloth was gone. Flora began to cry, “That was two season’s worth of work! Now I’ll have nothing to sell at the market!” Flora sobbed the rest of the night. >When the children were leaving for school the next day, Mother was still laying in her hammock and was coming down with a fever. Grandfather would stay with her. When the children returned from school in the afternoon, mother’s fever was worse and they were nearly out of food. Maria said, “Diego we need to help! I have an idea.” Maria looked in the basket mother kept her cloth in. She was looking for anything that might be left. All that remained in the basket were several scraps of cloth in odd colors and odd shapes. Maria took the basket outside and dragged her brother along. “Go collect small twigs and bring them here,” she asked him. Diego whined and said “Wwwhhhy?” “We have to help mother.” Maria replied. He scampered off to go find twigs without another word. Maria began organizing scraps of cloth, sorting them by color and size. When Diego returned with the twigs, they both started working. When mother or grandfather asked what they were doing, they said it was a secret. Mother was still running a fever and grandfather was trying to make her feel better. The kids kept working. Late in the night, they ran out of cloth scraps. When they looked at what they had made, they saw dozens of little tiny dolls in little tiny clothes. They had also made little pouches for the dolls to sleep in. As they packaged the dolls up, six in a pouch, Maria remembered one of grandfather’s stories about a magical doll who would grant its owner several wishes. The thought that these dolls were magical was funny to Maria, but for some reason she actually felt it was true. She hoped for her family’s sake that they were magical. Maria selected her favorite colored pouch and pulled each of the dolls from it. She lined them up in the palm of her hand and began speaking to them. “Good night my tiny friends, my family is in trouble and we need your help. Our fields are dried up, my mother is sick, we have no food or money, and my mother’s cloth was stolen. We need your help little ones.” Maria placed the dolls back in the pouch then placed them under her pillow. She was able to sleep very soundly that night, and when she awoke, the dolls were out of the pouch and all laid out in a circle on the table. “I was certain I put them in the pouch under my pillow last night,” she said to herself. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she convinced herself she must have imagined putting them under her pillow. That morning, Maria and Diego prepared to go to the market. They put all the doll pouches into a large wrap that can be used as a bag or a head covering and began walking to market. Mother managed to get out of her hammock and said, “Where are you going? They replied, “To market.” While Mother puzzled over what they would do there, Grandfather wished them good luck. As Maria and Diego made the long walk to market they encountered many people. They made sure to say “Hi how are you?” It would be considered rude to not say hello. The people would reply,”Fine thank you.” The two of them walked along barefoot, without complaining. Secretly they both wished they had the sandals that many other people used for long walks, but they knew they could not afford that luxury. Maria’s thoughts turned to bargaining. She had seen her mother and grandfather do it, but she had never had to do it herself. It was expected at the market that people would barter for a fair price. She worried that she would not have the skills needed to barter. Even if she could, what was a fair price for little dolls? She had never seen anyone sell them before. She decided to make up a price as she was bartering. For now, she focused on getting a good spot at the market. A good location would make all the difference she thought to herself. She did find a good spot, it was at the end of an aisle right next to a shoe seller. As they laid out their dolls on the sidewalk, the shoe seller recognized them and asked them where their mother was with her beautiful cloth. They told him of what had happened. Then Maria informed him that all they had to sell today were these dolls. The shoe seller examined the tiny dolls and puzzled over why someone would want such small dolls. Maria piped up and said there was magic in the dolls. The shoe seller laughed and said there was magic in his shoes too but that wouldn’t help them sell. “We shall see” said Maria, “we shall see.” As the day dragged on, sales were not going well, the market was almost closing for the day and they hadn’t sold any dolls. They were both getting worried. As Maria began putting away her dolls, a man dressed in fine clothes and a large hat in a very soft slow vice that is typical of Guatemalans asked “What are you selling?” “Just these little dolls,” Diego said. “Magic Dolls!” chimed Maria. The man adjusted his hat and with a smirk said “Magic huh? I could use a little magic. I’ll take them all!” They hurriedly wrapped up the dolls and he handed them a wad of money. “Thank you.” said Maria. The stranger said, “You’re welcome,” and was gone before Maria could turn around and start bartering for how much change he would get back. She counted the money in disbelief. 6,600quetzals! (~$940) That’s enough for us to live on for a year she exclaimed! She was not exaggerating. Diego started jumping up and down at the thought of being able to eat tonight. He and Maria bought some food and then headed for home. As they walked, they chewed on chicle which is a natural gum that comes from tree sap (and that’s where Chiclets gum came from). “Yes we did, we sold dolls!” Diego screamed. “Magic Dolls,” Maria added. They explained everything to mother and grandfather. Mother said, “It doesn’t sound like magic, it sounds like my children worked very hard.” “But how do you explain that you are feeling better?” asked grandfather. “That’s just the way trouble is,” exclaimed Flora, “sometimes it just comes and goes.” “How do you explain the rain?” yelled Diego. “What rain?” they all asked. “THAT rain,” he pointed. Sure enough, the fields were getting rained on as they were talking. The drought was over. When Maria was getting ready for bed she noticed something in her pocket, when she pulled it out, it was the same pouch of dolls she had spoken to the night before. How had they gotten there? She was sure she sold them to the man. In the pouch she found a tiny little note that said, “Tell these dolls your secret wishes. Tell them your problems. Tell them your dreams. And when you awake, you may find the magic within you to make your dreams come true.” There was no name on the note, just a little drawing of a man in a big hat. The mysterious stranger. 1. Source: www.tc.umn.edu/~mcdo0151/legend.html and http://www.sciencejoywagon.com/kwirt/Getty Images Bears linebacker Jon Bostic was fined $21,000 for a hit on Chargers wide receiver Mike Willie, and teammates are already speaking out to complain that Bostic was doing nothing more than playing good, clean physical football. It’s only minor consolation, but there is one piece of good news for Bostic: He won’t actually get $21,000 taken out of his paycheck. That’s because Bostic’s salary this season is $405,000, meaning that his 17 weekly paychecks come out to $23,823.53 before taxes. Under NFL rules, players can appeal fines and have them reduced to no more than 25 percent of their weekly pay. As a practical matter, the most a player making $405,000 a year can be fined for any one hit is $5,955, which is 25 percent of one weekly paycheck. So once Bostic is done with his appeal, his fine will likely be reduced by about $15,000. Of course, many would argue that Bostic (who wasn’t flagged for the hit) did nothing wrong in the first place, and that on appeal his fine should be reduced to zero.Apparently, a TSA officer getting fired for leaving a personalized note in a passenger's bag has not deterred other employees at the Transportation Security Administration from editorializing on the contents of the bags they screen. This time, though, the TSA officer did the passenger a favor, by not turning him in for traveling with illegal substances. Indiana rapper Freddie Gibbs had packed marijuana in his checked luggage; when his bag was screened, the TSA officer must have noted Gibbs' unique interpretation of the "mile high club." On the official note informing Gibbs that his bag had been inspected, the officer allegedly wrote, "C'mon son." Gibbs did not take the avuncular advice very seriously, instead providing photographic evidence of his possession and transportation of illegal substances over state lines via Twitter: Gibbs tweeted about the note on Wednesday, likely after flying to Denver to perform that night. While certainly a less intrusive note than "Get Your Freak On, Girl" (the one left by a TSA officer who discovered a vibrator), I imagine this TSA officer is going to get into double trouble for both leaving the note, and failing to act after finding something illegal in someone's bag. "TSA takes all allegations of inappropriate conduct seriously and is investigating this claim," says a spokesperson for the TSA. " Should the claims be substantiated, TSA will take appropriate disciplinary steps and refer the alleged possession of an illegal substance to law enforcement." Friends, this is why we don't tweet evidence that can be used against us (and those who did us a favor) in a court of law. Given that two notes to figures with large online audiences have surfaced, I'm now starting to wonder how often other people (without Twitter accounts or blogs to showcase their notes) are getting personalized messages from officers. Hat tip: Chris Barth.(CNN) -- Laura Edmonds has a look of horror on her face as she turns to look out the airplane window. "I'm not crazy about that shake," she exclaims before putting her hand on her heart and closing her eyes. "I'm going to think about my good place," which for Edmonds is her memory of bonding with her son right after his birth. Edmonds, a 44-year old realtor from Connecticut, has an intense fear of flying like many fliers. It's not the threat of terrorism that worries her, but rather the possibility of mechanical failure. She says she imagines the plane plunging to the ground because the engines may fall off. So every few minutes she glances out the window to make sure they're still attached. It is a fear that has gripped her for 18 years, since her wedding day, when she says she obsessed about the flight she would take the following day for her honeymoon to Italy. "I couldn't enjoy my wedding day. I had this wonderful wedding surrounded by love and family but the only thing I could think about was the next day," said Edmonds. Since then she has tried drugs and cocktails to make it through flights. But, she says, they've been no help in easing her anxiety. She has dragged her family on the train from Connecticut to Florida, insisted on long drives and tried to avoid flying at all costs. Even when friends fly, Edmonds says she worries, counting the hours till they arrive at their destination. It's been three years since Edmonds has stepped on a plane. Yet here she is now, 20,000 feet above the ground onboard a turbo-prop that's en route from New York's LaGuardia Airport to Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland. She is hoping this is the flight that will overcome her fear. "I feel the seat. I feel the seat against my arm. I feel my hands," recites Edmonds, her eyes still closed. She is attempting to redirect her mind, one of several so-called "strengthening exercises" she recently learned from a video course designed to overcome fear of flying. The idea is to focus on the moment, rather than the abstract. Former Pan Am and United pilot Tom Bunn is president of the company that produced the videos and that instructs clients in the basic mechanics of flying and teaches them to control their thoughts. "Most of my work is how do I keep them from imagining the things that they believe are happening when they are not," said Bunn, whose company is SOAR Inc. "When they can tell the difference between imagination and reality...they are going to be OK." Before boarding the U.S. Airways flight, Edmonds presents a letter from Bunn to the flight attendant asking to speak with the captain. The pilot gladly obliges, telling her he's been flying for more than two decades and assuring her, "You're going to be fine. We're going to take good care of you." During takeoff Edmonds looks to the flight attendant for reassurance. On her lap is a loose-leaf binder of Bunn's tips, Edmond's version of a study guide for her flight. When the flight attendant offers drinks, Edmonds places her cup of water on the tray table and studies it, tangible evidence that the plane is barely shaking. Yet another coping strategy is breaking down the flight into pieces, like eating a hamburger bite-by-bite. "If you think about it in small pieces and getting through each of the pieces, that's a little easier than thinking of the whole hamburger because it's very overwhelming and it becomes paralyzing," said Edmonds. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching Baltimore," announces the flight attendant. Edmond is relying heavily on Bunn's coping strategies during the 90-minute flight. But she's coping. As the wheels touch down, Edmonds' face lights up. "Yay! I did it," she exclaims to the pilot. "Congratulations," he responds. Back on solid ground, Laura Edmonds exults. "I feel so uplifted. I feel really proud of myself. I'm not trapped. I don't feel so paralyzed." So much so that Edmonds claims she's ready to fly to the Caribbean for a vacation on the island of St. Barts. "It'll take some doing," she said, "but I'm ready to go!"The recent re-release of Napoleon, Abel Gance’s awe-inspiring 1927 biopic, puts most other films in the shade. Few films can boast its giant scale, monumental themes and bold sweep through history, let alone its technical innovations and high-pitched drama. Many viewers may find it hard to believe that this film, which runs for an impressive five and a half hours in the present restoration, was made in the silent era. But while the movies started out small, it wasn’t long before filmmakers developed big ideas and grand ambitions. The silent era can boast some of the most memorable epic films ever made. The epic was born when the cinema was barely in its teens. In 1907, the first, unofficial, and rather cheap, film adaptation of Ben-Hur was produced by the American Kalem Company. At 15 minutes long, it couldn’t hope to reach the same narrative dimensions as the novel, but it did rustle up a chariot race, filmed on a New Jersey beach. In 1914, D.W. Griffith created a proper American epic when he directed Judith of Bethulia, a biblical tale starring Blanche Sweet and Henry B. Walthall. At an hour long, the film felt seriously substantial, and the US reviewers were hugely impressed, with Motion Picture World calling it a “fascinating work of high artistry”. However, the Italian film industry beat Griffith to the mark, with the two-hour-long Quo Vadis?, released in 1913. This story of Emperor Nero’s tyranny was written and directed by Enrico Guazzoni and can stake full claim to being a blockbuster, with 5,000 extras milling about some stunning, and vast, sets. Cabiria (1914) Director Giovanni Pastrone Even Quo Vadis? was overshadowed the following year though, with Giovanni Pastrone’s stunning Cabiria, a film running for more than three hours and featuring such memorable scenes as Mount Etna erupting, Hannibal’s trek across the alps, Archimedes harnessing the sun’s rays and the fall of Carthage to the Romans, as well as the gruesome sacrifice of infant children to the god Moloch (an image that Fritz Lang paid tribute to in Metropolis). The film revolves around the story of one young girl, Cabiria, a kidnapped princess who becomes a slave. It’s a truly big film, bustling with an excess of characters and action, which in places feels remarkably modern, not least because of its generous use of a moving camera, including some effective tracking shots. With Cabiria, according to experts including Martin Scorsese, Pastrone truly invented the epic film. It also made a star of an Italian dockworker called Bartolomeo Pagano, who starred in a subsequent series of films as his mighty Cabiria character Maciste. Intolerance (1916) Director D.W. Griffith For Griffith, the epic was an enduring interest, with many of his films living up to that billing, from his notorious The Birth of a Nation (1915) to the lush melodrama Orphans of the Storm (1921), set during the French Revolution. But Intolerance is the quintessential Griffith epic: weaving together four stories from different time periods, and culminating in a race-to-the-rescue, with the tension increased by the director’s famous use of cross-cutting. The stories, set in modern America, Biblical Judea, 16th-century France and the Babylonian Empire are linked by Lillian Gish playing a representation of eternal motherhood, and sharpened by brisk intertitles courtesy of Anita Loos. Griffith had seen Cabiria and wanted to create something even more spectacular. Pastrone’s influence can be seen in the enhanced scale of the American director’s sets, including the towering Great Wall of Babylon. The film cost an astronomical sum (possibly around $2.5m to make), much of which Griffith contributed himself. However, Intolerance’s feeble performance at the box office contributed both to his future financial troubles and to the rapid decline of his studio, Triangle. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) Director Rex Ingram Rex Ingram’s powerful anti-war film made a star out of its sexy leading man, Rudolph Valentino, and elevated June Mathis, the screenwriter who championed him, to a platform of power in the industry. Her name will recur in the story of the silent epic. It also launched the career of director Ingram in earnest. He had aimed high with this film, an adaptation of a hit Spanish novel about the First World War, intending “to picture not only the dramatic action, but to give it some of the merit of art”. Best remembered now for the star-making tango sequence near the beginning, this intergenerational, cross-continental story held powerful resonances for audiences when it was released just three years after the end of the war. The enthusiasm of critics and the public guaranteed it a box office return, and prompted a run of Hollywood epics, including similarly bold war films such as The Big Parade (1925) and Wings (1927). The Ten Commandments (1923) Director Cecil B. DeMille Cecil B. DeMille was every bit as comfortable in the epic mode as Griffith. His 1923 film is not quite the biblical tale that the title advertises, though. Moses and his stone tablet feature in a 50-minute prologue using two-strip Technicolor, which contains scenes of the exodus of the Jews and the parting of the Red Sea. The remaining hour and a half of the film, however, is a contemporary story, a modern-day morality tale, in which the commandments are tested. Richard Dix and Rod La Rocque play brothers, one a devout carpenter who has absorbed his mother’s scriptural teachings and the other a corrupt businessman who precipitates a terrible accident when he builds a church with weak foundations. DeMille had mixed ancient and modern before in lighter, secular fare such as Male and Female (1919). Audiences loved The Ten Commandments, and DeMille followed it with two more biblical films (The King of Kings, 1927 and The Sign of the Cross, 1932), creating his own Christian trilogy. Die Nibelungen (1924) Directors Fritz Lang Some stories are so colossal that only a Wagner opera or a Fritz Lang epic will do them justice in adaptation. Two films, each weighing in at well over two hours each make up Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Kriemhild’s Revenge. Thea von Harbou crafted the epic poem into a monumental screenplay, and her husband Lang directed with geometric precision and elaborate scope, allowing a certain theatricality to reflect the chivalric subject. It’s a tumultuous, violent story, with space for some affecting scenes of grief and sorrow too. The special effects, including a dragon and some supernatural superimpositions are neatly achieved, but it’s the palace conflagration at the end that steals the show. That this magnificent adventure can be seen as a hymn to German nationhood is troubling in hindsight, but its lasting influence is on the spectacles and heroic quests of contemporary fantasy cinema. Greed (1924) Director Erich von Stroheim No Biblical or classical settings here, but simply a nauseating investigation into human frailty. Erich von Stroheim claimed that the original cut of his adaptation of Frank Norris’s brilliant novel McTeague was formed of 47 reels. That’s about nine and a half hours of running time. Samuel Goldwyn had June Mathis trim it to a brisk 10 reels, but you can now watch a restoration that is nearer to four hours in length. It’s brilliantly shot, and the lure of filthy lucre is symbolised by an eerie gold glow effect. Even cut down, it’s a searing work, with crushing performances from Gibson Gowland and ZaSu Pitts as McTeague and Trina, a couple torn apart by avarice. Jean Hersholt co-stars as the friend who becomes McTeague’s worst enemy, and the final scene in which they are shackled together in the desert, trapped by their own worst impulses, is unforgettable. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) Director Fred Niblo The first official Ben-Hur film was one of the most famously troubled Hollywood shoots of all time, switching filming locations, directors and even stars mid-production. Ramon Novarro played the title role, June Mathis adapted the Lew Wallace novel into a blockbuster screenplay, and Fred Niblo was the last director standing. One assistant director was William Wyler, who shot his own epic Ben-Hur in 1959. The chariot race is a genuine highlight, which film historian Kevin Brownlow contends should be given the same importance as the Odessa Steps in Battleship Potemkin (1925). According to Hollywood lore, many of the era’s biggest stars, from Mary Pickford to Harold Lloyd swell the numbers in the amphitheatre. The sea battle is just as epic though, and the most spectacular effect is the two-strip Technicolor used for the scenes with Jesus. While Ben-Hur was well received by critics and audiences, it failed to turn a profit for MGM, which had spent heavily on the production and the rights to the novel. The Chess Player (1927) Director Raymond Bernard Political revolution takes its place alongside classic and Bible stories as a staple of the epic film. The uprising against the Russians in late 18th-century Polish Lithuania is the setting for The Chess Player, Raymond Bernard’s ingenious French drama that uses as its basis a controversial invention by a Hungarian engineer called Wolfgang von Kempelen. Kempelen invented a prototype chess computer, which appeared to be an ingenious automaton capable of defeating even the sharpest opponents. In reality a chess grandmaster was concealed in the cabinet, figuring out the moves the old-fashioned way. In the film, the machine is used to smuggle a Polish revolutionary to Germany. It’s a sumptuous, pictorial movie, with the largest of its sets, Catherine the Great’s Winter Palace, taking up 5,000 square metres of studio real estate. The Chess Player was beautifully restored in 1990, along with its orchestral score by Henri Rabaud. Napoleon (1927) Director Abel Gance Abel Gance had made big films before, the haunting anti-war movie J’accuse (1919) and the railway-set melodrama La Roue (1923), but nothing could touch the size of his plans for Napoleon. We may not have the full film still, as scenes including the graphic execution of prisoners after Toulon remain missing. But what we do have is a majestic statement of directorial ambition and patriotic sentiment, expressed with unrelenting cinematic creativity, fluidity and technical accomplishment. The experience of watching this film, especially when it bursts out of its own frame into widescreen tricolour “Polyvision” is a momentous one. Further, it reveals the true purpose of the epic form: the desire to communicate to the audience a history, and a passion, too big for conventional cinema. October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928) Director Sergei M. Eisenstein Sergei Eisenstein’s October is an epic with a purpose, an anniversary celebration of the 1917 insurgency, charged with renewing the revolutionary spirit. It’s an enthralling, violent spectacle, and not exactly what the Soviet authorities had in mind. Eisenstein, who had used the film to further explore his theories of “intellectual montage” was accused of bringing too much “formalism” to the exercise. Added to which, he was asked to remove all references to Leon Trotsky, who had recently fallen foul of Joseph Stalin. It’s a masterpiece of righteous action cinema, running to nearly three hours in the latest restoration, with sequences so exciting they could transcend politics, if needed. The “raising of the bridge” scene near the beginning of the film is brutal, with its martyred white horse hanging over the Neva river, the flash cuts signifying cannon fire, and the cross-cuts to the venal bourgeoisie attacking a man with umbrellas.LL staff note: Recent information was posted by police, saying this was an arrest made by undercover cops. www.diariodemexico.com.mx/justifica-pgjdf-secuestro-en-ocean I leave you with this video filmed in front of Mexico City Metro where youcan as a group of alleged kidnappers took two guys from a truck by force. The crime occurred right under the nose of a policeman who stood there stunned and did nothing. The criminals werecarrying guns and were in a van accompanied by another car. Theperson who filmed the video says : "I want to raise a complaint to thefederal police and they made me wait 1 hour, did not serve me andpretended nothing was wrong. Thelady who did not want to attend me, is a woman with curly hair is from the federal police of the airport and still walking super slow, as if nothinghad happened. "Thisis the second video in just a few
Baiji’s refinery,” the colonel said, adding 12 militants had been killed. Baiji resident Sultan al-Janabi told Reuters by telephone from his house that clashes had been raging since the advance, the first time security forces reached the city centre since launching a new encirclement strategy at the end of last month. BAGHDADI’S FATE UNCLEAR Major Curtis Kellogg, spokesman at the U.S. military’s Central Command, said it had no information to corroborate press reports that Baghdadi was wounded in any strike on the city of Mosul in the north and al-Qaim to the west. “We cannot confirm that Baghdadi was present when we struck the convoy near Mosul on Friday night,” he said. “We conducted two airstrikes near Al Qaim Friday evening destroying an ISIL armoured vehicle and two ISIL checkpoints but we’re not aware of another gathering of ISIL leaders in Al Qaim.” View of an eastern Kobani neighborhood destroyed by the fighting between Islamic state and Kurdish forces on November 10, 2014. REUTERS/Osman Orsal ISIL is the acronym of another name for Islamic State. A Twitter account claimed Baghdadi had been wounded but other accounts that support Islamic State said the report was untrue. A member of western Anbar Province’s security committee said he had heard unconfirmed reports that Baghdadi had been wounded and moved to Syria. Several other Anbar officials gave contradictory reports on Baghdadi’s fate. Even if Baghdadi were killed, Iraq would still face the challenge of defeating a group which quickly defeated its military in the north in June and is determined to expand a self-proclaimed caliphate. The United States, which fought Islamic State’s predecessor al Qaeda during the American occupation of Iraq, will send up to 1,500 more troops to train Iraqi forces. Britain also plans to send trainers. U.S. air strikes, launched after Islamic State beheaded Western hostages, have slowed down the Sunni insurgents and enabled Iraqi security forces to make some gains. POLICE GENERAL KILLED On Friday night, a suicide bomber rammed a truck packed with explosives into a Humvee transporting senior police commander General Faisal Malik, one of the supervisors of the campaign against Islamic State militants surrounding the refinery. The general and two policemen were killed. The truck used in the attack was armoured, the army colonel and a provincial police command centre said, suggesting Islamic State had seized it from defeated Iraqi troops. Tanks and anti-aircraft weapons have also been taken. The army colonel estimated that Iraqi forces had taken about 40 percent of the city centre. That could not be independently confirmed. Iraqi security forces have used helicopters to attack Islamic State insurgents surrounding the refinery. But months of operations have failed to rescue comrades trapped inside and ensure the strategic site will not fall into the hands of Islamic State, who have used oil and fuel to fund their self-proclaimed caliphate. Iraqi oil industry officials estimate Islamic State is making multimillion-dollar profits from the illegal trade. Slideshow (8 Images) Government forces, including counter-terrorism units, inside the compound have been surviving on airdrops as military forces outside tried to drive Islamic State militants away. The Baiji refinery was producing around 175,000 barrels per day before it was closed, a senior Iraqi official said in June. Iraq’s domestic daily consumption is estimated at 600,000-700,000 bpd.(CNN) -- A former California police officer accused of sexually assaulting a motorist during a traffic stop pleaded guilty in federal court, federal prosecutors said Friday. Federal prosecutors charged Feliciano Sanchez with deprivation of rights under color of law. Feliciano Sanchez, 34, admitted in court Thursday that while on duty on May 16, 2007, he pulled over a female driver in a traffic stop and forced her to perform oral sex on him, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien, who heads the office for the Central District. Sanchez, then of Los Angeles County's Bell Police Department, stopped the woman for speeding or weaving down the road, said central California U.S. attorney spokesman Thom Mrozek, citing court documents. After learning the woman, identified as R.H. in court documents, did not have a driver's license with her, Sanchez told her he suspected her of drinking and her car would be towed, Mrozek said. Sanchez offered to drive R.H. to her job, but instead drove her to the parking lot of an auto repair outlet in Bell, Mrozek said. Sanchez placed his hand on his gun and forced her to perform sex on him in his patrol car, Mrozek said. Afterward, Sanchez drove R.H. to her work place, Mrozek said. "Officer Sanchez brutalized a person he had sworn to serve," O'Brien said in the release. "As a result of his criminal conduct, Mr. Sanchez now faces a substantial amount of time in federal prison. His conduct eroded public confidence in law enforcement and cast a pall over his former colleagues who obey the law, proudly working to preserve public safety." Federal prosecutors charged Sanchez with a civil rights violation, according to the release. The crime carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison upon sentencing. Sanchez has been held without bond since his arrest in May 2007, Mrozek said. Sanchez's sentencing is scheduled for November 18. Sanchez resigned as an officer after his indictment, Bell Police Department Capt. Anthony Miranda said. Miranda said Sanchez's case was a first for the department. "We were in shock, and actually, disbelief," he said. All About Sexual Offenses • Los Angeles CountyIn 2007 Queens Park Rangers, a small Football Club of West London, were bottom of England's Second League and 2 hours from bankruptcy. Just as the club faced liquidation, they were bought by billionaire businessmen. Filmed in an observational fashion from a poetic distance, the documentary follows the larger than life and high profile characters who put their money and reputations on the line through 4 tumultuous years of enormous ups and downs. For 98 dramatic minutes we are given unprecedented access and remarkable insight into the worlds of sport, business, finance, power and ego - culminating in success in 2011, when QPR won promotion to the Premier League and the four year plan - set out by the owners in 2007 - was spectacularly achieved. Written by AnonymousAs it approaches its 25th anniversary,.ca has more than celebration on its mind. There’s also survival. This country’s leading domain extension is heading into its second year of beating the.com behemoth as the top choice of new registrants in Canada, but serious competition lies ahead. New options coming on board could include.online,.lol and.style, leaving.ca fighting to maintain market share. By next summer, hundreds of new top-level domains approved by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the California-based regulator which polices the web, should start rolling out. Article Continued Below “I’d say it probably presents one of the biggest challenges that we’ve faced, because nobody knows exactly how this is going to play out,” said Byron Holland, president and CEO of Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) the non-profit which oversees the.ca system. “On the other hand, like anytime you deregulate an industry, which is sort of what’s going on here, there will be some consumer confusion, all of those new brands are going to have to figure out how to speak to people and attract new users.” He’s banking on the organization’s 25-year head start and reputation. “We’ve been the beneficiary of Canada having a pretty good brand lately,” said Holland. “We have a strong user base, a clear value proposition being Canadian and being very safe, secure and trusted in terms of the registry.” Canadianism is a factor: to qualify for.ca you have to be a registered Canadian business or institution, or a Canadian citizen, permanent resident or landed immigrant. Cassels Brock intellectual property lawyer John McKeown acknowledges.ca faces “increased competition. However, “I think they’re well positioned: they’ve got all the benefits of a geographical top level domain name, because for people who want to be associated with Canada, that’s the domain name of choice.” But naming specialist Naseem Javed, head of the Brampton-based ABC Namebank, believes the expanded domain name offerings will quickly usurp two-letter country codes, also known as strings. Article Continued Below “The country codes work well within your own geographic area, but they’re a disaster outside,” he said. “The domain names not designed for nationalistic purposes; they are really designed to get you more clicks, more hits, more business, more visibility.” Cities such as Barcelona and New York applied for their brand strings, and the Boston Globe Newspaper Company asked for.boston, but the only Canadian destination request before ICANN’s spring deadline was for.quebec. That request was by PointQuébec, which describes itself as a non-profit designed “to promote culture, tourism and commerce on the Internet.” There were 60,000.ca registrants when CIRA assumed control of it in 2000. CIRA, which now has 60 employees, grew that to a million registrants by 2008 and is on track to double that by the end of this year. Along the way, the annual wholesale registration price dropped from about $50 per year to $8.50. The.ca system was launched in 1987 by University of British Columbia volunteers who signed up the initial users —University of Prince Edward Island was first — a year later. “I’m not overdramatizing this to say it was a server under (manager of Computing Facilities at the Department of Computer Science) John Demco’s desk in the basement lab of UBC,” said Holland. “You’d send them an email with your information and they would literally, physically enter them one at a time.” Today,.ca is the world’s 14th-largest country code domain registry, with the fourth-highest growth rate among all domain registries over the past five years.Physicists have resurrected a particle that may have existed in the first hot moments after the Big Bang. Arcanely called Z c (3900), it is the first confirmed particle made of four quarks, the building blocks of much of the Universe’s matter. Until now, observed particles made of quarks have contained only three quarks (such as protons and neutrons) or two quarks (such as the pions and kaons found in cosmic rays). Although no law of physics precludes larger congregations, finding a quartet expands the ways in which quarks can be snapped together to make exotic forms of matter. “The particle came as a surprise,” says Zhiqing Liu, a particle physicist at the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing and a member of the Belle collaboration, one of two teams claiming the discovery in papers published this week in Physical Review Letters. Housed at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) in Tsukuba, Japan, the Belle detector monitors collisions between intense beams of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons. These crashes have one-thousandth the energy of those at the world’s most powerful accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, but they are still energetic enough to mimic conditions in the early Universe. Collision rates at KEK are more than twice those at the LHC, and they occasionally give birth to rare particles not found in nature today — ephemeral creatures that wink into existence for an instant and then fall to pieces. Some of that subatomic shrapnel matches what would be expected from the breakdown of a particle containing four quarks bound together: two especially heavy ‘charm’ quarks and two lighter quarks that give the particle a charge. With 159 of these Z c (3900) particles in hand, the Belle team reports that the chance that its result is a statistical fluke is less than 1 in 3.5 million. “They have clear evidence of a particle with four quarks,” says Riccardo Faccini, a particle physicist at the Sapienza University of Rome. Image: Courtesy of Nature magazine The new particle has also been vouched for by a second experiment, the Beijing Spectrometer III (BESIII) at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider. BESIII found 307 Z c (3900) particles, sifted from 10 trillion trillion electron–positron collisions. “This gives credence to all of the other particles that Belle has seen,” says Fred Harris, a particle physicist at the University of Hawaii in Manoa and a spokesman for BESIII. In 2008, Belle found another four-quark candidate, and in 2011, it saw two other particles that may have been made of four ‘bottom’ quarks — but no other particle colliders have confirmed those sightings. No one questions the number of quarks in the latest particle. More controversial is their arrangement, which could have implications for quantum chromodynamics, the theory describing the strong force that connects quarks. Theorists fall primarily into two camps. One side proposes that the particle is actually a union of two ordinary particles called mesons, which contain one quark and one antiquark. Z c (3900) particles could be made up of two mesons joined by a loose connection to form a molecule-like structure (see ‘Quark soup’). Other theorists have tentatively labelled the new particle a true tetraquark — four quarks stuck together tightly to form a compact ball. Within the ball, two quarks are bound together, as are two antiquarks. Such pairings do not occur in any known particle and would thus introduce new building blocks of matter — with the potential to guide computer simulations aimed at working out all the structures that quarks can form. Proponents of the tetraquark theory point out that a ‘molecule’ made of mesons should split easily into two halves, and that such a breakdown has not appeared in the data. “The signature of a molecule is not seen, which favours the tetraquark picture,” says Ahmed Ali, a particle physicist at DESY, Germany’s high-energy physics laboratory in Hamburg. But the experiments’ margin of error is still too great to rule out the possibility of molecular mesons breaking down. Another way to test the two theories would be to look for other particles that each predicts should exist. Hoping to end the debate, researchers at BESIII are continuing to dig through data collected since their first experimental run in December and January. Depending on what they find, the unmasking of Z c (3900) may have to wait for the new, more powerful version of the Belle detector planned to come online in 2015. This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on June 18, 2013.Obama Hopes To Alter Electoral Map Barack Obama's Democratic presidential campaign could alter the electoral map that decides the White House. Virginia has been a traditionally red state, but Obama has been working hard to make it a blue state. Other states that could swing Obama's way include Florida, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Iowa. STEVE INSKEEP, Host: Think of that choice in Virginia's mountains as one of many that affect a close vote for that state which in turn could alter the electoral map, which we'll talk about next. NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson is with us. And Mara, Virginia is one place where Democrats are competing where they haven't been able to in the past. Where else? MARA LIASSON: Well, there are a lot of places that all of a sudden Barack Obama is competing where Democrats didn't win last time. Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio is always a battleground state, New Mexico, Iowa looks very good for him. I mean, he has a lot of ways to get to 270 electoral votes. That's what's happened recently. The electoral map seems to be shifting in his direction. And even in states that are pure tossups, he is leading by a little bit in current statewide polling. INSKEEP: So Barack Obama's got the money to gamble a little bit on some of these states to take a chance and see if he can get over the 270 electoral votes that decide the election. What about John McCain? LIASSON: John McCain has a much narrower path to winning. He just pulled out of a very important state, Michigan, one of those blue states that he had hoped to turn red. He needs to hang on to everything that Bush got in 2004. And assuming that Barack Obama is going to pick up a couple of those Bush states, he needed to win some blue states. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New Hampshire were all places where McCain had hoped to be competitive. Michigan just dropped off the list. Pennsylvania is looking more and more solid for Obama. So is Minnesota and Wisconsin. He just has fewer resources to play with, and that's why he has to drop out of a state like Michigan. He's basically doing triage. INSKEEP: But what is happening in the election that's giving Obama more chances to play on Republican turf than the other way around? LIASSON: Two things. One is he has so many more resources than John McCain. And also the economy. The economy was always part of the wind at the back of the Democrats. But with the latest financial crisis on Wall Street, all of a sudden the landscape that was tilted to Democrats got even more steeply tilted to them. INSKEEP: That's NPR's national political correspondent, Mara Liasson. And by the way, you can check out NPR's electoral map and work with it to make your own predictions about the 2008 presidential election. Just go to npr.org. 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.Image caption Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, became upset when talking about his efforts in Washington to convince officials to provide more support for the Syrian opposition US President Barack Obama never seemed to want a train-and-equip programme for Syrian rebels. Now, government officials admit that the programme is pretty much over. Here's what happened behind the scenes at the White House. After the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, rooting for the rebels was, for many in the West, synonymous with rooting for democracy and freedom. In the US, White House officials offered the rebels humanitarian aid and some military gear. But they argued over whether they should provide heavy weapons and help in a more serious way. The philosophical discussion at the White House was heated and fierce, leading to stalemate, not resolution. For years Obama and his deputies refused to say categorically: we're not doing this. Instead a decision was postponed. Four years later, the result is a splintered Syrian opposition, the growth of the Islamic State group and a humanitarian disaster stretching across Europe. Last year, in a move that was more symbolic than serious, Obama asked Congress for money to fund a programme allowing US personnel to teach rebels marksmanship, navigation and other skills. The goal was to train about 15,000 rebels in Jordan and other countries so they could return to Syria and fight. However, US defence officials admitted last month that only four or five of the recruits in the programme had actually returned to the battle. Speaking recently at the White House, Obama looked frustrated as he described "failures" in the US train-and-equip programme. On Friday US officials told reporters the programme was being modified. "We're going to take a sort of operational pause," said Christine Wormuth, an undersecretary of defence. Rebel leaders will now receive basic equipment packages, she explained, but training for the fighters has been stopped. The story of this disastrous programme dates back to the early days of the uprising in the Middle East. Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, had a front-row seat to the drama. Image copyright AFP Image caption Amabassador Ford with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2011 In early 2011 he met with Assad. Governments were being overthrown in Tunisia and Egypt, but things were still quiet in Syria. They discussed diplomacy in a polite manner. Then Ford asked about human rights. Assad "hit red real quick," Ford said. "He raised his voice, and it was very clipped, short," Ford said, twisting his face and karate-chopping a desk. After serving as ambassador to Algeria and working as a diplomat in the Middle East, Ford was the State Department's go-to Syria expert for years. He was faced with the challenges of managing the department's portfolio for Syria, a lovely country with olive groves and rolling plains that's "not of any particular strategic interest to anybody who doesn't live there," as Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. Even worse, Ford had taken on a seemingly hopeless task - arming the opposition in Syria with US weapons. Because of the uprising, Syria was in the news. But despite the changes within the country, Syria still wasn't vital to the strategic interests of the US.For that reason it remained a low priority for administration officials. When the Assad regime started to falter in 2012, Ford believed the US should get involved in the conflict by supporting the rebels. Otherwise Syria could slide into anarchy and become "another Somalia/Yemen", he said, using state department code for Failed State. Virtually everyone in the US, including Obama, wanted to support the opposition in Syria. But the question was whether the US should send Stinger missiles and rocket-propelled grenades, or offer moral support and humanitarian aid and stay out of the conflict. Ford told administration officials years ago they should arm the rebels. If the US doesn't help, he said at the time, extremists will give them money and lure them into their organisations. Those who supported his approach, the Arms for Rebels group, included then-CIA Director David Petraeus, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and most of the foreign-policy establishment in Washington, both Democrat and Republican. Image copyright The White House Image caption Obama and his national security team discussing Syria strategy in 2013. Many in the room were reluctant to arm rebels. On the other side of this issue at the time were Obama, top members of the national security staff and most of America. For years, according to a CBS News poll, Americans were opposed to the idea of sending ground troops into Syria to fight the Islamic State (IS) group. The White House officials were wary of military involvement in overseas conflicts, and they saw the Arms for Rebels idea as a step towards a full-scale, decades-long intervention in Syria. "Originally the argument was, 'We don't know them very well'," Ford recalled. "When we got to know them better, it was: 'They don't have very good backgrounds'." Most of the rebels, he said, weren't "ideologically pure", not in the way US officials wanted. "In wars like that, there is no black and white," he said. Rather than providing weapons, US officials provided food, medical kits and non-lethal military gear. Obama's national-security advisors argued that Syria was at least relatively stable with Assad in power. These advisors, as US officials who supported the programme told me, were presenting a false choice: Either Assad stays or Syria will be overrun with terrorists. In the end, said those who supported the programme, Syria got the worst of both outcomes. They believe Obama's advisors should shoulder the blame for the failure of the programme and also for the failure of the US to help in Syria. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Rebel forces from Jaysh al-Islam, or the Army of Islam, hold position near the frontline outside of Aleppo in August. With more than 200,000 dead and four million refugees, the Syria crisis has unfolded over a period of several years while Ford and his colleagues watched in horror. "It's not a problem of information," said Derek Chollet, who worked on Syria issues as assistant defence secretary. "It's not, 'Boy, if we had just known more.' There was never that." Ford's career as a diplomat is now over. I spoke with him at the Middle East Institute in Washington, where he was working in a borrowed office. The desk was empty except for a black ballpoint pen. While serving as ambassador to Syria from 2010 to 2014, he became familiar with the opposition in a way few Americans were. "He knew all these brigades, and he knew their strengths and weaknesses," New America Foundation's Barak Barfi told me, speaking on the phone from Syria. Michael Posner, a former assistant secretary of state, said Ford made an important contribution to the White House debate about Syria. "Usually when things get too complicated, it's: 'Oh, we can't have a point of view'." said Posner. "But he did have a point of view. He was a very principled, courageous diplomat who did a lot of good." People in the Syrian-American community admired Ford's efforts and looked at Obama in disbelief. "You can't stop barrel bombs with fruit baskets," said the Syrian American Council's Mohammed Ghanem. Image caption When the Syrian American Council's Mohammed Ghanem gets homesick, he likes to spend time at a Georgetown café that reminds him of Damascus. Photo by Colm O'Molloy for BBC News. People in the intelligence community said the time to arm the rebels was 2012. The opposition was turning into a military force and hadn't yet been overrun by al-Qaeda-linked fighters and militants. Not helping the rebels had consequences, Ford said. Early support came in the form of "soon-to-expire MREs", or Meals Ready to Eat, "repurposed from Afghanistan and Iraq", says one former opposition member. The White House officials didn't want to provide weapons in part because they were afraid they'd end up in the wrong hands. Rebels later admitted some weapons ended up with an al-Qaeda-affiliated group. The CIA gave some weapons and supplies to the rebels, though not many. "Fifteen bullets a month," said Ghanem. "That was actually mind-blowing." He recalled meeting a CIA contractor who tasked with helping the rebels who had quit, saying: "They're asking us to perform miracles, but they're giving us nothing." Doing even small things was hard since the process in Washington was "completely choked", said a retired US Army Lt General, Michael Flynn, the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "It was always a'mother-may-I'," he said. "And the'mother-may-I' would take a long time." Military officials were trying to explain to officials at the White House what they needed to help the rebels. The requests were vetted by people from the White House and federal agencies such as the state department. While people were arguing over Syria in Washington, Ford was in Damascus, telling rebel fighters Americans were on their side. Things were promised but never arrived, though, making it hard for him to develop a relationship with them. Image caption Robert Ford fought to arm the rebels in Syria. Photo by Colm O'Molloy for BBC News He recalled when two Americans, photographer Matthew Schrier and journalist Theo Padnos were held by a militant organisation, Nusra Front, in Aleppo. One morning in July 2013 Schrier escaped through a small window. Padnos didn't. Schrier told US officials about the building and its location. The officials asked one of the opposition leaders to go to the building and wondered what would happen. "It's not like he owed me anything," Ford said. He never found out if the commander actually looked for Padnos. Left alone in the cell, Padnos was tortured. Thirteen months later, with the help of Qataris and Americans such as David Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media, Padnos was released. He has a gentle, trusting manner, and during a visit to Washington he left his unlocked bicycle outside a café and put his mobile on a table. A crumpled, yellow Post-It with his password was stuck to the phone. He doesn't sound bitter about Ford, the White House officials or the Syrian commander, and he said it hardly mattered what the Americans were doing for the opposition at the time. "It's like saying if my grandmother had wheels then she'd be a baby carriage," he said. "If, if, if." In a broader sense that's true of US support for the Syrian opposition. No one knows what would have happened if Obama had decided to arm the rebels in a serious manner after the uprising had started. He recently told journalists at the White House that his critics come across as naïve, saying: "'We should have sent more rifles in early and somehow then everything would have been OK'." In an interview last year Obama described the rebels as former doctors, farmers and pharmacists. The president saw the rebels as brave but unpromising. So did many Syrians. "It was a failed opposition," said Bassam Barabandi, who used to work for the Syrian embassy and is co-founder of People Demand Change, an international development organisation. "For me when I watched it," he said. "I knew." Image caption Bassam Barabandi, a former diplomat, left his job at the Syrian embassy in Washington after the uprising. Photo by Colm O'Molloy for BBC News As we sat at on outdoor cafe, a bee landed on his arm. "Come, friend," he said. "Go away." He lifted his arm and whistled, and the bee floated near his head and disappeared. With bees and political leaders, Barabandi tries to see the world from their perspective. He admired Ford and others like him but said they were feckless. "People say we don't understand DC, which is true," Barabandi said. "But they didn't understand Obama, and we've paid a price for it." For years Obama has been trying to shift the nation's attention away from the Middle East to Asia. He wants to keep America's military role in the world to a minimum. "The attitude is very condescending. It's: 'Look, Syria is your issue, and we have a lot on our plate'," said Tyler Thompson, of the non-profit United for a Free Syria, describing his meetings with administration officials. "You never leave the White House with a good feeling." Obama is impatient with moral arguments. According to people who've discussed policy with him, he swats those notions away and asks: Will it work? Speaking recently about the train-and-equip programme, Obama said he'd pressed for details about its viability and heard "a bunch of mumbo jumbo". Image copyright Getty Images Image caption In 2014 Obama signed a spending bill authorising funds to train Syrian rebels "There's the moral imperative and all that," said one former administration official whose views are closely aligned with the president. "I just didn't think this train-and-equip programme was going to be able to accomplish anything," he said. He also thought it could pull the US into a long struggle in Syria. As he talked, I looked at my notebook. I'd written down things people had told me about why the US should send weapons to the Syrian opposition. When I brought these points up, he looked at me as if to say: How can you be so dumb? The objective of the train-and-equip programme, a "fool's errand", he described it, was to make people feel better about themselves while they watch Syria disintegrate. He said he was unhappy when Obama acquiesced last year and asked Congress for money to fund the programme. He still couldn't believe he'd lost the argument since, as he said: "The big boss agreed with me." But after IS beheaded US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, Americans started to re-think what the US military should do. Within months the majority of Americans supported the notion of providing support and even sending US troops to Syria to fight the militant group. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The execution of US journalist Stephen Sotloff (in black helmet) changed American opinion about involvement in Syria Steven Simon, the former senior director for the Middle East on the US National Security Council, said: "People had this conviction, 'Surely there's something we can do.' There was just one thing on the list that seemed more than just symbolic." "They put it this way: 'Let's just try it and see what happens'," he said, describing the train-and-equip programme. "It was just kind of thrown out there. "All you could say with certainty was it would put weapons in the hand of some Syrians." The train-and-equip programme, which costs $500m (£326m), was designed to help the opposition fight the Islamic State, not Assad. Last month Capt Chris Connolly, a spokesman for the coalition task force training the rebels, said some may "feel the training may take too long." Still he said morale among trainers and recruits was high. It's possible to sympathise with people on all sides of the debate at the White House - those who wanted to help the rebels, those who didn't, those in between - and still say Obama made the wrong choice. At the institute Ford sat in a chair for photographs. He'd taken off his glasses. The lights were bright, and the room was hot. He talked about Syria and the disastrous results of inaction. "What they saw is a messy civil war, and their basic thrust is, 'We can't steer this'," he said. "But if you don't the situation might actually get worse, and it might bite you in the butt." He said he didn't want more pictures - then agreed to stay for a moment. He looked angry and defeated, a man caught in circumstances beyond his control. Follow @Tara_Mckelvey.Formula 1 bosses have decided against extending the double points scheme to the final three races of the season. A proposal by F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone to extend the scheme from the last race of the season was discussed at a strategy group meeting. Participants agreed not to reveal details, but a source close to the talks told BBC Sport that the plan was rejected. Members needed to agree unanimously for the proposals to be passed. The strategy group comprises Ecclestone, Jean Todt, the president of governing body the FIA, and six teams. Ecclestone and the FIA have six votes each and the teams six between them. Media playback is not supported on this device F1 2014 rule changes The introduction of double points for the final race of the season was met with uproar by fans, and most teams believe going further would be a mistake. The group also decided not to make changes to the engine homologation rules after some teams supplied by Renault raised the idea of amendments. Manufacturers must submit a reference engine by Friday, after which changes are allowed only on the basis of reliability, cost-saving or safety. Renault has suffered a troubled pre-season with the new turbo hybrid engine which is required following a major rule change this season. All four of the teams using Renault - Red Bull, Lotus, Toro Rosso and Caterham - struggled with reliability problems acompared their rivals, who use Mercedes and Ferrari engines. Renault denied claims that it had asked for a two-month extension to the homologation deadline. A spokeswoman said: "Renault is providing the reference power unit and appropriate supplementary material to the FIA, as per the homologation deadline. "There is a background request from some teams for alternative proposals that regard some parts and components. However, the basic requirements of the homologation deadline will be delivered today as mandated by the FIA."McLaren Honda will run a revised livery from next weekend’s Spanish GP, sources close to the team have confirmed. It’s understood that the new version could be described as ‘shades of grey,’ with no chrome or silver, and that the change does not signal the arrival of a new sponsor. The original 2015 livery caused a stir when it was first revealed due to its similarity to previous incarnations, although Ron Dennis insisted at the Jerez test in February that it reflected McLaren and not Mercedes heritage. He said it would only change if there was a sound commercial reason – but then added that it would indeed change at some stage. He admitted that there had been a debate in the McLaren camp. “We’ve got the same thing inside [the company],” Dennis said at the time. “You’ve got people who say ‘Why don’t we make it orange?,’ and I say, ‘Why?’ ‘That was the old colour of McLaren.’ ‘Well yeah you just said it, why the hell do we want to go backwards?’ Then what do you do? Do you create an aesthetically pleasing design? For what purpose do you produce an aesthetically pleasing design? “This is the livery of McLaren, it’s always been a combination of these colours, and it will only change for commercial reasons, it wont change just to make a few people in the company happier because they want it orange, or they want it yellow. We tried to put a bit more of our real colour, which is dayglo. “Fluorescent red is our colour. We’ve got more heritage in fluorescent red than any other colour. But again what I prefer to do is put a stylish design and as we evolve… it will be far more recognised if we suddenly come out with a light green car for the following reason, you’ll all go, yeah they’ve got a big amount of money coming in. Why would you react to Twitter? Asked by this writer about the widespread association of the livery with Mercedes he said: “The car’s got a minimal amount of mirroring on it, I wouldn’t even call it silver. You’re voicing an opinion which lots of people voice, in the company, on Twitter, everything. But that’s a problem without a solution. Yes we could change colour, yes we could do something more daring, we could all these things, but give me a reason why? And if it’s just to aesthetically more pleasing, that’s not enough reason to me.” However, pressed on the Mercedes connection, he finally admitted: “It will change, but I’m not going to say when…”Three women arrested at O’Hare with $3M worth of drugs Three Minnesota women were arrested Tuesday afternoon at O’Hare International Airport carrying more than $3 million worth of heroin and opium. Pa Yang, 57; Mai Vue Vang, 58; and True Thao, 52 were each charged with one felony count of manufacturing and delivering more than 900 grams of heroin or heroin analogs, according to Chicago Police. All three are U.S. citizens who were returning to the United States from Vientiane, Laos via Narita, Japan, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The women were arrested about 4:20 p.m. in Terminal 5 of the airport after they got off a flight from Japan, police
on going forward is how we unite and how we defeat 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,” she said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” ADVERTISEMENT “Fair or unfair, she is to many of the Bernie [Sanders] supporters somebody who really gets them riled up,” McCaskill added. The Hill reported Tuesday that Democrats are debating whether the Florida Democrat should vacate her role as DNC chairwoman. “We can argue about why that is or if it’s fair that that’s the case, but this will ultimately be up to Debbie. I think we all need to figure out how to get along. We’ve got to land this plane,” McCaskill said. Critics say Wasserman Schultz’s handling of the presidential primary has alienated Sanders and his supporters, risking unity ahead of the general election this fall. A top aide to Sanders on Wednesday said he would support Wasserman Schultz stepping down. “Someone else could play a more positive role,” campaign manager Jeff Weaver said on CNN. But McCaskill on Thursday said there is no Democratic support for Wasserman Schultz’s ouster. “No one is calling on Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down,” she said. "I don’t think anybody is trying to move Debbie out. “I think there’s going to be a lot of back and forth between Bernie and his campaign and 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 and her campaign and all of this will get worked out,” added McCaskill, who has previously endorsed Clinton. McCaskill added that a united front is essential for Democrats if they want to keep Trump from the presidency. “I’m confident it will get worked out because we can’t have a reality TV star that has no concept of public policy set foot in the Oval Office,” she said of the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. "He cannot have the nuclear codes.” Clinton remains the Democratic presidential front-runner nationwide, boasting 1,768 delegates to Sanders’s 1,497. At least 2,382 are needed for avoiding a contested convention in July.Kevin Durant announced that he will join the Golden State Warriors on Monday and he stunned the NBA world while doing it. Hahaha — JARRETT JACK (@Jarrettjack03) July 4, 2016 Paul Pierce said what's on everyone's mind. If u can't beat um join um — Paul Pierce (@paulpierce34) July 4, 2016 Players went from surprise to realizing how damn good the Warriors are going to be next year. Thats crazy!!!! KD in GSW????.... R they gonna score 200 points a game — Marcin Gortat (@MGortat) July 4, 2016 I'm not really surprised honestly! KD made a great decision! Joining the Warriors makes a lot of sense. The guy wants to win championships!! — Kelenna Azubuike (@KAzubuike7) July 4, 2016 Now EVERY three pointer Klay takes will be completely undefended. Listen: EVERY TIME KD/Steph is doubled? That's an OPEN look for KLAY!! — Julius Hodge (@Follow24Hodge) July 4, 2016 79-3? — Julius Hodge (@Follow24Hodge) July 4, 2016 The western conference regular season and playoffs next year is going to be straight heavy competition!! Even more than last year. Excited — Austin Rivers (@AustinRivers25) July 4, 2016 Andre Iguodala acted like he had no idea what was going on, as Andre Igoudala tends to do. Looks I just turnt the gogo wifi on at the right time... — Andre Iguodala (@andre) July 4, 2016 David Eugene Chappelle... Start planning the next Player Haters Ball — Andre Iguodala (@andre) July 4, 2016 Dwyane Wade sent this tweet, which is cryptic to say the least. Relationships are important people! — DWade (@DwyaneWade) July 4, 2016 And followed it up with this Snapchat. Dwyane Wade's Snapchat reaction to Kevin Durant's announcement pic.twitter.com/v3QBOKQ6My — Alysha Tsuji (@AlyshaTsuji) July 4, 2016 Durant's former Thunder teammates reacted in... interesting ways. (We think Enes Kanter's message means "Turkey loves the Thunder," since Kanter is Turkish born. But that's actually a lightning emoji, for one.) And then there was plenty of salt. Somebody beat you! And you go there...? Superstar not doing that man.. — Jusuf Nurkić (@nurkic23) July 4, 2016 Green quickly tried to skate past his clear shade throwing but tweeting another innocuous tweet congratulating a couple of his friends. Congrats to my boys!! @hbarnes and Big Marv!!! — Danny Green (@DGreen_14) July 4, 2016 Nobody's buying that, Danny. We know what you tweeted. Jeff Teague had a genuinely good tweet. The Splash family lol — Jeff Teague (@Teague0) July 4, 2016 Anyway, the most important tweet came from a person who only aspires to be in the NBA, but isn't actually in it. "The BasedGod" wants to speak,As life unravels and superstars make decisions that change lifes, welcome home KD the curse is lifted - Lil B — Lil B THE BASEDGOD (@LILBTHEBASEDGOD) July 4, 2016 All is right with the world once more.An important part of work of any good web designer is keeping up to date with trending tools to ease up his daily job. Every day there are hundreds of articles about web design, new tools, scripts etc. It is impossible to read or see them all! In this post we will show you tools that are helpful in your daily hardship, and we will mention sites that will help you to overpower the abyss of the internet ;) UX checklist Are you about to turn in a ready website to a client? You’re sure you’ve done everything? UX checklist is a cheatsheet for web designers helping to plan their project, or it can serve as a checklist, where you can tick off work stages that are completed. UX checklist UX checklist Screenshot UI Names Name generator. We have 45 countries to choose from! UI Names Font Awesome Here you will find scalable vector icons, that can be freely customized through CSS. Font Awesome Font Awesome Screenshot Perfect Icons A tool for creating social icons (with generated HTML and CSS) Perfect Icons Perfect Icons Screenshot Pineapple.io Aggregator of links for web designers and developers. Don’t miss a thing! Pineapple.io Window Resizer Resize browser window to emulate various screen resolutions! Window Resizer Html5 Sites A collection of the most interesting pages about HTML5. Html5 Sites HTML5 Sites screenshot Html5 Weekly Don’t have time to browse multiple pages in search of a new of content? Subscribe to the HTML5 Weekly Newsletter to get interesting stuff on your inbox. Html5 Weekly Freebbble A lot of free goods can be found on Freebbble — loads of templates, UI, landing pages, bootstraps and animations. Freebbble Freebbble 1st Webdesigner An exceptional blog about web design created by a community of digital enthusiasts. First, read this post. 1st Webdesigner Freebiesbug Great free resources for web designers, including templates, UI and plugins. Freebiesbug Screenshot Freebiesbug UI space Another site with free stuff. Mostly UI icons and mockups. UI Space UI Space Screenshot Pttrns Browse mobile design patterns, UI kits and UI elements. Pttrns Flat UI Color Picker If you are looking forward to create a great piece of flat design, use this color picker. If you’d like to know more about color palettes read our post Best Color Palettes. Flat UI Color Picker Flat Ui Color Picker Screenshot UI Cloud The world’s largest database of user interface design. Elements of UI and UI kits for download and inspiration. UI Cloud UI Cloud Screenshot Tech&All Another page with resources for web designers. You will find scripts, templates, mockups, UI kits and elements, navigation, scripts and many others. Tech&All Tech&All Screenshot Site Inspire No idea what to do for another site? You lack inspiration? Site Inspire will get you right back on the track. Pages can be filtered and viewed by categories, type, platform and style. Site Inspire Unheap Organized and large base of jQuery plugins from different categories: UI, Media, Inputs, Nav or Animations and Effects. Unheap Unheap screenshot Unsplush it …just make yourself a placeholder ;) Unsplush it AWWWards Pages rewarded by Awwards, that is the best of the best. Awwwards Awwwards screenshot WebAppers Great resource for web designers: articles, plugins, frameworks, info about hosting and much more! WebAppers GoodUI What is good UI? Tips and tricks on that matter you’ll find on GoodUI site. Accessible information and pleasing to look at. GoodUI GoodUI screenshot Responsive Design Weekly Another newsletter, this time fresh portions on responsiveness every week on your mail. Responsive Design Weekly Codrops On Codrops you will find tutorials on web development and design techniques, plug-ins, articles as well as ideas and inspiration for solving problems that arise around creating web pages. You can find components, concepts of web pages and layouts. A veritable mine! Codrops Codrops screenshot Trianglify An app that generates beautiful meshes on the basis of triangles, which can be used as SVG or CSS backgrounds. Trianglify CSS Tricks Website devoted for front-end, not just CSS. You can find code snippets on it ready to use, video tutorials, extensive forum, where you can share knowledge with others and even job offers. CSS Tricks CSS Tricks screenshot Notepad++ Notepad for webmasters that supports several languages. Its features are syntax highlighting, PCRE, auto completion and more. Notepad++ Enboard You get the impression that all the necessary tools, inspirations are right here, in one place. Especially the two boards run by Dominik Serafin (A Pole can do it!) require special attention: web design and front-end. You will find over 500 resources, including blogs, articles, frameworks, icons, inspiration, podcasts and much more. Just sit down and browse. Enboard Enboard screenshot Kraken.io Kraken is an app, that optimizes images. Select one of two modes: Lossy, which reduces up to 90% of files, or lossless mode where the file does not lose its quality. Kraken.io UI faces A collection of avatars that can be used for mockups. UI faces UI faces screenshot Noun Project Great source of icons (over 100,000!) licensed under the Creative Commons. Available to download as pngs and svgs. For Mac users, there is also an application called Noun ($10/month), through which we can download icons by dragging and dropping to any program like Adobe, Sketch, Power Point, instant messaging or email. Noun Project Templated Templated is a collection of more than 800 templates in CSS and HTML5 licensed under Creative Commons. Templated Screenshot Templated Tuts+ On Tuts+ you will find the massive amount of tips and tutorials for web designers. Tuts + Tuts screenshot Smashing Magazine On Smashing Magazine you will find news from the world of code and web design. Smashing Magazine SitePoint Great site with the best articles for web professionals — developers, designers, freelancers and entrepreneurs. SitePoint ScreenshotWhile many choose to write off suicide victims as choosing their own fates, the reality is that many make impulsive choices that turned quickly irrevocable. Their deaths would be preventable with exactly the type of insight that the gun lobby is actively trying to suppress. This misleading partnership between the A.F.S.P. and the National Shooting Sports Foundation was sold by the A.F.S.P.’s staff and executives as a way to educate low-information gun owners about suicide prevention. But the reality is that this partnership provides no information for the general public, gives incomplete advice and has had the effect of covering up clear and present dangers inside the home to depressed individuals. While the two groups have developed a brochure that talks about storage options for firearms, it is woefully insufficient from a health perspective. Nowhere does it mention that having a gun in the home is associated with an increased risk of firearm suicide — regardless of whether the gun is kept in a secure location or of the number of guns in the home, according to a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology. To choose only one outrageous example: The A.F.S.P. website, in addition to featuring photographs of several people handling guns, has a set of “frequently asked questions” about its partnership with the National Shooting Sports Foundation that includes, “Is the partnership advocating no guns in the home?” The answer is a confounding “No.” The A.F.S.P. advocates “temporary” removal of firearms “during periods of increased risk of suicide” — yet it offers no guidance on how a civilian can legally remove a firearm from its owner. The dissonance is further heightened when gun owners hear from the other powerful voice in the room, the National Rifle Association, whose training materials state, “A gun stored primarily for personal protection must be ready for immediate use.” This is confusing and potentially deadly for gun owners and those inside their homes who may be thinking of taking their own lives. They need to be nowhere near a gun. I learned many hard lessons after my dad died. I witnessed the carnage that a single bullet can create. I learned that suicide is preventable. And I discovered that one critical way to reduce the risk is to teach others that removing guns from a home significantly reduces the risk of an impulsive suicide. That the A.F.S.P. seems willing to sacrifice these people with a deceptive partnership is appalling and a betrayal of the memory of my father.Cairo Map At least eight people were wounded in an explosion near a top court building in central Cairo today, security sources said. They said the blast occurred in front of the main gate of the building, which houses the office of the prosecutor general. Of the wounded, six were policemen and two were civilians. The public prosecutor was inside the building at the time of the blast, they sources added, and had since left to inspect the scene of the attack. While most of the worst attacks in Egypt have hit the Sinai Peninsula, a remote but strategic region bordering Gaza that is a hotbed of Islamist militants, smaller blasts have become increasingly common in Cairo and other cities. Last Thursday there were four bomb attacks in Cairo. One person was killed and two were wounded in one of the attacks outside a restaurant in the residential Imbaba district of the capital, the Interior Ministry said. © Thomson Reuters 2015To borrow a phrase from the Chelsea banners which idolised their former talisman, John Terry, Jamaal Lascelles is a captain, leader and could just be a Newcastle United legend in the making. Lascelles is not only the youngest captain in the Premier League, leading the youngest team, based on the average age of the starting XI this season, he is also a defender learning how to play at the highest level. When Lascelles was handed the armband last summer, he was just 22. He was neither a senior player or a proven one, yet still manager Rafa Benitez chose him. The Spaniard needed to build a new team, with a better attitude and stronger self-motivation after relegation. Lascelles was his cement, helping to bind the players together as they returned to the top flight after just one season. Given how well he has played in recent weeks, defending superbly, but also scoring the winning goal against both Stoke and Swansea, it is hard to fathom this is Lascelles’ first season as a regular starter in the Premier League. But there is something different about this young man from Nottingham. There is a steely determination in the way he plays and talks. It is combined with the sort of quiet menace that accompanies all the best centre-backs when they walk into a room.A disturbing video posted to Facebook has authorities in Louisiana looking to file felony charges for dogfighting. The Advocate in Baton Rouge Louisiana reports that a video posted by user Kendrick Drummond contained graphic scenes of dog fighting as dozens of spectators watched and cheered on the canine combatants. The video was brought to the attention of Tangi Humane Society Director Randy Stegall through emails and messages from people who had seen the video. Drummond, whose Facebook profile has since been deleted, as an Amite address, but the video claimed that the location was Lafayette, leading authorities to try and determine if the crime happened in Tangipahoa Parish or Lafayette Parish. The Tangi Humane Society is working with Lafayette PD, the Lafayette Sheriff’s Office, Tangipahoa Sheriff’s Office and State Police to ID the people in the video, as well as looking for clues to the location of the dog fight so that warrants can be issued and served. Lafayette law enforcement have a potential ID on one person in the video and have received a cell phone believed to be used by Drummond and registered to someone in Lafayette. The Advocate quoted Stegall as saying: “Once we ID one of them and get them pulled, we’ll probably get the rest of them. These are felony charges, so somebody’s bound to start talking.” Louisiana State law makes it a felony to operate, promote, profit from, or attend a dog fight, punishable by a fine from $1000.00 – $25,000.00 and/or 1-10 years in prison. Let justice prevail. Written by Trisha Lewis“I’m not a boy, but I’m going to be one,” Chris Edwards defiantly told his grandmother at age 5, when she asked “the girls,” including Chris, to come to dinner. “I’m not a girl,” Edwards told her. “Yes, you are,” his grandmother said. “No, I’m not. I’m a boy,” was his response. The next year, when he learned that his cousin Adam had a penis and he did not, Edwards thought he would eventually grow one. When that didn’t happen, he said, “I realized something was terribly, terribly wrong. When puberty hit, I knew that my body had betrayed me in the worst possible way that I could ever imagine. “I knew then that I was stuck being a girl for the rest of my life, and I became deeply, deeply depressed.” And so began Edwards’ journey from female to male, a journey that has included as many as 22 surgeries over five years. Edwards shared his story on Aug. 25 with a packed room at Harvard Hillel for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ summer Diversity Dialogue, “Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace.” In junior high school, Edwards said, “I knew I was attracted to girls, so I thought I must be gay, a very common mistake. A lot of people think that transgender is an extreme form of being gay.” Gender identity and sexual orientation are two completely separate and unrelated things, he said. This was the early ’80s, he went on, and thinking he was gay was traumatic. Later, Edwards decided he would go to college — Colgate University — and after graduation he would kill himself. “The suicide attempt rate for transgender kids is 51 percent,” Edwards said. Graduation came and went, he said, but he could not follow through with killing himself. Fortunately, Edwards, author of a soon-to-be-released memoir, “Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some,” said he found the right therapist. “She helped me realize that I would need a lot of support to get through this,” Edwards said, and convinced him to transition openly to family, friends, and co-workers. Using the skills he learned as an executive at Arnold Worldwide, a Boston-based advertising firm, Edwards decided he would rebrand himself. He said he decided to go from the top down, starting with the Arnold executive board, talking candidly about his transition and responding to any questions asked. He then recruited “brand evangelists” — friends and colleagues who would spread the word to others in the agency. Edwards said his co-workers were overwhelmingly supportive. “Most of them told me how brave I was,” he said. “One gave me a bar mitzvah card that said ‘Today You Are a Man.’” The visible change was gradual. He cut his hair shorter and shorter, and eventually grew a beard. After about two years, he said, one employee told him he did not remember what he looked like before. Edwards said, “Gender identity is defined by what’s inside your brain. I do not let my transition define me. I am not my parents’ transgender child Chris; I am just their son. “I am not transgender anymore,” he said, “I check male.” Joining Edwards for the discussion was Jackie Glenn, vice president/global chief diversity officer for EMC Corp. Her focus was “Transgender in the Workplace: Practical Implications and Advice.” Glenn offered a workplace guide for managers and others to better understand people who are going through a transition. “Sex,” she said, “usually refers to biological and anatomical characteristics, while gender refers to a psychological sense of self and the cultural norms expected of a binary model. Sex and gender are aligned for 95 percent of the population, but not for everyone.” Her “Gender Transition 101” guide offers, among other things, that “transgender is an ‘umbrella’ term for people who express any form of nonbinary gender identity or expression.” She added, “Not all transgender people wish to transition from their [sex] assigned at birth and not all transgender people who do transition will have any surgeries.” Glenn said the first transgender stage is hiding, with confusion and anxiety. The next is self-acceptance of transgender identity. The final stage is transition and acceptance of the post-transition gender and sex identities. Using EMC Corp. as an example of why it is important to work closely and supportively with people going through a transition, Glenn said, “employees who can bring their whole, authentic selves to the workplace and who are included as members of the community make [the workplace] a place where everyone wants to be. This leads to more productive teams who can all make an impact to the bottom line. Employees are then all fully engaged and happy to be [in the workplace]. “Some are open about their gender identity and expression, while others are not,” she noted. “For some people the process of understanding, accepting, and expressing that they are transgender is a challenging journey.” “Hearing Chris tell his story of transition, authenticity, and the process of rebranding himself was inspiring and engaging,” said Benjamin Janey, production services coordinator at the Memorial Hall/Lowell Hall complex. “Jackie’s experience of institutionalizing acceptance and engagement with transgender persons was similarly encouraging. I hope to see more institutions, [both educational and corporate,] embracing the diversity of perspectives and experiences that help make our community as strong as it can be.” Commenting on the discussion, Heather McCormick, manager of budget operations, FAS Office of Finance, said, “Both speakers were inspiring and successful in starting an important conversation here at Harvard around transgender inclusion. There is so much confusion around what it means to be transgender, which can be a roadblock in allowing people to be truly accepting. “Hearing Chris’s story firsthand highlighted how much I didn’t understand about the issues facing the transgender community, and I appreciated having this opportunity to become more educated and informed on the topic, “ she said. Save Save Save Save Save SaveAbout 100 officers and staff at Paris’s police headquarters on the Seine are to be DNA tested this week in an unprecedented move by judges investigating the alleged rape of a Canadian tourist in the building last year. Two police officers from Paris’s elite anti-gang-crime squad were charged last year after a 34-year-old Canadian woman filed a complaint that she had been raped by a group of officers. Both deny rape. One admitted to having had sex, but said it was consensual. The accused are also facing an investigation into tampering with the scene of a crime. Another police officer was made an “assisted witness”, meaning he will be called to testify but is not under suspicion. Judges are looking to match the DNA of a third man that was found on the woman’s clothes. The woman says she met the off-duty police officers at an Irish pub where they had been out drinking one evening in April 2014. She made a complaint later the same night that they had raped her at their headquarters across the river from the pub. A spokesman for the police union Synergie said the DNA testing and the dramatic staging of it was “stigmatising” to all officers at the headquarters. The case, in which French police were accused of a gang-rape inside their own building, shocked France. The interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the two officers would “face the full consequences” if they were found guilty. The police headquarters, known for its address, 36 Quai des Orfèvres, close to Notre Dame cathedral, was for years the base of Paris’s detective branch, the equivalent of London’s Scotland Yard, and inspired numerous crime novels and films. It was made famous by the Maigret novels written by Georges Simenon between 1930 and 1972. The headquarters has been at the centre of several scandals in recent years. Last year a police sergeant from the anti-drugs unit was placed under investigation on suspicion of stealing 52kg of cocaine worth €2m from a secure room where the drugs had been placed after they were seized in a raid.Finally, the news is official when it comes to “The Newsroom” season 3, and it is very much what we personally expected going into this week: The show will be back on Sunday, November 9. The only slight change is that it will air at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, an hour earlier than the first two seasons. While it may not be particularly revealing, the logline for this upcoming season goes as follows: “Created by showrunner Aaron Sorkin, the drama series follows the members of a cable news team on their quixotic mission to do the news well in the face of a fickle audience, corporate mandates and tangled personal relationships.” All of the important cast from the first two seasons is expected to return, including Jeff Daniels, Olivia Munn, Emily Mortimer, Dev Patel, and many more. So far, the only significant story spoilers that are out there can be found in the teaser video that was released a little earlier this month. Every little thing suggests that this could be the conclusion to the series that it deserves, but we will just have to wait and see if that truly comes to fruition. In addition to the return of “The Newsroom,” it was also confirmed today that “The Comeback” and “Getting On” would air following the show. The reason why this is particular significant is that it means these two shows could actually have a halfway decent lead-in for a change. Hooray to that! We’ll have to see where this story ultimately goes, but for the time being, there is a definite reason to be excited. We’re mostly just happy that HBO gave the show a final season at all, given all the uncertainty around it for a while. Want to get some more news related to “The Newsroom” right now? Then head over to the link here, or sign up to get even more news on everything we cover right now via our CarterMatt Newsletter. Photo: HBO Love TV? Be sure to like CarterMatt on Facebook for more updates!Heart Of The Swarm sells 1.1m in 2 days Expansion's launch creates excitement online and in stores Rachel Weber Senior Editor Thursday 21st March 2013 Share this article Share Blizzard has reported that its Starcraft II expansion pack Heart Of The Swarm sold through 1.1 million units in its first two days on sale. The approximate figure is for digital and physical sales combined, numbers that saw the game enter the UK software charts at number 3 earlier this week. "We want to thank the global StarCraft community for the incredible passion and support they've shown for Heart of the Swarm," said CEO Mike Morhaime. "In addition to a brand-new single-player campaign, we added a ton of enhancements with this expansion to make StarCraft II even more fun to play, and more exciting to watch. We're pleased to see gamers and eSports fans around the world enjoying Heart of the Swarm." The launch also boasted some impressive numbers with 1.1 million people checking out the launch events on Twitch, and concurrent viewers peaking at 125,000. "StarCraft II has always been one of the most popular games on Twitch, and we've noticed a wave of new viewership since Heart of the Swarm launched last week," added Twitch COO Kevin Lin. "Viewer numbers are up just about across the board for the most popular StarCraft II pro-gamers and personalities who stream on Twitch." Last month Activision Blizzard reported a record net revenue of $1.77 billion for Q4 2012.Over the past few weeks, a white woman that goes by the name “A Purposeful Wife” (Ayla) has garnered a lot of attention on Twitter and was featured in an article on Buzzfeed for dual loyalties to Mormonism and the Alt-Right Movement (a political movement whose explicit purpose is to create a white, Christian nation). She spends her days spewing Alt-Right messages to her 20,000 followers and thousands more that respond to her. Her alt-right beliefs inform her “white nationalism.” Although she rejects the label of “Nazi,” she subscribes to Nazi race theory. She has issued a “white baby challenge,” encouraging people now considered to be white to bear more children than people of color in order to maintain white supremacy. This cannot be called anything other than a call to eugenics–commonplace rhetoric in the Alt-Right. Ayla has a Mormon.org profile, seemingly written before her adoption of Alt-Right politics [it has been taken down as of 11:40 AM MST, but you can see the profile courtesy of the Wayback Machine]. Despite the unsavory, dangerous, and abhorrent rhetoric, it’s important to know Mormonism’s long history of supporting eugenics–even when they were not considered white or Christian. As Ardis at Keepapitchinin has rightly written, this flies in the face of current Mormon teachings. I applaud the LDS Church’s statement condemning all forms of racism past and present, and join in that call. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that the LDS Church condemns its past subscription to eugenics, not only the priesthood and temple restriction or other better-known racist or racial beliefs and practices. While this post is a very short introduction, I will provide a brief overview of the Mormon embrace of eugenics, explicitly, and implicitly, in terms of race and gender. Mormon eugenics and political history will come in a second installment.[i] RACE The Book of Mormon teaches that non-righteous groups of people have dark skin as a part of a punishment for their wickedness. There are several readings of passages that speak to whiteness as metaphorical, but it is impossible to ignore the racial overtones in the Book of Mormon. The groups in the Book of Mormon that are identified most closely with righteousness are associated with whiteness, and those with dark skin are associated with bloodthirstiness, civilizational decline, and a preponderance for violence. Historians recognize these racial scripts as a way of trumpeting whiteness at the expense of non-whites, a patter than has existed from the Enlightenment to the present day. Early Mormons believed that Israelite blood coursed through the veins of white Latter-day Saints and the remnants of the Book of Mormon’s peoples (Joseph Smith identified Native Americans as those remnants). Smith preached that those who were not of the blood of Abraham, those without proper lineage, would have their blood transformed into what was later called Israelite or “believing blood.” Conversion to Mormonism would have “a more powerful effect upon the body” than on the spirit for those that were not of Israelite lineage, like black Africans.[ii] A person without Abrahamic lineage, would have to undergo a physical change to become a Mormon. One would not have black African blood after conversion to Mormonism because conversion changed their blood and, in a way, made them white. In 1852, Brigham Young made reference to lineage, not to skin color when he preached that no person of the race of Cain (believed to be black Africans) would hold the ecclesiastical priesthood or participate in Mormon temple rituals. In short, lineage was part of being Mormon–and black Africans were not viewed as being compatible with Mormons without change. To be Mormon meant to be white–or at least to share in the religio-racial characteristics of those with the blood of Abraham. Those without the right lineage were not permitted to participate in Mormonism’s most scared rituals. GENDER Within a year of Brigham Young’s enactment of Mormonism’s priesthood and racial restriction, Apostle Orson Pratt justified plural marriage through the logic of creating and raising righteous “seed,” or children. Later in the decade, future apostle and counselor in the First Presidency George Q. Cannon insisted that Mormons were the only people that were rightly seeking to breed humans in the way that animal husbandmen raised livestock. He wrote, “Experience has long since taught mankind the necessity of observing certain natural laws in the propagation of animals, or the stock will degenerate and finally become extinct. But strange to say, in regard to the human animal, these laws, except in certain particulars, are more or less disregarded.” Cannon worried that society did not create or enforce laws “best calculated to develope [sic] our physical nature. A well formed, healthy, vigorous race should be the end sought.” After suggesting that the law should forbid “the unhealthy to beget children” and should compel “every healthy man to marry,” Cannon promised that under those conditions, no healthy girl would remain single and “no whore shall be permitted to live.” He argued that the simultaneous commitment to sexual purity and racial engineering leading to the improvement of the human race “is precisely what the Saints in the valleys of the mountains are endeavoring to accomplish.” The future apostle then argued, “The genius of Christian monogamy is to encourage prostitution; because it forbids plural marriages, yet compels no man to marry, and thus debars thousands of females from gratifying the strongest instincts of their nature,” by which he meant becoming a wife and mother.[iii] Cannon knew that eugenics could not work (literally) without women; the more women involved in procreation meant more members of the white race. After the LDS Church abandoned plural marriage, Scott Marianno has shown that after 1890 Mormons worked to be considered “the right type of citizen” through appeals to whiteness, including eugenics. Paul Reeve has proved that in 1908, Mormons crystallized Brigham Young’s 1852 pronouncement barring people of black African descent from temples and ecclesiastical priesthood and participated in scientific conversations meant to help Mormons attain the privileges of whiteness. However, Mormon contributions to scientific, eugenic conversations were saddled with the baggage of polygamy, which Mormons had not discarded on a theological level even if they had on a practical level. In part to justify a continued belief in plural marriage, B.H. Roberts, John A. Widtsoe, and others researched eugenics and connected plural marriage to the production of an elite race. Articles in the Relief Society Magazine warned its female readers against “race suicide,” meaning the lessening of “white” races’ power in the face of non-white immigration to the United States. By 1927, Apostle Melvin J. Ballard proudly quoted a scientist that labeled Mormonism “the most eugenical religion in the world!” CONCLUSION Those that subscribe to the Alt-Right and to Mormonism ignore their leaders’ call for an eradication to racism, but can point to their faith’s history to justify their beliefs. Mormonism theologized whiteness and the women’s bearing of eugenically sound children in the nineteenth century and even when plural marriage ceased to be practiced, continued to undergird much of Mormonism’s beliefs. These views, products of their time and usefulness, continue to shape portions of Mormon subculture today. The LDS Church officially disavows these beliefs–and can show its commitment to antiracism, at a minimum, by taking down her Mormon.org profile. [Update: her profile has been removed.] [i] Of course, both categories intersect. [ii] Some have argued that this was an irregular statement from Smith; it was not taught regularly. Still, the idea of believing blood captured the minds of Mormons after Smith’s death. [iii] Joseph R. Stuart, “Our Religion is Not Hostile to Real Science’: Evolution, Eugenics, and Race/Religion Making in Mormonism’s First Century,” Journal of Mormon History 42, no. 1 (January 2016): 23.NFL Commitment to Player Health and Safety A Letter from Commissioner Roger Goodell Printable Version September 14, 2016 Some of the greatest athletes in the world play football. Their ability to surprise and dazzle us with their talent—to lift our spirits—never ceases to amaze me. It’s why nearly 200 million people call themselves fans of the National Football League. Because on any given game day, something incredible is going to happen. Our game, of course, is a contact sport. Fans love to see the action on the field, including the big hits. While we can never completely eliminate the risk of injury, we are always striving to make the game safer—for our professional athletes down to young athletes first learning how to play. We’ve made important progress in health and safety. We’ve made safety-related rules changes, encouraged advancements in equipment, improved medical protocols and care and changed the way we teach the game. Rightfully, much of the public discussion is about concussions—how they happen, how they can be prevented and treated and what is known about their long-term impact. That is what I want to focus on here today. The NFL has been a leader on health
scientists led by French virologist Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, who won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2008 for her role in the discovery of HIV. Two years in the making, the scientific strategy provides a road map for moving research for a cure forward. Among the tasks: investigating where and how the virus can hide out in the body and studying the immune response of the select group of people who are naturally immune to HIV. After studying the virus for more than 30 years and developing potent drugs that transformed the disease from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition, a growing number of researchers now say the search for a cure should be a major research priority. While acknowledging substantial challenges, they argue that the effort is necessary because the epidemic cannot be contained through treatment and prevention alone. And recent medical and scientific advances — including the case of the first man definitively cured of HIV — offer proof that it's possible. An influential group of scientists gathered this week at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., is committing to a goal that just five years ago would have seemed ludicrous: to cure HIV. A man works on a quilt on the National Mall in Washington in memory of an AIDS… (Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty…) Developing drugs that keep HIV in check has so far proved more feasible than trying to eradicate it, said Dr. Steven Deeks, a member of the AIDS Research Institute at UC San Francisco. But now that more than 20 antiretroviral therapies can prolong the lives of people with HIV for decades, he said, it's time to aim higher. "I think these drugs have gotten as good as they're going to get," said Deeks, who worked with Barre-Sinoussi to develop the research plan. "We need to shift from blocking the virus from replicating to essentially getting rid of the virus." The antiretroviral drugs are lifesaving, but they have problems. Treatment is toxic and expensive, and only about half of the world's 34 million people living with HIV who need the drugs can get them. Patients must take the drugs daily for the rest of their lives to keep the virus at bay. "It's just practically difficult to treat people all their life with therapy, even if it's very simple therapy," said Dr. David Margolis, director of the Program in Translational Clinical Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But for a long time, there has been no alternative. HIV researchers suffered a major setback in the 1990s when they discovered that the strongest drug cocktails could substantially knock down a patient's viral load but couldn't wipe it out completely. If people stopped taking medication, the disease came roaring back. Pessimism about finding a cure set in, said Paula Cannon, a molecular biologist at USC's Keck School of Medicine. Even five years ago, a scientist who proposed HIV cure research "would be laughed out of the room," she said. "Nobody would give you money." What changed? "It's come down to one man," Cannon said. That man is Timothy Brown, known to the medical world as the Berlin Patient. Brown was an HIV-positive American who was living in Germany when he developed leukemia. After failing to respond to first-line cancer treatments, he opted for a bone marrow transplant in 2007. As his doctors searched for a suitable donor, they looked for one with a rare genetic mutation that disables a receptor known as CCR5, which HIV needs to gain entry into immune cells. Brown had two transplants that not only put his leukemia into remission but replaced his HIV-susceptible immune system with one that could ward off the disease. Brown no longer takes antiretroviral drugs and no longer tests positive for HIV. Essentially, he is cured. "There's nothing like success to galvanize the research," Cannon said. "People are daring to hope again that with a lot of hard work and ingenuity, scientists can deliver." Bone marrow transplants aren't suitable for widespread use: The procedure Brown received ends in death 20% of the time, and finding an appropriate donor would be a long shot in most cases. So scientists are working on alternatives.Thumb through DC Comics' new releases this week and you'll find the above image -- a teaser for the upcoming Batman: Eternal weekly series -- in the back pages of a good many of them (all the books I saw, in fact). I had to look up the artist who drew it. It's Detective Comics artist Jason Fabok, but it could just as easily be Tony Daniel, David Finch, Guillem March, Ivan Reis, Adrian Syaf, or a handful of other current DC artists. Like it or not, this is, with a few exceptions, just how DC Comics look now. DC Comics has had line-wide looks to its artwork over the years, particularly at the start of the Silver Age and in the years after Neal Adams came on the scene. But the company never seemed quite as regimented as Marvel's house styles have been in the past few decades (even considering DC's order to redraw Jack Kirby's Superman faces in the '70s). Indeed, until recently, the last thirty years of DC could be characterized by a broad appreciation for cartooning of all kinds, with artists as night and day as Dan Jurgens and Bill Sienkiewicz not only working within the same product line, but even collaborating on the same books. That's changed with the advent of DC's New 52 line. There are a few exemptions -- Snyder and Capullo's Batman, Azzarello and Chiang's Wonder Woman and JH Williams' Batwoman come to mind, as do DC's digital-first offerings, which are managed by an altogether different editorial office on a different side of the country -- but it's plain that the DC of today adheres devotedly to an aesthetic well represented in the Batman teaser above. on CBR last week : "From David Aja to Jamie [McKelvie] to Esad Ribic to Mike Allred -- seeing such a variety of artists cutting lose says loud and clear that there's no house style at Marvel." Alonso is correct, but it's still kind of crazy to hear a Marvel EiC say such a thing so unequivocally given Marvel's long history of having very well-defined house styles. In the 1960s, Jack Kirby would sit artists down and teach them the Marvel way -- in some cases, even doing breakdowns for them. Look at the work of John Buscema or Don Heck and try not to see the Kirby influence. Additionally, one of the major looks we associate with cape comics from the 1990s was mostly Marvel's doing, too, being heavily influenced by the success the Image founders enjoyed after leaving Marvel to form their own companies with their own pervasive styles. One of those Image rebels was current DC Co-Publsher Jim Lee, who quite naturally has a lot to do with the look of DC's current superhero offerings. His influence is perhaps most prominent in the work of top DC artists Tony Daniel and David Finch, both of whom came out of the '90s Image school Lee helped create, where Daniel worked for Todd McFarlane Productions and Finch worked for Marc Silvestri's Top Cow. It's this style which pervades the majority of the line. As such, the end result has been what Andy said: You either like the look of DC Comics or you don't. Marvel no longer has a dominant house style (art by Michael Allred, Esad Ribic, Jamie McKelvie, Chris Samnee, David Aja) In the ensuing twitter discussion, someone (sadly, I don't remember who) observed that DC has some of the same management -- certainly the same Editor-in-Chief, Bob Harras -- that Marvel did in the mid-to-late 1990s. That may certainly play a part in explaining why so much of DC's line has such a consistent aesthetic, and one that some have argued is reminiscent of Harras' time at Marvel. But there's something else to it, too, and I think it comes down to business philosophies. Or at least, differing ideas about what comics ought to be. Go back and read Marvel's comics from the 1960s and you'll get the feeling they're part of a cohesive unit; pieces that would eventually become a gigantic universe of characters and places. No matter what title you read from the '60s, they all have a similar feel and energy. That was partially because the company was only publishing a handful of titles (for several years, it was prohibited from publishing more than eight) and those books were produced by just a small handful of creators. In what I think is a misguided way, a similarly cohesive line seems to be what DC is going for with the New 52. One thing I remember people saying about the revamped line upon its launch in 2011 was how tonally similar everything felt -- with the exceptions being books that were either grandfathered in (like Batwoman and Batman Inc. ) or staffed by creators with enough sway to pull things in their own direction without substantial pushback (Grant Morrison's Action Comics comes to mind). But for the most part these were and are 52 comics which DC's leadership shape very deliberately with a view to a dominant house style. Which is a valid approach, except when it doesn't work. We have more than two years' worth of reports of DC creators quitting or getting fired from books over disagreements with editors to prove that the line-wide aesthetic has problems, at least creatively. Personnel changeover has been with writers more than artists, but there's obviously a house style for story and characterization in the New 52, just as much as there is for artwork, and they inform each other. With Marvel Now! and All-New Marvel Now! (I'm anxiously awaiting DoublePlus Brand New Oven Fresh Marvel Now! in early 2015), DC's competition took a completely different approach, one that seems to have been a sort of shoulder shrug and an "OK, let's do it." There is no longer a monolithic Marvel. If you're not all that into X-Force, or the way X-Force is drawn, that's not really going to have that much of an effect on whether you like any of the other dozen X-Men titles coming out. The philosophy seems to be to publish enough books, vary them very liberally, staff them with idiosyncratic creators with distinctive visions, and chances are a reader will find several different titles that appeal to them. DC's New 52 line is characterized by a prevailing style of drawing and coloring (art by Jim Lee, David Finch, Tony Daniel, Jason Fabok, Bret Booth) Of course, Marvel's "All-New" approach has made some readers furious, too. I'm a big fan of Matt Fraction and David Aja's Hawkeye, but there are other people who believe the current version of the title ruined the character because he's depicted so differently from the Hawkeye who was in Kurt Busiek's Avengers so many years ago. In the Marvel of 2013, Hawkeye isn't meant to speak to Marvel as a whole. It's meant to speak to Hawkeye. Now, that may seem positively anti-Marvel given the publisher's original methodology outlined above. After all, Marvel is the company that has embraced and even leveraged its homogeny and interconnectedness for its entire existence -- and it continues to do so in its movies, it has to be said. But on the comics publishing side, it seems the Marvel of today has conceded that it just publishes too many comics for a singular creative vision to be feasible for readers or for its talent pool, so the publisher's instead elected to make something for everybody. By most measures, this approach is a success, with contemporary Marvel books earning rave reviews, nominations for prestigious awards, commercial rewards (such as they are in American comics) and driving the direction of the company's hit films. Only DC can say what its metrics are for success, but as the company presses on with its efforts to make the New 52 books a uniform whole, turning away a number of creators and readers in the process, and producing what very often are some outright dour comics, the company may just be proving its chief competitor's philosophy right. Of course, there's a counterpoint, too. Valiant seems to be doing just fine with what I'd call a fairly consistent house style, though I can count the number of books it's publishing on my hands. But if the '60s success of Marvel means anything, there's certainly something to be said for starting small.In New Orleans, Home Floats To Withstand Floods Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Morphosis Courtesy of Morphosis The Make It Right Foundation will unveil a house Tuesday in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, which was largely wiped away by floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina. The house is different from others in the neighborhood that were rebuilt after the hurricane: It floats. The house is the brainchild of Morphosis Architects and its founder, Thom Mayne, winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. "We rethought the idea of a house in terms of the potential conditions of the flooding that took place in Katrina," Mayne tells Melissa Block. He says the designers gave the building a chassis, made it out of polystyrene foam and covered it with glass-reinforced concrete. "What does that do? It produces a raft; it floats," Mayne says. "And it's thought about as a seat belt. I mean, hopefully it never gets used. But when it gets used, it's important." The house is anchored to the ground by two vertical guideposts. At times of flooding, the house moves up the guideposts — up to 12 feet — to prevent it from drifting. Although there has been no opportunity to test the house in real flood conditions, Mayne says, he worked with structural engineers to develop the prototype. "We did extensive computer simulations, and we modeled this house for hurricane flooding conditions" similar to Katrina and its aftermath, he says. Mayne says that when he built the house for the Make It Right Foundation, he wanted a structure that both blended in and could handle severe floodwaters. "It was a really interesting problem," he says. "How do you keep a sense of community and the continuity of the neighborhood, and at the same time deal with this very extreme condition of the flooding?"On this fifth day of my book tour for Fair Game; My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House and my final book tour blog for the Huffington Post, I'm finding my stride. With the outing of my covert identity by conservative columnist Robert Novak in July 2003, I went from being a very private person whose entire professional career was devoted to the idea that discretion was paramount, to a public persona in the middle of a media maelstrom literally overnight. I have to say that I am still adjusting. As I have worked through numerous interviews for newspapers, radio, and TV, I am faintly surprised that there are a few questions that for the most part, I have not been asked about the book. Therefore, I thought I would use this blog as a means to answer some of them. 1. Why did you include a chapter on your bout with postpartum depression and were you concerned that the CIA would look unkindly on the fact that you sought help for your condition? I included the chapter on postpartum depression (PPD) frankly because my publisher, Simon & Schuster, allowed me too, even though it is a departure from the rest of the themes of my book. It is something that I feel passionately about and was actually somewhat painful to write. With the birth of my twins in 2000, I experienced serious postpartum depression and initially had absolutely no idea what was happening. I think it's fair to say that up to that point in my life, I had demonstrated a high degree of coping abilities under significant stress and had always come through just fine. Here I was, an educated, happily married woman with two beautiful, healthy babies and I was completely thrown off balance by dark feelings I had never before experienced. I sought professional help, once a friend clued me into what might be going on. As I pulled out of this truly troubling period in my life -- around the time the twins were about 8 or 9 months old -- I thought of the many women who did not have the resources I had and were struggling with their deep, debilitating depression (PPD is estimated to strike at least 15-20% of all new mothers). I became involved in organizations that sought to educate and heighten awareness on PPD. Although I would not wish PPD on my worst enemy, I am a richer and more empathetic person for having gone through it. I had no qualms about revealing that I had sought professional help for my PPD to the CIA during a subsequent medical exam required to serve overseas. I wanted to be honest about my experiences and indeed, felt wiser and more mentally healthy as a result. 2. Were you and former colleagues at the CIA for or against the war? During the intense period of operational activity in my office that preceded the war in Iraq, I never remember anyone discussing whether they were "for" or "against" the war. It simply wasn't done and would have been highly inappropriate. We were intelligence professionals working our hardest using every tradecraft skill and intuition we collectively had to try and collect solid intelligence from the Iraqi scientists within the presumed WMD programs. At the working level, our discussions were about how to reach a target, whether to consider a "cold pitch" if circumstances permitted, seeing if we could corroborate a source's intelligence, and figuring out if we could get a particularly valuable source out of Iraq with family, if warranted. The larger issues of the increasingly strident rhetoric coming out of the administration during those frenzied months were left to whispered conversations in the hallway among friends or maybe after hours over a beer. One, there simply wasn't time for this important debate in that environment -- there seemed to be operational crises every other moment. Secondly, my colleagues and I were simply trying to do our jobs and hope that senior US policy makers would make wise choices with the intelligence we sent to them. 3. Did you ever feel real, physical danger during your CIA career? Did you have to sleep with anyone to get intelligence? (Slight deviations from the query of whether life in the CIA resembles Hollywood movies...) For obvious security reasons, I cannot detail operations in which I was involved that may have taken a dangerous turn. But I can say that there were some heart-stopping moments that made me ask myself, "Why am I doing this?" What is important to note is that all CIA operations are a team effort; a rogue operator wouldn't get very far because it really takes many to ensure that the target is spotted, surveillance is in place, technical aspects of recording the meeting are working (if deemed necessary), and expert analysts have provided the hard and perhaps technically sophisticated questions that need to be answered. I always knew that if I was meeting a potential source in the back of a quiet bar or restaurant in a foreign city, I was not alone -- my colleagues, sometimes invisible, would do everything possible to ensure that no physical harm would come to me. As for the question about whether I've had sex with anyone to get intel (which, by the way, has been asked of me by a US diplomat and a major movie star), the answer is: there were many aspects of my job which were James Bond-like, but that, emphatically, was not one of them. Thank you for allowing me to blog on HuffPost. I have been so grateful for your support and kind comments. I hope you enjoy reading Fair Game, because it's been a long, strange journey to get here. Cheers.Thanks to an ingenious new strategy devised by researchers at University of California, Davis and Intel Corporation, computer network administrators might soon be able to mount effective, low-cost defenses against self-propagating infectious programs known as worms. Many computers are already equipped with software that can detect when another computer is attempting to attack it. Yet the software usually cannot identify newly-minted worms that do not share features with earlier marauders. When network managers detect suspicious activity, they face a major dilemma, said Senthil Cheetancheri, who led efforts to develop the strategy. "The question is, 'Should I shut down the network and risk losing business for a couple of hours for what could be a false alarm, or should I keep it running and risk getting infected?'" Cheetancheri, a graduate student in the Computer Security Laboratory at UC Davis when he did the work, has shown that the conundrum can be overcome by enabling computers to share information about anomalous activity. As signals come in from other machines in the network, each computer compiles the data to continually calculate the probability that a worm attack is underway. "One suspicious activity in a network with 100 computers can't tell you much," he said. "But when you see half a dozen activities and counting, you know that something's happening." The second part of the strategy is an algorithm that weighs the cost of a computer being disconnected from the network against the cost of it being infected by a worm. Results of this ongoing process depend on the calculated probability of an attack, and vary from computer to computer depending on what the machine is used for. The algorithm triggers a toggle to disconnect the computer whenever the cost of infection outweighs the benefit of staying online, and vice versa. The computer used by a person working with online sales, for example, might be disconnected only when the threat of an attack is virtually certain; the benefit she provides by continuing to work during false alarms far outweighs the cost of infection. On the other hand, a computer used by a copy writer who can complete various tasks offline might disconnect whenever the probability of an attack rises above even a very low level. The study is published in "Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection, 2008," the proceedings of a symposium that was held in Cambridge, Mass., in September, 2008. Other contributors to the study are John-Mark Agosta with Intel Corporation; Jeff Rowe, research scientist in the UC Davis Computer Security Laboratory; and UC Davis computer science professors Karl Levitt and Felix Wu. The study was supported by a grant from Intel IT Research.Oct. 31, 2016, 5:50 PM GMT / Updated Oct. 31, 2016, 5:50 PM GMT By Noel Gutierrez-Morfin During their respective campaign stops over the weekend, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump made overtures to the LGBTQ community. Clinton made a stop at The Manor Complex, a gay club in Wilton Manors, Fla., on Sunday during a campaign rally co-organized by the Human Rights Campaign. During her speech, she took aim at her Republican rival. "Donald Trump has a terrible record on LGBT rights, and this election will determine whether we can continue the progress we've made or let it be ripped away," Clinton said after speaking of her vision for a "hopeful, inclusive" America. "We will call on Congress to pass the Equality Act. We will then be able to protect LGBT Americans from discrimination in all aspects of our lives. We will work together to achieve the AIDS-free generation that is within our reach, and we will take on homelessness, bullying, and violence," Clinton added. She also called for gun control reform to ensure that "what happened in Orlando can never happen again." Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds up a rainbow flag with "LGBT's for TRUMP" written on it at a campaign rally in Greeley, Colorado, on October 30, 2016. Carlo Allegri / Reuters During a rally at the University of Northern Colorado on Sunday, Trump unfurled an upside-down rainbow flag with the words "LGBTs for Trump" written on it before returning it to one of his aides. "In nine days, we are going to win the state of Colorado, and we are going to win back the White House," Trump told the audience. The Republican nominee has said in the past that he would be a better president for the LGBTQ community, a claim Clinton and many LGBTQ advocates refute.During the filming of Planet of the Apes in 1967, Charlton Heston noted “an instinctive segregation on the set. Not only would the apes eat together, but the chimpanzees ate with the chimpanzees, the gorillas ate with the gorillas, the orangutans ate with the orangutans, and the humans would eat off by themselves. It was quite spooky.” James Franciscus noticed the same thing filming Beneath the Planet of the Apes in 1969. “During lunch I looked up and realized, ‘My God, here is the universe,’ because at one table were all the orangutans eating, at another table were the apes, and at another table were the humans. The orangutan characters would not eat or mix with the ape characters, and the humans wouldn’t sit down and eat with any one of them. “I remember saying, ‘Look around — do you realize what’s happening here? This is a little isolated microcosm of probably what’s bugging the whole world. Call it prejudice or whatever you want to call it. Whatever’s different is to be shunned or it’s frightening or so forth.’ Nobody was intermingling, even though they were all humans underneath the masks. The masks were enough to bring out our own little genetic natures of fear and prejudice. It was startling.” (From Joe Russo and Larry Landsman, Planet of the Apes Revisited, 2001.)HOBOKEN, NJ — The Battle of HoLa may be at an end, Hoboken. Last week, after more than two years of costly litigation between the Hoboken Board of Education and the Hoboken Dual Language Charter School (HoLa), the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court affirmed a previous decision from the state commissioner of education that granted the school's application to expand its program to the 7th and 8th grades. The decision comes a week after the school graduated its first 8th grade class, according to school administrators. As part of their June 29 decision, an appellate panel of judges found that – contrary to school administrators' claims - there was no evidence of socio-economic impact or an adverse funding impact to the Hoboken district from its expansion. Read the full court decision here. According to a statement from HoLa, the years of legal action between the three involved parties - HoLa, the Hoboken Board of Education and the New Jersey Department of Education – cost taxpayers more than $200,000. The Hoboken Board of Education sued the school in March 2014 after the Department of Education approved the school's expansion to the 8th grade. At the time, the school's oldest students were in 5th grade. Hoboken BOE members had argued that the charter school's expansion has shown trends of segregation, and that the percentage of minority students who attend HoLa is about half that of the district's public schools. The panel of appellate judges gave some details about the school's admission process in their decision: "HoLa is located in a low-income section of Hoboken, close to the Connors school. Students are admitted to HoLa through a lottery with no interviews. No demographic data is collected until students are registered. In order to represent a cross section of the Hoboken community, HoLa holds open houses and tours and advertises in local publications. It also partners with local organizations to recruit on-site. Dates for the open houses, tours and events, as well as the lottery, are posted on the school's website and are printed on flyers 'distributed throughout the city.' In addition, applications and brochures are mailed to every low-income household each year prior to the lottery. HoLa's parents and teachers also canvass subsidized and public housing and help complete applications on the spot. Parents may enroll children in the lottery online, in person, or by a phone call to the school. HoLa has a sibling preference, so that if a child is enrolled in HoLa, that child's younger sibling will have priority over other lottery applicants." Send local news tips, photos and press releases to eric.kiefer@patch.com Patch file photo Don't forget to visit the Patch Hoboken Facebook page here.A veteran Chicago police officer has been accused in a federal lawsuit of beating a mentally disabled teen while off duty last year, sticking his gun in the young man's mouth and filing a false police report to cover it up. Both the Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates police misconduct, and the Cook County state's attorney's office are looking into the September 2015 incident at the West Side home of Officer Matthew Jackson, the Tribune has learned. Jackson, a 21-year veteran of the force, became enraged after Nathaniel Taylor, 18, crossed onto his lawn on his way home from school, according to the lawsuit, which was filed Friday. Jackson beat the boy with his fists and shoved his service revolver into Taylor's mouth, causing multiple lacerations, according to the suit. Taylor, who has an IQ of 44, was treated at Mount Sinai Hospital and then sent to Cook County Jail on charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, the lawsuit alleged. He spent a week behind bars before being placed on electronic monitoring, an experience that caused severe emotional trauma, according to the suit. Richard Dvorak, the attorney representing Taylor's aunt and legal guardian, sent the Tribune photographs of the scene that appear to show Taylor's blood splattered on a walkway outside Jackson's home. He also provided photos of Taylor taken at the hospital that day depicting him with a bloodied nose, a fat lip and blood stains on the pants of his school uniform. Dvorak said Taylor's severe mental impairment made the consequences of Jackson's actions "even more tragic." "He's not someone who should be subjected to this kind of treatment," Dvorak said. "All (Taylor) did was cross this officer's lawn. The officer placed felony charges on this young man to cover up his own misconduct." Records show Jackson, 47, filed a police report stating Taylor had "attempted to enter his residence" in the 1200 block of South Albany Avenue in the Lawndale neighborhood when Jackson opened the door and announced he was a police officer. According to the report, Taylor tried to flee, but Jackson caught up to him and a "struggle ensued," during which Taylor tried to grab Jackson's gun from the holster. As they wrestled for control of the gun, the weapon "made contact with (Taylor's) face and mouth area," the report stated. Jackson also said he repeatedly yelled, "Chicago police! Stop resisting!" but Taylor continued to fight, according to the report. The officer was treated at a nearby hospital for minor scrapes. The aggravated battery charge filed against Taylor, which carried up to seven years in prison, was dismissed in April and Taylor instead pleaded guilty to misdemeanor trespassing, court records show. Reached on his cellphone Friday, Jackson declined to comment on the allegations. Dvorak said Taylor lodged a complaint with IPRA soon after the incident and that investigators have swabbed Taylor's DNA to see if there is a match to Jackson's gun. The test results are pending, he said. IPRA spokeswoman Mia Sissac confirmed there is a pending investigation but declined to provide details. The Cook County state's attorney's office, meanwhile, plans to review IPRA's findings to determine whether criminal charges against Jackson were warranted, according to spokeswoman Sally Daly. Jackson, who is currently on active duty as a patrol officer in the Harrison District, worked for years in the department's News Affairs office. Available records show two citizen complaints have been lodged against him, both of which were unsustained. Jackson made headlines six years ago when he obtained an emergency order of protection against his ex-girlfriend, police Cmdr. Penelope Trahanas. Jackson accused Trahanas of making veiled physical threats and said she'd threatened his job security in numerous phone calls after a bitter breakup, according to court documents. Trahanas was arrested and charged with telephone harassment but later acquitted. She's currently serving as a police captain. Chicago Tribune's Jeff Coen contributed to this report. jmeisner@chicagotribune.com Twitter @jmetr22bRewarding failure: A new low in Middle East diplomacy (UPDATED) Back in 2007, a couple of political scientists wrote the following: One might think that U.S. generosity would give Washington considerable leverage over Israel’s conduct, but this has not been the case. When dealing with Israel, in fact, U.S. leaders can usually elicit cooperation only by offering additional carrots (increased assistance) rather than employing sticks (threats to withhold aid)." (pp. 37-38) They offered several examples to illustrate this phenomenon, and quoted Israeli leader Shimon Peres saying that: "As to the question of U.S. pressure on Israel, I would say they handled us more with a carrot than with a stick." Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Yesterday the Jerusalem Post reported that the Obama administration has offered Israel a generous package of new benefits if it will just extend the settlement freeze for another two months. The source for the report was David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a key organization in the Israel lobby. Makovsky is also a co-author with Obama Middle East advisor Dennis Ross, so presumably he has accurate knowledge about this latest initiative, which is said to take the form of a personal letter from Obama to Netanyahu. Assuming this report is true, it marks a new low in U.S. Middle East diplomacy. Just consider the message that Obama’s team is sending the Netanyahu government. Netanyahu has been giving Obama the finger ever since the Cairo speech in June 2009, but instead of being punished for it, he’s getting rewarded for being so difficult. So why should any rational person expect Bibi’s position to change if this is what happens when he digs in his heels? Although failure to achieve a two-state solution is ultimately much more of a problem for Israel than for the United States, we have been reduced to begging them and bribing to stop building settlements — please … please … pretty please? … and then only for a mere 60 days. Not only is the United States acting in a remarkably craven fashion, it’s just plain stupid. How will this latest bribe change anything for the better? What do we think will have changed in two months? Remember that there isn’t even a genuine freeze right now, only a slowdown, which means that a deal will be just a little bit harder in two months than it is today. Does Obama think his bargaining position will be stronger after the midterm elections? And if construction resumes, what then? Back when direct talks were announced, I said they wouldn’t go anywhere, and I’ve made it clear in the past that I think this situation is a brewing tragedy for all concerned. And then I said I hoped the Obama administration would prove me wrong. Looks like there’s little danger of that, alas. P.S. Haaretz has reported that Netanyahu is not inclined to accept the administration’s offer, which leaves us right where we started. That is to say, with little hope that this latest round of talks will lead anywhere. The real question is: When will the United States try a different approach? UPDATE: Ha’aretz now reports that the White House is denying that any letter was sent outlining the conditions originally identified by Makovsky, thought it does not say that the information was not conveyed in some other way. If the entire report is bogus then new puzzles arise: where did Makovsky get these ideas? Was it a trial balloon? An attempt to make policy via leaks? An attempt to show that Netanyahu was being really stubborn? I have no idea, but unless the whole thing was just a hallucination on Makovsky’s part (and that’s hard to believe), then it reinforces the idea that the Obama Middle East team is improvising wildly and/or not on the same page.A new poll finds that while diversity offices are generally seen as a waste of money, a majority of Americans nonetheless believes colleges should monitor and punish offensive speech. The HuffPost/YouGov poll, which was conducted in December and released Monday, surveyed a random sample of 1,000 U.S. adults about their attitudes toward both the recent racial unrest on college campuses—exemplified by the protests at Mizzou and solidarity demonstrations elsewhere, but also encompassing separate incidents at schools like Brown and Yale—as well as their feelings about several common institutional responses to student complaints. 53 percent stated that colleges should “punish students who make racially offensive statements." [RELATED: MAP: ‘Stand with Mizzou’ protests spread to campuses across the country] The results revealed some surprising inconsistencies, with respondents expressing skepticism about efforts to teach students about tolerance and diversity, yet generally supporting the notion that colleges and universities should take action against instances of racist or offensive speech. Asked their opinion on the creation of departments specifically devoted to promoting diversity, for instance, 32 percent said they are “an important initiative to support,” while 42 percent called them “a waste of money and resources” (the remaining 26 percent were “not sure”). A similar dichotomy surfaced with respect to whether colleges have “a responsibility to teach students about issues related to racism,” with 45 percent agreeing that they do and 41 percent disputing the notion. The results were more lopsided, though, on the question of whether a university president has a responsibility to address racist incidents on campus, with 72 percent supporting the notion and only 17 percent taking the opposite stance. When the questions shifted from rhetoric to concrete action, a plurality opined that maintaining a non-discriminatory environment should take precedence over free speech rights, and an outright majority asserting that administrators should police student speech and punish offensive utterances. [RELATED: University tells students to dial 9-1-1 over ‘bias incidents’] Answers were closely split on the priority question. While 38 percent said colleges should emphasize “making sure that students have an absolute right to free speech, even if that means allowing offensive or racist comments,” they were edged out by the 43 percent who responded that “making sure that students have an environment free from discrimination, even if that means placing some limits on what students can say” is the more important task. [RELATED: Mizzou students asked to fill out Bias Reports due to ‘offensive’ pro-life display] Fully 53 percent, however, stated that colleges should “punish students who make racially offensive statements,” compared to just 28 percent who said they should not (and 19 percent who were unsure). HuffPost reports that the results are consistent—and predictable—once they are broken down by characteristics like race and party affiliation. Just four percent of black respondents identified an absolute right to free speech as their top priority, for instance, while 69 percent valued a discrimination-free environment most highly. White people responded less monolithically, but in general were slightly less supportive of speech restrictions than was the general population. Distinctions were also pronounced between Republican and Democrat respondents, contributing to the somewhat muddled overall results but offering clarification of the ideological divide on campus race issues. Whereas 66 percent of Democrats said colleges do have a responsibility to teach students about racial bias, 62 percent of
to smell it]. It smells, but normally you’re the only one who can smell it [just to remind you what a sinner you are]. Wash twice a day between your legs when you have your period [extremely practical when you’re at school]. Carry wet wipes with you at ALL times.’ And so it began. A costly and mostly ineffective attempt to make my vagina smell like the rose it wasn’t. Nowadays I can smell myself throughout my cycle and I know what I smell like. It’s not roses. Whether it’s discharge or blood, it smells like vagina. Yes. Surprisingly vagina smells – well – like vagina. It changes according to what I eat, what I drink, my activity and the time of the month. Despite my best efforts at loving myself, I’m barely okay with the way I smell…and I’m still terrified when I meet a new lover to let him go there. In fact as I lie there looking at the ceiling during what should be a hot moment, the thought crosses my mind. How on earth can he like doing that? Is he cringing as he’s doing it? And lastly…will he leave me if he thinks I’m disgusting? It’s not my smell that bothers me per se. (FACT. I smell far less pungent than camembert and loads of people love that. Yes, I have actually used this justification to myself). I know that every woman smells unique. I know that good and bad is simply a judgement. No. My fear is that he might be indoctrinated by the same system I am struggling to escape. And if I see my own insecurity mirrored in his eyes, I will feel once again the humiliation that I felt growing up. The humiliation of having a vagina and knowing that others know I have a vagina. Blood is evidence I have a vagina. Discharge is evidence I have a vagina. Camel Toe is evidence I have a vagina. And perhaps most insidious of all; smell is evidence…that I have a vagina. My vagina smells like shame. Rancid and sickly. SHAME. Since educating myself through my own personal projects, I’ve discovered so much about our systemic culture of shame which has prompted women to cut, bleach and douche their genitals to eliminate their natural shape, colour and smell. It’s truly heartbreaking. Because shame stems from someone else’s emotional repression. And their beliefs become internalized until we perpetutate them and shame our daughters. [The Genesis of Shame] In fact, for me this is the worst aspect of vulval and vaginal shame. We not only betray ourselves, but we betray our daughters. In the most extreme examples, mothers hold down their struggling daughters with other female village elders to go through female genital cutting because those women are shamed so strongly, that they think it is better put their daughters through a mentally, emotionally and physically scarring procedure – to cut away all existence of the vulva and sew up the vagina like it was never there – than it is to admit that women were born with the capacity of enjoying ourselves sexually. And that we have a vulva and vagina specifically designed to do so. But even for those of us who don’t come from cultures like these, we are shamed in other ways. Here’s what Eldiese, a self proclaimed lipstick lesbian in Australia had to say about it. You also need to smell fresh as a daisy everywhere whenever you see her after that, and I mean everywhere! God forbid the lady is performing the ever sacred going down dance and doesn’t like what she sniffs! My advice ladies, the sacred lotus flower is never going to smell like roses so breathe through your mouths! Eldiese Sapphic City Breathe through your mouths!!! What I want is for my lover to glory in my smell. To breathe in my musk and feel the heat rising in his body. To lap it up even if I haven’t had a shower 2 hours before, or even 24 hours before. I don’t want him to do me a favour and breathe through his mouth. Or be disgusted… so much so that he might be able to fuck it, but never to kiss it. What I want is to love myself and my smell and have him love it too. And so I must lose my shame. Because the large majority of smells in themselves are neutrally perceived including natural bodily odour. It is our reaction to them which is a conditioned response. When you first smell a new scent, you link it to an event, a person, a thing or even a moment. Your brain forges a link between the smell and a memory — associating the smell of chlorine with summers at the pool or lilies with a funeral. When you encounter the smell again, the link is already there, ready to elicit a memory or a mood. How Stuff Works For most of us growing up in this culture our response to vagina, it’s shape, colour and smell, is SHAME. My mother made sure of that. Here’s the thing. Your vagina smells and tastes fantastic to those who have no shame. And you know deep down, no matter how hard you scrub your vagina or how many times a day you douche, you will never be rid of shame. Because it doesn’t come off with soap and water, it only dissolves with love. As if it was never there. So love you and your smell and others will too. (Visited 501 times, 1 visits today)The Trump administration issued rules Friday that immediately carve broad exceptions to the Affordable Care Act's promise of no-cost contraceptive coverage, touching off fresh lawsuits and renewed debate about the proper scope of religious liberty. The rules significantly widen the range of employers and insurers that can invoke religious or moral beliefs to avoid the ACA requirement that birth control pills and other contraceptives be covered by insurance as part of preventive care. Administration officials and their allies on the right downplayed the impact of the change on American women, while women's rights and civil liberties groups portrayed it as a massive, discriminatory act. The rules, among the president's many moves to dismantle Obama-era initiatives, fulfill a pledge that he made as a candidate to appeal to social conservatives and that he amplified this spring through an executive order to expand religious liberty. Loosening the contraception mandate is the administration's most concrete manifestation of that pledge. It also is the latest twist in a seesawing legal and ideological fight that has surrounded this aspect of the 2010 health-care law nearly from the start. Capitol Hill reacted quickly Friday. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) termed Friday "a landmark day for religious liberty," while Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) decried the move. "This isn't 'The Handmaid's Tale,'" she said, referring to the popular book and Hulu series about an authoritarian state that controls how women conceive and bear children. This rewrite of the federal policy, in interim final rules from the Health and Human Services Department, broadens the entities that may claim religious objections to providing contraceptive coverage. They now encompass nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies, including ones that are publicly traded. Also included are higher educational institutions that arrange for insurance for their students, as well as individuals whose employers are willing to provide health plans consistent with their beliefs. A separate HHS rule covers moral objections, allowing exemptions under similar circumstances except for publicly traded companies. Several religious organizations, which battled the Obama administration for years over the ACA's requirement, lauded the action. Jeremy Dys, deputy general counsel for a conservative, Texas-based legal group First Liberty, said whether his clients — which include colleges, retirement homes and religious teaching ministries — choose to cover birth control or drugs causing abortion "is now a matter between them and their God, not them and the government." A raft of left-leaning groups and a few Democratic attorneys general swiftly announced plans to try to block the policy change in the courts. On Friday afternoon, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and the American Civil Liberties Union both filed complaints in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The two suits allege the rules violate the First Amendment by favoring certain religious views, discriminate against women and were issued without following correct government procedures. California's also claims the rules will harm the state, by leaving "millions of women" without access to birth control and thus increasing contraceptive costs to state-funded programs. Other administration opponents warned that unintended pregnancies will increase. And Anne Davis, consulting medical director for Physicians for Reproductive Health, said the expanded exemptions leave women "vulnerable to the whims of their employers," which, she said, "have no place in these private decisions, just as they would not in any other conversations about a patient's health care." [New Mexico makes it easier for women to obtain birth control] Asked about the swell of criticism, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders replied: "The president believes that the freedom to practice one's faith is a fundamental right in this country... This is a president who supports the First Amendment, supports the freedom of religion — I don't understand why that should be an issue." The HHS rules were part of choreographed moves by the administration. Minutes after the pair of ACA regulations appeared late morning in the Federal Register, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued sweeping guidance to all executive departments and agencies on the Justice Department's interpretation of religious liberties. Senior Justice Department officials said the guidance interpreted and clarified existing law. But the interpretation also triggered a backlash from civil liberties groups, which maintained that it essentially offers a license for discrimination. In two separate briefings for reporters, senior Health and Human Services officials contended the change will still leave "99.9 percent of women" with access to free birth control through their insurance. They said the estimate was based on the number of groups that have filed lawsuits over the provision. In one section of the religion rule, administration officials predict 120,000 women at most will lose access to free contraceptives through the combined rules — many fewer than critics anticipate. They write that they do not know how many employers or insurers that omitted contraceptive coverage before the ACA did so based on religious beliefs that would now allow them to be exempt. For that reason, the rule says, HHS cannot predict how many entities will want exemptions, other than the groups that have filed recent lawsuits or made other public statements against the Obama-era policy. The analysis concludes that perhaps one-third of women who get insurance through such groups — the estimated 120,000 — would end up paying for birth control on their own. The policy "will result in some persons covered in plans of newly exempt entities not receiving coverage or payments for contraceptive services," the rule acknowledges. But it says there is not "sufficient data to determine the actual effect... on plan participants and beneficiaries, including for costs they may incur for contraceptive coverage, nor of unintended pregnancies that may occur." The controversy first arose after the Obama administration decided birth control was part of the preventive care that insurers must cover under the ACA. When that mandate was initially implemented in August 2012, it required all health insurance offered by employers to cover at least one of the 18 forms of birth control approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Since then, savings on the birth control pill have accounted for more than half of the drop in all out-of-pocket prescription drug spending, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. [States with more Planned Parenthood clinics have fewer teen births and sexually transmitted diseases] Subsequent accommodations gave exemptions of sorts to houses of worship, nonprofits with religious affiliations and closely held for-profit companies. Such employers have been able to opt out of providing the coverage and instead have their insurance company pay for it by notifying the insurer, a third-party administrator or the federal government. That situation will continue. Organizations affiliated with the Catholic Church, which teaches against birth control other than by natural means, have been among the most vocal opponents. They've argued that having to cover the cost of contraception through health insurance plans is tantamount to being forced by the government to be complicit in a sin. In the past several years, lawsuits have been filed by nuns, Catholic charities, hospitals and universities. Even now, litigation remains in several federal appeals courts. One challenge was heard by the Supreme Court, and the justices ruled in 2014 that it was illegal to impose the mandate on "closely held corporations" such as Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain. Its Christian owners had objected to the idea of paying for several kinds of the birth control that must be covered. The Justice Department on Friday moved to dismiss several lawsuits, pending in appeals courts, brought in recent years by conservatives opposed to the Obama administration's policy. It is not entirely clear, however, what will happen to them or others among the more than 50 court cases across the country. In his sweeping May 4 executive order on free speech and religious liberty, Trump directed his Cabinet to address the concerns of those who had "conscience-based objections" to contraceptive coverage. "We will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied or silenced any more," the president promised. "We are ending the attacks on religious liberties." Roger Severino, director of HHS's office for civil rights and a longtime proponent of religious liberties, noted that Rose Garden directive on Friday. "That was a promise made, and this is the promise kept.... We should have space for organizations to live out their religious identity and not face discrimination because of their faith," Severino said. Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.Supreme Court Removes Travel Ban Cases From Its Calendar After Trump's New Revision Enlarge this image toggle caption Eric Thayer/Getty Images Eric Thayer/Getty Images The Supreme Court has taken two cases involving President Trump's controversial travel ban off its calendar, after the White House issued a revised and expanded ban. The justices ordered both sides to file new briefs over whether parts of the issue are now moot. "The cases are removed from the oral argument calendar, pending further order of the Court," the justices wrote in an order issued Monday. Parties in the two cases — Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project and Trump v. Hawaii — have until next Thursday, Oct. 5, to file their briefs. Over the weekend, the Trump administration issued a new update to its travel ban, which had been poised to expire. While the initial executive orders had applied only to majority-Muslim countries, the new order also includes North Korea, Venezuela and Chad, bringing the number of countries under the ban to eight. The other six are Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia. The Supreme Court had planned to hear arguments over the cases in October, deciding in June that parts of the president's revised travel ban should be in effect while the issue is pending. As we reported at the time, "Trump's revised executive order was put on hold by lower court judges in Hawaii and Maryland in March, hours before it was set to take effect. Two federal appeals courts left those nationwide injunctions in place, setting up one final appeal for the Trump administration." Iraq and Sudan, which had been included in earlier White House orders, were left out of the new ban that Trump signed on Sunday. Explaining how the administration's new ban would work, NPR's Arnie Seipel says: "The new restrictions on Chad and North Korea are a broad ban on nationals from those countries entering the States. For Venezuela, restrictions apply to government officials and their immediate family. "These changes are set to take effect on Oct. 18, though the restrictions on Sudan will be lifted immediately, as a result of security baselines defined by the administration." Challenges to the president's effort to impose a travel ban have called it a thinly veiled attempt to block Muslims from entering the country, something Trump and his advisers talked about during and after last year's presidential campaign.Why that baby birth on Google Streetview is a fake A child is born on a roadside as a Google Streetview car swishes by. It’s almost good too good to be true. And it is. The photo, which was apparently taken in the German suburb of Wilmersdorf, exactly outside No. 37 Hubertusallee, Berlin, looks like it was snapped by one of Google’s camera cars. It’s doing the rounds of Twitter and Facebook right now. A man cradles a newborn baby in his hands beside a car which has been parked hurriedly on the street with its door open. Uh huh… German website pcgames.de has called it out as a hoax, and it’s not hard to see why. Here’s where the photo is supposed to have been taken. Notice how close it is to a nearby hospital? Now, do you think they would have stopped the car 2 minutes form the hospital? I don’t think so. Another reason it’s a fake? Here’s the real Streetview picture of No. 37 Hubertusallee, Berlin. That’s right. It’s blurred out Along with the other 240,000 residents in Germany who opted to have their houses blurred out before the Street View service went live on earlier this month. Lastly, Google Germany has confirmed its a fake. But it wasn’t really that hard to work out.Think Oprah. Spirituality Rising The increasing belief in miracles would seem to run counter to a culture undergoing rapid technological change, where science is ascendant in individual lives. At the same time, academic trends such as the growth of historical biblical criticism tend to cast added doubt on many of the accounts of miracles in the Bible. In an article in Bibliotheca Sacra on "Three Centuries of Objections to Biblical Miracles," the Rev. Mark J. Larson recounts some of these arguments by philosophers. Voltaire, Larson noted, said that a "miracle is the violation of mathematical, divine, immutable, eternal laws." David Hume called belief in miracles "a superstitious delusion." "The intellectual winds of the last three centuries have blown in a direction contrary to belief in miracles," Larson concluded. Yet the spiritual winds appear to be blowing in a different direction now. A 2010 Pew Research Center report found 79 percent of Americans, including 78 percent ages 18 to 29, believe in miracles. In the 2003 National Study of Youth and Religion, 91 percent of respondents said they definitely or maybe believe in the possibility of divine miracles from God. Penn State's Martin analyzed General Social Survey data from 1991 to 2008. He found the belief in miracles is growing in recent years. Nearly 73 percent of American adults in 1991 believed that miracles definitely or probably existed, compared to 78 percent in 2008. The percentage who "definitely" believed in miracles rose from 45 percent in 1991 to 55 percent in 2008. Service attendance is the strongest predictor of belief in miracles, and demographic groups such as women and evangelical and black Protestants retain relatively strong beliefs in the existence of miracles. But the greatest growth appears to be coming on the periphery of organized religion. One striking finding, for example, was that marginal attenders across faith lines strengthened their belief in miracles over the past two decades. "Evangelical, mainline, and black Protestants as well as Catholics, so long as they attended religious services once a year or more but less than once a month, all experienced a strengthening in their belief in miracles," Martin reported. Even among respondents with no religious affiliation, the percentages who believe in miracles increased from 32 percent in 1991 to 42 percent in 2008. It is not being driven by any one generation, but seems to be more of a larger cultural shift, according to Martin. Touched By Angels What is contributing to this spiritual awakening about miracles among Americans Martin says are not considered overtly "religious" by traditional standards? One potential explanation, according to Martin, is the cultural preoccupation with miracles promoted in non-dogmatic ways by a series of popular television programs such as "Touched by an Angel" and best-selling books such as the "Left Behind" and "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series. No one, Martin and other researchers point out, may have done more for this spiritual phenomenon than Oprah Winfrey, who with her extraordinarily popular television show and other ventures made accounts of the miraculous a regular part of the lives of millions of Americans.Canada has been one of the largest donors to Haitian elections since at least 2006. But insiders and policy analysts have revealed that in recent years Canada, along with the United States and France, see their funding not so much as a donation but a purchase. For instance, Pierre-Louis Opont, Haiti’s elections overseer, recently said that Haitian President Michel Martelly did not legitimately win the last election in 2010. With Haitians scheduled to go to the polls on Sunday, Opont is wise to attempt to avoid a repeat of the last presidential ballot. The circumstances surrounding Michel Martelly's victory in Hait's 2010 presidential election remain controversial. ( Anja Niedringhaus / AP ) After the last vote was cast, the Haitian electoral council arrived at an initial count showing that Martelly had lost. But the result was soon modified by the Organization of American States (OAS). Not only had the OAS oddly tasked itself with an election review when its role was supposed to be that of election observer, but a Center for Economic and Policy Research analysis showed that the OAS recount was statistically unsound. The OAS’s own special representative would soon reveal that he attended the meetings at which Canada, France, and the United States dominated the process to alter the first-round result. The flawed OAS review kept Martelly in the game by the narrowest of margins. He would take the presidency in the second round in a vote that had the lowest turnout in the western hemisphere since the Second World War. The Canadian-backed 2006 Haitian presidential election was host to its own irregularities. That year, Canada was an election observer in its own right. Despite the fact that Haiti’s most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, was banned from participating altogether, and that its leading figures had been made political prisoners, the Canadian mission ignored this critical information altogether throughout its reporting. Article Continued Below Nor did the Canadians note that on election day, hundreds of apparently uncounted ballot boxes were discovered in a dump north of Port-au-Prince. Instead, the mission simply gave the race an overall “positive assessment.” How bad do things have to get for Canada to lose faith in the procedure of a Haitian election? The election in 2000 showed that all that’s required is a winning candidate who Canada sees as undesirable. In 2000, a landslide 92 per cent of ballots in the presidential race were cast for Jean-Bertrand Aristide, widely seen as unsympathetic to Canada’s business interests in Haiti, with 50 per cent voter turnout. But Canada seized on minor irregularities to discredit and embargo the government. These were not related to the presidential election itself, but rather to a handful of parliamentary seats. The electoral council had used a method to calculate run-off votes that the OAS chose not to object to until after the results came in. In 2003, the same year Aristide’s party announced that it would double the minimum wage, Canada hosted a meeting of foreign officials at Meech Lake, which decided that, “Aristide must go.” By February 2004, Canadian army commandos were securing the Port-au-Prince airport while the U.S. military removed the president from the country. Debate soon raged about whether Aristide had left voluntarily or been deposed, although many of the foreign policy analysts who initially dismissed the idea of a coup have since recognized that “Canada supported the forced removal of President Aristide in 2004, and rather uncritically supported the unelected transitional government in 2004—2005.” During the upcoming elections this year, however, Canada has a chance to change its approach. Although the electoral council disqualified a number of candidates based on a formalistic reading of the country’s election law, the eliminations have at least touched all parties similarly, and no party has been excluded across the board. The Canadian government owes it both to Canadians and Haitians to respect Haitian voters, to promote Haitian institutions working to administer and oversee elections in accordance with the law, and to ensure that they proceed without undue external interference. When I spoke with a Haitian human rights lawyer last month while in Port-au-Prince, I asked him if he still felt he could hope for a fair election this year despite the outside manipulation. Noting the influence of money on North American politics, he offered a measured reply: “Not even in the United States do they have elections that are completely fair. What we hope for in Haiti is much more modest: elections that are credible.” Mark Phillips is a Legal Fellow at the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and a graduate of McGill University’s Faculty of LawNacho Libre is a 2006 Mexican-American[1] sports comedy film directed by Jared Hess and written by Jared and Jerusha Hess and Mike White. It stars Jack Black, and is loosely based on the story of Fray Tormenta ("Friar Storm", a.k.a. Rev. Sergio Gutiérrez Benítez), a real-life Mexican Catholic priest who had a 23-year career as a masked luchador and competed in order to support the orphanage he directed. The film was produced by Black, White, David Klawans and Julia Pistor. The film was released on June 16, 2006 by Paramount Pictures. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $99.3 million at the worldwide box office against its $35 million production budget. Plot [ edit ] Ignacio's parents were a Scandinavian Lutheran missionary and a Mexican deacon, who both died when Ignacio was a baby. Now a cook for the Oaxaca monastery orphanage where he was raised, Ignacio dreams of becoming a luchador, but wrestling is strictly forbidden by the monastery. Ignacio cares deeply for the orphans and loves them with all his heart, but his food is terrible because he cannot afford quality ingredients. He also struggles over his feelings for Sister Encarnación, a nun who teaches at the orphanage. One night, while collecting donated tortilla chips for the orphans, Ignacio is robbed of the chips by a street thief named Steven. After a fight between the two, Ignacio decides to disregard the monastery's rules and become a luchador in order to make money. He convinces Steven to join him with the promise of remuneration if they win, and the two join a local competition as tag partners. Ignacio changes his name to "Nacho" to keep his identity secret, while Steven adopts the name "Esqueleto" (Skeleton). They are defeated in their first match, but are nevertheless paid, as every wrestler is entitled to a portion of the total revenue. They continue to wrestle every week, with Ignacio using his pay to buy and prepare better food for the orphans. Ignacio gets used to losing some fights, but after a while, he gradually grows annoyed with the consistent losses. Steven brings him to a water gypsy who tells Ignacio to climb to an eagle's nest, crack open the egg and swallow the yolk, claiming that he will gain the powers of an eagle. Ignacio completes the task, but still loses the next several bouts, frustrating him. He seeks advice from champion luchador Ramses, but Ramses is vain and in no mood to help aspiring wrestlers. Ignacio's secret is finally exposed to the entire monastery when his robe catches fire during church, exposing his wrestling costume. He admits that he is Nacho and tells them that he intends to fight at a battle royale between eight luchadores for the right to take on Ramses, and for a cash prize, which he will use to buy a bus for the orphans. But the wrestler Silencio wins the match; Nacho comes in second place. Banished from the monastery, Ignacio leaves to live in the nearby wilderness. The next morning, Steven comes to tell him that Silencio has been injured (Steven ran over his foot with Ignacio's bike) and cannot fight, meaning that Nacho—as the second-place finisher—receives the right to fight Ramses. Ignacio and Steven agree to team up again. That night, Ignacio sends a message via Steven to Encarnación, explaining his plan and confessing his love to her (as a sister). Despite initial difficulty, Nacho does well in the match. When the crowd begins to support Ignacio, Ramses resorts to cheating. Nacho is nearly defeated—indeed, unmasked—by Ramses, when Encarnación enters the arena with the orphans. Elated and inspired, Nacho rallies himself and defeats Ramses. Ignacio becomes a professional wrestler and, true to his word, buys a bus for the orphans with his prize money. The film closes with Ignacio, Steven and Sister Encarnación taking the children on a field trip to the city of Monte Albán. Cast [ edit ] Music [ edit ] Director Hess originally wanted musical artist Beck to be behind the soundtrack for the film. Beck, being a fan of Hess, accepted. However, Paramount Pictures did not think Beck's style fit the movie, and decided to try to get composer Danny Elfman to replace him. Elfman then wrote a full score and recorded it in May 2006.[4] However, only about 2/3 of Elfman's score ended up in the movie. Due to how much of Elfman's music filled the film, Elfman's representatives asked that Elfman be the only person credited for the film's score. Hess caught wind of this and would not allow the studio to remove Beck from the credits. When finding that he would not have the only music credit, Elfman told Paramount to remove his name from the film. An agreement was eventually reached where both Beck and Elfman were credited for their respective parts of the score.[5] Release and reception [ edit ] The release date was originally set for May 2006, but was changed by Paramount to avoid competition from Fox's X-Men: The Last Stand and one of Paramount's other films, Mission: Impossible III. It was then placed between the releases of Disney/Pixar's Cars (June 9) and Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures' Superman Returns (June 28). It was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 24, 2006.[6] It was distributed in Switzerland, Spain, and the Netherlands by Universal Pictures. During its opening weekend, Nacho Libre grossed $28,309,599, opening at #2 behind Cars' second weekend. The total domestic box office stands at $80,197,993 and a worldwide total of $99,255,460.[3] The film received mixed reviews by critics; it was labeled as "Rotten" on the Rotten Tomatoes website, with 40% of the reviews being favorable and an average rating of 5.1/10.[7] Rotten Tomatoes' critical consensus states: "At times hilarious, but other times offensive, director Jared Hess is unable to recapture the collective charisma of his Napoleon Dynamite characters, instead relying on a one-joke concept that runs out of steam. Sure to entertain the adolescents, however".[7] According to Roger Ebert, "it takes some doing to make a Jack Black comedy that doesn't work, but Nacho Libre does it".[8] Michael Medved gave the film two and a half stars (out of four) calling it "amusing, but resistable [sic]", but adding that "director Jared Hess [employs] the same off-beat humor that made his Napoleon Dynamite a cult hit".[citation needed] Soundtrack [ edit ] The track listing for the official soundtrack to Nacho Libre.[9] The soundtrack was released October 24, 2006 Hombre Religioso (Religious Man) - Mister Loco "A Nice Pile-Drive to the Face" (dialogue) - Jack Black Move, Move, Move - Alan Hawkshaw and Alan Parker Papas - Mister Loco Piel Canela (Singing at the Party) - Jack Black with Ismael Garcia Ruiz y Su Trio Ramses Suite - Danny Elfman "All the Orphans in the World" (dialogue) - Jack Black and Héctor Jiménez There is No Place in This World for Me - Beck "I'm Serious" (dialogue) - Jack Black 10,000 Pesos - Beck Irene - Caetano Veloso Pump a Jam (Ramses) - Cholotronic Black is Black - Eddie Santiago Half Forgotten Daydreams - John Cameron Encarnación - Jack Black Tender Beasts of the Spangled Night - Beck Saint Behind the Glass - Los Lobos "Beneath the Clothes We Find the Man..." (dialogue) - Jack Black Forbidden Nectar - Jack Black and Mucho Macho Acapulco Some songs that were not included on the soundtrack, but were in the movie, are "Mucha Muchacha" by Esquivel, "Bubblegum" by Mister Loco, "Holy Man" by Beck and "Bat Macumba" by Os Mutantes. Video game [ edit ] A video game adaptation of the film was published by Majesco Entertainment and was released for the Nintendo DS. It is a cartoon-style wrestling game based upon the film.[10] Possible sequel [ edit ] In November 2006, Jack Black, when asked, expressed his interest in a sequel; "I sure hope so, I love working with Jared. I think it's a good bet that we'll collaborate on something again. Mike had an idea that it would be Nacho goes to Japan, we'll see though."[11] However, Jared Hess (who directed the original movie) revealed in October 2009 that Paramount had never approached him about doing a sequel to Nacho Libre, though he said he would "love to work with Black again".[12]Meddler Xelnath Phreak IronStylus Tentative Urgot Changes ( aiming for patch 4.15 ) Meddler "Hey all. Long delayed update here and a change of plans. My original hope had been that we'd be able to rework Urgot's gameplay without needing substantial art support. That's proven to be too optimistic however, with the sort of changes we'd like to make including some new skills and other functionality changes that need animation, spell effects, sound and potentially model changes. Urgot is on our list for such a full rework, that's a ways off though (Sion's up next for major reworks, and we've been tentatively discussing Poppy as an option for after that, though that's not yet certain). As a result the new plan's to do some much shorter term work on Urgot that, while it won't fix everything, should help out on some of his issues and get him into a better spot until we're free to do larger scale work on him. That shorter term work's potentially going to be split into a couple of patches. The first (and I'm guessing that would be around patch 4.15, though not certain on that yet) focusing on some general cleanup and quality of life, with a possible follow up set of changes to add in a bit more power if appropriate. Tentative list of changes we're looking at for that first patch (note, not yet in testing, so may well change): General Basic attack missile speed increased to 1600 (from 1300) - Given Urgot's short attack range a more responsive auto attack's appropriate for the risk he's often putting himself in Recommended item update Some minor visual effects clean up Q Acid Hunters now check for Noxian Corrosive Charge on both start and end of Acid Hunter cast - Currently only checks at start of cast, penalizing swift follow up shots after firing the E at long range and attempts to sneak in a final homing shot as Noxian Corrosive Charge is close to expiring) Mana cost increased to 50 (from 40), half mana cost refunded on kill - Primary goal here is to punish Urgot less for last hitting with Acid Hunters when he needs to. Slight increase in cost to maintain a bit more harass cost, though still aiming to have this be a net buff to Urgot's mana usage. R CD reduced to 120/110/100 (from 120) - Adding a bit of late game power, without increasing his potential lane bully case Mana cost reduced to 100 (from 120) - Standardization with standard ult mana cost" "As above this is an initial set of changes targeted at feel and clean up more than power. Assuming these don't spike his power substantially (think it's unlikely they will, but been wrong before) we'll then look into whether there are some other safe buffs we can throw his way too. To be clear however Urgot's still got some substantial game health issues in his kit so we're not going to just keep throwing raw power at him until he's back to his previous problematic state." Meddler "Yes, minion killing's the intended use." Meddler "Just some minor changes aimed at convenience for existing Urgot players/better starting point for new Urgot players (Last Whisper in, Doran's Blade start, Mercurial out, Brutalizer/Tear/Glacial Shroud in explicitly not just as components etc)." "Next major rework (so full visual update, really big kit changes, lore update etc). Might well see some smaller reworks and/or visual updates first though, not certain on the timing of those off the top of the head." "Quote: Meddler, if you're reading this, how does making his shield scale off AD sound? AP is such a useless stat on him, especially as there is literally only one thing that scales off AP for him, and he will NEVER get any items with AP outside of the Baron buff or an allied Lulu. If not AD, scale off his health? Scale off Armor? One change I'd like to test, but have only limited confidence in at present, is having his shield scale with mana instead of AP. Doing so would offer some additional build distinction for Urgot (tanky mana build versus raw AD/pen build) and supports using Tear which I feel's fun and synergizes well with the Q refund change if that sticks. Potential downsides are a risk of forcing Urgot down a single build path, damage and tankiness from one stat via Manamune/Muraman (snowball issues) or alternatively, if the Muramana changes go through, a lack of appropriate mana items to support such a passive. Quote: Do you think you can give urgot some compensation for the planned manamura changes, as it completely takes away urgots late game power that he needs to stay relevent and gives bonus effects quite useless on him. Yeah, would definitely want to add some compensatory power somewhere if we go ahead with those changes and they cut significant power off Urgot. Not sure what form that would take yet though, few things such as a the possible mana scaling above, I'd want to look into to help make that decision. Unpopular Picks & LCS Picks Xelnath "Quote: How much effort do you put into making underused/underpowered champions viable again? I feel like those kinds of fixes are pretty low on your priority list, and you never
social ecological systems -- studying ecosystems with a special focus on both social and ecological variables that are linked in complex and dynamic ways across multiple scales," Berg said. "Woody plant encroachment is a good fit for this concept, but human factors may have an even more direct and measurable effect on woody plant encroachment than we have recognized." The small semi-urban area in the study showed increases in shrub cover, but all rural areas showed a surprising decrease in woody plants that lasted at least a half-century, Berg said. In addition, woody cover in one of these rural areas has since rebounded to match that from 75 years ago, while in the other it has remained almost unchanged over the last 60 years. He said they plotted the long-term woody cover data next to historical census data for these study areas and found almost a perfect match in each area - when human population density decreased, woody plant cover decreased across the landscape. "In every case and regardless of the time and direction of trends, the close correlation between population and woody cover was remarkable," Berg said. Digging deeper, they plotted the woody cover against historical farm size in each area. As with population, he said, the average farm size almost perfectly tracked woody plant cover, though in the opposite direction. Berg said in most cases when a rebound in population has occurred these were new rural landowners occupying more and smaller farms. Typically, these new landowners had limited or no agricultural background and were seeking recreational opportunities and natural resource amenities. "Many new rural landowners are driven more by a desire to enjoy natural resources than by profit generation, and they rank natural goods such as wildlife as a high priority," he said. "Because cultivation and forage production are not important economic interests, there is less interest in investing in brush management, and woody plants increase." While people may be affected by shrub and tree invasion of grasslands, they are equally likely to bring about these changes in the first place, Berg said. This connection between population growth and woody plant cover is likely to apply to many other rangelands around the world, he said. For these reasons, long-term land management decisions and studies of woody plant encroachment should include a close examination of demographic factors. ###It's hard to miss VR Zone Shinjuku when you're walking around the famous Kabukicho entertainment district. At night, you'll see this brand new building showing off colorful lights and the occasional wall projections. (For those familiar with the Yakuza game series, VR Zone is located at the same site as the bowling alley in Kamurocho.) The two floors have a total space of about 3,500 square meters (37,600 square feet), and it's expected to serve 1,500 visitors per day -- about five to seven times as many as the old Odaiba store. According to Bandai Namco executive producer Junichirou Koyama, the expansion is intended to ride on VR's increasing popularity among families, as observed by his team back in Odaiba. In the process, his team focused on multi-player VR, which gets a more impressive reaction from both the players and the spectators. Koyama added that there are still relatively few people who have experienced VR, but with Bandai Namco's iconic IPs, he's confident that VR Zone will encourage even more people to give VR a try, just so they get to play as their favorite characters. If all goes well, the company may roll out more VR arcades across the country and maybe even overseas. Unlike the appointment-only Odaiba store, VR Zone Shinjuku lets you buy tickets at the door, but only if reservations aren't full that day. For that reason, the arcade still recommends booking in advance, especially for the "1 day/4 Ticket set," which costs 4,400 yen (about $40) and gives you access to four games. The catch is that you can't just pick any four games; you have to choose one of the three games pre-defined by each of the four colored tickets. That said, if the store isn't too crowded that day, you may be able to buy a single VR game ticket for 1,200 yen (about $11) afterward, so that you can pick another game from that list, or even go back to a title you really enjoyed. It's worth pointing out that on top of the game tickets, you'll also have to buy admission tickets: 800 yen (about $7) per teenager or adult (so anyone age 13 and older) and 500 yen (about $4.40) per child (between the ages of 6 and 12); children under the age of 6 can enter for free. Once you're in, you can stay for as long as you want. All told, the VR arcade features 12 game titles, but there are also three non-VR physical games set up next to the in-store restaurant to let folks take a break from VR. Mario Kart Arcade GP VR Naturally, as soon as my tour ended, the first game that I dashed to was Mario Kart. There were two sets of four driving simulators, with car number 1 designated as Mario, number 2 as Luigi, number 3 as Peach and number 4 as Yoshi. My Taipei colleague Ross Wang and I hopped in and were given a pair of Vive Tracker gloves to wear. That allowed us to wave at each other as well as to grab and use weapons -- a shell, a banana or a hammer. Once I put on my Vive headset, I found myself inside the body of Luigi seated in a go-kart. It took a while for the others to be strapped in, but I didn't mind, as I was having fun by merely looking around the vibrant world of Super Mario Bros. Then the engine kicked in, and I realized that my seemingly ordinary ride also included motion feedback. Suddenly, Bowser and Wario came out of nowhere and rudely pushed in front of me. I thought to myself, I'll definitely be throwing some koopa shells today. Even though I had never played Mario Kart in a driving simulator before, this faithful rendition made the experience feel surprisingly familiar -- from the graphics, the music, how the race started, the steering, the obstacles, the crashes, and even how I finished the race (and I'm proud to say that I was the champion both times). The only major differences were having to reach out to the weapons that were hanging on floating balloons and then either throwing or striking them at my foes, but that felt natural. I was simply in awe of the fact that the cartoonish racing game that I grew up with had become very real. Dragon Ball VR: Master the Kamehameha Mario Kart was clearly a tough act to follow, but the next title didn't disappoint. Dragon Ball VR is a game that requires two players and you're both taught how to master the iconic Kamehameha attack move from the game's namesake anime. The preparation was a little more complicated than the other rides, though, as I had to put on a total of five Vive Trackers: one on each foot, one on each hand and one on the back of my waist. Just to be safe, the waist belt was tied to a pole behind me to soften any forward fall. The gloves also had chunky rumblers wired to the back, which I found to be a little uncomfortable at first. Soon after the game started, I was greeted by Goku who served as my mentor (the booth next door featured Vegeta instead). Given my limited proficiency in Japanese, I could not understand a word of Goku's instructions, but I did figure out that he was teaching me the correct posture for shooting small Ki blasts. With every blast I shot out, the gloves rumbled accordingly. This felt cool indeed, but I had terrible aim and managed to almost tear down the Martial Arts Temple in the first scene. I think it was because I didn't squat low enough. Looking disappointed, Goku then teleported me to the wild where I could shoot at large rocks instead, and that was where he taught me the ways of Kamehameha. First, I had to build up my Ki energy by squatting slightly and pulling my fists closer to my waist. I could feel the platform vibrating as if my Ki were really shaking the earth, and more impressively, there was actual wind blown at me to go with the glowing updraft in the game. In the next step, I had to cup my hands together on one side of the waist to concentrate the Ki into my palms, and I could tell my beam's readiness both visually and by how hard my palms were rumbling. There were a couple of occasions when I accidentally lost all my Ki, presumably due to my bad posture, forcing me to restart the process. At least that way I proved that this game does have some challenges, as opposed to just letting one goof around in the anime setting. When my beam was fully charged, Goku and I yelled the iconic "Ka-me-ha-me-HA!" scream, and then we pushed our hands out to shoot our Kamehameha beams. Boom! I destroyed a hill and left a massive trail on the ground. I'm not actually sure if the yelling made any difference, but who cares? This is Dragon Ball. After a few more practice shots, I was teleported to the battlefield to face the player next door. It was then merely a matter of who shoots first with the right aim -- there was a fair bit of distance between the two of us. Alas, my first shot was too low and I ended up with a massive trench in front of me. As I desperately tried to charge up my second Kamehameha, my enemy sent a perfect beam right into my face, which was accompanied by a quick gust of wind in the real world. I died. Luckily, it wasn't game over just yet, as the game shortly resurrected me back onto the battlefield. After another missed aim, I eventually redeemed myself and defeated my opponent right before the game ended. Evangelion VR: The Soul Seat I continued my anime frenzy by jumping into Evangelion VR. This game places the player inside of one of the three most iconic Evangelion giant cyborgs: Unit-00, Unit-01 and Unit-02. The story here is that Tokyo-3, a fictional fortress city where paramilitary agency NERV is headquartered, is under attack by a creature called Zeruel, aka the Tenth Angel, so NERV deploys all three Evangelion units to the surface in the hopes of defeating the Angel. Much like the rides made for Mario Kart VR, the Evangelion VR ones come with motion feedback and identical chairs, except the players have to lift their legs onto a leg rest to match the cockpit's design in the anime. Also, I didn't have to wear any Vive Tracker this time. To move around, you have to move both joysticks in the desired direction. Shooting is done with the right trigger using your head to aim, and you can equip a different weapon using the left trigger. The game started off with me inside a dark Evangelion cockpit awaiting activation. To establish a neural link between the human pilot and the Evangelion unit, the cockpit is slowly filled up with a transparent orange fluid (it's known as "LCL," which is actually blood harvested from the Second Angel, Lilith). As a pleasant surprise, the ride enhanced this part of the experience by gently blowing cool air up my body as I watched the liquid creeping up. I was impressed even before I got to mobilize the Evangelion suit. Soon, I was in sync with the suit and could see the heads-up display overlaying the outside world. Even though I was still being pushed out of the loading bay, I was already admiring the detailed graphics from a great height while my seat rumbled accordingly. Just as I was approaching the launchpad, I could also see my fellow Evangelion suits on both sides, and then we were rapidly shot up the shaft to the surface. The massive Angel showed up soon after our arrival, which prompted us to run around and attack it from all sorts of angles while trying to dodge its beams. Truth be told, I had no idea which part of the Angel's body to aim my rifle at, but it didn't matter as I was mainly enjoying the immersiveness inside this massive cyborg, courtesy of fantastic view combined with motion feedback from the seat and the joysticks. It took me a while to realize that I could pick up more weapons from some of the walls, but by the time I got to equip a new minigun, the Angel had already penetrated the wall and totaled me in the process. As a pre-death humiliation, I was forced to watch the ugly beast slowly devouring me with its alien jaws. Dinosaur Survival Run: Jungle of Despair Just because the remaining VR titles lack the iconic IPs doesn't mean they aren't also fun. In fact, I would highly recommend a thriller game called Dinosaur Survival Run: Jungle of Despair, in which up to four players are tasked with rescuing plane crash survivors on an island where dinosaurs roam free (we never learn, do we?). It's pitch-black, human corpses are scattered all over the forest, and you're only given a self-balancing scooter -- simulated by a rumbling platform and a handlebar -- plus a flashlight with limited battery life. Basically, you can expect lots of screaming. Hanechari I also enjoyed Hanechari, which literally means "winged bicycle." You have to fly this vehicle on what's essentially a stationary bicycle. Even though this required some exercising, I was able to fully appreciate the stunning landscape in the game, and the breeze generated by the two fans in front of me made my three-minute flight more realistic. Most importantly, I managed to dodge all the obstacles to reach the castle in one piece. Fishing VR: GIJIESTA If you want something even less physically intensive, there's Fishing VR: GIJIESTA, which can be a one- or two-player game and is all about catching the biggest fish possible within six minutes. Although I'm not a fishing expert, the fishing rod controller and the fake scoop net made the experience a tad more realistic, plus it was also fun for others to watch as I wrestled the virtual fish. After letting two fish escape the hook, I managed to catch an 86-cm (33-inch) fish that set a new record for the day, until someone else came along with a 90-cm (35-inch) catch later. Earlier games Given the limited time I had at VR Zone, I only managed to try the brand-new titles there, but I do hope to return for the games that were brought over from the old site. The most notable ones are Gundam VR and VR-AT Simulator: Armored Trooper Votoms Battling Dudes, both of which are based on their respective classic anime series though only the latter lets you pilot a robot. The remaining games include Argyle Shift, which puts you inside the cockpit of a giant battle robot; Hospital Escape Omega, which pushes you through a bloody hospital on a wheelchair (I tried this at Tokyo Game Show last year and failed to hide my fear); Ski Rodeo, which is a ski simulator; and Fear of Heights: The Show, which requires the player to walk a plank protruding out of the top floor of a skyscraper. Ghost in the Shell: Arise Stealth Hounds One ride that wasn't available for demo at the time was Ghost in the Shell: Arise Stealth Hounds, as it wouldn't be ready until August. The setup was all shielded off so I couldn't even get a glimpse, but based on the official info, it will use MSI's VR One backpack for untethered gameplay in a 20-by-12-meter (65-by-40-foot) arena, and up to eight people can play in this two-team game. Much like the futuristic warfare in the anime, you'll be able to apply optical camouflage in the game, which makes me wonder if players will keep running into each other by accident. Final thoughts In the end, I spent about three hours playing games at VR Zone Shinjuku. I got around to six VR titles (two of which I played twice) that day, which was already a record for me, but I still wanted more. Nowhere else have I seen a VR arcade -- not even HTC's own Viveland -- matching the same level of scale and sophistication, so kudos to Bandai Namco for such dedication. That said, there's always room for improvement: I'd love to see VR Zone incorporate even more sensory features like haptic suits and thermo-electric devices, but what it's offering now is already leagues ahead of most other so-called VR arcades. Hopefully the lines won't be too long because I definitely have to go back at some point; I'm kicking myself for still having not tried Gundam VR. Engadget Chinese's Taipei Editor Ross Wang contributed to this report.INTERNET — A whistleblower from the CIA released conclusive information to the hacker collective Anonymous that showed the CIA was acting as “de facto editor-in-chief” for all network and cable news stations. That means that a CIA agent ultimately controlled what Brian Williams could and couldn’t say, while giving him cash rewards for hamming up stories about combat in Iraq. The whistleblower also alleged that Bob Simon, dead Wednesday evening from a fatal car crash, was on the verge of coming forward with an investigative report that would show conclusive proof that the CIA has been controlling the content of practically every major newspaper at home and abroad, and most actively in Syria and the Ukraine. Williams has totally disappeared from the public eye and was suspended for six months without pay.In a sane world in which a true "free market" existed, there might not be a need for independent dealerships. So manufacturers might prefer letting indies sell their wares. Others would opt to sell direct. Because why is it the government's business to tell manufacturers who can and can't sell their product? So we can all snicker with a knowing nod that the three states that have now officially closed the internet-sales loophole and banned Tesla from selling their cars at all are—drum roll—Texas, Arizona, and as of this week, New Jersey. When Republicans talk about their fealty to the free market, just look at Texas and Arizona and laugh in their face. And New Jersey? Why, that's Chris Christie's turf, and it was his administration that unilaterally shut down Tesla in the state. This was the same Chris Christie that a week prior, at CPAC, said this: We need to talk about the fact that [Republicans] are for a free-market society that allows your effort and ingenuity to determine your success, not the cold, hard hand of the government. “There are substantial economic and public safety implications in the purchase of an automobile,” said Jim Appleton, president of New Jersey Coalition of Automotive Retailers. “The Tesla factory-owned store model destroys price competition and restricts consumer access to warranty and safety recall service.” Ironic, then, for him to shut down "ingenuity" using the "cold, hard hand of the government." The incumbent auto dealerships have no interest dealing with competition, and Christie is right there to help them maintain their outdated business model. Listen to the dealers' argument Manufacturers can set their own prices. People decide which car they can afford. Not sure where "price competition" is harmed. In fact, Tesla's no-haggle pricing is a breath of fresh air. There are few experiences more frustrating than trying to negotiate an auto price at a dealership. And that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that dealers have monopolistic "territories," whether they are the only outfit carrying a specific brand. The competition can be an hour's drive away. (Though in fairness, I negotiated my last car purchase by emailing the five closest Mazda dealers with my requirement, and going with the one that got me the best price, even though I had to drive an hour to go pick it up.) Restricts consumer access to warranty and safety recall service? Not only is Tesla opening up their own service centers, but they have roving service teams for people who live too far from a service center. And in any case, if that was a problem, the free market would take care of it, right? Either independent service centers would arise to fill the need, or Tesla would suffer from poor word-of-mouth as owners would find it difficult to service. And it's really rich for dealers to hype up their role in safety issues when... [T]he Consumer Federation of America reported in 2013 that “[m]isrepresentation in advertising or sales of new and used cars, lemons, faulty repairs, leasing and towing disputes” was the top source of consumer complaints to state officials, as it had been in previous years. The dealership model is a failure. Ironically, dealers don't make that much money in car sales. Even in the best of years, the numbers are about $150 per vehicle, and in bad years, they could lose money per sale. And the dealership model costs about $2,225 per car, costs that are obviously passed on to auto buyers. Dealerships actually make their revenue in their service and parts department, and that wouldn't necessarily be affected by direct internet sales of vehicles. New Jersey is just the latest front in this wide-ranging battle between Tesla and incumbent dealers, and it certainly won't be the last. There is legislation pending in New York, Ohio, and other states to similarly ban Tesla from bypassing the dealers, and those dealers are pumping thousands of lobbying dollars to protect their turf. It's a losing cause, of course. There will be far more public pressure to allow Tesla sales in Texas and New Jersey and Arizona than there will be to keep them out. And not just from middle class families that will clamor for Tesla's mid-priced sedan scheduled to arrive in 3-4 years, but more importantly, from the well-heeled upper-income people who now see Tesla as a status symbol. (And as far as status symbols go, Tesla is probably the most wholesome save-the-earth one possible.) And yes, once Tesla breaks the dam, then other automakers will follow suit. And that's a good thing. If people think that a middle-man is worth their while and want to pay the premium, all the power to them! But in the end, the dealers DO have everything to fear. They suck, people hate them, and given an alternative, they'll take it.Don’t Kick Your Robot here with some helpful hints on how we move through the ladder. [DKMR]Varranis wants you to be ready to start playing ranked and move from rank 25 to rank LEGENDARY! Check out our tips and tricks! Ten Ways to Improve Your Game I thought this week we would go over 10 ways to improve your game. A lot of these relate to one another and aren’t applicable to every situation, but they’re important concepts to consider when developing your play style. 1. Maximize Your Mana Generally if you’re spending all of your mana every turn you’re making stronger, more efficient plays than a player who isn’t. If you have 3 mana available and the choice between playing a 2 drop or a 3 drop, the 3 drop will usually be right. The 3 drop will usually be a slightly stronger card (otherwise you might want to reconsider why you’re playing that 3 drop). It will also be more difficult to play that 3 drop on future turns since it costs more mana. Playing the more expensive card now frees up your mana on future turns. I find this concept especially important when using the Coin. Identifying the turn on which you will have the most difficultly maximizing your mana is a good way to determine when to use the Coin. Most of the time, the extra mana from the Coin will allow you to maximize your mana on that turn. Note that it is not always right to maximize your mana. It’s a good concept to keep in mind to make sure you’re making efficient plays, but NEVER make a bad play merely because you have the mana to do so. When your Knife Juggler gets slain by a Fiery War Axe, your pleas of maximized mana will not grant the poor gnome any solace in his futile demise. 2. Accept RNG(J)esus Into Your Life I’ve said this before, but RNG happens. There’s been a lot of talk about Tinkmaster Overspark and Nat Pagle recently. Should they be banned in tournament play? Do they make the game unfun? Do they discourage skillful play? Those are all interesting questions, but if you want to win, they don’t matter. What matters is that your Pagles fish better and your Tinkmasters tink smarter. The first step to accepting RNG(j)esus into your life is to realize that you have an influence on RNG. The first decision you make that influences RNG is deck construction. You don’t have to play Tinkmaster or Pagle. Clearly they can be powerful, but you need to accept the devil’s bargain you make when you slide Tinkmaster Overspark into your deck. He’s not always going to tink a Squirrel. It’s usually a very poor play to tink a 5/5 hoping for a Squirrel. If you’re in a situation where you need Tinkmaster to do that, you likely lost the game earlier, and Tinkmaster’s giving you a 50% out another card couldn’t provide. Tinkmaster is really only a good card when you expect to tink a Cairne, Ragnaros, or other powerful minion. With most popular decks at the moment only running one or two reasonable Tinkmaster targets, it may even be time for the all-powerful Tinkmaster to shed his staple status. He’s a good pick if you expect a lot of big Legendaries in the meta, but fairly poor otherwise. The second decision you make is how you play with RNG during the game. A good example of this is our above discussion of what you’re tinking. Tinking an Earth Elemental is always good value and the RNG doesn’t matter. Tinking an Ancient of Lore is a 50/50 gamble that can lose you the game in certain dire situations. I usually like to discuss Knife Juggler here as well. A key to many aggressive decks is using your Knife Jugglers most effectively. By sequencing your attacks appropriately, you can increase the odds of hitting certain targets. When playing Knife Juggler, I typically envision the best and worst outcomes and play in a way that enables the best outcome. Harvest Golem is a common card that comes up here. If you have a way to kill the front half of a Harvest Golem (without running the Knife Juggler into it) before playing minions, there’s a good chance you can juggle a knife at the back half and save your Knife Juggler. Whenever a situation involving RNG comes up, make sure you think smart and maximize positive outcomes. One last point on RNG: don’t let it put you on tilt. I’ve seen far too many players rage at unfortunate RNG and lose games not to RNG but unfortunate misplays they make while enraged. Don’t let yourself be a minion with Enrage: Lose the game. 3. Know Who’s the Beatdown A lot of people have written entire articles on this concept already, and it’s no wonder why. In a game where minions are your primary removal spells, it’s crucial to understand which player is the aggressor. As one would expect, aggressive decks are typically the aggressor and control decks usually are not. Things get a little trickier in aggro mirrors and control mirrors. As a decision making shortcut, I generally ask myself, “If I attack my opponent’s face, will my opponent have to attack my minions?” If the answer to this question is yes, you’re probably the beatdown. Attacking your opponent’s minions in this situation often means you’re straight up losing the damage you could have done. Your opponent is going to make the trades for you because they have to. Obviously there are some situations where going for the face will allow your opponent more favorable trades. In these situations, it is often right to make trades that prevent your opponent from making the most favorable trades and go to the face with your remaining minions. Taunt is a very direct representation of this concept. It is rare that you don’t want to go for the face with your Taunt minions since your opponent has to attack them. 4. Make Your Opponent’s Turn Awkward What the heck is that supposed to mean? Essentially, keep in mind that your opponent can only play cards during their turn. Aside from Secrets, there are few to no ways for your opponent to interact with you once it’s your turn. You’ve got all the control during your turn, and you want to ensure your opponent’s next turn will be a little…weird… With the popularity of certain strategies, it’s usually not that hard to figure out your opponent’s game plan. Make sure you consider what they are most likely to do on their next turn and what their primary goals are for the game. If they’re a Druid playing Force of Nature and Savage Roar, make sure you have enough life or a Taunt or two to survive turn 9. Taunts in general are a really good example of making your opponent’s turn awkward. You want to make your opponent do things they’d rather not. Attacking a Taunt minion is usually one of those things. Another way to do this is by making attacks your opponent would like to do less optimal. For example, if you have an Azure Drake and your opponent has a Chillwind Yeti, pinging the Yeti in an incidental fashion (Hero Power, Swipe, etc.) will make attacking the Drake a far less favorable play since he will also lose the Yeti. 5. Play To Your Outs Sometimes the conventional best play is actually a sure way to lose. If your opponent gets far enough ahead, there can be situations where you will lose before you can catch up by making favorable trades. In these situations, you should play in a way that maximizes the impact of your remaining outs. Perhaps the only way you can win is to go for the face and top deck a particular Charge minion (I’m looking at you Leeroy). Your best play could be to forego playing a Fire Elemental and instead using your Hero Power to try for a Spell Damage Totem to combo with the Bloodmage Thalnos in your hand and the Lightning Storm you hope to draw. Frequently with my Paladin deck I’ll find myself in situations where I can trade minions to survive a turn or two longer or go to the face and put myself in a position to draw one of my many Charge minions for game. The latter option frequently delivers more wins due to the way my deck is constructed. Always make sure you’re not only thinking about how you’ll play the next few turns, but how you plan on winning the game. Constructing a game winning scenario is difficult and takes many turns of planning. 6. Pack A Few Surprises It’s always good to surprise your opponent. How do you think players felt having Force of Nature and Savage Roar played against them before it was popular? I can assure you, they were surprised. And the players playing the combo likely won quite a few games because of it. The lesson here is that it’s often worth playing a couple powerful cards your opponent won’t expect. If the cards are unexpected, it’s less likely your opponent will be prepared for them. In the right meta, cards like Mind Control Tech, The Black Knight, Big Game Hunter, Crazed Alchemist, Millhouse Manastorm, and many others can be surprising and game winning. If your opponent expects Mind Control Tech, they’re never going to have more than three minions. If they don’t, well…you may get to play a game swinging Mind Control Tech. Which of these cards is good is always changing, but it’s important to play a card or two that will catch your opponent off guard. 7. Research, Research, Research Not every card is created equal, and some cards are more equal against other cards. It’s always critical to understand the current meta and how you can take advantage of it. This takes some research. Fortunately, you’re off to a good start by reading this article. Research doesn’t have to be hard, and you probably do a lot of it already. Listen to podcasts, tune in to streams, read articles, browse forums, even playing on the ladder is a form of research. Knowing is half the battle. Once you know what’s popular you can tech your decks appropriately to combat it or play a different deck entirely. Research is also a great way to learn how to improve your technical play. 8. Check Twice Dude. Don’t be the guy who misses lethal. Even great players can miss when they have game on board (but rarely, they are great after all). Always do your math twice. Don’t snap cast a spell; see if there’s a better target first. Look for unconventional plays. The ability to identify the best play in a unique scenario is one of the greatest defining factors between the good players and the best players. 9. Practice What Matters It’s an oft used idiom that practice makes perfect. However, I caution you to not just practice, but learn. Just grinding a bunch of games with a deck won’t make you an expert with it. You need to learn why your deck works the way it does, the purpose each card serves, and why certain cards are good or bad in a certain situation. When building my Paladin deck, it was crucial for me to understand that the reason I was playing Equality was to get around Taunt minions. Once I understood that, it was easy for me to switch them out for Ironbeak Owls; a change that improved the deck immensely. It’s easy to judge success by win percentages, but when you’re practicing, the results of individual interactions are far more important than who wins. Try to identify what cards you need in various situations and why. Think of cards you may not be running that would be good against a popular strategy and try them out. Don’t judge that new card by whether you win or lose, but by how it performs in the situation you chose it for. Was it as good as you expected? If so, it may be worth playing even if you don’t win often. Perhaps it’s a different card you need to change. 10. Build A Community This may sound cheesy, but playing Hearthstone with friends or finding a community of others who enjoy the game is one of the best ways to improve your game (especially if they’re better than you). Having a group to bounce ideas around with and test those ideas is a surefire way to stumble upon useful information. It also gives you an outlet to do serious testing without putting your rank on the ladder at risk. So get out there, make friends, and play some Hearthstone! We encourage you to head to our forums and ask questions, post your decks, believe it or not your questions help us get better! [DKMR]varranis streams every Sunday from 10 AM – 4 PM EST at http://www.twitch.tv/varranis. You can find all of DKMR’s streamers on their website with times and the days they stream! Guide written by [DKMR]Varranis Discussions about this topic brought to you by Team [DKMR] Decks to Watch Out For Here are a few decks that I’ve been seeing on the ladder or in tournaments recently. I’ve seen a lot of my Paladin Aggro deck, and I’ve included an updated build below. Reynad’s Warrior deck has been around for a few weeks now, but it’s still all over the ladder at higher ranks. This is the Shaman Midrange build I played in the recent Hearthstone Players Invitational. I highly recommend this deck for tournaments if you expect a lot of Druid, Warrior Control, or other control or midrange strategies. Note that some players have been using Chillwind Yeti over Unbound Elemental. Lava Burst is an easy answer to Chillwind Yeti or Ancient of Lore and also doubles as reach. ENoR’s Rogue is an example of the “Miracle” Rogue decks littering the lower ranks of the ladder. It’s combolicious, and fairly difficult to play correctly. As I’m sure most of you have noticed, there’s a bunch of aggro on the ladder after the reset. I suggest choosing your deck accordingly.Essex County voters who get turned down to vote next Tuesday, November 7, at their polling places can receive free legal assistance from students at Rutgers Law School in Newark. If an Essex County resident goes to vote on Election Day and is not permitted to cast their ballot on the voting machine at a polling place, that voter can appear before a judge to obtain a court order allowing them to cast a vote. Rutgers Law students will assist voters, accompanying them to court and representing them, at no cost, before a Superior Court judge. Sign Up for E-News “I think it’s important for a law school to offer this kind of service,” said Rutgers Law Professor Alexis Karteron, who directs the Constitutional Rights Clinic. “It’s important because the right to vote is sacrosanct.” Rutgers Law students who are part of the Voter Assistance Project, will assist voters for free, a service that the law school has been providing to local residents for nearly a decade. And to make it easier for frustrated voters, Rutgers Law students will be located at the Essex County Court Complex in Newark where voters have to go to make their appeal. “We will represent voters before the court to make application for a court order allowing them to vote on a voting machine,” said Karteron. The law students will be accompanied by a Rutgers Law professor throughout the day. “Most people don’t realize their legal options,” said Kevin Cropsey, a student volunteer who is in his third year of law school. “There’s multiple avenues they can pursue to exercise their right to vote.” Essex County residents who are not permitted to vote at their polling site have two choices, explained Rutgers Law Professor Charles Auffant, of the Community and Transactional Lawyering Clinic. That voter can appear before a judge and request a Court Order that he or she be allowed to vote at a polling place, or that voter can vote with a provisional ballot, which may not be counted. “There are very few rights as important as the right to vote,” said Tony Martinez, another law student volunteer, who remarked on the importance of Tuesday’s gubernatorial race in New Jersey. Citizens denied the right to vote who elect to appear before a judge must proceed to the Superintendent of Elections Office at the Hall of Records to be heard by a Superior Court Judge. The appeals are heard in the Veterans Courthouse and the Historic Courthouse in Newark. This legal service is provided through the Voting Assistance Project, which was started by the Constitutional Rights Clinic at Rutgers to educate and assist residents of Essex County. This year, law students from the Constitutional Rights Clinic will be accompanied by law students from the Community and Transactional Lawyering Clinic to represent voters. Law student Pauline Tarife said she volunteered because it was a chance to take what she’s learned in her law classes and put it into practice, “It was the perfect opportunity to make an impact.”Ether.Camp’s Hacker Gold Token
typically use software that simulates networks of brain cells, known as neural nets, to process data. They require more powerful collections of computers to run. Facebook’s AI group will work on applications that can help the company’s products as well as on more general research that will be made public, says Srinivas Narayanan, an engineering manager at Facebook who’s helping to assemble the new group. He says one way Facebook can help advance deep learning is by drawing on its recent work creating new types of hardware and software to handle large data sets (see “Inside Facebook’s Not-So-Secret New Data Center”). “It’s both a software and a hardware problem together; the way you scale these networks requires very deep integration of the two,” he says. Facebook hired deep learning expert Marc’Aurelio Ranzato away from Google for its new group. Other members include Yaniv Taigman, cofounder of the facial recognition startup Face.com (see “When You’re Always a Familiar Face”); computer vision expert Lubomir Bourdev; and veteran Facebook engineer Keith Adams.At Periscope Data we continuously help people build, diagnose, and update their data. When approaching a table of data for the first time, it helps our understanding to see summarizing statistics. By looking at such staples as the range, sum, and average, you can get a quick glance at the shape and distribution of the data before taking a deep dive. Today we will demonstrate how we append this data to our SQL tables. Understanding Blog Post Metrics Whenever we write a blog post, we want to understand if readers are visiting the Periscope Data homepage and signing up for a trial. We have tables blog_pings, homepage_pings, and signup_pings that let us observe when users visit the homepage after reading a blog post. We want to count visitors to the blog even if they did not visit the homepage. Since blog_pings includes everyone in homepage_pings, which in turn includes all of signup_pings, we use left join to merge these records without losing any of the rows. select post , count(distinct blog_pings.cookie) as blog , count(distinct homepage_pings.cookie) as homepage , count(distinct signup_pings.cookie) as signups from blog_pings left join homepage_pings on blog_pings.cookie = homepage_pings.cookie left join signup_pings on blog_pings.cookie = signup_pings.cookie group by 1 Running this query gives us the counts of visitors who visited the blog page, the home page, and those who signed up for a trial of Periscope Data. This table makes it very easy to analyze the conversion rates of the most active and least active blog posts, but not how an average post performed just by scrolling through the table. We can add the average and standard deviation as headers to the table to guide the analyst when checking up on a blog post. First, we bundle the previous query into a temporary table using with blog_signups as (...) with blog_signups as ( select post , count(distinct blog_pings.cookie) as blog , count(distinct homepage_pings.cookie) as homepage , count(distinct signup_pings.cookie) as signups from blog_pings left join homepage_pings on blog_pings.cookie = homepage_pings.cookie left join signup_pings on blog_pings.cookie = signup_pings.cookie group by 1 ) Now we can pull statistics like the total, mean, and standard deviation from blog_signups. select 'Total', sum(blog), sum(homepage), sum(signups) from blog_signups union select 'Average', avg(blog), avg(homepage), avg(signups) from blog_signups union select 'Standard Deviation', stddev(blog), stddev(homepage), stddev(signups) from blog_signups Having these statistics is great, but it becomes tedious to check multiple data sources. We can address this by simply folding our statistics into the main table by unioning them together. select 'Total', sum(blog), sum(homepage), sum(signups) from blog_signups union select 'Average', avg(blog), avg(homepage), avg(signups) from blog_signups union select 'Standard Deviation', stddev(blog), stddev(homepage), stddev(signups) from blog_signups union select * from blog_signups This will make sorting the table difficult, since the Total, Average, and Standard Deviation are on either ends of the range of the data. To help us in sorting the data, we can add an index column that we will use as a primary sorting key. First, we add an index to blog_signups: with blog_signups as ( select 1 as index , post , count(distinct blog_pings.cookie) as blog , count(distinct homepage_pings.cookie) as homepage , count(distinct signup_pings.cookie) as signups from blog_pings left join homepage_pings on blog_pings.cookie = homepage_pings.cookie left join signup_pings on blog_pings.cookie = signup_pings.cookie group by 1, 2 ) Then we index the statistics in our order preference: select 4, 'Total', sum(blog), sum(homepage), sum(signups) from blog_signups union select 3, 'Average', avg(blog), avg(homepage), avg(signups) from blog_signups union select 2, 'Standard Deviation', stddev(blog), stddev(homepage), stddev(signups) from blog_signups Now we wrap this entire query into another with block which we call signup_statistics: with signup_statistics as ( with blog_signups as (...) select 4, 'Total', sum(blog), sum(homepage), sum(signups) from blog_signups union select 3, 'Average', avg(blog), avg(homepage), avg(signups) from blog_signups union select 2, 'Standard Deviation', stddev(blog), stddev(homepage), stddev(signups) from blog_signups union select * from blog_signups ) select post , blog , homepage , signups from signup_statistics order by index desc , signups desc And there we have it! Now whenever an author wants to check up on their post, they will be able to more easily understand how their post faired against the distribution.I do not own Highschool DxD. Rias Gremory didn't know what to do. So she sought out her best friend Sona Sitri. If there was anyone who could help her it was Sona. Rias admired her friend's genius mind and skills. The two of them haven't even matured yet and Sona had already used several of her Evil Pieces while Rias had failed to use any of her own. In a way, Rias was envious of Sona. Even so, they were best friends that had grown up in the underworld and even came to Japan together to attend school. It seemed like the entire underworld was against her. All Rias wanted to do was marry for love. Not to some arrogant man named Riser Phenex. She saw the way he treated his servants and knew she would be just another 'notch' under his belt. It disgusted her and she couldn't stand it. "Sona, you have to help me! I can't possibly marry someone like him!" Rias said begging her friend. "I'm sorry Rias, but I don't see a way out of this. You won't be able to convince them with the sate the underworld is in. We are still recovering from the last Great War" Sona said deep in thought. "There has to be something, anything!" Rias said desperately. "There might be...no, that would be too risky" Sona said pushing her glasses up. "What is it!? Tell me!" Rias said desperately. "The only way to break off the engagement, you would have to sacrifice everything" Sona said looking at her friend seriously. "What do you mean?" Rias asked hesitantly. "You would have to renounce your family name, give up your status of high class devil, forfeit your evil pieces and become a servant to another devil" Sona said looking sadly at Rias. "I'd have to give up everything?" Rias said in shock. "It's the only way. If you do that I can protect you in my peerage. I still have some evil pieces left" Sona said taking her friends hand. "You mean, I'd become your servant?" Rias asked her. "We would still be friends. Eventually you will be able to work your way back up to a high class devil again and get your evil pieces back" Sona said trying to lift her friend's mood. Rias was deep in thought. She knew exactly what all of this meant. She would be giving up her right to be a Gremory and her right as heir. She would have to give up her status and freedom so she could break off this engagement. If everything succeeded she would be able to get her evil pieces back and nobody would be able to control or manipulate her ever again. Would it all be worth it? "I'll do it" Rias said literally putting her life in her friend's hands. "I'll protect you Rias. I swear" Sona said pulling her friend into a hug. For the rest of the night they made their plans. They knew they would have to act fast because the engagement party was tomorrow. It was then that they would make their move. They would do it in front of everybody so no one could doubt her resolve. [~][~][~] They next day everything had been set into motion. There was no stoping them now. Rias and Sona were dressed elegantly for the engagement party. It was a party with many members of both the houses of Gremory, Phenex and a few other noble houses. Nobody here actually cared that Rias was against the wedding. As long as it increased their status and secured the bloodlines for future generations. It disgusted Rias and she couldn't stand these nobles or their politics. The party was coming to a climax and Rias knew she had to make her move before the formal engagement was announced. The two of them climbed to the top of the grand stair case to stand above all of them. Sona gave her and encouraging nod and Rias took a deep breath. She tapped on her champagne glass gather everyone's attention. Eventually the entire party had gone silent to listen to what she had to say. She recognized many of their faces and to a select few she silently apologized for what she was about to do. "Everyone I have an announcement to make" Rias said and she knew what they were all expecting, but she was going to disappoint all of them. "From the moment I was born this marriage has been prearranged. I wasn't given a choice, or a say in the matter at all. So, I Rias Gremory...herby denounce my family name! My right as a high class devil, and I forfeit my Evil Pieces!" Rias said in a glorious rage of rebellion. Everyone was shocked and an outcry of anger erupted through the crowd. The members of the Phenex family became angry with the Gremory family and members of the Gremory family were angry and confused towards Rias. "Rias what are you doing!?" "What is the meaning of this Gremory!?" "This is unacceptable!" "As a friend and someone who truly cares about her. I Sona Sitri clam Rias Gremory as my servant and place her under my protection" Sona said glaring at all of those below her. This only cause further outcry that blamed the Sitri family and it started to look like fights were about to break out. They were all angry and confused and Rias could care less about what the repercussions would be. She wouldn't be manipulated any longer. "This is an outrage!" "Explain yourselves!" "Is the Sitri family behind this!" "The Sitri family has nothing to do with this! This is my own free will! I will not be controlled like some puppet!" Rias shouted at all of them and the yelling only ensued. Without even realizing it someone had stepped up beside Rias's side. She looked up at him in shock as her brother, the Maou placed a hand on her shoulder and raised his other to quiet the crowd. Rias could only wonder what he was planning and Sona shrunk away from his presence. Soon the crowd quieted down to listen to what he had to say. "My dear sister has renounced her family name and her status. There is nothing we can do about that" Sirzechs said causing another outcry amongst the crowd, but he raised his hand to quiet them again. "Even so, we cannot allow the bloodlines to die off and it is imperative that we do not fight amongst ourselves" Sirzechs told them seriously. "So I propose to have a tournament among the young generation of devils for the right to clam Rias Gremory. It should be quite entertaining" Sirzechs said suavely, intriguing more than a few of them. Before Rias could even start arguing with her brother she was pulled away by his wife Grayfia. No matter how hard she struggled she couldn't get out of her fierce grip. "Let me go! Why is my brother interfering! I'm not some trophy to be won!" Rias shouted struggling against her grip. Suddenly Grafia turned and slapped Rias hard across the face. "You foolish girl! Do you have any idea what you have done!? You could have very well sparked a war in the underworld! That's why he had to step in! All because of your selfish actions!" Grayfia said angrily. "You would never understand! You and Sirzechs love each other! Maybe you should consider how I feel!" Rias said with tears running down her cheeks. Grayfia recoiled in shock and in shame. Slowly she brought the crying Rias into her arms and held her tight. "I'm sorry for hitting you, but me and Sirzechs do care about you, but he is a Maou with an enormous responsibility. He is doing everything he can to make sure you are happy" Grayfia said holding Rias as she cried. [~][~][~] For the next three days Rias waited. News about the tournament spread throughout the underworld and was being made into a grand spectacle. She was nothing more than just a prize and she couldn't do anything about it since she gave up her status. The worst part about all of it was that she was being kept in the dark. All she knew was that the tournament would start tomorrow. Rias was deep in thought and was frustrated with the world when Sona can to see her. "Sona, what are you doing here? What's going on?" Rias asked hoping her friend could fill her in. "I'm sorry Rias. I didn't expect this to happen. I knew there would be repercussions, but not this" Sona told her. "It's ok, just tell me what's going on" Rias told her. "The entire underworld is talking about it. It has become a lot more than just winning you as a servant. It's all about who is strongest of the young devils, but everyone seems to have their own reasons for competing" Sona explained. "What? How many people are competing in the tournament?" Rias asked. "I don't know. The tournament is practically going to be an all out war. The last 'King' standing wins. All of their servants will be competing also. So those with more servants have an advantage" Sona said pushing her glasses up. "What!? Something of that scale is ridiculous!" Rias said in shock. "Exactly, which is why it is such a huge commotion in the underworld. There are too many competing in the tournament to do standard rating games. I've even heard other factions are interested in watching. Everyone is exploiting this tournament and no one is sparing any costs. You threw the stone in the pond and the ripples turned into tidal waves" Sona said irritably at her friends situation. "What am I supposed to do? What's going to happen to me?" Rias asked trembling in front of her friend. "Don't worry Rias. I have a plan and I will make sure that we win. We will defeat Riser and everyone else" Sona said grinning with confidence. "We?" Rias asked but Sona couldn't tell her anything more. [~][~][~] "Isse-senpai, do you even know why we are competing in this tournament?" Koneko asked. "For the freedom of oppai!" Isse proclaimed and thrust his fist in the air. Koneko face palmed and Akeno giggled at her master and King. Everyone in his peerage knew he had a one-track mind. It wasn't hard for them to figure out what he was thinking about. He was clueless, perverted and had no natural leadership skills. Even so, all of them would follow him blindly. He had saved them all from terrible fates and he cared for all of them. They were like the family that none of them ever had. "Akeno, this is scary" Asia, the newest member of their peerage, said. "Don't worry. Just stick with me and Isse and you'll be fine" Akeno assured her and patted her on the head. "We won't let anything happen to you" Kiba said with his 'Prince Charming' smile. "I want to protect everyone too!" Gasper said suddenly. "We've been training very hard so let's do our best, okay" Akeno said to everyone. "FOR OPPAI!" Isse shouted. "For O-oppai" Gasper declared shakily. Akeno giggled while everyone else face palmed. The Hyoudou group would be participating in the tournament tomorrow. It was perfect timing considering that they all had just finished their own intense training. The only strange part of all of it was where they got the invitation from, but considering how many others got invitations they weren't too worried about it. While every other team that was participating was making their plans the Hyoudou group did what they usually did and goofed off. [~][~][~] The next day Sona and her peerage waited in their war room for the tournament to start. They had made all of their preparations and her strategy was fool proof. It was basically a battle of stamina. Whoever lasted the longest would win. Sona's group wasn't the most powerful, but she didn't need strength to win. Even if she did fail, she had a backup plan. A giant magic circle appeared in the center of the room and they knew it was time. They all stepped into the circle, Saji being the last one to step in. The magic engulfed them and transported them to the massive arena. The arena was a bowl shape valley and a thick forest in the center. Sona was very pleased with the environment. "Tsubaki, Saji start laying the traps. Everyone else..." Sona commanded but was interrupted by a huge explosion. The Sitri group watched as a massive blast of energy soared from one end of the arena to the other, destroying everything in its way. It hit the edge of the barrier and engulfed one of the mountains. The barrier shimmered slightly before it returned back to normal. "Teams 12, 17, 22, 27, 29 and 32 retired" the moderator announced to everyone in the arena. "W-what the hell was that!?" Saji asked almost shaking. Sona was just as surprised as the others. A massive blast like that would require a lot of power. If someone like that were to get in her way it would ruin her plans. As far as Sona knew most of the other competitors weren't very powerful or skilled. "I didn't know someone that powerful would be in the arena" Sona muttered to herself very concerned. At first the only one she was concerned about beating was Riser. Now another strong opponent had shown himself. "How foolish. He just made himself a target and I bet that took a lot of energy" Tsubaki stated. "We will stick to the plan. Hopefully he will defeat more teams and wear himself down" Sona said smiling, considering it would make it easier if everyone's focus were distracted from them. "So we wait and pick them off one by one" Tsubaki concluded. [~][~][~] Rias was at least allowed to watch the tournament as long as she behaved. She was in one of the VIP boxes with her brother and Grayfia. The crowd that had gathered was enormous and the tournament was being broadcasted throughout the underworld and more than a few other realms. It was a tournament were everyone put aside their differences to watch the young devils practically kill each other. Though no lives would actually be lost. Rias looked over to her brother who was unexpectedly calm and she had no choice but to put her faith in him and Sona. She then turned her attention back towards the center of the stadium where the announcer stood. "Ladies and Gentelman, Gods and Goddesses! Welcome, the tournament of Kings!" the announcer's voice boomed throughout the stadium and the crowd roared. "The tournament is simple! The last King standing wins! We have forty-two teams competing of various devils with a wide arrange of powers, abilities and skills! The winner, will win the hand of this fair maiden!" the announcer said motioning towards a large image of Rias that appeared. Rias looked down indignantly and in shock as her 3D image did an embarrassing pose. The crowd cheered and only made Rias angrier. "The winner will also win a sizable fortune and not to mention the prestige, honor and the title King of Kings!" the announcer continued. "What a shallow tournament" Rias commented dryly. "I think it's pretty exciting!" Sirzechs said grinning. "Now let's go to some of the contestants that we interviewed only moments ago!" the announcer said and the screen in the middle of the arena changed. "Riser-sama you are favored to win and were originally engaged to Rias Gremory. How do you feel about this tournament?" the announcer asked. "Wife or servant, it doesn't matter. She will be mine and no ridiculous tournament is going to prevent that" Riser said arrogantly causing Rias to shake in anger. The screen changed to a new contestant. "Sairaorg Bael! You are rumored to be the strongest of the new generation of devils. What do you have to say about the tournament!?" the announcer asked holding the microphone up. "This tournament was created because of the corruption and greed of others. I will win this tournament and I will right the wrongs" Sairaorg said and the screen changed again before he could say anything else. "Sona Sitri! You are Rias's best friend and was there when the tournament was declared! What is your opinion!?" he asked her. "This tournament is despicable! Rias Gremory was forced into a loveless engagement so she renounced her family and status. Even after all that they wouldn't let her go free and created this tournament enslave her to their politics and greed. The Gremory's, the Phenex's and everyone else involved should be ashamed. I will win this tournament for my friend" Sona Sitri said angrily. "Your friend sure is harsh" Sirzechs said nervously. "Do they want to start a riot?" Grayfia said sternly. "It's only the truth" Rias said dryly. "We've tried to get an interview with Rias herself but unfortunately we were denied" the announcer said sadly. "Let's go to some of the other contestants!" the announcer said and the screen changed once again. Rias looked at the screen with a slight interest with the odd assortment of devils. The King looked completely ordinary, but had a nekomata, a priestess, a nun, a dhamphir, and a 'Prince Charming'. "They all look so cute" Rias muttered to herself. "Excuse me sir! You were the last team to enter the tournament! May I asked what is your reason for competing!?" the announcer asked him as energetic as the last interviews. Their King turned to look in the camera and he smiled broadly. "For oppai of course!" he said causing half the audience to fall over in shock. His own servants face palmed and covered their faces in embarrassment. "What is that supposed to mean!?" Rias said slightly embarrassed and instinctively covering her own breasts. "Uh sorry about that folks! That was the wrong footage!" the announcer apologized and laughed nervously. "I've just got word! The King of Kings tournament is about to start! Almost the entire underworld is focused on this massive free-for-all battle! Are you ready for the biggest arena battle in history!? I hope you are all ready for the battle to win this maidens heart!" "Now let the tournament BEGIN...right after this commercial break" the announcer said and this time everyone in the audience deadpanned. "Levi-tan here! Try my new Magical Girl marshmallow cereal!" Well this is my first Highschool DxD story. I've watched the anime, read the manga and the light novels. So I hope you all enjoy this story. WARNING!: I am terribly slow at updating my stories. That being said the next chapter is already done I just have to edit. The next chapter is all about the tournament. They may seem OP but that's just because there are a lot of weak devils in the tournament. Plus they are kind of OP in the light novels anyway. Thank you you for reading and please review!In 1986, Florida voters authorized a lottery through a constitutional amendment, enacted by a two-to-one margin that would use its proceeds to enhance public education in Florida. Governor Bob Martinez and the Florida Legislature established the Florida Lottery with the mission of maximizing revenues for education to allow the people of Florida to benefit from significant additional monies while providing the best lottery games available. Over the 31-year history of the Florida Lottery, both goals have been accomplished. Driven by the legislative mandate for tickets to go on sale by January 18, 1988, the Lottery's start-up was a year of dynamic activity. Rebecca Paul was hired as the Lottery's first permanent Secretary and on January 12, 1988, the Florida Lottery began sales of its very first game – six days ahead of schedule. A $1 Scratch-Off, the Lottery's first game, MILLIONAIRE, exceeded $95 million in sales – setting a lottery industry record. MILLIONAIRE was so successful that in just 17 days the Lottery was able to repay the original startup money borrowed from the state's General Revenue Fund of $15.5 million plus interest. Lottery fever swept across the state, and the players enthusiastically embraced the new games, resulting in many ongoing favorites. The first Draw games, FLORIDA LOTTO® and CASH 3™, were introduced with a dual launch on April 29, 1988. By August 31, 1988, the Florida Lottery had emerged as an industry leader when FLORIDA LOTTO produced an estimated $52 million jackpot, a new national and world record for its time. As the Florida Lottery continued to respond to its growing player base, FANTASY 5™ was launched as a bi-weekly game in April 1989 and PLAY 4™ was added to the daily games in July 1991. Finally, MEGA MONEY™ was introduced in 1998. In July 2008, the Lottery announced that it would join the Multi-state Lottery Association (MUSL) and launch POWERBALL® in early January 2009. The instant-win game LUCKY LINES™ launched in October 2010 and ended prior to the launch of MEGA MILLIONS® in May 2013. In July 2014, the Lottery replaced MEGA MONEY with the Draw game LUCKY MONEY™. On August 1, 2016, two new twice-daily Draw games were added to the lineup, PICK 2™ and PICK 5™; CASH 3™ and PLAY 4™ were renamed PICK 3™ and PICK 4™, respectively, to complete the new daily game product line. On February 17, 2017, the Lottery started selling the regional multi-state game CASH4LIFE®. On September 1, 2017, the Florida Lottery launched the instant-win game Fast Play. In January 2019, the Lottery replaced LUCKY MONEY with the Draw game, JACKPOT TRIPLE PLAY™. The Lottery's portfolio of Scratch-Off games has also grown through the years to offer players a myriad of themes with a variety of instant prizes. Millions of Scratch-Off players have collected prizes ranging from free tickets and merchandise, to instant cash prizes up to $10 million. Players now have numerous entertainment options offering something to intrigue every player. The Lottery's Scratch-Off games include choices of tickets that now range from $1 to $25. At more than 13,000 retailer locations across Florida, players can continually choose from a wide assortment of approximately 60 different Scratch-Off games at any one time. Florida Lottery games have delivered what had been promised to players... "better games and more winning moments." As the Florida Lottery has grown into an industry leader, it remains a dependable contributor to education in Florida. More than a $1 billion in each of the past 16 consecutive fiscal years has benefited Florida students and schools statewide, representing approximately six percent of the state's total education budget. While the Lottery was never intended to fully fund Florida's education system, Lottery contributions are far-reaching and crucial to ensuring the future success of students in Florida. Pre-kindergarten projects have directly affected the youngest Florida citizens, while thousands of K-12 students reap the benefits of Lottery dollars every school day. Thousands of bright minds have followed the beacon offered by Florida's Bright Futures Scholarship Program and other student financial aid to pursue opportunities in higher education at state universities and community colleges. These institutions of higher learning themselves have benefited from more than $6.3 billion that help keep them running and affordable to Florida students. Additionally, Lottery dollars have funded School Recognition and Merit Programs for improved schools, and have even helped build and renovate nearly 800 schools through the Classrooms First and Classrooms for Kids programs. In total, Florida's schools and students have received more than $34 billion in Lottery profits, including more than $5 billion to send more than 808,000 students to college on Bright Futures Scholarships funded by the Florida Lottery. Through the years, the Lottery has become part of the very fabric of Florida, truly affecting the lives of all Floridians and providing residents with a reason to believe their dreams can come true as millions regularly enjoy "water-cooler dreaming" with family and friends about what they would do if they won the big jackpot. Today, millions continue to show their support by purchasing billions of dollars in Lottery products per year. Whether they are winners who have collected million-dollar Lottery prizes, or one of the many who are able to follow their dreams by getting a better education with the help of Lottery dollars, all Florida residents enjoy and benefit from the Florida Lottery. With the patronage of its players, the dedication of its retailers and employees, and a state-of-the-art gaming system, the Florida Lottery will continue to ensure that players are provided with the best games in the industry and that profits continue to generate even greater contributions to education in the state. The best years are yet to come!Published on Sep 3, 2016 Visual Studio Code (http://code.visualstudio.com) is a free open source code editor that runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSx. It can be used to develop code for a variety of languages, but is a fantastic tool for writing and debugging Node.js applications. In this lightning fast video, I give you a quick overview of how to use Visual Studio Code to debug a Node.js application. See how to: - Open Visual Studio Code from the command prompt - Create the jsconfig.json file - Add TypeScript type definitions for your packages and modules - Leverage IntelliSense to make writing code easier - Configure the Node.js debugger in Visual Studio Code - Create regular and conditional breakpoints - Step through code using the debugging toolbar All in seven minutes!The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a EUR 190 million loan agreement with Lietuvos Energija for the greenfield construction of new combined-heat-and-power (CHP) plants in Vilnius. The project is expected to lower municipal waste landfilling, decrease energy prices as well as cut emissions and improve the security of energy supply in the country. The EIB loan is guaranteed under the “Investment plan for Europe” of the Juncker Commission. The loan agreement was signed in Vilnius this morning, where the EIB’s Vice President Jan Vapaavuori commented: “Lithuania has a growing economy and an increased need for cleaner environment and efficient use of energy resources. I am glad that through the “Investment plan for Europe” the EIB can support Lietuvos Energija and the Lithuanian people in financing a key stepping stone to an improved security of supply, as well as more cleanly generated energy. The mission of the EIB is to improve the quality of life for citizens, for example by helping to reduce energy bills while also cutting pollution. Here I think we are doing just that.” The project consists of one biomass-fired and one waste-to-energy-fired CHP plant with a combined total capacity of 88 MWe and 227 MWth, supplying electricity to the national grid and heat to the district heating system in Vilnius. The plants will provide 413 GWh/y of electricity to the national grid and 1180 GWh/y of useful heat to the district heating system in Vilnius, thus ensuring a reliable heat supply at lower than current costs. The CEO of Lietuvos Energija, Dr. Dalius Misiūnas, added: “EIB loan agreement is a crucial milestone in Vilnius CHP project. It will ensure that construction of the plants is going to be financed in accordance with the best terms. The fact that “Lietuvos Energija” is the first project to receive funding guaranteed under the Juncker Commission’s Investment Plan for Europe of shows the strategic importance of Vilnius CHP plants”. The use of modern CHP technology the project will result in more environmentally friendly waste management and efficient generation of electricity and heat as well as lower CO 2 -emissions than fossil fuel plants. The project will increase the generation of electricity of local fuels in Lithuania, improving the security of supply and making the country less dependent on energy imports. The Project will be completed by 2020. Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, responsible for Energy Union, said: "We encourage Lithuania to take advantage of the funding opportunities provided by the European Fund for Strategic Investments to finance projects which address its main challenges in the energy sector. In particular, we believe investments aimed at improving energy efficiency and fostering the competition in the local market hold the greatest long-term value for Lithuania's economy. This project perfectly helps to achieve these twin objectives." Another expected outcome of the project is that less waste will go into landfills, as the waste remaining after sorting and treatment will be incinerated to generate heat and electricity. During the construction phase of the CHP plants around 750 person-years of employment will be created, while a further 75 permanent jobs will be needed for the running of the facilities.From the beginning of the recreational marijuana movement, the most commonly coined rallying cry was to ‘regulate marijuana like alcohol’. Both substances would be permitted only for those 21+, and driving under the influence of either would still be illegal. Like so many things, attempting to match the regulation of a substance for the very first time and a substance long-legal, but with a troubled past of its own, the devil is in the details. One such detail? Pre-employment drug screening. Who Is Drug Testing in Legalized States? Federally Funded Companies Companies rarely test for alcohol consumption pre-employment, so drug testing in legalized states for marijuana must soon succumb the same fate, right? Until marijuana is no longer considered a Schedule I substance by the Federal government – alongside heroin and meth – it remains illegal at the Federal level. Any companies receiving Federal grants and Federal contractors must adhere to the U.S. Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988, which allows for drug testing of any Federally illegal substance if workplace safety is a concern. The realm of ‘concerning workplace safety’ is still widely debated. Privately Owned Companies Privately funded companies may also bring charges to employees at the Federal and State level. This is where things get murky. Currently, 26 states and D.C. have enacted medical marijuana industries, with 4 states and the District of Columbia legalizing marijuana for recreational use. The bottom line is, in every single one of these medically or recreationally legal states, you have the possibility of being fired, even for off-duty marijuana use. Especially if a case is brought to you at the Federal level. There is some reprieve and exception to this rule, however. Bottom line is…even in these legal states, you have the possibility of being fired, even for off-duty marijuana use. While Federal law still supersedes state law, most privately-owned companies would see a case of off-duty marijuana use and its accordance with lawful termination be brought at the state level. According to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, no person shall be discriminated against because of certain qualifying disabilities. This includes discrimination from any subsequent pre-employment rejection or current employment termination. The determination of ‘qualifying disabilities’ in regards to medicinal marijuana use as well as its determination on possibly discriminating acts is the basis of many state laws that are beginning to slightly swing the pendulum towards the employee. Based on previous court decisions in these states, future persons who use marijuana will be able to argue their status as disabled or discriminated against, and have a court decide accordingly. It does not guarantee someone terminated due to marijuana use to win said case, only the opportunity to. Each state shall determine the appropriate position of employer and employee with regards to appropriate use in and outside of the workplace. Exactly like alcohol.The Oprah vegan contradiction noted by farmers By Ken, National Corn Growers Association With many folks stuck inside because of snow and ice, the farm world was abuzz on social media Tuesday about another great installment of the Oprah Winfrey Show where she yet again tells us how we really should live our lives. This week, she apparently wants us all to be vegans. Well, that’s just nice. I wonder how Godiva feels about the Queen of Conspicuous Consumption, who once had her studio set made entirely of fancy chocolate? And then there are Anna and Christina, whose show on cooking appears on the Oprah Winfrey Network (Called OWN). In today’s episode, our perky and intrepid young cooks have fun with fat: “There
just wants to vote no. I want to get to the politics of this. CORN: Of course. MATTHEWS: The politics is about this. You can`t lose in the Republican Party by opposing the president. CORN: Right. MATTHEWS: It is the safest rabbit hole there is, Jonathan, right? CAPEHART: Right. MATTHEWS: So just say no. CAPEHART: Right. Oppose the president, yammer on "Obama care," even though, as you said, it`s the law. I mean, these are all talking points we have heard for the last -- for the last two years. And we`re not talking about a grand bargain here. We`re talking about a deal that doesn`t do any of the... MATTHEWS: Anyway, the leadership in the House, led by John Boehner, has declared open war on the Tea Party. They`re fighting back, these guys. I said Don Knotts ain`t no more. (LAUGHTER) MATTHEWS: But it`s the exact opposite story in the Senate, where the threat of the Tea Party primary is the tail wagging the dog. Look at this. Tea Party darling Sarah Palin had this warning for any Republican who dares to support the budget deal. "2014 is just around the corner. If any member of Congress thinks raising taxes and increasing wasteful spending is a winning strategy to run on, then by all means, they should vote for the Ryan budget. We`ll be watching." Very forbidding there. And Matt Hoskins, the executive director... CORN: Who`s the "we"? MATTHEWS:... of the Senate Conservatives Fund, took it a step further, saying, quote, "The solution here is for conservatives to work together to replace these Republicans in the primary elections with true conservatives. If conservatives rise up, they can regain control of the party. If they stay home, the establishment will remain in power and continue to help the Democrats enact their liberal agenda." Well, their threats appear to be working. Not a single Senate Republican facing a primary battle next year in 2014 is supporting the deal. Not yet, anyway. Senate leaders Mitch McConnell, the best known senator there is on the Republican side, John Cornyn, the number two guy from Texas, with tons of money, are voting no, as is Lindsey Graham, another incredibly well known guy, Pat Roberts, others like Lamar Alexander. Thad Cochran and Mike Enzi have actually panned the deal, but officially remain undecided. David, this is what`s stunning We know politics has a lot to do with television these days, and radio, and of course, still the newspapers and getting your name out there. People`s names -- everybody knows Mitch McConnell who follows American politics. Everybody knows probably Lindsey Graham. CORN: Yes. MATTHEWS: These guys have spent 20 years building up their reputation... CORN: But you know... MATTHEWS: No -- they`re afraid of losing to people that nobody`s ever heard of. CORN: Well, Mitch McConnell, in particular -- he has won several elections in Kentucky but at really low margins for what you`d expect for a national political leader. MATTHEWS: Why is he afraid of Matt Bevin? CORN: Well, because... (CROSSTALK) CORN:... because already, his disapproval rating... MATTHEWS: OK... CORN:... Mitch McConnell`s is (INAUDIBLE) But look what he gets to do now over the past few months. When he wants to, he can say, I`m a deal maker, I got the deal that ended the government shutdown. When he wants to say, I`m against, you know, the budget bill, he can say that now. So here`s... (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS: My question is, why is a guy who`s a well-known politician by definition today in trouble? On the right, they don`t like anybody they recognize. They like these unknown guys, like little Mike Lee comes in from nowhere. (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS:... vote for him. Are they going to vote for this guy Stockman, who`s certifiable? (INAUDIBLE) he`s a birther and a nutcase! If they vote for him, they want a birther and a nutcase. CAPEHART: Right. MATTHEWS: They know what they`re getting. CAPEHART: Yes, they know what they`re getting. But remember, they want people who are conservative and... MATTHEWS: Meaning they`ve never heard of them. CAPEHART: They`ve never heard of them. But Mitch McConnell is not conservative enough. Speaker Boehner is not conservative enough. (CROSSTALK) CAPEHART: Bob Bennett was not conservative enough. CORN: They want people who will blow things up. It`s not just conservatives, it`s not just ideology. They want people who will disrupt. Why? It goes back to Obama. MATTHEWS: Exactly. CORN: They want to blow up... (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS:... who`s never been in the room with the guy because they consider that contaminating. To be in the room, to be near him... (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS:... have a cup of coffee with him, is trouble. (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS: We got to go. This is the nature of -- this is all next spring, guys, we`re going to be talking about this. Thank you, David Corn and Jonathan Capehart. Coming up: "The Return of the Welfare Queen. Conservatives are back to using that old favorite. But guess what? It helps nobody in the end. Plus, signs that President Obama may be going populist, pushing hard on things like higher minimum wage and other steps to close the income gap in this country. And progressives like what they`re hearing. Also, spy game. When Robert Levinson disappeared in Iran almost seven years ago, the U.S. government said he was a private businessman. We now know he was part of a rogue CIA operation that cost three agency officials their jobs. And "Let Me Finish" tonight with the pride of finishing my 15-city book trip across the country. And this is HARDBALL, the place for politics. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MATTHEWS: Amid the 2016 talk about Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Chris Christie, here`s a name from the past that doesn`t want to be forgotten, Mike Huckabee. The former Arkansas governor told "The New York Times" he`s open to another run for president next time around. And his evangelical background will no doubt play well in states with high populations of Christian conservatives, just as it did in 2008, when he won the Iowa caucuses. We`ll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. Well, Republicans are out there reviving an old favorite these days, the welfare queen. Whether the issue is extending unemployment benefits, increasing the minimum wage, expanding Medicaid or funding food stamps, setting up makers-versus-takers conflict appears to be a political strategy the GOP`s banking on. Here`s Texas congressman Louie Gohmert, an old birther, sharing what he says is his constituents` frustration with food stamp recipients. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. LOUIE GOHMERT (R), TEXAS: They talk about standing in line -- I`ve heard this story so many times -- standing in line at a grocery store behind people with a food stamp card, and they look in their basket -- as one individual said, I love crab legs, you know, the big king crab legs. I love those. But we haven`t been able to have them at our house in who knows when. But I`m standing behind a guy who has those in his basket, and I`m looking longingly, like, When can I ever make enough again where our family can have something like that, and then sees the food stamp card pulled out and provided. (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: Sounds a lot like the Tea Party Republican we told you about yesterday, who`s challenging Senator Lindsey Graham in South Carolina next year. Here`s a quick reminder. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LEE BRIGHT (R-SC), SENATE CANDIDATE: You think about -- we`ve all seen the folks in line that are using, I guess they call them WIC here, too, to buy their food. But yet they got the nicest nails and the nicest pocketbook, going to get in the nicest car, and we`re getting the bill. And how many times do they turn around and say thank you? Never! (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: Well, in Iowa, you`ve got Republican state senator Joni Ernst (ph), who`s running for Senate, writing in her "Notes from the capital" update that new Medicaid recipients have no personal responsibility for their health. And Republican Louisiana congressman Bill Cassidy, who`s also running for the Senate, he describes a hypothetical single woman -- he gives her the name Sharon -- who`s, quote, "not on Medicaid and might have a no good neighbor gaming the system." Cassidy writes, quote, "Sharon suspects that here neighbor could earn more money, but he would rather work fewer hours or work for cash or perhaps live out of wedlock so that he and his girlfriend both qualify for the taxpayer-provided free insurance." Well, "The Return of the Welfare Queen" is Beth Reinhard`s cover story in the latest issue of "National Journal," and the cover image hits all the hot spots, the fancy sports car with the fins -- boy, this is back to the `60s -- babies galore in the car, a tin of caviar and aforementioned king crab legs flying out of a Whole Foods grocery bag, paperwork for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid and Healthcare.gov blowing in the wind there, and last but not least, an Obama/Biden bumper sticker. Willie brown was mayor of San Francisco and Margaret Carlson writes for Bloomberg. Mayor, I don`t know if you laugh at the ridiculousness of it or the stereotypical. I would love to see you in court as a prosecutor asking this character, Lee Bright is his strangely named nickname -- name -- he`s called Mr. Bright by his friends. Here he`s saying that he has obviously not observed somebody with the fingernails he thinks are really delightful or with the expensive bag, which may well be a knockoff for all he knows, and of course, driving around in a very zippy car. I don`t think he`s ever watched anybody in a line at a Safeway or a Piggly Wiggly or any place he goes shopping. I think it`s all stereotyping and it`s all the game -- it`s called the dog whistle we know he`s blowing. Your thoughts. WILLIE BROWN (D), FMR. SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR: There`s no question about it. It`s all made up. And let me tell you, Chris, it`s going to aid Democrats like you would not believe. Between now and 2014, if the Republicans stick to the stupidity of all those misrepresentations and all of those fakes and they`re forced to put their hand and show their hand, it`s going to be embarrassing. MATTHEWS: And you know, Margaret, when we talk about unemployment compensation, one thing we must remind everybody listening is unemployment compensation goes to people who have worked. MARGARET CARLSON, BLOOMBERG: And who want to work. MATTHEWS: It doesn`t go -- yes, it doesn`t -- yes, who are constantly applying for jobs. It doesn`t go to people who don`t want to work, it goes to people who have worked, a proven work record, or you don`t get a buck. CARLSON: Yes. It`s made to sound like welfare, like a handout, and it`s a bunch of deadbeats who never want to work again, when we know that you announce a job -- I saw one of these lines. When a job was announced, you have people around the block... MATTHEWS: In every big city. CARLSON:... to get the job. MATTHEWS: And they stand there all day. CARLSON: And they -- and they do because people actually want work. Most people, 99 percent, want work at the center of their lives. And this whole -- the king crab legs, Chris -- remember when -- back in Tip O`Neill`s day, king crab legs are the new Cadillac! Remember the... (CROSSTALK) (LAUGHTER) MATTHEWS: I don`t know. I would have thought, no, it was the young - - as Reagan would put it so delightfully, the young buck waiting if line with the food stamps buying the gin. (CROSSTALK) CARLSON: Yes. MATTHEWS: I think -- wasn`t it that, Mayor? I think he had some image along those lines that he favored. Was it T-bone or was it gin? I don`t know what the hell it was. (LAUGHTER) MATTHEWS: Something along those lines. By the way, I don`t think you can buy booze with food stamps anyway. I never heard you could anyway. CARLSON: No, you cannot. BROWN: No, you cannot. You cannot buy -- and, by the way, most of the people who have food stamps actually already have a job. They are the working poor, and we assist them. To keep them working, we give them a little bit of a handout called food stamps. Otherwise, they would be in real trouble and they`d cost us even more. The right-wing nuts don`t seem to know that or don`t want to admit it. Bill Clinton took them apart when he said, we are abolishing welfare as we know it. At that moment, it became no longer an issue. MATTHEWS: Yes. I was thinking, Margaret, that part of this, some people around here think that it`s because they`re concerned not that health care, Affordable Care Act, the president`s plan, will fail. They`d love that. What they`re afraid of is, it will be loved. CARLSON: Yes. MATTHEWS: That`s what they`re -- and, therefore... CARLSON: It could work. MATTHEWS:... they have to begin the drum roll now that all government programs are bad and they`re all handouts. CARLSON: But, also, even this one now, we`re back to the Kenyan socialist redistributing income because some people are going to pay more for their insurance because there`s more in there. It`s a better policy. So you... MATTHEWS: As opposed to paying nothing right now? That`s the weird thing. If you go to an E.R., the whole -- every dollar of your medical cost is dumped on to somebody with an insurance policy. (CROSSTALK) CARLSON: Republicans are -- are in the position of defending the people who don`t want to have insurance, the deadbeat kids who don`t want to have the insurance. You wouldn`t think -- I mean, they`re the people that are asking for welfare, which is the welfare of the emergency room. MATTHEWS: Yes. Well said. Mayor, isn`t that interesting? It`s like -- it`s like they have changed sides in the argument, like in a moot court. Oh, I will take the other side now. I will come out against self-reliance. I will do that one. (LAUGHTER) CARLSON: Yes. BROWN: And, you know, the one -- one of the few red states that seems to have embraced the idea of doing something about the health care needs through the Affordable Care Act, Kentucky, it is the leading red state. And in spite of that, McConnell is still on the wrong side of this issue. MATTHEWS: Well, good for them. And, by the way, I think the welfare queen, as Reagan described her, never existed. Anyway, thank you, Willie Brown. It always -- have -- have a nice weekend, sir. And, Margaret Carlson, my friend, thank you for coming on. Up next: Steve Colbert may have hit on why some Republicans are against the budget deal. And this is HARDBALL, the place for politics. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO") JAY LENO, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO": Well, in defending the budget deal, Congressman Paul Ryan quoted the Rolling Stones. He said, you can`t always get what you want. That`s for the budget deal. When it comes to Congress, here`s a better Stones quote. We can`t get no satisfaction. (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: Well, time for the "Sideshow." That was, of course, Jay Leno last night on Paul Ryan`s budget deal, which passed the House last night. As you might have expected, though, Steve Colbert is against the deal. Here`s his explanation. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE COLBERT REPORT") STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE COLBERT REPORT": Americans sent Republicans to Washington to accomplish one thing: zero things. (LAUGHTER) COLBERT: But with this bipartisan budget, we will have no chance of another government shutdown for two whole years. (LAUGHTER) COLBERT: You fools! You can`t leave our national parks open that long. (LAUGHTER) COLBERT: It will give the wolves time to unionize. (LAUGHTER) (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: Well, a group supporting the Affordable Care Act has come out with a new ad to encourage young people to sign up for health care. It`s a rap parody of Snoop Dogg`s 2004 single "Drop It Like It`s Hot." (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): Let me be clear. When I`m in the Oval Office, call me President Barack, President Barack, President Barack. If my critics get an attitude, I tell them to stop, I tell them to stop, I tell them to stop. If you need that new health care, sign up because it`s hot, sign up because it`s hot, sign up because it`s hot. I`m commander in chief and I`m two terms strong. Plus, I have got this health care which has got it going on. (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: Well, the video is already under fire from the right, most notably from Karl Rove, who says it crosses the line. Well, clearly, it`s not the music that Rove objects to, though. He liked it when people were rapping about him at the 2007 Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But he will rap it when you give him doing rapping dance. That`s true. He`s a dancing resident. He`s a sidekick to the president. And tell me what is your name? KARL ROVE, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: M.C. Rove. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This man will never stop. Look at him jumping up and down ready to hop. (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: What I`m tempted to say, I better not. Finally, Christmas is less than two weeks away. And if you`re not yet in the spirit, maybe this will help. It`s the latest musical mash-up to go viral from Baracksdubs. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Dashing through the snow in a one horse open sleigh. Over the fields we go, laughing all the way. (LAUGHTER) OBAMA: Bells on bobtail ring making spirits bright. What fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh. Hey! (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: I like that laugh in there. Up next, President Obama`s left-hand, well, let`s say populist turn. Can he get his presidency back on track by becoming more progressive? You`re watching HARDBALL, the place for politics. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MILISSA REHBERGER, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT: I`m Milissa Rehberger with breaking news out of Colorado. A gunman is dead after he opened fire at Arapahoe High School in Centennial. Authorities say the suspect, who was a student at that school, was targeting a specific teacher. That teacher fled after the suspect fired at him and missed. One student was critically wounded after confronting the gunman. A second student was also injured at the scene. Authorities believe the gunman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His identity has not been made public -- back to HARDBALL. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: Tonight, let`s declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour. (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) OBAMA: We should be able to get that done. (END VIDEO CLIP) MATTHEWS: Well, you saw Biden`s clapping and you saw the speaker not doing nothing. Welcome back to HARDBALL. That was President Obama earlier this year in his State of the Union address calling for an increase in the minimum wage. Now he`s declaring his own fight to address a growing inequality gap as a major priority for the next three years as president. The president`s pushing progressive economic reforms that center around income inequality and expanded opportunity. Politico, the newspaper here in town, wrote today that -- quote -- "The president wants to sound like a different kind of Democrat. He`s connecting to progressive populism with an aggressive, spending-oriented, activist government approach to the economy, personified by Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio." Of course, the president made those remarks before the big noise about de Blasio up in New York. His populist message comes at a time when the gap between the rich and poor is expanding, faith in the American dream is eroding. A new Bloomberg poll shows that 64 percent agree that the government should spend more -- or pay more attention to income inequality, while just 27 percent prefer a focus on the needs of the market. Progressives are cheering on the president`s economic populism. And Congressman Elijah Cummings is a Democrat from Maryland, and Ron Reagan an MSNBC political analyst. Congressman, I`m looking at this and I`m thinking, the president is going further in terms of offering now a more philosophical difference between he and the right wing of this country. And I`m looking for, I guess the old phrase was in the Mondale campaign, where`s the beef? What exactly he is going to try to get through Congress that`s going to establish a better agenda for people who are not doing well in this economy? REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), MARYLAND: Well, first of all, I think he`s going to definitely be pushing for this minimum wage, but he has got to push for jobs. If you don`t have a job, you don`t have to worry about minimum wage because you don`t have any wages. And I think there is a good sign that came yesterday. We finally got to some kind of reasonable compromise, Chris. And I think it showed -- and I keep thinking about that picture of Boehner in his press conference when he basically is saying, Tea Party, we tried it your way. It didn`t work. Ted Cruz, we tried it your way, shutting down the government. It didn`t work. Now it`s going to be my way and the president`s way. And that hopefully is a reasonable way to begin to come together to address some of these issues. And I think -- and I actually think the American people has emboldened -- have emboldened not only Speaker Boehner, but also the president, hopefully to come to some type of agreements where we can move forward. MATTHEWS: Let me go to Ron on this, because the Republicans, as I remember them on Capitol Hill, were not squeamish about spending money when it came to highways and things like that. They liked that kind of construction work. It meant work for the construction companies. It also meant labor jobs. It meant a lot of skilled, semi-skilled work out there on the roads, and it made everybody happy because the roads were wider and faster and they were there and they hadn`t been there before. The bridges were safer. The tunnels were wider. Something happened to the Republican Party where you can`t negotiate creation of jobs anymore. I mean, President Reagan was able to do it with Tip on the highway bill. Something`s changed. I don`t know what it is about jobs and the Republicans. RON REAGAN, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, the Republicans don`t think that government can do anything anymore. Anything the government does is, by definition, bad, as far as the Republicans are concerned. So it`s nice to hear the president talking about this again, but, as you have observed before, the proof is in the pudding. What are you actually going to do here? We go through these cycles, these -- with the president where we`re in an election cycle and suddenly he`s talking very populist, it`s jobs, it`s infrastructure and things like that. MATTHEWS: I know. REAGAN: But then the election`s over, and suddenly we drift back into the talking about debt and deficit, as if that`s the big problem, which it is not. MATTHEWS: Well, I`m with you. And now let me go back to the congressman, who has voting power here. Why is that the case? I`m with Ron on this. I love the rhetoric. And, by the way, you can`t fight it. Look what it cost Mitt Romney when he talked the other direction about the 1 percent and then fighting the 47 percent. I mean,, clearly, the country sees the guys on Wall Street. Every time you pick up a newspaper, you read about Wall Street and these salaries these guys get, these golden parachutes. They`re knocked off, they don`t run the companies anymore, they don`t have to do anything anymore. Talk about getting paid for nothing. They`re getting paid for failure and they`re making exponentially more money than the people working in middle management. Your thoughts? CUMMINGS: I think the American people are speaking very loudly. And basically what they`re saying is that we want to make sure that this country is properly functioning. We want to make sure that people have jobs. And I think that, actually, Chris, puts pressure on this president and it puts pressure on our Congress. Keep in mind, I mean, up until yesterday, we basically -- and the president had a group of folk who were saying, my way or the highway. MATTHEWS: Yes. CUMMINGS: And I`m telling you, I mean, you know, Chris, I`m a progressive, but I -- and I`m very cautiously optimistic, but I do believe that we -- and part of the president`s shift is he sees that the population is shifting with him. People are tired of working their butts off, if they have a job, and making less and less. And that divide is -- something has got to give. MATTHEWS: OK. Let`s talk turkey. (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS: Would Boehner ever buy a vote? Would he ever let your party vote in the House of Representatives, where he has the majority and he sets the agenda, on a minimum wage of $10.10? Would he ever let that come to a vote, Boehner? CUMMINGS: I think he will. I think he, eventually, he will. But it`s got to -- it`s got to be -- first of all, the president has got to beat the drum as far as the public is concerned. And then -- and he`s got to -- he`s got to make the public say, look, we have got to do better than this. And keep in mind, Chris, when people are paid very low wages, we all pay in the end. We got to pay -- we pay it through food stamps. We pay medical costs, all kinds of things. We have got to support them. So the fact is, is that he`s got to make the case that people should have some type of living wage to do for their families and take care of them. And so I believe that we can get there. And I believe that with the forces coming from the progressives, and hopefully some of the more centrist Republicans who are now saying, you know, maybe we can work something out, I think we can move towards that. And I`m not trying to be Mr. Optimist, but I`m telling you, we cannot continue to go down the road we`re going. MATTHEWS: Well, my interview last week at American University with -- the president was speaking. Here`s when he said about the government. It cannot stand on the sidelines, he said. He did call for a collective effort to reduce inequality in America and provide everyone with a fair shot. Here he is making the case for what he ought to do. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: How do we do those things that reduce inequality in our society and broaden opportunity? And government can`t solve all of that. And we live in an economy that is global and technological and is changing faster than ever before in history. But government can`t stand on the sidelines when we`re doing that. And without some faith in our capacity for collective action, those trends are going to get worse. So, we`ve got to -- and the young people in particular -- have to understand government is us. Government`s not somebody else. Government`s us. We have the capacity to change it. Voters have the capacity to change it. Members of Congress do, as well as the president. (END VIDEO CLIP) CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC HOST: Well, here`s the question, Ron. What`s the difference between what he says there and what he`s doing? Because I hear the words there, and I still wait for a big jobs bill. RON REAGAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, well, exactly. There isn`t a big jobs bill. Now, you know, as the congressman will point out, it`s very difficult to get anything through the House, for instance, with a Republican majority in there like a big jobs bill. But you got to keep -- you got to keep selling the idea, it seems to me, and this president doesn`t always do that. He sort of, you know, moves forward and then takes a step back again. As I said, once the elections are over. This is, you know, we talk about him taking a populist turn or a turn to the left, he`s really turning toward reality. Income inequality, need for infrastructure spending. MATTHEWS: I know. REAGAN: Those aren`t -- those aren`t subjective kind of soft touchy feely things. Go out, drive around in this country. Go out, look at how many people are unemployed in this country. Those are -- that`s reality that he`s describing. Not left or populist. MATTHEWS: I think that`s what the congressman said from the beginning. What good is a minimum wage increase do if you don`t have a job? Anyway, thank you. U.S. Congressman Elijah Cummings, thanks for coming on tonight as always, sir. REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), MARYLAND: Thank you. MATTHEWS: Ron Reagan, of course. Up next, missing in Iran. Unpacking, figuring out this mystery of this fellow. And American agent who disappeared -- well, five, six years ago and the rogue CIA operation that cost three officials their job sent him over there. Who`s behind all this? It seems like "Homeland." It`s really tragic. We don`t know where this guy is, dead or alive. This is HARDBALL, the place for politics. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MATTHEWS: One year after the deadly shooting rampage in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, support for gun safety measures has dropped to its lowest point in a year. According to our own NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll, just 52 percent say they want stricter laws covering the sale of firearms, 38 percent say gun laws should remain as they are, and 8 percent say they should be made less strict. That 52 percent is down from a peak in February when 61 percent of us wanted stricter gun laws. This comes after a year when gun safety advocates outspent gun rights advocates on TV ad spending by 7-1. And we`ll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MATTHEWS: We`re back. A retired FBI agent vanishes after being sent on a secret and unauthorized CIA mission inside Iran. It might sound like the latest episode of "Homeland", but what happened to Robert Levinson made public in a bombshell "A.P. " report yesterday is anything but fiction. According to the report, Levinson disappeared in March 2007 after being sent to meet with an Iranian fugitive wanted for murder. On the morning of March 9th, he checked out of his hotel, was never seen again. When word got out Levinson had gone missing, the U.S. publicly described him as a private citizen on private business. But as "A.P." reports he was being paid in secret by a team of CIA analysts who had zero authority to run spy operations. As they described it, it was an extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules. Well, the ordeal prompted a shakeup inside the CIA. Officials aren`t sure if Levinson is alive or dead. Pete Williams is NBC`s justice correspondent, and Michael Isikoff is NBC`s national investigative correspondent. First, you, Pete. What do we know? PETE WILLIAMS, NBC NEWS JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think what the "A.P." story says is accurate. A lot of people confirmed the essence of it. We now know why he was there. We also now know what happened within CIA. MATTHEWS: What was he looking for? WILLIAMS: He was going to try to find out information about whether Iranian officials were skimming the profits from oil sales and to get some information for the CIA on what would happen or some speculation or some analysis on what would happen if sanctions were further tightened. But we had known he just disappeared, we just didn`t know what he was up to. And as you say, so, there are several strands to this. One is the fact that the people who were managing him were not in the director of operations, they were in the analysis. They weren`t cleared to do this. But I think one of the most fascinating things out of this story, because frankly, there are a lot of reporters including my colleague, Michael Isikoff, who were aware and didn`t report because of concern about what might happen to Bob, that he was there on detail for the CIA. But what`s fascinating about this is that after he goes missing, according to the family members and their lawyer, they contact the CIA and say, hey, we need help finding Bob and the CIA`s response is, well, we didn`t send him there. And when members of Congress asked the CIA, they said the same thing. Finally, the CIA gets its act together and apologizes to the family, but it was -- you can imagine the incredible emotional turmoil this is causing in the family that their husband, their father is missing and the government that sent him there denies to them -- MATTHEWS: But is that standard operating procedure? First, that the government always denies having a spy somewhere? WILLIAMS: No, he`s a contract employee. He`s not a CIA undercover operative. MICHAEL ISIKOFF, NBC NEWS NATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: By the way, one thing to add here is, and the CIA didn`t play $2.5 million. The family was threatened to sue over this because of the -- MATTHEWS: That`s an admission of responsibility. ISIKOFF: Yes, and to settle the whole matter out of court. (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS: Was he breaking the law over there? ISIKOFF: No, no, first of all -- MATTHEWS: No, but was he a spy first up? WILLIAMS: No, I don`t think so. I mean, I guess it depends on how you define spy. But he`s there as a contract employee to gather information. The wrong people, though, sent him there and they shouldn`t - - they clearly -- MATTHEWS: Well, who cut the check to travel over there? Who paid for his expenses
ed back, sending a chill up Anna's spine. "Ah, hi...I wanted to use one of the study rooms.." "Oh sure!" The man beamed, reaching his hand out as he used the other to search his pockets for the keys. "I'm Owen, nice to meet you..hold on one second, let me get the key!" He giggled, his smile quite infectious. "Oop...I'm sorry, just realized I'm not allowed to have one of those anymore!" Owen stated, hardly surprising Anna. "But my friend is over there, she'll help you..and she has keys!" The odd man said, waving Anna off as she peeked her head down the aisles. There, on a ladder, was a young woman with a large stack of books piled in her arms, putting them away one by one. She looked busy, although Anna couldn't see her face, she felt bad for bothering her. Still she needed to study and time was ticking away. Taking a testing step towards the woman, Anna looked up and cleared her throat, "Excuse me?" Anna called, startling the woman. At first Anna believed she was going to trip and fall off the ladder, panic seizing her heart as the woman flinched. But then she found her footing and Anna watched dumbly as a book fell off the top of her pile and smacked right into her head. "Ouch!" Anna cried, dropping to her knees as she held her head. "Are you okay?" A voice gasped out, followed by footsteps as the woman came down the ladder. Books hitting the ground with a loud thump as she practically tossed them aside. "I'm so so sorry, I didn't see you down there!" "It's cool.." Anna groaned, shaking her head to clear the stars in her eyes. A cool touch came upon her head then, soothing the throbbing pain. "Is there anything I can help you with?" The woman asked, voice soft and tender as Anna turned to meet her eyes. "Well I.." Anna said, her mind blanking no sooner had she done so. Unable to comprehend the woman before her. Anna must have been hit much harder than she had anticipated, because before her now was none other than the Queen of Arendelle that she had met a year ago. Her eyes were a deep blue, hair light blonde and skin milky white just as the woman's was. Every curve, every angle, every aspect of her was similar to Elsa, a clone at best. "Ah..." Anna said, still unable to speak. Nearly calling the Elsa lookalike by that very same name. Unsure how she would take that. "Well..Ah..Ah.." The blonde bit her lower lip, looking Anna over. "I think you need to go to the nurse.." The girl said, giving her a worried smile. "Do you mind if I walk you?" "Ah...yes.." Anna laughed out, "I mean..NO...no..I don't mind.." "Okay...Owen, I'll be back!" the blonde called, hovering her hand over Anna as she led her down the aisle. Owen waved at them, smiling knowingly at the two as they walked through the door. Later that afternoon, Anna was leaving the campus nurse's office with a ice pack on her head, her heart full of hope. The blonde haired beauty walking right at her side. "Again, I'm sorry I hit you...um...?" The blonde asked, trying to get a name. "Anna!" Anna quickly said, smiling ear to ear. "And yours..?" "Ela.." Ela said shyly, seeming to enjoy Anna's smile. "I don't suppose I could talk you into coffee sometime?" she asked, a little more bold than the woman she had known long ago. "I'm kinda new to the area and I could really use a local's take on how everything runs here.." she admitted, "I promise I won't drop another book on you...or anything for that matter." Anna didn't seem to mind that, especially if she got to see this girl again. "It's a date then?" Anna teased, feeling a blush fill her cheeks as the girl nodded happily at that. "Cool.." Ela said, and for the first time in that entire year, Anna felt so too. A/N- Hey guys! Well this story was to help me get back into writing! I've had this idea stirring in my noggin for months now and I just was suddenly hit with inspiration to do it. It might be a little sloppy, but I enjoyed it. Just something to get me back into the swing of things. Let me know what you think of it! -TPIn honor of both the new Elemental Evil Player’s Companion book releasing in a free PDF (which is full of new spells), and rolling up my first character for a 5e campaign (a Warlock), here are some of the big things you need to know about playing a spellcaster in 5e if you’re familiar with previous editions. Almost Everybody Has the Option to Cast Spells Now Not just the classics like Clerics and Wizards, even Fighters and Rogues can get a spell list if they pick the option to do so at the appropriate levels. There are even feats to pick up cantrips and rituals if you want just a touch of spellcasting to your character. Likewise, even if you don’t go down a path with a spell list, other character options get abilities that work like spells. That may be a part of your racial abilities (like the Forest Gnome) or part of the character class (the Way of the Four Elements Monk.) The Major Spellcasting Classes All Work A Bit Differently, But Similarly Enough to Trip You Up Preparing and casting spells has been streamlined overall, but the complexity has been pushed to the individual classes and how they cast. The feel of each class has been preserved, and sleeping is still how classes tend to get spells back. The way key spellcasting numbers are calculated is similar. From there, the classes begin to diverge. Wizards have a limited number of spells in their spellbook, from which they prepare which spells they have access to for the day, and they have a certain number of slots per level to cast them. have a limited number of spells in their spellbook, from which they prepare which spells they have access to for the day, and they have a certain number of slots per level to cast them. Clerics have all the cleric spells to choose from to decide what to prepare, plus their domain spells they always have prepared, with a limited number of spell slots per level to cast them. have all the cleric spells to choose from to decide what to prepare, plus their domain spells they always have prepared, with a limited number of spell slots per level to cast them. Druids operate similarly to Clerics, but use their circles instead of domains. operate similarly to Clerics, but use their circles instead of domains. Sorcerers have a limited number of spells, which are all always prepared, and they have a certain number of slots per level to cast them. They also have spell points to regain spells or use other abilities, and they can burn spell slots to gain more spell points. have a limited number of spells, which are all always prepared, and they have a certain number of slots per level to cast them. They also have spell points to regain spells or use other abilities, and they can burn spell slots to gain more spell points. Warlocks have an extremely limited number of spells, which are all always prepared, and a very limited number of slots (all used at their highest level) to cast them. However, they regain their spell slots during either a short or long rest. They also are likely to get a number of other spells from their pacts, invocations, and so on. have an extremely limited number of spells, which are all always prepared, and a very limited number of slots (all used at their highest level) to cast them. However, they regain their spell slots during either a short or long rest. They also are likely to get a number of other spells from their pacts, invocations, and so on. Paladins cast spells like a Cleric. cast spells like a Cleric. Rangers cast spells like Druids. cast spells like Druids. Bards, Rogue Arcane Tricksters, and Fighter Eldritch Knights work like Sorcerers, without the spell points. , Arcane Tricksters, and Eldritch Knights work like Sorcerers, without the spell points. Barbarians don’t cast spells. You’ll just have to settle for raging. It’s Not Quite Vancian as We Remember It, And That’s a Good Thing Between the preparation system and rituals, the days of needing to determine just how many utility spells were needed for a day is largely over. A wizard can have feather fall prepared, and never cast it, but not have it feel like a waste if it doesn’t come up, since that spell slot can just be used for something else. Likewise niche utility spells like Comprehend Languages can come out to play more often, without being too overpowering. I’m glad I no longer have to decide exactly how many Magic Missiles I’ll need for a day: I know I’ll have it as a backup, and it still presents me with hard choices about what to cast and when. Concentration is Important It’s important to note in the spell descriptions if a spell requires concentration. You can only be concentrating on one spell at a time (which prevents some of the worst multiple buff spell abuses of previous editions), and so it’s important to note when in that critical fight if you have to give something up in order to put up a new spell. You also have to roll to maintain concentration when taking damage. Spell Attack vs. Spell Saving Throw Spell attack rolls are rolled by you, the caster, using your spell attack bonus, against the target’s AC. Like other attacks, that means you can benefit from things like Advantage to get double the rolls. Saving throws are rolled by the target, trying to beat your saving throw difficulty class number. It’s not a roll by you, so you can’t benefit from advantage on it (unless the GM allows it). However, a lot of saving throw damage spells have an effect even if the target saves. Some Abilities Are Now Spells Especially if you’re used to 4e D&D, you’ll find that some of the class abilities there have been folded into spells, and they’re not automatic for the class. For example, Ranger’s Hunters Quarry is now a spell called Hunter’s Mark, and the Warlock’s Curse power is now a spell called Hex. Any other tips you have for 5e spellcasters?File Photo Johannesburg - Two high school pupils appeared in the Krugersdorp Magistrate’s Court on Monday after being caught with a gun and live ammunition on Friday. According to Kagiso police station commander Brigadier Sipho Ngubane, pupils at the Mosupatsela Secondary School reported to the deputy principal that Bongani Phapha, 19, and Joubert Tlou, 18, were in possession of a gun. The deputy principal called the police, and the gun, which had been hidden on the school grounds, was recovered. Initially, three pupils were arrested but the third teenager, a minor, was later released. Ngubane said the firearm had been linked to a Kagiso house break-in about a month ago. Meanwhile, a 16-year-old is recovering in hospital after a classmate bit off a chunk of flesh just above her eye. According to police spokesman Warrant Officer Solomon Sibiya, two pupils were fighting in a classroom at Madiba Secondary School in Kagiso on Thursday when a third pupil tried to break up the fight. “As she was trying to intervene to stop the two, one of them pounced on her and bit her just above her eye. A chunk of the flesh above her eye was hanging,” Sibiya said. The girl’s mother had opened a case of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. Sibiya said no arrests had been made and investigations were continuing. [email protected] The StarNext Two Congressional Hearings On Copyright Reform Show The Exact Wrong Approach from the setting-it-up-as-a-fight dept As Congress kicked off its latest effort towards comprehensive copyright reform, I noted some talking points that raised a really big concern : many in Congress appeared to suggest that copyright reform was a fight between "content creators" and "technology companies" and that any eventual result would be a balance between what those two sides were squabbling for. This is very concerning for a variety of reasons. First off, neither of those groups should be the primary concern of lawmakers. The Constitutional mandate for Congress when it comes to copyright is to "promote the progress of science" (the useful arts stuff is about patents...). The key beneficiaries are to beSo, the first concern, obviously, is that if the focus is on "content creators" on one side and "the tech industry" on the other,. That's abad idea. The second problem with setting it up as a battle between those two sides is that it suggests that what's good for one side is bad for the other, and this is a push and pull whereby when one side wins something, the other loses, and the "ideal" result is one where both have to compromise. Thus, you get talk about how copyright law needs to "balance" the interests of "both sides." Again, this ignores that there are a lot more than "two" sides here, but more importantly it ignores the idea that this isThe history of the tech and content industries shows that -- while they often squabble about things -- success goes hand in hand. Each and every major innovation from the tech world has resulted infor content creators. It's getting old to say this over and over and over again, but a mereafter Jack Valenti told Congress that the VCR would be "the Boston Strangler" to the movie industry, home video sales for Hollywood were bigger than box office sales. Technology isn't anti-content creator -- it opens up new and greater opportunities. The focus shouldn't be on figuring out who has to "give up" what for "balance" but to seek out a scenario that is more likely to(whether or not everyonethe opportunity may be a different story).Thus, the key focus should be on what kinds of things should be in any copyright reform proposal that will "promote the progress" by building up those opportunities for everyone -- increasing innovation, not locking it down. That means bringing together everyone to figure out how they can help each other and the public -- not dividing them up and putting them on certain "teams."But... this is Congress. And that's not how Congress works.Instead, we're getting, one about how awesome copyright is, and another about how awesome technology is. As if those two things are in conflict.Congress needs a fight between "this side" and "that side," preferably with each side involving giant multinational companies with giant lobbying budgets. Because, when you have a fight like that, both sides ramp up their donations to Congress to make sure "their side" is heard. Congressto set up fights between two big wealthy industries, because that just means more money for them. This is also why this won't be resolved any time soon (the longer you drag it out, the more money pours in).So, it should come as no surprise at all that the next two hearings that the "Intellectual Subcommittee" have called are designed not to move the ball forward on real copyright reform, but rather to set up the "two sides" in the war. First up, next week, there will be a hearing on "Innovation in America: The Role of Copyrights." The following week? Same thing, but "the role of technology" (official title hasn't been released yet, as far as I can tell, but I've seen a few variations floating around, that basically just involve substituting "technology" for "copyrights") -- as if technology is inherently "anti-copyright."The end result will be lots of home team cheering from people who solidly identify with one side or the other, coupled with ragging on "the other side." But there will be little or nothing to actually look at how those two "sides," along with many others, can come together to best serve the public benefit in terms of furthering the incentives to have important cultural and intellectual works created, experienced and shared. Filed Under: congress, copyright, copyright reform, creators, promote the progress, technology, zero sumMexican actress Salma Hayek has a personal Donald Trump story, and it’s not very flattering. She told a Los Angeles Calif. radio station on Oct. 21 that the Republican presidential candidate asked her out (link in Spanish) years ago, even though he knew she had a boyfriend at the time. Hayek, who has been campaigning for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, said Trump got her home number by pretending to be a friend of her boyfriend. She declined his invitation to go on a date, saying she wouldn’t go out with him even if she didn’t have a boyfriend. Later, she added, the National Enquirer published that Donald Trump wouldn’t go out with her because she was too short. After that, Hayek received another call from Trump, acting surprised and telling her she didn’t want people to believe that story. “The man thought that I was going to try to go out with him so that nobody thought that he wouldn’t go out with me because of that,” she said. The anecdote came up when Hayek, who was on the show to rally the Latino vote, was asked about her thoughts on the women who have denounced Trump for sexual misconduct.“I think that they do well, and I don’t doubt it for a second,” she said. Trump, who said he would sue his accusers, has not publicly commented on Hayek’s remarks. As of press time, Trump’s campaign had not responded to Quartz for a request for comment.These 27 Democrats Voted to Side with Predatory Billionaires over Low-Income Homeowners Jonathan Cohn Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 1, 2017 While Senate Republicans worked on finalizing their Christmas gift to the 1 percent, House Republicans took their own steps to reward predatory billionaires. The House today took up the deceptively titled Preserving Access to Manufactured Housing Act, which, contrary to its title, does nothing to preserve access to manufactured housing (“mobile homes”). So what does the bill actually do? First, it changes the definition of a “mortgage originator” so that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule on marketing and documenting consumer financial transactions wouldn’t apply to mobile home retailers offering credit to borrowers. And second, it would increase the thresholds for specific rates and fees that trigger Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA) protections. This would have exempted more than half of mobile home loans in 2013, according to Consumer Bureau data. In short, it removes vital protections for low-income homeowners to encourage predatory practices by the rich. And one of the biggest culprits is the Warren Buffett, who, contrary to what some Democratic elites like to say, is not your billionaire friend. He’s just as predatory as his peers. Maxine Waters (CA-43) and some of her Democratic colleagues in the House Financial Services Committee showed why: Additionally, a years-long joint investigation by The Seattle Times and Center for Public Integrity, which focused on Clayton Homes, the largest manufactured homebuilder in the United States, found that Clayton Homes, which is controlled by multi-billionaire Warren Buffet, reaps significant financial profits from unsuspecting consumers — from producing the housing, to selling the housing, to originating loans that take advantage of vulnerable consumers that leave them with virtually no way to refinance.\3\ Specifically, the article noted that, ``Clayton systematically pursues unwitting minority homebuyers and baits them into costly subprime loans, many of which are doomed to fail,’’ charges minority borrowers substantially higher rates, on average, than their white counterparts, and ``typically charges black people who make over $75,000 a year slightly more than white people who make only $35,000.’’\4\ Maxine Waters hammered this point further in a passionate floor speech: “This bill makes it easier for financial titans like billionaire Warren Buffett to earn even more profits, at the expense of the most vulnerable consumers in this country.” Buffett-owned Clayton Homes has a monopolistic hold over the mobile home market: About 70 percent of mortgages for manufactured homes are already higher-priced mortgage loans, compared with only 3 percent of mortgages for site-built homes. That’s due, at least in part, to the lack of competition within the manufactured housing industry. Companies affiliated with a single large corporation, Clayton Homes, were responsible for 38 percent of manufactured housing loans in 2016 and for more than 70 percent of loans made to African American buyers in 2014. That leaves companies with little need to lower their rates to attract consumers — and that would be especially true if there was a steady stream of referrals from affiliated retail shops. Clayton Homes is also the largest producer of manufactured homes and sells these homes through 1,600 retailers. That gives the company thousands of opportunities to solicit customers for loans offered by its mortgage lending affiliates, 21st Mortgage and Vanderbilt Mortgage, which make far more loans each year than any other lenders. They also charge consumers higher interest rates than much of their competition. The bill passed 256 to 163. Every Republican except Walter Jones (NC-03), the lone one to ever seem interested in financial regulations, voted for it. Unfortunately, so did 27 Democrats. Among the 27 are 1 gubernatorial candidate (Polis), 2 Senate candidates (Rosen and Sinema), 1 declared-way-too-early presidential candidate (Delaney), and 1 Congressman whose press team likes planting stories about him as a presidential candidate (Moulton): Sanford Bishop (GA-02) Salud Carbajal (CA-24) Lou Correa (CA-46) Jim Costa (CA-16) Henry Cuellar (TX-28) Pete DeFazio (OR-04) John Delaney (MD-06) Vicente Gonzalez (TX-15) Josh Gottheimer (NJ-05) Ron Kind (WI-03) Greg Meeks (NY-05) Seth Moulton (MA-06) Stephanie Murphy (FL-07) Tom O’Halleran (AZ-01) Jimmy Panetta (CA-20) Scott Peters (CA-52) Collin Peterson (MN-07) Jared Polis (CO-02) Kathleen Rice (NY-04) Jacky Rosen (NV-03) Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-02) Brad Schneider (IL-10) David Scott (GA-13) Terri Sewell (AL-07) Brad Sherman (CA-30) Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09) Tom Suozzi (NY-03) Only 22 Democrats had voted for it in 2015, when the House last passed the bill. Four Democrats who voted for it are no longer in office: Brad Ashford (who lost reelection), John Carney (now governor of Delaware), Gwen Graham (running for governor in Florida), and Ann Kirpatrick (ran for Senate in AZ and now running for the district adjacent to her old one). Two Democrats who had voted for it in 2015 voted against it today: Jim Cooper (TN-05) and Lacy Clay (MO-01). However, one Democrat who voted NO in 2015 voted YES today: Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-02). And he was joined by 10 freshmen in voting YES: Carbajal, Correa, Gonzalez, Gottheimer, Murphy, O’Halleran (who replaced Kirkpatrick), Panetta, Rosen, Schneider, and Suozzi.George Michael, we need to talk. Ben Thomas Payne Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 8, 2015 About this “Last Christmas” song of yours. Every single year — that is, every day from the day after Halloween through Christmas Day — I hear you on the radio. (What can I say? You’re very popular on my local “variety” station, which, overnight, just as kids are finishing their trick-or-treating, magically reformats into a 24-7 Christmastime soundtrack, dedicated to establishing itself as the go-to Christmas channel in the ears of its listeners, and, perhaps more importantly — because, again, this is Christmas we’re talking about — its sponsors.) Anyway, every single year, I hear you singing how last Christmas, you gave someone your heart, but how that the very next day, that person you so deeply confided in, that person you so trusted, that person you wanted with all your heart to want you with all their heart — that person gave it away. And every single year, you sing how this year, you’ll give it to someone special. But really, George Michael, who are you kidding? You say “this year” every year. When will you learn your lesson? When will you learn to live in the moment, George Michael? Interestingly, you never say who that “someone” is, but I understand — you don’t want to violate their trust. But you know what, George Michael? By betraying you, they already violated yours. They say it’s drugs that landed you in therapy. But let’s be honest here, George Michael. Drugs are only the tip of the iceberg. It’s really about trust. Every single year, you’re always addressing your enabler: as the story goes, “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away.” George Michael, you need to learn to walk away from those people who hurt you. It’s okay to be hurt. It’s not okay to dwell on the person who hurt you. I want to help you, George Michael. But there are two kinds of people in this world: those you can help, and those you can’t. I hope that the Christmas spirit finds you, that it turns you into the kind of person that can be helped, just like the Christmas spirit turns my local variety music station into the antithesis of a variety music station. I wish you a Merry Christmas, George Michael. Not next year. This year. With love, Ben (You don’t know me, so I don’t know why I’m signing my name, but maybe you should. Maybe you should start getting to know the people who want to help you.)Calgary, Alberta, Canada – On Sunday, November 15, longtime Cask employee and microcanning pioneer Jamie Gordon passed away in Denver, Colorado. He was 56. Below is a statement from Cask founder Peter Love regarding Jamie and his role in the development of micro-canned beer around the globe for Cask. “It is with a very heavy heart that I have to announce that our wonderful friend and mentor, Jamie Gordon, passed away last week in Denver, Colorado. He was doing what he loved best – working with his friends and customers in the craft brewing industry. On Thursday, November 12, Jamie completed an installation at Grist Brewing in Littleton, Colorado, and went on to Wynkoop Brewery in downtown Denver to help the staff with an equipment issue. He then returned to his hotel in Highlands Ranch where he suffered a heart attack and collapsed in the hotel lobby. The hotel staff gave Jamie CPR and emergency medical staff attempted to restart his heart before taking him to Littleton Adventist Hospital and placing him on life support. Unfortunately he did not recover and was removed from life support Sunday afternoon. Jamie’s family graciously agreed to donate his organs to a donor association in Colorado, where he played such a large role in the development of our company’s micro-canning efforts. His organs will help save and improve numerous lives in Colorado and beyond. Jamie has been instrumental in the growth and development of Cask Brewing Systems Inc. since he started working for us almost 30 years ago. He initially sold homebrew kits for us in Eastern Canada while he still operated his homebrew store in Montreal, Gordon’s Cave a Vin. He helped us grow in the “brew-on-premise” industry by designing a filing system to help these entities meet new government regulations for that burgeoning industry. During our work with those homebrewer-minded enterprises, a brew-on-premise owner asked us if we could somehow create a small canning system for the store. Jamie eagerly took up the challenge and designed our initial manual canning system back in 1999. The rest, as they say, is history. We soon formed our great association with Ball Corporation and introduced micro-canning to the craft brewing industry around the world. Jamie Gordon has been a wonderful ambassador for our company in North America and around the globe. As one of our customers recently told Jamie’s son Andrew, “Jamie has rock star status in the craft brewing industry.” Jamie was a certified beer judge. He presented at a number of industry events for the Master Brewers Association of America (MBAA) and the United States Association of Cider Makers. He was recently asked to speak to the Brewery Engineers Association of England at their annual Technical Day in Burton-on-Trent this coming March. His passing is a big loss to our Cask Brewing System’s family. A chapter in our company history is now closed. Receptions to celebrate Jamie’s wonderful life will be held in his home town of Montreal this Saturday, November 21 and in Calgary the following Sunday, November 29. Details are at the bottom of this message. Tool Shed Brewing in Calgary is brewing a “Flat Cap” stout in Jamie’s honor. The beer is named for Jamie’s beloved and signature driving cap. They plan for the beer to be a staple in their standard beer list, with packaging graphics that include a picture of Jamie. Our deepest condolences go out to Jamie’s wife Anne Marie Fontaine and their two sons, Andrew Gordon and Alastair Gordon, in this difficult time. Jamie Gordon will be missed, but never forgotten.”Just like the mop on top of your head needs to be taken care of, so does the mop on the lower half of your face. This involves regular shampooing, trimming, combing…and an oft-forgotten step: oiling. Beard oil offers a variety of benefits for an unshaven man: it moisturizes the often dry skin underneath, it tames beard frazzle, and it just smells nice. I’m a recent convert to beard oil, and now I won’t turn back. While I’d seen it on plenty of men’s websites and even in retail shops, I hadn’t ever even tried it before finding some at a farmer’s market and testing it out. I was immediately entranced by the smell, and was hooked by the softness of my beard and the health of my skin underneath it. While I loved the product, it was expensive — as most beard oil is. You’re looking at paying between $10-$20 for a 1-2 oz. bottle (you only use a few drops at a time). While that amount will last awhile, I figured there had to be a way to make it on my own a little more cost effectively. And don’t ya know it, there is! Follow the simple steps below, and you’ll be on your way to having a soft beard that shines and doesn’t itch — a miracle I say! Ingredients 1oz bottles Mini measuring cup or shot glass Small funnel Carrier oils (more on that below) — I used jojoba, sweet almond, and coconut oil Essential oils — I used tea tree, peppermint, cinnamon cassia, and orange The carrier oils and essential oils were bought at my local GNC. Be warned, they aren’t cheap ingredients, but they’ll last a really long time. The essential oils were $5-$10 each and the carrier oils were each about $10 (even though the jojoba oil was 4oz and the sweet almond was 16oz — keep that cost difference in mind when making your own recipes). So while startup costs are higher, your per-bottle cost ends up being just $2-$3 using the recipes below. (Keep this in mind when thinking about Christmas presents for your bearded friends and relatives!) A Primer On Carrier and Essential Oils Carrier oils will make up the bulk of your beard oil recipes. They’re a base oil that carries the more potent essential oils and dilutes them to make them more palatable for your skin. When not diluted, essential oils can actually cause irritation and burning. There are a variety of carrier oils out there that provide different benefits, and most have just a faint scent (unlike the potent essential oils). My choices for carrier oils — jojoba, sweet almond, and coconut — were chosen mostly on availability, but they’re also the ones that are most common in beard oil recipes. A few carrier oils and their benefits: Jojoba – is similar to your natural human oils and is easily absorbed by your skin Argan – makes skin softer and protects against signs of aging like wrinkles Sweet almond – keeps inflammation at bay, which particularly helps prevent in-grown hairs Coconut – one of the best natural moisturizing and hydrating products on the planet, great for dry environments Hazelnut – helps prevent acne and eczema Hemp seed – another moisturizing oil, helps prevent facial hair from becoming brittle Essential oils are natural compounds found in seeds, stems, flowers — and almost every other part of a plant. When you squeeze an orange peel or lemon peel, for instance, the fragrant residue left behind contains essential oil. Essential oils are extremely potent to the nostrils and provide scent and additional health benefits to your beard oil. They have been used for thousands of years for their medicinal and therapeutic benefits, a few of which are listed below: Cedarwood – helps prevent acne Eucalyptus – aids again skin irritation Lemongrass – invigorates, like a good aftershave Peppermint – invigorates and refreshes the skin Amla – repairs damaged hair Other essential oils are used primarily for their scent: sandalwood, clove, sage, rosewood, tea tree, lime, bay rum, vanilla, etc. All told, there are around 100 essential oils available to consumers. How to Make Beard Oil It’s really quite simple to make your own beard oil with these ingredients. All you do is mix the various oils and you’re good to go. The key is to simply experiment with various combos and find what you like best based on scent and desired skin and hair benefits. Follow the basic steps below, then create your own recipes! I provide a few sample recipes, but the options are limited only by your imagination. 1. Start With Carrier Oils The first ingredients in your recipe are your carrier oils. Basically, mix and match your oils to get about 1oz’s worth (you can always do more or less as desired; I have 1oz bottles, so that’s how much I made). In this first recipe I measured out half an ounce each of jojoba oil and sweet almond oil. You could also simply use a single carrier oil rather than mixing. Again, it’s about scent and the health benefits accrued, as well as what feels best on your skin. Experiment with various combinations of carrier oils to find what you like best. 2. Add Essential Oils After you’ve added your base carrier oils you’ll add drops of essential oils for scent. Your essential oils will come in a bottle with a built-in dripper; remember that they’re potent, so you don’t want to add more than 10 or so drops to each 1oz mixture. For the more powerful scents, 3-5 drops is all you need. You can mix and match essential oils to find the scent that you like best. 3. Mix and Enjoy Making your own beard oil is that easy! After you’ve added your essential oils, put the cap on, shake it up, and enjoy. To use, simply put a small dab on your fingers (a few drops is all that’s necessary) and rub into your beard. The best time to use is after a shower when you’ve washed your beard and your skin is fresh. A Note on Using Coconut Oil Coconut oil, being an excellent moisturizing agent, is often used in beard oils. The coconut oil that you buy in the store is most often in solid form, as it has a high melting point of about 76 degrees F. This can obviously make it difficult to work with. To use coconut oil as a base carrier of your beard oil, you’ll have to first melt it so you can mix with your essential oils. I put a large tablespoon of the solid oil into a dish, then set that dish into another that had hot water. The oil liquified in no time and I was able to mix in a few drops of an essential oil. It will then re-solidify, and you end up with more of a beard balm. You simply rub a little on your fingers, and your body heat will melt it, thereby turning it into oil again, ready to use on your facial hair. A Few Recipe Ideas After some experimenting, you’ll quickly find your favorite combos. My favorite scents are definitely peppermint and tea tree. As for carrier oils, I enjoy the coconut because the dry Colorado air dries out my skin. The jojoba is also a great base since it closely mimics the natural oil your body creates. Again, refer to the benefits above of the various carrier oils, and figure out what works best for you. Below are a few of my favorite recipes. The names are my own creation, but feel free to steal them. Coco-mint 1 tablespoon melted coconut oil 3 drops peppermint oil Sweet Mint 1/2oz jojoba oil 1/2oz sweet almond oil 5 drops peppermint oil 2 drops tea tree oil 2 drops orange oil Forest Haven 3/4oz jojoba oil 1/4oz sweet almond oil 5 drops tea tree oil 3 drops peppermint oil Fall Face Foliage 1/4oz jojoba oil 3/4oz sweet almond oil 2 drops cinnamon cassia oil 2 drops orange oil 2 drops tea tree oil Have you made your own beard oil? What’s your favorite recipe?Impending cutbacks at the walk-in health clinic in Berwick drew more than 400 concerned citizens to a public meeting Wednesday night to voice their concerns. Starting Oct. 1, West Kings Memorial Health Centre outpatient department will only be open four hours every day. It's now open 14 hours a day. Janet Knox, CEO of Annapolis Valley Health, said they are trying to cope with a $3.9 million budget shortfall. "As an organization, we have no choice but to balance the budget, so we have to take some resources out," she said. Judy Dominey-Crocker helped gather more than 3,000 signatures to protest the decision. "Berwick Health Centre is part of the Valley community, and people are very emotional about that, and
). This has a value of 200 extra points. Other than the timing and scoring differences, "Grand Tichus" have the same rules as standard "Tichus". A single player may not call both a "Grand Tichu" and a standard "Tichu". It is entirely legal for more than one player (even on the same team) to call either type of Tichu. Obviously, however, only one of them can be right. Winning the Game When one team reaches 1000 points they are the winners. If both teams reach 1000 points in the same round, then the game should continue until a hand ends where the teams are not tied and the winning team has a score of at least 1000 points. Notes and Rule Details (by Aaron) 1) None of the four special cards can be used in any type of Bomb. 2) In regard to the requirements of the Mah Jong card: It is legal to name a card of which you know that all 4 have already been played - doing so will put no burden on any player. This is of course equivalent to simply choosing to not name a card at all. Assume a "7" has been named as the player plays a row of 12345. If you have cards 5689 and the Phoenix (wild/joker), you do NOT have to play on the trick. However, if you have 5678 and the Phoenix, you DO have to play on the trick by making the Phoenix a 4 or a 9, allowing you to play your "natural" 7. You would also have to play if you had 7777. (wild/joker), you do NOT have to play on the trick. However, if you have 5678 and the, you DO have to play on the trick by making the a 4 or a 9, allowing you to play your "natural" 7. You would also have to play if you had 7777. Since bombs can be played out of order, you can do some odd things. For example, let us say you have 2222 456789 and the player before you plays the Mah Jong alone and calls for a 7. Basically you must either play a single 7 (which would be bad as it would leave you with 5 fairly low single cards) or you can instead play a bomb of 2222. If this bomb wins the trick, you must then play a 7 but it is legal to play the 7 then as part of a combination so you would be able to play the row of 456789. 4) The order of play given above is counterclockwise - each player is followed by the player on his right. Feel free to play it in the more common American clockwise fashion where each player is followed by the player on his left. Hints Try to get rid of your bad cards (low single cards and pairs) as quickly as possible and be economical with your "A's", Dragon and Bombs. Whoever, after a good power play, remains sitting on a single "4" has not yet grasped the garlic. That is, don't leave yourself with low cards and no way to ever get the lead. If your partner is playing a Tichu, help him unreservedly. When you are the Mah Jong player, do not demand any card that could deprive him of a Bomb nor of a trick. Naming the card you passed to the player who plays after you is one way to make sure not to hurt your partner. If an opponent declares a 'Tichu' then play against him, so that he finds it hard to get rid of his cards. Version 2 Tichu Tientsin (for 6 players) There are two teams of 3 players each. The rules are the same as for the 4 player game with the following exceptions: The 'large Tichu' must be declared before you take your seventh card (during the deal stage). Each player only passes on 2 cards and only to his own 2 partners. He in turn receives a card from each of them. The "Dog" gives the "lead" to the partner of your choice When reckoning up: the last player gives the remaining cards in his hand and all his tricks to the opposing team. the player finishing fifth gives all the tricks he has won to the winner of the round. there is now a triple victory where one team has lost all its cards and the 3 rivals still have cards in their hands. This is worth 300 points. Version 3 Grandseigneur (for 5-12 players) This was marketed by Hexagames as Karrierepoker. The Game Cabinet - editor@gamecabinet.com - Ken TidwellElsa/Cassandra \| Frozen/Tangled crossover for my dearest @carrieasagiri because she’s the best and needs a pick me up right now. I’m no expert on either franchise, so please forgive me any mistakes. Angst „I didn’t ask to be assigned a bodyguard, so get out of my way”, Elsa snapped, out of patience and kindness after a day of fruitless discussion with her stubborn sister and her idiot husband. AU “I can help you understand that being a mutant is nothing to be afraid of, Cass… if you let me”, Elsa added, quickly, still uncertain on how to approach this new student in Xavier’s school without looking like the blushing fool she was. crack “It’s all fun and chills and fancy sex toys until someone sneezes and you have to explain to the court physician how you ended up with your boobs frozen.” Future fic “She’ll be a better ruler than you could ever be”, Cassandra stated calmly when the newly crowned Queen turned to face the crowd, and only someone who knew her as well as Elsa could would be able to tell that it was the biggest compliment she’d ever given her fiancée. First time This was not how this was supposed to go, definitely not, not between lunch and the beginning of the coronation, and in the reindeer stable of all places, but every time Elsa tried to stop Cass from burying her face between her legs, she miraculously forgot how to language. Fluff “As your bodyguard, it is my sacred duty to get you home safely, your Majesty, and you just lost your ride, so I’m gonna have to ask you to shut up”, Cass smirked, pulling Elsa even closer into her arms to make sure she would be comfortable on the bare back of her horse. Humor “Now that my sister’s fiance has arrived, why don’t you elaborate on how a reindeer army is not an acceptable substitute for a line of defense?”, Elsa asked, amused, tapping her nails against her throne’s armrest while Cass looked like she wasn’t sure whom to behead with her sword first. Hurt/comfort “I don’t fucking know, because the only one between us who can do magic and miracles just lost a hundred gallons of blood, so why don’t you go find a goddamn doctor while I try to keep my girlfriend from dying?” Smut She’d promised Cass that one day she would take her here, into a refugium she no longer needed, but maybe she’d thought about it twice if she’d realized the two of them would be melting the ice off the floor while they were fucking their way through the whole building. UST “I know you love to show off, darlin’, but would it be asked too much to wear something more than ice on our wedding day after I had to wait for this night for two damn years?”Forty-six people abandoned a sinking fishing vessel shortly before noon Tuesday and were rescued by merchant ships that responded to a U.S. Coast Guard emergency broadcast, an official said. There were no reports of injuries. The 229-foot trawler Alaska Juris was taking on water Tuesday evening in the Bering Sea, said Lt. Joseph Schlosser of the Coast Guard District 17 command center in Juneau. The boat's occupants, all 46, were equipped with survival suits and abandoned ship in three life rafts, he said. Alaska Juris was dead in the water more than 150 miles northwest of Adak, the official said. Two of the life rafts were secured to the sinking vessel, an effort meant to keep them from drifting, Schlosser said. A third raft with 18 occupants was not able to get secured or the line broke, he said. The merchant vessel Spar Canis responded to the scene and recovered 28 people from two rafts, according to Schlosser. "The life raft that went adrift, all 18 members in that raft, have been successfully recovered by a good Samaritan vessel by the name of Vienna Express," he said. All crew members were aboard the two ships as of 8:20 p.m. and on their way to Adak, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Lauren Steenson. It was unknown if the Alaska Juris was fully submerged. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation in Adak told the Coast Guard it would monitor the vessel, Steenson said. Conditions on scene were reported as calm seas and limited visibility, according to the Coast Guard. Preliminary information suggests mechanical problems in the ship's engine room led to the sinking, Schlosser said. Public records show the vessel was owned by the late Karena Adler, who also owned the Fishing Co. of Alaska of Renton, Washington, before she died in January. The company's Alaska Ranger sank in the Bering Sea in 2008 with the loss of five lives, including its captain. The Coast Guard concluded in 2011 that Adler's company failed to properly maintain the Ranger.The combination of pears and blue cheese is as classic as it gets. Grilled on a crunchy baguette with honey drizzled all over, and walnuts scattered on top, is stuff that comes straight out of food heaven. I saw Gordon Ramsay make something similar on TV, and this inspired me to dive into the kitchen and create these. He used goats cheese, which I also love, but I think I put blue cheese at the top of the list for these tartines. I used a lovely sharp Gorgonzola-style cheese which works so well here. The saltiness contrasts with the sweetness of the pear and honey. The toasted walnuts, along with the crunchy toasted baguette give this snack so much amazing texture. I want to say it’s a party in your mouth, but that is such a cliche. My suggestion is to just make it and then pop on back and tell me you agree. This is what you do: Slice the baguette lengthways in half and lightly butter the cut side and toast this on a griddle pan or under a hot grill. If you want the tartine to be extra crunchy, I would suggest lightly toasting the underside too. I used 2 mini baguettes, making 4 tartines, but if you are making a longer one you can simply cut them up before serving. Layer the blue cheese fairly generously on the toasted cut side and place the pear slices on top of that. You even drop a few more pieces of cheese on top of the pear creating a layered effect. Toast them under a hot grill until they start to bubble. Add chopped walnuts and then continue to grill for a further minute or so. I find the walnuts burn if you add them at the beginning. You could also just scatter already toasted and chopped walnuts at the end. Drizzle these tartines with honey and tuck in. If you are like me, and love the whole pear and blue cheese vibe, you can check out a few more of my ideas over here: Pear, blue cheese and walnut salad with a maple vinaigrette (This is also one of my all time most popular posts) Raisin bread French toast with caramelised pears and gorgonzola Easy tortilla pizza with pear and blue cheese I look forward to connecting with you again in the future. Visit my Drizzle and Dip Facebook page to get updates of all my posts. I can also be found enthusiastically pinning beautiful food images on Pinterest, and snapping pics of my life in Cape Town and what I eat on InstagramLionel Messi claims he does not compete with Cristiano Ronaldo, and expects the Real man feels the same Lionel Messi insists he does not compete with Cristiano Ronaldo, and suspects the Real Madrid man feels the same about him. Messi, currently out of action for around four weeks with a knee injury, says his rivalry with Ronaldo is created from outside the duo, and that he only concentrates on what is best for Barcelona. The Argentine has scored six goals this season, with Barca sitting third in La Liga. Messi lies injured against Las Palmas, and will be out for around another four weeks In an interview with Guillem Balague on Yahoo.com, Messi said: "These are things that people say. I don't compete with Cristiano and I suppose he would not compete with me. "What I want is the very best for my teams, and that's what I am working for." Barcelona won the treble under Luis Enrique last season, but have struggled to hit top gear this term, and have looked short in recent weeks through injuries and a transfer ban until January. After suffering a knee problem in the 2-1 win over Las Palmas last month, Messi says that although his injury felt like "the worst thing in the world", he is fully concentrated on a 100 per cent recovery. We look back at Messi and Ronaldo's best moments from the 2014/15 season We look back at Messi and Ronaldo's best moments from the 2014/15 season "Being injured is the worst feeling in the world for a sportsman," said Messi, "but right from the start, I accepted that I had an injury and that the only thing to do was to recover from it the best way possible. "The most important thing for me is to be at 100% fitness. I am improving every day without setting myself any targets. "I have always said that I don't set myself any dates because it isn't up to me. As much as I would like to play tomorrow, the doctors wouldn't let me."Few suggestions to improve Twitter For What It’s Worth Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 27, 2016 I am a regular Twitter (but not an avid one) and generally find the service useful to stay up to date with what is going on in the world. However, there are a few things I would really like to see Twitter to take on in 2017. Ability to view/follow other people’s curated feeds I have found Twitter to be a wonderful medium to consume information. Be it articles, video, remarks, comments etc. on your topic of interest, Twitter has it all. However, for a new Twitter user and many times even for an experienced user, it is quite an effort to curate a quality feed to stay in the thick of things. Twitter has been trying to solve for this by giving recommendations of people to follow when a new user signs up but I don’t think this goes far enough. I have read this from several sources and experienced it myself as well that Twitter is what you make of it. Your Twitter feed, apart from the ads, is essentially a manifestation of who you follow and it takes people months (if not years) and more to determine who they follow to optimize their feed. Fred Wilson replying to a fellow VC, who was frustrated that Twitter is not doing much to improve the signal to noise ratio, that Twitter is what you make of it As such, personally, one feature which I would like Twitter to add is the ability to view the feed of anyone else. This will enable me to experience what a good curated feed could looks like, identify tweeters who I want to follow based on their tweets and not spend significant time and effort to determine who to follow to curate my own feed. Several of the people I admire and share similar interests with, such as @benthompson or @fredwilson, follow 1000+ people and though Twitter shows me who they follow (though it requires lots of patience), I would love to see the content of their feeds and even follow it (given how much time they spend curating it) to avoid starting from scratch myself. For new users, Twitter can even tweak their “people to follow” model by providing suggestions of “feeds to follow” which will immediately provide rich, high quality tweet content that people can start engaging with from the get-go. Over time, I expect people will adjust their feeds to their taste by following/unfollowing tweeters but this could be a worthwhile model to try out. Build a Reddit style reply model Twitter’s reply view. Note how the number of users in the tweet are falling off. It is unclear to me who is replying to whom at this point :( Twitter’s reply model is broken. Just try expanding a Donald Trump tweet (for instance) and note how tough it is to follow the threaded conversation thereafter. Apart from clicking on “Show More” multiple times, it is difficult to visually figure out which thread you are expanding, which replies relate to which tweet and what thread you are following. I think I have a workable alternate model here. Twitter could use reddit’s comment model to help users visualize all the replies (including sub replies) which are currently really hard to follow. Since reddit’s comment model takes care of multiple replies and multi-level replies, it could be an adequate fit for Twitter too given the parallelism. Also, since Twitter allows for retweeting and hearting replies (which could be used as proxies for reddit votes), Twitter can rank its replies threads based on that to show the most popular ones at the top. This may not be the default reply view but I would be more than grateful if there is an option to switch over to this reddit style reply view for some tweets where I am keen to read alternate viewpoints or conversations and that have had large amounts of engagement. I have found some true gems in Twitter’s reply threads but, again, it takes time, effort and patience to navigate through it. Ability to have a “Read Later” mode for tweets with link to articles/video I am not sure if this is a unique request (and how common this behavior is) but I generally like to go through my entire Twitter feed (or as much as possible depending on my time), remember which tweets are linked to interesting articles (or videos) and then go back to them. The reason I do this is because I want to gauge the quality of all articles in my feed before choosing which to read vs. reading them on a first come first serve basis. However, the challenge in doing this is obvious. I have to literally remember which tweets were interesting and go back to them once I am done perusing my feed. I would love for Twitter to have a “read later” mode where I can quickly earmark tweets which I want to come back to later — currently I hack this using the heart button but that doesn’t seem natural. This can potentially also happen with an integration with Pocket or Instapaper if that is more common with users. Another way to think through a solution here is whether Twitter can help surface tweets which I am more likely to engage with algorithmically — which has been something they’ve been trying. I have found this feature to be quite useful — especially their “While you were away” implementation — but not good enough (yet) to keep me from not perusing my entire feed. Rich real time content experiences with Twitter I might be rambling now but I feel that Twitter should also focus on creating rich in app experiences that focusses on its strength i.e. real time. Currently, this experience manifests itself in the form of tweets in timeline which are easy to miss (either buried in the timeline or you are not following the right people). Moments tries to solve this but I think it still misses the mark since it never really rises beyond tweets — and into content which is what users like me care about. One way to realize this is through partnerships with online/mobile first publishers such as Buzzfeed, Vox, Cheddar TV etc. who can create exclusive content for major events unfolding in real time (where Twitter is strong) in exchange for Twitter driving large swaths of traffic as well as providing necessary tools (such as quick access to real time tweets; Twitter is uniquely positioned to be successful here) for content creation. The content itself could be a mix of text, images and videos etc. (and not restricted to just tweets) which users can view and potentially engage with. Though these partnerships might be expensive to setup, it could be worth a shot as it enables Twitter to abstract itself out from just tweets & timeline and morph into a platform for rich realtime content experiences — which even new users, with zero/very few follows and followers will also care about.coverting.3dsx to.cia using UBUNTU a guest Apr 6th, 2016 795 Never a guest795Never Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features! rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 2.42 KB To convert.3dsx to.cia first we need to know if the source code of the program is available.. First download the source code,then compile it For this open up your terminal then type the following command to setup the development environment sudo apt-get install git curl curl -L http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro/files/Automated%20Installer/devkitARMupdate.pl/download -o devkitARMupdate.pl chmod +x./devkitARMupdate.pl sudo./devkitARMupdate.pl /opt/devkitpro echo "export DEVKITPRO=/opt/devkitpro" >> ~/.bashrc echo "export DEVKITARM=/opt/devkitpro/devkitARM" >> ~/.bashrc echo "export PATH=$PATH:/opt/devkitpro/devkitARM/bin" >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc To compile a program first goto the location of makefile which is included in a project using the cd command For example if my program's makefile location is on desktop,I would type the following commands in the terminal:- cd /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/ and then type in make You would get a.elf and.3dsx file. We would need the elf fie to make.cia. ----------------------------------------------------- To make a cia:- we woud need the following tools and files:- folder at the bottom of my post an audio.wav file a banner.png image dimensions 256x128 a icon.png image dimensions 40x40 NOTE:-The total size of the three files should be less than 381kb some amount of brain ------------------------------------------------------- step2.Put audio,banner,icon and.elf file in the folder I provided+edit the.rsf fie according to your need Step3.Put the folder on Desktop Step4.Run the following commands chmod +x /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/makerom chmod +x /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/bannertool /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/bannertool makebanner -i /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/elf2cia/Banner.png -a /home/kartik/Desktop/3ds/elf2cia/audio.wav -o /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/banner.bnr /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/bannertool makesmdh -s "shorttitle" -l "longtitle" -p "author" -i icon.png -o /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/elf2cia/icon.icn /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/makerom -f cia -o /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/install-me.cia -DAPP_ENCRYPTED=false -rsf /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/.rsf -target t -exefslogo -elf /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/.elf -icon /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/icon.icn -banner /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/.bnr http://www113.zippyshare.com/v/zXlZysYQ/file.html Thankyou RAW Paste Data To convert.3dsx to.cia first we need to know if the source code of the program is available.. First download the source code,then compile it For this open up your terminal then type the following command to setup the development environment sudo apt-get install git curl curl -L http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro/files/Automated%20Installer/devkitARMupdate.pl/download -o devkitARMupdate.pl chmod +x./devkitARMupdate.pl sudo./devkitARMupdate.pl /opt/devkitpro echo "export DEVKITPRO=/opt/devkitpro" >> ~/.bashrc echo "export DEVKITARM=/opt/devkitpro/devkitARM" >> ~/.bashrc echo "export PATH=$PATH:/opt/devkitpro/devkitARM/bin" >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc To compile a program first goto the location of makefile which is included in a project using the cd command For example if my program's makefile location is on desktop,I would type the following commands in the terminal:- cd /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/ and then type in make You would get a.elf and.3dsx file. We would need the elf fie to make.cia. ----------------------------------------------------- To make a cia:- we woud need the following tools and files:- folder at the bottom of my post an audio.wav file a banner.png image dimensions 256x128 a icon.png image dimensions 40x40 NOTE:-The total size of the three files should be less than 381kb some amount of brain ------------------------------------------------------- step2.Put audio,banner,icon and.elf file in the folder I provided+edit the.rsf fie according to your need Step3.Put the folder on Desktop Step4.Run the following commands chmod +x /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/makerom chmod +x /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/bannertool /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/bannertool makebanner -i /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/elf2cia/Banner.png -a /home/kartik/Desktop/3ds/elf2cia/audio.wav -o /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/banner.bnr /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/bannertool makesmdh -s "shorttitle" -l "longtitle" -p "author" -i icon.png -o /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/elf2cia/icon.icn /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/makerom -f cia -o /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/install-me.cia -DAPP_ENCRYPTED=false -rsf /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/.rsf -target t -exefslogo -elf /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/.elf -icon /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/icon.icn -banner /home/(useraccount)/Desktop/3ds/.bnr http://www113.zippyshare.com/v/zXlZysYQ/file.html ThankyouSo, maybe this is the secret behind the Houston Rockets 12-game winning streak. It's been quite obvious over the last couple of weeks that the team has been a very cohesive unit. So cohesive, actually, that it seems like they might be sharing the same brain. Just look at this video of Rockets stars Chris Paul and Trevor Ariza and try to argue that they AREN'T sharing some sort of brain wave: This is really how in sync the @HoustonRockets have been lately... pic.twitter.com/oIcvJkUHiT — Aaron Dodson (@aardodson) December 16, 2017 Now this is just uncanny. It'd be one thing if they just happened to look the same place at the same time. But these two not only did that, they looked at the same place, then turned back, then scratched their heads all in unison. Seems like witchcraft to me. This sequence of movements seem so surreal that some fans think they're watching a video game rather than reality: Nah that's one of those @NBA2K glitches — Ryan Lee Hernandez (@_iamryanlee) December 16, 2017 Then again, with how dominant Houston has been this season, maybe this isn't too far off anymore.There's the top 1% of wealthy Americans (bankers, oil tycoons, hedge fund managers) and there's the top 0.01% of wealthy Americans: the military contractor CEOs. If you've been following the War Costs campaign, you already know that these corporations are bad bosses, bad job creators and bad stewards of taxpayer dollars. What you may not know is that the huge amount of money these companies' CEOs make off of war and your tax dollars places them squarely at the top of the gang of corrupt superrich choking our democracy. These CEOs want you to believe the massive war budget is about security -- it's not. The lobbying they're doing to keep the war budget intact at the expense of the social safety net is purely about their greed. In many areas, including yearly CEO salary and in dollars spent corrupting Congress, these companies are far greater offenders than even the big banks like JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America. Egregious Military Contractor CEO pay The top 0.01% of earners make at least $9.14 million per year, a rarefied strata of income that includes defense company CEOs and Wall Street bank chieftains alike. But a deeper dive demonstrates how defense companies outpace the big banks' knack for enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else. Military Contractor CEO Pay in 2010 Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush: $22.84 million. Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens: $21.89 million. Boeing CEO James McNerney: $19.4 million. Just to put that in context, consider how these annual payoffs compare to the people we're used to thinking of as poster children for the top 1 percent: Financial Sector CEO Pay in 2010 JP Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon: $20.81 million. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf: $18.97 million. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan: $1.94 million. Considering how they stack up to financial sector heads, war industry CEOs aren't just members of the 1%; they're the super-elite among them, the one-hundredth of a percent. Lobbying Domination Disgusted by the overwhelming corporate influence in Congress? Look no further than the big military contractor companies, whose flagship companies spend enough on lobbying to dwarf even financial sector titans. War Industry Lobbying Expenditures for 2010 Again, just to provide some context, here are the same lobbying totals for some of the most recognized names in the financial sector. Financial Sector Lobbying in 2010 JP Morgan Chase:$7.41 million. Bank of America: $3.98 million. The war industry gets away with blowing our money on job-killing spending because it can bend Congress to its whim. In the process, the industry is like a vacuum sucking up brain power and engineering resources that could and would establish and grow entirely new wholesome industries. It's no surprise that Americans confront a 9.1% unemployment rate and an under-employment rate flirting with 20 percent this year. Want to know where all the money went that could be putting people back to work or keeping U.S. manufacturing industries competitive? The war industry CEOs dumped lobbying cash on Congress and diverted all that wealth to their private bank accounts. Striking a blow for democracy The war contractors' iron grip on the wealth and politics of our country has caught the attention of our friends at Occupy Wall Street, who are targeting war profiteers in its draft list of demands with a call to bring home "all military personnel at all non-essential bases" and to end the "Military Industrial Complex's goal of perpetual war for profit." We're allies of the Occupy movement, which swells from the 99%'s disgust and dysfunction with our system. A democracy for and of the people that favors the 0.01% at the expense of the 99.99% of us is no democracy at all.Is there something really serious brewing that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano isn’t telling us? Like for example, is she concerned that those thousands of illegal immigrant prisoners her organization is releasing will join with others crossing our border to reclaim former Mexico territory…and accomplish this before the Democrats can manage to capture Texas for themselves in 2016 using Amnesty votes? Hey, if some of us may be getting just a bit paranoid, DHS certainly isn’t making it easy to resist that temptation. First, we hear that DHS is in the process of stockpiling more than 1.6 billion rounds of hollow-point ammunition, along with 7,000 fully-automatic 5.56x45mm NATO “personal defense weapons” plus a huge stash of 30-round high-capacity magazines. Incidentally, those are also known as “assault weapons”, but are not the limited single-fire per trigger-pull semi-automatic types that we civilians are currently allowed to own. By some estimates, that’s enough firepower to fight the equivalent of a 24-year Iraq war. Then, to cap it off, we find out that DHS, through the U.S. Army Forces Command, recently purchased and retrofitted 2,717 Mine-Resistant Armored Protection (MRAP) vehicles formerly used for counterinsurgency in Iraq. They are specifically designed to protect occupants from ambush attacks, incorporating bullet-proof windows designed to withstand small-arms fire, such as.223-caliber rifles. The Investor’s Business Daily quoted Robert Whitaker, a DHS officer stationed in El Paso, Texas, proudly describing these mobile marauding marvels as: “Mine-resistant…we use to deliver our teams to high-risk warrant services…[with] gun ports so we can actually shoot from within the vehicle; you may think it’s pretty loud but actually it’s not too bad…we have gun ports there in the back and two on the sides as well. They are designed for.50-caliber weapons.” No mention was made of any provisions to outfit the MRAPs with loudspeakers to inform unfortunate warrant resisters of their Miranda rights. While most fellow shooters I know don’t have occasion to buy many hollow-point rounds (which make large, unsightly holes in people they hit), several have expressed curiosity regarding reasons for soaring ammunition prices and a scarcity of available supplies. One inclination has been to simply attribute these circumstances to a run on gun and ammunition sales provoked by Obamaphobia in general, most recently, exacerbated by opportunistic anti-gun lobby proposals following the Newtown school tragedy in particular. While President Obama’s influence upon the overall U.S. economy may not inspire much confidence, he at least deserves clear credit for his contributions to the domestic firearms industry, an achievement which began even before he took office. The number of gun dealer requests for customer background checks through the National Instant Background Check (NICS) system rose 49% during the week before he was elected in 2008 compared with the same week one year earlier. And why might that be? Perhaps partly because of a time between 1998 and 2001 when he served along with Bill Ayres and his current senior advisor Valery Jarrett on the 10-member board of the radically anti-gun Joyce Foundation in Chicago…a period when that organization contributed more than $18 million in grants to anti-Second Amendment causes. And maybe because a former Illinois State Senator Barack Obama voted four times against legislation giving gun owners an affirmative defense… even when they used firearms to defend themselves and their families against home invaders and burglars. But forget about that old history stuff. Maybe some folks remain confused about what he really meant during 2008 campaign remarks, when speaking in Colorado, then-presidential candidate Obama said: “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.” Huh? It probably didn’t help to alleviate gun rights concerns when, during a private San Francisco meeting on April 6 of that same year, candidate Obama spoke of “small towns in Pennsylvania” and the Midwest beset by job losses in a changing economy where: “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment.” Nor was it comforting when a 2009 DHS report titled “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalism and Recruitment” indicated that conservatives and the unemployed represent a clear and present danger. It warned: “The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.” It also concluded that “rightwing extremism” may include “groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration." So, just who, after all, exhibits the most compelling evidence of unjustifiable paranoia? And which is more dangerous…a paranoid government, or a wary citizenry? Okay, let’s take a deep breath and realize that all this speculation about DHS armament purchases being earmarked for an Orwellian national security force probably rises to a few floors over the top of rational alarm. We should also understand that other government agencies began purchasing large amounts of ammo at the same time as DHS. A big difference, however, is that they have offered reasons for doing so, while DHS has made a point not to. For example, the Social Security Administration issued a post on its official blog explaining that the ammunition they purchased was “standard issue” used by special agents during “mandatory quarterly firearms qualifications and other training sessions, to ensure agent and public safety.” As reported by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics in 2008, 73 federal law enforcement agencies then employed approximately 120,000 armed full-time on-duty officers with arrest authority. Of the four largest, two under the DHS and two in the Department of Justice employed four-fifths of the total. That obviously represents a lot of guns, and demands an enormous amount of practice ammo. It’s also appropriate to consider that in order to ensure adequate supplies will be available, government agencies must place large orders from commercial suppliers well in advance of the time they are needed. Still, despite active public inquiry, DHS has not only remained silent, but has gone so far as to literally black out information regarding its purchases. Such redactions are only supposed to be allowed when authorized by Congress or for national security reasons. In at least one solicitation, the DHS asserted that its contract to purchase ammunition on behalf of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) was not subject to “full and open competition”, claiming that the waver was justified by an “unusual and compelling urgency” to acquire bullets. They noted that a shortage could cause “substantial safety issues for the government” should law enforcement officials not be adequately armed.
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exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea zato say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only 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pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea zato say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea zato say pizza in German it is 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spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea zato say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only 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spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only 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spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only 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spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only prounounced as if it is spelled as pea za to say pizza in German it is exactly the same only 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required to maintain such a high rating, or might become bitter over time, in which case the ratings system, with the help of passengers, will sort things out on Uber’s behalf. Anyway, this is how attempts to regain leverage seem to be starting, with anonymous communication in public and private and with individual attempts at data collection outside of the Uber app. It’s network versus network. It’s app versus app! What will companies like Uber do if these things blossom? A sufficiently massive public forum of disgruntled drivers could become a real problem in Uber’s attempts to find and retain drivers. A larger shadow-network of Uber drivers talking to each other and comparing their experiences could make attempts to manage and contain driver complaints through an email tree less tenable — perhaps more effectively than some Uber drivers’ explicit attempts at labor action. Likewise, Uber might be motivated to discourage drivers from monitoring passengers or making any types of recordings, or from banding together to collect alternate data — about pay, rides, etc — using other apps, because such a thing could be legitimately empowering. New forms of labor communications are needed to address the inconsistencies of work that is characterized by algorithmic dynamism and ambiguous information flows to improve labor-platform relations. In a bricks- and-mortar workplace, the physical infrastructure is relatively reliable and unchanging. In a semi-digital workplace, small technical changes to the app’s interface, or built-in features that support a dynamic workplace, such as surge pricing and heat maps, can create ambiguity and confusion about worker (and passenger) expectations. When people in the startup world talk about “algorithmic labor unions,” or a “right to an API,” they might want to look at what people are already doing, and what they’re trying to achieve. (Also worth considering in this context: Airbnb’s effort to mobilize its own users for political gain). What do they want? The same data Uber has, at least! When do they want it? Before they’re replaced by machines and herded to the next app? Idk actually!!A university in central China's Wuhan city has come under fire after media reports suggest that the school has been operating a brothel on campus. Students from Wuchang Polytechnic School have reported to local police that a hotel next to their domitory was offering paid sex to students. The students alleged that the hotel, run as school property, operates a foot bath club and was blatantly promoting their "special services" saying discount would be offered if students can show their student ID cards. Investigative reporters from the Beijing Times confirmed that the hotel did host prostitutes. It was later found out that the hotel was owned by the brother-in-law of the college's principal. Police have closed down the foot bath club inside the hotel and its management has been taken away for further investigation.SCP-1305 SCP-1305 during initial containment. Item #: SCP-1305 Object Class: Euclid Special Containment Procedures: SCP-1305 is to be contained within a wildlife observation facility, located in Site-77. There is to be a feeding chamber and a resting chamber. Once per week, a pig or other similarly sized animal is to be released into SCP-1305's containment chamber, to feed SCP-1305. SCP-1305 will then be compelled to retreat to its resting chamber through direct application of bright light. Following this, 2 D-Class personnel are to clean the interior of the feeding chamber, observed by security personnel. Description: SCP-1305 is a mammalian organism, with an ovoid body and six multi-jointed legs. It has one large, flexible jaw located on the front of body, containing a long tongue and SCP-1305's lure. It weighs approximately 150 kilograms, with a height of 2 meters, although it is known to be able to contort and compress its body to fit in spaces 1/16th of its size. When active, SCP-1305 will attempt to hide itself in a dark, enclosed area, such as a cupboard or closet. When it has hidden itself sufficiently, it may release a "lure" at the end of its tongue, most commonly resembling a domesticated animal such as a domestic cat.This lure will usually display behaviors expected of the organism it is imitating, and attempt to bring human subjects to SCP-1305. In most cases, when a subject approaches the lure, it will revert to the shape of a prehensile tongue, wrapping around the subject's body. SCP-1305 will then attempt to bring the subject into its mouth and consume them. The consumption usually takes between 16 to 24 hours, during which SCP-1305 will use the lure to draw in additional subjects. Testing has shown that there appears to be no limitation on the number of subjects SCP-1305 is able to consume at one time. As SCP-1305 consumes additional organic matter, it will create additional lures, which it will send into the structure it inhabits. These lures will be highly audible, especially at times when human subjects are within the structure. In addition, these lures may take the form of subjects SCP-1305 has consumed, primarily taking form of subjects that its prey was familiar with. This process will continue until no prey organisms are left within the area, at which point SCP-1305 will sever itself from its added mass, and move to a new area. SCP-1305 was recovered from a residential home on 7/19/1953, after reports of the homeowner going missing under mysterious circumstances reached Foundation personnel in [REDACTED]. As of 8/11/1953, SCP-1305 has been classified as Euclid. Addendum: Document recovered with SCP-1305. Had a bad day today. Mr. Shaw was being really rude, interrupted me during my presentation. I'd been working on that thing for months, and he had to open his fat mouth to ruin it. The jerk. Rest of the day was pretty average. I think that cat is back though, because Jimmy said he heard scraping on his bedroom window. He seemed kinda spooked, but I got him to bed in about an hour. Jimmy was at his Mom's house today, so I had the place to myself. The food I set out for the cat was gone, which is a good sign. Gonna put the next one closer to the door, and leave it open a crack. See if it comes in. Saw the cat today! It was on the windowsill, after I came in when Jimmy said he heard scratching. The police say they haven't found any notes for kidnapping. God… I feel sick to my stomach. Jimmy is gone. Someone has taken my son. Please, god, let him be okay… Im alone today. Jim's gone, and his fucking mother left town. I'm sure she has something to do with it. I don't care what Bannister says, he's out there somewhere. I heard the cat scratching again today. Jimmy liked it a lot.Poland's new prime minister has indicated he will stay on collision course with the EU over his country's controversial judicial reforms. The European Commission had warned Warsaw that if Poland, this week, approved two laws giving the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party control over judicial appointments, then it would, next week, trigger a sanctions procedure. English speaker and former banker is a more EU-friendly face of PiS (Photo: consilium.europa.eu) But the new Polish PM, Mateusz Morawiecki, speaking at his first EU summit in Brussels on Thursday (14 December), showed no sign of backing down. "If a process has started and, as far as I understand, the decision has already been made that next Wednesday the European Commission plans to start [the procedure], then it will most likely be triggered," he said. "From the start of such an unfair procedure for us, until it ends, we will certainly talk to our partners," he said. He said the Polish judiciary had to be purged of former Communist stooges the same way France and Spain had had to purge former members of the Vichy and Franco regimes. "Europe should be a Europe of sovereign states who should have the right to reform their justice systems," he said. An EU official told EUobserver the commission was ready to launch the sanction procedure under article 7.1 of the EU treaty next Wednesday if the Polish judicial laws were enacted by the president. The process would begin with a formal warning that Poland was in breach of EU values. It could lead to suspension of Poland's voting rights in the EU Council, but Poland's EU allies, such as Hungary and the Czech Republic, would be likely to veto such a step. New face Morawiecki, a 49-year old former banker who speaks English and German, took up his post earlier this week, giving PiS a more EU-friendly face. He said on Thursday, in one pro-EU concession, that Poland would respect the ruling of the EU court on logging in a primeval forest. "We will respect the verdict of the EU tribunal," he said. He defended free speech, saying "even if they're biased, very biased, we fully support the rights of free media to keep on functioning". But he did not see anything wrong in the fact a Polish media regulator, the KRRiT, recently fined a private TV station for its coverage of anti-PiS protests. Morawiecki said the KRRiT "is not under the government's authority, it has autonomy" and that the TV station could challenge the fine in court. "We're a free country and this case will quickly be clarified," he said. He also endorsed Poland's earlier decision to boycott an EU migrant-sharing scheme. He said he was "happy that the head of the EU Council now speaks with the same voice as the Polish government had used" on migrants. Same voice? Morawiecki was referring to criticism of the EU migrant quotas by Donald Tusk, the Council president and a former Polish leader. But Tusk later the same day distanced himself from PiS on the issue. "I will never go over to the side of those who talk about other people with contempt or disrespect," Tusk said, referring to PiS verbal attacks on asylum seekers as being potential disease-carriers and terrorists. "I hope we will see a moment in which Poland will be treated again as the heart of Europe," Tusk added. "[But] so far I have not seen the least desire for cooperation from the government," he said. Morawiecki met British PM Theresa May on Thursday to talk about the fate of Polish citizens in the UK after Brexit. He also met French leader Emmanuel Macron on Friday morning to discuss the rights of Polish truckers to work in France on low pay. The Polish PM told Macron he wanted to maintain dialogue with the commission, while Macron said it was "important" to talk with Frans Timmermans, the EU commissioner in charge of the Polish rule of law case, according to sources.Washington Redskins cornerback Josh Norman (24) forces Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott (21) to fumble during the second half of play at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland on Sunday, September 18, 2016. The Dallas Cowboys defeated the Washington Redskins 27-23. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News) Ezekiel Elliott fumbled twice in his second NFL game. He has never fumbled twice in a game before Sunday's 27-23 win over Washington. "He fundamentally carries the ball really sound," the Cowboys owner and GM said Tuesday morning on 105.3 The Fan's Shan and RJ show [KRLD-FM]. "He carries it. He carries it up against him. We won't get into all of that detail, but if you asked the question: Is he very sound in the way he holds the football? He is." Elliott, who finished with 83 yards and a touchdown on 21 carries Sunday, lost a fumble late in the third quarter. He then fumbled again midway through the fourth. He never carried the ball again. Alfred Morris handled Dallas' final three handoffs. Will those fumbles affect Elliott's workload or playing time going forward? "No. They will not, at all," Jones responded. "He's a big man and he carries it properly. He does a good job of finishing, which means he's trying to give the tacklers more than he's getting in terms of how you absorb hits. All of that makes him a sound ball carrier fumbling wise." Twitter: @jonmachota Get the latest Cowboys news here \| Follow dmn_cowboys on Twitter \| Like our Cowboys Facebook page herepastalane™ via http://www.flickr.com/photos/pastalane/2124214669/in/photolist-4eHa1R-4iwJGu-4u3hLp-4Vk1Yc-5hs2rR-5osYjc-5BQJog-6foCXm-6ttcHD-6txmjy-6Ag1q7-6NK2HF-6NK2Mg-6NPd4U-7it4i8-7rq4mK-cy3s4s-aPAq4F-aAFZvz-8LoZZE-7KuxrC-avyRzg-8G71pF/ creative commons In the rapidly changing new world, you've got to abandon the linear career trajectory. Instead you should get comfortable with the "squiggle," argues digital marketer Mitch Joel in his new book, "Ctrl Alt Delete." That means being ready and willing to adapt to new challenges and opportunities. In practical terms, Joel offers four lessons from a squiggly career, which we've summarized below. 1. Don't be afraid of short and powerful projects. You should be "constantly working to put ideas, innovations, and products into market." This could involve multiple projects within an organization or working with multiple organizations. Switching jobs won't hurt your resume as long as "you can prove that the moves you've been making were done because you accomplished (and surpassed) the pre-established goals. 2. Don't be afraid of big. "If you're not thinking about the bigger problems that face your industry, someone else is," Joel writes. As examples of people who dreamed big, he cites Jack Dorsey, who dreamed of a world without cash registers, Steve Jobs, who talked about making a dent in the universe, Mark Zuckerberg, who talks about connecting the world, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who talk about organizing the world's information. Big dreams are within reach these days. 3. Get Squiggly. This means not getting stuck in "decisions that you made and followed back in high school and university (or because your predecessor did things a certain way)," Joel writes. Be willing to switch to a totally new career. Even in your current job you can "take on a challenge within your organization, work with a new department, change something within your business that is antiquated or draconian." 4. Be incompatible (maybe just a little bit). What Joel means here is that you have to be willing to be unpopular, as you will be if you push for change, make people do things they don't want to do, treat your work like art, disrupt the way other people do things, and commit to lonely work. " "Ctrl Alt Delete" is a reassuring book for millennials, who have been criticized for their inability to commit to a steady job, and also for older workers, many of who have watched as their industry has imploded in the IT revolution. Not everyone is going to be the next Steve Jobs, but an openness to change is a useful attitude change.SXSW’s Astounding Ideals of Cowardice South by Southwest’s stunning decision to cancel a panel dealing with online harassment is as embarrassing as it is unjustifiable and pathetic. Chris Kluwe Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 27, 2015 By Chris Kluwe Dear SXSW individuals involved with the cancellation of “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games”, (For what it’s worth, I’m getting quite tired of writing these letters to idiots, but someone needs to do it.) This week, you announced a decision so mind-numbingly shameful, it’s a wonder that the collective spleens of everyone involved didn’t spontaneously combust from the overload of self-loathing. I speak, of course, of your Neville Chamberlain-esque choice to cancel a panel on harassment in online spaces, featuring Katherine Cross, Caroline Sinders, and Randi Harper, due to (and I can’t believe I have to type this) overwhelming harassment from those opposed to said panel — i.e., Gamergate (a group you conveniently allowed to have their own panel without following any of the listed application rules, in a fascinating display of fear-profiteering that would make Dick Cheney blush). Then, you inexplicably tried to justify the unjustifiable, with one of the most mealy-mouthed, corporate nothing speak emails I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading; all in the hopes that this would somehow explain your craven actions. I have just one question, though: How can you literally be this stupid? In your email — no doubt drafted by your fear-riddled fingers, trembling over the realization that you might actually have to take a stand against abusive behavior in a stunningly out of place display of moral culpability — typed the following: “On the one hand, we are an event that prides itself on being a big tent and a marketplace of diverse people and diverse ideas. On the other hand, preserving the sanctity of that big tent at SXSW Interactive necessitates that we keep the dialogue civil and respectful — so that people can agree, disagree and embrace new ways of thinking in a safe and secure place. We have already received numerous threats of violence regarding this panel, so a civil and respectful environment seems unlikely in March in Austin. For this reason, we have also canceled other sessions at the 2016 event that focused on the GamerGate controversy. We are strong believers in community at SXSW — and a healthy community sometimes requires strong management. Preserving the sanctity of the big tent is more important than preserving any particular session.” I read this, slammed my head against the wall for an hour, snorted half a bottle of bleach, force-fed myself eighteen pounds of lead-based paints, and still couldn’t approach the depths of sheer bloody-minded imbecility it must have taken to put those words together in that particular order. First off, the panel was not on Gamergate, did not mention Gamergate, and the only tangential relation it had with Gamergate was that the odorous denizens of that particular hashtag have made it their mission to try and ruin the lives of the women involved in the panel (among others). The fact you felt the need to connect it to Gamergate shows quite clearly where the pressure to silence these voices came from. Second, and perhaps more pertinently, you run a festival that features A-list celebrities and tech magnates worth collective billions, superstar athletes, and some of the biggest music acts in the world, and you’re telling me you can’t provide security for a panel of three women? That it’s beyond your resources to hire any sort of police presence when you shut down entire sections of Austin at a time? That the unceasing vitriol these brave individuals face on a daily basis is just too much for your tender feelings to deal with, when you’ve experienced the merest fraction of that torrent of filth they’re forced to endure? You disgust me. Your selfish weakness sickens me. Your puling bleats of golden mean fallacies fills my stomach with such nauseous rage that an entire continent of antacid tablets would be insufficient to quell the depths of my contempt for you. What you did, what you’re doing, is providing the blueprint for harassers and hatemongers as to how they win. From this point forward, any fringe group of spiteful lunatics can point to this moment and say, “We will silence the voices of anyone we dislike at SXSW, any view we disagree with, because we know the mewling slugs in charge have not the backbone to stop us. All we need to do is confront them with our vileness, and they will fold.” And the worst part? YOU are solely the ones responsible for this. YOU decided that it was appropriate to give a group of harassers a platform to continue their wretched campaign of ignorance. No one forced you to bypass the application process, to slide this selection of charlatans and liars along back alley channels into the conference. (And by the way, it is beyond ironic that a group ostensibly about ‘ethics in journalism’ required such an unethical route.) YOU chose to ignore the warnings of the women targeted, to dismiss their voices as unworthy of respect or consideration, and then had the gall to act shocked that a ‘movement’ known for its corrosive toxicity slimed its oh-so-predictable foulness in your direction after you invited them in. YOU are the only ones to blame for this monumental cock-up, and I would be lying if I didn’t say I hope this brings your precious ‘big tent’ crashing down on top of every money-grubbing scumbag furiously selling their morals beneath it. I’ll happily withdraw from my panel so as not to be associated with the likes of callous sleaze such as yourselves, and to hell with if you ever invite me back. Really, let me see if I have this straight … You make millions of dollars off the backs of unpaid labor, and somehow you lack the finances to secure a room for an hour so a discussion can be held on the horrible reality women face online? You can’t muster the intestinal fortitude to admit that harassment is something that happens on a regular basis, is a problem that needs to be addressed in a society intertwined so tightly with the Internet, and that harassers are likely going to try and stop any attempts to do so? That’s seriously the argument you’re going with? That you’re so afraid of neolithic barbarians and their mindless rage, you’d rather bury your heads in the sand and pretend they don’t exist so they turn their anger back towards their usual targets? Again, your cowardice is almost inconceivable to me. The idea that a human being could willingly make a decision like that, could write an email conflating the idea that those being harassed and those doing the harassing somehow deserve an equal venue in which to present their views, is staggering in its evil banality. The idea that someone would deny women under attack a means by which to discuss their struggles with others because that someone is too scared to stand up to a swaggering bully, drunk off his infantile lust for power, should drive any sane person to despair. You say you “pride yourself on being a marketplace of diverse people and diverse ideas,” and I say that is obviously nothing more than a shallow lie cultivated in the hopes of eking out another dirty dollar for your own pocketbook. You pride yourself on nothing. Your ‘diversity’ is revealed as the blind self-absorption of the privileged, eager to benefit off the structures already in place to ensure their continued pleasure, regardless of the harm it causes others. Your ‘marketplace’ is illuminated as the tawdry business of selling convenience, not courage. Your ‘strong management’ is the tattered white flag of surrender, raised by witless, gutless shells of men who scrabble around like roaches in the muck of their own feculence, mistaking turgid trash for treasure. Your conference is the corrupt, decaying edifice of the status quo, no matter how much you pretend otherwise, because you lack the common decency to take a stand against those who would hurt others merely because they’ve always been able to do so. The women who presented this panel knew there would be risks. Threats of violence, of bitter hate, of crude and salacious intimidation tactics — these women, and many others, deal with those risks every day, simply because they dare exist. They wanted to have a conversation about those risks, discuss ways of mitigating, or perhaps even solving them, but thanks to your impotent leadership, they now will not have that opportunity. So I say to you, SXSW, and every one of your toadies who failed to stand up for what was right, even though it might have been what was difficult, that your conference is garbage. You, collectively, are garbage, a sad accumulation of fears squirming inside the skins of what could have been human beings, and I hope that one day, all of you will take stock of your lives and determine whether or not you are the people you wish to be. Until that day, you have proven yourselves unfit to steward nothing more than the ferrying of waste through your own body. Sincerely, SXSW Panelist For ‘The Art of The Own: Internet Etiquette and Sports,’ And You Better Be Damn Certain This Is Going To Be In The Panel — Chris KluweNew Zealand's Joseph Parker could be fighting Hughie Fury in England later in the year. Kiwi heavyweight Joseph Parker and Hughie Fury could be fighting in England in September. The pair were meant to fight for Parker's World Boxing Organisation crown last month, but Englishman Fury pulled out citing a back injury. Fury was replaced by Romanian Razvan Cojanu, who Parker beat in Auckland last month. MARK ROBINSON/SUPPLIED Hughie Fury was meant to fight Joseph Parker last month but pulled out with a back injury. Now Duco Boss David Higgins told RadioLIVE's Sunday Sport an announcement will be made shortly about Parker and Fury getting in the ring together. READ MORE: * Hooker's stunning KO * Parker sticking with Higgins * Victory in sight for Team NZ "The World Boxing Organisation has ordered we fight the mandatory challenger, which is Hughie Fury," Higgins said on RadioLive. "They had given us 30 days to negotiate terms with the Fury camp. "The 30-day deadline did pass a few days ago, but myself and the Furys both agreed that we should request another week, so we went to the WBO asking for another week. "I got a letter from the WBO president giving us another week, so with that in mind you can expect a worldwide announcement in the next fortnight." Higgins was confident of Parker beating Fury and that it is a good fight for several reasons. I'm glad to be fighting again next month & September. Your all in for a shock. @MTK_Manchester @HennessySports @frankwarren_tv @boxnationtv — Hughie Lewis Fury (@hughiefury) June 7, 2017 "Beating a Fury sends Joseph's stock in the United Kingdom through the roof and sets up some mega fights with other British heavyweights. It is a sensible fight and one we are happy with, provided the contract has the right balance with it. "If they agree to the terms we want then we will do it in Britain." Fury's trainer Peter Fury told Boxing News a deal should be done on Monday and they are looking at fighting in the UK in September. "Hughie is mandatory, so that's where it's at. Both camps are in agreement with everything so it should be signed by Monday."posted on Thu 21 December 2017 A new year is coming on us quickly, so how about a nice new website to go with it? Baby New Year from 110 years ago … houz and I have been working hard over the past few months to migrate the old website from Wordpress to a new static site, using Python/Pelican. This should make things more secure and safer for both you and us (see the problems that rawsamples.ch had for the perils of using a db-driven backend for a website). Not to mention it makes collaboration and contributing a bit easier now, as the entire site gets its own GitHub repository (I’ll be eagerly awaiting your pull requests). I tried to create a design that had a bit more emphasis on accessibility and readability. The site is fully responsive for screens ranging from a mobile phone to a full desktop. The type is larger and generally given a bit more room to breathe in the page and we tried to highlight images a bit more, as this is a photography-centered project. This is just one small way for me to contribute and give back to the community in my own way (you should probably not let me near any real code). In fact, this is one of the reasons I started up the community over at PIXLS.US. We needed a community focused specifically on Free Software photography and a way for us to freely share our knowledge and experiences to help everyone, especially across multiple projects. pixls.us If you’re not familiar with the community yet, why not?! We’re all photography folks who have a passion for Free Software with the mission: To provide tutorials, workflows and a showcase for high-quality photography using Free/Open Source Software. We also happen to have quite a few developers of various types in the community, and as a way to assist projects and contribute back we’ve been working on websites and other community-oriented functionality (like the forums, hosting comments, files, and more). I’d get in trouble if I didn’t mention that we also got raw.pixls.us setup to replace the ailing rawsamples.ch also. One neat way we’re able to help out even more is by integrating the commenting system here into the forums. It’s how we manage commenting on the main pixls.us website, and we had great success with this approach for the digiKam project when we built them a new website earlier this year. This lets us moderate comments in one place, allows for cross-pollination of knowledge between the projects, and users get to truly own their comments (instead of being monetized and tracked by some third-party commenting system like Disqus). 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, was really about Palestine. Against the backdrop of the Algerian war for independence, the escalation of American involvement in Southeast Asia, and the proliferation of revolutionary Marxist insurgencies across Latin America, Third Worldism helped to embed a number of ideas in the thinking and discourse of the European Left, of which Palestinians would later be the most significant beneficiaries: • The uncritical valorization of any indigenous movement that positioned itself as hostile to Western aims and interests; • A corresponding determination to impute the most reprehensible motives to whatever the West did (or did not do); • Indulgence in the vicarious pleasures afforded by the glorification of transgressive revolutionary violence, even—or, perversely, especially—when it was used to target civilians. In other words, support for terrorism. Having seen the French successfully ejected from Algeria and the Americans humiliated in Vietnam, the New Left turned its attention to Palestine and the PLO. Yasser Arafat became Che Guevara in a keffiyeh. Throughout the 1970s, the PLO galvanized radical European supporters and terrified their governments with a campaign of assassination, terrorism, and air piracy, mostly targeting Jews and Israeli citizens and interests. Meanwhile, Radical New Left groups like Germany’s Red Army Faction not only applauded such acts of terror, they received training with Palestinian militants in the Middle East and actively participated in terrorism. But the operating assumption that the West bore responsibility not just for the problems in its own societies, but the problems of everyone else’s as well, discouraged any meaningful scrutiny of the guerilla movements to which radicals lent such uncritical support. What were the motivating beliefs of Algeria’s FLN? What was the attitude of the Sandinistas to democracy? What did the PLO actually have to say about Jews? Such questions were a matter of studied indifference. Third Worldist and postcolonial theorists helped solidify the Soviet claim that Israel is a Western neocolonial project of which the Palestinians are the victims. Europeans are held morally responsible for Israel’s existence. Americans are held morally responsible for their country’s ongoing support of Israel. Israelis are held morally responsible for being instruments and agents of oppression. But as the oppressed party, Palestinians are believed to be incapable of moral responsibility. Writers on the Left have spilled an ocean of ink in support of the Palestinian cause, but it is striking just how little of it bothers to concern itself with Palestinian ideology and politics. Israeli crimes are picked over obsessively (not least in Israel’s own press), but Palestinian corruption, oppression, and rejectionism are either blamed on the Israelis or—more frequently—simply ignored. The degree to which this myopic perspective on the conflict has become received wisdom on the Left was demonstrated by the European reaction to and media coverage of the 2014 Gaza war. Accusations of Israeli war crimes and the deliberate targeting of children were made by normally-respected news outlets and NGOs; celebrities advertised their virtue by tweeting in support of Gaza; grotesque cartoons depicting the supposed bloodlust of Israeli soldiers and politicians circulated on social media; reports of anti-Semitism spiked; protestors on European streets filled the air with eliminationist slogans and calls for the gassing of Jews; a French demonstration turned into an impromptu pogrom. And who on the Left spoke up for the right of a democracy to defend its citizens from terrorism and rockets fired by genocidal anti-Semites? Not many. For example, Israeli attempts to draw attention to the Palestinians’ use of human shields, designed to maximize their own civilian casualties, were met with a bored shrug. For European Jews, many of whom have relatives living in Israel, it was a reminder that only one party to the conflict is considered a moral actor. The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks showed that large sections of the Western Left have difficulty comprehending the sincerity of irrational doctrines. If the attacks could not be explained as a rational and desperate response to some kind of monstrous injustice, then they were just acts of mindless slaughter. As a result, various explanations were offered for why terrorists might kill themselves and murder nearly 3,000 American civilians in a single morning, most of which concluded that America must have somehow brought this disaster on itself. For many, this was the only intelligible explanation for the atrocity. This was a profound failure of imagination on the part of people clinging to a belief that, deep down, everybody wants basically the same thing that broadminded Western liberals do. In the intervening years, observable reality has called this belief into serious question. The savageries released by the Arab Spring and the Islamist surge across the Middle East and Africa will no longer submit to the liberal demand for rationality. One might have expected that the escalation of regional barbarism would directly correlate with an increase in sympathy for Israel’s predicament. But curiously, antipathy toward Israel has only intensified. Boycotts are demanded and lurid condemnations continue to mount. The assumption seems to be that, as an open society, Israel must be judged like other open societies, such as those in Scandinavia, that do not find it necessary to occupy land or go to war every two or three years. But Israelis live in the Middle East, and the politicians they elect to protect them calibrate their threat assessments and behavior accordingly. This distinction manages to pass by some otherwise highly intelligent people. The Left’s operating assumption that the West bore responsibility not just for the problems in its own societies, but the problems of everyone else’s as well, has discouraged any meaningful scrutiny of the guerillas and terrorists to which radicals lend uncritical support. A prominent example of this tendency appeared in 2003, when the late British historian Tony Judt took to the New York Review of Books to recommend a one-state outcome to the conflict. His essay, which was not terribly well-received at the time, has not dated well. The whole idea of a Jewish state, he sighed, is “an anachronism.” Judt would likely be untroubled by today’s alarming uptick in anti-Semitic violence that is causing European Jews to seek sanctuary in Israel in unprecedented numbers, since he claimed it was the hateful behavior of Israel, not Arab and Muslim pogromists, that was responsible for endangering the lives of Europe’s Jews. But it was Judt’s apparent inability to imagine a reality different to the one he enjoyed in the West that was most astonishing. “What if the binational solution were not just increasingly likely, but actually a desirable outcome?” he mused. “Most of the readers of this essay live in pluralist states which have long since become multiethnic and multicultural. [Israel] has imported a characteristically late-nineteenth-century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law.” Recent events in Brussels and Paris have provided a bloody reminder that European democracies are not the picture of happy multicultural harmony that Judt may have had in mind as an instructive template. And open frontiers in the Middle East? Individual rights? International law? Were Judt alive today, would he be delivering this solemn lecture on the anachronism of nationalist aspirations to the Kurds of northern Iraq? Or might he wonder if he had not confused “the world” with the NYU campus outside his office window? Nonetheless, since 2001 a substantial body of literature has accumulated demanding the replacement of Israel with another Arab-majority state that reunites the territory of British Mandatory Palestine. The most recent example of this dismal trend was Perry Anderson’s lengthy editorial in the November-December 2015 issue of the New Left Review. The idea that the Jews, uniquely among peoples, should be stripped of their national home and made to live at the sufferance of others in the most dangerous and anti-Semitic part of the world is intellectually unserious, unworkable, and morally reprehensible. That this has done little to diminish its popularity among academics and activists in the West, many of whom elevate such a plan to the status of a categorical imperative, is a telling indication of the Left’s attitude toward Jewish rights, interests, and security. A lot has been written in recent months about the unwelcome resurgence of political correctness and identity politics and the exasperating doctrines of the social justice Left. I will simply make the curt observation that the progressive stack—an organizing principle designed to foreground the voices of those deemed to be “marginalized”—has not been kind to Jews. This is partly because those in charge of arranging ethnicities into a hierarchy of oppression are still trying to decide whether or not Jews should to be considered “white” and therefore “privileged,” and, as such, undeserving of the social protections from racism afforded to other minority groups (as though it were within their rights to define the Jews in the first place). This problem is, of course, exacerbated by the Livingstone Formulation. But there is a further problem with the way racism is conceived and understood as a structural problem by social justice activists. According to the precepts of critical race theory, racism only results from a combination of prejudice and power. Since anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory about the malign influence of a powerful and mendacious world Jewry, it essentially holds that the Jews are experiencing hatred on account of the power they hold. Anti-Semitism, therefore, is not racism at all, but something more akin to resistance. For most of this essay I have concentrated on the situation Jews face in Europe. But consider a recent Facebook status posted by a young Jewish alumna of Oberlin College—reproduced by David Bernstein for The Washington Post’s website—in which she details the attitudes toward Jews she routinely encountered amongst liberal people ostensibly committed to anti-racism. Or take a look at the recent series of essays in Mosaic about the alarming rise of anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses. Support for Israel among the American public remains stable at around 70 percent—higher than anywhere else on Earth. But the striking similarities between the Oberlin post and the Oxford University statement with which I opened this essay are a worrying harbinger of things to come. Unless the American Left addresses the low-intensity spread of anti-Semitism as a matter of urgency, then the Oberlin post and the Mosaic debate will start to resemble very dead canaries in an increasingly toxic coalmine. The Left’s willingness to critique the assumed nobility of Western motives and actions, and point out the imperfections of its own societies, has been a valuable check on chauvinism and an engine of progressive domestic reform. But this impulse exists alongside an insufferable belief in the Left’s own moral superiority, an article of faith the Left is extremely reluctant to question. To be on the Left, it is held, is to care about others; to be on the Right is to care about nobody but oneself. This assumed monopoly of truth and virtue carries the assumption that those who contest Left-wing axioms harbor debased motives. Meanwhile, organizations on the Left—particularly those in the NGO sector—are held to be above reproach and are consequently excused from any meaningful scrutiny. This tribal reflex has sometimes prevented the Left from making the most important and elementary moral distinction of all, which is not between the political Right and Left, but between democrats and authoritarians. It has often given Left-wing dictators the benefit of the doubt while expressing furious indignation against those on the democratic Right who point out those dictators’ shortcomings. If the Right turns out to have been correct about something, then one frequently hears the objection that this is “for the wrong reasons.” This tendency has placed Israel at an additional disadvantage in its relations with the European Left and, increasingly, the American Left. Israel has long ceased to be the Labor Zionist experiment of its formative years, which attracted the sympathy and support of many European social democrats. Since 1977, Israeli democracy has been dominated by Right-wing parties, and since 2009, Israel has been led by Benjamin Netanyahu—a figure whose every statement, no matter how reasonable, throws the Left into a frenzy of disgust and loathing. During the last Israeli election, Netanyahu stated that there was no possibility of a Palestinian state being established “today,” and the Western Left, up to and including the president of the United States, rose as one to denounce him. In early February of this year, however, Isaac Herzog, leader of the Left-wing Zionist Union party, sheepishly agreed and, a few grumbles notwithstanding, the reaction was one of widespread indifference. The result is that even the Zionist Left has often been content to stand by and allow Netanyahu’s government to be vilified and defamed by Israel’s enemies. Perhaps they hope that a critical mass of anti-Israeli hostility will persuade Israeli voters to return a government more to their liking, or will pressure Netanyahu into making the concessions they desire. But if they think they can save themselves or win acceptance by feeding Likudniks and West Bank settlers to the anti-Zionist crocodile, then they have misunderstood the insatiable nature of its appetite. This is a self-defeating strategy, and only makes it more difficult to distinguish legitimate opposition to Israeli policy from the anti-Zionism of the wider Left. In the immediate aftermath of the Oxford Labour Club row, the former president of the university’s Jewish society wrote an op-ed for The Guardian in which he stated, “I hate that my Jewishness and my progressive politics are currently incompatible.” So why can’t the European Left change in such a way that European Jewish socialists and social democratic Zionists are made to feel welcome again? A number of recommendations suggest themselves: 1. Stop seeing the partition of Mandatory Palestine as some kind of act of paternalistic expiation for European sins rather than the realization of a persecuted people’s legitimate quest for self-determination. 2. Banish the term “anti-Zionism” from the realm of permissible discourse and reframe criticism of Israel—no matter how vehement—in political and not existential terms. 3. Respect the fact that for the vast majority of Jews, Israel represents an expression and final guarantor of Jewish security and identity. 4. Stigmatize anti-Semitism in the same way as any other kind of racism, including when it issues from the mouths and pens of other minority groups. 5. Stop treating Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular like children whose pathologies are to be patiently indulged. 6. Reject moral and cultural relativism, and hold all people to the same moral standards you would expect of yourself in the same circumstances. 7. Understand that differences of opinion with most democrats, of whatever political persuasion, ought to fall within the boundaries of respectable disagreement. 8. Appreciate the value of liberal democracy and learn to take seriously the threats of those who declare their intention to destroy it. But the reality is that the Left is in no mood to do much, if any, of the above. On the contrary, it is moving in exactly the opposite direction. In Britain, the Labour Party has elected Jeremy Corbyn as its leader—an unrepentant hard-Left anti-Zionist who has shared platforms with genocidal terrorists, blood libelers, and Holocaust deniers in order to supposedly demonstrate his solidarity with the oppressed denizens of Palestine, even as he signed petitions calling upon a centrist Israeli MK to be arrested on arrival in the UK. Supporters of the policies of pro-Israel former British prime minister Tony Blair and the European Zionist Left are embattled, diminished, and in disarray. The signs are that things are going to get worse. Blairism has not survived because its centrist values were never accepted by the Labour rank-and-file, who preferred to gripe and pine for the day that they would get “a real Labour government.” The Iraq catastrophe was used to discredit and denigrate wholesale a political project they never particularly liked in the first place. But by Blair’s own assessment, it was his firm support for Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War that finished him off. “[That] probably did me more damage than anything since Iraq,” he wrote. “It showed how far I had swung from the mainstream of conventional Western media wisdom and from my own people.” At times, however, the Left has proven capable of self-criticism with respect to Israel, the Jews, and the question of Palestine. For some, this occurred during the ferocious onslaught of the second intifada, a campaign of self-lacerating violence that not only destroyed Palestinian civil society, but also smashed the Israeli peace movement. In 2002, the hitherto dovish Israeli historian Benny Morris said that he felt like he was watching the Russian tanks roll into Budapest in 1956. The American critic Paul Berman identified the 1976 Entebbe hijacking, along with the earlier Munich massacre, as the moment at which a section of the New Left awoke to “a suspicion that, out of some horrible dialectic of history, [they] had ended up imitating instead of opposing the Nazis—had ended up intoxicating themselves with dreams of a better world to come, while doing nothing more than setting out to murder Jews on a random basis.” And before that, Stalin’s 1952 Doctors Plot, in which hundreds of Jewish doctors were accused of planning to murder top Soviet officials, forced previously ardent Stalinists to confront the painful fact that they had allowed themselves to be deceived into defending a murderous political pogrom. But such moments are hard to come by these days. As the recent wave of stabbings and car-rammings have demonstrated, the Left is simply unmoved by Palestinian terror. Anti-Zionist Jews or (better still) those prepared to renounce every last vestige of their Jewish identity will of course continue to be warmly welcomed and invited to join the Left’s tireless struggle against the baleful power of the Zionist entity and Jewish capital. For anyone and everyone else, unconditional support for the Palestinians and hostility to the State of Israel—not just for what it does, but for what it is—are now the sine qua non of authentic European Leftism. These are positions informed by convictions so fundamental to the idea of what it means to be Left-wing that they are adopted with hardly a second thought. For this to change will require a stark reappraisal of what the Left values as well as what it despises, and the courage to interrogate some of its most sacred articles of faith. Regrettably, at present the appetite for this kind of painful self-criticism remains negligible. Banner Photo: Tomer Neuberg / Flash90I was living in Brussels when François Hollande, the President of France, introduced his 75 percent top rate tax in 2012. Immediately, my quartier began to fill with French exiles, who could commute to Paris in just over an hour. One of the few Belgians left in my street, a stern local matriarch, stopped me as I left the house one morning. “You’re in politics, Monsieur le Député, maybe you can tell me something. What kind of hell must these poor souls be fleeing if they see Belgium as a tax haven?” Three years on, President Hollande is shame-facedly scrapping the 75 percent rate, having forcibly re-learned an ancient truth: Wealth taxes don’t redistribute wealth; they redistribute people. Thousands of well-off Frenchmen made the easy journey north, including the country’s richest man, Bernard Arnault. Others decided that if you’re going to flee punitive taxation, you can do better than the land of moules frites and speculoos biscuits. Gérard Depardieu, France’s greatest actor — in every sense — went to Russia, where, whatever their other problems, they have a flat rate tax on income of 13 percent (9 percent for dividends). Hollande’s tax, levied on incomes above one million euros, has been a miserable failure. Over its lifespan, it raised around $500 million, a tiny fraction of the original projections. Why? Well, the Paris bureaucrats who made those projections overlooked something rather important. Rich people don’t sit around waiting to be taxed. They have all sorts of ways of beating the system, not necessarily involving accountants. The two most straightforward forms of legal tax avoidance are earlier retirement and emigration, and wealthy Frenchmen have made ample use of both. Parts of Kensington, an expensive district of West London, are now largely Francophone. London is, on some measures, the sixth-largest French city in the world. It pullulates with French financiers and French footballers and French management consultants and French pastry chefs. They have just two things in common. First, all had the get-up-and-go needed to start a career in a new language and a new country. Second, all are paying their taxes to the British Exchequer instead of the French treasury. Merci, mes amis. Not since the expulsion of France’s Protestants in 1685 has there been such an exodus of entrepreneurs to the Anglosphere; and this wave, like that one, has been a transfusion of talent, leaving the English-speaking world more energetic and France more anemic. Nicolas Sarkozy, well understanding where the relatively small free-market-minded section of his population could be found, launched his presidential election campaign in London. When rich people emigrate, they leave others to pick up their share of the tax bill. Even in 1685, the loss of revenue hit the French state badly, setting it up for a series of defeats in the wars with the English-speaking peoples that were to follow over the next century. These days, friendlier tax jurisdictions are a Gulfstream flight away, and financiers can often open their businesses abroad simply by opening their laptops. A lot of politicians don’t want to hear this. Instead of accepting international competition, they legislate against it — by, for example, imposing international rules on tax harmonization. The new president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has campaigned all his life for European fiscal integration, including financial transaction taxes, debt pooling and a common EU finance ministry. Amusingly, though, it now emerges that while he was mouthing these platitudes, he was, as prime minister of Luxembourg, wooing multi-nationals with secret tax exemptions. The best way to maximize your tax revenue, though, involves neither harmonization nor secrecy. On the contrary, it involves lower, flatter, simpler taxes. The complexity of a tax system is every bit as damaging to competitiveness as the overall tax rate, yet we take it almost for granted. If there is an American who understands the tax code in its entirety, I have yet to meet him. The super-rich, who can afford ingenious tax advisers and high upfront fees, turn complexity to their advantage, sheltering their assets in various pockets unintentionally created by government schemes. Again, the rest of us then have to cough up to cover their portion. One way to think of the tax system is as a massive Swiss cheese. Each hole is an exemption created by a legislator in pursuit of good headlines — a hole waiting to be filled by the clever accountants. If we were to compress the cheese, collapsing all the holes, its overall height would fall substantially. In other words, scrap all the special incentives, rebates and waivers, and you can cut the basic rate. Time spent on legal avoidance would instead be spent productively. Revenues would increase. It works every time. Between 1980 and 2007, the US cut taxes at all income levels. Result? The wealthiest one percent — those chaps that the Occupy crowd keeps banging on about — went from paying 19.5 percent of all taxes to 40 percent. In Britain, after the top rate of income tax was lowered in stages from an eye-watering 98 percent in the late 1970s to 40 percent by 1988, the share of income tax collected from the wealthiest percentile rose from 14 to 27 percent. In other words, flat taxes don’t just make avoidance pointless; they don’t just boost the economy; they also ensure that the rich pay more. If President Hollande were to embrace them, he might edge even France out of its nosedive. Dan Hannan is a British Conservative member of the European Parliament.Image copyright Kenny Thomas Image caption Kenny said Christina's doctors thought it mostly likely she has a high-grade brain tumour which would be unlikely to respond to treatment The 1990s soul singer Kenny Thomas has launched an £80,000 fundraising appeal to pay for treatment for his daughter, who has a brain tumour. Four-year-old Christina Thomas was diagnosed about two weeks ago. Doctors told her parents chemotherapy or radiotherapy might prolong her life but would not save her. Mr Thomas, who lives in Norfolk, said this would result in "enormous suffering" and he wished to raise funds to "find alternative" treatments. The 48-year-old, whose song Thinking About Your Love was a hit in 1991, said: "At worst, we hope she will have a comfortable time and live longer than expected. "At best we hope it could have an impact on the tumour." As first reported in The Sun, Christina was diagnosed with a midbrain glioma on the brain stem about two weeks ago, after she developed a limp. Within two hours of the diagnosis, Mr Thomas was "with Christina in a back of an ambulance, at very high speed, going over to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge". Image copyright Kenny Thomas Image caption He added he had been absolutely amazed at the support the family had received since setting up the fundraising page Brain tumours They are a mass of abnormal cells growing in the brain The size of a brain tumour does not matter nearly so much as where it is located Christina's tumour is on the brain stem, where the spinal cord passes through the brainstem, controlling all functions in the limbs and body It is unclear what causes them Source: Brainstrust Image copyright YouTube/James Johnson Image caption Kenny Thomas's hit "Thinking About Your Love" peaked at number four in the UK charts The musician said: "I can only compare it to your worst nightmare that you simply can't wake up from." Mr and Mrs Thomas set up a fundraising webpage, which has so far raised more than £34,000, in the hope of finding alternative treatment. He is currently researching "non-harmful" procedures in the United States and Mexico. Christina is being given "all the nutrients and correct diet she needs" and they hope this will give her the strength to travel if they find a hospital which might be able to help prolong her life. Mr Thomas said: "If you can buy yourself another year, in that time some other treatment might present itself." But he added "if the worst happened, the money would go to charity".The Formula 1 Strategy Group voted against using the Halo in 2017, instead deferring the introduction of cockpit protection - in a yet undetermined form - until 2018. Sainz, however, thinks a formal driver vote on the matter should be taken into account by the sport's governing body. "I think is that every driver should try it before 2017, then every driver should give their opinion and there should be a vote after running the Halo," Sainz suggested. "This is the most common sense thing to do, even though in the end they probably won’t take into consideration our vote." Interim solution Regarding the decision to postpone the Halo, Sainz said he would have preferred to see it implemented as an interim solution next year. "Everyone took a decision to have a protection device in 2018 – doesn’t mean it will be a Halo, it means all the teams and FIA will work to provide a safety component for 2018. "But it probably means in 2017 we have nothing in the car, which opens the question of what happens if something happens in 2017. "I think Halo [could’ve been] a solution for one year before they come up with something more advanced. But it’s clear for ’17 they cannot bring this. "They want to bring it for ’18, but if something happens in ’17, you look back and say 'ah, maybe we should have left the Halo [on] for one year', before bringing on the nice-looking super-safe aspect for 2018 that they have promised. "It’s a question mark we all have, hopefully it will not be like that and nothing will happen." Additional reporting by Jamie KleinPosted January 10, 2014 by Floydian Slip Easy Action plans to release one of the last known live performances of Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett. The label’s managing director, Carlton Sandercock, tells “Floydian Slip,” “We have indeed purchased and are preparing to release a live set by The Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band featuring Bruce Pain, Jack Monk and Twink. Guesting is Fred Frith and, on two maybe three songs, Syd Barrett. “The music played in this set is a million miles away from anything Pink Floyd have ever done,” he adds. The performance was recorded Jan. 27, 1972, at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge, England. The set list is as follows: Sea Cruise L.A. to London Boogie ICE Nadine Drinkin’ That Wine Number Nine (Gotta Be Reason) Let’s Roll Sweet Little Angel Auction house Bonhams put up for bid a reel tape of the show in June 2010. Expecting to fetch $5,000, the item didn’t meet its reserve price and was later sold to Easy Action. (See “Rare Syd Barrett recording up for auction” and “Rare Barrett recording goes unsold“) The label plans to release the recording, possibly as a vinyl-only release to being with, in March.President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after a security briefing at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., on Thursday. \| Evan Vucci/AP Trump: Military plans are 'locked and loaded' on North Korea The president also warned that North Korea 'will truly regret' threatening or attacking the U.S. and its allies. President Donald Trump on Friday warned that U.S. plans for military action against North Korea are “locked and loaded,” urging North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to “find another path” amid escalating tensions on both sides of the Pacific. “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!” the president wrote on Twitter Friday morning. Story Continued Below He explained to reporters later Friday that his tweet is “pretty obvious” and said he hopes Kim will “fully understand the gravity of” it. “If he utters one threat in the form of an overt threat … or if he does anything with respect to Guam or any place else that’s an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it,” Trump warned. “And he will regret it fast.” And the president expressed confidence that the U.S. will find a resolution with North Korea — and fast. “We’ll either be very, very successful, quickly,” he said, “or we’re going to be very, very successful in a different way quickly.” Trump in no way softened his tone while addressing reporters later Friday from his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., adding that his administration was considering further economic sanctions against North Korea. If implemented, he said, the sanctions would occur “at a very, very high level.” “You could say as strong as they get,” he added, describing the type of sanctions his administration is considering. The president also provided a measure of reassurance to citizens of Guam, adding that "if anything happens to Guam, there's going to be big, big trouble in North Korea." Trump’s threats against North Korea have escalated this week, with the president warning on Tuesday that the Kim regime would face “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it continues its threatening behavior toward the U.S. Trump doubled down on that rhetoric Thursday, telling reporters that perhaps his “fire and fury” threat “wasn’t tough enough.” He also declined to rule out a preemptive strike against the regime. The president’s stepped-up rhetoric has come in response to seeming advancements in North Korea’s long-held goal of obtaining a nuclear weapon capable of striking the U.S. In recent weeks, Pyongyang has tested ballistic missiles that could potentially hit the continental U.S., news that has been compounded by reports of U.S. intelligence agency assessments that the Kim regime already possesses a nuclear warhead small enough to fit inside one of those missiles. In response to the president’s Tuesday warning of “fire and fury,” which North Korea dismissed as “a load of nonsense,” the Kim regime also threatened to attack the Pacific island of Guam, the U.S. territory with a significant military presence, with an “enveloping fire.” The most reliable politics newsletter. Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. The hot rhetoric dragged down financial markets this week, stripping more than $1 trillion from stock markets worldwide as investors shifted funds into traditionally safer bets like the Japanese yen, Swiss franc, and U.S. and German bonds and gold, all of which climbed higher this week. The slide in the markets is a blow for the Trump administration, which has prided itself on the climb in U.S. stock prices since the inauguration. China, responsible for the majority of North Korea’s international trade and its chief patron on the world stage, has waded into the middle of the cross-Pacific threats, warning both the U.S. and the Kim regime against taking military action. In an editorial published Friday in a state-run newspaper, the contents of which were reported by The Washington Post, the Chinese Global Times newspaper said China won’t assist North Korea if it launches a preemptive strike against the U.S. “China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten U.S. soil first and the U.S. retaliates, China will stay neutral,” the editorial read. “If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel, too, weighed in, telling reporters Friday in Berlin that "I don't see a military solution and I don't think it's called for," according to The Associated Press, and that "I think escalating the rhetoric is the wrong answer." Trump responded by calling Merkel a friend of the president and first daughter Ivanka Trump. But he also suggested she was speaking for Germany. “She’s certainly not referring to the United States,” he said. “That I can tell you.” Adding a layer of confusion to the rhetoric emerging from Washington has been the mixed messages from various arms of the Trump administration. One day after the president’s “fire and fury” threat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who was en route to Guam at the time, told reporters that “Americans should sleep well at night” and that “I do not believe that there is any imminent threat” from North Korea.” That same day, Defense Secretary James Mattis took a tougher tone, declaring that the Kim regime “should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.” On Thursday, Mattis more closely matched Tillerson, responding “no” when asked by a reporter if people in Guam should be concerned. Asked to square the differing tones coming from the State and Defense departments, White House national security aide Sebastian Gorka told the BBC on Thursday that those seeking the official U.S. position “should listen to the president.” He called it “nonsensical” that Tillerson would comment on military matters, although he later sought to walk back that comment in a statement explaining that he had only meant to criticize reporters for asking the secretary of state military questions. Cristiano Lima and Nolan D. McCaskill contributed to this report.Imagine cells that can move through your brain, hunting down cancer and destroying it before they themselves disappear without a trace. Scientists have just achieved that in mice, creating personalized tumor-homing cells from adult skin cells that can shrink brain tumors to 2% to 5% of their original size. Although the strategy has yet to be fully tested in people, the new method could one day give doctors a quick way to develop a custom treatment for aggressive cancers like glioblastoma, which kills most human patients in 12–15 months. It only took 4 days to create the tumor-homing cells for the mice. Glioblastomas are nasty: They spread roots and tendrils of cancerous cells through the brain, making them impossible to remove surgically. They, and other cancers, also exude a chemical signal that attracts stem cells—specialized cells that can produce multiple cell types in the body. Scientists think stem cells might detect tumors as a wound that needs healing and migrate to help fix the damage. But that gives scientists a secret weapon—if they can harness stem cells’ natural ability to “home” toward tumor cells, the stem cells could be manipulated to deliver cancer-killing drugs precisely where they are needed. Other research has already exploited this method using neural stem cells—which give rise to neurons and other brain cells—to hunt down brain cancer in mice and deliver tumor-eradicating drugs. But few have tried this in people, in part because getting those neural stem cells is hard, says Shawn Hingtgen, a stem cell biologist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Right now, there are three main ways. Scientists can either harvest the cells directly from the patient, harvest them from another patient, or they can genetically reprogram adult cells. But harvesting requires invasive surgery, and bestowing stem cell properties on adult cells takes a two-step process that can increase the risk of the final cells becoming cancerous. And using cells from someone other than the cancer patient being treated might trigger an immune response against the foreign cells. To solve these problems, Hingtgen’s group wanted to see whether they could skip a step in the genetic reprogramming process, which first transforms adult skin cells into standard stem cells and then turns those into neural stem cells. Treating the skin cells with a biochemical cocktail to promote neural stem cell characteristics seemed to do the trick, turning it into a one-step process, he and his colleague report today in Science Translational Medicine. But the next big question was whether these cells could home in on tumors in lab dishes, and in animals, like neural stem cells. “We were really holding our breath,” Hingtgen says. “The day we saw the cells crawling across the [Petri] dish toward the tumors, we knew we had something special.” The tumor-homing cells moved 500 microns—the same width as five human hairs—in 22 hours, and they could burrow into lab-grown glioblastomas. “This is a great start,” says Frank Marini, a cancer biologist at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who was not involved with the study. “Incredibly quick and relatively efficient.” The team also engineered the cells to deliver common cancer treatments to glioblastomas in mice. Mouse tumors injected directly with the reprogrammed stem cells shrank 20- to 50-fold in 24–28 days compared with nontreated mice. In addition, the survival times of treated rodents nearly doubled. In some mice, the scientists removed tumors after they were established, and injected treatment cells into the cavity. Residual tumors, spawned from the remaining cancer cells, were 3.5 times smaller in the treated mice than in untreated mice. Marini notes that more rigorous testing is
“special” plays were both reverses to Percy Harvin. Most of the Base Offense is practiced on Wednesday. So the Drive Starter plays will be practiced on Wednesday. Here is a run down of what a typical Wednesday for a coach and player may look like: So at 9:00 A.M., the team met and the coaches presented the scouting reports on the Dolphins. Then the game-plan was introduced. Specifically, they went over the Base Offense plays and protections that were going to be implemented later in practice. Most of the Base Offense plays are concepts that have been practiced and repped since the off-season, but the coaches will run the concept out of a different formation or look. At 10:30 A.M., each position met with their position coaches and again went over the plays. The different formations that are going to be run and maybe even defensive tendencies that were picked up on film. Later in the day, the team met again to walk through the plays that are going were be practiced at 2:00 P.M. Coaches have to be very detailed in their practice plan because the team has a limited amount of time to practice. Once practice began at 2:00, the team repped all of their Base Offense plays. Included in that practice time were the plays that the Bills wanted to run as their Drive Starters. As I have mentioned, many of the Base Offense categories may overlap, so the Bills probably practiced other Base Offense categories (I.E. 2nd and 7+). Greg Roman ran seven opening Drive Starters in that first Dolphins game. Keep in mind, these are only the open field base offense play-calls. The open field for the sake of this article is from the Bills 10 yard line to the Fins 20 yard line, and did not take place in the Red Zone, 2 minute drill or Backed Up scenario. These calls were practiced on Wednesday. So lets look at the calls and see how well they were executed. Drive Starter #1 On the following play the Bills start their 2nd drive with Roman’s patented Pin and Pull scheme. [gfycat data_id=”NippyJointCoot” data_controls=true] For all the Eric Wood haters, watch him perform a fantastic reach block allowing Richie to climb to the second level LB. Woods cracks down on the force player. Mccoy receives the hand off. Clay PINS the DE. Glenn PULLS and he and Felton lead the play wide. Felton lines up the alley LB. Result: 9 yard gain. Drive Starter #2 Roman dials up a reverse to Harvin to start the Bills’ third drive. [gfycat data_id=”NeedyBronzeFoxhound” data_controls=true] Glenn leaves the DE and climbs to the second level. Hogan holds his block on the wide side of the field. Clay, aligned in the off tight end position to the boundary leads the reverse. But I want to highlight Woods’ block. He comes from the bottom of the screen all the way across to block the rotating safety. He takes it a little too far and gets an unnecessary roughness penalty, but that effort doesn’t go unnoticed. Result: 9 yard gain. Drive Starter #3 On the first play of their fourth drive the Bills run a rare toss to Karlos Williams. Pay close attention to Incognito, Glenn and Felton. [gfycat data_id=”FlawedQuarterlyAtlanticblackgoby” data_controls=true] Richie executes a solid reach block on the DT. Clay motions and latches onto the DE. Glenn then pulls and leads the play with Felton. Woods again picks up a pursuing LB, Woods is an animal. Felton has a DB in his sights and eliminates him. Glenn, with his head on a swivel wipes out the safety and two other players to spring Karlos. Result: 18 yard gain. Drive Starter #4 The Bills are at their 20 yard line to start their 7th drive. Roman again runs a special play-call. [gfycat data_id=”AptTintedBlobfish” data_controls=true] Bills are in 11 personnel. They motion Harvin from the slot to the strength of the formation. Harvin receives the handoff. Clay arc blocks to the safety dropping down due the motion. Robert Woods again takes care of the DB, allowing Harvin to get the edge. Result: 7 yard gain. Drive Starter #5 The only pass by the Bills to start a drive came on the 8th drive of the game. Roman tries to run a play-action pass to Charles Clay. [gfycat data_id=”LegalBigheartedDarklingbeetle” data_controls=true] Tyrod fakes the run to Karlos Williams. Richie sells the run to the right but then peels back to block the backside rush player. Glenn blocks down on the DT, again to sell the run. The pressure by the DE and DT don’t give TT time to hit any of the receivers. He pulls it down and gets to the sideline Result: 3 yard gain. Drive Starter #6 On the 2nd to last drive of the game, Roman is protecting the lead and decides to run a counter run play to Karlos Williams. [gfycat data_id=”WavyWholeHake” data_controls=true] RG Urbik pulls and leads to the left. FB Felton also is the lead blocker on the counter play. Glenn immediately heads to the second level to block the ILB. The Dolphins do a great job on this play of getting off of blocks and getting downhill. Results: 3 yard gain. Drive Starter #7 Victory Formation So in the first meeting between the Bills and the Dolphins Greg Roman was pretty successful on Drive Starters. He ran 6 plays for 49 yards. The average of over 8 yards a play to start drives set the offense up well. But what was even more impressive about the Drive Starters in that first game, was the diversity in the calls. Roman wanted to be run heavy, but he also wanted to slow down the aggressiveness of the Fins’ defense. He did that by mixing in two special play-reverses to Harvin to slow down the pursuit of standout defensive ends Cameron Wake and Olivier Vernon. The coordinator also mixed in a play-action pass to keep the defense off balanced. The Drive Starter plays that were scripted were executed very well by the players. But the next portion of creating a game-plan is actually scripting the Opening Sequence. The Opening Sequence are a set of plays that the Bills will run to start the game. These are plays that may show several formations to get an idea on how the Fins’ defense plans to match-up versus the Bills’ personnel. Stay tuned for the next portion of this series, Greg Roman’s Game-Plan: Opening Sequence.The world changed too quickly for me to catch it again, making me curse inwardly. I wanted to actually see the effect of the change. I wanted to study, to analyze it, to see if I could come up with something that I could pick apart to help out Chris. Maybe give him an idea for a material that might allow for easier dimensional breaches, if such a thing were even possible. I wasn’t sure, but if there was the possibility, then it might be something worth exploring. I was still getting my bearings over the sudden shift in locale when I heard squeals of delight. One feminine, one more masculine. I knew instantly who the latter was, and I had the former figured out before the bundle of excitement slammed into me with a fierce hug. Instinctively, I hugged back with the hand that wasn’t holding my halberd. “Welcome back Jor,” Amy said, nuzzling her head into my chest. A quick glance to my left revealed that Chris was doing about the same to Sarah. “It’s good to be back,” I said with all sincerness. I’d enjoyed the past few days in Twain, but it had also been exhausting. Sarah and I had been hit up for interviews five times. One of those had been on camera, which made it even more awkward. We’d kept our answers vague for the most part, avoiding the topic of our wildlings and addressing the more emotional side of it. What it was like to explore a dead city (depressing, with a constant sword of dread hanging above us), the sheer number of wildlings (mind-boggling), and a little about what all we’d discovered. The last was mainly me talking about the plethora of tests that I’d run throughout our time in Saint Louis. At one point, as I was trying to fight off exhaustion, I started talking about that first house we’d entered. The way that I’d pieced everything together about the family that had lived there, and how it had felt to be in it. How I’d felt like I was observing the last moments of a loving family before they’d fled in terror. Afterwards, Sarah had told me that I’d done a great job, and that they’d eaten it up. I wasn’t so sure. Even worse was the way that Sarah seemed to actively encourage them parading us around, meeting anybody who could be considered a VIP there. We’d even met with Warren Oswald, the Junker King. He was a nice guy, though he admitted to us that his position was mainly ceremonial — he had veto rights for the city council, and could push his agendas through speeches to the public, but for the most part he was simply there as a figurehead and tinker, same as any other. The meeting was cut short when someone interrupted to inform him of a problem with another tinker’s tokamak fusion reactor, so I doubted that he was simply a figurehead leader. For the most part, though, I got to meet some wonderful people who were thrilled that we’d simply survived. Enough that I was happy to insist that Sarah and I got separate rooms. I was glad that protection was commonly available in Twain, and that she was smart enough that I didn’t have to remind her to use it. Perhaps my favorite person was Mr. Rieger, the barber I’d gone to on the first day. He’d insisted on not being paid, but had provided a good amount of conversation with me. He’d also insisted on giving me a shave every single day that we’d stayed. I’d never had someone else shave me before; it was strangely relaxing. I’d made sure to tip him at least what he’d lost by giving me a free shave. Amy pulled away from me reluctantly, beaming up at me. With a faint smile, I stroked a lock of hair away from her face. We didn’t have much time, though, before Chris was latching onto me in a fierce hug. “Bro,” he said with a giddy laugh. I couldn’t help but join him. “You wouldn’t believe how ape people have been going over you two! Ever since Dragon released that statement, and people found out that I was your brother, I’ve been getting all sorts of questions.” “I’m familiar,” Sarah said in an amused tone. Apparently, Dragon had made sure the press knew what we’d done for her. Considering that Dragon herself released so few statements, it had caused quite a stir, which was part of the reason why we had gotten the reception in Twain that we had. Which reminded me. “By any chance, did you get some newspapers?” “Of course,” he said with a laugh. “What kind of brother would I be if I didn’t? Anything with your names in it got saved.” “Sarah.” Tabby’s voice drew my attention. I looked over to find her hugging Sis tight. “You two are stupid, irresponsible, and damn near suicidal. What would have happened if-” “We’re fine, Mom.” Sarah smiled a little. “The numbers were good, and we cut through a lot of BS this way. We’re fine. Besides, we’re only taking after Dad.” I’d apparently been so focused on Amy and Chris that I’d missed Tabby and Tim. He approached slowly, extending his hand. “Jordan.” As I took it, he frowned. “You’re hurt.” I let go, raising the hand to my neck. “It’s nothing, really. Patched up all good, so no worries. I barely feel it.” On a scale of one to ten, I’d only rank it a three. Annoying, but it was almost healed to the point where the gel was only a thin slit. It wasn’t slowing me down in the slightest. “Besides, who was it who jumped into the field with a broken arm to hunt down two villains?” He looked uncomfortable. “I never should have let anybody know about that incident.” “And Jordan takes after you for that,” Tabby said. Unlike Tim, she had a small, uncomfortable smile on her face. “You cleaned it up good? I don’t-” “Mom,” Chris said, rolling his eyes. He grabbed my shoulders to show her my neck better. “Yes. The gel actively draws out and expels bacteria and viruses. It doesn’t have a deep indentation, so I know that they put enough in to completely seal the wound. And considering that he didn’t bleed out, they got it in before they had to worry about anything. Trust me, they know more about how to do this than even I do.” It was… technically true, but only because we had more experience using it. Time for a distraction. “We weren’t expecting you.” Tabby frowned a little at me. “When we heard what you two were doing, we came here as quickly as possible. We’d been tempted to take Chris to Twain, but he was pretty insistent that we wait here. We would have preferred to see you before you left. You really should have…” Her words trailed off as she looked over my shoulder. “Miss Wilbourn.” I turned to see Tattletale, dressed in a very nice suit and wearing those small square glasses of hers. She had the same coy smile as the last time I’d seen her, like she knew more than anyone around her. Which, to be fair, she probably did. “Mrs. Abrams.” She looked to Chris. “Mr. Abrams.” She looked to Sarah. “Miss Abrams.” And finally to me. “Jordan.” I smiled a little, but it was Tim who spoke up. “Can we help you?” Her head tilted a little, her grin growing a touch. “I had hoped that you would have had your family reunion in peace before you noticed me. I-” “Oi, Shit-tits! Back the goddamn hell off from Fuck-ass and Bitch-chan!” “Hi Gina,” I called out before I even saw the source of the voice. I quickly began to make pacifying motions to everybody. I only knew of one person who used the term fuck-ass either as a nickname or a term of affection. Well, two, but the second person was dead. Slowly, Gina came into view. Her suit was just as nice as Tattletale’s in its own way. It wasn’t cut to her body as nicely, but it was old-world, pre-Gold Morning. How she’d kept it in such good condition was beyond me. Her jewelry was very nice, too. The only things ruining the professional image were the fact that she had her head down to stare intently at the tinker device she held in her hands, the scowl that virtually shot vitriol at everyone in the same hemisphere as her, and the heavy boots she wore. Next to her was an older bearded man in a uniform; it was so strange to see Dragon’s Teeth in their dress uniforms and not their armor. He was giving everyone an apologetic smile. Right, not everyone was as used to Gina as I was. “Miss McTee,” Tattletale said, trying very hard to keep her smile up. She wasn’t being exactly successful. “How-” “By pissing the fuck off,” Gina growled, marching right up to the taller blonde woman. It wasn’t until she was right in Tattletale’s face that she finally looked up from the tablet-like device, her eyes burning with fury. “We get to debrief the damned duo before you get to even get a fucking crack at them.” Tattletale met Gina’s angry gaze with an even stare, not intimidated in the slightest. “Dragon-” “She’s outside of the fucking chain of command and therefore immune and you goddamn well know it,” the dark haired girl snapped. “Nope, don’t go with their time in Twain, no debriefing happened there, either. Never had the chance, what with every reporter in the goddamn world seeming to hover over them like fucking buzzards. I wonder who might have had so many there? It would be interesting to look at the money trail. So buzz right the fuck off until we’re done.” “Miss McTee,” Lisa growled. Yeah, Gina had that effect on people. “I see that you’re here for a fight. Rather than argue here, why don’t we let them have their family reunion and discuss this in private?” The man’s eyebrows raised a little. I got the feeling that he was all for that option, but he was wisely staying out of it. Gina might only be half his age or less, but few people could stop her once she got going. “Why would I want to talk in private with someone whose head is so far up her ass she stands upright again?” Gina’s hands were fidgeting so bad they were almost a blur. If she was actually a Mover, they probably would have been. “No, you ask them anything, question fucking number one, and I come down on you like a ton of bricks for breach of contract. Then, once I’ve revealed everything about your hypocritical ass, I’m sure that I’ll be able to represent someone else in court, too.” “You don’t want to do that.” “Don’t I?” Gina laughed, the sort of laugh that you heard in nightmares. “I’m sorry, are you not using your goddamn power?” Tattletale started to say something, but was cut off by Gina’s motor mouth. “Nope, my power’s confusing yours, isn’t it? Too many mixed signals throwing yours off and giving conflicting conclusions, yay! But I don’t need my power to read you like a damn penny novel. Now, how about I start shrieking the really interesting details, hmm? Like how-” “Ladies!” Tim interrupted, his face stern. They both looked over to him, but Gina’s eyes were dancing. “We can talk more with the two of them later, and we’d rather not get in the middle of a lawsuit.” The possibility of a brawl went unsaid. “So, how about instead, Sarah and Jordan go with Miss McTee now, with the understanding that they have a limited time until they need to spend time with us, and perhaps first thing in the morning they meet with Miss Wilbourn for as long as she wants?” Tabby jumped in, her back straight and her voice cool and calm. “I believe that it’s a much better agreement than possibly getting into an argument and revealing possibly sensitive information on the open street. Wouldn’t you agree?” Lisa looked back to Gina, who flashed her a maniacal grin. “Mine’s bigger than yours.” Tattletale sneered at Gina for a moment, before that bright, knowing grin crossed her face. “That’s fine. I wouldn’t dream of violating the good working relationship that we have with the Wardens, or the Dragon’s Teeth. Please.” The man in the uniform coughed softly. “Then perhaps we should do this quickly, so that the two of them can get back to what they were doing?” Gina stepped away from Tattletale, instantly stalking off. The man smiled at all of us in turn before motioning for us to join her. I noted that he inclined his head in a polite nod towards Chris. “Please.” Sarah and I began to follow, but I quickly turned and moved towards Tattletale. “Sorry about that, Miss Wilbourn.” “It’s quite alright.” She flashed me a smile. “It’s not your fault in the slightest.” I fished in my belt, pulling out one of the rolls of negatives inside and offering it to her. “Please. Keep them, we’ve still got multiple copies of the photos.” And of the negatives, but still. That made her smile more genuine as she took it from me. “Thank you, Jordan.” Funny, she sounded surprised by my offer. I flashed her a smile before moving to Amy. I barely got my arms around her for another hug before Gina’s voice called out. “Oi! Fuck-ass! Get a move on already!” Amy let out a nervous laugh, the kind that said she wasn’t sure how else to respond. “Go. We can catch up later.” I turned and ran, mindful of my halberd. No matter how used to it I was, how much of an extension of my own body it might feel like, I always kept in mind that it was a weapon that could seriously hurt, maim or kill someone if I got careless with it. As I got close, the officer turned to look at me, briefly giving me a glance at the name on his uniform. That made my face light up. “Commander Van Dorn! I didn’t recognize you.” Somehow, something Sarah had said almost a lifetime ago half-filtered through my mind. Something about familiar faces to butter us up. The Commander smiled warmly at me. “I thought I’d give the beard a chance. I’m thinking maybe I should have waited until winter.” I laughed a little, relaxing more and more now that the pressure of the earlier conversation was behind us. “As soon as I found out who it was that was being debriefed, I volunteered for it. I’m lucky that HighCom agreed. Besides, it gave me time to talk with your brother while I was waiting.” Commander Van Dorn was part of the logistics branch of the Dragon’s Teeth. On occasion, he’d buy blades from Chris to assign to those who were undergoing missions that would leave them without support for lengthy periods of time. He seemed to like my brother, and that was good enough for me. Gina, on the other hand, didn’t really like anybody. She more of tolerated them. “Fancy meeting you here. I haven’t seen you in years.” “Whatever, Fuck-ass.” She didn’t bother to look up from her tablet, despite leading the march. I saw Sarah bristle, and quickly turned to her. “Gina and I had several classes together. The fact that she uses the same insult for me every time is almost a term of endearment. Really, she’s quite nice once you get to know her.” “Deep throat your halberd.” I smiled. They’d had to explain to me that I had to stand up to her, needle her back on occasion. After I had, we’d gotten along a lot better. Sarah still wasn’t looking happy, so I tried a different track and addressed Gina again. “How’s your parents?” The words tumbled out of her mouth like a machine gun. “Dad’s still pissed off that I ran off to join the Wardens instead of his practice. I’d rather gouge my eyes out with warm water one drip at a time. I’d end up killing my clients by the end of the week. Mom’s still a vapid bitch that puts out more babies than common sense. She’s disappointed that I’m not a fucking social climber. And I’ve made it clear that they can both suck my metaphorical nuts. So all in all, pretty good.” She paused just long enough to take a deep breath. “Before you ask, I’m officially a lawyer, but the Wardens toss me at whatever they think will distract me for a little bit. Let me tell you, being the smartest fucking person in the room fucking sucks sometimes. Every day it’s something new. Crime scene investigation, debriefings for strange things, I’m going to help with the study of a goddamn Endbringer here soon, and, unfortunately, dealing with stuck up Thinkers like Tattletale. “Ugh.” She lowered her tablet for a moment, her jaw setting in fury. “That bitch especially. She’s such a fucking hypocrite and she doesn’t even realize it.” Again, she fixed on the tablet. “You know, the first time I met with her, I’d hoped that she could keep up with me, be an equal. But no, the woman herself is dumb as a box of rocks! All of her smarts comes from her power. And she’s so intent on showing other Thinkers that they aren’t as smart as they think they are and putting them in their place, she doesn’t even realize that she’s just as guilty as they are! How fucking worthless is that?!” She wheeled around suddenly, pointing at me. “Yes, I realize the hypocrisy of that statement, but my power doesn’t actually augment my intelligence in the slightest. Mein gott, this conversation is so boring! You two are so damn predictable!” Classic Gina. I felt bad for her; there was so very little that gave her genuine happiness anymore. Or even temporary happiness. “You aren’t going to get in trouble for that display back there, are you?” “Maybe,” she admitted. Her eyes fell to the tablet again and she got back to leading the way. “Maybe not. Hard to say. If she takes us to court, it might be tricky to prove that your conversation with Dragon couldn’t be construed as a mid-mission debriefing. I’m mostly sure that we can get around it, but Chevalier and Legend might give me huge frowning faces. The biggest you’ll ever see.” She paused to take a breath. “Also, did you two take an audio recorder with you? Video camera?” “We took pictures,” Sarah said hesitantly. “We were more concerned with weight, but we thought it wisest to get at least some sort of visual record in.” “We brought them with,” I added quickly. “We were planning on giving you them and the negatives during the debriefing.” “Good, good.” Dealing with Gina was hard on the best of days. From my understanding, she’d been brilliant before she’d gained her power, and it had only gotten more intense since then. Unfortunately, her power was continually taxing on her nerves. Even worse, she couldn’t turn it off, only enhance it. And that came with certain risks. Commander Van Dorn spoke up. “When it comes time for the debriefing, I have a log of the audio and visual that Dragon shared with us. Some’s been scrubbed, I’m afraid. Something about personal conversation.” She scoffed softly. “But I figured it could wait so that you could watch it while we were talking.” “I love you,” she deadpanned quickly. “I want you to bear my children.” “Uh…” The bearded man looked uncomfortable. “Oh, come on! It’ll be great, having a bouncing baby inside your belly! I even brought all the gear! And just for you, the fun bit is dragon sha-” “Pass,” he said quickly. From my angle, I could see that Gina was grinning a little. As she lead us into he Wardens HQ for the city, I couldn’t help the feeling that this wasn’t going to be as bad as I’d feared. I sat, my feet curled up beneath my seat, my head leaned against Mom’s shoulder so that I could see out the window. I watched as the landscape tore by, an expression of wonder on my face. I’d never get used to these displays. “I’ll never get tired of this,” I said lazily. “Mmm. You’ve loved this line ever since you were five. You used to just watch out the window, as excited as you could be. Now, you look like you’re going to pass out.” I flicked my eyes up at her, then back out. “Big day.” “A very big day,” she agreed. “I gotta admit, I’m scared.” She smiled a little and ran a lock of her red hair behind her ear. “I’d be worried if you weren’t. Two years of work, all leading to one singular moment. And now, it’s finally coming to an end. Sometimes, the end of a journey can be even scarier than the journey itself.” We rode in silence, me just staring out the window. Out there, I couldn’t just sit by, but here? Like this? I could at least relax in motion. It was strangely comfortable like this. Especially when she spoke truths like that. “Chicago sure was beautiful.” Mom chuckled softly. “More than you’ll ever know.” Amy smoothed out my lapels for a moment before laying her palms on my chest. They were warm. Funny how quickly I was coming to appreciate the little things about her. The closeness. “Are you sure you don’t want us to go inside with you?” “He’s got this,” Sarah said, gently clapping me on the shoulder. I’d wanted her to come in with me, but she’d insisted that this was something I had to do on my own. She’d claimed older sister’s intuition, which amused both of us to no small end; she wasn’t that much older than me. Things had been a little odd here lately. After the debriefing with Gina and Commander Van Dorn, we’d all spent some quality time together. The Dragon’s Teeth had apparently seen to helping ensure that everything we’d brought through with us was taken to our warehouse in the Kaf district, and now the Wardens were helping guard it all. It wasn’t until the next day, and a wonderful night of getting to sleep with both Sarah and Chris, that we set about taking proper stock of everything. Chris said that his power told him that the liquids and powders we’d brought back would work. He didn’t know how he knew, he didn’t know why they worked, he simply knew. Not as if that made things any less frustrating. Answers simply weren’t coming to me as to how Twain worked, and it was driving me mad. A madness that was taken down a step when I’d caught sight of Sarah angrily arguing with a man in a suit. One of Tattletale’s people. I didn’t venture out to join her, and when she came back in she’d smiled said it was nothing. That was a lie and I knew it, but I also knew that pressing her on it wouldn’t do any good. Not when she smiled and brushed it off so casually. Since then, she’d been… vigilant. Not like she was expecting to get attacked, but constantly scanning the crowds. She’d also been giving Chris and myself time with the objects of our affections. Literally pushing us away from her or our parents to spend time with them. I honestly wouldn’t have minded seeing more of Chris and Karen together, though. I’d caught him feeding her fruit at one point, pausing to gently boop her on the nose with finger. It took everything I had to keep from squealing. I worried about their prospects, though. I didn’t know enough about Karen to make a solid judgement. But Sarah wasn’t raising any concerns, and seemed to find the two of them as cute together as I did. I pushed those thoughts out of my head and buried them deep. Now wasn’t the time. Not while I was dressed in my suit, standing outside of Alcott’s offices. I smiled weakly at everyone. “Wish me luck.” “None needed,” Chris said with a grin. “We’ll be here when you’re done.” I reached out to brush my thumb against Amy’s cheek, and she tilted her face into it. Only then did I take a deep breath to steel myself before going through the door. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but this hadn’t been it. The waiting room that I stepped into was more dimly lit than one would guess, but not so dark that you couldn’t see. It was relaxing. There were two desks and chairs against a wall, but the majority of the furniture was overstuffed couches. Dark red, bordering on maroon. The entire room was made of dark wood, and curtains had been hung to enhance the strange ambiance of the scenery. Further in was a reception desk, behind which an aging man sat. I approached him slowly, taking another breath to steel myself. I had a lot of questions that I could ask, but I had to spend them carefully. That was enough to strain anyone’s nerves. “Hello, m-my name is Jordan. I have an appointment with Miss Alcott.” The man smiled patiently as he withdrew some papers. “We’ve been expecting you. As a formality, I’m afraid that I have to ask you to sign some paperwork.” I nodded as he continued. “There will be guards posted the entire length of your meeting. There are those who respond poorly to her answers. Please watch what you say; any question that triggers her power, no matter how innocent, will be deducted from your questions. The money put towards your questions are non-refundable, no matter what your results are. Unspent questions will be held, but will require another appointment.” “Sounds fair,” I muttered to myself as I picked the pen up, scanning the paperwork. “There is also a clause absolving her of fault due to following her council. Her power can tell you what is probable, but there is always variation.” I nodded absently as I ticked own the paperwork. “To save energy during the simulation, it doesn’t account for every possible micro-permutation, which can have subtle differences. The simulated realities she reviews are hyper-accurate, taking into account information that not even she has access to, but do have possible holes in them due to intervention due to other powers. She can point me in the likely direction, but she cannot say that something will happen with absolute certainty. There’s always variation, and something that has a 98% chance of success will still fail 2% of the time.” The older man looked at me with a critical eye as I signed at the bottom. I looked up at him with a bright smile. “I’m very familiar with her, sir. I wrote a thirty page report on her in school.” The man made a soft noise in the back of his throat before taking the papers. “If you’d have a seat, please. She will see you shortly.” With a smile I moved to one of the couches and settled down. For the time, I was content to simply look around the waiting room. The odd pillars, the drapes, if I had to set an ambush for an unsuspecting party, with pleny of areas to tuck people into. A great defensive location against people, even triggered people. Which raised the question as to if she was expecting trouble or not. With her powers, sorting through a plethora of possible simulated timelines, it would be hard to decide that there was a high probability of encountering danger. And with what the man had said, she’d most likely either encountered it or asked herself if it was likely. Thinkers like her and Tattletale got the short end of the stick when it came to powers. I’d worked through where Blasters could hide and was working on where Brutes could bunker down so that opponents could be flushed into the range of Strikers when the door opened. A woman in a flowing skirt and pink top smiled at me. “Dinah will see you now.” I rose and hurried over to her, desperately smoothing down my suit jacket. I’d forgotten to unbutton it when I’d sat down. Suits were still alien to me. The fact that my heart was suddenly racing didn’t help matters any. The woman didn’t seem to notice, at least, not on a conscious level. Gracefully, she lead me down a hallway, then began up a flight of stairs. “Are you nervous?” I blinked, looking at her. “Nervous?” A small chuckle escaped me. “Yeah, nervous is a good word. Especially if you tack on the phrase, as a cat in a room of rocking chairs.” The woman flashed me a patient smile. “You shouldn’t be. Just remember, no matter what numbers you get, they’re only possibilities. You’ve also had a full day’s worth of questions paid for, so you can take as much time as you need.” “I know,” I said with a warm smile. “Thank you, though, for the reminder.” I started focusing on my breathing, slowing my heartbeat. Each step hurt my knee, but it would hold. The trip to St. Louis had taken its toll on my body, but I was recovering now. The pain was back down from a six to a three or four. “Manners,” she said with an appreciative smirk. “Are what separate us from beasts, or so I’m told.” I paused, trying to find some other way of filling the silence. “That and opposable thumbs. Thumbs are pretty dang important.” She laughed a little as she lead me to the door. “Well, keep that attitude, and you’ll do fine, Jordan.” She stood off to the side of the door and folded her arms. She expected me to open it. For some reason, though, my arms felt like lead. Even with controlling my breathing, trying to force my heart rate down, it was still hammering in my chest. Fear. I didn’t fear much. In practice, there wasn’t anything to be afraid of; even if you lost a sparring session, you were likely to gain something out of it. In a real fight, if you lost you wouldn’t be around long to know it. In most situations, there was very little to actually be afraid of, as life would continue on regardless. So why was I so afraid now? I was just going to get my questions answered. Just another step along the path. I reminded myself of that as I forced my hand up to open the door. Stepping inside, I found the massive room to be equally as lavish as the waiting room. Curtains, tapestries and paintings adorned the walls. There were opulent couches, loveseats, and chairs. End tables that might as well have been trimmed in gold; they might very well be for all I knew. A large wooden radio played relaxing music. The lighting was half light bulbs and half candles and lanterns, but it only served to make the atmosphere of the room warm, inviting, relaxing. Intoxicating, almost. If there were defenders here, and there were, they were very well hidden. The decorations of the huge room, the support pillars, the doors located here and there, all these things offered plenty of hiding spots. She probably had the best already figured out. A woman rose from her seat, not at the desk like I would have expected, but from a table surrounded by chairs. Her smile was well-practiced, but fake. A woman used to entertaining guests
the server. (link) This incident inspires him to rethink and re-redstone some parts of his armory. And apparently drown the betrayal in potions cause right after he goes decorating his wild west potion saloon. On another side of the town TangoTek also opens a potion business. The Tektonics shop - now complete and stocked - opens its doors for new clients. (link) The shop wars continue with ImpulseSv finally recognising the competition and getting a new villager breeder to stay on top of the enchanted books market. (link) And speaking of war, a certain war machine gets a much needed upgrade. Xisumavoid perfects the logfella logfarm to get max efficiency out of it. This even takes some help from the creator of the whole thing! (link) However the opposition does not rest. In her latest issue of the Hermiton Herald, ZombieCleo exposes… pretty much everything she could expose (link). How will logfellas, sheriff and the town react to the controversy? Probably not at all unless the advertisement she placed in the nether hub works. In the wake of brewing conspiracies hermits start to weaponise themself properly. Before furnishing the courtroom, Scar follows up on an order he has recieved for his Tool Forge shop. (link) iJevin prefers to make his own weapons himself, finally getting a replacement diamond gear and a brand new elytra from Cub’s store.(link) MumboJumbo even creates an automated shooting range in his batcave where you have to snipe out targets while moving along the set.(link) But the seemingly simple redstone contraption quickly gets tangled up once applied to the actual set. (link) And that’s pretty much it for this week’s episode! Let us know your favorite moments of the week in the comments. My name is Pixlriffs and our writer, as always, is ZloYxp; if you have a minute to spare, you can check out both our own youtube channels in the description down below.Women’s Convention Picks Man Who Opposes Identity Politics To Speak On Opening Night On Thursday, October 12th, the Women’s March tweeted out a USA Today article announcing that former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would deliver an opening night speech at the Women’s Convention in Detroit, MI. We are so excited to have @SenSanders join us at the #WomensConvention October 27-29th in Detroit! https://t.co/UssiTSe2IN — @womensmarch Yes, you read that correctly. In the strangest decision since Ron Swanson winning of the Dorothy Everton Smythe Woman of the Year Award, a man will be giving opening night remarks at a women’s convention designed to “Reclaim Our Time.” It was no surprise that this announcement was met with an intense backlash. Many women took to Twitter to express their disappointment with a man who has decried identity politics and supported anti-choice candidates being given a keynote slot at the convention. Please review this handy informational guide @womensmarch — @bravenak @womensmarch @SenSanders To have a man open a women's convention is absolutely a disgrace. I'm embarrassed for you. — @rgay Having a man speak at the opening night of the Women’s Convention is problematic in and of itself. While male allies are definitely welcome and wanted in the fight for gender equality, their role should be amplifying women’s voices, rather than giving their own speeches. The entire world exists as a sounding board for men’s thoughts and ideas — surely they can handle three days where the spotlight isn’t on them. And men, if this concept makes you angry — if it bothers you that I think because of your gender you should sit down and shut up for half a second — maybe you can start to begin to understand how women feel every single day of our lives. (This doesn’t even consider the terrible optics of having a man receive top billing at such an event. Like, seriously, there’s an Onion article written about this very topic.) Not only did the Women’s Convention’s organizers pick a man to give opening night remarks — they picked a man who has a history of gas-lighting women (especially minority women) when it comes to their issues. Hell, even the womens march movement is centering a man who dismisses women's control of our own bodies as secondary. — @JoyAnnReid “These are guys getting hung up on gay marriage issues. They’re getting hung up on abortion issues. And it is time we started focusing on the economic issues that bring us together: Defending Social Security, defending Medicare, making sure that Medicaid is not cut, that veterans’ programs are not cut.” — Sanders in an MSNBC interview in 2013 Sanders has called Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign “establishment” despite the fact that both have played integral roles in the fight for marginalized and underrepresented communities. When writing for a Vermont left-wing revolutionary paper called “The Freeman,” he penned concerning essays that included rape fantasies and suggested cervical cancer was caused by “lack of orgasms.” He openly backed anti-choice candidates and refused to consider how damaging and concerning such a stance could be to women. He continuously voted against gun control legislation during his time in the U.S. House of Representatives. He has dismissed reproductive rights as a secondary issue and called Hillary Clinton “unqualified” for the presidency. And the Women’s March called him “one of the most powerful U.S. senators…on women’s issues.” Highlighting Sanders after his divisive and dismissive comments towards women is a slap in the face to all those that showed up to the January march. It also serves to legitimize some of his most fervent supporters, a faction of which have continuously harassed those who speak in opposition to Sanders. Of course, it is primarily women of color who have received the most targeted harassment in these cases. However, what is most concerning out of this whole debacle is how the Women’s March organizers responded to the outrage. Instead of stepping back and asking why people who have largely supported them in the past were feeling so betrayed, they blamed the media for incorrectly framing the situation. And then they accused those who were upset of only reading headlines. And then they said they tried really hard by inviting Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who all apparently had scheduling conflicts. @Essence @RepMaxineWaters Have you looked at our speakers list or are you just reading news headlines that we have no control over? https://t.co/Iu325fljBI — @TamikaDMallory Alright. Let’s unpack. A PR team is responsible for setting the narrative the press runs with. If the organizers of this convention were unhappy with the media portrayal, why did they promote the USA Today article on their twitter account? Why did they wait until they received backlash to clarify their quotes which apparently misleadingly characterized their intent? Clearly, it was approved by whoever runs the social media account, therefore suggesting that either someone made a mistake in promoting the article or the organizers didn’t see a problem with how the event was characterized until after their reply to retweet ratio skyrocketed. (There are currently over 9000 primarily negative responses to the tweet.) Additionally, criticizing the reaction of these women flies directly in the face of everything this organization was supposed to stand for. Instead of promoting a dialogue to discuss the concerns brought up by the Sanders announcement (and perhaps participating in some self-reflection as to why none of these concerns were considered before selecting Sanders as a speaker), the Women’s March organizers increased divisiveness by refusing to treat this outrage as valid. And lastly — you tried to find a qualified woman but just couldn’t? Hmm, that sounds familiar. This talking point is nearly offensive in its patronization. There were no other qualified female politicians or activists who could have spoken on the opening night? None of the more than 18,000 women who have signed up to run for office through Emily’s List since the election were available? So… there were no women available … to open the womens convention…? https://t.co/m1QDj2KX4N — @JoyAnnReid In fact, why was a convention scheduled without making sure it at least attempted to cater to the schedules of four of the most impactful female politicians of our time? And, if Hillary Clinton was really invited, why did you refuse to include her as an official honoree of the Women’s March in January? When I marched down Pennsylvania Avenue the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration, I felt like I was part of history. The swelling activism that flooded the streets in resistance to the backward, damaging beliefs of the current administration gave me hope that even though we had failed the shatter that highest glass ceiling, women were done being silenced. Now, one more platform has been taken away from women and given to a man who uses the guise of progressiveness to promote himself, with little consideration to being a true ally in the fight for gender equality. If Bernie Sanders sincerely wants to “advance the progressive agenda” as he said in his statement on being a part of the Women’s Convention, he needs to rethink the way he is using his platform. He can start with giving his speaking slot to… I don’t know, a woman? Featured Petition From Planned Parenthood Sign the Petition: Add your name against Trump's attack on birth controlhttp://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/10/redwoods/redwoods-interactive Ever wonder all of the history and important dates and events the giant redwoods have been alive to witness, well on the National Geographic Interactive website you can do just that. This website created a time line of one redwood tree using its tree rings and shows the huge length of time these trees have been alive, the tree they focus on has been alive since around 1180! These trees have been alive throughout major points in history like the Magna Carta being signed in 1215, Christopher Columbus’ journey to the Caribbean in 1492, the American revolution of the 1770’s, the founding of the national parks in 1872, and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This website also maps these huge giants along California’s coast and shows two National Geographic employees journey through the forests, which lasted a year. The final part of the website, and one of the most interesting pats, is the the focus on the canopy ecosystem of these giants, which is rarely accessed and studied. Hundreds of feet up in the air on the branches of the giant redwoods, thrives an usually unseen ecosystem, full of plants and animals, including berry bushes and ferns as well as the Marbled Murrelet an endangered bird, salamanders, and chipmunks. Over the years soil has formed on these huge redwood branches, and in some cases this soil is up to three feet deep, which allows for the thriving ecosystem up in the trees. This National Geographic Interactive web site is a great tool to learn about the giant redwood forests, see all of the history these trees have witnessed, and get a glimpse at an ecosystem that few see and study.This is the first of a new series of videos concerning the Vatican, the CIA and their connections to banking, pedophilia rings, child-trafficking and organ harvesting. We begin this series by providing some historical context so that anyone seeing this information for the first time can quickly verify some of these facts and gradually move on to more recent events of interest in the areas of banking, pedophilia and government corruption. It is up to us citizen journalists and alternative news researchers to expose these crimes against humanity. Examining the origins of the CIA-Vatican ties is a must if you wish to understand the present situation. Following the US tradition of interfering and influencing elections around the world, the Truman administration in the 50s had provided Pope Pius XII with more than $350 million dollars to be used to support the Christian Democratic Party in Italy in order to fight the communist ideology. This money was funneled thru the secret and recently created Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) also known as the Vatican Bank, a secret entity used for money laundering and elite transactions whose incomes and expenditures reports are only accountable to the Pope. Transactions are not only secret but documentation is routinely destroyed erasing any possibility of transparency or accountability. The newly created US Central Intelligence Agency under Truman as well as NATO were funding, arming and training secret groups of political hitmen with the objective of not just fighting communism but also covertly influencing European politics. It is a lesser-known fact that the Catholic Church worked in concert and covertly in support of these efforts in what later became known as Operations Gladio. These secret armies relied on acts of sabotage, blackmailing and committed acts of terror that were blamed on political enemies with the objective of manipulating public opinion. The Catholic Church has a proven history of connections to the Nazi leadership in Germany during WW2. Powerful CIA directors swore alliances to the church and became part of the Sovereign Military Order of Knights of Malta including James Jesus Angleton, William Colby, William Casey among others. As part of these new deals, the Vatican became not just the recipient of black money but also became the repository of secret military documents. In 2006, Holocaust survivors who claimed the IOR was the repository of gold that had been stolen from them by the Nazis, filed a class action suit in Alperin v Vatican Bank during which classified CIA files related to the development of nuclear weapons were accidentally exposed. Today, this covert network of well-connected individuals rely not only on blackmailing and false flag operations to achieve their geopolitical objectives but also in human trafficking, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, organ trafficking and more. The sickness and moral degeneration of these institutions have reached apocalyptic levels. The information you are about to see is neither new nor secret. It exists and has existed on the public record for years. The reason why most of us have not heard about some of these scandals is the result of a corrupt mainstream Mockingbird media campaign that lies mostly by omission. We will also examine in more detail the contemporary works of the Vatican bank as it relates to Wall Street and the world elite and their drive for more political power and their push for a world government. This secret alliance of elites and religious entities is not new and in fact it is a well-documented historical fact. #Pedogate Dyncorp Child Trafficking as Rep. Cythia Mckinney grills Donald Rumsfeld https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTJe3… The Clinton-Silsby Trafficking Scandal And How The Media Attempted To Ignore/Cover It Up http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01… Harvard Human Rights Journal http://harvardhrj.com/wp-content/uplo… Missing girl was abducted for Vatican sex parties – priest https://www.rt.com/news/girl-vatican-… 20 ‘powerful elite’ abused children for decades – whistleblower https://www.rt.com/uk/171176-children… 9th Circle Secret Society https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laC50… ORGAN TRAFFICKING IS NO MYTH http://www.newsweek.com/organ-traffic… *The Views Expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Silent Crow News editorial policy.Other Stories 16 persons detained in connection with release of secret recordings According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 16 persons have been detained in connection with the release of secret recordings. Read more CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX 2018: Georgia got 58 out of 100 According to the CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX 2018, Georgia scored 58 and was consequently ranked as 41 among 180 countries. Read more January 25 – birthday of the second president of Georgia The 25th of January marks the 91st birthday of the second president of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze. Read more Jack Shepherd from the UK detained in Georgia A British man who went on the run last year after killing a woman in a speedboat crash on the River Thames has been detained in the former Soviet state of Georgia - says Reuters. Read more Georgia recognizes Juan Guaido as an interim president Georgia recognized Venezuelan parliament speaker Juan Guaidó as an interim president. Read more Georgian PM aims to turn Georgian into a center of the region Georgian PM Mamuka Bakhtadze is in Davos to participate in World Economic Forum. He gave interviews to two media outlets – CNBC TV and Deutsche Welle. Read more Possible confrontation within the Georgian Dream Party? Eka Beselia, a member of the ruling party, will hold a news conference in the Parliament at 12:00 today. Read more 13 dead from swine flu in Georgia, emergency treatment to be free for all 13 people died from swine flu in Georgia so far, but there is no risk of epidemy, says Georgian Minister of Health. Read more Georgian president Salome Zurabishvili not ready for launching diplomatic dialogue with Russia I'm not ready to give any advice to the legislative body about the launch of the diplomatic relations or dialogue with Russia Read more Georgia suffering the steepest drop in democratic quality in eastern Europe According to the statistics for the Democracy Index 2018, published by Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), Read more “Let’s see if you can wrestle with women”- Interior minister to the opposition (Video) Female Police officers were mobilized in front of the Gurjaani District Court where the case of Davit Kirkitadze, the member of the United Opposition was considered. Read more Georgian citizens can apply for temporary residency in France 150 permits for young specialists as well as additional 500 permits will be granted each year to go to work to France. Read more Numbers of Georgians seeking asylum in Germany has significantly decreased According to Ambassador of Georgia to Germany Elguja Khokrishvili, the drop of asylum requests has been due to recently taken steps. Read more U.S. Congress supports Georgia with a new bill Unanimously the U.S. approved the act, which calls for imposing sanctions on Russian actors for the commission of serious human rights abuses in the occupied Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Read more ‘Horn wrestling’ between opposition party leader and police chef (Video) Yesterday on the 16th of December, clashes occurred between Nika Melia, leader of the United National Movement and Teimuraz Kupatadze, head of patrol police department in the village of Velistsikhe, Kakheti region (eastern part of Georgia). Read more Salome Zourabichvili officially becomes the fifth president of Georgia The inauguration ceremony of president-elect Salome Zourabichvili took place in Telavi, Kakheti (eastern region of Georgia) on the 16th of December. Read more Famous Georgians invited at the Inauguration of Salome Zourabichvili The inauguration ceremony of president elect Salome Zourabishvili will be held in Telavi, Kakheti (eastern region of Georgia) on the 16th of December. Read more Exclusive interview with Lincoln Mitchell, American political analyst and Georgia expert (Video) More than 20,000 people responded to the appeal of the opposition and gathered in front of the former parliament building in downtown Tbilisi last Sunday. Read more The after-pains of the presidential election in Georgia Yesterday evening, at a meeting with his supporters in the Philharmonic Hall, the defeated candidate Grigol Vashadze made it clear that he didn’t recognize the result of the presidential elections and called for early parliamentary elections. Read more National democratic institute publishes their findings about the presidential elections in Georgia A delegation of the National Democratic Institute, which included observers from five countries, analyzed the election process. Read more(CNN) Actress Diana Douglas Webster, the first wife of Kirk Douglas and mother of Michael Douglas, died Friday night at age 92. Donald Webster, her third husband of 15 years, confirmed that she died in a hospital in Woodland Hills, California, after battling cancer. "She was a person much beloved by everyone," Webster said. "One of her greatest qualities was that she was always thinking of the other person." The matriarch of the Douglas acting clan was born Diana Love Dill in 1923 in Devonshire, Bermuda, the youngest of six children in a prominent and wealthy old-line family. Her father, Col. Thomas Melville Dill, was a prominent Bermudan lawyer, politician and soldier who served as the British territory's attorney general. Her mother, Ruth Rapalje Neilson, traced her lineage back to the last Dutch governor of New York, Peter Stuyvesant, according to "Crazy Rich: Power, Scandal, and Tragedy Inside the Johnson & Johnson Dynasty," an unauthorized biography by Jerry Oppenheimer. Read MoreCritics have long accused former President Barack Obama’s administration of illegally spying on U.S. citizens. Monday, the first domino from the Obama administration could finally tumble. Ben Rhodes, a top Obama administration insider, was named a “person of interest” in the investigation of the unmasking scandal on Aug. 1. [SHOCKER] Hillary’s “Hit List” revealed to public [sponsored] House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes asked the National Security Agency head, Adm. Michael Rogers, to reveal “the total number of unmasking requests made by” Rhodes during the 2016 presidential election. The documents are set to be delivered on Monday, Aug. 21. Should they contain evidence that Rhodes used his position to illegally identify Americans in intelligence documents, it could lead to an immediate arrest. “Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, ex-National Security Adviser Susan Rice and former CIA Director John Brennan previously had been named in requests from the House Committee. Brennan and Rice have admitted to issuing unmasking requests, but said the asks occurred only as part of their official duties,” Fox News reported. “Power and Rhodes both would have had legal authority to unmask U.S. citizens; however, Nunes is looking into whether those requests were abused or politically motivated.” Sponsored: [FINAL WARNING] – Your loved ones will thank you! Rhodes was such a central figure in the Obama administration, he once bragged that he didn’t “know anymore where I begin and Obama ends.” Should sufficient evidence be uncovered by the House’s investigation that Rhodes misused his powers for political gain, an arrest would surely follow — and putting the handcuffs on such a high profile Washington insider would send shock waves throughout Capitol Hill. It’s not a stretch to assume Rhodes illegally played politics with sensitive government information, critics say. According to The Free Beacon, in 2008 Rhodes was seemingly denied an interim high-level security clearance by the FBI for unknown reasons. Sponsored: Ronald Reagan’s cancer cure finally revealed? Nunes had previously written that the House Intelligence Committee had “found evidence that current and former government officials had easy access to U.S. person information and that it is possible that they used this information to achieve partisan political purposes, including the selective, anonymous leaking of such information.” That’s not all Rhodes may be in trouble for, either. While he could theoretically avoid trial in the unmasking scandal by claiming executive privileged, he’s also been accused of being the main source of the illegal leaks in President Donald Trump’s administration. In July, Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis labeled Rhodes as the primary source of the leaks and “urged the House Intelligence Committee to call Rhodes and other former Obama officials to testify publicly about any role they may be playing in spreading classified information to reporters,” according to Zero Hedge. WARNING: Do NOT wash your hair until you read this [sponsored] “I think Congress and some members of the Intelligence Committee can call Ben Rhodes to testify … He may be able to invoke executive privilege from when Obama was president but he definitely can’t do that in any interactions he’s had since then,” DeSantis said. Comment “LOCK THEM UP!” below if you think Barack Obama’s whole administration should be prosecuted. — The Horn editorial teamIt is no secret that I love making DIY’s using things that I already have at home. I am always thinking of ways to re-purpose the things that other people would just throw away. We received a DVD shelf for Christmas, from my in-laws, and before David had a chance to throw away the box, I grabbed it and hid it in the spare room. I knew I could make something useful and fun out of it. So, here is a DIY on how to make coasters from cardboard. It was such an easy and fun DIY, it took me under 2 hours to make. I think the end result was great! This is what you need: Cardboard box (big enough to make at least four coasters) Scissors & box cutter Glue gun & glue sticks Fabric Ruler & pencil Tape Using a ruler and pencil, draw the measurements for the coasters on the cardboard. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but just make sure the coasters are very close to the same size. After you are done, use the box cutter to make a clean cut. I decided to add tape to cover the cardboard first, just to help with the durability of the coasters later on. Following the measurements of the coasters, I cut four pieces of fabric that I thought would look great. Using the glue gun, I glued the fabric to the coasters, making sure to pay attention to the edges and cutting any extra fabric that might look out of place. There you have it! I hope you all enjoyed this DIY and if you did, make sure to share it. Sharing is caring! 😉 What others have DIY you made from cardboard?My Sunday column looks at what I call “the cancer lobby” — a term that will have said lobby writing in indignation about now. But I’m pretty indignant, too. The column focuses on the effort by the big chemical companies like Exxon and DuPont — working through the American Chemistry Council — to shut down the “Report on Carcinogens” issued every two years by the National Institutes of Health. My take is that the chemical companies don’t like the direction the scientific consensus is taking (e.g. that formaldehyde is a carcinogen), and so the industry is doing exactly what it did in the case of tobacco and asbestos and many other dangerous substances. It’s trying to sow doubt and leverage uncertainty and gum up the regulatory process. Read the column and let me know if you agree.ABSTRACT Background: Various intentional and unintentional factors influence beliefs beyond what scientific evidence justifies. Two such factors are research lacking probative value (RLPV) and biased research reporting (BRR). Objective: We investigated the prevalence of RLPV and BRR in research about the proposition that skipping breakfast causes weight gain, which is called the proposed effect of breakfast on obesity (PEBO) in this article. Design: Studies related to the PEBO were synthesized by using a cumulative meta-analysis. Abstracts from these studies were also rated for the improper use of causal language and biased interpretations. In separate analyses, articles that cited an observational study about the PEBO were rated for the inappropriate use of causal language, and articles that cited a randomized controlled trial (RCT) about the PEBO were rated for misleadingly citing the RCT. Results: The current body of scientific knowledge indicates that the PEBO is only presumed true. The observational literature on the PEBO has gratuitously established the association, but not the causal relation, between skipping breakfast and obesity (final cumulative meta-analysis P value <10−42), which is evidence of RLPV. Four examples of BRR are evident in the PEBO literature as follows: 1) biased interpretation of one’s own results, 2) improper use of causal language in describing one’s own results, 3) misleadingly citing others’ results, and 4) improper use of causal language in citing others’ work. Conclusions: The belief in the PEBO exceeds the strength of scientific evidence. The scientific record is distorted by RLPV and BRR. RLPV is a suboptimal use of collective scientific resources. INTRODUCTION Some beliefs about scientific topics are held true despite evidence refuting them, whereas other science-related beliefs are presumed true even though insufficient evidence exists to support or refute them (1). One such presumption is that regularly consuming compared with skipping breakfast protects against obesity or causes weight loss, which we refer to as the proposed effect of breakfast on obesity (PEBO)5 in this article. More precisely, the PEBO goes beyond indicating an association between skipping breakfast and obesity (in which breakfast consumption and lower weight are observed together) by indicating that the introduction of breakfast causes a decrease in body weight. We have chosen the PEBO as an example because 1) it is a topic that is amenable to conducting randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and thus, there are not insurmountable barriers to moving beyond observational evidence, and 2) it seems like a less politically charged topic than the topics of some previous publications on biased reporting [eg, sugar-sweetened beverages (2, 3) and breastfeeding (4)] to better facilitate the discussion of extrascientific factors that affect the fidelity of research reporting. In this article, we first establish that the PEBO is only a presumption so that we can examine 2 factors that may influence the propensity to believe in a presumption beyond the available evidence. The first factor we identified is research lacking probative value (RLPV), which we defined as experiments or analyses that are 1) about questions that have already been sufficiently answered or 2) designed in such a way that they cannot advance the scientific knowledge about the question. As an example, when no association studies existed about the PEBO, the first few studies were certainly probative. Similarly, the first few studies to show the association in children compared with adults may be considered probative. However, at some point, additional similar observational analyses will only trivially add to our knowledge regarding the PEBO by studying nonmeaningfully different subgroups or by gratuitously replicating existing associations. We quantified RLPV by conducting a cumulative meta-analysis to show that the association, but not the causal relation, between breakfast and obesity has been more than sufficiently established. The second factor was biased research reporting (BRR). We looked at 4 indications of BRR: 1) biased interpretation of one’s own results, 2) improper use of causal language in describing one’s own results, 3) misleadingly citing others’ results, and 4) improper use of causal language in citing others’ work. By discussing RLPV and BRR, we hope that 1) future efforts will be spent on elucidating novel associations and causal relations by conducting probative research, 2) future research results will be reported with greater fidelity by minimizing BRR, and 3) the belief in scientific topics will be grounded in scientific evidence. METHODS Establishing that the PEBO is a widely believed presumption Lay-media, scientific, and government sources were searched for statements about breakfast and obesity to establish that the PEBO is widely believed. To evaluate our perception that the PEBO is only a presumption rather than an empirically supported scientific conclusion, scientific databases were searched for empirical human research about the PEBO. In addition, studies were reviewed from one published meta-analysis and 3 systematic reviews (5–8). Cumulative meta-analysis to assess RLPV We identified 92 unique articles about the PEBO that were cited in one published meta-analysis and 3 published systematic reviews (5–8). Briefly, Horikawa et al (5) meta-analyzed 19 studies of the association between breakfast consumption and odds of being overweight or obese in Asian and Pacific countries. Szajewska and Ruszczyński (8) systematically reviewed studies of children and adolescents in Europe and identified 16 studies. Mesas et al (6) systematically reviewed a number of eating behaviors related to obesity and reported 69 articles that looked at breakfast and obesity in English, Spanish, or Portuguese. Rampersaud et al (7) identified 16 articles in children and adolescents in a systematic manner, although the review was not declared a systematic review. All identified studies were observational. Studies were synthesized in a manner similar to the breakfast-obesity meta-analysis by Horikawa et al (5) as follows: breakfast consumption in each article had to be defined as a frequency (as opposed to investigating only the type or amount of breakfast consumed); the breakfast skipping group “was defined as the lowest category of breakfast frequency in an individual study” (5); body weight needed to be classified into overweight and/or obese; and analyses that adjusted for potential confounders were selected when available and appropriate. In addition, studies that considered both overweight and obese were included; mutually exclusive groups (eg, male and female subjects) were included as separate groups for analysis where possible and appropriate; and we limited the analysis only to full articles in the English language. SEs and ORs were calculated for each independent study group. In total, 58 of 92 studies fit these criteria with a total of 88 independent OR estimates. With the use of a random-effects model in Review Manager 5.1 software (The Nordic Cochrane Centre, The Cochrane Collaboration), we first synthesized all data by weighting each study group by the inverse variance of its point estimate. As a check, this method successfully reproduced the results of Horikawa et al (5) when limited only to data in their analysis (OR: 1.75; CI: 1.57, 1.95). Evidence of funnel-plot asymmetry was assessed graphically and by using Egger’s linear regression (9). Funnel-plot asymmetry can be indicative of a publication bias or unaccounted heterogeneity in the analysis. Subsequently, we conducted a cumulative meta-analysis by sequentially synthesizing point estimates from the meta-analysis by publication year starting from 1994 and ending in 2011. All studies published within a given year were added concurrently. Assessing BRR For all ratings, AWB and MMBB independently rated the articles with input from DBA on the rating scales and criteria. All rating disagreements were settled by consensus between AWB and MMBB. 1) Biased interpretation of one’s own results. Of the 92 articles identified for the cumulative meta-analysis, 88 articles contained abstracts indexed in PubMed in English. The results and conclusions stated in these abstracts were rated as follows: either not mentioning breakfast in relation to obesity (none) or indicating that breakfast was beneficial (positive), there was no relation between breakfast and obesity (no relation), breakfast was detrimental (negative), or the relation between breakfast and obesity was mixed (mixed). Although some studies implied mixed results (eg, breakfast was only stated as significant in one group and not mentioned in the other group), results were rated only on explicit mentioning of breakfast and obesity to allow reasonable tolerance for word limitations of abstracts. 2) Improper use of causal language in describing one’s own results. The 88 rated abstracts were from observational studies; 76 studies were cross-sectional, 11 studies were longitudinal, and one study was a case-control study. Therefore, language concluding a finding of cause and effect was not appropriate within these 88 abstracts. Conclusions that included breakfast and obesity were subsequently rated causal if causal language was used or associative if the inference was limited to associations. In addition, conclusions were rated qualified causal if qualifiers such as “may” or “suggests” were included in the causal language because distinguishing between statements that used qualifiers to introduce a hypothesis compared with veiling a causal statement was subjective. 3) Misleadingly citing others’ results. We examined the manner in which articles cited an RCT reported by Schlundt et al (10). Schlundt et al (10) assigned women to a weight-loss plan that included or excluded breakfast and stratified them by prestudy habitual breakfast intake for a total of 4 study groups. They noted a P value <0.06 for the interaction of breakfast habit by breakfast assignment, with no significant main effect of breakfast consumption, which indicated that subjects who were assigned to change from their baseline breakfast frequency lost more weight than did subjects assigned to continue their baseline breakfast frequency (Table 1). We identified a total of 91 English-language articles that cited Schlundt et al (10) by searching the Web of Science (http://apps.webofknowledge.com) and Scopus (http://www.scopus.com) on 14 May 2012. Scopus contains citation records back to 1996; the Web of Science subscription for the University of Alabama at Birmingham is current from 1990 to year end 2011. We selected this article because 1) it was fairly well cited, and 2) the study had mixed results, which allowed us to potentially observe misleading citations both for and against breakfast. Articles were categorized on the basis of the way they cited Schlundt et al (10) as accurate, mildly misleading positive, explicitly misleading positive, mildly misleading negative, explicitly misleading negative, neutral, inaccurate unrelated, and otherwise unrelated. Positive was defined as misleadingly citing the results to make breakfast seem more beneficial, and negative was defined as misleadingly citing the results to make breakfast seem detrimental. Neutral meant that results were cited as indicating that breakfast and weight had no relation and did not mention the interaction trend, and the 2 unrelated categories indicated that breakfast and weight results were not cited (eg, the citation was related to other study aspects). 4) Improper use of causal language in citing others’ work. We examined to what extent authors extrapolated beyond the limitations of the study design when citing a National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) study by Wyatt et al (11). Wyatt et al (11) observed that “A large proportion of NWCR subjects (2313 or 78%) reported regularly eating breakfast every day of the week. Only 114 subjects (4%) reported never eating breakfast. There was no difference in reported energy intake between breakfast eaters and non-eaters, but breakfast eaters reported slightly more physical activity than non-breakfast eaters (p=0.05).” (11) TABLE 1 Baseline breakfast habits Eaters Skippers Total Assignment (kg) Breakfast 6.2 ± 3.3 [15]2 7.7 ± 3.3 [8] 6.73 No breakfast 8.9 ± 4.2 [14] 6.0 ± 3.9 [8] 7.8 Total 7.5 6.9 — Baseline breakfast habits Eaters Skippers Total Assignment (kg) Breakfast 6.2 ± 3.3 [15]2 7.7 ± 3.3 [8] 6.73 No breakfast 8.9 ± 4.2 [14] 6.0 ± 3.9 [8] 7.8 Total 7.5 6.9 — View Large TABLE 1 Baseline breakfast habits Eaters Skippers Total Assignment (kg) Breakfast 6.2 ± 3.3 [15]2 7.7 ± 3.3 [8] 6.73 No breakfast 8.9 ± 4.2 [14] 6.0 ± 3
she had tried “to get our judges not to be intimidated by the notion of crossing an international border.” “I’ve asked them, ‘What would we do if the child had relatives in New Jersey?’ ” Ms. Ravenhorst said. “We’d coordinate with the State of New Jersey. So why can’t we do the same for a child with relatives in the highlands of Guatemala?” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Dora Schriro, an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said the agency was looking for ways to deal with family separations as it prepared new immigration enforcement guidelines. In visits to detention centers across the country, Ms. Schriro said, she had heard accounts of parents losing contact or custody of their children. Child welfare laws differ from state to state. In the Missouri case, Carlos’s adoptive parents were awarded custody last year by Judge Dally after they privately petitioned the court and he terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to Carlos. Photo In February, immigration authorities suspended Ms. Bail’s deportation order so she could file suit to recover custody. Ms. Bail’s lawyer, John de Leon, of Miami, said his client had not been informed about the adoption proceedings in her native Spanish, and had no real legal representation until it was too late. The lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, Joseph L. Hensley, said his clients had waited more than a year for Ms. Bail to demonstrate her commitment to Carlos, but the judge found that she had made no attempt to contact the baby or send financial support for him while she was incarcerated. The couple asked not to be named to protect Carlos’s privacy. Ms. Bail came to the United States in 2005, and Carlos was born a year later. In May 2007, she was detained in a raid on George’s Processing plant in Butterfield, near Carthage in southwestern Missouri. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Immigration authorities quickly released several workers who had small children. But authorities said Ms. Bail was ineligible to be freed because she was charged with using false identification. Such charges were part of a crackdown by the Bush administration, which punished illegal immigrants by forcing them to serve out sentences before being deported. When Ms. Bail went to jail, Carlos, then 6 months old, was sent to stay with two aunts who remembered him as having a voracious appetite and crying constantly. But they also said he had a severe rash and had not received all of his vaccinations. The women — each with three children of their own, no legal status, tiny apartments and little money — said the baby was too much to handle. So when a local teachers’ aide offered to find someone to take care of Carlos, the women agreed. Then in September 2007, Ms. Bail said, the aide visited her in jail to say that an American couple was interested in adopting her son. The couple had land and a beautiful house, Ms. Bail recalled being told, and had become very fond of Carlos. Photo “My parents were poor, and they never gave me to anyone,” Ms. Bail recalled. “I was not going to give my son to anyone either.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story An adoption petition arrived at the jail a few weeks later. Ms. Bail, who cannot read Spanish, much less English, said she had a cellmate from Mexico translate. With the help of a guard and an English-speaking Guatemalan visitor, Ms. Bail wrote a response to the court. “I do not want my son to be adopted by anyone,” she scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper on Oct. 28, 2007. “I would prefer that he be placed in foster care until I am not in jail any longer. I would like to have visitation with my son.” For the next 10 months, she said, she had no communication with the court. During that time, Judge Dally appointed a lawyer for Ms. Bail, but later removed him from the case after he pleaded guilty to charges of domestic violence. Mr. Hensley, the lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, said he had sent a letter to Ms. Bail to tell her that his clients were caring for her son, as did the court, but both letters were returned unopened. “We afforded her more due process than most people get who speak English,” Mr. Hensley said. Ms. Bail said she had asked the public defender who was representing her in the identity theft case to help her determine Carlos’s whereabouts, but the lawyer told her she handled only criminal matters. “I went to court six times, and six times I asked for help to find my son,” she said. “But no one helped me.” Ms. Bail got a Spanish-speaking lawyer, Aldo Dominguez, to represent her in the custody case only last June. By the time he reached her two months later — she had been transferred to a prison in West Virginia — it was too late to make her case to Judge Dally, Mr. Dominguez said. “Her lifestyle, that of smuggling herself into the country illegally and committing crimes in this country, is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child,” the judge wrote in his decision. “A child cannot be educated in this way, always in hiding or on the run.”The province’s Acadian and francophone school board is bucking the declining enrolment trend that is plaguing all other school districts in Nova Scotia. Officials with the Conseil Scolaire Acadien Provincial say increasing publicity, a strong academic reputation, smaller schools, immigration and a renewed interest in Acadian culture and bilingualism are driving the strong student numbers. At École du Carrefour in Dartmouth, principal Daniel Côté said he expects enrolment at the Grade 7 to 12 school to jump by at least seven per cent come September. Some of the students at the school have Acadian parents who cannot speak French, but want their children to reclaim their francophone heritage. "It’s very nice that these parents are supporting their kid getting back in francophone culture, to open more doors for their kids by the time they leave high school," Côté said. "It opens the door for the future, to keep living in French for these students and bring the French back in the family." Enrolment at the Conseil Scolaire Acadien Provincial has jumped by 24 per cent in the last decade and now sits at more than 5,100 students. The board runs 21 schools across the province. Demand is so high that in September the conseil will take over Gertrude Parker Elementary School in Lower Sackville, which has been declared surplus by the Halifax Regional School Board. Grade 12 student Nicholas Doiron says there are advantages to being bilingual when searching for a job. (CBC) And it's not just in the metro area. Schools in Sydney, Truro, Bridgewater and Pomquet are also seeing more students. The board is still the smallest in Nova Scotia, but not for long. Its increasing student body means it will soon surpass some rural boards. This comes as all other Nova Scotia school boards suffer a steady decline. Overall enrolment in the province has dropped from 145,369 students in 2004-05 to 120,881 this year, according to provincial statistics. Francophone students and the children of parents who were taught in French are entitled to be educated in French in Canada. Students like Nicholas Doiron say there are advantages to growing up fully bilingual. "It’s very much needed to have people who can speak in English and in French properly, especially if you look at federal jobs," said Doiron, who is in Grade 12. "But a big part of me continuing education in French, which is also shared by my parents, was really just the culture and identity. It’s really my background, my heritage and my roots." Some of the increases at the francophone board are being driven by immigration of French-speaking students from the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Karim Amedjkouh is from Algeria. He teaches history at École du Carrefour. "École du Carrefour, for me, it’s not just a school," he said. "It’s more than that. For me it’s a family."WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Donald Trump has opened a wide lead over Hillary Clinton in Upstate New York, but Clinton would win the larger battle for the Empire State in the 2016 presidential race, according to a new poll released Tuesday. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is favored by likely voters 48 percent to 36 percent over Clinton in Upstate New York, according to the Quinnipiac University poll. But thanks to overwhelming support from Democrats in New York City, Clinton would easily win statewide with 47 percent to 35 percent for Trump, the Quinnipiac poll found. The poll is the latest to confirm that Clinton has a commanding lead in New York, a state that both candidates call home and have vowed to win in the November election. Trump, the Manhattan businessman, and Clinton, New York's former two-term U.S. senator, both suffer from disapproving voters on their home turf, the poll found. Overall, Clinton is viewed unfavorably by 52 percent of voters, while 61 percent have an unfavorable view of Trump. The poll of 1,104 New York voters was conducted Wednesday through Sunday by live interviewers who called land lines and cell phones. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The Quinnipiac pollsters found voters of all age groups favor Clinton, with her strongest showing among those ages 18 to 34, who favor the presumptive Democratic nominee 53 percent to 18 percent. The poll also found a wide gender gap, with women overwhelmingly supporting Clinton (54-28 percent) while men lean toward Trump (44 percent to 40 percent), Quinnipiac pollsters said. Clinton also had an edge among independent voters (41 percent to 35 percent) who are not enrolled in a political party. "As Republicans rally in Cleveland and Democrats prepare for their Philadelphia convention, Hillary Clinton seems to have her adopted home state votes safely locked up," said Quinnipiac's Maurice Carroll said in a statement. Trump has repeatedly said that New York will be one of his keys to winning the White House, and he will put the state in play in the presidential election. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich echoed that confidence on Monday when he spoke to the New York delegation at the Republican National Convention. The poll also found U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., with a commanding lead (60-28 percent) over Republican challenger Wendy Long in his re-election bid. Contact Mark Weiner anytime: Email \| Twitter \| Facebook \| 571-970-3751BTS fans who attended the group’s recent concert in Beijing and voicing their disappointment about the event. On July 28, Chinese outlets reported on fans being discontent with the concert. Unfortunately, fans had to be in the dark for about 30 minutes due to issues with lights at the concert venue. Concert organizers have since apologized for these technical difficulties. Another aspect fans were disappointed with was Rap Monster’s absence from most of the concert. The leader experienced difficulty breathing and was unable to continue performing. Rap Monster personally apologized for this as well. Due to the difficulties with the lighting, the concert ended shorter than planned and lasted about an hour and 30 minutes. Thus the concert ended around 9:30 p.m. and left fans wanting more. Moreover, fans were most upset about only 15 songs being performed out of the expected 26. BTS performed 26 songs at their concert in Nanjing on July 2, so fans in Beijing were disappointed at the difference. The report quoted a fan who said, “Since it was their last concert in China many fans came from other regions. However, there was great disappointment due to fewer songs being sung than originally announced and the lighting accidents.” Apparently, fans who went to this concert paid for tickets ranging from 380 yuan to 1,580 yuan (approximately $57 to $237). It appears as though a combination of unfortunate events resulted in a less than perfect concert experience. Source (1)The second half of 2015 was a very busy, but quiet time for #REKT development in the public eye. That is about to change because to kick off 2016 we have a brand new alpha build of the game! This build incorporates numerous changes including some new art for some old maps, a new CTF game mode (with a new map) and the unification of the Gravity Belt energy and Mana systems into one pool of energy. It can be downloaded here. Here are some more details about the changes: After a shakeup in the art department, we are now closing in on an art style for our map environments. The easiest place to see this is the map Folding. For those of you who enjoy a more minimalist style, turn the Material Quality video setting down to low. For some added detail and depth, make sure the Material Quality is maxed out. Minimal Low Detail (click for full-size screenshot) So-Shiny-You-Could-Eat-Off-Of-It Max Detail (click for full-size screenshot) For some larger scale Red Team vs Blue Team action check out the new CTF mode along with the new map called Gauntlet. Note this is still somewhat experimental so most of the map art is missing, but the separate team bases and the large open obstacle course space in between brings a whole new experience to #REKT Guess which side is for Red and which is for Blue? (click for full-size screenshot) These are the most obvious visible changes to the game with this release, but there have been numerous tweaks to the numbers behind the scenes. The biggest gameplay change is the unification of the energy for the Gravity Belt and the Mana used for the Wizard Powers. Now the Gravity Belt, Shield and Wizard Powers all pull from the same mana pool. Mana pickups now increase your potential maximum mana pool and mana now regenerates much more quickly. A development blog post with more details about these changes will be coming soon. In the mean time we hope you try out the latest changes and provide us with great feedback! Our focus after this build is going to shift from major game mechanics changes to introducing more game modes and implementing some much needed quality of life enhancements like a new menu system, music and a server browser! Stay tuned and follow us on our various forms of social media to keep up to date on these changes and more.It has some addicting qualities, but are there any other minigames except for "Memory"? Doesn't really seem to be much you can really do and has fairly linear gameplay. (explore/play memory, gain artifacts/coins so you can work to unlock to explore/play memory some more.) Can't really do much to the museum itself, thought it would be more like a sim building game. I do like the fact that the artifacts can be maxed out and sold for gold, helped break even and eventually accumulate enough gold (via orbs/gold per minute) to break out of China. Overall, just can't see much incentive to keep playing, would be nice if there was another aspect to work on (building "Sim/Tycoon games", alternative mini-games similar to "Dr. Brain series", customization, ect). The music is nice and fits quite well overall, rather enjoyed it.ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Alaska is nearing its first legal sales of marijuana, nearly two years after voters approved the recreational use of cannabis by adults. Retails stores are being permitted by the state Marijuana Control Board, and just a few hurdles remain until commercial sales begin. The biggest obstacle is waiting for labs to test the raw product. Two labs have been licensed by the state, both in Anchorage. One of those, CannTest, should be open by mid- to late October, said co-owner Mark Malagodi. The facility is awaiting final inspection from the municipality and state and final approval from an accrediting lab. “If we’re going to start testing by definitely the beginning of November, I think it rolls in pretty well with everything else,” he said. Arctic Herbery received the first-ever marijuana retail store license from the city of Anchorage on Tuesday evening. Tim Hinterberger, co-sponsor, Measure 2 “I know people are eager to get the things going and frustrated they're not happening faster, but from my point of view, we're making great strides.” There was no public opposition to the license, even though the city had initially raised concerns that the business only has five parking spots. “It was shocking to me,” owner Bryant Thorp said of the quick approval, adding he didn’t know why the process was so smooth. “Maybe people have come to terms that I’m not such a bad guy.” He plans to open his store around Nov. 1, and he anticipates a huge opening akin to when national chains open in Alaska’s largest city, and lines of customers snake around the business for days. “When Krispy Kreme opened, Cabela’s or Kmart back in the day, people freak out, they go nuts,” he said. The first retail license conditionally approved by the state was for Nick and Destiny Neade of Fairbanks for their Frozen Budz store. Destiny Neade said Wednesday they are awaiting a final inspection next week from city officials. “That will finalize our retail license, but like everybody, we’re just waiting on the testing labs,” she said. Once the labs open, she anticipates beginning sales about a week later. The testing process takes about 72 hours, and then the marijuana will have to be driven from Anchorage to Fairbanks. The first store to complete all its paperwork and is ready to open is The Remedy Shoppe in the southeast Alaska tourist town of Skagway. But like everyone else across the state, owner Tara Bass has to wait for marijuana to be cleared by a testing lab. “Right now, the plan is to go spend some time with family until there’s things available. All the work is done until the product arrives, right?” she told the Juneau Empire. Besides Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington state and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana. Voters in five states — Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada — will consider making recreational cannabis legal in November. During local elections on Tuesday, voters in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough north of Anchorage approved allowing for the sale of marijuana in unincorporated areas, but one city in another part of the state put the brakes on sales. Voters in North Pole rejected marijuana sales in the Christmas-themed community where light poles are decorated year-round like candy canes. North Pole is about 15 miles southeast of Fairbanks. Tim Hinterberger was one of the sponsors of the initiative to legalize marijuana, and is now a co-owner of the other Anchorage lab that is waiting to open. “It’s pretty exciting for me personally to see this progress. I know people are eager to get the things going and frustrated they’re not happening faster, but from my point of view, we’re making great strides over the many years I’ve been involved with this,” he said. “Things are finally happening.” He says AK Green Labs is about a week behind CannTest in the race to open. “I’m sure people will be patient, and things will fall in place real soon,” he said. For Destiny Neade, she’s not going to wait until she is totally stocked with edibles and concentrates and will open with just marijuana on the shelves. “We’re just trying to get weed to the people,” she said.This article is part of Turned On, our special report on the future of sex. It contains language and descriptions that may not be suited for younger readers. In the first episode of the space drama "The Expanse," two characters are getting busy when the artificial gravity malfunctions. Elegantly, the pair floats up into the air, their cosmic coitus uninterrupted by the glitch, until the gravity slams back on and they collapse onto the bed below. Enlarge Image Syfy As it turns out, sex in microgravity is a bit more complicated than that and other onscreen depictions might have you believe. With NASA, the European Space Agency and other outfits declining to address the subject of hanky-panky in space, the official position seems to be that there has never, ever been any. (If there has, nobody's talking, not even the only married astronaut couple to have been in space together, NASA's Mark Lee and Jan Davis). It's also possible, though, that nobody has had space sex -- and for good reason. It would be fiddly, tricky and messy. But it wouldn't be completely impossible. Astronauts who've spent six months on the space station may or may not already know that. But what about the rest of us? Will we be able to enjoy vacation sex on those upcoming space tourism journeys? More importantly, can we propagate the species once we've started colonizing the universe? Two to tango First things first: You have to be able to contain your motion sickness. NASA's Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, used for parabolic flight for microgravity training, isn't called the Vomit Comet for nothing. But it is possible to become acclimated to microgravity, as the pilots who fly the Vomit Comet have proven. By the time astronauts are sent to the International Space Station, they've gotten used to weightlessness too. OK, good. They're probably not going to ralph on their partner should they engage in some microgravity nookie. Tick that one off the list. But can lovers hovering above Earth really go at it as gracefully as they do in this NSFW GIF from "The Expanse"? Not exactly. You're floating weightless in zero G. And on the ISS, a constant small breeze that keeps the station ventilated presents an additional challenge. Not only would you have to hold on to your partner to avoid being pushed apart with each thrust, you'd have to fight the breeze pushing against you. Carbon dioxide levels are building up. 'I have a headache' takes on new meaning because well, yeah, you do. Kira Bacal, NASA clinical consultant "If you're trying to do something that involves a certain amount of pushing or force against the other person, it takes a lot of strength to hold you together," says Kira Bacal, a physician and scientist who worked as a clinical consultant for NASA and penned an in-depth article on frisky business in zero G. Even something as simple as a kiss can be a challenge, as discovered by inventor and author Vanna Bonta, who took a parabolic flight with her husband and struggled to connect for a smooch. Her solution? The 2suit, a pair of space suits that can be Velcroed together so couples can be intimate. Sadly, Bonta passed away in 2014, and the 2suit never made it past the prototype stage. Get a room Aboard the ISS, two people looking to avoid pushing themselves apart could sequester themselves in one of the small sleeping quarters. The tight fit could prove beneficial, bracing the participants against walls so they don't bounce apart. It would even provide a measure of privacy, since the quarters have doors that close. But would the ventilation be adequate for two people breathing heavily? Wikimedia/CC BY 3.0 "If you're in a small space, you don't have a lot of ventilation there," Bacal says. "So, carbon dioxide levels are building up. 'I have a headache' takes on new meaning because well, yeah, you do." Carbon dioxide isn't the only thing that builds up. Your body's going to heat up, and your sweat won't roll away, since there's no gravity working on it. And the ISS doesn't have a shower. NASA's Skylab had one, and it was pretty inefficient -- a single shower took two and a half hours. On the ISS, astronauts take something more akin to a cat bath, using a damp washcloth. It's possible to clean up, because astronauts need to exercise on the ISS, but it's going to be arduous. Those are just the physical complications. When it comes to space missions, sex could mess with team dynamics. Add to that the relative lack of female astronauts -- some 10 or 12 percent of the more than 500 astronauts from around the world to have been to space have been female. Presumably, some of those 500-plus astronauts have been gay, but so far the only publicly known one is Sally Ride. "If you're the only woman on a three-person crew, and you're boinking one guy," Bacal says, "what's that gonna do to relations amongst the three of you? Or, what if the two guys are going at it, and you're the odd woman out?" Astronauts have "had to give up enormous, enormous things to be an astronaut and have a mission given to them," Bacal adds. "There is a real sense that anything that you're gonna do that's gonna f**k up the mission, no pun intended, is a career-ending move. So put that alongside the potential public affairs disaster, and I think anybody who does it is going to be quite cautious." People have claimed to have had microgravity sex, but their stories don't hold up to closer inspection. A series of 1999 pornographic films called "The Uranus Experiment" famously includes microgravity sex scenes, allegedly filmed aboard the Vomit Comet. Alas, the scenes are clever fakes. In one, actor Silvia Saint's ponytail neatly hangs down her back instead of floating around her head as it would in microgravity. In another, the footage has merely been flipped upside down after filming, according to Mary Roach, author of "Packing for Mars," a book that examines humanity's incompatibility with space. In 1989, a document allegedly detailing NASA's experiments with microgravity sex between heterosexual couples was posted to the alt.sex Usenet group. It, too, turned out to be a fake. The STS-75 shuttle mission on which these experiments supposedly took place had an all male crew -- and didn't fly until 1996. A little self-care What's almost certainly happening, though? Masturbation. You may have read that it's difficult for a male astronaut to get an erection in space because of the way blood moves through the body in microgravity, but this isn't necessarily true. For starters, we already know female astronauts menstruate normally, which seems to indicate fluid flow within the body can still function just fine. As retired NASA astronaut Mike Mullane put it in a 2014 interview with Men's Health, "A couple of times, I would wake up from sleep periods and I had a boner that I could have drilled through kryptonite." So gravity, or lack thereof, shouldn't be a significant barrier to arousal for men or women. It would arguably be within the astronauts' best interests to masturbate. Studies have shown that a healthy masturbation schedule correlates with a decreased risk of cervical infections and a stronger pelvic floor for women, and a decreased risk of prostate cancer for men. Getting official confirmation that astronauts masturbate proved tricky. Neither NASA nor the ESA responded to requests for comment, and former ISS Commander Chris Hadfield politely declined to talk. Roach had more success getting answers from retired Soviet cosmonaut Aleksandr Laveykin, who spent 174 days in space in 1987 as part of the Mir-EO2 expedition. In "Packing for Mars," she shares Laveykin's response when friends ask him how he had sex in space. "I say, 'By hand!'' As for the logistics: 'There are possibilities,'" he told Roach. "And sometimes it happens automatically while you sleep. It's natural.'" NASA astronaut Ron Garan said in a 2015 Reddit Ask Me Anything, "I know of nothing that happens to the human body on Earth that can't happen in space." Survival of the species NASA is planning a manned return trip to Mars in the 2030s. Mars One, as well as SpaceX CEO and Mars-obsessed magnate Elon Musk, are both looking toward creating a permanent colony on the Red Planet. We may not be getting an off-world colony anytime soon, but it's a real enough possibility that it's worth asking: Will we be able to make new humans? We know from a mouse study that fertilization is as possible in microgravity as it is in 1G (gravity on the Earth's surface), at least in one mammalian species in a lab setting. But bringing the fetus to term and birthing it in microgravity may not be as smooth. One study involving rats found that microgravity hinders the development of balance. Another found a higher death rate for rat fetuses exposed to microgravity. Space takes a toll on the adult body, with problems including muscle and bone density loss and hormone changes. We don't know how these affect a developing fetus, but a team of Serbian researchers led by Slobodan Sekulic hypothesized that microgravity in the third trimester could inhibit a fetus's musculoskeletal development. And that's all without taking into account one of the most fundamental health concerns associated with space habitation. "It's a radiation environment," Bacal says. "Astronauts are considered radiation workers, and nobody is going to allow a pregnant woman to work at Three Mile Island." Mars OneGlenn Greenwald, the Guardian writer who cultivated Edward Snowden as a source and has broken numerous stories about the nature and extent of secret U.S. surveillance programs, says harmful national security information will be released automatically if “something happens” to the notorious NSA leaker. “Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had,” Greenwald said in an interview with the Argentinean paper La Nacion. “The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.” It’s the most explicit confirmation yet that among the documents Snowden sneaked out of the NSA are some that could harm the U.S. and that these are being used as leverage against the United States as the government seeks his arrest and extradition. It’s unclear what actions would trigger such an indiscriminate, mass leak, and who would authorize or execute it.Bengaluru police cracked open a shocking case of homicide -- the murder of techie Keshav Reddy when they traced the cellphone location of a call made by his wife. Keshav Reddy, a 36-year-old software engineer working at Actiance India Limited was killed on Saturday night. His drink was laced with sleeping pills allegedly by his wife Shilpa Reddy who is accused of bludgeoning him to death with a blunt weapon at their Banaswadi residence, Bangalore Mirror reported. According to the report, Shilpa took help from her parents, Ramachandra Reddy and Vijayalakshmi and a 22-year-old cousin Vasudev Reddy to dump his body next to a lake near Sreenivasapur in Kolar district. It is alleged that Shilpa was having an affair with Vasudev, and were planning to settle abroad. Shilpa’s gambit, of calling Keshav’s brother Thirumala Reddy to enquire whether he had reached his native place safety was meant to provide subterfuge for the murder, but it proved to be her undoing. The call was was made from Sreenivasapur, moments after his body was dumped. Thirumala sounded off his suspicion to the police when Keshav’s body was found next morning, with his ID card and belongings. Sreenivasapur police scanned her cellphone tower location for Saturday to connect the dots, Shilpa allegedly confessed to the crime after being interrogated in custody. Her parents, Ramachandra and Vijayalakshmi, and cousin Vasudeva Reddy have also been arrested.CBI officials are currently present at Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia’s residence in Delhi. Earlier Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had claimed that his office was raided by the CBI. File PhotoIn January, the CBI had started a preliminary inquiry against the Deputy Chief Minister in a case involving alleged irregularities in ‘Talk To AK’ campaign. “Talk to AK”, the maiden interactive session of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, was held on July 17 last year. CBI reaches Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia's residence pic.twitter.com/NiufbZE8pu — ANI (@ANI_news) June 16, 2017 CBI sources denied that it was a raid, saying it was merely seeking clarification. No raid or search at premises of Manish Sisodia. CBI visit is to seek clarification on certain issues relating to an ongoing Enquiry: CBI — ANI (@ANI_news) June 16, 2017 More to followLAWRENCE — A wide-ranging study of gains and losses of populations of bird species across Mexico in the 20th century shows shifts in temperature due to global climate change are the primary environmental influence on the distributions of bird species. “Of all drivers examined … only temperature change had significant impacts on avifaunal turnover; neither precipitation change nor human impacts on landscapes had significant effects,” wrote the authors of the study, which appeared recently in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. Using analytical techniques from the field of biodiversity informatics, researchers compared current distributions with distributions in the middle 20th century for 115 bird species that are found only in Mexico. They then compared those bird community changes to patterns of change in climate and land use. “We assessed which places appear to have lost which species,” said lead author A. Townsend Peterson, university distinguished professor of ecology & evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and senior curator at KU’s Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Institute. “We picked out places that were well-characterized with data,” he said. “Once we did a dissection of what was lost where, we analyzed what could be be driving those changes. We got summaries of how much temperature, rainfall and land use had changed across the country, and that was a very interesting result because avifaunal changes were associated with temperature change only.” The researchers created detailed maps based on data about bird occurrences in Mexico from two key sources. More than 330,000 records of historical bird occurrences were drawn from the Atlas of Distributions of Birds of Mexico project collected mostly from 1920 to 1950. “The historical data is pretty unique to Mexico,” Peterson said. “It comes from specimens in natural history museums from around the world — 64 museums everywhere from Russia to Mexico to KU. But we’ve spent years improving the data, adding geo-references, adding and checking identification and doing other checks to be confident in the data. The old ‘Birds of Mexico’ data set is pretty unique. There aren’t very many countries that have that comprehensive a data set encompassing a major taxon like birds.” Peterson and his colleagues also considered 890,000 records of bird occurrences collected since 2000 by citizen scientists and deposited in the aVerAves database. The researchers related the changes in bird populations to land-use patterns using the Global Human Influence Index, a data set that includes population density and other measures of people’s influence on natural areas through land use, building, roads, nighttime lights and other factors. They also explored information captured by hundreds of weather stations documenting climate change across Mexico in the latter half of the 20th century, focusing on temperature and rainfall. According to Peterson, the researchers suspected temperature fluctuations caused by global climate change would be a key driver determining bird community change in the temperate zone, but they were surprised that it was the prevailing factor in a tropical area like Mexico. “Birds are making sure they have space and time and resources to carry out their life cycle — the real name of the game is reproduction,” he said. “In the temperate zone, birds are waiting until it’s just warm enough to start the nesting cycle. They’re timing breeding so they’ll have young in nests right when they have maximum food available. But in the tropical world, it’s always a pleasant temperature for birds, so I’d imagined precipitation might have had more of an effect.” Overall, among bird species endemic to Mexico, numbers of losses greatly outweighed gains, the study showed. The research found “relatively few” gains of species, mainly in the central-northern Chihuahuan Desert and in the northwestern Baja California along the border with the U.S. state of California. Peterson said the findings should provide some useful information to Mexican environmental policymakers. “When you design protected areas, like national parks or biospheres for biodiversity conservation, that design needs to take into account how climates are changing,” he said. “They’ve done major planning, more than in the U.S., for present-day distributions of species. But climate change must be taken into account because those distributions are changing.” Peterson’s co-authors were KU’s Jorge Soberón; Adolfo G. Navarro-Sigüenza, Enrique Martínez-Meyer and Angela P. Cuervo-Robayo of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; and Humberto Berlanga of the Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad. Photos: The slideshow above shows a sampling of birds endemic in Mexico whose populations have been affected by climate change, according to a new study at KU. Photos courtesy of Rafael Calderon Parra, Humberto Berlanga and Adolfo Gerardo Navarro Siguenza.MIAMI - Video recorded by red light camera shows who's at fault in a crash that injured a City of Miami motorcycle officer. Juancarlos Erigoyen was injured Monday when he crashed at Flagler Street and Douglas Road. Hector Ramirez, the driver of the pickup truck that hit the motorman, was cited for failure to yield to an emergency vehicle. Ramirez, 49, was also arrested and charged with providing false information on a crash report. Investigators first believed an elderly driver cut off a pickup truck, causing Ramirez to swerve and hit Erigoyen. "He claims that someone cut him off so he had to avoid that accident and went into path of this officer, this motorman. Like we see it, we just don't see it on the tape," said Miami Police Det. Willie Moreno. But video showed Ramirez was stopped at a red light when he crossed over a double yellow line and in front of Erigoyen, said police. Erigoyen was leading a funeral procession at the time. "He is going around traffic to reach that intersection and make way for this funeral to continue on its way
excessivos procedimentos de licenciamento, regulações e outros encargos administrativos — que estão impedindo o estabelecimento, operação e expansão de empresas. Estamos a realizar um inventário dos custos das regulações da economia, começando com o mais oneroso. Com base nesta análise, para ser apresentada pelo final de Junho de 2013, o governo vai elaborar um roteiro para uma simplificação da regulamentação. Vamos intensificar os esforços para tornar operacional o ponto de contacto único, um portal de governo electrónico que permite que os procedimentos administrativos sejam feitos on-line. Os progressos em direcção a aplicação da Nova Directiva de Pagamentos em Atraso, que ajudará a promover condições de liquidez para as empresas. 33. Regulação. Aprovámos antes do previsto uma lei-quadro para o funcionamento dos reguladores que define as conclusões e recomendações do relatório especializado recém-concluído, avaliação comparativa, as responsabilidades, recursos e independência dos reguladores sectoriais principais, face às melhores práticas internacionais. Lei: (i) estabelece um quadro regulamentar que protege o interesse público e promove a eficiência do mercado, (ii) garante a independência e a autonomia de gestão financeira, administrativa e autonomia das Autoridades Reguladoras Nacionais no exercício das suas responsabilidades, incluindo as condições necessárias para garantir adequados meios humanos e financeiros, sendo capaz de atrair e manter suficientemente pessoal qualificado, e (iii) reforça o papel da Autoridade da Concorrência na aplicação de regras de concorrência. A lei-quadro foi apresentada ao Parlamento. As alterações correspondentes para os estatutos das entidades reguladoras nacionais serão aprovadas pelo governo nos três meses seguintes à publicação da lei quadro. Uma vez que a lei-quadro das ARN (Autoridades Reguladoras Nacionais) e acompanhamento dos estatutos e regulamentos internos estão em vigor, os reguladores vão continuar a perseguir a adopção das melhores práticas regulamentares internacionais, incluindo a organização de exercícios de revisão pelos pares internacionais. 34. Judicial. Vamos continuar a avançar com medidas específicas para reduzir os casos de registo posterior à execução. Apesar dos desafios para resolver os casos de Tribunal em atraso, um adicional de 52.000 casos em execução foram clarificados, trazendo o número total para cerca de 165.000 casos em execução desde Novembro de 2011. Os grupos de acção interagências estabeleceram metas trimestrais para revisão de casos em execução a serem fechados. Avançamos ainda mais as reformas para melhorar a eficiência do sistema judicial. Começámos etapas preliminares para implementar um roteiro judicial abrangente para reduzir o número de tribunais e simplificar a estrutura do Tribunal e o novo Código de Processo Civil, a fim de acelerar o processo judicial. Vamos enviar ao Parlamento no fim a Junho de 2013 um importante projecto-lei para fortalecer a autoridade e o financiamento da estrutura do corpo de fiscalização de agentes de execução e administradores de insolvência (CACAJ) bem como o recrutamento que visa atender às procuras do mercado. O governo vai aprovar até final de Junho 2013 uma estrutura de comissões que incentiva a execução rápida. Quadro 1. Portugal: Critérios Quantitativos de Desempenho (Em milhares de milhão de euros, a menos que especificado de outra forma) Dez-12 Programa Actual Mar-13 Programa Actual Jun-13 Set-13 Dez-13 (1) 1. Base sobre o saldo de caixa consolidado da Administração Pública (cumulativo) -9.0 -8.3 -1.9 -1.4 -6.0 -7.3 -8.9 2. Limite máximo sobre a acumulação de dívida doméstica pela Administração Pública (1) 0 cumprido 0 ñ cumprido 0 0 0 3. Limite máximo sobre o saldo total da dívida da Administração Pública 180.0 177.2 182.2 178.5 187.3 188.9 187.4 4. Limite máximo de acumulação de novos pagamentos externos em mora na dívida externa contraída ou garantida pela Administração Pública (critério de desempenho contínuo) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 (1) Interno em atraso para efeitos do programa diminuiu perto de 700 milhões de euros entre final de Setembro e final de Dezembro de 2012, mas aumentou em Fevereiro de 2013. De forma global, o atraso interno diminuiu em mil milhões de euros entre Setembro de 2012 e Fevereiro de 2013. (2) Objectivo indicativo. Quadro 2. Portugal: Condicionalidade Estrutural: Sétima Revisão sobre o EFF Medida Data Estado Acções anteriores Adopção pelo Conselho de Ministros e publicar o quadro orçamental de médio prazo que inclui medidas completamente especificadas para cumprir o défice de 2014 (LOI P4 e MPEF P7). Cump Submeter ao Parlamento o orçamento suplementar que inclui as medidas necessárias para cumprir o objectivo orçamental de 2013 (MEF P6). Cump Referências Estruturais A. Política Orcamental 1. Submeter ao Parlamento o projecto de uma nova lei de trabalho de administração pública que terá como objectivo alinhar o actual regime de emprego público para as regras do sector privado, incluindo horas de trabalho, tempo de férias e rescisão (MPEF P8). 2013-07-15 2. Submeter ao Parlamento um projecto de lei sobre o quadro de mobilidade redesenhado (MPEF P8). Fim de Junho de 2013 3. Submeter ao Parlamento uma proposta legislativa que que aumente a idade da reforma para 66 anos (MPEF P8). 2013-07-15 4. Submeter ao Parlamento uma proposta legislativa que alinhe as regras and benefícios fundo de pensões do sector público, CGA, para o regime geral de pensões (MPEF P8). 2013-07-15 A. Fortalecer a estabilidade financeira 5. Submeter-se alterações ao Parlamento para a lei que regula o acesso dos bancos ao capital público (LOI P2). Fim Jan 2013 Cump B. Aumentar a competitividade e atacar estrangulamentos para o crescimento 6. Aprovar a reforma de verbas rescisórias que reduz o pagamento de indemnização a 12 dias por ano para todos os novos contratos de trabalho permanentes (MPEF P28) 2013-10-01 8 Atualizar as projeções do caminho de dívida de tarifa de energia de médio prazo e identificar opções de política para eliminar a dívida de pauta até 2020 (MPEF P30). 2013-07-15 B. Fortalecer as instituições orçamentais e reduzir riscos 8. Rever e apresentar ao Parlamento o projecto-lei de finanças públicas regionais e locais (LOI P2 e MPEF P18). Fim Dez 2012 Cump 10 Implementar um verdadeiro Serviço de Grande Contribuinte (SGC), para cobrir auditorias, serviços de contribuinte e funções legais sobre todos os grandes contribuintes, incluindo a adopção de gestores de conta (LOI P2 e MPEF P13) Fim Dez 2012 Cump Memorando Técnico de Entendimento 1. Este Memorando Técnico de Entendimento (MTE) estabelece os entendimentos sobre as definições dos indicadores sujeitos a metas quantitativas (critérios de desempenho e metas indicativas), especificadas nos quadros anexados ao Memorando de Políticas Económicas e Financeiras. Também descreve os métodos a utilizar na avaliação do desempenho do programa e os requisitos de informação para assegurar um controlo adequado das metas. Consultaremos a CE, o BCE e o FMI, antes de modificar as medidas contidas nesta carta ou adoptar novas medidas que desviem os objetivos do programa e fornecer a CE, o BCE e o FMI as informações necessárias para o acompanhamento do programa. 2. Para os fins do programa, todos activos estrangeiros relacionados com moeda, passivos e fluxos de programa serão avaliados a “Taxas de câmbio do programa” conforme definido abaixo, com excepção de itens que afectam saldos orçamentais do governo, que serão medidos na taxa de câmbio spot (ou seja, a taxa para entrega imediata) prevalecente na data da transacção. As taxas de câmbio do programa são aquelas que prevaleceram em 5 de Maio de 2011. Em particular, as taxas de câmbio para efeitos do programa são definidas €1 = 1,483 US dólar, €1 = 116.8390 ienes japoneses, €1.09512 = 1 DES (Direito Especial de Saque). 3. Para fins de relatório, o MF (Ministério das Finanças) e o BdP (Banco de Portugal) vão empregar os relatórios padrões e modelos considerados adequados, tendo em conta a transmissão de dados abrangidos por este MTE (Memorando Técnico de Entendimento), a menos que caso contrário seja estabelecido ou acordado com a CE, o BCE e o FMI. Administração Pública 4. Definição. Para efeitos do programa, a Administração Pública, tal como definido na lei de enquadramento orçamental, Lei n. º 91/2001, de 20 de Agosto, alterada pela Lei 22/2011, de 20 de Maio, inclui: 4.1 O Governo Central. Isto inclui: 4.1.1 As entidades abrangidas no âmbito do Orçamento de Estado, que abrange os orçamentos da Administração Central, incluindo as agências e serviços que não são administrativamente e financeiramente autónomos, agências e serviços que são administrativamente e financeiramente autónomos (Serviços e Fundos Autónomos – SFA). 4.1.2 Outras entidades, incluindo Empresas do Sector Estatal Incorporadas (ESEI) ou extra-fundos orçamentais (EFO) não fazem parte do Orçamento do Estado, mas que, no âmbito do Sistema Europeu de Contas (SEC 95) e Manual do SEC 95 sobre regras do défice e dívida, são classificadas pelo Instituto Nacional Estatística (INE) como parte do Governo Central. 4.2 Governos Locais e Regionais, que incluem: 4.2.1 Governos Regionais da Madeira e Açores e Governos Locais (Administrações Regionais e Locais); 4.2.2 Empresas e sociedades dos governos regionais e locais estatais, fundações, cooperativas e outros órgãos e instituições, que são, sob o SEC 95 e Manual do SEC 95 sobre regras do Défice e Dívida, classificadas pelo INE como Governo Local. 4.3 Fundos de Segurança Social, que inclui todos os fundos que são estabelecidos no regime geral de segurança social. Esta definição de Administrações Públicas (Governo Geral) também inclui quaisquer fundos de novos, ou outros programas orçamentais e extra orçamentais especiais ou entidades que podem ser criadas durante o período do programa para realizar operações de natureza fiscal e que são, no âmbito do SEC 95 e Manual do SEC 95 sobre regras do défice e da dívida, classificados pelo INE no subsector correspondente. O MF (Ministério das Finanças) informará a CE, o BCE e o FMI da criação de quaisquer novos fundos, programas, entidades ou operações no momento de sua criação ou reclassificação estatística ou, no caso de governos regionais ou locais, na época em que o governo reconhece a sua criação. A Administração Pública (Governo Geral), como medida para fins do programa de monitorização em 2013, não inclui entidades nem operações (incluindo fundos de pensão) que são reclassificadas para o Governo Geral durante 2013, mas devem incluir, reclassificadas em 2011 / 12. (NOTA: Uma operação refere-se à parte de uma entidade legal que está envolvida na produção ou fornecimento de bens e serviços, incluindo serviços de governo fornecidos em uma base não mercantil. Como tal, não inclui as transacções relativas aos elementos do activo ou passivo de uma entidade. Por exemplo, deve uma entidade lidar com um número de PPPs, reclassificando apenas uma PPP seria considerado como reclassificação de uma operação. Em contrapartida, assumir parte da dívida da entidade pelo governo não qualificaria para a exclusão. Sobre este assunto, Ver também n º 13.) 5. Material de Apoio 5.1 Dados sobre os saldos de caixa do OGE serão fornecidos à CE, ao BCE e ao FMI pelo MF (Ministro das Finanças) dentro de três semanas após o fim do mês. Os dados incluem informações detalhadas sobre os itens de receitas e despesas, de acordo com relatórios mensais que são publicados pelo MF. 5.2 Os dados sobre os saldos de caixa de outras partes do Governo Geral, tal como definido no n º 4 serão transmitidos para a CE, o BCE e o FMI pelo MF dentro de sete semanas após o fim do mês. Os dados incluem informações detalhadas sobre os itens de receitas e despesas. Os dados incluirão também informações detalhadas sobre PPP-relacionadas com as receitas e despesas para as PPP reclassificadas no sector público de acordo com o SEC 95 e as chamadas garantias. 5.3 Dados sobre resgates de dívida interna e externa (títulos), nova emissão de dívida interna e externa (títulos), alteração na moeda nacional e estrangeira de activos e passivos do Governo Central no BdP e outras instituições financeiras serão fornecidas para a CE, o BCE e o FMI pelo BdP dentro de 40 dias após o encerramento de cada mês. 5.4 O BdP fornecerá para a CE, o BCE e o FMI mensalmente dados detalhados sobre o financiamento da Administração Pública (Governo Geral), tal como definido no SEC 95, dentro de sete semanas após o encerramento de cada mês. 5.5 Dados sobre as receitas, despesas, despesas de capital, remuneração do pessoal, EBITDA (Ganhos Antes de Impostos, Depreciações e Amortizações) e o número do pessoal de funcionamento será fornecido em relação a empresas estatais (SEE) trimestralmente, no prazo de 7 semanas após o término de cada trimestre. Dados agregados para as EPEs dentro do perímetro serão fornecidos, com informações específicas para consultar para REFER, Estradas de Portugal, Metro de Lisboa e Metro de Porto. Além disso também serão fornecidos dados para Comboios de Portugal e Parpública (fora do perímetro). CRITÉRIOS DE DESEMPENHO QUANTITATIVOS, LIMITES MÁXIMOS INDICATIVOS E CRITÉRIOS DE DESEMPENHO CONTÍNUOS: DEFINIÇÕES E NORMAS DE RELATO A. Base do Balanço de Caixa Consolidado do Governo Geral (Critério de desempenho) 6. Definição. O saldo de caixa consolidado do Governo Geral (SCCGG) é definido como a soma dos saldos de caixa das entidades abrangidas pelo Orçamento de Estado, as empresas incorporadas no SEE, os Governos Regionais e Locais e os fundos de Segurança Social e outras entidades e extra-fundos orçamentais (EFOs), tal como definido no n º 4. Receitas de privatização serão excluídas de recebimentos em dinheiro. Em 2012 e posteriormente, as receitas de reclassificação dos fundos de pensão no Governo Geral não vão ser contabilizadas como receita de dinheiro, para efeitos do cálculo do saldo de caixa consolidado do Governo Geral. Em 2012-13, o produto de dinheiro da venda da concessão dos Aeroportos da ANA vai ser contabilizado como operações de redução de despesas em dinheiro. Aquisição líquida de activos financeiros para fins de política, incluindo empréstimos e participação accionista será registada como despesas de dinheiro, excepto para as transacções relacionadas com o sector bancário, suporte e estratégia no âmbito do programa de reestruturação. As chamadas garantias (excluindo-se aqueles relacionados ao sector bancário, suporte e estratégia de reestruturação), no caso de entidades do Governo Geral fazerem pagamentos em dinheiro em nome de entidades que não fazem parte do Governo Geral, serão registadas como gastos de dinheiro. (NOTA: Em 2011, os dados excluem empresas estatais regionais e locais, fundações, cooperativas e outros órgãos e instituições, que, sob o SEC 95 e o Manuel SEC 95 sobre regras do défice e dívida, classificadas pelo INE como Governo Local, ou seja, as entidades referidas no n. º 4.2.2.) 6.1 O Saldo de Caixa do Orçamento do Estado. O saldo em dinheiro do Orçamento do Estado será medido acima da linha, com base em receitas do orçamento (receitas recorrentes mais receitas não recorrentes, incluindo o dinheiro da UE, menos os reembolsos de imposto) menos as despesas do orçamento do OGE, publicada mensalmente no site oficial da DGO do MF e em consonância com os itens de linha correspondentes estabelecidos no Orçamento de Estado. As despesas do orçamento irão excluir pagamentos de amortização mas incluem salários e outros pagamentos ao pessoal e das pensões; doações a fundos de Segurança Social, saúde e protecção social; despesas operacionais e outras, pagamentos de juros; pagamentos em dinheiro para aquisição de equipamento militar; e despesas da UE. 6.2 O saldo de caixa dos governos regionais e locais, fundos da Segurança Social, empresas incorporadas no SEE e outras entidades ou EFOs. O saldo de caixa de cada uma destas partes do Governo Geral será medido acima da linha, com base em receitas menos despesas, como será fornecido pela DGO do MF no relatório de execução de orçamento mensal do Governo Geral (ver parágrafo 5) e em consonância com os itens de linha correspondentes estabelecidos em seus respectivos orçamentos. Todas as entidades, incluindo as empresas incorporadas no SEE que preparem demonstrações financeiras com contabilidade na base do exercício apresentarão o demonstrativo do fluxo de caixa mensal em conformidade com a forma e o conteúdo especificado pelo MF. A comunicação pelo Governo Local vai ser extinto tal como estabelecido no parágrafo 8 abaixo. 6.3 Ajustador. As bases trimestrais de 2013 sobre o saldo de caixa do Governo Geral consolidado serão ajustados para o montante acumulado dos juros de mora liquidados no contexto da estratégia de afastamento da mora: (i) mora de sector saúde (até €432 milhões), (ii) dívidas do governo local estabeleceram-se através do mecanismo de crédito de €1 mil milhões criado em Maio de 2012, (iii) e as dívidas do governo RAM (Região Autónoma da Madeira) sujeitam-se à conclusão do acordo com o governo central (até €1,1 mil milhões). 4. Outras Provisões 7. Para efeitos do programa, as despesas do Governo Central monitorizadas excluem pagamentos relacionados com o apoio da banca, quando realizados no âmbito do programa do sector bancário e estratégia de reestruturação. No entanto, qualquer operação financeira pelo governo central para apoiar os bancos, incluindo a emissão de garantias ou provisão de liquidez, será imediatamente informada à CE, ao BCE e ao FMI. 8. Contas trimestrais consolidadas do Governo Geral em regime de caixa serão relatadas internamente, CE, BCE e FMI monitorizando 7 semanas após o período de referência, começando com o primeiro trimestre de 2012. Os relatórios serão publicados externamente a partir de dados de Dezembro de 2011. EPEs (Empresas Públicas) serão consolidadas com as contas públicas, começando com o primeiro trimestre de 2012. Os municípios maiores (definidos como aqueles com uma população de 100.000 eleitores ou mais) são obrigados a fornecer relatórios mensais em regime corrente, e seu saldo de caixa será incluído no cálculo do saldo de caixa mensal. O saldo de caixa dos municípios menores, ou seja, aqueles com uma população de menos de 100.000 eleitores, será excluído até qualquer necessidade de alterações legais, exigindo-lhes fornecer relatórios mensais a serem postos em vigor. Neste período transitório, o MF fornecerá uma estimativa mensal do saldo numerário destes municípios menores excluídos dos relatórios do Governo Geral para a CE, o BCE e o FMI. 9. Material de Suporte 9.1 Os dados sobre os saldos de caixa do Governo do Estado, empresas incorporadas no SEE, Governos Regionais e Locais e fundos da Segurança Social serão fornecidos à CE, ao BCE e ao FMI pelo MF dentro de sete semanas após o final de cada mês. As informações fornecidas incluem aquisições líquidas de administrações de activos financeiros para fins de política, incluindo empréstimos e participações de capital, como também as chamadas garantias onde entidades que fazem parte do Governo Geral fazem pagamentos monetários em nome de entidades que não fazem parte do Governo Geral. 9.2 O MF apresentará os dados trimestrais sobre as contas do Governo Geral determinados pelo INE em conformidade com as regras do SEC 95, apresentando também os principais itens da transição de saldos de caixa para os saldos das Administrações Públicas em contas nacionais. A reconciliação será acompanhada por materiais explicativos necessários para qualquer indicação de potencial desvio do destino de dinheiro do Governo Geral anual do exercício, objectivo determinado em conformidade com as regras do SEC 95. B. Não-Acumulação de Novas Moras Internas pelo Governo Geral (Indicador Contínuo Alvo) 10. Definições. Compromisso, passivos, contas a pagar/credores e pagamentos em atraso podem surgir em relação a todos os tipos de despesas. Estas incluem custos de emprego, utilidades, transferência de pagamentos, juros, bens e serviços e despesas de capital. Os compromissos são acordos explícitos ou implícitos para fazer pagamentos a terceiros em troca dessa parte do fornecimento de bens e serviços ou cumprir outras condições. Compromissos podem ser para bens e serviços específicos e surgem quando uma acção formal é tomada por um serviço governamental, por exemplo, emissão de uma ordem de compra ou assinatura de um contrato. Compromisso também pode ser de natureza contínua que exigem uma série de pagamentos ao longo de um período indeterminado de tempo e podem ou não envolver um contrato, por exemplo, salários, serviços e pagamentos de direito. Passivos são obrigações presentes da entidade decorrentes de eventos passados, a resolução de que deverá resultar em uma saída da entidade de recursos (normalmente dinheiro), incorporando benefícios económicos ou potenciais de serviço. Em relação ao compromisso, a responsabilidade surge quando um terceiro satisfaz os termos do contrato ou instrumento semelhante. Contas a pagar/credores são um subconjunto dos passivos. Para efeitos do programa contas a pagar/credores excluir provisões, passivos acumulados. Pagamentos em atraso são um subconjunto de contas a pagar/credores. Para efeitos do programa interno em atraso é definido como contas a pagar/credores (incluindo os credores comerciais do estrangeiro), que permaneceram sem vencimento por 90 dias ou mais para além de qualquer especificada data de vencimento (independentemente de qualquer período de carência contratual). Caso nenhuma data de vencimento seja especificada, pagamentos em atraso são definidos como contas a pagar/credores que permaneceram sem vencimento por 90 dias ou mais após a data da nota orçamental ou contrato. Dados de mora serão fornecidos dentro de sete semanas após o final de cada mês. Contínuo objectivo indicativo da não-acumulação de novos pagamentos em atraso internos requer que o atraso total no final de cada mês não seja maior que o total correspondente ao final do mês anterior, com base no perímetro do mesmo em relação as entidades abrangidas. Isso inclui também o atraso que está sendo acumulado pelas empresas do SEE não incluídos no Governo Geral. 11. Material de apoio. O valor de pagamentos em atraso será medido através de um levantamento. Relatórios sobre o conjunto de dívidas de administrações públicas estão a ser publicados mensalmente. O MF irá fornecer dados consistentes de mora mensal de despesas do Governo Geral, tal como definido acima. Dados serão fornecidos no prazo de sete semanas após o final de cada mês e incluirão o total em atraso classificado pelos diferentes sectores constituintes do subsector do Governo Geral, tal como definido no n º 4, bem como os montantes mensais das dívidas apuradas no âmbito da estratégia de afastamento da mora (ver parágrafo 6.3). 12. Ajustador. Em 2013, a alteração mensal do valor de pagamentos em atraso será ajustada para qualquer ajustamento de acções relacionadas com a estratégia de afastamento da mora conforme parágrafo 6.3. Isso permitirá que a monitorização do fluxo subjacente de novos pagamentos em atraso. C. Limite Máximo do Saldo do Débito do Governo Geral (Critério de Desempenho) 13. Definição. O saldo total da dívida do Governo Geral referir-se-á à definição estabelecida pelo Regulamento (CE) n.º 479/2009 do Conselho, de 25 de Maio de 2009 a respeito da aplicação do protocolo sobre o procedimento relativo aos défices excessivos anexado ao Tratado que institui a Comunidade Europeia. Para efeitos do programa, será excluído o saldo da dívida do Governo Geral: (i) dívida contraída para a reestruturação da banca, quando realizada no âmbito do programa de apoio de sector bancário e reestruturação de estratégica; (ii) depósitos do IGCP; e (iii) (a partir de final de Setembro de 2011) a margem de’ pré-pago’ sobre todos os empréstimos do MEEF (Mecanismo Europeu de Estabilidade Financeira). 14. Ajustadores. Para 2013, o limite máximo do saldo total da dívida do Governo Geral será ajustado para cima (para baixo) pelo montante de qualquer revisão em alta (em baixa) para o saldo da dívida do Governo Geral do fim de Dezembro 2012 de 204,5 mil milhões de euros. De 2014 em diante, o limite do saldo total da dívida do Governo Geral será ajustado para cima (para baixo) pela quantidade de qualquer aumento (redução), reclassificação de operações ou de entidades que afecta o saldo no fim de Dezembro do ano anterior. 15. Material de apoio. Os dados trimestrais sobre o saldo total da dívida do Governo Geral tal como definido no n. º 12 será fornecido à CE, ao BCE e ao FMI pelo BdP, o mais tardar 90 dias após o término de cada trimestre, como relatado para o BCE e o Eurostat. Estimativas mensais serão fornecidas à CE, ao BCE e ao FMI pelo BdP, o mais tardar sete semanas após o final de cada mês D. Não-Acumulação de Novos Atrasos no Pagamento de Débito Externo pelo Governo Geral (Contínuo Critério de Desempenho) 16. Definição. Para efeitos do programa, a definição de dívida é a mesma que no n º 12. Um atraso de pagamento da dívida externa será definido como um pagamento em dívida para não-residentes, contratadas ou garantidas pelo Governo Geral, que não tenha sido apresentado no prazo de sete dias após a data vincenda (tendo em conta qualquer carência contratual aplicável). O critério de desempenho será aplicado de forma contínua durante todo o período do programa. 17. Material de apoio. Qualquer atraso de pagamento da dívida externa do Governo Geral será imediatamente informado pelo MF. E. Mecanismo de Suporte de Solvência da Banca 18. A instalação do Mecanismo de Suporte de Solvência Bancária (MSSB) será mantida no Banco de Portugal. Conforme avaliação anterior, recursos para a MSSB serão acordados em cada revisão e depositados na conta específica. F. Monitorização Global e Requisitos de Informação 19. Desempenho no âmbito do programa será monitorizado a partir de dados fornecidos à CE, ao BCE e ao FMI, pelo MF e o BdP. As autoridades vão transmitir à CE, ao BCE e ao FMI, todas as revisões de dados em tempo útil.Andrea Janus, CTVNews.ca NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair says the NDP has respected rules “every step of the way” regarding satellite offices that use Parliamentary resources to operate. During a news conference with reporters following his weekly caucus meeting Wednesday, Mulcair defended the offices, saying his party “has done something creative” by establishing them. Staff at the Montreal office, for example, are doing important outreach work with Quebecers, who gave the NDP a record number of seats in the province in the 2011 election, he said. “We respected the rules every step of the way,” Mulcair said. “We were open, transparent every step of the way. Of course our employees are allowed to work in Montreal. To hear the Liberals and Conservatives tell it, they should all be working here in Ottawa.” The Conservatives and the Liberals have accused the NDP of misusing Parliamentary resources for partisan purposes, and misleading administrators over the issue. The parties referred the matter to the board of internal economy, the all-party body that oversees administration of the House of Commons. Following the complaints, the board adopted a provisional bylaw that says MPs cannot use House budgets to pay staff who work out of offices “owned, leased or under the control of a political party.” Mulcair said the decision to open the satellite offices came out of a discussion on how best to use government resources. Discussion turned to whether the party or Parliament should pay the rent on the offices, and the decision was made for the party to pay. “We didn’t anticipate that they would start changing the rules and make it difficult and say the party couldn’t pay,” Mulcair said. The employees are now working from home, rather than at the satellite offices, he said, to comply with the new rules. While Mulcair maintains that the offices complied with House rules and the satellite offices were not hidden, documents released Monday showed that the House administration was unaware that the NDP staffers, who were approved to do constituency work in Ottawa, were working in a Montreal party office. Questions were raised about nine staffers as early as 2011, when employment forms indicated they lived near Montreal. When asked where the employees would work, the deputy chief of staff for the NDP leader at the time said “in Ottawa.” Seven NDP MPs also said the staffers would work in Ottawa. But Audrey O’Brien, clerk of the House of Commons, said there was no indication the staffers “would be located in Montreal or that their work world be carried out in co-location with a political party's office.” Mulcair said Wednesday it was clear the staffers were in Montreal: they were given telephones with 514 area codes and had Quebec addresses. Mulcair will answer questions about the issue Thursday during an appearance before the Procedure and House Affairs committee, which has asked that he also turn over documents, including the lease for the Montreal office. When asked by reporters if he will turn over the documents, such as the lease, Mulcair would only say that: “We will be there to answer all the questions as I do with you every single day.” Anne McGrath, the NDP’s executive director, later told CTV’s Power Play that documents will be presented to committee, but did not specifically say whether the lease will be included. “There’s no reason not to comply with the request for information because, as we’ve said and as we are confident, we have done nothing wrong,” McGrath said. McGrath accused the Liberals and the Conservatives of engaging in “a bit of a witch hunt” because they are worried about the NDP’s strong support in Quebec and “want to throw mud. “It won’t stick, though,” McGrath said. It was clear “all the way along” that the staffers were based in Montreal, she said. The party did not hide the fact that it had opened the office, she said, having held news conferences there at times. Cheques were sent there for payments, she said, and an Ottawa political paper announced the hiring of staff. “Everybody knew what was going on,” she said. Once the committee reviews all the documents and hears Mulca
fire on a party where a pregnant woman revealed her child's gender, killing a 22-year-old woman and wounding eight, including the expectant mother and three children, authorities said. Colerain Township Police Chief Mark Denney said at a news conference Sunday afternoon that two men fired handguns in the living room of the home Saturday evening. Denney said the two gunmen who fled on foot haven't been identified or arrested. He wouldn't discuss details of the investigation into the shootings. The 22-year-old was identified as Autumn Garrett of Indiana. The three children wounded were ages 2, 6 and 8. None of the eight who were wounded appeared to have life-threatening injuries, he said. The pregnant woman told CBS affiliate WKRC-TV she lost her baby after being shot in the leg. Police are searching for the gunmen, who were dressed in black when they broke into the home while guests were watching a movie. Police investigate the Cincinnati-area home where multiple people were shot on Saturday, July 8, 2017. WKRC-TV It is not known if those behind the shooting knew the victims, but police said they fired into the party at random, WKRC-TV reports. "I did talk to the officer that was the first one on the scene and he just said it was horrific," police spokesman James Love told reporters. "He said it was something that was unimaginable, and when he started for calling for help, he said, 'what do I say? I need ambulances, I need people to help me out here.'" The Cincinnati Police investigative unit is assisting the Colerain Township Police Department with the investigation.FBI Director James Comey met key lawmakers Thursday to talk about matters related to Trump Tower, a congressional source familiar with the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election told NBC News. Comey huddled with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C. and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va, according to NBC. He then talked to House Speaker Paul Ryan, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Reps. Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff, the top Republican and Democrat, respectively, on the House Intelligence Committee. It was not immediately clear what specifically he told the lawmakers. Comey was seen leaving the United States Capitol on Thursday afternoon and declined to answer NBC's question about whether there was ever a legal wiretap at Trump Tower. Trump on Saturday accused former President Barack Obama of tapping his phones "during the very sacred election process." He compared it to President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. Since then, though, Trump aides have not pointed to any specific evidence to back his claim. Comey reportedly asked the Justice Department to publicly reject the assertion, while the chairmen of both the House and Senate intelligence committees have said they have not seen evidence to support it. Separately Wednesday, two senators asked the Department of Justice and FBI for any warrant applications or court orders they have related to Trump's accusation. The senators, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, which has oversight of the Justice Department's criminal division. It is not clear what Comey said in his conversations Thursday about Trump's allegations. The House and Senate are investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The U.S. intelligence community has accused Russia of hacking Democratic computers during the campaign, among other efforts to meddle. Top Trump campaign, and subsequently administration, officials have faced accusations of improper contacts with Moscow. Trump has called any allegations a politically charged witch hunt. Key Trump officials have recently played defense over their contacts with Russian officials. Trump's first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, resigned last month after the White House said he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the U.S., before Trump took office. Trump has defended Flynn holding those conversations, but said his advisor betrayed Pence's trust. Attorney General Jeff Sessions then said this month he would step back from any investigations related to the Trump campaign after it was revealed that he talked to Kislyak before the election. Sessions told senators during his January confirmation hearing that he did not have contact with Russian officials. He later clarified that statement, saying he misunderstood the question and that he met with Kislyak in his capacity as a then-senator on the Armed Services Committee. — NBC News' Kasie Hunt contributed to this report Correction: Richard Burr is a Republican. An earlier version misstated his party affiliation.A wide range of Twitter accounts were attacked earlier this month after a 2012 leaked password dump from LinkedIn started getting shared more broadly recently. Leaked password dumps are now affecting Citrix's GoToMyPC service, which allows users to remote-control their PC from a range of devices. "The GoToMYPC service has been targeted by a very sophisticated password attack," reads a status message posted two days ago. "Citrix can confirm the recent incident was a password re-use attack, where attackers used usernames and passwords leaked from other websites to access the accounts of GoToMyPC users." Citrix has responded to the password attack by initiating a mandatory password reset for all GoToMyPC users. It's not clear how many accounts were compromised in the attack, or how many PCs were remotely controlled by the attackers. If malicious users were able to gain control of any PCs then this could have opened up GoToMyPC users to additional breaches if website passwords were stored or cached in a browser and the attacker had full control over the PC. The GoToMyPC attack comes just weeks TeamViewer was also compromised thanks to the reuse of passwords that were leaked in recent dumps. TeamViewer is a similar service for remotely controlling PCs, and attackers were able to breach the service accounts for business users to attack multiple devices. Once again, it's time to stop using the same password across multiple sites. Install a password manager if you need to, or even make your email address as hard to guess as your password.The geniuses who run the Multnomah County Republican Party in Multnomah County, Oregon are honoring Martin Luther King Jr and Abraham Lincoln by raffling off a rifle in their honor. From the MCP website … Portland, OR January 13, 2014: Multnomah Country Republicans recognize the incredible time of year we are in. In successive months to start the year, we celebrate the legacy of two great Republicans who demonstrated leadership and courage that all of us still lean on today: Martin Luther King, Jr and Abraham Lincoln. In celebrating these two men, and the denial of the rights they fought so hard against, the Multnomah County Republican Party announces that we have started our third raffle for an AR-15 rifle (or handgun of the winner’s choice). The drawing will be held at our Lincoln Day Dinner on February 15th, 2014. Tickets are once again $10 apiece, or 12 for $100, and there is a hard cap of 500 tickets in the raffle. Notably, both honorees are associated with gun violence. In fact, Dr. King was shot to death with a 30-06 Remington Game-master. And it gets better! Because doesn’t it always? The keynote speaker will be none other than Rafael Cruz, father of Sen. Ted Cruz (R) of Texas.Application of fluorescein is a vital part of the workup of ocular complaints. Despite some studies showing questionable support, the typical cited clinical concern for stored fluorescein solutions is contimination with Pseudomonas and risk for iatrogenic infection with associated ulcer formation. 1–4 Subsequently, single dose sterile strips have become the standard agent stocked in most EDs. Many patients, especially children, can be apprehensive of the application of the physical strip directly to the eye, and are more comfortable with the concept of eye drops. In this post, we review multiple technique to create fluorescein solutions and additional tips for utilization that may be integrated into your practice, depending on the supplies available to you. Strip-In-Syringe This technique was first described in a guest post from Dr. Ian Brown. The strip is placed directly into the syringe, and sterile saline is drawn in with the strip. The blunt filling needle is then removed, and the solution is ready for application. Mix-In-Packaging This technique, utilizing a respiratory saline ampule and the strip packaging, is nicely photographed and explained in our prior post by Dr. Sam Ko and Dr. Kimberly Chan. Dab-and-Withdraw Another technique contributed by ALiEM-AAEM Fellow Dr Matt Zuckerman creates a solution directly in the syringe or respiratory ampule of saline. If using a 10 cc flush, you will want to discard saline until 3 cc is remaining. Saline is expressed to create a droplet at the tip of the syringe/ampule, and the strip is dabbed directly to this droplet. Aspirating brings the fluorescein solution back into the container. This will need to be repeated a few times to achieve appropriate concentration of fluorescein. Because the need for precise syringe-work, there is a potentially for small spills utilizing this technique, so plan accordingly. Specimen Cup This is a technique I frequently utilize in my department because of the supplies that are most readily available and some messy mishaps with the above dab-and-withdraw technique. Simply dispense 3 cc of sterile solution in a sterile specimen cup, mix the fluorescein directly into the solution, and then load into syringe. We did utilize a blunt filling needle in our example, but you may load directly into the syringe if you prefer. Left over solution in the cup can be used to explain the nature of the stain and also help motivate younger patients (“This will give you super glowing eyes!”). Angiocath Dropper Regardless of the technique used to create a syringe of solution, there can be some awkwardness with application. Unlike the saline ampule, the syringe has properties which make it behave unlike a typical eye dropper. Overcoming the static friction of the syringe plunger can cause a sudden stream of fluorescein solution that can be uncomfortable or surprising for patients. This can also potentially stain clothing and lessen patients overall trust and comfort in the exam setting. I have found that applying a 24G angiocath tip to the Luer-Lok syringe can help create more control applying the solution. The small droplet size has also helped me successfully stain children who were squinting, foregoing the need to pry eyelids open and cause additional discomfort and anxiety. Happy Staining! Top image credit 1. PubMed] Claoué C. Experimental contamination of Minims of fluorescein by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Br J Ophthalmol. 1986;70(7):507-509. 2. PubMed] Duffner L, Pflugfelder S, Mandelbaum S, Childress L. Potential bacterial contamination in fluorescein-anesthetic solutions. Am J Ophthalmol. 1990;110(2):199-202. 3. PubMed] Rautenbach P, Wilson A, Gouws P. The reuse of opthalmic Minims: an unacceptable cross-infection risk? Eye (Lond). 2010;24(1):50-52. 4. PubMed] VAUGH D. The contamination of fluorescein solutions; with special reference to pseudomonas aeruginosa (bacillus pyocyaneus). Am J Ophthalmol. 1955;39(1):55-61. Share This Facebook Twitter Pocket Print InstagramWe have something a little different for you today. RHacker93 has compiled short interviews with most of the game’s Grandmasters, including himself. (Seems legit.) If you’ve ever wondered who the top players of Duelyst really are, look no further! Yukarin Nationality? Japan Occupation? Engineer, Evaluating durability of products by using FEM. What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Magic How long have you been playing Duelyst? About 2 years. Favorite card? Gravity Well Favorite general? Cassyva and Kara Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Control Cassyva UnoPro Nationality? Australian Age? 20 Occupation? Teacher’s Assistant What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Duel of Champions How long have you been playing Duelyst? Over a year. Favorite card? Juxtaposition Favorite general? Reva Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Backstab Mask of Shadows pre bloodborn spells Zayne Nationality? Russian. Live in Moscow Age? 24 Occupation? Tried myself as a tutor in physics and mathematics. Currently unemployed and trying to stream full-time. What was your first competitive card/strategy game? MTG How long have you been playing Duelyst? About 17 months (recently quit due to overwhelming frustration) Favorite card? Meltdown 2/5 Kelaino, Scintilla Favorite general? Zir’an Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Heavy Zir’an, Winter’s Wake Kara Humans Nationality? Australian Age? 31 Occupation? Engineering Student / Shelf Stacker What was your first competitive card/strategy game? MTG How long have you been playing Duelyst? Just over a year Favorite card? Hearth Sister Favorite general? Faie Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? My DWC Qualifier and Open ‘Control (midrange) Faie’ in November KolosTheDragon Nationality? Chinese American permanent resident, no citizenship yet Age? 22 Occupation? Final year comp eng student What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Diamond one League of Legends How long have you been playing Duelyst? One and a half years. Favorite card? Dancing Blade Favorite general? Cassyva Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Combo mag Rmoriar1 Nationality? American Age? 27 Occupation? Graduate Student What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Poker How long have you been playing Duelyst? 15 months Favorite card? Nether Summoning Favorite general? Reva Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? SpellHai AlphaCentury Nationality? I’m Canadian Age? 19 Occupation? Student in Math/Physics What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Duelyst is the only game I’ve been competitive in How long have you been playing Duelyst? Since ~February last year (blast 3rd wish) Favorite card? Has to be Skywing. As soon as they print a good flying minion I’ll show you all how busted it is! Favorite general? Zir’an Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Onyx Jaguar Kaleos! Zaowi Nationality? British Age? 26 Occupation? Medical Record Assistant What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Pokemon tcg How long have you been playing Duelyst? Since October 2015 I think Favorite card? Grandmaster Zir Favorite general? Lyonar and Magmar Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? I liked the Godhammer/Nature’s Confluence deck that was pretty fun. Ferocca Nationality? Dutch/The Netherlands Age? 23 Occupation? Trader/Writer What was your first competitive card/strategy game? First strategy game was probably Age of Empires (1) How long have you been playing Duelyst? 2 years Favorite card? Juxtaposition Favorite general? Kaleos Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Celerity Lantern Fox Songhai TM87 Nationality? Canadian Age? 19 Occupation? Unemployed currently What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Duelyst How long have you been playing Duelyst? 26 Months Favorite card? Aegis Barrier Favorite general? Cassyva Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Preshimzar Shadow Creep Briguy77 Nationality? US Age? 20 Occupation? Student What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Duelyst was my first card game, though I’ve been a board and video gamer my whole life. How long have you been playing Duelyst? Since February 2016 Favorite card? Gravity Well – I really like the positioning of it and its versatility. Favorite general? Faie has always been my favorite, though in the current meta it is probably Reva (she’s always been a close second – I really like the combo potential of Songhai) Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Wall Faie in May/June 2016 was really fun for me! I also really like Minmaxer’s Reva deck in December/January. Dragall Nationality? Canadian Age? 25 Occupation? Student/Personal Trainer What was your first competitive card/strategy game? MTG How long have you been playing Duelyst? 14 Months Favorite card? Bonereaper Favorite general? Cassyva Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Control Reva RHacker93 Nationality? American Age? 23 Occupation? Game Programmer What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Magic the Gathering How long have you been playing Duelyst? Around a year and a half. Favorite card? Ironcliffe Guardian Favorite general? Argeon Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Divine Bond Lyonar Munkbusiness Nationality? Danish (Denmark) Age? 26 Occupation? Writing masters thesis What was your first competitive card/strategy game? Yu-Gi-Oh! How long have you been playing Duelyst? Since some months before two draw disappeared Competitive: Since a bit before DPL 2 Favorite card? Fractal Replication Favorite general? Vaath / Argeon / Lilithe / Cassyva Favorite deck that you’ve ever played? Fractal Midrange VaathFour hundred doctors from one end of Nova Scotia to the other gathered in Halifax on Saturday for a town hall meeting. Physicians spoke about the ongoing challenges they face and how proposed tax changes by the Trudeau government will impact them. “My real concern is the current climate can’t handle this crisis,” said Dr. Tim Wallace, a surgeon and site chief for Cumberland County. “It’s going to be more dramatic than people actually think in Nova Scotia.” READ: Wife tells how overcrowded Halifax hospital failed her husband Since the proposed tax changes were announced earlier this year, doctors have been speaking out about how much they have to lose. It’s expected the changes will end up costing doctors in Nova Scotia between $20,000 and $30,000 annually. “We’re really concerned about the manpower issue but also overall care and trying to provide world-class care in a place where we don’t feel that people are valuing what we do. They’re equating it to our earnings. Earnings are just reflected on how many people we see. It’s not about the value that we provide,” said Wallace. READ: Reality check: Will closing tax loopholes for the rich really help the middle class? Doctors Nova Scotia recently did a survey to assess physicians — 864 physicians responded to the survey — which found if the proposed tax measures are implemented, 451 physicians would consider moving from Nova Scotia. In addition, 375 physicians would consider reducing the number of hours they work, while 359 physicians would consider offering different services. Wallace says one in five physicians in Canada are over the age of 60, with 12 per cent over the age of 65. One of his concerns lies with what will happen when those doctors retire since some of them have up to 3,000 people in their practices. “You’re going to have a lot of people without family doctors,” he said. Wallace says Nova Scotia, in particular, has a problem with recruiting and retaining doctors. He says patients are ultimately going to be receiving care from people who are “completely strapped.” “Even specialists are going to feel this, not just the family doctors,” said Wallace. “We have one place where the entire department of anaesthesia has told me that they’re going to retire, some are going to move. I, myself have been contacted by two institutions from not in this country so this is real.” READ: Do Trudeau’s tax changes really only hit the rich? Wallace says the Canadian Association of General Surgeons suggests that a one in five call schedule is appropriate for doctors, meaning they would be on call for one day out of every five. He says the majority of places in Nova Scotia don’t operate that way, and doctors are typically on call one in every three or four days. “On St. Paddy’s Day, most people are out having fun and I wasn’t on call, and I got a call from the emergency doctor that said, ‘Tim, someone tried to end their life and they took a shotgun to their face. You’re the only one that can do this, so tell me you’re there.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll be there in 15 minutes. I wasn’t on call, I was, you know, with my family and I got called away because nobody else could save that guy,” he said. WATCH: Federal tax changes could be ‘catastrophic’ for Nova Scotia doctors Dr. Lisa Bonang, a family physician in Musquodoboit Harbour, N.S., is worried about how the tax changes will impact her workload. “We’re already overburdened as it is and I think the possibility that these tax reforms may encourage an exodus of physicians from our province, quite frankly, scares me,” she said. Bonang got a standing ovation at the town hall after discussing why she wanted to stay in Nova Scotia. “I came home to practice and I intend to stay home to practice. Life can change, one never knows but I hope to continue to make it work in my community,” she told Global News. READ MORE: Morneau draws criticism from business, concerns from Nova Scotia premier over tax proposal Elias Fares is a resident doctor — an individual who finished medical school but is still training. He says he can see the pressure that doctors are under. A recent survey from Doctors Nova Scotia found “burnout” is a serious issue for physicians in the province, with 50 per cent of people surveyed reported experiencing symptoms of burnout and another 20 per cent feeling ineffective. “You can easily see the burnout that our mentors are experiencing and how [it] impacts medical trainees as they move forward and think about their transition to medical practice,” he said. READ: Burnout a ’cause for concern’ for Nova Scotia doctors: survey Fares is from Spryfield and ideally, would like to stay in his home province once his training is complete. “Clearly, my roots are here. It’s where my family is, my friends are, my community is and I would love to stay here,” he said. “I guess the trouble is, coming out of medical school, many of us accumulate $250,000 [in] debt and these changes will really impact our ability to work in Nova Scotia, where we’re paid among the least in the country and taxed almost the most, so it makes it really challenging to stay here.” READ MORE: Nova Scotia doctor calls family doctor shortage a ‘crisis’ There were a number of elected officials at the town hall on Saturday including Liberal MLA Labi Kousoulis. “I have many physicians in my riding and I have been having many conversations with them, and quite a few of them have reached out to me and asked me to come out and hear the stories of how tax changes may affect them,” he said. Canada’s Finance Minister Bill Morneau is currently touring the country. He has said he is open to making changes to the proposed tax reform, if necessary. Public consultation on the proposed tax changes wraps up Oct. 2.The great smell of barbecued raccoon leads cops to the 'Squirrel Brothers' meth lab Adam Eubank was charged with promoting the manufacture of meth A man who was caught roasting a raccoon in the parking lot of his apartment complex then led police to a meth lab and landed his brother in jail. The Tennessee man - who has not been named - was found grilling the raccoon by officers in his downtown Memphis parking lot. He also had several large knives. Investigators called in the department's meth task force to help after they discovered buckets of an unknown material. Police arrested Adam Eubank, 26, from their apartment. They believe he purchased cold medicine used to manufacture methamphetamine nearly three dozen times in the past year, according to WPTV.com He was charged with promoting the manufacture of meth and is being held on $75,000 bond. Scroll down for video Fire: Eubank's brother was roasting the raccoon in the parking lot of the complex Neighbour: Shelton Russell said she can't even imagine where they got the raccoon and said it was scary Scene: Residents at this complex said they called the brothers the'squirrel brothers' after they were caught skinning a squirrel Neighbour Shelton Russell said: 'I'm shocked, I mean it's a raccoon, where did they even find it?' Another neighbour said resident at the complex call them the squirrel brothers. Chris Phillip explained: 'We found them on the common stairs skinning a squirrel one night.' Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economyI hate patriotism. I can't stand it, man—makes me fuckin' sick. It's a round world last time I checked. - Bill Hicks Bill Hicks was the angry voice of reason for the disenfranchised and foul mouthed street criminals of his time—he was the man who smoked in the face of cancer. If you don't know who Bill Hicks was, do yourself a favour, click into a new tab, Google the comedian, and watch everything he ever did as the man was a savant imo (then come back and read the rest of this article, please.) Sadly though, the world only got to listen to his ramblings for a mere 16-years as he died from pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the young age of 32, however, in his short time above ground Hicks proved to be one of the most influential comics of all time. And as with any well known person who dies young—especially a controversial one—rumours have run rampant following his death. In the case of Hicks' death, none of those rumours are more prolific, and bizarre, than the notion that Hicks faked his death to become conspiracy monger Alex Jones. A quick Google search will bring you to hundreds of blog posts on the topic and self made videos crowd youtube as theorist attempt to further the conspiracy. While it's truly an intense amount of crazy, the idea has lived on the internet so long that—apart from the true believers—it has become an in-joke for redditors, channers, and a rogue crew of Alex Jones fans (potato-men?). Most importantly though, this conspiracy seems to really fucking annoy Alex Jones—a 9/11 truther who has spread the notion that the kids killed in Sandy Hook were actors and the Quebec mosque shooting was a false flag attack. "I'm sick of hearing about Bill Hicks," lamented Jones on a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience. "It hurts me that they're so dumb, they don't know I'm my own person, Alex Jones." So, with that annoyance in mind, why don't we take an in-depth look at the theory? The idea's first major appearance on the web was in 2006 in thread posts form on the forums Godlike Productions and Doppelganger and Identity Research Society. The theory, like all good conspiracies, is fractured as hell, so in order to explain I'm going to attempt to compile the most widely "accepted" ideas. First things first, the question of why Hicks decided to give up the possibility of being the voice of a generation to become a potatoman by the name of Alex Emerick Jones. One massive branch of the theory revolves around a man named Kevin Booth. Booth's production company, Sacred Cow Productions, was behind comedy films for the likes of Hicks, Rogan, and Stanhope—and Booth also produced Hicks' posthumous comedy records. It was co-founded by Hicks and Booth in the early 90s but, since the comedian's death, it's one shining star has been, you guessed it, Alex Fuckin' Jones. So, long story short, many believe that Booth is actually the man with the plan who had Hicks switch up characters much like in pro wrestling. Another widely held explanation by the theorists on why Hicks decided to play the character of Alex Jones full time is, well, they say Jones is a CIA disinfo agent put into the AM shock jock scene to discredit actual radio hosts. Here's a portion of a popular blog post explaining it: Evidence indicates that Bill Hicks transitioned himself into a new 'right wing' talk-radio conspiracy-minded shock jock just as some in government were raising the alarm about Timothy McVeigh 'lone wolf' type domestic terrorists being inspired by AM radio talk jocks. Also it was the advent of the brand-new internet-era and so the timing was perfect to insert a glib provoking-agent into the 'alternative media' scene— someone who could get out front and the lead patriotic Americans around in circles. And so Bill Hicks apparently went to work for the CIA— transforming himself into Alex Jones, the new 'info-warrior'. In order to become a new man, the theorists posit that he utilized "plastic surgery, testosterone, growth hormone, larynx surgery, and cosmetics." However, the one thing that people freak out about is that Jones and Hicks seemingly have similar teeth (seriously, a lot of work has gone into proving they have the teeth thing,) they have also done vocal comparisons and believe Jones' voice is the same as one Hicks used, at times, in his comedy. Some dude even made a gif about the teeth! Photo via dublinsmickdotcom There is, of course, the bonkers list of reasons that are IRREFUTABLE PROOF that the two are one man, this includes them having similar moles, having similar heights and facial profiles, people mistakenly calling the host "Bill" on-air, Jones' jocular references to himself as Hicks, the fact that Jones came out of nowhere for his first radio show in 1996, and, shit you not, the idea that Jones' middle name, Emerick, is the taken from Geoff Emerick the—Beatles producer who "killed Paul." The Jones/Hicks truthers have also gone to the uncomfortable level of insanity of digging through Jones' birth certificate and other documents to see if it they're fake—which considering Alex Jones' role in the birther movement, is actually pretty fucking funny. The theory has even climbed the wonderful meta peak only certain conspiracies are able to ascend, with some theorists musing about the idea Jones may have started and propagated the theory himself to discredit accurate conspiracies about him. But, perhaps the main driver of Jones' annoyance with the whole goddamn thing is the idea that the little potatoman looks far older than he is. Jones is currently 43 years-old while Bill Hicks would have been 55-years-old and the theorists are convinced Jones looks far older than he says he is—which is kind of insulting, I guess. Yeah, I get how this would annoy him. Photo via dublinsmickdotcom There are some similarities, the two are both are immensely intense on the mic, share a little bit of a similarity in looks, both are from Texas, and Hicks did tend to enjoy a conspiracy theory. However, with the recent change in Jones' politics the two now exist on drastically different poles politically. While at the beginning of his career, Jones didn't have a hard time seeing conspiracies on both sides of the political spectrum—much like Hicks—as of late, Jones has giddied up to the nationalistic establishment by softly nuzzling Trump with the warm kindness of an old dog looking for his owner's hidden peanut butter. This, frankly is something that one would have a hard time seeing a consummate hater of the state like Bill Hicks do. Still, though, despite it being utter bullshit, the conspiracy is so prolific that people will, sometimes in public, only address Jones as Bill or come up to him in restaurants and repeat Hicks name until Jones looks at them. With that apparently happening all the time, Jones said he's straight-up done with the conspiracy and furthermore, he said it annoys the family of the great comedian. "Bill Hicks is in the ground folks," said Jones on his radio show in 2014. "Kevin [Booth] was there when he died. This isn't funny, this is sick." Overall, the theory is, for lack of a better term, banana-pants crazy-town, and Jones is right—the notion that Hicks never truly died is disrespectful to the late great Hicks and his family, and it's good that Jones can see that. It's just a shame the man doesn't extend that same respect to the 20 kids shot dead in the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Editor's note: An earlier version of this story contained an image that was removed due to copyright. Follow Mack on Twitter.Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, is introducing legislation to bolster the online video market, what he says is an effort to prevent cable and satellite companies from using their power to limit the growth of services like Netflix and Amazon. The Consumer Choice in Online Video Act, which Rockefeller intends to introduce on Tuesday afternoon, would bar cable, satellite and large media companies from engaging in “anti-competitive” practices against online video distributors. It would do so in part by putting “reasonable limits” on contractual provisions in carriage contracts that limit online providers’ access to programming. An aide to Rockefeller said that the legislation would allow online video providers to choose to be considered like cable and satellite providers, giving them a “pathway to negotiate for content” the way that cable and satellite providers do. The 1992 Cable Act included regulations designed to prevent companies from limiting access to channels as a way to stifle competition. If an online service chooses to be treated like a cable or satellite provider, it also would face certain retransmission consent and must carry regulations over the carriage of broadcast signals. The legislation also would limit the ability of a cable or satellite company that also provides Internet service to “degrade” competitive online video services. Specifics of the legislation have yet to be released. A big concern among consumer groups has been that cable and satellite companies will try to stifle competition by implementing more restrictive pricing for their Internet customers based on their usage. Although the legislation would not prevent cable and satellite companies from offering usage-based pricing for their Internet service, the legislation is intended to make billing clearer and more understandable. It also would direct the FCC to “monitor broadband billing practices to make sure they are not used anticompetitively.” Rockefeller’s proposed legislation also does not directly address the legality of Aereo, the online provider of broadcast signals that broadcasters are challenging in court. If courts deem that the service is legal, “then this would clarify then that they would not be subject to retransmission consent payments,” an aide to Rockefeller said. In May, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) introduced legislation designed to end some of the cable and satellite bundling of channels, a primary complaint of consumers facing hefty bills, but his legislation has yet to advance. Rockefeller has the advantage of sitting on a powerful Senate committee, even if his proposals are likely to stir up contentious debate with the cable and satellite industry. “We have all heard the familiar complaint that we have five hundred channels, but there is nothing to watch,” Rockefeller said in a statement. “My legislation aims to enable the ultimate ala carte — to give consumers the ability to watch the programming they want to watch, when they want to watch it, how they want to watch it, and pay for only what they actually watch.” Update: The National Cable and Telecommunications Assn. issued a statement in which it noted that online video services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime have flourished “facilitated in large part by massive ongoing investments in broadband networks. “In a world marked by such dynamism and robust competition, prudent policy dictates the removal of regulatory obstacles for all instead of creating marketplace disparities that would ‘cherry pick’ rights and obligations for some,” the org said. The National Assn. of Broadcasters expressed concern that the legislation would “legitimize” services like Aereo. “Copyright theft poses a very real threat to the revenue stream that supports local television and the U.S. network-affiliate relationship that is the envy of the world,” the org said. John Bergmayer, senior staff attorney at the public interest org Public Knowledge, said that the legislation “is the ambitious approach we need to ensure that the benefits of online competition come to the video marketplace. It will ensure that online video providers have access to the content they need to offer a service and the home broadband connections they need to deliver it. It would bring fairness, transparency, choice, and competition to online video.”The number of homeless adults, dependents and families is increasing The number of homeless adults, dependents and families is increasing A TOTAL OF 1,429 families were recorded as homeless in one week in July – an increase of 299 compared to the same week last year – according to figures released today. Between 24 and 30 July this year, there were 1,429 homeless families, compared to 1,130 families between 25 and 31 July last year. 2,973 dependents were recorded as homeless that week, compared to 2,348 in the same week last year. The figures were released by the Department of Housing, Planning & Local Government, which stated that “the long term solution to the current homelessness issue is to increase the supply of homes”. A department statement reiterated that the government’s housing plan – Rebuilding Ireland: Action Plan on Housing and Homelessness – aims to deliver 47,000 units by 2021. Over 3,000 people exited homelessness into independent tenancies in 2016, the statement said, with over 1,800 people doing so in the first half of this year. However, the problem is still worsening, with an increase of 1,010 people accessing emergency accommodation in the week under focus in July, compared to the same week last year. Focus Ireland said that the “dreadful” figures showed the Rebuilding Ireland strategy was failing to deal with the crisis. Focus Ireland Advocacy Director Mike Allen said: The time has now come for the Government to take the decisions it has shied away from for several years. This includes actively building social housing, taxing those who hoard building land and protecting the rights of tenants facing eviction. 5,187 homeless adults accessed emergency accommodation during the week in July detailed in the department’s figures, with 3,
10? Is that the end of the "edge"? Although Hejduk disagrees, anything less than a US win and Columbus wouldn't be nearly such an automatic when 2017 rolls around. And by then it will be even harder to pass over places like Seattle, Portland and Kansas City for this match. READ: A history of USA vs. Mexico in Columbus "If we don't get the result [on Sept. 10], and odds are we will – let's stay positive, I still think it's an edge," Hejduk said about Columbus. "The players feel comfortable against Mexico in Crew Stadium, for whatever reason." But with the cutthroat scrap for USMNT matches among the multitude of new soccer stadiums that have sprouted around the country, "for whatever reason" is probably not going to cut it anymore for Crew Stadium. And if Sept. 10 does represent the final chapter of USA-Mexico in Columbus, we'll always have "Dos a Cero," a phrase that will forever be identified with a very particular era of American soccer: the USA's first successful spell as CONCACAF's top nation in the modern era. And it all materialized in MLS' first soccer-specific stadium, the symbolic foundation for the high expectations heaped on Klinsmann's squad today. And by the way, if the USA is as far along as everyone imagines from that momentous Feb. 28 back in 2001, then beating Mexico shouldn't have to depend on mind games. Or Columbus Crew Stadium.On Monday, the launch of the WWE Network in the United Kingdom was delayed indefinitely just 20 minutes before it was set to go live. Many people were pointing fingers at Sky Sports, which carries WWE programming and pay-per-views in the UK. Dave Meltzer stated on Wrestling Observer Radio that Sky was unhappy about WWE giving away Survivor Series for free on the Network, when Sky Box Office would be selling the same show at £14.95. Since then, Sky.com community manager issued the following statement denying any involvement: “Hi all, Please be advised that the the delay on the WWE Network is in no way related to Sky. As previously advised, this is an independent service which Sky will not be providing.” Furthermore, Sky’s social media team (@SkyHelpTeam) also commented on the situation: “@jordanwwe19 Good afternoon, Jordan. Thanks for the tweet :) We understand that the WWE Network release date has been delayed and this isn’t a decision that we have made and instead it was made by the WWE. You can get some confirmation on this here on our Community Forum. I appreciate that the delay is frustrating and would suggest directing any questions about it to the WWE themselves. If there is anything else I can do for you today, please let me know.” WWE has yet to elaborate on why the Network was delayed once again in the UK.Samantha Donovan reported this story on Monday, February 17, 2014 12:50:00 ELEANOR HALL: To Victoria now, where school principals are calling on the State's Education Department to drop the requirement for religious education in schools. As with some other states, Victorian primary schools are obliged to offer "special religious instruction", provided approved instructors are available. But a growing number of school principals is ignoring that requirement because of concerns about the quality of instruction on offer. In Melbourne, Samantha Donovan reports. SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Joe Kelly has been the principal of Cranbourne South Primary School in Melbourne's outer south-east for 15 years. He says after years of complying with the requirement that his school offer religious instruction he recently changed his mind. JOE KELLY: I was blindly accepting and approving these activities in my school until I started taking a closer look at the material and an even closer look at the actual sessions that the volunteers were conducting. I concluded that the material and the associated teachers and teaching methods simply do not reach the standard of quality educational practise that this school requires. SAMANTHA DONOVAN: The people I believe offering the classes aren't qualified teachers? JOE KELLY: No, they're not. They undertake, I believe, up to six hours of initial training. They're usually, from the best of my knowledge, volunteers from the local church group… SAMANTHA DONOVAN: What was it about the materials that bothered you? JOE KELLY: The most significant part is that my own school is nationally, and even internationally, recognised for its work that we do with cooperative learning. This is where we're expecting and asking and giving children to work together very cooperatively in a very respectful manner to question, to ask, to analyse, to solve problems. The Access Ministry material and religious instruction, by virtue of definition, is simply counterproductive to that. It presents material in a very dogmatic manner. SAMANTHA DONOVAN: The system, I understand, in Victoria has changed, in that now parents can opt in to the classes, whereas previously it was an opt-out system. Doesn't that give parents more of an option? JOE KELLY: Yes, it does and it doesn't. It was very clear at this school that parents were very confused about what actually was on offer. Quite a number of them thought the course was a study of religion, a comparative religious course - which I have no objection to. But the course is not that - it is one, it is a course of instruction in Christian dogma, and there are children that attend this program because parents, for a whole range of reasons, either don't understand exactly what it is, I've spoken to some parents who have their children going because they don't want them sitting out in the corridors doing nothing for that period of time. I've had other parents say, look, my husband's Indian, we have our own religion, but I don't want my son to look different or to be out of sync with the rest of the class. So there's a very dysfunctional element about the whole management of it. SAMANTHA DONOVAN: Do you think the law in Victoria should be changed in relation to these classes? JOE KELLY: Yes, absolutely. The section of the act should be repealed that allows religious instruction in our schools. We really should be putting an emphasis on teaching children the history of religion and comparative religions. We certainly don't need this device of intrusion into our great public school system. SAMANTHA DONOVAN: The Victorian Education Minister Martin Dixon says the legislation to introduce special religious instruction in schools was passed in 2006 with bipartisan support. But it seems he isn't too concerned if school principals decide not to offer the program. Mr Dixon told The World Today he has full confidence in school principals making decisions in the interests of parents and the school community. ELEANOR HALL: Samantha Donovan.A former president of the UN General Assembly, John Ashe, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with taking $1.3 million in bribes from Chinese businessmen in a corruption scandal that stunned the world body. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “shocked and deeply troubled” by the charges, which were unprecedented in the UN’s 70-year history. Ashe, who served as assembly president for a year from September 2013, allegedly took bribes in exchange for backing a proposed UN conference center in Macau promoted by wealthy Chinese developer Ng Lap Seng. “Among other things, Ashe accepted over $500,000″ from Ng who was “seeking to build a multi-billion dollar, UN-sponsored conference center in Macau,” the complaint said. New York police arrested the 61-year-old former UN ambassador for Antigua and Barbuda at his home in Dobbs Ferry outside New York and three others were detained in New York early Tuesday. US Attorney Preet Bharara said Ashe was using the United Nations as a “platform for profit”, pushing for the Macau project and advancing Chinese interests in his Caribbean home country. In exchange for payments, Ashe submitted a written request to Ban “which claimed that there was a purported need to build the UN Macau Conference Center,” the complaint said. Ng and others used the March 2012 letter from Ashe to promote the conference center which was to house a “Global Business Incubator” to foster South-South cooperation in the private sector. Ashe, who holds Antiguan citizenship and is a US resident, served as ambassador when he wrote the letter, a position he held until November 2014. Francis Lorenzo, a UN deputy ambassador from the Dominican Republic, was also jailed along with Shiwei Yan and Heidi Hong Piao on multiple bribery-related counts. Last month, Ng was arrested in New York along with associate Jeff Yin for smuggling more than $4.5 million in cash into the United States over a two-year period. The six are accused of using a fake non-government organization to carry out the bribery scheme. Lorenzo, the NGO’s honorary president, was paid a $20,000 salary. – Rolex watches, tailored suits – “If proven, today’s charges will confirm that the cancer of corruption that plagues too many local and state governments infects the United Nations as well,” Bharara told a news conference. The former UN assembly chief “sold himself and the global institution he led” for Rolexes, suits and a private basketball court all paid for by the wealthy Chinese developer, said the attorney. The bribes allegedly were paid from 2011 to December 2014. Details of Ashe‘s luxurious lifestyle listed in court documents showed that he purchased two Rolex watches worth $54,000, took out a $40,000-lease for a new BMW and ordered expensive tailored suits from Hong Kong worth $59,000. Ashe received $800,000 from Chinese businessmen to advance their interests at the United Nations and with the Antigua government, the documents said. Antigua’s prime minister allegedly received a cut of the bribe money. The bribe payments also went to pay for family vacations and the construction of a basketball court at Ashe‘s house. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN officials first learned of the charges when media reports surfaced on Tuesday and had not been contacted by the US authorities to help in the investigation. “The secretary-general was shocked and deeply troubled to learn this morning of the allegations against John Ashe, which go to the heart of the integrity of the United Nations,” he said. The current president of the General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft of Denmark, said he was “deeply shocked” and declared that “the United Nations and its representatives should be held to the highest standards of transparency and ethics.” But he declined to say whether any new measures would be introduced to oversee the conduct of ambassadors and UN leaders in light of the corruption scandal. “I am in no position to investigate myself or to make new regulations without a specific decision from the General Assembly,” said Lykketoft.In the United States in 1984 a gallon of gas cost $1.10 and the average house price was $86,730. Beverly Hills Cop was the highest grossing movie and Amadeus won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. In the world of books Ironweed by William Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner took out the Man Booker Prize. Neither of these titles topped America’s popular bestseller lists though where family sagas and crime thrillers were the order of the day. 10. Lincoln by Gore Vidal Lincoln is the second sequential book in Gore Vidal’s Narratives of Empire series that was released between 1967 and 2000 (though Lincoln was actually published fourth). The series interweaves the lives of fictional characters with significant historical figures. This volume was adapted for television in 1988 and starred Sam Waterston as Abraham Lincoln and Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Todd Lincoln. 9. The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz by Joan Rivers With chapter titles including ‘Baby Bimbo’, ‘The Broad Abroad’ and ‘Hooker Housewife’, The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abromowitz is a humorous fictional biography for Rivers’ comedy character. This book, described by one reviewer as ‘good-natured, dirty fun’, spent 18 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. 8. Full Circle by Danielle Steel Renowned for writing several books a year, Danielle Steel had books on the top 10 bestselling novels list every year between 1983 and 2000. Full Circle fits the mould that made Steel an international success: ‘Tana Roberts comes of age in this turbulent decade (the sixties), and begins a journey that will lead her from New York to the South during the heat of racial unrest. A thoroughly modern young woman, she yearns for a career and is willing to sacrifice everything to get it. And it’s only much later that Tana discovers that she can have it all. Career. Love. And peace of mind. As she comes of age, at last, and comes full circle.’ 7. The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth Frederick Forsyth is an English author, journalist and commentator. He is best known for writing thrillers including the seminal assassination novel The Day of the Jackal and The Odessa File, which was a bestseller in 1973. In The Fourth Protocol, Forsyth’s fifth novel, the general secretary of the Soviet Union and British defector Kim Philby have a dangerous and wicked plan that not even the KGB know about. The task falls to MI5 Officer John Preston to save the day.The Fourth Protocol was adapted into a computer game for Commodore 64 (where the player’s goals included maintaining a filing cabinet and reading memos). 6. And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer Helen Hooven Santmyer was born in Cincinnati in 1895. She was 88 when And Ladies of the Club was published which had apparently taken her close to 50 years to write. And Ladies of the Club only sold a few hundred copies when it was first published in 1982 by Ohio State University Press, but in 1984 it was selected for the Book-of-the-Month Club with a first print run of 150,000 copies. The novel charts the story of the women involved in a study club in Waynesboro, Ohio, that goes on to play a significant role in the local community. 5. The Butter Battle Book by Dr Seuss This timely fable about an arms race was released in January 1984, the same year Dr Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel) won a special Pulitzer Prize for his contribution the education and enjoyment of America’s children and their parents. The Butter Battle Book was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and an animated version of the story was produced for television in 1989 by Ralph Bakshi. 4. Love and War by John Jakes This 1019-page tome is the second book in John Jakes’ North and South Trilogy which sold over 55 million copies in total. Set during the American Civil War, it charts the friendship of two men who meet while attending West Point Military Academy but then find themselves on opposites sides of the conflict. Jakes began writing fiction as an evening hobby to earn extra income, spending his days working in advertising as a copy writer and creative director. He went on to write almost 200 short stories and more than 60 books. 3. The Sicilian by Mario Puzo The Sicilian is Puzo’s sequel to the highly successful The Godfather. The novel features the real-life bandit/Robin Hood figure Salvatore Giuliano but is centred around fictional events. It also focuses heavily on the Corleone family, charting the time between Michael Corleone’s exile to Sicily in 1950 and his return to the United States. Puzo’s novel was adapted for the screen in 1987 but due to copyright issues this version excluded the Corleones. 2. The Aquitaine Progression by Robert Ludlum Robert Ludlum (1927–2001) was the author of 27 thriller novels and is widely considered to be a master of the genre – ‘don’t ever begin a Ludlum novel if you have to go to work the next day’ wrote one reviewer. His first novel, The Scarlatti Inheritance, was originally rejected by thirteen different publishers; today an uncorrected proof of the first edition is on sale for US$3500. In The Aquitaine Progression lawyer Joel Converse is given a message by a man he hasn’t seen in twenty years. He finds himself running for his life, unravelling a global conspiracy of coordinated violence. 1. The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub Stephen King and Peter Straub, both masters of the horror genre, decided in the late 1970s to collaborate on this, a fantasy novel. King and Straub met and worked together to write the beginning and ending. For the middle, each worked on a section for a few weeks before sending it the other. The Talisman is a classic quest story: 12 year old Jack Sawyer must travel through America and a parallel universe called ‘the territories’ in an attempt to save his mother who is dying from cancer. The original hardbound edition of The Talisman was the number one book on the New York Times Bestseller list for 12 weeks and sold over 880,000 copies in 1984 alone. A graphic novel adaptation of the book was published in 2010. * Data Source: Publishers Weekly, bestselling novels in the United States 1984 Related post: 1983’s Bestselling Books Follow @A_WritersStudioWednesday, September 23rd, 2015 at Gexa Energy Pavilion Van Halen performed at Gexa Energy Pavilion this past Wednesday, with the Kenny Wayne Shepherd band opening the evening. Van Halen has taken many incarnations since their formation in 1972, with guitarist Eddie Van Halen originally taking the spot as lead vocalist, with his brother Alex Van Halen on drums, and original bass player Mark Stone. In 1974 the band recruited vocalist David Lee Roth, and bassist Michael Anthony. Spiraling upwards in fame, the band didn’t release their debut album until 1978. As tensions grew within the band, Roth departed in 1986, seeing Sammy Hagar taking over lead vocal duties. In 1996 Hagar parted ways (due to musical differences and tensions with the bands new manager, Ray Danniels), which saw a very brief reunion with Roth, who recorded new material for the bands Greatest Hits release the same year. As rumors began of Roth joining the band, personal tensions obviously not resolved led to a dead-end. Ex-Extreme vocalist Gary Cherone joined the band the same year. After declining popularity and decreasing albums sales, Cherone parted ways in 1999, citing musical differences. After an almost five-year hiatus, Hagar re-joined the band 2003 briefly until Roth took over the helms once again in 2006, which also saw the departure of bassist Michael Anthony. Eddie Van Halen’s son, Wolfgang, has taken over bass duties ever since. Van Halen has released 12 albums in the course of their history, with the latest being 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth. The Kenny Wayne Shepherd band opened the evening. The band recently released Little Something From the Road Vol. 1, live recordings culled from the extensive 2014 tour following the release of Goin’ Home. With less than 3,000 pressed on vinyl and 1500 on CD worldwide, the album has already become a collectors item. Related articles: Experience Hendrix – Verizon Theatre – Grand Prairie, TX – March 11th, 2014 Kenny Wayne Shepherd – House of Blues – Dallas, TX – July. 20th, 2014 Photos: Daniel Work / Staff Photographer ©2008-2015 North Texas Live! Images may not be copied, printed or otherwise disseminated without express written permission of North Texas Live! or its agents.A certain Swiss man named Hans Kamper took on a voyage to Africa to join his uncle’s business, but on the way he took a detour to the Catalan city of Barcelona. Little did the young man know that once in the Catalan capital he would end up founding one of the greatest European football clubs. A club whose impact would be felt much beyond just the beautiful game and it would, in time, become the symbol of hope and resistance for an entire population. The journey for FC Barcelona began with a simple advertisement that Gamper placed in a local newspaper on 22nd October 1899, inviting players to come to town for a meeting. 11 people turned up for the meeting on 29th November and thus began the journey of Futbol Club Barcelona as the attendees were given playing and management duties at the club. And an Englishman named Walter Wild was made the first ever president of the infant club. Gamper was no unknown to football. Prior to his journey to Catalonia, he had already laid the foundation for two of the greatest Swiss clubs – FC Zurich and FC Basel. In fact, the colours blue and red of Barcelona were chosen as homage to Basel. Gamper, enamoured by his adopted city, learnt the local language and changed his name from Kamper to the Catalan sounding Gamper. A former captain of FC Basel, Gamper was a natural as a striker. His 51 games for Barcelona yielded a prolific 120 goals. Not even Lionel Messi can match that! The team won their first trophy under their inspirational founder’s leadership as they took home the Copa Macaya in 1901. However, the club soon began to experience difficulties both on and off the field. The trophies dried up and the club’s finances were in a mess, raising fears that it wouldn’t be able to survive much longer. But Gamper was made of sterner stuff. He became the club president in 1908 and led them admirably for the next 15 years, overseeing the rapid development of his project. In 1909, Barcelona moved to their first ground – the Carrer Industria with a capacity of 6000 spectators. Gamper’s astute eye for spotting talent saw him bring in the likes of Paulino Alcantara, Ricardo Zamora and Pepe Samitier amongst others. He also brought in an English manager at the helm in Jack Greenwell. The well-assembled squad went on to win numerous trophies and ushered in the first golden age for the club. However, Spain was changing fast and the rise of dictator Primo de Rivera didn’t bode well for the founder of Barcelona – a foreigner. When the club faithful jeered the Spanish anthem and then applauded God Save the Queen during a match in June 1925, it spelled great trouble for FC Barcelona. The club was forced shut and Gamper was forced into exile for allegations of promoting Catalan nationalism. The pain of being banned from his own club combined with the Great Depression of 1929 – which led to Gamper suffering huge financial losses – meant that he went on a downward spiral. It is a tragic coincidence that Gamper committed suicide on the same day as the final of the inaugural FIFA World Cup. However, FC Barcelona haven’t forgotten their founder. He has been assigned as the first soci of the club, and every summer the first team competes with a major club for a trophy named after Joan Gamper.In a rare case of gun rights and religious freedom overlapping, an Amish man from Pennsylvania is challenging a federal law that requires a photo ID to buy a firearm, saying that his religious beliefs prevent him from being photographed. Andrew Hertzler filed a suit on Friday in the US Middle District Court claiming that the photographic identification requirement violates both the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and his constitutional right to bear arms. Hertzler tried to purchase a firearm at a Pennsylvania firearm dealer with a state-issued ID. The sale was denied because the identification card didn’t have a photograph on it, which the law requires. Eight Amish men jailed for buggy crime http://ow.ly/6wTu1 — RT America (@RT_America) September 16, 2011 The suit names defendants as the federal government, US Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey, as well as Thomas E. Brandon and Christopher C. Shaffer, the acting director and the assistant director of public and government affairs, respectively, for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Hertzler is an “active and practicing” member of the Amish community in Lancaster County and desires a firearm for self-defense, according to the lawsuit. It also says that part of his Amish faith is “a sincerely held religious belief” that prevents him from having his photograph taken. “The Amish faith prohibits an individual from having his/her photograph taken,” the suit reads. “This belief stems from the Biblical passage Exodus 20:4, which mandates that ‘You shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth’, as well as the Christian belief in humility.” Hertzler could purchase firearms without photo identification by applying for a federal firearm license, which would allow him to sell, make or transfer firearms, but the suit states that he has no interest in doing that. He also attempted to reach out to Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania), who contacted the ATF, but the senator couldn’t help his constituent. Toomey said that the bureau responded by saying federal laws require photographic identification when buying a gun without exception. Hair hatred: Group charged for attacks on Amish locks http://t.co/eLnKQGrg — RT (@RT_com) August 27, 2012 This forced Hertzler to choose between foregoing his constitutional right to keep and bear arms or violates his religion, the suit says. He contends that a state’s non-photo ID, along with other documentation, should be sufficient. The federal government passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 1993, and Hertzler’s suit argues that it protects him from this type of dilemma. “By knowingly and willingly sitting for a photograph, even for a state-issued identification document, Mr. Hertzler would be violating his religion by taking a graven image of himself,” the suit read. “Thus, Mr. Hertzler’s religious freedom has been substantially burdened ‒ in order to exercise his fundamental right to possess a firearm for defense of himself and his home, the Government is requiring him to violate a major tenet of his sincerely held religious belief.”Slyvester Stallone could not stop the bust-up which saw David Arquette dragged into the scrum But the presence of Sylvester Stallone could not stop the bust-up at the game in Los Angeles which saw Hollywood star David Arquette dragged into the melee. Arquette, 38, the husband of Friends star Courteney Cox, ended up on the floor in the middle of the scrum. The devoted Los Angeles Lakers fan, a one-time wrestling champion, rushed to the aid of a bouncer who was struggling to hold back a supporter from rushing on to the pitch to celebrate their 128-107 victory over the Phoenix Suns. But as others waded in to help, the actor was caught in the scramble and knocked down. Eyewitnesses described Arquette as a “peacemaker” and “hero” for his efforts. But Arquette, who is soon to star in Scream 4, has not commented. Sly, 63, who watched the match with his 11-year-old daughter Sistine, was content to stay out of the way of the brawl.Pope Francis shakes hands with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in Yerevan's Presidential Palace, Armenia, June 24, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Medichini/Pool YEREVAN (Reuters) - Pope Francis departed from his prepared text on Friday to use the word “genocide” to describe the mass killings of Armenians in 1915, a description that infuriated Turkey when he said it a year ago. In an address to Armenia’s president and the diplomatic corps, Francis used the Armenian term ‘Metz Yeghern’ (the great evil), but then added to his prepared text “that genocide” to refer to what he also called “the first of the deplorable series of catastrophes of the past century”. There was no immediate reaction from Turkey, which last year recalled its ambassador to the Vatican after the pope used the ‘genocide’ term. The envoy was kept away for 10 months. Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during World War One, but it contests the figures and denies that the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide. It also says many Muslim Turks perished at that time. “There is no reason not to use this word in this case,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters. “The reality is clear and we never denied what the reality is.” Lombardi said the pope felt is was important for people to “understand the lessons of the past” and that it often seemed that little was learned from them. He noted that the pope has in the past lamented that the killing of Armenians in 1915 was followed by the Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews, and more recently, the mass killings in the Balkans and the Great Lakes region of Africa. After Friday night’s unscripted remarks, which delighted his Armenian hosts, there was great anticipation for what he would say on Saturday morning when he visits Tzitzernakaberd, the “Genocide Memorial and Museum” in Yerevan.Fresh off a despicable hot mic slip urging a Muslim Congressman to play up his identity for political gain, former Speaker of the House and 100-year-old Democrat Nancy Pelosi made stomachs turn during a recent town hall event hosted by CNN's Jake Tapper. Pelosi was confronted by a female college student who explained that her young mother found out she was pregnant with her in less than perfect circumstances, but she gave her up for adoption instead of aborting her. The woman bluntly asked Pelosi: Shouldn't all lives be given the same chance to thrive and succeed like I was? Now, there was no way Pelosi, being the abortion fanatic that she is, was going to concede the obvious: of course all lives matter and no one should be killed in the womb under the guise of "choice." So instead, the Democrat decided to inform the young woman that she was happy her mother had the "choice" to kill her, although she didn't choose to. Yup, seriously. Watch: "My birth mother was faced with the decision [of motherhood]… without the means of properly raising a child," said the student. "She made the most ethical decision and chose adoption. With her courageous and unselfish decision, I now have the ability to thrive. Don’t you think that everyone needs the chance to thrive and succeed in life?" Pelosi predictably pounced on the word "chose." "You said ‘my mother chose,'" said the Democrat. "And we need other people to have that, uh… to have the opportunity to choose." After spouting off about how much she loves "our children" (the ones that aren't murdered in utero), Pelosi continued along the same lines: "So I hope, uh, respecting your mother’s ability to make her choice, I hope you’ll help us help all of these children be able to thrive when their mothers make that choice to have them, as well." Again, Pelosi is referring to the children that aren't murdered in the womb. H/T Steven CrowderBangladeshi students have won four medals, including two silver and two bronze, in the 58th International Mathematical Olympiad held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Though one of the students missed out on a gold medal by one point, Bangladesh ranked 26th, while India finished 52nd, Sri Lanka 62nd, Pakistan 81st and Nepal 110th among 111 countries. Bangladesh was ranked in the 35th position last year. The silver medal winners are Asif-e-Elahi of MC College, Sylhet and Ahmed Jawad Chowdhury of Cantonment English School and College of Chittagong. The bronze winners are Tamjid Morshed Rubab of Notre Dame College and Rahul Saha of Dhaka College.Sabbir Rahman of Notre Dame College and AM Naimul Islam of Amrita Lal Dey Mohabiddyaloy were given Honourable Mentions for their scores in the competition. Muhammad Zafar Iqbal, vice president of Bangladesh Mathematical Olympiad committee, said: “Missing gold for one point is heart breaking but I will not let this to ruin my joy. I am proud of our BdMO team and congratulate everyone. “It must be fun to beat every country in our region and climb 8 steps up in world ranking,” he added. The 58th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO 2017) was held in Rio de Janeiro of Brazil from July 12 to 23. This was the first IMO to be held in Brazil. However, the history of the IMO goes back to 1959 when its first edition was held in Romania. Since then, the competition has provided a stimulus to mathematics, offering a great opportunity for the creative exchange of ideas and experiences among students from various cultures.Chicago’s iconic Willis Tower (formally the Sears Tower) is set to become a massive solar electric plant with the installation of a pilot solar electric glass project. The high-profile project on the south side of the 56th floor will replace the windows with a new type of photovoltaic glass developed by Pythagoras Solar which preserves daylighting and views while reducing heat gain and producing the same energy as a conventional solar panel. The project could grow to 2 MW in size — which is comparable to a 10 acre field of solar panels — turning North America’s tallest building into a huge urban vertical solar farm. The project is a collaboration between the tower’s owner and the manufacturer to prove the viability of the building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) system, which will also save energy by reducing heat gain and cooling costs. The new windows, dubbed high power density photovoltaic glass units (PVGU), are a clever hybrid technology that lays typical monocrystalline silicon solar cell horizontally between two layers of glass to form an individual tile. An internal plastic reflective prism directs angled sunlight onto the solar cells but allows diffuse daylight and horizontal light through. Think of it as a louvered shade which allows for views but cuts out the harsh direct sun. The manufacturer claims that the vertically integrated solar cells will produce the same amount of energy as normal rooftop-mounted solar panels. This is great news for cities that have precious little rooftop space and towering walls of glass. The product is also a potential breakthrough in energy efficiency in glass towers, where solar heat gain is the bane of energy-efficient design.It was, in consecutive days, a high-volume scoring night in the NHL. But after Auston Matthews monopolized the lamp lighting Wednesday night, quite a few were able to get in on the fun on Night No. 2. To celebrate another 24 hours free of discussion about ways to introduce more goal-scoring in the NHL, we introduce the top five goals from Thursday night's action. 5. Drouin big things Jonathan Drouin might go from four to 40 this year. Watch the comeback sniper of the year favorite lull the defense to sleep before quickly picking up his feet, turning, and letting a perfect snap shot kiss the bar over Petr Mrazek's shoulder for his first of the season. 4. Oil change Discarded former first-round picks of the Edmonton Oilers are hitting the right notes in St. Louis. Here's Nail Yakupov landing a pinpoint cross-ice feed in transition onto the stick of Magnus Paajarvi, who finds a hole in Devan Dubnyk. 3. Mad Matheson Three-on-three overtime is all skill? Tell that to Michael Matheson. The defender stuck around on the forecheck while the Panthers changed personnel and dropped an unsuspecting Damon Severson. Emerging with the puck, Matheson spotted Aleksander Barkov with a cross-crease feed for the winner. 2. Receiving Ranger This one's a little unconventional. Literally catching a chin-eye slap pass from across two lines from rookie Pavel Buchnevich in stride, Chris Kreider turns on the jets to beat Jaroslav Halak with a backhand deke. Chris Kreider scores his first goal of the season in the #Rangers 5-3 win over the Islanders! #YSMSExclusive pic.twitter.com/rVH7PYWcG3 — Your Sports Store (@yoursportsstore) October 14, 2016 1. Jets sweep Winning a jump puck at center with Justin Faulk, Blake Wheeler leads Mark Scheifele into the zone two-on-one, finding his center with a touch feed for the finish, and to complete Winnipeg's comeback over Carolina.Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota entered his name into the 2015 NFL Draft class earlier this week, and it only took a few days for the idea many have speculated about in Philadelphia for months to make it's way to the Heisman winner. "Obviously my relationship with Coach Kelly," Mariota said about potentially joining the Eagles, "it'd be a lot of fun to be a part of that offense and be a part of that team. But for me, any team that wants me to be part of their club, I'm all for it." Mariota was speaking with reporters for the first time since announcing he would enter the draft as part of a conference call for being named the 2015 recipient of the Manning Award, an honor handed out by Archie Manning and the Manning family every year to the top quarterback in college football. Mariota certainly played like the top quarterback throughout this past college season, finishing his final season at Oregon with 4,454 yards, 42 touchdowns and only four interceptions. The dual-threat also added 770 yards and 15 touchdowns on the ground. His history with Kelly, who recruited Mariota to Oregon and started him as a freshman, has led Eagles fans everywhere to hope that the team might be able to land the quarterback despite currently sitting at No. 20 overall. After the Eagles' current starting quarterback, Nick Foles, suffered through a tough 2014 season before injuring his collarbone, both Kelly and owner Jeffrey Lurie made it clear that the team needs better play from the quarterback position. Kelly's praise of Mariota has only added fuel to the fire that the team might try to trade up to get him. "He has a gift for playing football," Kelly said of Mariota last month. "He is everything you could want. He can throw the ball, he can run. He is the most talented kid I coached in college." Although there is still plenty of time before the draft, and prospects have fallen before, Mariota is currently slated by many to be the No. 1 pick. "For me it's just, whatever opportunity comes up in the NFL, I'm going to do my best to make the most of it," Mariota said of the importance of being the top pick
doing so would concede the point and make it that much easier for Romney’s team to argue that Obama is a failed president. And so, O’Malley’s comment aside, Democrats have settled on a message similar to what Brad Woodhouse, the DNC’s communications director, said on CNN this morning: The truth is though is that the American people know. I mean, we were literally a plane that was heading -- the trajectory was towards the ground when the president took over. He got the stick, he's pulled us up out of that decline. We were losing 800,000 jobs a month. Lost 3.5 millions, Americans I know have not forgotten, we lost 3.5 million jobs in the last six months of the Bush administration. We gained 4.5 million jobs over the past two and a half years. So if you just put those side by side, clearly we're better off. However, we have a long way to go. Context isn’t an easy sell in politics, especially since there’s usually little room for collective memory or foresight in mass opinion. But Obama’s argument may be an exception, because polls consistently show that Americans do remember what happened four years ago – who was president when the economy melted down, how severe and terrifying the fallout was, and how impossible the situation that Obama inherited was. There is evidence that memories of George W. Bush have translated into a benefit-of-the-doubt effect for Obama, leaving him in better political shape than in incumbent president in this economic climate should be. This is why, as Greg Sargent argued Sunday, Romney’s team may be miscalculating in depending so much on economic anxiety to push swing voters into their camp. They have the examples of 1992 and 1980, the last two times incumbent presidents were defeated for reelection, in mind, but those situations were different. The “Are you better off?” question, in fact, was basically invented in ’80, when Ronald Reagan employed it to devastating effect in his debate with Jimmy Carter. He line worked so well because inflation had nearly tripled on Carter’s watch, and unemployment had climbed nearly two points in the 18 months before the election. To the casual voter, the answer to Reagan’s question was simple and obvious. There was no room for context. It was the same in 1992. The unemployment rate had been around 5 percent when George H.W. Bush took office, but by the summer of his reelection year it had spiked to nearly 8 percent. The fall brought some signs of improvement, but it was too late for the incumbent. It sure seemed like something had happened on Bush’s watch to hurt an economy that had been working pretty well when he came to power. This is a much different election. The economy was in a freefall that hadn’t been seen since FDR’s days as Obama was taking the oath of office. If the Wall Street meltdown had played out in September 2009, Obama probably wouldn’t be getting much benefit of the doubt now. But it played out in September 2008, at the end of a presidency that the overwhelming majority of voters had decided was a disaster. This doesn’t mean Obama is in the clear; the polls are close, and even if he wins, it will probably be by a narrow margin. But “Are you better off?” doesn't automatically undermine him the way it did with Carter and Bush 41.Jaguars owner Shahid Khan suggested Thursday at a Crain’s Chicago Business conference that his fellow NFL owners may be ignoring a difficult truth. And it’s one that could hamstring the league’s capacity to come to grips with its simmering national-anthem controversy. “You’ve got a bunch of 85-year-old guys who don’t think they’re racist, but they are racist,” Khan said, according to the Chicago newspaper. Khan, 67 and a native of Lahore, Pakistan, became in 2012 the first nonwhite owner of an NFL team, after a previous attempt to purchase the St. Louis Rams failed. A Khan representative later sought to clarify his remark, explaining the business tycoon was referring to what others told him about the situation he faced as a Pakistani man breaking the ownership color barrier. Khan, who also owns the English soccer club Fulham FC and made his fortune with the Illinois-based automotive manufacturer Flex-N-Gate, lamented that some fans have come to believe that supporting the players’ First Amendment right to protest during the anthem is inconsistent with patriotism — “which is crazy” — and that President Trump, to whose inaugural committee Khan was a $1 million donor, has been taking advantage of that situation. “I think what we’re seeing,” Khan said at the Chicago event, “is the great divider overcoming the great uniter.” Khan joined Jacksonville players on the sideline before a Sept. 24 game played in London, linking arms during the national anthem in a show of solidarity.We posted the Panthers’ preseason opponents back when they were announced, but never posted an update with the dates/times of those games. So, here is that update you were promised. The Panthers open their preseason schedule in just five days when they welcome the Houston Texans to Bank of America Stadium on Wednesday, August 9 at 7:30 p.m. ET. The Panthers won’t play their starters for very long, but we’ll get a good opportunity to see the younger players in action, notably running back Christian McCaffrey. The two biggest games in the preseason — games two and three — are both on the road, so the Panthers will get a little practice in playing back-to-back away games. As always, the most important game is the third one where the Panthers will face off against their fellow 1995 expansion team (and cat brothers) — the Jacksonville Jaguars. The final preseason game, aka The Annual Richardson-Rooney Cocktail Party, will give us an opportunity to see a lot of fringe guys battling for a precious spot on the 53-man roster. Barely any starters will play in this game, but it’s still fun to watch. With the NFL’s new cut-down rule now in effect, the fourth preseason game becomes a lot more important for those 15 guys who used to be cut from the roster after the third preseason game. Anyway, here are the dates/times for the Panthers’ preseason games: Panthers vs Texans Date: Wednesday, August 9 Time: 7:30 p.m. ET TV: Panthers TV, NFL Network (live) Location: Bank of America Stadium (Charlotte, NC) Panthers at Titans Date: Saturday, August 19 Time: 3 p.m. ET TV: Panthers TV, NFL Network (replay) Location: LP Field (Nashville, TN) Panthers at Jaguars Date: Thursday, August 24 Time: 7:30 p.m. ET TV: Panthers TV, NFL Network (replay) Location: EverBank Field (Jacksonville, FL) Panthers vs Steelers Date: Thursday, August 31 Time: 7:30 p.m. ET TV: Panthers TV, NFL Network (replay) Location: Bank of America Stadium (Charlotte, NC) Which preseason game are you most excited to see, Panthers fans?In a statement, President Obama suggested he was supportive of the legislation, urging Congress to deliver a “final product that will serve as a strong signal to the executives who run these firms that such compensation will not be tolerated.” In an appearance later on “The Tonight Show” on NBC, Mr. Obama was measured in his reaction, saying he understood that Congress was “responding, I think, to everybody’s anger” but that the best way to handle the situation was “to make sure you’ve closed the door before the horse gets out of the barn.” The legislation would apply to bonuses paid to executives at companies holding at least $5 billion in bailout money and would essentially wipe out the phenomenal paydays that have been a tradition on Wall Street, at least until the firms reduce the amount they owe taxpayers to less than $5 billion. According to a tally by The New York Times of bailout recipients, employees at 11 institutions — including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase — would face restrictions immediately. Photo The current version of the Senate bill would apply to an even wider array of companies. It would tax bonuses at companies that received as little as $100 million in federal bailout assistance, though at a lower rate. In response, financial institutions that have received federal bailout money mounted a broad assault Thursday on the House legislation, which was opposed by leading Republicans. But nearly half of House Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the measure, which was approved by a 328-to-93 vote. Its backers said the companies had forced Congress to act by inexplicably handing out generous rewards to employees after tapping taxpayer funds to survive an economic calamity brought on by irresponsible and risky executive decisions. A.I.G. gave out $165 million in bonuses, saying the payments were essential to retain employees who could help the company sort out its financial problems. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “Have the recipients of these checks no shame at all?” asked Representative Earl Pomeroy, Democrat of North Dakota. Summing up his personal view of the so-far-anonymous A.I.G. executives, he said: “You are disgraced professional losers. And by the way, give us our money back.” But several executives at Wall Street banks said they were being unfairly caught up in a hasty response by Washington that would ultimately deliver a sharper blow to their companies than to A.I.G., which set off the furor. One bank executive said employees were coming into his office in tears. Several banks are considering refusing to participate in government financial rescue programs if the bill passes, according to a person briefed on the banks’ plans. Hedge fund and private equity firms may also be hesitant to work in partnership with the government to purchase bad assets from banks — a central component of the Treasury Department’s coming financial recovery plan — if they think the government might later add restrictions on their pay. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. “If this stands, you will destroy the value of institutions where the government is an owner,” said Orin Kramer, who runs a hedge fund and helps oversee the New Jersey pension plan. “You will drive people away from being willing to do business with the government,” said Mr. Kramer, a prominent fund-raiser for Mr. Obama. Members of both parties raised doubt about whether the legislation could survive a court challenge, saying it was tantamount to a retroactive “bill of attainder,” which is banned by the Constitution. Even backers of the bill acknowledged it amounted to an extraordinary use of tax law. “It is an extreme use of the tax code to correct an extreme and excessive wrong done to the American taxpayer,” said Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, senior Republican on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, who backed the measure despite reservations. Photo But experts on constitutional and tax law said it was likely the House bill could pass muster. Numerous court rulings have upheld retroactive tax provisions, particularly over short periods. The House bill applies back only to Jan. 1, 2009. The measure is also strengthened by the fact that it does not apply to just one company or group of individuals, and does not take aim only at past bonuses but also bonuses to be paid in the future, experts said. The effort to impose the tax was led by the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, who just days earlier had expressed reluctance at using the tax code for this purpose. Mr. Rangel has also sought donations from A.I.G. for a public policy institute at City College in New York that will bear his name. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But on Thursday Mr. Rangel said that the executives were “getting away with murder.” “They are getting paid for the destruction they have caused our communities,” he said. Bank executives, who requested anonymity because they did not want to further alienate lawmakers, said their employees were on edge and many would face severe financial hardship if they were severely taxed on money already paid. “It’ll impact tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of people,” said Alan Johnson, managing director at Johnson Associates, a compensation consulting firm in New York, noting that the tax would apply to a bonus recipient with family income of more than $250,000. “If you’re a receptionist and your husband is a doctor, your $5,000 bonus just vaporized. It’s not just the C.E.O.’s.” Led by Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the party leader, several House Republicans assailed the legislation, calling it a diversion by Democrats eager to escape scrutiny for failing to block the bonuses. They also pointed to a last-minute addition to the economic stimulus legislation approved in February that appeared to restrict the federal government’s ability to block bonuses for the most senior executives if they were negotiated into contracts before Feb. 11, including some at A.I.G. “This bill is nothing more than an attempt for everybody to cover their butt up here on Capitol Hill,” Mr. Boehner said. “It’s full of loopholes. A lot of these people who are getting these bonuses likely live in London. And it’s not clear how raising this tax is going to recover that money.” But their attacks were somewhat undermined by the fact that 85 Republicans, including Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 party leader, ended up backing the new tax, suggesting they wanted to be seen as restricting the bonuses even as others in the party were trying to hit Democrats over the issue. In all, 87 Republicans opposed the bill. Senator Reid said he hoped Congress could send a final tax bill to Mr. Obama by Easter.Gabriel Stacy and Sarah Stacy are the fictional twin children of Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Both first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #509 (August 2004) and appeared in The Spectacular Spider-Man, while the former only appeared in the limited series Amazing Spider-Man presents: American Son. Fictional character biography [ edit ] The story arc "Sins Past" by J. Michael Straczynski in The Amazing Spider-Man #509-514 (August 2004 - January 2005) reveals that Norman Osborn, Green Goblin's alter ego, fathered twins with Gwen Stacy, a boy and a girl to whom she gave birth while in France shortly before her death. Gwen vowed she would raise them with Peter Parker and refused to allow Norman access to them, seeing Norman's disregard for his eldest son.[volume & issue needed] Seeing her as a threat to his potential heirs, Green Goblin killed Gwen. Norman then raised Gwen's two children, a boy named Gabriel and a girl named Sarah. Due to Norman's enhanced blood, the twins aged about 2-3 times faster than normal and became adults within the span of a few years (speculated to be between 5 and 9 years old), and thus develop a unique form of progeria. Osborn told them that Peter was really their father and was responsible for their mother's death.[volume & issue needed] The twins then attack Spider-Man, and he subsequently deduces their true identities thanks to a note they sent him that had been written by Gwen while she was in Paris. However, seeking to confirm it, Peter goes to Gwen's grave and digs up a sample of her DNA to compare to the twin's DNA which was obtained from the envelope of the letter. During a brief confrontation with Sarah just after the DNA analysis completed, Peter learns that she clearly resembles her mother, but is forced to escape when Gabriel attacks. Spider-Man tells Mary Jane Watson about his initial encounter with Gabriel and Sarah, whereupon Mary Jane reveals that she knew about Norman's involvement with Gwen and tells all to Peter. She has kept it from him all these years because Gwen was distraught and begged her not to say anything, as well as not wanting to taint Peter's memory of the only woman he ever loved as much as- if not more than- he loves her.[volume & issue needed] Arranging a press conference, Spider-Man tells the twins to meet him on the bridge where Gwen died, where he tells them the truth about their origins. Sarah believes Spider-Man — concluding that he would never have dug up Gwen's grave to acquire a DNA sample if he thought there was even a chance that he was their father, Spider-Man having never even run his own DNA against theirs because he and Gwen never reached that stage in their relationship — but Gabriel does not, resulting in him attempting to attack Spider-Man only to accidentally shoot Sarah. With their metabolisms out of control due to the Green Goblin formula they inherited from Osborn, Gabriel returns to a secret base that Osborn told them to travel to after they had completed their mission, taking the Green Goblin formula and briefly becoming the Grey Goblin - the formula apparently stabilizing his aging problem at the cost of what remains of his sanity - while Sarah is taken to hospital and is given a transfusion of Spider-Man's blood while in the hospital. Spider-Man's abnormal blood also serving to stabilize her condition, both physically and mentally (with Mary Jane imagining Spider-Man 'kicking Norman's ass' on a cellular level as his blood defeats the anomalies created by the Green Goblin formula in Sarah's system). When Grey Goblin tries to attack the weakened Spider-Man, Sarah shoots Grey Goblin's glider, recognising that Spider-Man is not responsible for their mother's death, causing an explosion that results in her brother vanishing. Sarah flees from the hospital, while Gabriel is later found washed up on a beach with no memory of what happened.[volume & issue needed] A follow-up story to "Sins Past" was published in The Spectacular Spider-Man (Vol. 2) issues #23-26 (December 2004-March 2005), titled "Sins Remembered" written by Samm Barnes with art by Scot Eaton. Spinning directly out of the events of The Amazing Spider-Man #509-514, Spider-Man locates Sarah in Paris, where Sarah has her brother (suffering from amnesia) restrained in her home. With the help of Spider-Man and Interpol, Sarah helps build a case against a criminal called Monsieur Dupres in exchange for the Interpol's help with her rapid-aging disease which is causing her, and Gabriel, severe headaches. However, during this time Gabriel escapes, prompting Sarah to join Interpol in hopes of finding her brother.[volume & issue needed] This story arc was later collected as a trade paperback in 2005 as The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol. 5: Sins Remembered (ISBN 0-7851-1628-1). Brand New Day [ edit ] J. Michael Straczynski ultimately wished to retcon the characters out of existence using the events of the "One More Day" story arc, but was not permitted to do so.[1] Jackpot refers to new villain Menace as the "Grey Goblin" and Spider-Man reacts by saying "I've got enough problems without yet another Gray Goblin to deal with".[2] Later, one of Norman's male test subjects is identified as "G. Stacy", yet Spider-Man states that Harry Osborn is Norman's "only son" (although this may have been metaphorical).[3] It's stated that only a woman who has taken his Green Goblin serum can be impregnated, which contradicts how the twins were conceived.[4] Lastly, Molecule Man's torment of the Dark Avengers includes Iron Patriot hallucinating a pregnant Gwen Stacy about to be killed.[5] Gabriel Stacy officially returned in the American Son mini-series (although Sarah Stacy's whereabouts are still unknown). He introduces himself to Harry Osborn then shoots his half-brother in the chest.[6] But American Son appears and saves Harry. After his attempt on Harry's life, Gabriel confronts the American Son battle suit and demands to know why "he" interfered.[7] It is subsequently revealed that Gabriel has stolen the American Son armor, but is now suffering from a split personality, committing crimes as himself while American Son undoes the damage he has caused, identifying itself as the part of Gabriel that recognizes that what he is doing is wrong.[8] Gabriel hears a planned ambush by a police squad and proceeds to attack them; before he can do any real damage, however, he is stopped by Spider-Man. Later, after kidnapping a reporter named Norah and luring Harry to a vacant warehouse, Gabriel makes another attempt on Harry's life. While locked in combat with Harry, the two discuss their respective views of their father. Harry attempts to convince Gabriel that Norman is an evil monster who only craves death and power while Gabriel tells Harry that he's a waste of Norman's bloodline. Saddened by his inability to reach Gabriel, Harry reveals that he hacked into the American Son armor and quickly over powers Gabriel. After Gabriel is defeated the warehouse is set on fire and both men are saved by Spider-Man and a police squad. Following his capture, Gabriel is placed in a psychiatric hospital, and informed that the American Son suit is thought to be destroyed. However, a package is soon delivered to his room containing the American Son helmet and a note from Norman telling him that he loves Gabriel and misses his son.[9] Powers and abilities [ edit ] Due to Norman Osborn's enhanced blood, Gabriel and Sarah aged about 2-3 times faster than normal and became adults within the span of a few years. This enhanced blood also gave the twins a slight increase in strength, reflexes, healing and endurance. But the aging causes the twins to suffer severe headaches. Sarah's condition is stabilized through a blood transfusion from Spider-Man, leaving her significantly more mentally stable (although her precise strength level is unclear). Gabriel later took the Green Goblin serum to have his condition stabilized and to become the "Grey Goblin" which granted him further increased superhuman strength while also driving him insane. He adopts the Green Goblin's Halloween-themed appearance, dressing in a goblin costume and using an arsenal of high-tech weapons, notably grenade-like "Pumpkin Bombs" and a bat-shaped "goblin glider". He later acquired the 'American Son' armor which granted him further strength and stamina. Character development [ edit ] J. Michael Straczynski later stated that he originally wanted Peter Parker to be the father of Gwen Stacy's kids but the editors vetoed the idea. They felt that it would age Peter Parker too much if he had two adult children. It was then decided by the whole creative and editorial team that Norman Osborn would be the father.[10] In other media [ edit ] Grey Goblin appears in Spider-Man Unlimited as an alternative version of Green Goblin.UPDATE 9/17/2010: We are pleased to be able to give away 500 additional keys for the Vindictus Early Access Beta program. Please follow the directions below to get your key. Once you register your Vindictus beta key, you should receive an email with two additional keys to share with your friends. We encourage you to visit ourforum threadto share the love. Thank you for your patience. We hope you enjoy the beta! - Tyler Nagata UPDATE 9/16/2010: We have run out of keys to distribute for the Vindictus Early Access Beta program. But don't panic! We have just contacted Nexon and it sounds like there’s a good chance that we will be able to receive more keys soon. If you alreadyhave a beta key, you should have received an additional key to share with others. So in the meantime, we’ve set up aforum threadso that folks can share their keys with others interested in playing. Thank you for your patience. We will update this article again as soon as we hear back from Nexon. It’s easy to overlook quality free-to-play titles. That’s why we’re excited to give away free beta keys for Vindictus, the latest title from Nexon. We think you’ll like it. A lot. Vindictus looks incredible for a free-to-play game, mixing hack-n-slashy combos with Diablo-esque dungeon diving. That’s partly why GamesRadar gave Nexon America our award for the ‘Best Booth We Didn’t Expect’ at E3 2010. But enough talk. Scroll on down, get yourself a beta key, and try it out for yourself. Above: While you’re downloading the Vindictus client, you can also check out our most recenthands-on previewof Vindictus Above: Vindictus controls like an MMO, but it plays like a third-person action title NOTE: The early access beta for Vindictus is for North American users only How to get your early access beta key 1. Login to www.GamesRadar.com. If you’re not already a member,click hereto register. It only takes a minute. 2. Head to ourVindictus Beta Key Pageto get your early access beta key. 3. Make a note of your code before closing your browser window. The code will only be displayed once. How to start playing Vindictus 1. If you don’t already have one, you’ll need a Nexon Passport ID. You can sign up for onehere. 2. Head to theEarly Access Open Beta pageto register your beta key. 3. Headhereto download the client. 4. Enjoy the beta! System Requirements Worried about whether or not your PC can run Vindictus. Check the minimum and recommended system requirements below. You should also check out the latesttutorial poston the Vindictus blog, which has some nice tips and tricks for running the game with a low spec PC. Minimum OS: Windows 2000 CPU: Single Core 2.4 GHz RAM: 512MB HDD: Over 5GB of free space GPU: Nvidia GeForce 5xxx Series Network: Broadband recommended Recommended OS: Windows XP or higher CPU: Duo Core or higher RAM: 1GB or higher HDD: Over 6GB of free space GPU: Nvidia GeForce 7xxx Series Network: Broadband recommended Sep 15, 2010 Nexon’s Vindictus shows why free-to-play matters Action/MMO was one of the most impressive and overlooked games on show at E3 2010 WTF Flash Games Procrastinate in style with the most bizarre, perverted, and fun Flash titles on the netIn celebration of Colin Baker’s birthday today, we have some special offers on several of his works for Big Finish. Happy Birthday Colin Baker! Colin has not only played the Sixth Doctor since the very early days of Big Finish in The Sirens of Time in July 1999, but he has also worked on a number of other Big Finish stories. His earliest appearance was in Birthright, one of the Continued Adventures of Bernice Summerfield with Lisa Bowerman. Colin plays Russian detective Mikhail Vladamir Popov, and is the second part of the Time Ring trilogy. It’s now available for £4 on CD, just for today! To hear about Colin’s illustrious career, and more about the man himself, you can catch him in converstaion with Nicholas Briggs in This is Colin Baker. Colin joins Alexander Vlahos in The Confessions of Dorian Grey, in The Mayfair Monster, available for download at £4. Written by James Goss, Colin starred in two Dark Shadows releases, The Harvest of Souls and The House by the Sea, where he plays Gerald Conway, and the town of Collinsport haunts heavily over him... He also stars with Louise Jameson in one of Big Finish’s Drama Showcases, Pulling Faces Joanne Taylor - former TV Diva (played by Louise Jameson) - is on the verge of her fifty-somethingth birthday, seriously single, 'hot-flushing' and about to make some drastic changes in her life. Pulling Faces is an acerbic, topical comedy about society’s obsession with youth, beauty and transformation. He’s also appeared in The Avengers: The Lost Episodes boxsets, which are both available at £20 on CD or £15 on download. Listen to the trailer from Volume 2: And Volume 1: The single stories are all available for £5 on CD or £4 on Download, and The Avengers Boxsets are up for grabs at £20 on CD and £15 on Download. Or all these releases can be purchased as a bundle at £64 (plus £12 postage) on CD (this includes a download copy of The Mayfair Monster), or as Download Birthday Bundle at £48 (note that this doesn’t include Birthright). As a birthday celebration, they’re only around for 24 hours at these prices, so move fast!The No. 3 Sam Houston State University Bearkat football team dropped a tough game in Conway to the No. 12 University of Central Arkansas Bears 41-30 in a showdown between two Southland Conference powerhouses. The loss to UCA was the Kats’ first loss in conference play since Nov. 7, 2015. The Bearkats’ troubles started early as they had a rocky start when senior quarterback Jeremiah Briscoe was intercepted by UCA senior cornerback Tremon Smith just 1:21 into the game. The pick-six gave the Bears an early 7-0 lead. SHSU would never be able to grab a lead as UCA led from start to finish. SHSU tried to answer the call as they got a big first down on their second drive following a great catch by senior wide receiver Yedidiah Louis on a pass deflected by Bears’ junior defensive back Michael Ware. Briscoe would take a shot downfield on the next play and connect with wide receiver Nathan Stewart who made a great catch to complete the 34-yard touchdown pass. With the game tied 7-7, UCA’s offense would take the field for the first time. A big run by redshirt freshman running back Kierre Crossley followed by a Bearkat penalty would put UCA deep in SHSU territory. Senior quarterback Hayden Hildebrand would find junior running back Cedric Battle for a 25-yard touchdown pass as UCA took a 14-7 lead with 9:46 left in the first quarter. The Bears’ defense made an impact on the next possession as Briscoe was sacked inside of his own five-yard line. After a timeout by head coach K.C. Keeler, Briscoe stood in the pocket on third down and 21 to find Stewart for a 41-yard pass play and a first down to keep the drive alive. The drive would eventually stall, however, and SHSU would be forced to punt. The Bearkat defense would force a three-and-out as the offense set up shop with great field position at their own 47-yard line. SHSU would go for it on fourth down in the red zone and come up short, turning the ball over to UCA at their own 13-yard line with 2:58 remaining in the opening quarter. Crossley’s legs would continue to give the Bearkat defense trouble as a pair of back-to-back runs got UCA into SHSU territory, but the drive would stall as UCA would be forced to punt. The first quarter would come to an end with UCA leading SHSU 14-7. This marked the first time the Bearkats trailed any Southland Conference opponent at the end of the first quarter in a game since 2014. “Offensively, we didn’t get in great rhythm,” Keeler said. “When we subbed, the officials were really holding the clock. Everyone has a tempo to the game, and that was the tempo they were giving us.” The Bearkats first drive of the second quarter would end with a punt from the shadow of their own end zone as UCA’s drive would start in SHSU territory. It would take just one snap for Hildebrand to find Battle for their second touchdown connection of the game, this time for 46 yards as the Bears pushed their lead to 21-7 with 14:34 to play in the second quarter. After another drive stalled for SHSU, senior defensive lineman P.J. Hall would come up with a tackle in the backfield as he dropped Hildebrand for a loss of five yards. The defense would feed off of that momentum to force a three-and-out, and the Bearkats would start the next drive on their own 40-yard line. The offense would continue to struggle, though, as SHSU would run three plays for a total of -3 yards and be forced to punt once again after a three-and-out of their own. The Bearkat defense would hold strong and continue to do what they could to stop UCA as they would force another Bears’ punt to get the ball back to Briscoe and the offense. With offensive struggles lingering, SHSU would find themselves staring at a fourth down and one from their own 34-yard line with 7:30 left in the first half. Keeler would elect to leave his offense on the field, and SHSU would pick up the first down. That conversion would seem to awaken the Bearkats offense. The next two plays would yield back-to-back first downs, but the struggles would return and they would face a fourth down and ten. Briscoe once again stayed out there and surprisingly handed the ball off to senior running back Corey Avery who picked up 12 yards as he moved the chains inside the red zone. Despite a pair of fourth down conversions, SHSU would be forced to settle for a 36-yard field goal by junior kicker Tre Honshtein that would close the gap to 21-10. UCA would respond quickly as Hildebrand would find freshman wide receiver Brandon Myers for a 74-yd touchdown pass. The Bears would need just two plays on the 39 second drive to push their lead out to 28-10 with 3:34 to go in the first half. Sophomore wide receiver Jaylen Harris would find some space on the kickoff return to set up the Bearkats drive at their own 42-yard line. Briscoe would hook up with Stewart for a 39-yard pitch and catch for their second touchdown connection of the night. That quick strike would close the gap to 28-17 with 1:46 remaining in the half. A pair of deep passes by Hildebrand would move the Bears down the field quickly and set up a first and goal for UCA at the SHSU five-yard line with :38 left. SHSU would make a strong goal line stand, and UCA junior kicker Matt Cummins would tack on a 17-yard field goal as the Bears would take a 31-17 lead over the Bearkats into halftime. “James Madison put out the blueprint,” Briscoe said. “People want to beat us playing man coverage, that should be a slap in the face to us offensively. Tonight they made more plays than we did.” Battle picked up right where he left off, returning the second half kickoff to the UCA 40-yard line to give the Bears offense good starting field position. The miscues would continue for SHSU as a pass interference penalty would push the Bears across midfield. The drive would end with a 33-yard field goal as UCA’s lead would swell to 34-17 with 10:06 in the third quarter. The Bearkats would string together a series of positive plays on the next drive to move down the field, but the momentum would swing back to UCA as Smith would pick off a pass from Briscoe for his second interception of the game. The Bears would be unable to score any points off of the turnover, and SHSU would finally be able to take advantage of an opportunity. After a pass interference call against UCA in the end zone kept the Bearkats drive alive, Briscoe connected with Stewart on a two-yard touchdown pass for Stewart’s third touchdown reception of the night. The extra point would narrow the deficit to 34-24 with 2:07 remaining in the third quarter. That touchdown pass by Briscoe would tie him with Brian Bell for the all-time SHSU career record of 84. SHSU would field a punt from UCA to begin the fourth quarter down 34-24. The Bearkats would cap off a 10-play, 84-yard drive with a 20-yard touchdown run by Avery. A missed extra point would keep the deficit at four points as SHSU still trailed 34-30 with 12:20 left in the game. The touchdown run by Avery made him the first 100-yard rusher in a game for the Bearkats this season. SHSU would suffer a major miscue with 9:25 in the fourth quarter. As the Bearkats lined up to punt, the snap went over the punter’s head and UCA would take over on downs inside the SHSU 20 yard line. The Bears would extend their lead to 41-30 on a 17-yard touchdown pass from Hildebrand to senior wide receiver Brandon Cox. SHSU would get the ball back with 3:45 left to play but would be unable to get anything going. The drive would last four plays for a total of -6 yards as the Bearkats would turn the ball over on downs at their own 40 yard line. With SHSU out of timeouts, UCA would turn to their ground game and sophomore running back Carlos Blackman would pick up the first down to seal the deal for the Bears. “Hats off to Central Arkansas. I thought they played an outstanding game,” Keeler said. “I think our kids quite honestly heard all week about how we couldn’t be beaten because of what we did to Nicholls, and obviously that wasn’t so.” SHSU could not overcome their two turnovers (both coming on interceptions by Briscoe) and their 12 penalties that set them back 135 yards. The Bearkats seemed to fall short in all three phases of the game as UCA ultimately pulled out the 41-30 victory, dropping the Bearkats to 3-1 overall. “We got exposed in all phases of the game,” Briscoe said. “That’s what happens when you come in a little too loose and laid back and you get exposed and you get beat.” SHSU turns its attention to the annual Battle of the Piney Woods against Stephen F. Austin next Saturday at NRG Stadium in Houston. Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. and the game will be televised on ESPN3.In a New York Times Magazine article about the future of the Democratic Party, Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked what he thinks the party stands for. “You’re asking a good question, and I can’t give you a definitive answer. Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long
why Laurel Lance? Guggenheim: Obviously, “Arrow” is always a show that’s evolving. It’s always a show where every character, arguably except for the Arrow, is fair game. We started off this year with the promise of a death, and when we worked our way through our various different creative choices, we realized that the thing that will give us the most pop, going into the end of the season and into next season, unfortunately would be Laurel. By the way, we knew that it would enrage a lot of people. We’re not [blind] to the shipping, and we’re not [blind] to the internet controversy … But we’ve never made decisions on the show, creatively, because of the internet. One of the things we knew people would think was, “In the season where Oliver and Felicity get engaged and Laurel dies, that’s clearly making a choice about who’s going to end up with who.” And truth be told, we told the Laurel-Oliver romance story in Season 1 … and we never really thought about going back to it. So, the shipping thing was not an element. It was not a factor for us. And we recognize that that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans. In the comics, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen, depending on which version of the character you like, are in a romance together, in various iterations. That, to some people, is considered canonical and iconic, and we respect that. But at the same time, we’ve always made no bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos. The Green Arrow has had so many different interpretations, and Black Canary has had so many different interpretations, over the years, that we never felt beholden to one particular interpretation. This is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize that there are plenty of people, up and down my Twitter feed, who do not like it, and I totally respect that. It just made the most creative sense for us, going forward, despite the fact that we absolutely love Katie. Not getting a chance to work with Katie, day in and day out, is tempered by the fact that we now live in a universe where there’s resurrection, parallel Earths, time travel and flashbacks. We have all these different ways of keeping Katie in the “Arrow”-verse family. In fact, you will see her on an episode of “The Flash”, playing the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance. Katie is reprising her role as Laurel in Earth-1 to be in “Vixen” Season 2. Death does not mean goodbye on any of these shows, but we’ve made a creative choice and we’re sticking to it. We’re recognizing that Black Canary and Laurel have an incredibly loyal fan base, and Katie has an incredibly loyal fan base, but the show has never been just about the comic book history, it’s never been just about one or two different particular fan bases. We make the creative choices we feel benefit the show as a whole, and the story that we’re telling overall. Quentin has lost Sara twice, only to get her back, and now he’s lost Laurel. Can you talk about how that impacts him? Blackthorne: From a character point of view… Quentin’s point of view is almost like that of the audience’s going, “What the hell is going on ‘round here?” This year, there’s all the outrageousness with the magic and all this stuff. He can’t really take it on as a reality, but if this is the result of what’s going on, than I have to deal with it. He can’t really accept it, but he has to accept that it is happening. And with these deaths, with Sara’s reprisal through magic and the Lazarus Pit, while it’s all a bit for Quentin to reconcile as something that could truly be happening, it is happening, therefore he’ll deal with it. We started things off with [Sara] being “dead.” So, there’s always been a world of, “Sara’s dead,” and then, “Oh, but she’s back,” and then, “Sara’s dead again,” and then, “Oh, my god, she’s back again,” but it was always based in her being dead, since we began. This death, of course, is just devastating for Lance because this is not the one that was ever supposed to happen. How could this ever be on the books? Personally, I was almost as devastated as Lance, to be honest, with the news of this happening. Katie and I have had such an amazing working relationship that it really is hard to accept that I’m going to be going to work without [her] to work with. That, as an aside, is slightly annoying. But in terms of Quentin, he’s going to have to pick up the pieces, not pick up a bottle, and reconcile what’s left in his life. With that, he’s got the Arrow family. That will be where he’ll have to find his anchor now, from here on in, without his beautiful daughter. Katie, can you talk about the emotions of shooting your death scene, and the last scene you shot? Cassidy: I found out that this was the choice, creatively, that was going to be made and obviously I talked to Marc and Greg and Wendy and I actually had found out right before the court scenes – that day we shot in the court. Blackthorne: And that’s when you told me, yeah. Cassidy: Which was hard. I remember I was like “okay, I need to put this on the backburner for now,” because I had a huge day of all legal jargon and a lot. But it actually worked out really well because in the next episode, 19, I’m actually in the episode and it’s a lot of flashbacks. And emotionally it’s interesting because that scene that you see when I’m in the hospital and I say goodbye, I say to the team, “I never wanted this, I was thinking up giving up the Black Canary and I couldn’t do it,” honestly, that scene was definitely so real, shooting it, because it was my saying goodbye to the team … So it definitely wasn’t difficult for me to get to that emotional point. For sure it was hard, but it was very real and it was good, it was genuine. And then the last scene I think I shot was… we had to do a reshoot, actually, of when I actually die, when Darhk stabs the Black Canary, and that was a week after, I think? That was the very last scene that we shot, and it was so weird because I remember we had broken for lunch, we came back – I was running to set and putting on my jacket and my gloves and they were just calling me to set to show wrap me, and I didn’t know I was done and it was just sort of a bit of a shock. But it was good, I feel like there was no other way I would want it to go. Blackthorne: Can I just add something? In terms of, when you find out news like this, it’s rather annoying and very devastating and all the rest of it – you’re going to lose a cast member such as Katie, but at the same time, it was such a shock, certainly to me and I think to everybody, when the news came out, that you’re thinking “god, we’re right in the middle of this thing and it was shocking. What’s it gonna be to the audience?’’ and in terms of fantastic story, as awful as it is that Black Canary’s the sacrifice, in terms of story, it’s like wham – and if that’s not what story’s about, then what is it about? So in terms of the element of this story, it’s an amazing turn to throw at the audience and people aren’t expecting it, and it’s fantastic. If it shocked us that much, what’s it going to do to the audience? It’s great story. Marc, you said the death was permanent – but since Katie is appearing on “Flash” and “Vixen,” do you feel that cheapens the death, because it isn’t technically permanent? Guggenheim: I think the thing we’ve recognized ever since the Lazarus Pit, parallel universes, etcetera, etcetera, is we definitely recognize, across all three shows, that when we kill off a character, it means something different now. I’m not gonna put a qualitative judgment on whether it is more or less impactful, I’ll leave that to the audience and to you guys, but certainly we acknowledge that there’s a difference. And I think “Arrow,” much more so than “Flash” or “Legends,” for a lot of the reasons Paul was saying, it traffics in death. We start off the series with the apparent death of Sara Lance and the actual death of Robert Queen, and a hero that murdered people. For better or for worse, death is part of the show. What we’re finding is that death now – and as it should when you start to get, as we are, pushing into Season 5 – the show has to evolve, it has to change, and the concept of death on the show is evolving and changing, as we’ve already seen with Sara Lance and we’ve already seen with seeing Laurel in a parallel universe. There’s a world where we do an episode where Oliver Queen meets the Laurel Lance of Earth-2 — that’s now on the table. Time travel is now on the table. As the show has evolved, so has death, and I’ll leave it to you guys to decide if death is more or less impactful as a result. How suspicious should viewers be that Laurel was fine, she asked Oliver for a favor that we didn’t hear, and then she was dead. Is there any wiggle room there? Guggenheim: That’s the joke I’ve been making, quite frankly: Oliver Queen killed her! But that was not… again, there are certain coins of the realm on our show. Death is one of them. Mysteries and secrets are another. Certainly, “what did Laurel say to Oliver?” But we didn’t intend for it to be like, she asked Oliver to euthanize her. No room that Oliver drugged her and faked her death? Guggenheim: No. We’ve done that. We’ve done a fake death before. And that’s the thing: we’re always trying to figure out what’s the way to do this. That fake-out where she was OK and then she wasn’t, that was, again, our attempt at “how do we do a death we haven’t done before?” We’ve had people killed right in front of Oliver; we’ve faked a death; we’ve had someone be fatally injured and then Oliver arrives on the scene. “Walking Dead” has this problem, too, which I suppose [the finale] episode indicates. I shouldn’t say a problem: a creative challenge. The deeper you get into your story… “Game of Thrones,” also. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Jon Snow, but that is also probably going to change things. It’s the nature of having a long-running show that deals, with a major component of it, with death. How long before we know what was said? Mericle: You’ll know in Season 5. You say the internet doesn’t impact your storytelling… Guggenheim: I also know the internet doesn’t believe me when I say that. [Laughs.] Laurel is a somewhat divisive character among portions of the fanbase, so why did you think this would give you pop? MG: Let me be clear: when I say this gives us a lot of pop, I don’t mean on the internet or publicity. I mean creatively for the show. Every time we’ve killed off a character on the show, it’s really been for the effect it has on all the characters left behind. I don’t want to spoil the end of Season 4, or what we have planned for Season 5 — which we’re already in the room working on — but the way we describe it, and you guys have been in enough of these screenings to know that this is a favorite phrase of ours, is the creative math. How “divisive” Laurel is as a character on Twitter, that’s not a factor. And truth be told, Twitter is a very specific sub-segment. And the number of people who don’t like Laurel, it’s probably an infinitesimally small group. It’s not statistically relevant. Katie, can you talk about letting go, from the time you found out this was the plan? Cassidy: From a creative standpoint, I think the writers — and I’ve always said that since Season 2, up until now, Laurel has had truly an amazing journey and they’ve written so well for me. I’ve had such an incredible arc. It made sense to me, creatively, that we’ve told Laurel’s story; [it] has come to an end in the “Arrow”-verse. Again, it’s television, and I always say anything can happen. It made sense to me. I love everyone on set, I love our crew. Being there for four-and-a-half years, they’ve become family; it’s hard to not go into work every day and to work with such amazing people. That part is certainly sad. Again, I was OK with it, and we all came to an understanding that this was going to happen. It made sense to me. I think the shock value is good. I think being producers and writers and being in the writers’ room, I think it definitely gives you so much — it’s such a jolt. It’s such a turn in the story. It gives them so much more to do, and places to go with it. Otherwise shows can get stale. Blackthorne: And that’s what you guys are kind of masters of, as well, the writers, these guys. Every act is some kind of weird, crazy, “Where the hell did that come from?” thing. From one episode to one season, culminating in moments like this, that’s what makes the show so watchable isn’t it? You just never know what’s coming next. And this is the mother of all “never know what’s coming nexts.” Guggenheim: I did want to say what a class act Katie is, but I think it’s pretty obvious. She’s such a pro, and coming to work every day after we had this discussion, and giving 120 percent, and being gracious, and sweet and a joy to collaborate with. It’s hard for us. Even though we’re not up in Vancouver, we got to work with her in our own way, and we’re constantly on the phone or texting back and forth. And we’ll miss doing that, as I like to say, on a regular basis. Like I said earlier, dead is not goodbye. We’re still working together. What will the emotional aftermath for the rest of the team be? Mericle: Well, it’s going to be huge and significant, and in terms of our process for making the decision, you can judge the impact by how important that character was, how important Laurel was to the universe we created. And there’s no question that it is going to be shocking, and it was a shocking thing to us to process and to write the aftermath. We really wanted to ensure that we did it in a way that was very honorable, and that gave us space to honor all of the characters’ various reactions to it. And I will say that the episodes that we’ve written in the aftermath, they’re devastating, and they’re meant to be. That’s what we wanted. We wanted to explore that and to have everybody feel the impact of this loss. Because it is significant and we do feel that it is a game-changer – in a very sad way, in that we’re losing a very beloved character; but also in the sense that unfortunately big moves like this will open up new storytelling avenues and will force our characters to re-think their decisions and to rethink their objectives. One of the things Marc was saying earlier about the show we’ve created is that death is a reality, and with the Lazarus Pit and the possibilities of coming back, it’s easy in some ways to forget that our characters are vigilantes — they’re out on the street doing really dangerous things, and what this does is it really brings that reality back in a very kind of rude and brutal way. And I think that it’s good for the audience to be reminded of that, and for our characters as well. How much guilt will the team be feeling over Laurel’s death, and will we see Sara find out on “Legends of Tomorrow”? Guggenheim: Diggle especially, like he says in the hospital, he’ll never forgive himself. And I would say the biggest consequences emotionally are felt by Thea and by Diggle. And of course, Oliver, Felicity and Lance, everyone’s having their own reactions, but Diggle – you can draw a straight-ish line from his decisions in this episode to Laurel’s death. And that’s certainly a fact that’s not lost on him. Sara will find out in “Legends” about what happened with Laurel, and I think we give it its due. I’m looking at Paul to see if I’m lying, but I feel like we give it its due. And we always said on “Legends,” we were not going to shy away from this development, as far as Sara’s character is concerned, and Paul was very gracious to lend his time to “Legends” to really allow us to explore that. Damien says before he stabs Laurel that he’s doing it because Lance betrayed him. Are those words going to find their way back to Quentin, and will that have an adverse affect on how he accepts this? Guggenheim: Not this season. Anything is possible next season. More than one woman has been Black Canary already. Is the title and the costume up for grabs? Guggenheim: I don’t know if I’d say up for grabs. I haven’t even had a chance to discuss this with Wendy or with Greg [Berlanti]. Like you said, it’s a mantle that multiple people have had. We’ll play with that notion in episode 19. I personally like the idea that in DC Comics, all the comics, they all have the concept of legacy in them. We’ve seen on “Legends” that someone picks up Oliver Queen’s mantle, for example. We’re in that world but we lean into it pretty strongly in 19 but that doesn’t always mean that the person is a hero. 19 is the answer to that question. Felicity has been absent from the team lately, especially in this episode. Will Laurel’s death bring her back into the fold? Mericle: I can tell you this, it will definitely have a huge impact on her character and that if you think about Felicity and what she would do in the wake of something like this, I leave you to draw your own conclusions. You’ll find out in 19 but everyone is going to be compelled to try to fix this and figure out what happened and get revenge on the people who did it. Spoilers about Laurel’s death leaked online early thanks to paparazzi photos — how did you deal with that and does that matter to you? Guggenheim: It does matter. Look, it’s not cool, straight up. Honestly, all I can say is you’ve got … we’ve had the paparazzi on “Legends” and on “Arrow” so you’re talking about two shows’ worth of crews, people who work really hard to do the jobs that they do; who care a lot about the shows; who care a lot about the stories that we’re telling. Like Paul said, these shows deal with surprises, particularly “Arrow,” and honestly I just look at these paparazzi people as… they’re just spoiling it for everybody. They’re kind of taking a big steaming dump on the work that all these people do. They work in Vancouver, unbelievable hours in the rain … to produce shows that everyone can be entertained by and part of being entertained is being surprised. I look at these paparazzi as… they’re ruining the party for everybody. We take precautions but unfortunately when you’re dealing with a cemetery, we have to go out on location. We have to be out in the world. We can’t produce the show just on our soundstages. We take precautions, we have extra on-set PAs patrolling and we try to put things up to block people but it does happen and it just sucks. It just sucks, and I’ll just say it, shame on those people. Katie, can you talk about the most memorable part of playing Laurel all these seasons? Cassidy: Oh gosh. Obviously I think at the end of Season 2 … when I put the [Black Canary] jacket on for the first time. I still get choked up talking about it because I was so excited. I remember trying on the jacket and I’d been waiting for that moment and I think that, for me, was sort of the turning point. And obviously Season 2 my character had a really hard time. I think, as an actor, the writers were writing so brilliantly and I think it was great to take on that challenge and go there — hit rock bottom and then come back on top. I think the end of Season 2, going into Season 3 and all of Season 3, even up to Season 4, up to now, every day going there, I was excited to be there and happy to be there. Also, being in training and fight training and getting to be a strong female character who is also out there kicking some ass, too, was definitely something that was cool and I had a blast, too. Did you get to keep anything from the set? Cassidy: Yes, actually. I asked for the jacket and mask and I didn’t think they would let me have it but, yes, I got to keep the Black Canary jacket and mask. What do you hope the legacy is for this character? Cassidy: I don’t know … I still feel so close to this character. Obviously for the last four and a half years it’s been a character that’s very close to me and, also, as we said, I go onto “The Flash” and I am on Earth-2 as the Black Siren and so I feel like it’s still… you talked about in the future, you never know what can happen. As [the writers] know, I love working with them and always happy to come play with them if they have time travel and what not. To me, Laurel was always such a good person and had such a good heart and was a fighter, and her being remembered that way is definitely important to me. Guggenheim: Just to further that, someone had pointed out to me that “Arrow,” unlike, I think the other shows, when we publish the DVD boxes, it doesn’t say Green Arrow and Speedy and Spartan and Black Canary. It says Oliver and Diggle and Thea and Laurel. On this show, we really always start with who these characters are before they put on the mask. I think Katie has always so embodied Laurel, even when she’s wearing the mask you think, that’s Laurel Lance, this good person who is doing good things. She just changes up her methodology for how to make the world a better place. But Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world. Cassidy: Always trying to save the world! “Arrow” airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW. What did you think of Laurel’s death? Weigh in below.As audiences interested in watching gaming content on YouTube and Twitch continue to grow, it becomes clearer every day that the most popular video content creators in gaming can have a huge impact on the success of smaller games. At the Game Developers Conference, YouTube personality Ryan Letourneau — better known by the moniker Northernlion — gave a talk on how independent developers can work with video creators to market their games. Letourneau started by noting that YouTube stars have become "some of the biggest influencers and biggest personalities out there" in the world of gaming and yet simultaneously "a niche that's still untapped." To prove his point, Letourneau put up logos for major gaming publications like IGN, GameSpot and Kotaku. "You probably all recognize these," he said. Then he put up logos for three of the top gaming video creators on YouTube: TotalBiscuit, OfficialNerdCubed and TheRPGMinx. He pointed out that together these three reach millions of viewers, but they aren't as instantly recognizable — and as such not as frequently contacted by developers. "These three YouTubers can single-handedly get your game greenlit and drive sales if they like it," he said. To further demonstrate this, Letourneau turned to quotes from a few independent developers who discovered greater buzz for their games thanks to the YouTube community. Mike Bithell, creator of Thomas Was Alone, said his game "wouldn't have been as big of a success without YouTubers." Letourneau noted that two Thomas Was Alone videos from TotalBiscuit and OfficialNerdCubed alone received over 600,000 views between them. Team Meat's Edmund McMillen was quoted as saying that his tiny side project, The Binding of Isaac, jumped from around 150 sales a day to nearly 1,500. When he tried to figure out the source of the inflated sales, he discovered that YouTubers like Letourneau were uploading as many as 100 videos of the game a day. Lucas Pope, the creator of Papers, Please, shared a graph with Letourneau showing the increase in traffic to his Steam Greenlight page as various YouTube videos about the game's beta were released. It started with initial bumps from Letourneau and others and absolutely blew up when TotalBiscuit put up a video. That went on to be one of the fastest Greenlight campaigns in the short history of Valve's service. Turning to advice on contacting YouTubers, Letourneau compared it to "finding individual straws of hay in a haystack." He pointed to Video Game Caster, a website that lists a small portion of the thousands of people creating gaming content on YouTube, as a priceless resource for developers looking for contact information. Letourneau suggested that developers looking for coverage from YouTubers reach out by e-mail and Twitter rather than messages on YouTube itself. He said that more popular streamers can get 10 game coverage requests or more per day, so including a code or build of the game in your initial contact is very helpful. He also suggested that developers include a very brief, direct explanation of what their game is and why audiences might find it entertaining to watch. As a word of caution, Letourneau said that more triple-A publishers and developers have finally started reaching out to YouTube and Twitch content creators to get them copies of major releases in advance. For indie developers, that means they'll now have more competition for the limited time those video creators have. However, Letourneau reminded those in attendance, "There's plenty of fish in the sea." He said that he personally has been making YouTube videos full-time since 2011, and in that time he's reached 280,000 subscribers and over 10 million lifetime views. But even those impressive stats only put him as the 480th biggest gaming channel on YouTube. If a few YouTubers decide not to feature a certain game, there are still thousands out there with sizable audiences.At the weekend, it was implied by some folk that Bleeding Cool was making a lot of fuss about nothing regarding the coverage of ICV2’s retailer summit reports and interview with Marvel SVP David Gabriel. Now, in the light of everyone else, it seems positively restrained. Here are just a few. Will the late night talks shows jump on? Oh look, it just hit BBC’s Newsnight with J. A. Micheline… Does Marvel have a problem with diversity in its comics? Comic book critic, J. A. Micheline (@elevenafter), tells #Newsnight pic.twitter.com/vwOuD1z30X — BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) April 4, 2017 “Marvel vice president of sales David Gabriel recently claimed that he had heard from retailers that they ‘didn’t want female characters out there’. The comments sparked a huge backlash, with critics claiming that many other things could be to blame, including monotonous storytelling or sketchy origins. Gabriel later clarified his comments saying that the newer, diverse heros were here to stay and that other retailers claimed them as sales-boosting” – Daily Mail “Part of the problem is the industry’s legacy. Both Marvel and D.C. Comics date back more than 50 years and many of their most recognizable characters were first created in the 1930s. Superman, for instance, was the brainchild of two Jewish men whose parents immigrated to North America at the turn of the century. That character debuted in 1938 as an escape to the pending doom of war. With this kind of history, any deviation from the original character is seen as heresy.” – NBC “It’s important that women and people of color remain represented throughout the comics publishing world, especially in influential positions like writer and editor. But perhaps it’s more important to allow the intellectual property-farm model for the superhero industry, which marginalized those people in the first place, to pass into memory. Then a different model, which considers the rights of real people before the dollar values on fictional ones, can ascend.” – The Guardian “While Gabriel was quick to backtrack on his comments, they remain a troubling example of the struggles facing storytelling that places non-white faces at their centre — one even more embarrassing for an audience seemingly willing to blindly accept superhuman powers and inter-dimensional portals, but not so much a diverse assembly of characters.” – The Telegraph “The problem occurs when there is a disconnect between “diversity” on the page and diversity among that page’s creators, which gives rise to comics that fail to realise the potential of their own characters and stories and thus get a chilly reception from readers. Then when these comics sell poorly, their deviation from the straight white male norm – not their quality – is blamed. What readers are rejecting is not diversity, but rather a failure of creativity and comprehension. If Gabriel and Marvel want to increase their comic sales, that’s where they should start” – The Independent “Whether Marvel brass wants to admit it or not, making diversity a priority over the last several years has made much of what it does political. This is the same company that made an entire event about profiling, literally called Civil War II. If sales are suffering, there are so many other things about Marvel’s approach that could use re-evaluation. Focus more on better stories and less on the next big crossover. Give writers more freedom to experiment. Stop killing beloved characters only to bring them back as zombies. (Sorry, Hulk.) But inclusion and politics are a big part of what Marvel is. We’ve come too far to even entertain the idea of turning back.” – The Verge “Gabriel’s explanation has since caused a backlash, with many fans and critics suggesting that Marvel is shifting blame onto readers for the poor sales, rather than addresing other legitimate problems like the company’s reliance on confusing crossover “event” comics, rising prices and a “brain drain” of artists and writers to other more creator-friendly companies.” – The Radio Times “G Willow Wilson, author of the Kamala Khan Ms Marvel series, also disagreed with Mr Gabriel’s theory, saying: “Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work.” Instead, he criticised Marvel’s tendency to introduce the latest iteration of fan favourites by “killing off or humiliating the original character”.” – The Times – though something seems to have gone wrong there. “He’s now arguing that, whereas he approves of that lesbian superhero who works on a council anti-bullying programme, he feels that Marvel should focus its energy on endangered classics such as Spider-Man, Iron Man and Thor. Yes, Captain America: Civil War, with $1.2 billion in receipts, was the most successful cinema release of 2016. But there are corners of the Crab Nebula where it barely sold a ticket.” – Irish Times “In any case, let us all prepare for another cycle of kneejerk responses to smaller sales numbers, even as the evidence all around us continues to indicate that inclusion is more of a scapegoat than the real culprit.” – Slate “He argues that retailers want more of the old characters back because they sell more, and it’s a fair point – but one that shouldn’t stop a push for diversity. The truth is, when film, music, the remaining elements of pop culture and culture in general, were only representing white men, comic books were already one step ahead. In 1941, when women in the US were still struggling to get a job as a receptionist, Marvel released the eighth issue of its All Star Comic, where a warrior Amazon Princess is tasked with saving the Americans from the Nazis.” – Heart “While intermittent splashy write-ups of the creative teams behind Marvel’s more inclusive series are an all right start to introducing the public to its fresh heroes, it’s going to take a lot more than that to court new readers (who aren’t middle-aged white guys) to buy their books.”– Fusion And Bleeding Cool’s Joe Glass was even called upon to talk about it on BBC Radio Wales. And a decent stab by CBR to illustrate that, actually, diversity is not a sales problem for Marvel after all! “Having dug into the data, it’s become clear that diversity is not hurting Marvel. The truth is, Marvel’s “diverse” titles actually sell decently. The problem, instead, appears to be a hollowing-out of Marvel’s traditional A-List, titles whose sales have dropped by tens of thousands of copies in the past few years. Especially painful has been the collapse of X-Men sales, which once made up Marvel’s bread and butter, though the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy lines have also seen a major declines since “Secret Wars.” Blaming “diversity” only goes so far when it is series about white men and teams of white men that have been dropping the furthest.” Well, you can prove anything with facts… About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist. (Last Updated ) Related Posts None foundAbstract Background: The effect of a whole-food plant-based vegan diet vs an AHA-recommended diet on inflammatory, lipid, and glucometabolic profiles remains uncertain. Methods: This prospective blinded end-point trial randomized 100 patients with invasive angiographically-defined coronary artery disease (CAD) to 8 weeks of a vegan or AHA diet. Participants were provided weekly groceries for their assigned diet strategy, sample 2-week menus, tools to measure portion size, and on-going consultation with the study dietitian. Dietary adherence was measured by two weekly 24-hour dietary recalls and plasma and urine trimethylamine-N-oxide levels. Participants also completed a 4-day food record during the week prior to the baseline, 4-, and 8-week study visits. The primary endpoint was serum hsCRP concentration. A linear mixed effect model was used to model the log-transformed endpoints (to correct for skewness), evaluate the change in endpoint over time within treatment group, and test the interaction between time and treatment. The primary analysis was also covariate-adjusted. Results: Baseline characteristics are shown in Table 1. Two subjects withdrew from the vegan group after randomization, but dietary adherence remained higher in the vegan vs AHA group at the 4-week (96% vs 84%, p=0.09) and 8-week (94% vs 70%, p=0.003) visits. Endpoints are shown in Table 2. Conclusion: A vegan diet significantly reduced systemic inflammation, as evidenced by hsCRP, in patients with CAD on guideline-directed medical therapy, while an AHA diet did not. This is the first rigorous study to comprehensively assess multiple indices of cardiovascular risk between a vegan and AHA diet.Today I found out that in High School, Major League Baseball star pitcher Justin Verlander traded a small percentage of his eventual $3.12 million signing bonus for a 50 cent chocolate milk. This happened while the future MLB superstar was in the 10th grade at Goochland High School in Virginia. Short 50 cents needed for a chocolate milk that day, he asked his friend Daniel Hicks for the money. So I said, ‘How about I give you 0.01% [actually it was.001%] of my pro signing bonus if you give me 50 cents now?’ He found a napkin, wrote it up, and I signed it. I forgot about it, but after I signed [with Detroit], he comes over and whips out this old napkin. I’m like, oh my God! My bonus was 3-point-something million. That worked out to a little over $3K for the industrious Daniel Hicks who turned 50 cents into $3120 in just about five years when Verlander signed with Detroit in 2004 out of college for a guaranteed contract of $4.5 million (max $5.6 million) with a signing bonus of $3.12 million. This might not have worked out quite so well for Hicks had Verlander not come down with strep throat at a key time in High School. At that time, Verlander was regularly throwing 93 mph, but when scouts were coming to take a close look at him at the start of the season, he got sick with Group A Streptococcus (a.k.a. strep throat) and thereafter his velocity dropped to around 81 mph for a good portion of the rest of the season. By the time he recovered most of his velocity at the end of the year (up to the high 80s at that point), the scouts were no longer around, so he went to college. Had he signed out of high school, he very likely wouldn’t have gone nearly so high in the draft and his signing bonus would have been significantly less. In college at Old Dominion University, he drastically bolstered his value in scout’s eyes in the three years he attended, setting a school record for strikeouts in a single game (17), a single season (139 and then broke it again at 151), all-time strikeout leader (427 in 335 innings), and finished with a 2.57 ERA in college. In 2003, a year before he was drafted, he also helped the U.S. win a silver medal in the Pan Am Games. Ultimately he was drafted second overall in 2004, after Matt Bush. His contract was negotiated directly by his father, as Detroit couldn’t reach an agreement with Verlander’s agent. As you might expect from becoming instantly wealthy right out of college, Verlander does not regret signing the deal for the chocolate milk. “Was a chocolate milk worth $3,000? I want to say yes. I
left job in third season 3 Of course one person is missing. If Wenger doesn't win the league this season (and noone thinks he will) then it'll be 14 years. Surely this is indulging him to excess if we are still a club which starts with the ambition of winning the league? A small footnote: 1938-1947 only covered three full seasons. 1938/9, 1945/6 and 1946/7. [/season17-18] permanent link Share this story: Tweet Wed, 29 Nov 2017 Well, fancy that... Despite my early season pessimism things are suddenly and unexpectedly looking rosier! After 11 games we were behind Spurs, but had battled well to stay in touch with what we were assured was a superb Tottenham team. I was thrilled by a superb North London Derby that left us just 1 point behind. Since when Spurs have continued to implode and we've been thoroughly professional: Grinding out a rather grim 1-0 at Burnley and thumping poor Huddersfield tonight. (Sorry Huddersfield fans!) The net result is that we are 4th and Spurs are 7th. Four points down. Permit me to enjoy that. Power shift in North London? No sign of it. Anyway the key bit of the table is... 4. Arsenal P14 28pts +12 5. Liverpool P14 26pts +10 6. Burnley P14 25pts +3 7. Spurs P14 24pts +10 Burnley are impressive this season. I'll also remind people Spurs still have to play City twice. However a long way to go, and a four point gap can, as Spurs just demonstrated, be reversed in 4 games! [/season17-18] permanent link Share this story: Tweet Mon, 28 Aug 2017 Welcome to the new season! So... The losses to Liverpool and Stoke were hardly suprises, but do rather confirm that this is going to be another groundhog season. I was hoping to be able to start this year with an optimistic post, but none of the opening league results justified that. Anyway here is the start of the year placeholder. Will the Saint be returning thanks to Spurs' Wembley hoodoo, or will it be a year of wailing and gnashing of teeth? [/season17-18] permanent link Share this story: Tweet Sun, 30 Apr 2017 Well... I knew it would happen eventually. Fair play to Spurs, but the lack of passion and organisation from Arsenal was predictaly bad. [/season16-17] permanent link Share this story: Tweet Sat, 29 Apr 2017 Tomorrow evening... Well I think we all know the situation but just to get it down here before the game... Before the match Arsenal have six games left and we are 14 points behind. There are three results If Arsenal win then we reduce the gap to 11 points with 15 points left to play for. Also I will laugh. Spurs will still finish above us, but it will reduce the pain a little. then we reduce the gap to 11 points with 15 points left to play for. Also I will laugh. Spurs will still finish above us, but it will reduce the pain a little. If we draw then the gap stays at 14 with 15 to go. Not the best result for either team but at least we avoid the anti-St-Totteringham happening at WHL. Right now I'd take this if offered. then the gap stays at 14 with 15 to go. Not the best result for either team but at least we avoid the anti-St-Totteringham happening at WHL. Right now I'd take this if offered. Finally the third option. If that happens we will be unable to catch Spurs. Some straws to clutch at for Arsenal fans: Spurs will be celebrating finishing second, like we did last season. 21 years. We have an FA Cup final. Next year Spurs will be at Wembley. And finally remember: Arsenal have finished above Spurs 66 times since Spurs joined the league wheras Spurs have finished above us only 30. Mind the gap! [/season16-17] permanent link Share this story: Tweet Mon, 10 Apr 2017 What was that... Writing at half time we are deservedly 1-0 down. It is so bad I am trying to distract myself. My attempt to find a picture to tweet for the Arsenal watching face didn't go well, so I'm doing arithmetic. If I'm posting this it didn't get any better. (In fact it got a whole lot worse.) Taking the relevant info from the PL table... P Pts Games left Max points Spurs 31 68 Arsenal 30 54 8 78 Spurs now need just 11 points. Four wins out of seven, or three if they win the NLD. Which is the third game they play. I am wondering if us losing our next two games might be less painful. [/season16-17] permanent link Share this story: TweetThe China the world sees at the beginning of its new year hardly resembles the one of a year ago. At home, inflation and public resentment are rising. While political elites in Beijing jockey for power ahead of the transition to a new generation of leaders, average Chinese citizens are venting their anger and frustrations over rising prices, corruption and unaffordable housing. Overseas, meanwhile, China’s external environment has deteriorated so significantly that many veteran observers are saying that its relations with major powers and its neighbours are the worst they’ve been since the dark days of the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989. Judging by the enormous domestic and foreign policy challenges Beijing faces in 2011, perhaps the most optimistic thing that can be said about how China will fare in the year ahead is that since most of the damage to its economic health and foreign relations is self-inflicted, Chinese leaders are better positioned than anyone else to repair the damage. Of course, rectifying mistakes isn’t the only path—things could conceivably get worse if politicking on the eve of the leadership transition gets in the way. At home, the most critical issue is, without doubt, taming inflation. Over the past decade, China has adopted a loose monetary policy (printing far too much money) and maintained financial repression (keeping deposit rates negative and loan rates artificially low). Such a combination may have delivered double-digit growth because it unleashes a torrent of funds available for China’s investment-driven development. But it also inevitably results in rising prices and asset bubbles (in China’s case, a housing bubble in urban areas). Combating inflation requires not only short-term measures such as raising interest rates and revaluing the currency. A long-term solution lies in difficult financial sector liberalization, fiscal reforms and privatization. Since China entered the World Trade Organization, the economy has become, contrary to expectations, more statist and less liberal. Supported by easy access to credit and government protection against competition from foreign firms and the private sector, state-owned companies now dominate key sectors of China’s economy (finance, banking, energy, telecoms services, natural resources, steel and automobile) while the business climate for dynamic private firms has deteriorated significantly. At the same time, local governments collude with real estate developers to maximize their revenues from the booming residential housing market. Because of an implicit deal between local governments and Beijing, Chinese provinces and municipalities derive nearly half of their fiscal revenues from land sales. In other words, high housing prices are an inevitable outcome of the current Chinese fiscal system because they are simply taxes in disguise. So making housing affordable for the average Chinese means lowering taxes. Unfortunately, the structural reforms required to rebalance the Chinese economy and address the underlying causes of inflation will be politically impossible in 2011. They will hurt interest groups that have influence during leadership transition. Many top executives of state-owned enterprises and provincial leaders are members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and senior leaders in Beijing need their support in gaining coveted seats on the Politburo for themselves or their protégés. Such reforms were deemed too difficult when the Chinese economy was in much better shape and the leadership transition was a dormant issue. Today, they are simply out of the question. So the best that can be expected on the economic front is window dressing and short-term fixes. Aware of the lethal danger of inflation, Chinese leaders will deploy all the policy tools at their disposal: raising bank reserve requirements, hiking interest rates, imposing price controls, limiting fixed investment projects and rationing credit. Such measures may have a short-term effect, but they won’t cure the underlying ills of the Chinese economy. And Beijing also needs to be careful about stepping on the brakes too hard. All of these measures will slow growth—if they are applied in panic, the Chinese economy could have a destabilizing hard landing. But compared with the cooling off of its domestic economy, repairing China’s battered ties with the United States and neighbouring countries may be even tougher. It’s unclear whether Chinese leaders genuinely understand how much damage they’ve done to their foreign policy, and the causes of their mistakes. What’s alarming about China’s international behavior in 2010 isn’t a single catastrophic blunder, but a series of assertive and arrogant acts that have totally discredited China’s declared policy of ‘peaceful development.’ It’s highly unlikely that these acts were dictated by a clear-cut change of course at the highest level of the Chinese government. To think so would give too much credence to the idea of an efficient and cohesive Leninist regime. In all likelihood, China’s foreign policy disasters in 2010 reflect a new mindset, one that combines arrogance (our rise is unstoppable), misjudgement (the United States is declining and can’t do much about China) and renewed hostility to the liberal order (Western democracies represent an existential threat to the Communist Party’s political monopoly). Changing such a self-destructive mindset will clearly take some time, and may need practical proofs, in the form of push-backs by the United States and its allies and friends, that such a mindset endangers China’s national interests. The good news here is that the Chinese are pragmatists as well, and however they might interpret their diplomatic setbacks in 2010, what’s clear now is that they’ve started a process of damage repair. The focus of this process in 2011 is on stabilizing all-important Sino-US relations. President Hu Jintao’s state visit in late January set the tone, even though there were few substantive outcomes. In specific terms, we could see China take some active measures to placate US anxiety and concerns. China’s currency appreciation vis-à-vis the US dollar, for example, will most likely continue, albeit at a measured pace (roughly 5 percent to 6 percent in nominal terms, and higher in real terms if inflation in China is factored in). On other bilateral economic issues, Beijing may adopt a more conciliatory tone on intellectual property rights and market access. A few firm-specific concessions may be made as signs of China’s willingness to respond to US complaints. On the security front, China will also likely use more pressure to restrain North Korea, its troublesome client state, so that tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain under control—reconvening the Six-Party Talks will be China’s top priority. Even though such talks have proved to be ineffective in getting the North Koreans to denuclearize, China believes that as long as the talks are held, the North Koreans will behave themselves. Of course, given the scepticism in Washington over the usefulness of engaging a rouge state that keeps breaking its commitments, Beijing will have a tough time selling this idea to US policymakers. However, recent revelations that Pyongyang has made huge progress in its uranium enrichment programme may motivate Washington to reconsider its options. Given the rapid advances in China’s military modernization, Beijing will be hard pressed this year to alleviate the suspicions of Washington that its new capabilities are directed at the United States and designed to deny US armed forces the ability to operate freely in East Asia. Obviously, no one expects China to suspend its defence modernization. But maintaining a more open channel of communication with the US military and taking concrete steps to avoid accidents (such as signing an incidents-at-sea agreement) can help. The Obama administration, particularly Defence Secretary Robert Gates, has pressed the Chinese to be more forthcoming in the US-China military-to-military exchanges, and there may be some modest progress in this area over the course of this year. More difficult for China is how it’s going to fix its ties with Japan. After needlessly humiliating Tokyo over the detention of a fishing trawler captain in 2010, Beijing has a lot to do to earn back the goodwill of the Japanese elites and public alike. In this respect, the least Beijing can do is tone down the anti-Japanese rhetoric in the media, stop sending fishing or naval vessels into disputed waters to avoid ugly incidents and resume high-level dialogue. These aren’t just bitter pills to swallow for Beijing—they may be the minimum requirements for thawing the Sino-Japanese freeze. A second challenge in Asia for China is to reassure its jittery neighbours in Southeast Asia. After carelessly declaring that the South China Sea is part of its ‘core interests’ last year, China has scared a group of states it has spent the last two decades assiduously cultivating. To regain their trust, China will have to adopt a new approach toward the disputes in the South China Sea. Ending the loose talk of the South China Sea being its core interest seems to be a must. Addressing Chinese neighbours’ concerns about the building of dams in southwest China that may have contributed to the severe reduction in water levels in the Mekong River is another. It’s hard to know whether Chinese leaders view rebuilding Beijing’s ties with Washington, Tokyo and Southeast Asia with any degree of urgency. If they do, and if they take appropriate policy measures, they may still have a bumpy ride this year—but at least it will be a huge improvement over 2010. Minxin Pei is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and an adjunct senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International PeacePhoto by: John Dixon/The News-Gazette Charles Goodall asks questions of the Homer Village Trustees in April during discussions of the village selling water to a proposed coal mine. SIDELL — East Central Illinois lost a passionate environmentalist and farmer who tirelessly voiced his concerns in an effort to educate and empower others, according to those who knew him well. Charles William Goodall, 68, of Sidell died July 4 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago of complications from multiple myeloma, according to his obituary. The fifth-generation farmer who grew up on the farm in Sidell was an agricultural economics graduate of the University of Illinois, a member of the Sidell Lions Club, the Farm Bureau and served on the Hastings drainage district commission, Lake Vermilion Water Quality Coalition, the Sidell Tree Commission, the Prairie Rivers Network board and founded Stand Up to Coal. "It would be hard to find a person more dedicated to the environment," said Bruce Hannon, an emeritus professor at the UI and environmental activist who has known Mr. Goodall for 35 years. But, Hannon said, Mr. Goodall was also a farmer, ditch commissioner, father and husband. "And just sterling in all those categories. There's no kinder, gentler or thoughtful person," said Hannon, who also described him as "always upbeat" and "unique." After college, Mr. Goodall spent two years with the Peace Corps in Venezuela, then lived in New York and St. Louis, where he graduated from Washington University School of Law. He and his wife, Nancy Tsai Chao, returned to Sidell to farm with his father. Hannon said Mr. Goodall could easily speak about environmental concerns to members of the farm bureau and the drainage district, because he was all of those things. "He'll be missed because of his uniqueness," Hannon said. Clark Bullard, fellow Prairie Rivers Network board member, said his insightful contributions to the development of the network's positions on agricultural issues will be missed. As a drainage district commissioner, Bullard said, he led by example, experimenting with creative ways to provide drainage without wrecking the habitat for fish and other wildlife, and as a farmer and board member Prairie Rivers, he had been leading an effort to develop a model land lease for absentee landowners who want to ensure that tenants farm their land in a sustainable manner. "Charles was a thoughtful man who always spoke from his heart - directly into ours," Bullard said. Though she hadn't known Mr. Goodall as long as Hannon and Bullard, Traci Barkley with Prairie Rivers Network worked very closely with him in the last few years on coal issues. Mr. Goodall started Stand Up to Coal, a grass-roots association of people dedicated to protecting drinking water, farmland, health of communities and the environment and stopping a proposed underground coal mine in Vermilion and Champaign counties. Barkley said Mr. Goodall launched the Stand Up to Coal initiative with just a handful of people. She said he was so proud of how it became a large, diverse group of people. "He was just extremely passionate about talking with folks about how strong their communities were and how fortunate they were to have the farmland they have and the clean and abundant groundwater and rivers systems," she said. "He poured a lot of heart, and time and money into that effort. He was really tireless in letting people know what his concerns were and empowering folks to find their voices." Susan Smith of Homer is also involved in the Stand Up to Coal initiative, but her husband and father-in-law had known and worked with Mr. Goodall for many years. She described him as a life-long learner, who would call or stop by occasionally to discuss his ideas on whatever problem he was working on at the time. "Charles was always coming up with creative ideas that challenged the status quo," she said. "Most recently, my husband and I have begun farming organically with one of his sisters. It has been a delight to team up with the Goodall family in this venture. I so appreciated Charles for his enthusiasm and determination in everything he did." Barkley said he was also progressive, living in a passive solar home decades before that was in vogue and using progressive farming practices long before anyone else. "Our hope is that others will continue working and living the way that he did," she said. "We are really going to miss his involvement, leadership and passion." A memorial service for Mr. Goodall will be held at 4 p.m. July 28 at the Sidell United Methodist Church, 202 Chicago St., Sidell. Nora Maberry-Daniels, editor of The Leader, contributed to this report.I was recently in Berkeley, CA, and saw a car with a receipt on its dashboard showing it had paid for a couple hours of parking. There was also a note that said, “Please stop giving me parking tickets. I clearly pay for parking.” It had an arrow pointing to a massive stack of receipts for parking. Under the windshield wiper was a parking ticket. Either the parking attendants really don’t like that car, or the owner had been illegally plugging the meter. As it turns out, the city you live in makes a big difference when it comes to getting parking tickets. I used to live in Providence, where you cannot park on the street at night. If a friend were visiting and you didn’t have an extra parking space in your driveway, you could call the city and get the license plate put on a special list so the car wouldn’t be ticketed overnight. But the parking enforcement was so aggressive; leave your car in a spot for 2 hours and 5 minutes, expect a ticket! I’m glad I only owned a bicycle. To generate this time series comparison, I compiled data from four cities. Each data set represented at least one year of tickets, with N-values between 740k and 6.4M, so the trends are robust. The data were given at one-minute intervals, which I then binned to five-minute intervals to reduce the noise. Of these cities, Milwaukee’s parking ticket timing is certainly the odd one out; about 50% of the citations are made before 6 AM each day. This suggests it has a strict parking law that applies at night, between 2 AM and 6 AM. New York City has a strange pattern in the morning, from 7 AM to noon; tickets are much more frequent near the beginning of the hour and half hour. Then, in the afternoon, the pattern stops. Perhaps a New Yorker can explain this… Good luck avoiding those parking tickets! Data sources: https://data.baltimorecity.gov/Transportation/Parking-Citations/n4ma-fj3m http://milwaukeedata.org/resource/18992 https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Transportation/Parking-Tickets/yyiw-ypks https://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/contentonly?vgnextoid=ca20256c54ea4310VgnVCM1000003dd60f89RCRDAs crowdsourcing has grown in scale and effectiveness, there has been a growing appreciation of the fallibility of experts. Alas, that growth has been from a very low base, and most policy discussions continue to revolve around a so called expert panel who will shape and guide things. A paper, published recently in Nature, highlights the risks involved in placing too much emphasis on expert advice. The authors suggest that experts are susceptible to a wide range of subjective influences, which the experts themselves are often oblivious to. How reliable are experts? I’ve written previously on the tendency for senior leaders to rely more on gut instinct than on hard data, and the Nature article reminds us of the need to balance this instinct with less biased sources of insight. “Policy makers use expert evidence as though it were data. So they should treat expert estimates with the same critical rigour that must be applied to data,” they reveal. “Experts must be tested, their biases minimised, their accuracy improved, and their estimates validated with independent evidence. Put simply, experts should be held accountable for their opinions.” With expert judgements often no better than apparent novices, what can improve our use of expert opinion? The authors offer up eight suggestions to help. Getting the most from experts Groups of experts are better than individuals on their own as the outlandish suggestions even themselves out Select members carefully as value declines dramatically once people step outside of their specialism Judge their value on their merits rather than any reputation, qualification or experience Try and build groups that are as diverse as possible. Homogeneity is your enemy Interestingly, those who are less self assured, yet can pull in information from diverse sources are usually better judges Try and gage expertise with some test questions, and use this finding to then weight the opinion of your experts Train your experts on various horizon scanning type activities so they can better ascribe probabilities to their predictions Make sure you provide regular feedback on the success (or otherwise) of predictions. Try and make the feedback as instant and as unambiguous as possible The authors don’t advocate binning experts altogether and do say how valuable they still can be, but caution that they need to be used in the right way in order to get the most out of them. “The cost of ignoring these techniques – of using experts inexpertly – is less accurate information and so more frequent, and more serious, policy failures,” they conclude. How many of the eight steps do you or your organization currently use?Christopher Hitchens rose to notoriety as a moralist. He wrote a book assailing the character of Mother Teresa. In the same vein he assailed Henry Kissinger and Jerry Falwell–among others. And his book on god is not Great is a pretext for him to vent his indignation at all things religious. Recently, Hitchens has been receiving experimental therapy for cancer. Of course, many other cancer patients could potentially benefit from the same experimental therapy. Take a teenager with cancer. So why does Hitchens make the cut while others do not? Because he’s a celebrity. Fame and favoritism go together. He’s in the same boat as other cancer patients, but he gets special treatment. In effect, Hitchens is throwing other passengers overboard. After all, when he was singled out for preferential treatment, Hitchens could always say, “I appreciate the offer, but I’m 62. I indulged in high-risk behavior. I lost the bet. I’m wealthy. If I die, my dependents will be well-pro vided for. Why don’t you take the case of that teenager with cancer instead? ” The proverbial lifeboat is a stock hypothetical in ethics. Given limited food and freshwater to go around, should we be altruistic when altruism is a threat to our own survival?“At the end of the day, I believe people’s lives will be lost because of the Snowden leaks because we will not be able to protect them with capabilities that were once effective but are now being rendered ineffective because of these revelations," he said. “It’s the greatest damage to our combined nations’ intelligence systems that we have ever suffered. The biggest ever. And it has had a huge impact on our combined ability to protect our nations and defend our people." General Alexander conceded that the US government had no way of knowing how much more Mr Snowden had taken, and refuted suggestions he had leaked the documents due to public interest. In comments that will raise the ire of many supporters around the world, he said only a fraction of the leaks had anything to do with Americans’ civil liberties and that he believes Russian intelligence is now “driving" Mr Snowden. He said that Mr Snowden’s choreographed questioning of President Vladimir Putin on Russian television was “probably organised to help improve Snowden’s credibility so... it would appear as if he’s an independent actor". “So we absolutely need to know what Russia’s involvement is with Snowden. And I think that is now going to be a job for law enforcement, counterintelligence and those related areas," he said. AFR AFR He forecast more problems would emerge in eastern Ukraine as President Putin sought to “secure his borders and his legacy" and believes globalisation is perversely contributing to greater geopolitical instability at the same time as both cyber and terrorist attacks are on the rise. “With what’s going on across North Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific, I think you can conclude the world has become a less stable place," he said. Advertisement Crises ‘deepening’ “These unfolding crises are getting worse—they are deepening. The prospects of a serious regional conflict in the next decade are higher than they have been in the past." In addition to stating that the “enormous amount of espionage taking place" was “far greater than most people understood," General Alexander said all nations were “moving towards developing offensive cyber capabilities" that could inflict physical damage on targets. “These capabilities are expanding and there are real risks, which can only be managed by fixing your network security," he said. He explicitly referenced the “Stuxnet" cyber-attack, which has been unofficially attributed to the US and Israel, that infiltrated and destroyed almost one-fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges by exploiting four undiscovered holes in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The general said there were real risks of cyber warfare escalating to physical conflict. He said recent North Korean cyber attacks on South Korea’s banks could have spiralled quickly out of control and said Middle Eastern attackers “nearly disabled a major US telecommunications company" in 2012. “If that [North Korean] attack had been more severe, we simply don’t know how South Korea might have responded, and whether we could constrain that response," he said. He said there was a “significant probability for miscalculation in these cases – with catastrophic ramifications for everyone" because the “lack of transparency on red lines, and agreed escalation protocols, was especially acute in cyberspace". Advertisement General Alexander said he was “greatly disappointed" The Washington Post and The Guardian had been “rewarded" with the Pulitzer Prize after putting “so many lives at risk" by revealing vital intelligence capabilities and “vilifying" and “misrepresenting" the NSA. A Guardian News & Media spokeswoman denied it had done anything wrong. “It’s a shame that some members of the intelligence establishment are more keen to defend the right of governments to gather mass data on their citizens than to recognise the legitimate role of a free press in encouraging responsible public debate," she said. General Alexander said he sympathised with those who felt their privacy had been violated following the Snowden revelations, but blamed misrepresentation by the media. “The problem is that it is being portrayed in the press that everyone’s data was being exploited by the PRISM program, which is wrong. The people are being misinformed and I believe that is a disservice to our country," he said. “At the end of the day if a bad person is on one of those media platforms planning an attack, NSA’s mission is to help stop this from happening within the confines of the constitution and US laws... where we failed was explaining the difference between myth and reality." He said suggestions the NSA had over-stepped its remit were misguided and had been found to be untrue, with every independent investigation finding that the NSA was doing exactly what Congress and the administration had asked it to do. General Alexander’s claims were backed by Professor Geoffrey Stone, a civil libertarian and constitutional lawyer who was one of five people appointed by President Barack Obama to review the NSA’s operations following leaks. “I went into the NSA with preconceptions that the media had shaped, which is that the NSA was running amok and the Review Group’s job was to stop them from doing so," he said in an interview. “What I discovered was that what the NSA was doing was almost entirely within what was authorised by statute, judicial decision, and executive order. Advertisement “The problem is not with the NSA, but those who have given it these authorities." ‘Secure zones’ Professor Stone said it was easy for the media to demonise the NSA, but “much more complicated to say members of Congress, the President and the executive branch, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had not done their jobs properly". General Alexander was adamant that revelations about NSA surveillance techniques could have dire consequences, and compared it to earlier leaks, which many have linked to the success of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “Think about in 1998 when somebody disclosed that we were monitoring Osama bin Laden’s communications via his Satcom phone. “After that, we never heard bin Laden’s communications again. And he was free to go on and develop the 9/11 plots," he said. General Alexander advocated closer co-operation between the public and private sector to pre-emptively establish “secure zones" that leverage off the government’s hardened cyber defences. “When you look at the investments government has made in protecting its most valuable information assets, I think we are obliged to help the private sector do the same thing," he said. Advertisement “We’ve got to provide that same opportunity for those citizens who would like to capitalise on the level of security we have developed in government – to allow them to ‘opt-in’ inside our cyber defences." Intelligence community watchers expressed their interest in hearing General Alexander’s views on such a wide range of topics in the Financial Review’s interview. Scott Borg, director of the US Cyber Consequences Unit, said that as the chief officer of America’s cyber capabilities, General Alexander commanded an awesome military force, as well as being the boss of “the world’s most powerful intelligence-gathering organisation." In a profile last year Wired Magazine, which did not interview General Alexander, concluded that “never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power". Mr Borg said “General Alexander’s “worst case scenario," describing escalating cyber-attacks leading to a major physical war was not at all unlikely". “If anything he understates this danger: an all-out cyber assault could potentially inflict a level of damage that would only be exceeded by a nuclear war," he said. After reviewing the 17,500 interview transcript, which also covered specific NSA operations, the metadata and encryption debates, and Australia’s decision to ban Huawei from the National Broadband Network, Mr Borg said it was “the most extensive and illuminating interview he had ever seen with General Alexander".Starting Monday, unmarried Virginians who live together will no longer be breaking the law, but drivers caught texting in the commonwealth will face stiffer penalties, and in Maryland, early voting will expand and military personnel seeking credentials for civilian jobs should see a more streamlined process. Virginia motorists also can expect to pay less at the pump, while driving in Maryland will get more expensive as part of new laws that will take effect Monday. In Virginia, much of the state’s transportation funding overhaul will be put into action, including a reduction of the 17.5 cents-per-gallon gas tax to a 3.5 percent wholesale levy. Diesel gas will be taxed 6 percent. The tax on car sales will increase from 3 percent to 4 percent and will rise incrementally through 2016. Alternative-fuel vehicles, including electric cars and hybrids, will require an annual fee of $64, up from $50. The initial proposal for the alternative-fuel vehicle tax was $100, but Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) lowered it during a veto session amid a backlash. On Monday, hybrid owners plan to rally for a repeal of the tax at the Alexandria office of the Department of Motor Vehicles. The “love shack” bill, which clears the way for lawful cohabitation for unwed couples in the commonwealth, targeted an 1877 law that made it a misdemeanor for “any persons, not married to each other, [to] lewdly and lasciviously associate and cohabit together.” Virginia was one of four states — including Florida, Michigan and Mississippi — with such a statute still on the books. Police will no longer need a reason to pull over drivers suspected of texting, although it is unclear how officers would determine when to act. First offenders face a $125 fine — an increase of $105. A second offense will be fined $250, up from $200. Emergency vehicle operators engaged in official duties are exempt. Also taking effect is a law banning the use of electronic welfare benefits to buy alcohol, tobacco, tattoos, pornography and lottery tickets, or at strip clubs. The bill aims to crack down on fraud and complies with a similar federal law. Doctors will have to inform patients tested for Lyme disease that lab testing can produce false negatives in the early stages of the disease. The law makes Virginia the first state with such a requirement. Proponents argued that disclosure was necessary to fully educate patients about potential exposure to the disease. A two-year moratorium on drones will take effect while the state explores how best to balance the right to privacy with the use of new technology. The ban does not apply to the Virginia National Guard or to state and local authorities assessing traffic, damage or wildfires, or to research institutions studying the technology. Motorists who fill up in Maryland will pay an additional 3.5 cents per gallon of gas, as the state tax rises to 27 cents. The increase is the first of several that will be phased in over the next few years under a broad transportation measure lawmakers approved in March. The legislation, which was supported by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), is projected to raise an additional $4.4 billion for road and transit projects over the next six years, including in the heavily congested Washington region. O’Malley has released an initial list of $1.2 billion in new spending projects, including $280 million in design work on the Purple Line, the proposed rail link between Bethesda and New Carrollton. Tolls around Maryland also are set to increase Monday. For passengers paying cash, rates will rise to $4 from $3 for passenger vehicles using the Fort McHenry Tunnel, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel or the Francis Scott Key Bridge. On the Bay Bridge, it will cost $6 per passenger vehicle, an increase of $2. It will cost $6 to cross the Nice Bridge in southern Maryland, which carries Route 301 over the Potomac River. Tolls on Interstate 95 between Baltimore and Delaware will go up to $8 from $6, as will tolls for driving on the Hatem Bridge over the Susquehanna River. The Veterans Full Employment Act of 2013, which will take effect Monday, drew the praise of first lady Michelle Obama, who joined O’Malley at the signing ceremony in April. Besides speeding up the process for numerous credentials and licenses needed for civilian jobs, the law will allow military training to count as college-level academic credit in some cases. A new law will require that by 2018, battery-operated smoke alarms must be sealed and tamper-resistant units with a “silence/hush” button and use long-life batteries. The measure also makes several clarifications to Maryland’s existing patchwork of laws affecting residential smoke alarms. Under another measure, early voting in Maryland will be expanded from six days to eight. The new law also will increase the number of early-voting sites and allows same-day registration during early-voting periods. Another law will make it possible for same-sex couples in Maryland to file state income taxes jointly. The state legalized gay nuptials in January, but a quirk in tax law did not make it immediately possible for married couples to file together. Mark Berman contributed to this report.Erik Lamela. The guy who was once touted as being the closest thing to a replacement to Francesco Totti. The young Argentine who was one of the first big youth purchases of the American Revolution. There was so much hope for Coco, and he seemed to be on the right track after a great 2012-13 season with the Giallorossi. Goals were a plenty, mostly in thanks to Zdeněk Zeman being at the helm for the first portion of that season (time to relive those amazing moments below, try and choke back the tears) The Departure As many remember, Lamela went on to become one of the two sacrificial lambs of the summer of 2013. The sale of Marquinhos was one of 20+ million in profits and, as painful as it was to see him leave, the move made sense. He was replaced with Mehdi Benatia and the remainder of the fee covered part of the Kevin Strootman transfer. Meanwhile, the Lamela sale was a little harder to swallow. A player who was sold to us as the future of Roma. A player who was told he was going to remain and was marched out onto the pitch at Open Day ceremonies. His girlfriend went on to call it the “great farce”, as shortly thereafter he was sold to Tottenham Hotspur. Slow Starts and Injuries Lamela got off to a slow start at Spurs, having an injury plagued first season and finding it difficult to adjust to the style of the Premier League. The next two years saw better health and a knack for picking up some assists, but the goal scoring totals he achieved under Zeman at Roma have yet to be replicated (no shock here). After some great form at the end of last campaign, Spurs fans looked forward to seeing what Lamela could accomplish this season. However, he has been plagued with a hip injury and been out of the
story of the 20th century. SP: Correct, and so there’s a whole way in which the subject of Personae is just literature at large, and what it means to exist within these preexisting categories while, one hopes, combining to form something that didn’t exist before. that might feel new. CJ: For me it felt very new. [awkward silence which persists long enough for my own reflection] CJ: So the problematics of the characters in the play, schematically, some of the issues they understand themselves to be facing are: where are we? how do we identify this place? and how do we know each other’s names? and how does a person make up a name? How do you relate that to the realm of literature or our current condition? SP: Well I think most people go through life not really examining it too closely. Probably less true than of a person who would pick up a University of Chicago press novel and read it, but, when talking about the population at large, I think most people are rightly concerned with what they need to accomplish that particular day, and I’m not criticizing that. I think what you see in the play that we are talking about is maybe the excessive counterpoint to that way of life. A kind of paralysis by speculation, or by the zealous pursuit of knowledge. not so much wisdom, just literally, knowledge. What is it exactly? Because I find just existence incredibly fascinating, but not in a pleasant way. In a way that unsettles me. And I was trying to capture that in some of the dialogue. It doesn’t thrill me. So you bring up philosophy. I have a bit of a background in it and i think you do too right? CJ: Yeah. SP: When you first decide ‘this is what I’m going to study.’ You know– CJ: It’s not a great moment. SP: Not a great moment. You’re essentially dooming yourself to a kind of poverty, if you continue. But it also seems like a declaration of a certain mode of intent towards life. It seems like a declaration that you will engage in this activity, which is not altogether pleasant at times, which is examining what everyone takes for granted, in like, an extreme way. In a way that I don’t think I would recommend at all, but it’s built into your structure. It’s more like discovering something, that this is the way you are going to view the world whether you like it or not. You might as well try to get something out of it, and try to do it in a programmatic way that achieves something. CJ: Right. So a question about skepticism. I think most philosophical movements are in someway motivated by different kinds of skepticism. You’ve mentioned before that you have a somewhat skeptical approach to the world. So how do you understand the skeptical influence in your writing? How did you become a skeptic? SP: Well, I think it wasn’t so much that i became skeptical, as it was that I learned what the name was for what I was. It’s not that anything happened, it was more like I realized that, oh, there is a legitimate way of thought that is attributed to this feeling that I constantly have, and it kind of ties in to novel writing. listen, I don’t know how far afield you want to go– [interrupts] Everywhere. SP: [audible sigh]… I tend to not draw the greatest distinction between say the fictional and what we call the truth. When I write, I’ve heard other writers describe this too, Philip K. Dick for example, I found the same sense of recognition of, where you don’t feel like you’re creating something so much as you feel like you’re being granted access to something that was already there. And when I have that experience as a reader, and as a writer, is when I most feel the tangibly the physical world start to melt away. And start to seem less real than a literary character, or than a concept even. And I don’t know why that is, but it’s my sense that it is coming on to something that is true on a base level. And I think that a lot of the advances in theoretical physics for example, are showing us that what we consider the physical world is not as unproblematic as we’d like to think. That it’s far more complicated when you try to say ‘this chair I’m sitting on is red.’ That statement turns out to be very weird in and of itself. The chair is not anything. It’s the experience you’re having when you observe a bunch of atoms collected in a certain way. Or with Heisenberg’s principle, you think it says you can’t measure two things at once, but the reality is that it doesn’t have any sort of attributes whatsoever until you look at it. And that has tons of strange implications for what consciousness is, because for example if you sent an inanimate object to go make an observation, that object itself would be susceptible to the same vagaries as what it’s measuring. So you eventually need a consciousness to come in and make something true, not discover something, But make it in the sense of giving it a velocity. Those kind of concepts appeal to me not because I know the math, not because I’m that conversant in it, but because they jive in a very sinewy way in the way I view art and the writing of novels. CJ: I agree, but I don’t meet many people who think the uncertainty principle is a great writing tip. So what then is your relationship to christianity? There is definitely Biblical scenery in parts of A Naked Singularity, and an Adam in Personae but you don’t seem to be a writer with christian interests. SP: Well if you ask me about christianity, and what it really is, I mean that a broad topic. You know Thomas Jefferson said we could take out all the supernatural elements of the gospels. The principles of christianity appropriately stated are undeniably true. Turns out when you examine these christian, truly christian principles, they are pretty clearly true. The problem comes from all the apparatus that emerges around it. You think of somebody like Tolstoy or Kierkegaard just being offended at all the apparatus that came around these principles that they thought were undeniably true, I kind of feel that way. I feel the beauty of this undeniably positive and unproblematically useful guide to a way of living is being clouded by so much nonsense around it, that it’s making it hard to see the simple beauty of it. That’s christianity, obviously thats completely different than saying Catholicism or some other formal construct that arose around the principles espoused by the writers of the gospels… it gets complicated fast. What’s my relationship to that whole apparatus? I feel they do a poor job of–what do politicians call it– getting their message across? I’m not sure that it even understands what true christianity implies really. Which is a radical lack of concern with things like materialism, and wealth. It seems that quite often what is being espoused as christianity is actually the opposite, which is a weird Orwellian situation. My relationship to it all is wonderfully up in the air, and in that way it becomes useful fodder. In a way that, when you have answers, it stops the pen. When you figure everything out there is no reason to try to tease out discovery which is a large part of what writing is to me. CJ: So what are your opinions about pizza? Is there a style or topping you will drop dead for? SP: By where I live is the best pizza around. Manhattan is great too. But yeah, of course I’m all over it. Prosciutto and spinach, onions, thin crust though I like it thin and crispy. You’re from Chicago? They give you that deep dish stuff over there, I don’t need that, you’re basically eating bread. CJ: One more philosophy question: Socrates or Plato? SP: Well of course our only access to Socrates is through Plato, he’s a character, so I’m going to say Socrates because that kind of ties in nicely with what we were talking about, in the sense that I don’t draw a great distinction. Like in the gospels or the dialogues, we’ve taken this literary character, and we’ve decided we’re not really too worried about the nuances of creation, who is the creator. Just that Jesus said, or Socrates said. CJ: Any person could have said, the language existed for them to say it. SP: Right, and because that brings in all these notions of literary creation, then I would say Socrates. But in terms of what’s the more useful activity, the problem with dialogue, is that somebody eventually had to write that down, and the creation of literary work, what draws me to that is the precision of it. You and I are having a discussion right now, and believe it or not, the imprecision in my answers is something that would offend me greatly if it was written. CJ: Which will offend you greatly once it is written. SP: Yeah, butI’m doing the best I can under the constraints of, right off the top of my hands giving you the answer, and it’s more fun than not doing it, it’s more fun than watching T.V. But it cant compare to writing, because what happens is, when I write something, then it will sit. And I will come back to it. In the process of tightening it, I will learn from it, and my ill-formed, off the cuff stuff will start to sharpen in a way. That’s why if we take Socrates later on who said ‘what is justice?’, the precision that resulted from asking so many people can never compare with what Plato did when he sat down and wrote the Republic. So in that sense I do find that the human activity of sitting down and figuring out for yourself what it is that you think through writing and the honing of language, that’s what it is really about for me. And that is what philosophy sort of is, when you write something, you don’t fucking publish sit, you give it to another philosopher and they say fuck you. and you say fuck you. CJ: And then you talk until finding places where argument and language are in slippage. SP: There is this way of dialogue being suspect, but there is a nod to that kind of notion, through each of us sharpening what the other has said, we are going to get to somewhere. CJ: I hope so. Finally, what city would you like to visit that you haven’t been to? SP: I think San Francisco. It intrigues me. * CJ Morello is a poet from Chicago. His work is forthcoming in Gigantic magazine. Find him at cjmorello.com or @siegethethird on twitter. Tags: CJ Morello, Personae, Sergio de la PavaUFC Hall of Famer Tito Ortiz, was arrested last night following a one-car pileup on a Los Angeles freeway in the early morning hours. KTLA has the story: The popular athlete, whose birth name is Jacob Christopher Ortiz, was taken into custody around 4:00 a.m. after a single-car collision near of on the 405 Freeway near Sepulveda and Santa Monica boulevards, the CHP said. "Ortiz was driving northbound on the I-405 when he lost control of his vehicle and struck the concrete center median," the press release said. Ortiz signed with Bellator last year and was set to fight Quinton "Rampage" Jackson in that promotion's first pay-per-view. That event was moved to free TV when Ortiz suffered a broken neck in training. He is also managing the career of former women's Strikeforce champ Cris Cyborg and has been going through a messy break up with his porn legend spouse Jenna Jameson. Rest assured Bloody Elbow will keep you updated on this important story.Get the biggest football 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 Jan Vertonghen broke down in tears as he revealed the personal heartbreak that remains the inspiration to his football career. Tottenham’s new £12million signing was receiving his Footballer of the Year trophy in Holland, an award that acknowledged his brilliant last season with Ajax. Vertonghen, 25, was the Dutch champion’s outstanding player and captain. His sensational form paved the way for his move to White Hart Lane. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Vertonghen’s mum stepped forward to present Jan with his prize and the player revealed his heart-breaking past. Vertonghen, born and raised in Belgium, revealed: “I have gone through difficult times. When I was 20, the manager at Ajax decided to loan me to a small club (RKC) and I felt I was not going to make it at the top level. “Exactly at that time my dad became critically ill. I got a call from Belgium and they said it was urgent. I had to get home.” Vertonghen’s father died and he and his two brothers were bereft. Jan went on: “I couldn’t care anymore about the football or the club where I was going to play. I said: ‘What the f*!’ I agreed to go on loan and leave Ajax. “Nobody knew about my private situation. I am not the sort of guy who tells his manager that his dad is seriously ill. “There was only one man at Ajax who knew that I was going through absolute hell.’’ (Image: Laurence Griffiths / Getty) Both Vertonghen and his mum cried on the stage in front of 800 guests, who were also wiping away tears. And the player dedicated the golden boot to his late father. “I miss my dad,” he said. “I wish he could see where I am now. I wish he could see I am a player at Tottenham Hotspur, a massive club in the Premier League. He would be so proud and I can only hope he can see things from somewhere above. “If your dad jumps off a roof and commits suicide, it must be a shock. In our situation it was the opposite. “I was six when his illness was diagnosed. For 14 long years I knew he was going to die. And every day of those 14 years I had to live with those emotions. He was such a great dad, a wonderful bloke. “There are days where I wonder why I am a catholic. My dad was such a good person. The way he lived his life… I find that good people seem to die earlier than bad people. “Now I want to live life to the full. I want to get everything from my career possible. Nobody will fight harder in the team than me.” Vertonghen is enjoying his new life in London and has tipped Spurs to mount a title challenge this season. He said: “I developed in Amsterdam as a player and a person. I came out of my comfort zone. “This is why I now love living in London and why I can easily talk to anybody.” Elsewhere, Tom Huddlestone is angling for a first start on over a year against Reading.Share Seeking a significant amount of funding on WeFunder, Knightscope is developing a new type of crime-detection robot that could help police departments by using predictive algorithms to determine where crime will occur. Called the K5 Autonomous Data Machine, the robot is being built on the Segway robotics platform, sits tall at 5-feet high and weighs in at approximately 300 pounds. It comes equipped with an array of high-tech gear such as night vision cameras with built-in thermal imaging technology, panoramic cameras for 360-degree high definition video recording, high-fidelity microphones to capture audio as well as infrared, radar, ultrasonic and air quality sensors. Of course, the robots won’t be armed with any form of weaponry in order to physically prevent crime. In addition, anyone that attempts to tamper with the robots will be caught on video immediately and prosecuted once caught. Interestingly, the K5 will include advanced facial and license plate recognition software. This could allows the K5 robots to actively scan for stolen automobiles or other license plate infractions, assuming that motor vehicle data has been made available to the robot by the police department. The software is also capable of gesture recognition, thus may be able to detect threatening gestures from humans in the area. Pointing a gun, for instance, could trigger an alert. When it comes to mobility, the current models can travel up to 18 miles per hour. Knightscope expects future models to include more advanced systems to handle rough terrain or obstacles in the street. The system also uses a 3D mapping model in combination with proximity sensors and GPS data to autonomously determine which areas to patrol. Regarding the cost of the systems, Knightscope expects to have these K5 robots available to organizations by 2015 for an hourly rate that would equal about $6.25 an hour. At this price, deploying a robot over a security guard could potentially be cheaper for large companies. At the present time, the K5 can operate on a single charge for up to 24 hours. Hypothetically, an organization could deploy just a few of these robots in order to provide 24/7 coverage of a particular area, as long as someone kept the robots all charged up. Capable of processing 90 terabytes of data, all the of information recorded by the K5 robot is compared to a real-time, crowdsourced social feed. In turn, this allows Knightscope to create a heat map of potential problems in the area using a predictive analytics model. Conceptually, that data will be transmitted to authorities when there’s a series problem as well as made available to the public in real-time in order to offer total transparency. As a citizen, checking on any potential problems in the area could be as simple as pulling out a smartphone, firing up an app and checking out the local heat map. Knightscope CEO William Santana Li estimates that crime, in an area patrolled by the K5 robots, could drop as much as 50 percent. There are plans in place to test the K5 unit at sporting events, security companies and large public areas like malls. However, it’s clear that the actual effectiveness of the K5 robots will need to be tested extensively and proven with several studies before city governments attempt to deploy these machines on the streets.Share. Batwoman, Northstar and more. Batwoman, Northstar and more. June is National LGBT Pride Month, plus gay marriage was made legal in the United States last week, so we are celebrating by listing off our favorite LGBT characters from movies, television, comics, and video games. Take a look at our list, then let us know your favorites in the comments. Why It Matters if a Fictional Character Is Gay Mystique The shape-shifting Mystique has been intimate with several male characters -- Wolverine, Forge, and even Professor X -- but her one true love is Irene Adler aka Destiny. While Mystique often uses her sexuality to get what she wants, her relationship with Destiny always stuck out as the one true romance in her life. Mystique is a fighter for mutant rights and is the poster child for accepting yourself for who you are no matter what you look like -- and if anyone has a problem with that, she has the skills of an elite assassin to back her up. Dumbledore The headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is as old as he is powerful, yet his quiet and humorous demeanor would never let you think he’s the one person that Voldemort is truly afraid of. While author J.K. Rowling never explicitly said that Dumbledore was gay in the books, she implied it by describing a deep relationship with the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald and then later confirmed it during a fan Q&A. In the end, Dumbledore is a great example of how a character can be a fan-favorite due to his brilliant mind and extraordinary skills, with his sexuality being just another attribute of his character, like his long beard or half-moon glasses. Sailor Neptune & Sailor Uranus There were a number of LGBT characters in Sailor Moon, including the Fisheye, Zoisite and Kunzite, and Sailor Star Fighter, but the most recognizable couple is easily Sailor Neptune (Michiru) and Sailor Uranus (Haruka). The original Sailor Moon English translation by DiC tried to write off Michiru and Haruka as affectionate cousins, but it was pretty obvious that they had a romantic relationship -- one that is arguably more pure and supportive than Usagi and Mamoru’s relationship. Michiru and Haruka are almost always seen together and are very protective of one another to the point where they are willing to betray their allies. Even though it’s difficult to think of one without the other, especially because their relationship feels so natural and well-presented, Michiru and Haruka also stand out individually as well for their refined personalities. Exit Theatre Mode Oberyn Martell The standout character of Season 4 of Game of Thrones is Dorne’s favorite son, Prince Oberyn Martell. He came into King’s Landing with confidence and swagger, getting what he wanted in court and also in the bedroom. It wasn’t a shock to see Oberyn indulge in both men and women; in fact, it made sense that a man who led such a cavalier life to not let a thing like gender stop him from living to the fullest. That “sword-swallowing” was condemnable in King’s Landing yet he made no attempt to hide it made him all the more badass. A skilled spear-fighter with acrobatic skills impressive enough to make Darth Maul jealous, the Red Viper proved that he could defeat the juggernaut known as the Mountain in single combat… but because he delayed the killing blow, his head wound up like so many grapes. Exit Theatre Mode Northstar A landmark moment for LGBT nerdom came when Northstar came out of the closet in 1992, paving the way for gay characters to actually acknowledge their sexuality instead of only hint at it. A mutant member of the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight along with his sister Aurora, he can fly, move a super speed, endure heavy damage, and manipulate light. Now lets be frank about one thing, Northstar can be kind of a jerk. While always on the side of the heroes, he’s quick to anger and can be as aggressive to his teammates as he is his enemies. Although we have to cut him some slack -- mutants are hated and feared as it is, but he has to deal with prejudice against gay people on top of that. But there must be some charm to the guy; his longtime boyfriend Kyle Jinadu married him in 2012, setting yet another landmark with the first-ever gay wedding in a Marvel comic book.For the community in the United States, see Mulch, Virginia A mulch is a layer of material applied to the surface of soil. Reasons for applying mulch include conservation of soil moisture, improving fertility and health of the soil, reducing weed growth and enhancing the visual appeal of the area. A mulch is usually, but not exclusively, organic in nature. It may be permanent (e.g. plastic sheeting) or temporary (e.g. bark chips). It may be applied to bare soil or around existing plants. Mulches of manure or compost will be incorporated naturally into the soil by the activity of worms and other organisms. The process is used both in commercial crop production and in gardening, and when applied correctly, can dramatically improve soil productivity.[1] Uses [ edit ] Many materials are used as mulches, which are used to retain soil moisture, regulate soil temperature, suppress weed growth, and for aesthetics.[2] They are applied to the soil surface,[3] around trees, paths, flower beds, to prevent soil erosion on slopes, and in production areas for flower and vegetable crops. Mulch layers are normally 2 inches (5.1 cm) or more deep when applied.[4][5] They are applied at various times of the year depending on the purpose. Towards the beginning of the growing season, mulches serve initially to warm the soil by helping it retain heat which is lost during the night. This allows early seeding and transplanting of certain crops, and encourages faster growth. As the season progresses, mulch stabilizes the soil temperature and moisture, and prevents the growing of weeds from seeds.[6] In temperate climates, the effect of mulch is dependent upon the time of year they are applied and when applied in fall and winter, are used to delay the growth of perennial plants in the spring or prevent growth in winter during warm spells, which limits freeze thaw damage.[7] The effect of mulch upon soil moisture content is complex. Mulch forms a layer between the soil and the atmosphere preventing sunlight from reaching the soil surface, thus reducing evaporation. However, mulch can also prevent water from reaching the soil by absorbing or blocking water from light rains. In order to maximise the benefits of mulch, while minimizing its negative influences, it is often applied in late spring/early summer when soil temperatures have risen sufficiently, but soil moisture content is still relatively high.[8] However, permanent mulch is also widely used and valued for its simplicity, as popularized by author Ruth Stout, who said, "My way is simply to keep a thick mulch of any vegetable matter that rots on both sides of my vegetable and flower garden all year long. As it decays and enriches the soils, I add more."[9] Plastic mulch used in large-scale commercial production is laid down with a tractor-drawn or standalone layer of plastic mulch. This is usually part of a sophisticated mechanical process, where raised beds are formed, plastic is rolled out on top, and seedlings are transplanted through it. Drip irrigation is often required, with drip tape laid under the plastic, as plastic mulch is impermeable to water. Materials [ edit ] Rubber mulch nuggets in a playground. The white fibers are nylon cords, which are present in the tires from which the mulch is made. Shredded wood used as mulch. This type of mulch is often dyed to improve its appearance in the landscape. Pine needles used as mulch. Also called "pinestraw" in the southern US. Aged Compost mulch on a flower bed Crushed stone mulch Spring daffodils push through shredded wood mulch Materials used as mulches vary and depend on a number of factors. Use takes into consideration availability, cost, appearance, the effect it has on the soil—including chemical reactions and pH, durability, combustibility, rate of decomposition, how clean it is—some can contain weed seeds or plant pathogens.[6] A variety of materials are used as mulch: In some areas of the United States, such as central Pennsylvania and northern California, mulch is often referred to as "tanbark", even by manufacturers and distributors. In these areas, the word "mulch" is used specifically to refer to very fine tanbark or peat moss. Organic mulches [ edit ] mulching_coconut farm Organic mulches decay over time and are temporary. The way a particular organic mulch decomposes and reacts to wetting by rain and dew affects its usefulness. Some mulches such as straw, peat, sawdust and other wood products may for a while negatively affect plant growth because of their wide carbon to nitrogen ratio,[11] because bacteria and fungi that decompose the materials remove nitrogen from the surrounding soil for growth.[12][13] However, whether this effect has any practical impact on gardens is disputed by researchers and the experience of gardeners.[14] Organic mulches can mat down, forming a barrier that blocks water and air flow between the soil and the atmosphere. Vertically applied organic mulches can wick water from the soil to the surface, which can dry out the soil.[15] Mulch made with wood can contain or feed termites, so care must be taken about not placing mulch too close to houses or building that can be damaged by those insects. Some mulch manufacturers recommend putting mulch several inches away from buildings. Commonly available organic mulches include:[6] Leaves [ edit ] Leaves from deciduous trees, which drop their foliage in the autumn/fall. They tend to be dry and blow around in the wind, so are often chopped or shredded before application. As they decompose they adhere to each other but also allow water and moisture to seep down to the soil surface. Thick layers of entire leaves, especially of maples and oaks, can form a soggy mat in winter and spring which can impede the new growth lawn grass and other plants. Dry leaves are used as winter mulches to protect plants from freezing and thawing in areas with cold winters; they are normally removed during spring. Grass clippings [ edit ] Grass clippings, from mowed lawns are sometimes collected and used elsewhere as mulch. Grass clippings are dense and tend to mat down, so are mixed with tree leaves or rough compost to provide aeration and to facilitate their decomposition without smelly putrefaction. Rotting fresh grass clippings can damage plants; their rotting often produces a damaging buildup of trapped heat. Grass clippings are often dried thoroughly before application, which mediates against rapid decomposition and excessive heat generation. Fresh green grass clippings are relatively high in nitrate content, and when used as a mulch, much of the nitrate is returned to the soil, conversely the routine removal of grass clippings from the lawn results in nitrogen deficiency for the lawn. Peat moss [ edit ] Peat moss, or sphagnum peat, is long lasting and packaged, making it convenient and popular as a mulch. When wetted and dried, it can form a dense crust that does not allow water to soak in. When dry it can also burn, producing a smoldering fire. It is sometimes mixed with pine needles to produce a mulch that is friable. It can also lower the pH of the soil surface, making it useful as a mulch under acid loving plants. However peat bogs are a valuable wildlife habitat, and peat is also one of the largest stores of carbon (in Britain, out of a total estimated 9952 million tonnes of carbon in British vegetation and soils, 6948 million tonnes carbon are estimated to be in Scottish, mostly peatland, soils[16]), so gardeners who wish to protect the environment will choose more sustainable alternatives.[17] Wood chips [ edit ] Wood chips are a byproduct of the pruning of trees by arborists, utilities and parks; they are used to dispose of bulky waste. Tree branches and large stems are rather coarse after chipping and tend to be used as a mulch at least three inches thick. The chips are used to conserve soil moisture, moderate soil temperature and suppress weed growth. The decay of freshly produced chips from recently living woody plants, consumes nitrate; this is often off set with a light application of a high-nitrate fertilizer. Wood chips are most often used under trees and shrubs. When used around soft stemmed plants, an unmulched zone is left around the plant stems to prevent stem rot or other possible diseases. They are often used to mulch trails, because they are readily produced with little additional cost outside of the normal disposal cost of tree maintenance. Wood chips come in various colors. Woodchip mulch [ edit ] Woodchip mulch is a byproduct of reprocessing used (untreated) timber (usually packaging pallets), to dispose of wood waste by creating woodchip mulch. The chips are used to conserve soil moisture, moderate soil temperature and suppress weed growth. Woodchip mulch is often used under trees, shrubs or large planting areas and can last much longer than arborist mulch. In addition, many consider woodchip mulch to be visually appealing, as it comes in various colors. Woodchips can also be reprocessed into playground woodchip to be used as an impact-attenuating playground surfacing. Bark chips [ edit ] Bark chips Bark chips of various grades are produced from the outer corky bark layer of timber trees. Sizes vary from thin shredded strands to large coarse blocks. The finer types are very attractive but have a large exposed surface area that leads to quicker decay. Layers two or three inches deep are usually used, bark is relativity inert and its decay does not demand soil nitrates. Bark chips are also available in various colors. Straw mulch / field hay / salt hay [ edit ] Permaculture garden with a fruit tree, herbs, flowers and vegetables mulched with hay Straw mulch or field hay or salt hay are lightweight and normally sold in compressed bales. They have an unkempt look and are used in vegetable gardens and as a winter covering. They are biodegradable and neutral in pH. They have good moisture retention and weed controlling properties but also are more likely to be contaminated with weed seeds. Salt hay is less likely to have weed seeds than field hay. Straw mulch is also available in various colors. Cardboard / newspaper [ edit ] Cardboard or newspaper can be used as mulches. These are best used as a base layer upon which a heavier mulch such as compost is placed to prevent the lighter cardboard/newspaper layer from blowing away. By incorporating a layer of cardboard/newspaper into a mulch, the quantity of heavier mulch can be reduced, whilst improving the weed suppressant and moisture retaining properties of the mulch.[8] However, additional labour is expended when planting through a mulch containing a cardboard/newspaper layer, as holes must be cut for each plant. Sowing seed through mulches containing a cardboard/newspaper layer is impractical. Application of newspaper mulch in windy weather can be facilitated by briefly pre-soaking the newspaper in water to increase its weight. Carpet [ edit ] Synthetic carpet that is composed of artificial fibers may be removed after planting to prevent fibers taking a long time to decompose, whereas carpet made from natural fibers may be kept in place, blocking competition from weeds. Rain is absorbed by carpet and then slowly released into the soil, reducing watering needs.[10] Colored mulch [ edit ] Some organic mulches are colored red, brown, black, and other colors. Isopropanolamine, specifically 1-Amino-2-propanol or DOW™ monoisopropanolamine, may be used as a pigment dispersant and color fastener in these mulches.[18][19][20][21] Types of mulch which can be dyed include: wood chips, bark chips (barkdust) and pine straw. Colored mulch is made by dyeing the mulch in a water-based solution of colorant and chemical binder. When colored mulch first entered the market, most formulas were suspected to contain toxic, heavy metals and other contaminates. Today, “current investigations indicate that mulch colorants pose no threat to people, pets or the environment. The dyes currently used by the mulch and soil industry are similar to those used in the cosmetic and other manufacturing industries (i.e., iron oxide),” as stated by the Mulch and Soil Council.[22] Colored mulch can be applied anywhere non-colored mulch is used (such as large bedded areas or around plants) and features many of the same gardening benefits as traditional mulch, such as improving soil productivity and retaining moisture.[23] As mulch decomposes, just as with non-colored mulch, more mulch may need to be added to continue providing benefits to the soil and plants. However, if mulch is faded, spraying dye to previously spread mulch in order to restore color is an option.[24] Anaerobic (sour) mulch [ edit ] Mulch normally smells like freshly cut wood, but sometimes develops a toxicity that causes it to smell like vinegar, ammonia, sulfur or silage. This happens when material with ample nitrogen content is not rotated often enough and it forms pockets of increased decomposition. When this occurs, the process may become anaerobic and produce these phytotoxic materials in small quantities. Once exposed to the air, the process quickly reverts to an aerobic process, but these toxic materials may be present for a period of time. If the mulch is placed around plants before the toxicity has had a chance to dissipate, then the plants could very likely be damaged or killed depending on their hardiness. Plants that are predominantly low to the ground or freshly planted are the most susceptible, and the phytotoxicity may prevent germination of some seeds.[25] If sour mulch is applied and there is plant kill, the best thing to do is to water the mulch heavily. Water dissipates the chemicals faster and refreshes the plants. Removing the offending mulch may have little effect, because by the time plant kill is noticed, most of the toxicity is already dissipated. While testing after plant kill will not likely turn up anything, a simple pH check may reveal high acidity, in the range of 3.8 to 5.6 instead of the normal range of 6.0 to 7.2. Finally, placing a bit of the offending mulch around another plant to check for plant kill will verify if the toxicity has departed. If the new plant is also killed, then sour mulch is probably not the problem. Groundcovers (living mulches) [ edit ] Groundcovers are plants which grow close to the ground, under the main crop, to slow the development of weeds and provide other benefits of mulch. They are usually fast-growing plants that continue growing with the main crops. By contrast, cover crops are incorporated into the soil or killed with herbicides. However, live mulches also may need to be mechanically or chemically killed eventually to prevent competition with the main crop.[26] Some groundcovers can perform additional roles in the garden such as nitrogen fixation in the case of clovers, dynamic accumulation of nutrients from the subsoil in the case of creeping comfrey (Symphytum ibericum), and even food production in the case of Rubus tricolor.[27] On-site production [ edit ] Owing to the great bulk of mulch which is often required on a site, it is often impractical and expensive to source and import sufficient mulch materials. An alternative to importing mulch materials is to grow them on site in a "mulch garden" - an area of the site dedicated entirely to the production of mulch which is then transferred to the growing area.[27] Mulch gardens should be sited as close as possible to the growing area so as to facilitate transfer of mulch materials.[27] Mulching (composting) over unwanted plants [ edit ] Sufficient mulch over plants will destroy them, and may be more advantageous than using herbicide, cutting, mowing, pulling, raking, or tilling. The higher the temperature that this "mulch" is composted, the quicker the reduction of undesirable materials. "Undesirable materials" may include living seed, plant "trash", as well as pathogens such as from animal feces, urine (e.g. hantavirus), fleas, lice, ticks, etc. In some ways this
u, by talking about Jett freely, he says. And he holds on to the traditional Catholic belief that “a person’s soul lives on forever”, despite having been converted to Scientology in 1975 by the actress Joan Prather on the set of The Devil’s Rain in Mexico. “I wasn’t well and she gave me what’s called ‘an assist’. I got well very quickly after that, but I mean 30 minutes later.” Travolta was intrigued enough to sign up to a course on his return to Los Angeles, where he found that Scientology “used everything I had always known to be true and provided really workable solutions. He,” he says, presumably referring to science-fiction writer L Ron Hubbard, “has done the heavy lifting for us and worked to hone down what works into a technology that helps you attain the things that you are looking for in a religion.” If it weren’t for his beliefs, Travolta assures me, he could never have got through the period following his son’s death. “Oh my God,” he says, and there’s a crack in his voice even now, “I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had the support of Scientology. I don’t think I could have got through it. They were with me every day after Jett died. They even travelled with me when I needed to get away. And for a solid two years it was like that. It was only in the second year that I started to take a break of a day or two just to see how I was doing on my own.” Travolta with Kirstie Alley in the film Look Who's Talking I wonder whether, well before Jett’s death, Scientology had become a crutch for Travolta – and Tom Cruise after him – to lean on when the pressures of fame became too much. A private man who remembers a time when showbusiness was about “ability being valued over getting attention for no particular reason”, Travolta is bemused by today’s reality television culture. “I always feel like a terrible snob when I say this,” he says, laughing, “but I would be embarrassed to be famous for not doing anything. Fame is already a tricky thing but to have it when you have no particular ability is a strange thing, I think.” It’s about a modern cult of “voyeurism” he says. “What do they look like going shopping? What do they look like when they go on a date? How are they with their children and when they eat? What else can all that be but voyeurism?” To think that people invite that scrutiny into their lives through social media is anathema to Travolta, who once described the seclusion famous people are forced into as being like “a celebrity prison”. Of course Diana, Princess of Wales, was the ultimate victim of that, and when the two of them had that famous dance at a White House gala dinner in 1985, Travolta felt that it was “two victims of it dancing together”. “There really was something lovely and girlish about her,” he remembers, “and I felt that I had taken her back to her childhood, when she had probably watched Grease – and for that moment I was her Prince Charming.” He wasn’t nervous, he says, “because I’d seen her dance with Charles beforehand so I knew that she was strong. But she looked like she was leading [him] and because I knew that the world was watching I thought that I really needed to give her certainty that I knew what to do. I put my hand in the middle of her back, brought her hand down so that it wouldn’t be so high and gave her the confidence that we would do just fine,” he smiles. “She was the real deal. And I think that was partly because she followed the rule that ‘it’s OK to be important as long as everyone else is equally important’.” One gets the sense that Travolta lives by that mantra. He’s gentle and courteous throughout our interview; he’s also unafraid to sound vulnerable. “I don’t love the idea of turning 60,” he admits of his birthday later this month, “so I had hoped to keep it under the radar.” Having feared that he might never act again after Jett’s death, he now has a series of tough-guy roles lined up, first in heist movie The Forger, then as John Gotti Snr in a 2015 biopic about the mobster. He won’t really “close the chapter on playing villains”, he says, until he gets cast as a baddy in a James Bond film. “I would love that. They’re going a different way with their villain in this next film but I’ve spoken to Barbara Broccoli about it and she loves the idea, so that would be great.” His white, three-piece disco-dancing suit may now be a museum piece, but Travolta still likes to sing – particularly to his son, Ben. “I like to introduce him to songs in unusual ways. I recently told him about the fastest aircraft in the world – the SR-71 Blackbird – because he loves planes like his dad, so I said: ‘You know, Ben, there’s even a song about the Blackbird.’ ” Here Travolta breaks into a few lines of the Paul McCartney song – that unmannered high tenor still surprisingly affecting, all these years on. “The nanny was listening and do you know what she said? ‘I didn’t know that Paul McCartney wrote that about the SR-71.’” He’s still laughing softly to himself when we say goodbye. A Conversation with John Travolta is at Theatre Royal, London WC2 on February 16. Tickets: 0844 412 4660 www.reallyusefultheatres.co.uk/concerts-and-events/16th-february-john-travolta JOHN TRAVOLTA AND FAMILY: IN PICTURESConfigure a full video wall by just taking one picture Have a look at the demo video to get an idea of what this video wall package is capable of: Configure the screens After you imported this package into your account you'll first have to create a setup based on it. A setup allows you to create a video wall from a collection of screens. If you want to create multiple video walls, just create multiple setup. In the setup you'll first have to click on the Assigned devices tab and add all the screens you want to use. Then click back to the Configuration tab. You should see the screens you've just assigned. The first thing you'll have to do now is click on the Save button. This will instruct all assigned devices to show a configuration tag. Each screen should now show something like this: The next step is to take a picture of all your screens from the position of your future viewers. For example stand directly in front of all your screens and take a picture. Make sure all tags are visible. Click on Upload/Capture Mapping Picture and select the picture you just created. Certain browsers, especially on mobile devices, also allow you to directly take a picture instead of selecting an existing picture. If your browser supports webcam access you can instead use the webcam capture mode. Just click on the Camera Capture button. Your browser might ask for permission to access the webcam. Allow this access (Due to how the info-beamer configuration interface works, the live video stream //never// leaves your browser: All computation is done on your machine and is never shared with info-beamer.com or any other site), then point the webcam to your video wall screens and click on either the live stream panel or on the Camera Capture button again. After you've selected or taken a picture it might take a moment to automatically detect all the tags in the picture. If everything was successful, all screens items in the configuration interface should turn green. Just click on Save again and you're ready to show content on your video wall. If your snapshot didn't detect all tags or some tags are covered, you can create more mapping pictures to configure your wall. Be sure to capture any additional snapshot from the same position you took the initial snapshot. Otherwise your mapping won't work. Additional snapshots allows you to create setups that include partially occluded screens: First create a snapshot with all the screens in the "bottom layer". Then, while keeping the camera in the same position, add more screens on top and create more snapshots to complete your setup. Changing the mapping If you're not satisfied with your configuration, just click on Reset mapping. This will remove the previous mapping configuration and allows you to create a new one. Make sure you click on Save so all screens show the configuration tags again. Hints You can have screens in any orientation. They can be rotated in almost any direction as long as the tag is still detectable by the configuration system. Be aware that a wierd arrangement might only look good from the position you took the mapping picture. If you want to create a video wall that works from any angle, be sure that all screen surfaces are planar. Make sure you get as close to your screens as possible as the video/image you show on your screens will be scaled according to the mapping picture you took. The further you're away from the screen, the less of the content you'll see on them later. I'd suggest you just play around with them a bit to get a feeling of how the mapping system works. Right now the package is limited to 32 screens. This isn't a hard limit and exists because only the first 32 tag images used to detect orientations are included with the package. If you want to use more than 32 screens, get in contact and the package can be updated. Set a playlist Click on the node labeled Playlist Configuration on the left side of the configuration screen. You can add images and video assets to your playlist. If you make changes to a playlist and click on Save, your devices will go black for a short moment until they are all back in sync. Therefore it is recommended to make all changes to a playlist and save only once. Streaming This package as experimental support for live streaming. Just enter a stream url and your device will play that stream instead of the configured playlist. Since there is no communication across devices running a video wall setup, synchronization is tricky. Right now streaming really only works if you configure a RTP multicast stream. You can use the "Multicast Video Streamer" to generate such a stream from a connected camera module. Learn more about the package: Multicast Video Streamer by Florian Wesch <fw@info-beamer.com> Receives video from various sources and multicasts it to the local network as RTP stream Learn more.. Release history Version 'incremental' The package now allows incremental mapping. This allows you to configure partically occluded screens by taking multiple configuration pictures from the same location. Version'stream' Added experimental streaming support Version 'webcam' Added webcam support to the configuration interface. Version 'preview' This is the first public release. While it works, there might be problems. If you find anything, please open an issue on github.ES News Email Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account The chairman of the London Assembly transport committee has been filmed in a bizarre row on a train with a woman who was accused of putting her muddy feet on his seat. In an astonishing five-minute bust-up, Conservative councillor Keith Prince was subjected to an increasingly angry tirade from the woman opposite him, who witnesses said had put her shoes up on his chair. In her angry tirade, the woman eventually calls Mr Prince a “white idiot” as the row escalates. Mr Prince traded insults with the woman sitting opposite him on the Southeastern train during yesterday's rush-hour. Footage of the exchange was posted on Facebook on the Dartford Rail Travellers Association page. The footage shows an increasingly heated argument between the pair, with the woman firing a string of insults at Mr Prince, most of which he laughs off. What they said: Woman: You're an idiot. You're so used to women being quiet when you talk innit? Touch me again i'll f*ing slap you. You're an idiot Mr Prince: No, you're an idiot W: That's why you're not married you idiot. M: (laughing, shows his wedding ring and makes a noise at the woman) W: Are you married? Are you married? Are you sure? M: Yes W: She's not cheating on you? M: She's a really nice Yoruba lady W: She's Yoruba? So she's Nigerian? She's my people? She's using your money. Trust me she doesn't love you. Touch me again I'll fing slap you. Your wife, is where I'm from so I know you know her attitude - so touch me again and I will slap you. M: I don't want to touch you, all I want is for you to not put your shoes on my chair so that I don't have to get dirt on my trousers. (The woman then puts his foot on his chair and he appears to grab her ankle and Mr Prince starts laughing W: You are laughing because you know you can't do s*. Listen my feet is literally by your balls. I'm literally grabbing you by your balls. M: No you're not, no you're not, no you're not W: You're an idiot, you're actually an idiot She angrily accuses Mr Prince's Nigerian wife Temitayo of being with him to get his hands on his money. She said: "Stop touching me," adding "That's why you're not married." Mr Prince replies, displaying his wedding ring, and saying his wife is a "lovely Yoruba lady." To which the woman replies: “Your wife is from where I’m from – you know we have the same accent. Trust me, she doesn’t love you, she is using your money, you idiot. “Touch me again and I will slap you, the same way your wife treats you at home.” Mr Prince then says: "“My wife is not like you.” The woman then escalates the row further, saying “I’m literally grabbing you by your balls, do you understand this? You know you can’t do sht.” Mr Prince today said he regretted being drawn into the row. "I regret getting involved in such a petty dispute. This is one of those situations in which it is better to simply walk away," he said in a statement. “By the end of the journey we were joking with each other and having a pleasant conversation. That said, I’d like to apologise to my fellow commuters for the disturbance our initial disagreement caused.” A Tory spokesman said: “We are aware that video footage has been posted online of a verbal dispute between an unknown woman and London Assembly member Keith Prince. “The exchange occurred on a train travelling from Dartford to London Bridge yesterday morning at around 8.30am.”Welcome to "Real News/Fake News," the game show everybody is talking and tweeting about. Playing this is as simple as LSU's last six offensive game plans vs. Alabama. There are seven topics with two spins on each. You decide which spin is real news and which spin is fake news. Good luck! Topic 1: LSU football closes practices to media Spin A: LSU coach Ed Orgeron closed his preseason practices to the media, noting that they would remain shut until Aug. 21 when he expected to have the Tigers' new offense re-installed and some of the defensive vacancies filled. Spin B: LSU athletic director Joe "The Search" Alleva announced plans to build the world's largest underground practice facility. Besides a 100-yard football field, weight room and training staff facilities, it will also have a cafeteria and a dorm so players never see the light of day during an August training camp. "The media always says we have a 'bunker mentality' so we might as well as confirm it," Alleva wrote in an e-mail to ticket-holders in which he also said season ticket prices were being tripled to cover the cost of constructing the building nicknamed "O's Hideaway." Topic 2: An SEC school has a class in which students can name their own grade Spin A: University of Georgia professor Dr. Richard Watson, who teaches business courses, said he'll have a "stress reduction policy" in which a student can name his or her own grade. All a student must do is send an e-mail to Dr. Watson that includes what grade the student would like to receive. The grade request will be granted. Spin B: UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen, who said last week that "football and school don't go together" has applied for immediate enrollment at the University of Georgia. "I hear they have an outstanding business school," Rosen said. "I've always wanted to be an Academic All-American. Finally, I can just mail it in and get a 4.0." Topic 3: Les Miles hired by SEC Network Spin A: Former LSU head football coach Les Miles will be a guest analyst for the SEC Network studio show Sept. 2 from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. leading into the season opener between Florida and Michigan at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Spin B: The SEC Network announced it has hired former LSU head coach Les Miles. Also, the network posted a job for an on-air interpreter who will be at Miles' side. In addition, the network said it will use subtitles anytime Miles appears on the air. Topic 4: Florida coach Jim McElwain suspended seven players, including star receiver Antonio Callaway, for making improper charges on their university student IDs at the school bookstore. Spin A: Per GatorBait.net, some of the players used funds from part of their scholarship agreement to buy electronics equipment and then later reported the cards stolen. Some players sold the electronics equipment purchased with the school-issued funds. It was Callaway's third incident at Florida, following being accused of sexual assault and for marijuana possession. McElwain said he would use the latest incident as "a learning opportunity." Spin B: After Florida receiver Antonio Callaway robbed a bank, followed by a high-speed chase with law enforcement that ended with Callaway sprinting on to the practice field throwing cash in the air screaming "hundys for my boyz," Gators' coach Jim McElwain stopped practice and named Callaway a permanent team captain. "Yes, we know Antonio is not perfect, he's a work in progress," McElwain told the team, still somewhat distracted counting their unexpected instant bonus. "But if you just look what he did - the way he busted his butt to get to practice no matter the obstacles in front of him or the pursuers behind him - he had to get here because this team is important to him. He gives of himself. He constantly screws up to show lessons we all need to learn. Antonio makes us all better people." Because Callaway threw one of the bags of cash out the window during the chase and it landed on the front lawn of Boys and Girls Club, McElwain also announced Callaway as the school's nominee for SEC's annual Brad Davis Community Service Award. Topic 5: LSU moves Fan Day to the spring Spin A: LSU announced it will move the annual football "fan day" to spring 2018 to be part of the National L Club spring game festivities. "This move will greatly improve the festivities of that weekend and give our student-athletes more time to really get involved," Deputy Athletics Director Eddie Nunez said in a release. Spin B: LSU announced it will move the annual football "fan day" to the spring 2018 to be part of the National L Club spring game festivities. Deputy Athletics Director Eddie Nunez said fans wishing to get autographs of any of the Tigers' anticipated absent players, such as graduated seniors or early NFL Draft entries such as Derrius Guice and Arden Key, they can leave self-addressed stamped envelopes that will be forwarded to those players. LSU also announced that its 2017 media day has been moved to August 2020. Ed Orgeron has agreed to allow coordinators Matt Canada (offense) and Dave Aranda (defense) to finally speak with the media if Canada and/or Aranda hadn't taken a head coaching job somewhere. Topic 6: Auburn uses a Waffle House food truck to feed players. Spin A: A Waffle House food truck pulled up to the Auburn Athletic Complex to feed players following a practice and meetings Wednesday. As players lined up for Auburn coach Gus Malzahn's favorite post-game victory meal, new AU quarterback Jarrett Stidham jumped in the truck, placed a Waffle House hat on his head and served up waffles for teammates. Spin B: Noting Auburn QB Jarrett Stidham serving waffles to his teammates from a Waffle House truck, LSU coach Ed Orgeron thought it was a great team bonding exercise. So Orgeron ordered a Waffle House truck and had all his quarterbacks not only cook waffles but flip pancakes. Turned out it wasn't such a good idea. "A lot of players on our team, especially our linemen, didn't get enough to eat," Orgeron said. "Our quarterbacks kept missing the plates when trying to flip pancakes on them. Either they overthrew the plate badly or fired the pancake so hard it just bounced off the plate and landed on the ground." Topic 7: LSU creates new level of club seating to allow more beer and wine sales Spin A: The new Skyline Club, opening in September atop Tiger Stadium's south end zone deck of Tiger Stadium, will feature an all-you-can-eat special menu that is included in the price of the ticket. Additional menu items along with beverages, including beer and wine, will be available for an additional cost to those purchasing tickets in the Skyline Club. The Skyline Club is open-air seating and can to accommodate up to 1,500 fans in sections 650-658 of the south end zone of Tiger Stadium. Because the area is designated as premium seating, it meets the SEC criteria of allowing alcohol sales in suites and club levels. The league prohibits sale in all other areas in their venues. Spin B: The ticket demand response for LSU's new Skyline Club has been so great that Tigers' athletic director Joe "The Search" Alleva announced plans to turn the entire West side of Tiger Stadium into club seating. "We're going to retro fit each seat with a beer tap, a breathalyzer and a button where you can call an Uber for a ride home," said Alleva in an e-mail, who also announced a partnership with Uber to become "The Official Designated Driver of the LSU Tigers." Topic 8: Possible next Mike the Tiger is in quarantine in his campus habitat Spin A: An 11-month old rescue tiger named Harvey, who will likely become LSU's next live mascot Mike VII, is being quarantined for at least one week in his on-campus habitat where he will be acclimating to his new surroundings. Spin B: An 11-month old rescue tiger named Harvey, who will likely become LSU's next live mascot Mike VII, is being quarantined for at least one week in his on-campus where he will be acclimating to his new surroundings. When asked to be more specific about the acclimation, a vet school spokesman explained in detail. "The tiger has to be able to do three simple things consistently," the spokesman said. "The first is to successfully change channels on his 71-inch big screen. Secondly, he must also understand how to increase and decrease the vibration on his specially-made, tiger-sized massage bed. "Finally, when we make his dinner and sculpt all the pounds and pounds of ground beef into a replica statue of Nick Saban, the tiger must be able to clean his plate within 90 seconds." To ensure that the tiger stays in a positive frame of mind, the vet school has enlisted the help of first-year coach Ed Orgeron for such affirmation. Each morning at 6:30, Orgeron stands outside the tiger habitat and repeatedly yells "Go Ti-gah, go T-igah, go T-gah" for a half hour or when the Monster energy drink wears off."They left out the humor. They left out the human interest and personality and playing up characterizations and personal problems," the Marvel icon once said. Viewers may have been blown away by the Amazing Spider-Man live-action CBS series in late 1970s, but there was one person who hated it: Stan Lee. In an interview unearthed by Heat Vision, Spidey's co-creator said the show, which ran for two seasons and starred Nicholas Hammond as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, missed the mark. "The Spider-Man TV series I was very unhappy with because very often, people will take a novel, let's say, and bring it to the screen... and they will leave out the one element, the one quality that made the novel a best-seller," Lee explained. "With Spider-Man, I felt the people who did the live-action series left out the very elements that made the comic book popular." Basically, the characters were boring, the Marvel icon said. "They left out the humor. They left out the human interest and personality and playing up characterizations and personal problems," Lee said. The CBS series was technically not the first live-action Spider-Man venture. That distinction belongs to PBS' The Electric Company, which in the early 1970s featured the short skits "Spidey Super Stories." However, those had no action, no special effects. The CBS series had special effects, and Lee admitted that visually, The Amazing Spider-Man was impressive, especially for its time. "On a technical level, I think they did a good job," he said. "The scenes of him climbing on the wall — in those days, they didn't have the wherewithal that they have today, and they did a very good job with that." Yet, the program was one-dimensional, in Lee's opinion, and he wasn't surprised it only lasted 13 episodes. His dislike for the Spider-Man series marks the rare occasion when Lee has publicly been critical of a Marvel-related project. He was also vocally not a fan of an attempt to make a 1994 Fantastic Four film, which ultimately went down in flames. In separate footage featured in Doomed, a 2016 documentary about the failed Fantastic Four project, Lee promised fans after that debacle, Marvel would have control over future iterations of its big-screen characters. The Tom Holland starrer Spiderman: Homecoming is due out July 7. Lee, of course, will have a cameo. Check out Lee's comments on The Amazing Spider-Man and a trailer for the show's pilot below.Early life Edit Expedition to the Far East Edit Arrival in Japan Edit In April 1600, after more than nineteen months at sea, a crew of twenty-three sick and dying men (out of the 100 who started the voyage) brought the Liefde to anchor off the island of Kyūshū, Japan. Its cargo consisted of eleven chests of trade goods: coarse woolen cloth, glass beads, mirrors, and spectacles; and metal tools and weapons: nails, iron, hammers, nineteen bronze cannon; 5,000 cannonballs; 500 muskets, 300 chain-shot, and three chests filled with coats of mail. When the nine surviving crew members were strong enough to stand, they made landfall on 19 April off Bungo (present-day Usuki, Ōita Prefecture). They were met by Japanese locals and Portuguese Jesuit missionary priests claiming that Adams' ship was a pirate vessel and that the crew should be executed as pirates.[8] The ship was seized and the sickly crew were imprisoned at Osaka Castle on orders by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the daimyō of Edo and future shōgun. The nineteen bronze cannon of the Liefde were unloaded and, according to Spanish accounts, later used at the decisive Battle of Sekigahara on 21 October 1600. Adams met Ieyasu in Osaka three times between May and June 1600. He was questioned by Ieyasu, then a guardian of the young son of the Taikō Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler who had just died. Adams' knowledge of ships, shipbuilding and nautical smattering of mathematics appealed to Ieyasu. William Adams meets Tokugawa Ieyasu, in an idealised depiction of 1707. Coming before the king, he viewed me well, and seemed to be wonderfully favourable. He made many signs unto me, some of which I understood, and some I did not. In the end, there came one that could speak Portuguese. By him, the king demanded of me of what land I was, and what moved us to come to his land, being so far off. I showed unto him the name of our country, and that our land had long sought out the East Indies, and desired friendship with all kings and potentates in way of merchandise, having in our land diverse commodities, which these lands had not… Then he asked whether our country had wars? I answered him yea, with the Spaniards and Portugals, being in peace with all other nations. Further, he asked me, in what I did believe? I said, in God, that made heaven and earth. He asked me diverse other questions of things of religions, and many other things: As what way we came to the country. Having a chart of the whole world, I showed him, through the Strait of Magellan. At which he wondered, and thought me to lie. Thus, from one thing to another, I abode with him till mid-night. (from William Adams' letter to his wife)[9] Adams wrote that Ieyasu denied the Jesuits' request for execution on the ground that: we as yet had not done to him nor to none of his land any harm or damage; therefore against Reason or Justice to put us to death. If our country had wars the one with the other, that was no cause that he should put us to death; with which they were out of heart that their cruel pretence failed them. For which God be forever praised. (William Adams' letter to his wife)[9] Ieyasu ordered the crew to sail the Liefde from Bungo to Edo where, rotten and beyond repair, she sank. Japan's first western-style sailing ships Edit Western samurai Edit Taking a liking to Adams, the shōgun appointed him as a diplomatic and trade advisor, bestowing great privileges upon him. Ultimately, Adams became his personal advisor on all things related to Western powers and civilization. After a few years, Adams replaced the Jesuit Padre João Rodrigues as the Shogun's official interpreter. Padre Valentim Carvalho wrote: "After he had learned the language, he had access to Ieyasu and entered the palace at any time"; he also described him as "a great engineer and mathematician".[citation needed] shōgun. From Naaukeurige Versameling der Gedenk-Waardigste Zee en Land-Reysen (a series of accounts of famous land- and sea-voyages). Thought to be by 1707 map of Japan, with a cartouche representing the audience of William Adams with the. From(a series of accounts of famous land- and sea-voyages). Thought to be by Pieter van der Aa Adams had a wife and children in England, but Ieyasu forbade the Englishman to leave Japan. He was presented with two swords representing the authority of a Samurai. The Shogun decreed that William Adams the pilot was dead and that Miura Anjin (三浦按針), a samurai, was born. According to the shōgun, this action "freed" Adams to serve the Shogunate permanently, effectively making Adams' wife in England a widow. (Adams managed to send regular support payments to her after 1613 via the English and Dutch companies.) Adams also was given the title of hatamoto (bannerman), a high-prestige position as a direct retainer in the shōgun's court.[11] Adams was given generous revenues: "For the services that I have done and do daily, being employed in the Emperor's service, the emperor has given me a living" (Letters). He was granted a fief in Hemi (Jpn: 逸見) within the boundaries of present-day Yokosuka City, "with eighty or ninety husbandmen, that be my slaves or servants" (Letters). His estate was valued at 250 koku (a measure of the yearly income of the land in rice, with one koku defined as the quantity of rice sufficient to feed one person for one year). He finally wrote "God hath provided for me after my great misery" (Letters), by which he meant the disaster-ridden voyage that had initially brought him to Japan. Adams's estate was located next to the harbour of Uraga, the traditional point of entrance to Edo Bay. There he was recorded as dealing with the cargoes of foreign ships. John Saris related that when he visited Edo in 1613, Adams had resale rights for the cargo of a Spanish ship at anchor in Uraga Bay.[citation needed] Adams' position gave him the means to marry Oyuki (お雪), the adopted [12] daughter of Magome Kageyu. He was a highway official who was in charge of a packhorse exchange on one of the grand imperial roads that led out of Edo (roughly present-day Tokyo). Although Magome was important, Oyuki was not of noble birth, nor high social standing. Adams may have married from affection rather than for social reasons. Adams and Oyuki had a son Joseph and a daughter Susanna. Adams was constantly traveling for work. Initially, he tried to organise an expedition in search of the Arctic passage that had eluded him previously.[citation needed] Adams had a high regard for Japan, its people, and its civilisation: The people of this Land of Japan are good of nature, courteous above measure, and valiant in war: their justice is severely executed without any partiality upon transgressors of the law. They are governed in great civility. I mean, not a land better governed in the world by civil policy. The people be very superstitious in their religion, and are of diverse opinions.[13][citation needed] Establishment of the Dutch East India Company in Japan Edit Establishment of an English trading factory Edit Religious rivalries Edit The Portuguese and other Catholic religious orders in Japan considered Adams a rival as an English Protestant. After Adams' power had grown, the Jesuits tried to convert him, then offered to secretly bear him away from Japan on a Portuguese ship. The Jesuits' willingness to disobey the order by Ieyasu prohibiting Adams from leaving Japan showed that they feared his growing influence. Catholic priests asserted that he was trying to discredit them. In 1614, Carvalho complained of Adams and other merchants in his annual letter to the Pope, saying that "by false accusation [Adams and others] have rendered our preachers such objects of suspicion that he [Ieyasu] fears and readily believes that they are rather spies than sowers of the Holy Faith in his kingdom." [16][17] Ieyasu, influenced by Adams' counsels and disturbed by unrest caused by the numerous Catholic converts, expelled the Portuguese Jesuits from Japan in 1614. He demanded that Japanese Catholics abandon their faith. Adams apparently warned Ieyasu against Spanish approaches as well. Character Edit After fifteen years spent in Japan, Adams had a difficult time establishing relations with the English arrivals. He initially shunned the company of the newly arrived English sailors in 1613 and could not get on good terms with Saris. But Richard Cocks, the head of the Hirado factory, came to appreciate Adams' character and what he had acquired of Japanese self-control. In a letter to the East India Company Cocks wrote: I find the man tractable and willing to do your worships the best service he may... I am persuaded I could live with him seven years before any extraordinary speeches should happen between us." (Cocks's diary) Participation in Asian trade Edit A Japanese Red seal ship used for Asian trade – 1634, unknown artist Adams later engaged in various exploratory and commercial ventures. He tried to organise an expedition to the legendary Northwest Passage from Asia, which would have greatly reduced the sailing distance between Japan and Europe. Ieyasu asked him if "our countrimen could not find the northwest passage" and Adams contacted the East India Company to organise manpower and supplies. The expedition never got underway. In his later years, Adams worked for the English East Indian Company. He made a number of trading voyages to Siam in 1616 and Cochinchina in 1617 and 1618, sometimes for the English East India Company, sometimes for his own account. He is recorded in Japanese records as the owner of a Red Seal Ship of 500 tons. Given the few ships that the Company sent from England and the poor trading value of their cargoes (broadcloth, knives, looking glasses, Indian cotton, etc.), Adams was influential in gaining trading certificates from the shōgun to allow the Company to participate in the Red Seal system. It made a total of seven junk voyages to Southeast Asia with mixed profit results. Four were led by William Adams as captain. Adams renamed a ship he acquired in 1617 as Gift of God; he sailed it on his expedition that year to Cochinchina. The expeditions he led are described more fully below. 1614 Siam expedition Edit In 1614, Adams wanted to organise a trade expedition to Siam to bolster the Company factory's activities and cash situation. He bought and upgraded a 200-ton Japanese junk for the Company, renaming her as Sea Adventure; and hired about 120 Japanese sailors and merchants, as well as several Chinese traders, an Italian and a Castilian (Spanish) trader. The heavily laden ship left in November 1614, during the typhoon season. The merchants Richard Wickham and Edmund Sayers of the English factory's staff also joined the voyage. The expedition was to purchase raw silk, Chinese goods, sappan wood, deer skins and ray skins (the latter used for the handles of Japanese swords). The ship carried £1250 in silver and £175 of merchandise (Indian cottons, Japanese weapons and lacquerware). The party encountered a typhoon near the Ryukyu Islands (modern Okinawa) and had to stop there to repair from 27 December 1614 until May 1615. It returned to Japan in June 1615 without having completed any trade. 1615 Siam expedition Edit Adams left Hirado in November 1615 for Ayutthaya in Siam on the refitted Sea Adventure, intent on obtaining sappanwood for resale in Japan. His cargo was chiefly silver (£600) and the Japanese and Indian goods unsold from the previous voyage.[citation needed] He bought vast quantities of the high-profit products. His partners obtained two ships in Siam in order to transport everything back to Japan. Adams sailed the
about it. After two smaller sets in a row, Counterplay Games—which recently partnered with Bandai Namco as a publisher—tells me it's switching to a pattern of swapping between big and small expansions. The newest set, Unearthed Prophecy, is also getting back to some of the ideas that made me fall in love with Duelyst in the first place. Unearthed Prophecy Thunderhorn is one of the previously revealed cards coming in the new set. It relies heavily on positioning, and has the potential to entirely change how your opponent thinks about their movements while on the board. You can take a look at all the cards from Unearthed Prophecy revealed so far right here. Already announced is the addition of new types of tiles specific to the Lyonar, Magmar, and Vetruvian factions, as well as a smattering of cards that more heavily rely on board position. Effects that interact with unit movement and positioning were one of the most exciting parts of Duelyst's core set, so I'm pleased those concepts will be expanded on in Unearthed Prophecy. But what about the other three factions that aren't getting new tiles? Well Vanar, Abyssian, and Songhai will each get three units with a brand new keyword: Sentinel. Sentinel units all cost 3 mana and, when played, appear on the board as a generic looking 3/3. When one of three conditions is met—the opponent playing a unit, playing a spell, or attacking with their general—the Sentinel will transform into its true form. The trick here is that only the player who played the Sentinel unit knows which one it is, so your opponent will have to tiptoe around each trigger while you can try to bluff which unit you actually played. It's something like a mix of Hearthstone's Secrets and Magic: The Gathering's Morph. There are only going to be nine Sentinel units total in Unearthed Prophecy—three per faction, each with one of the triggers. That means the possibilities are pretty simple to check and prepare for if you are familiar with the cards, especially if only one of the three turns out to see play in a given deck. But still, I love the idea of putting three of each into a deck and watching my opponent be utterly confused each time a faceless Sentinel hits the board, just for laughs. You can flip through the nine new Sentinel cards we have to show off in the gallery below, along with the generic Watchful Sentinel unit for each faction. You can also find th e full resolution PNGs and animated GIFs of each card here.Transcript for Kerry Criticizes Donald Trump's Use of Twitter The tweets that you've been seeing from the president elect and with they obviously those pertaining to foreign policy whether they're in Taiwan whether there Russia whether it. Intel what what effect do you think that hands a. And how could speculate honestly. I don't. You know I know that. Make announcements of foreign policy bites we Twitter I don't think. You know a 140 characters. Allow you to adequately. Deal with the complexity of many choices that we make I think we really need to hopefully move to. Different. A way of communicating. Wherever this administration is gonna go but it's up to them to make that decision and I relegated to a back and forth. This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.Last week, The Herbivorous Butcher closed shop for two days to film a new episode of Food Network program Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Hosted by Guy Fieri, the long-running travel food show features local restaurants around the country and has Fieri sampling their most popular dishes while interviewing the owners in the kitchen. While Fieri has made a name for himself eating mostly carnivorous fare, The Herbivorous Butcher sibling owners Kale and Aubry Walch report that the host loved their vegan offerings, revealed that members of his family had recently eschewed meat and dairy from their diets, and commented about the positive health aspects of veganism. During his visit, Fieri sampled the Turkey and Dill Havarti Sandwich and the Italian Cold Cuts Sandwich—made with pastrami, ham, pepperoni, and mozzarella served on a hoagie bun with pickled cherry peppers, mayonnaise, dried oregano, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. “My favorite thing is when he said the Italian Cold Cut sandwich was good even by a meat sandwich standard,” Kale told VegNews. In regard to Fieri, Aubry revealed, “He said that most of the time he cooks just vegetables at home. People think he’s a crazy, hard-core meat eater, but he’s a pretty awesome dude.” About their upcoming appearance on national television, the duo agreed it would bring veganism to a new audience, and, as Aubry stated, “make it less scary.” The vegan butcher shop has received much acclaim since its opening early this year with features in TIME and Eater, and on National Public Radio. VegNews covered the story of The Herbivorous Butcher in the May+June edition of the magazine. Photo courtesy of The Herbivorous ButcherMatt Corasanti was taking his gear off after a quick, after-work kayak outing in Fells Point when a frantic man ran up to him, saying his dog had fallen into the water and asking whether Corasanti could help him. Corasanti hopped back into his kayak, docked at the Canton Kayak Club's pier in the 1600 block of Thames St., and paddled toward the puppy, which was trying to scramble back over a concrete barrier and onto the dock. But he couldn't reach the puppy. So the 28-year-old Canton man slipped out of his kayak and into the harbor. Bobbing in his life jacket, Corasanti swam over to the little dog, plucked it up in one hand and lifted it to safety. "My whole focus was trying not to get any water in my eyes or mouth," he said of the Monday evening rescue. Marc Sumers noticed the commotion about 70 p.m. as he was taking pictures for a photography class at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He couldn't see what was happening on the other side of the wooden pylons and initially thought a child had fallen into the harbor. Sumers reached his camera out over the water and began blindly snapping pictures to see what was going on. "I kind of chuckled a little bit," he said, when he looked at the photos, showing Corasanti hoisting the dog up to its owner. "I was really glad the little puppy is OK," Sumers said. "It was jumping around excitedly. My first reaction was relief that it wasn't a child. And I'm glad the kayaker wasn't hurt either." Neither Corasanti nor Sumers knew the dog's owners. They said the couple whisked away the animal soon after the incident. Corasanti, who lives in Canton and works for Sylvan Learning in Harbor East, said friends and family all had similar reactions when he told them the story: "Ew, the harbor! That's a little gross." "I took a hot shower when I got home," he said. cmcampbell@baltsun.com twitter.com/cmcampbell6Twenty three universities have agreed to share and combine their digitized content, including millions of scanned books and documents, in one gigantic, 78-terabyte library that launched Monday. Called the HathiTrust, the depository contains digital content from 11 University of California libraries and a 12-university consortium that forms the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which includes the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago. Before the HathiTrust launched, digital content was isolated to each university library, according to John Wilkin, associate university librarian of the University of Michigan, who was named the executive director of HathiTrust. “This effort combines the expertise and resources of some of the nation’s foremost research libraries and holds even greater promise as it seeks to grow beyond the initial partners,” Wilkin said in a press release. HathiTrust is similar to Google's Book Search project, which has formed partnerships with several major universities and public libraries who have lent their materials to the search-engine giant for digitization. However, while Google Book Search's seemingly altruistic mission is to provide "a tool that can... help remove the barriers between people and information and benefit the publishing community at the same time," the corporation profits from advertisements displayed near digitized pages. HathiTrust, by contrast, exists purely for universities to share their information with one another, with the goal of fostering advancements in research. Nonetheless, the HathiTrust project will likely encounter controversy regarding copyright infringement, as Google has in the past. Critics of Book Search have said the service commits "massive copyright infringement," even though Google argues its digital content sharing is considered Fair Use. Press Release [HathiTrust] Photo: Dawn Endico/FlickrFormer Democratic President Bill Clinton’s aides were using taxpayer dollars to subsidize the Clinton Foundation, for IT equipment and the notorious private email server, according to a new information released Thursday. The Clintons were using the Former President’s Act, a federal program through the General Services Administration (GSA) – which is generally used for the purpose of paying former president’s staff, travel and pensions – to pay 13 out of 22 staffers who also worked at the nonprofit, reports Politico. The Virginia-based news outlet reports several of the employees salaries were subsidized up to $10,000 annually using money from the program. The evidence strengthens arguments critical of the Clinton Foundation, which may have blurred the lines between political activities and the nonprofit. The foundation is currently under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service for alleged pay-to-play practices. While using the Former President’s Act is not illegal, critics have repeatedly slammed presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton for allowing donors to impact her policy decisions during her tenure as Secretary of State – contending that there are repeated conflicts of interest which merit scrutiny. Bill Clinton drew more funds from the federal program than any other president in the past, having requested a whopping $16 million since he left office. While the Clintons previously claimed that they were “dead broke” after leaving the White House, a claim that has since been debunked, they continued to use taxpayer funds despite managing a $2 billion entity. Follow Juliegrace Brufke on Twitter Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.Ala. Governor Apologizes To Indian Government In 'Excessive Force' Case YouTube Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley apologized on Tuesday to the government of India for an incident, captured on a squad car's dashboard camera, in which officers slammed an Indian man to the ground. In a letter to the Consul General of India in Atlanta, Bentley said he deeply regretted the "unfortunate use of excessive force" by Madison police. Officers there seriously injured Sureshbhai Patel, 57, an Indian man, in a confrontation that has brought renewed attention to excessive force by law enforcement officers. Enlarge this image toggle caption Chirag Patel/AP Chirag Patel/AP Patel had been in the U.S. for a couple of weeks to help with a new grandson in Madison, a suburb of Huntsville in northern Alabama, when he was stopped by two officers responding to a call about suspicious activity. The police video reveals a language barrier. "He don't speak a lick of English," an officer says, complaining that Patel was walking away. Patel's arms are then restrained behind his back, and Madison policeman Eric Parker slams Patel to the ground, face down. He was hospitalized earlier this month with a spinal cord injury and is undergoing rehabilitation. Bentley says that state officials will investigate; an FBI probe already is underway. "Please accept our sincere apology to your government, Mr. Patel and the citizens of India who reside and work in our state," he wrote. Patel's lawyer, Hank Sherrod, says the family is grateful for the Indian government's support, and welcomed the governor's response. "They really appreciate the governor making such a public apology," he said. Nevertheless, Patel has sued the Madison Police Department. The police chief has also apologized and is firing officer Eric Parker, who has been charged with assault. Parker's attorney, Robert Tuten, says the officer will fight both the dismissal and the charge. Anupreet Singh, the president of the Huntsville India Association, says his group met with Madison city leaders Monday to talk about ways to improve communication and cultural understanding. Police stopped Patel after a neighbor called to report "a skinny black guy" with a toboggan hat, thought to be peering into garages. "I don't want to blame that person for making that call. But I do want to say that people have to know their neighbors — get around, meet them, see what they are about, learn their culture," says Singh. "That's what should come out of this incident."This article is over 3 years old Candlelight gatherings staged in towns and cities to remember drowned Turkish boy Aylan Kurdi and call on politicians to tackle unfolding humanitarian disaster Tens of thousands of people attended candlelight vigils across Australia in support of refugees on Monday evening, adding their voices to the growing pressure on Australia to accept more people who are fleeing the war in Syria. Large crowds attended the Light the Dark events in Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart to honour the life of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose body was pictured on a Turkish beach, sparking an outcry over Europe’s response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. The call went out on social media under the hashtags #refugeeswelcome and #LightTheDark, with planned gatherings in major cities as well as more spontaneous events elsewhere. #LightTheDark: readers share their photos from around Australia Read more cosmic sans (@mcat_ee) aaaaaa so proud that so many peoples showed up at the #adelaide #lightthedark pic.twitter.com/jk9mchdho4 Social Justice (@JamUCWA) Lighting candles of compassion for Aylan and all those fleeing danger #LightTheDark #Perth pic.twitter.com/lVrtrXu4yT A crowd of several thousand gathered in the drizzle of Melbourne’s Treasury Gardens to call for more to be done to help Syrian refugees. Several held signs offering to share their homes with those escaping the four-year war, which has resulted in more than 4 million people fleeing the country. Melanie Tait (@MelanieTait) Hobart #LightTheDark. Photo by @jamesfahy. pic.twitter.com/6voGJk3CMc Pamela Curr, of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said such rallies would continue until the Australian government “opens its heart, opens its mind and opens the doors of Australia. We will keep coming out to fight, to light the dark until our government opens its heart and opens the door.” In Sydney, about 5,000 people rallied in Hyde Park, with many people holding signs reading, “You are welcome here.” ASRC (@ASRC1) Wow Melbourne. Get down to Treasury Gardens now - this is huge #LightTheDark #refugeeswelcome pic.twitter.com/aTLlj6rvW2 A Gosford Anglican priest, Rod Bower, spoke to the crowd about Aylan Kurdi. The image of Aylan’s body, washed on to a Turkish beach after his family’s bid to flee Syria by boat, has become a symbol of the humanitarian crisis. #LightTheDark: share your photos and videos Read more “Without warning this child has become every refugee,” Bower said. “An archetype, every refugee, calling us to the fullness of humanity. “None but the wilfully deaf, the wilfully blind and the dead of heart can remain unmoved. Sadly it is those wilfully blind, to our eternal shame, who govern us this day.” The scenes echoed those of February 2014 when vigils were held across the country for Reza Barati, the Iranian man killed during violence at the Manus Island detention centre. In Darwin, people gathered on the Nightcliff jetty and foreshore to hear speeches by advocates, former Save the Children workers and refugees. Several people held signs reading “People just like us.” In Perth, several hundred people rallied in Northbridge. A further rally will be held in Canberra on Tuesday, while Brisbane will hold a Light the Dark event on Friday. jocelyn (@hey_jocelyn) #Lismore gathered to #LightTheDark and call on our leaders to increase intake of refugees #refugeeswelcome here! 💛 pic.twitter.com/a5N9bA9RMr State governments and federal MPs have been increasing the pressure on Tony Abbott to accept a far greater number of Syrians. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Some of the crowd at Nightcliff Jetty in Darwin listen to speeches. Photograph: Helen Davidson for the Guardian Abbott has said Australia would take a “significant” number of Syrians but will not increase the overall refugee quota, which stands at nearly 14,000 people. Labor has said 10,000 extra places should immediately be made available to those fleeing Syria. Ewen Jones, a Liberal MP, told the ABC that the number should be higher, at around 50,000. The Victorian state government and opposition have called for a greater refugee intake, while Mike Baird, the New South Wales premier, told ABC’s Q&A program that the figure could be more than 10,000 people. “Who is to say we can’t do more?” he said. Colin Barnett, the West Australian premier, has said the state could deal with 1,000 refugees while his South Australian counterpart, Jay Weatherill, has told Abbott that the state could house 700 to 800 people. Refugees are Australia's most entrepreneurial migrants, says research Read more Kon Karapanagiotidis (@Kon__K) #Melbourne you're doing us proud as you #LightTheDark to say #refugeeswelcome. Yes they are! #AylanKurdi #Syria pic.twitter.com/3NmfSUaC3b The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said on Monday: “We are proposing a significant increase because this is a significant crisis.” Dr Cat Dorey (@CatfishStory) vigil for refugees in Hyde Park Sydney is growing! #refugeeswelcome pic.twitter.com/kwhuwD0xqc Tony Abbott hints at taking fight to Isis in Syria amid pressure to help country's refugees Read more Shalailah Medhora, Helen Davidson and Australian Associated Press contributed to this reportThe Ravens made it official, naming Steve Spagnuolo as secondary coach and hiring Brian Pariani as tight ends coach. Neither move was a surprise with Pariani accepting the position Monday to replace 15-year tight ends coach Wade Harman. Spagnuolo had been expected to become the secondary coach as the replacement for Teryl Austin since Austin was hired by the Detroit Lions as defensive coordinator. Spagnuolo was also given the additional responsibility of assistant head coach. Special teams coordinator Jerry Rosburg now holds the title of associate head coach after previously being assistant head coach. A former St. Louis Rams head coach who's been a defensive coordinator for the New Orleans Saints and New York Giants, Spagnuolo spent last season on the Ravens' staff as senior defensive assistant. Spagnuolo was the Giants' defensive coordinator for a Super Bowl XLII championship team in 2007 that led the NFL with 53 sacks. Spagnuolo was the Philadelphia Eagles' defensive backs coach for three seasons when John Harbaugh was on that coaching staff. He takes over a unit that includes cornerbacks Lardarius Webb and Jimmy Smith and safeties Matt Elam and James Ihedigbo. “How fortunate are we to have a former NFL head coach, former defensive coordinator and secondary coach become the Ravens’ coach for our defensive backs?” Harbaugh said in a statement. "Steve is one of the outstanding teachers in the NFL, and he already worked with our defensive staff and players last season as a senior assistant. Our players respect him, and a number of our veteran defensive backs recently said to me that they wanted Steve to coach them.” Pariani coached tight ends for the Houston Texans for the past eight seasons, working under new Ravens offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak. With the Texans, he coached two-time Pro Bowl tight end Owen Daniels. Pariani has also coached tight ends for the Denver Broncos previously where he coached Hall of Fame selection Shannon Sharpe. He was an offensive coordinator at Syracuse for one season in 2005 and was previously an offensive assistant and scouting assistant with the San Francisco 49ers. With the Ravens, Pariani inherits a position where top tight end Dennis Pitta is an unrestricted free agent as well as Ed Dickson and Dallas Clark. The Ravens are expected to make a major push to retain Pitta with either a long-term contract or by making him their franchise player, at a cost of $6.702 million. “Brian has earned a reputation as one of the NFL’s top tight ends coaches, and we’re excited that he was available and willing to join us,” Harbaugh said. "Another factor that immediately makes him valuable to us is his familiarity with the offense we want to run. We are making changes on offense, and Brian will be able to help teach and implement them.” awilson@baltsun.com twitter.com/RavensInsiderAfter a 20-year partnership with the Rock Cats, the Minnesota Twins are splitting from their Double-A affiliate in New Britain, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. No information has been released about a new affiliation, but Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra released a statement about the team being affiliated with the Colorado Rockies. “This is more great news for Hartford. We welcome the Colorado Rockies to Connecticut. We’re excited about yet another step forward towards the redevelopment of Downtown North,” Segarra said. Twins general manager Terry Ryan spoke with the Pioneer Press on Saturday about the split with the local team. Hartford Ballpark Proposal Renderings “We had to do something (by Thursday’s deadline) and we did,” Twins general manager Terry Ryan told the Pioneer Press on Saturday. “We ended up severing. I’m not going to deny. Yeah, we severed, but that doesn’t mean anything. I wouldn’t read too much into that.” According to the Pioneer Press, the Twins still have the option of negotiating a two-year agreement with the Rock Cats, which are eyeing a move to Hartford in 2016. “There’s a lot of uncertainty out in New Britain right now,” Ryan told the Pioneer Press. “I don’t think anybody knows if they’re going to move to Hartford. That’s about the only reason we severed is there’s a lot of uncertainty with the affiliate right now. The new owners are fantastic. That’s not the issue. Everything is fine, but there’s a lot of uncertainty.” Conversely, the Twins could enter into a new agreement with one of six other Double-A teams still searching for major league partners, including teams in Chattanooga, Tennessee; Mobile, Alabama; and Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Pioneer Press reports. The Twins have until the end of the month to select their Double-A partner. “We’re out looking,” Ryan said, according to the Pioneer Press. “Whether or not we end up going elsewhere, we’re out looking. There's a few affiliates that are open. Not a lot, but we're exploring some things. I'm not sure exactly where we're going to land, or whether we might end up back in New Britain." Rock Cats Players Hurt in On-Field Collision (Published Thursday, Aug. 14, 2014) The Rock Cats said the decision by the Twins will not affect team operations. "Per Major League Baseball Guidelines, the Player Development Contract cannot be discussed publicly until a final deal is reached. Rest assured, the Rock Cats will have a Double-A Major League affiliate playing in New Britain next April," said Josh Solomon, Managing Partner, New Britain Rock Cats. New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart released a statement and mentioned a Hartford Courant report about the team signing with the Rockies. “For nearly 20 years, New Britain has hosted the Minnesota Twins AA affiliate. While it is unfortunate they now feel compelled to cut those ties, I am relieved to hear that the Colorado Rockies AA affiliate may call New Britain home in the 2015 season. Between our fans, our facilities, and our willingness to work with ownership, this City has proven that a minor league ball club can be very successful right here in New Britain. We thank the Twins for their partnership over the years and we would welcome the Rockies organization to Hard Hittin’ New Britain!,” Stewart said in a statement.A GROUP of New York mobsters has visited Britain to get tips on exploitation from train companies. The gangsters expressed their admiration for the way trains operate in the UK, which they consider to be the most beautiful racket ever devised. ‘Wise guy’ Tommy Logan said: “One day it’s £75 for an off-peak return. The next day – boom – it’s double the price. Nobody asks any questions. “They got this other shit like ‘super off-peak’ just to make it real confusing. “Poor schmucks don’t know what ticket to buy so they just get the most expensive one, it’s nice. Real nice. “Season commuter tickets are the sweetest part of the operation because there’s no other way for people to get to work. Plus they got this ‘family saver’ grift that’s more expensive than the regular fare. “All this and they don’t even bother to fix the toilets.” “You know the best thing? If they want more money, they just ask the government. Cook up some bullshit about ‘vital track maintenance’ then blow the loot on women and horses.”Get the biggest politics 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 There were 499 soldiers with mental health problems kicked out of the Army last year, a defence chief has admitted. Troops suffering illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety were told they were no longer fit to serve. Many who were medically discharged say that losing their jobs and often homes made their illness worse, driving some to the brink of suicide. The disclosure was made in a letter from defence minister Tobias Ellwood to decorated hero Trevor Coult, a staff sergeant shown the door after developing PTSD. Trevor won the Military Cross after killing three would-be suicide bombers in Iraq. He wrote to the MoD urging better treatment for PTSD sufferers. (Image: PA) In the reply, Mr Ellwood admitted almost one in five of all troops medically discharged from the Army in the 12 months to April had mental illness. Married dad-of-one Trevor, 42, a veteran of three Afghanistan tours, received only £6,000 after his discharge. He used it to help rent a home for his family. He said: “I was sent home on sick leave and no one contacted me for 11 months. Then I got a letter saying my employment was being terminated and I had 28 days to vacate my MoD property or I’d be evicted and my family moved to sheltered accommodation. I was devastated. My salary of £36,000 had gone and I was homeless. I became depressed quickly and attempted suicide. The money I received from the MoD lasted just a couple of months. “We now know hundreds of soldiers with PTSD are being forced out every year and the Government washes its hands of them. They need help and support.” (Image: PA) Trevor, who campaigns for better treatment for veterans, told Mr Ellwood rather than paying medically discharged troops £6,000 they should have help finding a new home and get rent for a year. He added: “Six thousand pounds goes very quickly when you are unemployed and homeless.” He was told there were no plans to change government policy. In the letter, Mr Ellwood said of 2,526 service personnel medically discharged up to April, 499 had “mental and behavioural problems”. He said to “provide preferential treatment for one particular group would not be fair to those discharged for other medical reasons”. The Sunday People is campaigning for better treatment for veterans with mental health problems.Turkish soldiers position an anti-aircraft gun at Incirlik airbase in the southern city of Adana, Turkey, July 27, 2015. REUTERS/Murad Sezer By Tulay Karadeniz ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday it was impossible to continue a peace process with Kurdish militants and urged parliament to strip politicians with links to them of immunity from prosecution. Hours after he spoke, the Turkish military said its F-16 fighter jets had bombed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak, which borders Iraq, in response to an attack on a group of gendarmes. Turkey last week launched air strikes on PKK camps in northern Iraq following a series of attacks on its police officers and soldiers blamed on the Kurdish militant group. The PKK has said the air strikes, launched virtually in parallel with strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria, rendered the peace process meaningless but stopped short of formally pulling out. "It is not possible for us to continue the peace process with those who threaten our national unity and brotherhood," Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara before departing on an official visit to China. Western allies have said they recognize Turkey's right to self-defense but have urged the NATO member not to allow peace efforts with the PKK to collapse. While deeming the PKK a terrorist organization, Washington depends heavily on allied Syrian Kurdish fighters in battling Islamic State in Syria. An emergency NATO meeting in Brussels on Tuesday offered political support for Turkey's campaigns in Syria and Iraq, and Erdogan signaled Turkey may have a "duty" to become more involved. For NATO allies, the prospect of Turkey, which borders Iran, Iraq and Syria, fighting a domestic conflict against Kurdish as well as Islamist fighters is a deep concern. But for many in Turkey, Kurdish rebellion remains the primary national threat. Besir Atalay, spokesman for the ruling AK Party, said it was too soon to declare the peace process over and said it could resume if "terrorist elements" put down arms and left Turkey. "There is currently a stagnation in the mechanism but it would restart where it left off if these intentions emerge," he told a press conference in Ankara. POLITICAL GAMBLE Braving nationalist anger, Erdogan introduced tentative reforms on Kurdish rights and in 2012 launched negotiations to try to end a PKK insurgency that has killed 40,000 people since 1984. A fragile ceasefire had been holding since March 2013. However, any calculation Erdogan may have had that his political gamble would reap broad electoral support from Kurds, some 20 percent of the population, demonstrably failed. The pro-Kurdish HDP party won 13 percent of the vote in a June 7 poll, helping to deprive the AKP Erdogan founded of a majority in parliament for the first time since 2002. Many Kurds believe that by reviving conflict with the PKK, Erdogan seeks to undermine support for the HDP ahead of a possible early election. That poll - so runs the argument - could then provide him with the majority he seeks to change the constitution and increase his powers. "He is trying to achieve the result he failed to in the June 7 election in a political coup. That's the real aim of the steps taken now," the PKK said in an e-mailed statement. It accused Erdogan of trying to "crush" the Kurdish political movement "to create an authoritarian, hegemonic system", but it did not directly address his latest comments. Turkey has shut down almost all Kurdish political parties over the years. Erdogan, who has accused the HDP of links to the PKK, said he opposed party closures but urged parliament to lift the immunity of politicians with links to "terrorist groups". "We have committed no unforgivable crimes. Our only crime was winning 13 percent of vote," HDP chairman Selahattin Demirtas told party members in parliament. "The only way for the AKP to be in government on its own is if the HDP is liquidated. Tomorrow the HDP's 80 lawmakers will submit a request for immunity to be lifted," he said, effectively challenging parliament to fulfill Erdogan's threat. SEEKING LEGITIMACY Casting the operations as a war on terrorist groups "without distinction", Turkey opened its air bases to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State and launched air strikes against the jihadists in Syria and the PKK in northern Iraq last week. It has since been rallying international support.Clinton is Far More Anti-Crime Than Pro-Justice When Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton clashed over stop-and-frisk at their first televised debate, Clinton only weakly addressed “the idea of racial justice,” but instead “went immediately to the idea of effectiveness” of stop-and-frisk as a crime-fighting tool. “If a program infringes on civil liberties and violates the Constitution, it doesn’t matter at all if it’s effective or ineffective,” said Chip Gibbons, policy and legislative counsel for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. If, however, the purpose of a policy is “to terrorize people of color, then I supposed you can make an argument that stop-and-frisk is effective in doing that,” said Gibbons. Trump Not the Only Neo-Fascist Running for President Hillary Clinton’s “worldview and her policies are just as dangerous as Donald Trump’s,” said Ajamu Baraka, the Green Party’s vice presidential candidate. Lots of folks “talk about the coming of neo-fascism under Donald Trump, but don’t understand that the foundation for neo-fascism has already been created under the Obama administration -- and for some of us, in our communities, we have already been subjected to neo-fascist repression.” In Syria, both Clinton and Trump “are committed to the use of military force to advance the interests of the U.S,” said Baraka. Candidates “Tone-Deaf” to Inner City Demands “Our big concern was that the presidential candidates were tone-deaf to the avalanche of organizing and fightback against corporate education interventions that are targeting Black and brown neighborhoods all over the United States,” said Jitu Brown, of the Journey for Justice Alliance, representing 40,000 activists in community organizations in 24 cities. The Alliance demands “real, comprehensive equality in education” and a national moratorium on school charters. “We will not give folks the pass that President Obama got,” said Brown. Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.A woman from Aroland First Nation, Ont., says she was wrongfully accused of shoplifting at a Walmart in Thunder Bay. Donna Wesley-Gagnon says she was shopping with her husband and three grandchildren at the big box store in October and noticed store employees were closely watching and even following them. Wesley-Gagnon said after spending $300 on clothes and food, security stopped her just outside the entrance. She said she was accused of taking the jacket she was wearing from the rack and wearing it out the door. The security guard held up another, older jacket and accused her of swapping it for the jacket she was wearing. "He says, 'Excuse me ma'am, we saw you exchange that jacket you're wearing,' and I was in shock," Wesley-Gagnon said. "Like I was saying 'Is this a joke?'" Jacket had tag from different store Wesley-Gagnon said security refused to believe her, even though she said she bought the jacket months ago at a different retail store. It even had a Warehouse One tag on it, she said. She asked to speak to the manager and received an apology, then returned everything she bought from the store and received a refund. "I was terribly upset," said Wesley-Gagnon. In an e-mailed statement, Walmart said "out of respect for our customers, we do not share specific details about their visits to our stores." But the Walmart spokesperson wrote that the company is "committed to an environment free of discrimination for our associates, customers, members, and suppliers. This includes zero tolerance for discrimination on the basis of an individual's race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, or any other status protected by law or local policy."The Renault Clio turns 25 this year. It’s a car that Americans may not know much about; however, this hatchback is deeply rooted in the European market. The Clio has seen many changes over the past 25 years but it has remained an excellent choice for driving enthusiasts. There were numerous performance versions of the Clio over the years but one stand out is the Clio 182 Trophy. The Clio 182 Trophy was a performance hatch that could punch way above its weight class. Featuring Sachs racing suspension and weight saving measures, the Trophy exhibited handling abilities that could match super cars. There were only 550 Trophys produced and one of the lucky owners is Harry Metcalfe, founder of EVO. Harry purchased his Clio 182 Trophy after driving it during the EVO Car of The Year review in 2005. It is now part of his car collection, which includes the likes of the Pagani Zonda and Lamborghini Countach to name a few. Harry’s love for his Clio 182 Trophy started from the moment he drove it in 2005 and has lasts into today.PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans say the best or most positive thing about a possible Hillary Clinton presidency -- if she were to run and be elected in 2016 -- would be her serving as the first female president in the nation's history. Other positives mentioned by at least 5% of Americans are her experience, that she would bring about change from the previous two administrations, that she would adhere to a Democratic agenda, and that she would be the best choice. These results are from a Gallup survey conducted March 15-16, which asked a nationally representative sample of Americans to say what would be the best and the worst things about a possible Clinton presidency, if she were to be elected in 2016. A little less than half of Americans did not give a substantive answer in response to the positive question, and about the same percentage didn't give a substantive answer to the negative question. This is in large part because the majority of Republicans have no specific thoughts about the best thing about a Clinton presidency, and a majority of Democrats do not have specific responses to the question about the worst aspects of a Clinton presidency. Americans' substantive responses can be grouped into three broad categories: personal characteristics, specific issues, and political considerations. Clearly Clinton's "unique selling proposition" is that she would be the first woman president. Nearly one in five Americans mention this historic possibility as a positive, including 22% of women, 27% of 18- to 29-year-olds, and
Reglan is another example of doctors failing to uphold their ethical duties to "do no harm". Cori Crider, the strategic director of Reprieve, signed the letter accompanying the adverse incident report to the FDA on behalf of three prisoners being force fed at Gitmo. Crider also sent a letter to ANI Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of the 10 mg tablets of Reglan asking the company to "assist us in stopping the misuse of your drug". According to materials she provided to Al Jazeera, Crider told API: "It is highly likely that prisoners are being medicated with Reglan without their informed consent. There is also a grave risk it is being administered for extended periods that may cause severe neurological side-effects…I am sure you will agree that the use of Reglan in the force-feeding of Guantanamo detainees is incompatible with your company's aims. "It places one of your products, intended to promote health, at the centre of a notorious and ongoing human rights violation, and will cause irreparable damage to your corporate reputation. The forcible administration of Reglan places you in potential breach of your duty as a manufacturer to warn of these adverse side effects, since any warning pamphlet is obviously made otiose in these circumstances." Neither the FDA nor a spokesman for ANI Pharmaceuticals returned calls for comment. Last month, Crider sent a letter to the chairman and chief executive of Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturers of the nutritional supplement Ensure, which has become symbolic with the force-feeding procedure at Guantanamo. The letter called on Abbott to "explicitly disassociate your product line from any use in force-feeding detainees at Guantanamo". The company never responded to Reprieve, Crider said. No cause for concern Guantanamo officials, meanwhile, say concern over the use of Reglan is unwarranted. "Heartburn and gastric reflux medications are only given to detainees who want or who feel they need them at the time of feeding," said Lt Col Samuel House, a Guantanamo spokesman. "All medications provided to the detainees are the same FDA-approved medications available to treat US service members, with safeguards in place regarding dosage, drug interactions, dispensing and prescribing authority. "No detainee has been provided 10 mg of Reglan on a regular basis for three months. I will need to check to see when the last time Reglan was used to treat a detainee." House said health care providers inform prisoners about the "dangers of medications". "In the end, it is up to the detainee," he added. "Like all medications, the healthcare provider chooses the medication, based on symptoms and medical diagnosis." House did not provide a follow-up response as to when Reglan was last administered to a prisoner. Capt Robert Durand, the chief spokesman for the Guantanamo prison, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday there would be no further comment on Reglan or any other medications used at the prison. This force-feeding kit and liquid nutritional supplement was inside the media room at Camp 5 [Jason Leopold/Al Jazeera] "Prescriptions are provided with the consent of the detainee by licensed physicians who monitor for other drug interactions following warnings and label guidelines," he said. But during a recent visit to Guantanamo, Al Jazeera spoke with the medical officer in charge of the detention camp, a woman whose name we were not permitted to print for security reasons. When queried about the adverse side effects associated with Reglan, she said, "I've never heard of any issues associated with the use of that medication". "Reglan is just one option doctors use," she said. "If there are any concerns I'm not familiar with what they are." The senior medical officer at the detention hospital, a physician whose name Al Jazeera was also not authorised to print, would not respond to direct questions about the use of Reglan. He said, "some [prisoners] complain of stomach distention and discomfort", and they are receiving "first-rate medical care". Dr Joseph Jankovic, a neurologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told the Los Angeles Times in 2009 that Reglan "is prescribed by internists or gastroenterologists who are not necessarily familiar with the recognition of tardive dyskinesia". Jankovic told the Times he analysed 443 tardive dyskinesia patients at the Baylor clinic over the course of 25 years. He said that prior to 2000, the antipsychotic medication Haldol was responsible for the bulk of TD cases. However, Reglan was blamed for all TD cases since then. "It is a public health problem," Jankovic said. "Many of these patients who have metoclopramide-induced movement disorders aren't recognised until...they're at pretty advanced stages of the disease." Jankovic was unavailable to speak to Al Jazeera about the use of Reglan on hunger striking Guantanamo prisoners. Several other doctors Al Jazeera contacted said they were unable to provide an immediate opinion about Reglan's use at the prison. History of questionable use of drugs at Gitmo This is not the first time the use of a controversial drug at Guantanamo has been called into question. In 2010, this reporter broke the story that all prisoners transferred to Guantanamo had been given treatment doses - 1,250 mg - of the powerful antimalarial, mefloquine, regardless of whether or not the prisoners had malaria. Mefloquine can cause severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including suicidal thoughts, hallucinations and anxiety. There is no doubt that they would give me medicine without asking me. -Abu Wa'el Dhiab An Army public health physician, Maj Remington Nevin, said in an interview at the time the use of mefloquine "in this manner...is, at best, an egregious malpractice" and was tantamount to "pharmacologic waterboarding". The government exposed prisoners "to unacceptably high risks of potentially severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including seizures, intense vertigo, hallucinations, paranoid delusions, aggression, panic, anxiety, severe insomnia, and thoughts of suicide", Nevin said. "These side effects could be as severe as those intended through the application of 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'" Pentagon officials defended the practice and noted the drug was given to US military personnel as well. However, following a series of news reports linking the drug to suicides, a formal policy memo was issued in February 2009 by Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker, removing mefloquine as a "first-line" agent, and changed the policy so that mefloquine would not be prescribed to Army personnel unless they had contraindications to the preferred drug, the antibiotic doxycycline. Nor could mefloquine be prescribed to any personnel with a history of traumatic brain injury or mental illness. By September 2009, the policy was extended throughout the Department of Defense. Last year, this reporter also co-authored an investigative story, citing a Defense Department watchdog's report obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that showed Guantanamo prisoners were drugged against their will, "medically restrained" and interrogated while under the influence of powerful antipsychotic medications, such as Haldol, which also causes tardive dyskinesia. No signs of side effects Crider, of Reprieve, and other attorneys Al Jazeera spoke with said they have not seen any signs of the side effects associated with long-term use of Reglan in their Gitmo clients. Nor do they know if the prisoners were even given the drug. One of the problems Crider and other lawyers defending Guantanamo prisoners face is that they do not have access to the prisoners' medical records, which would presumably document the drugs they have been given. However, Crider provided Al Jazeera with notes from some of her hunger striking clients, all of whom said they have not been asked to provide consent prior to being administered medication. "There is no doubt that they would give me medicine without asking me," said Abu Wa'el Dhiab, a Syrian who has been cleared for release, during a phone call with the human rights group on May 30. "There is no doubt about that. I have experience in [hunger] strikes. They grind up the medicine and mix it with the food." Shaker Aamer, the last British prisoner at Guantanamo who has been cleared for release, said on May 5 in recounting the brutal force-feeding of another prisoner that medical personnel "gave him medicine without his consent". Samir Moqbel, who has been force-fed since March 17, said on April 8, "Everything is by force. None of this is administered by choice, for me or anyone else. Still they try to get us to take vitamins or other pills." Moqbel wrote a harrowing op-ed in the New York Times about the force-feeding process that attracted widespread attention to the brutality of the procedure. Even if the prisoners were asked to consent, they are not in the right state of mind to understand what they are agreeing to, said Pardiss Kebriaei, an attorney with New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights who just returned from meeting with several Guantanamo prisoners she represents. Kebriaei said conditions at the prison are "grave". She said she could see the collar bone of one of her clients protruding from his shoulder. "There is no way these men, after being on a hunger strike for more than four months, are in any shape to give consent," Kebriaei said during an interview with Al Jazeera. "Even if [medical personnel] read the risks and side effects off the label [to the prisoners]. To think that they can give informed consent right now given the complete breakdown in communications at Guantanamo is ludicrous." Kebriaei added that some of her clients have been refusing to take medication altogether because of a lack of trust between the prisoners and medical staff. Last month, 13 Guantanamo prisoners penned an open letter to military doctors at the prison facility, saying they "cannot trust your advice" and demanded they receive independent treatment by physicians hand-picked by their attorneys who are not associated with the military. "I cannot trust your advice, because you are responsible to your superior military officers who require you to treat me by means unacceptable to me, and you put your duty to them above your duty to me as a doctor," the prisoners wrote in a letter that Reprieve's Crider helped coordinate. "Your dual loyalties make trusting you impossible." "Whether you continue in the military or return to civilian practice, you will have to live with what you have done and not done here at Guantanamo for the rest of your life," they wrote. "You can make a difference. You can choose to stop actively contributing to the abusive conditions I am currently enduring." Pentagon spokesman Todd Breasseale dismissed the letter, saying there is "no precedent" for providing prisoners with independent doctors. Source: Al JazeeraIt seems that there’s nothing that 13-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, and routine dropper of names, Phil Hellmuth, won’t give up for a little mainstream publicity – including Katherine, his wife of roughly 25 years. Have an offer to be on ABC television show “Wife Swap,” but wife won’t do it! Though I’m SURE she would look amazing! #WifeIsAwesome— phil_hellmuth (@phil_hellmuth) October 15, 2014 “Wife Swap“ is the television show where a pair of married couples exchange the matriarch of each family for a set period of time (a couple weeks) to see what drama may unfold. Phil’s recent tweet implies that there is or was an offer to include the burger eating poker champ on the table, and, while he was 100% game, “Honey!” had to put her foot down. One might think that while being married to Phil for that long of a period of time, that this would be the perfect opportunity/escape plan one might hope for. That said, it’s being rejected for now. Makes sense though as Phil’s wife Katherine, according to Wikipedia, is a Stanford psychologist perhaps giving her the mental fortitude to deal with Phil’s sometimes outrageous behavior and the good sense to turn down a show life “Wife Swap”. For all he knows, Phil might have dodged another bullet as it’d probably be a race to see if his lady would even come back after the swap. Phil’s luck knows no bounds. Bonus: “He called a raise with Queen Ten, honey!”Olympic silver medallist PV Sindhu and her coach P Gopichand arrived in Hyderabad to a grand welcome Highlights PV Sindhu, her coach reached Hyderabad this morning; get hero's welcome She travelled in a double-decker bus in a victory rally to a city stadium Sindhu is the first Indian woman to win silver medal in the Olympics PV Sindhu is the first Indian woman to win silver medal in the Olympics Celebrations at Gachibowli stadium PV Sindhu's best is yet to come, her coach Pullela Gopichand promised as his star pupil beamed beside him at the packed Gachibowli stadium in Hyderabad on Monday.He credited her "fantastic genes" for her stupendous performance at the Rio Olympics. The badminton ace thanked her coach and her parents, both former volley ball players, for their support. Sindhu returned home with her silver Olympic medal, the first won by an Indian woman, to the kind of welcome only World Cup winning cricket teams have got so far.For almost three hours today, the champ and her coach rode through a cheering city in an open double-decker bus, called in specially from Mumbai and draped with long strings of marigold, as it slowly drove 30 km from the airport to the Gachibowli stadium. On the way, thousands lined up to cheer Sindhu, 21, many showering her with flower petals.At the stadium, they did a victory lap in a jeep before being greeted on stage by the Telangana government which organised the celebrations."Thank you all for the blessings...it made my day," said an overwhelmed Sindhu to the cheering crowd.Along with wrestler Sakshi Malik, who won a Bronze, Sindhu ensured that India did not return empty handed from Rio in Brazil, where this year's Olympic Games ended yesterday. The US topped the tally with 121 medals, 46 of them Gold."Hats off to women for saving our face in front of the world," said Mr Gopichand, who has now trained two Olympic medalists in Saina Nehwal and Sindhu.At the airport in the capital they currently share, top politicians of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh jostled with each other to greet the champion. While Sindhu's mother P Vijaya is from Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, her father PV Ramana is from Adilabad in Telangana.Both states have announced cash rewards, land and jobs to Sindhu to celebrate her Silver. Pullela Gopichand thanked both states and remarked, "Sindhu belongs to India.""I think she is still far away from complete transformation. I believe we have just seen glimpses of what she is capable of," the star coach said, adding, "She has got potential and I was waiting for her to realise that. It might take time." At Rio, PV Sindhu blazed through to the final, beating the World no 2, before she lost to World no 1 Carolina Marin of Spain 21-19, 12-21, 15-21 in a pulsating match that lasted an hour and 23 minutes.ANALYSIS/OPINION: If it’s true that in politics you are judged by the caliber of your enemies, Yukiya Amano is off to a stellar start. The 62-year-old Japanese technocrat has only been at the helm of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for two months, but he is already exceedingly unpopular with the Iranian regime. On Feb. 21, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the influential head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of Iran’s legislature, known as the Majles, took the unprecedented step of publicly chastising the newly-installed Mr. Amano. “We had announced earlier that the agency’s director general should avoid linking his reports to political issues, but Mr. Amano’s reports seem to be moving toward politicization,” the legislator told reporters. Mr. Boroujerdi’s discontent stems from the IAEA’s latest report on Iran’s nuclear program, released publicly on Feb. 17. The study, the first issued by the agency with Mr. Amano at the helm, provides the IAEA’s most critical view to date of Iran’s nuclear endeavor, and of the possible dangers associated with it. Intelligence amassed by the IAEA, the report says, “raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. These alleged activities consist of a number of projects and subprojects, covering nuclear and missile related aspects, run by military-related organizations.” The new IAEA assessment is all the more striking given the distinctly counterproductive role the IAEA has traditionally played in the international debate over Iran’s atomic effort. Under the direction of Egyptian diplomat par excellence Mohammed ElBaradei, the organization busied itself with all manner of issues, nuclear and otherwise, while giving short shrift to the strategic logic underpinning the ayatollahs’ enduring interest in the bomb. In the process, the organization and its famous head came to be seen as something less than an honest broker in the international effort to prevent the Islamic Republic from going nuclear. (Depending on how you view it, Mr. ElBaradei’s confession last year that he thought the Iranian regime may indeed be striving for nuclear weapons status after all was either a true change of heart, a savvy burnishing of his legacy, or an effort to bolster his credentials ahead of a possible bid for the Egyptian presidency.) All of which makes the IAEA’s latest critical look at Iran’s nuclear program all the more devastating for Iran - and helpful to the West. More than two months after President Obama’s informal year-end deadline for “engagement” with the Iranian regime, momentum is building within the Capital Beltway for serious economic sanctions against Iran. A wide range of measures - from the sweeping ban on Iran’s gasoline imports favored by Congress to the more “targeted” sanctions against Iranian financial interests and actors embraced by the White House - is now on the table. The common denominator in all of these, however, is leverage. Simply put, Washington does not have much. After three decades of embargo, trade between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic is minimal; in 2009, the bilateral trade balance between the United States and Iran stood at less than $250 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. America’s coalition partners, by contrast, have much more. Europe, for example, wields considerable power vis-a-vis the Iranian regime. Two-way trade between the Islamic Republic and EU states is estimated to have surpassed $10 billion last year, and Iran is reliant on Europe for nearly 40 percent of its high technology needs. Increasingly, moreover, countries there are putting their money where their mouths are, and curtailing their commercial dealings with Iran. In recent weeks, a spate of European companies - including Italy’s ENI and Germany’s Siemens - have begun to rethink future trade with Tehran. These decisions have been further buttressed by the evolving European position toward the Islamic Republic. The European Parliament is said to have recently begun lobbying telecommunications firms like Nokia and Siemens to sever economic ties to Tehran entirely over its violations of human rights and censorship practices in the wake of last summer’s contested presidential election. The IAEA’s new, more sober reading of Iran’s nuclear intentions should serve to reinforce these trends, and help to add new members to the emerging international consensus regarding the need to isolate Iran. If it does, Mr. Amano’s tenure as the IAEA’s director general could already be considered more successful than that of his predecessor. Ilan Berman is vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.The CRTC should make high-speed Internet part of its "basic service objective," because Canadians who do not have advanced broadband Internet will become "second-class citizens," Liberal MP Marc Garneau warned the federal regulator. "Just as the railway and the Trans-Canada [Highway]were the critical infrastructure that linked our communities in the 20th century, fibre optics, wireless and satellites will be the critical infrastructure that links our society in the 21st century," Mr. Garneau, the Liberal critic for industry, science and technology, told a CRTC hearing on Tuesday in Gatineau, Que. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission is reviewing several aspects of its mandate regarding rural and remote areas in Canada. In those areas, land-line telephone service is mandated but Internet service is often slower, more expensive and unreliable compared with connections in urban areas. Story continues below advertisement Mr. Garneau's remarks are important mainly because a bold and significant broadband policy is more likely to come from politicians than from the regulator, since such a policy would require hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly billions. The Montreal MP stressed that the regulator should make high-speed Internet part of its mandate and suggested a goal of delivering download speeds of 1.5 megabits per second (mbps) by 2014 and about 4 mbps by 2020. In remote areas, the high cost of delivering service does not provide private-sector companies with a sufficient return on investment to justify building infrastructure. Some small communities in Ontario, in part using government money, have set out on grassroots efforts to build networks capable of 10 mbps as early as next year.Uber wants to make its U.K. drivers’ lives “easier” by limiting the number of hours they can work. In a letter to Parliament, Uber’s U.K. head of public policy Andrew Byrne outlined several initiatives the ride-hailing company plans to make in 2017, many of which focus on improving driver experience. “Our business will only be successful if drivers want to work with us,” the letter says. Uber is planning to introduce a limit to the number of hours drivers are able to log in the U.K. Though it did not specify the cap, Uber says it will come up with an hours cut-off by this summer. The company already monitors drivers who work more than 56 hours per week, and the Uber app notifies all drivers to be safe and take breaks throughout the day. A quarter of Uber drivers in London log 40 hours per week or more, according to the letter. Uber’s promise of an hours cap comes after several of its drivers told the U.K. Parliament’s Work and Pensions Committee that they were working long shifts to eke out a profit after Uber takes its cut for commission, insurance costs, and other expenses. One Uber driver told the legislature it is not uncommon for him to work as many as 100 hours per week. Related: Tech Leaders Speak Out Against Uber Following Sexual Harassment Allegations Uber dealt with this same problem in the U.S. last year when it instituted a cap for drivers in New York City. In an effort to combat driver fatigue, the tech company instituted a policy that would temporarily deactivate drivers who are on the road for more than 12 hours.Anti-war activists handed a letter to East Dunbartonshire MP Jo Swinson urging her not to back military strikes on Syria. The UK parliament is debating whether to sanction an attack against the Assad regime over its alleged use of chemical weapons in its long-running civil war. Protestors Neil Scott and Angus Clark, members of the Campsie branch of the Scottish Socialist Party, handed their letter to Ms Swinson’s Bearsden constituency office on Wednesday. It states: “We understand that Parliament is to be reconvened in order for the Prime Minister to put forward a case for intervention in the dreadful Syrian civil war. “This comes on the back of the US and UK governments already supplying help to the opposition forces – forces that include groups that are linked with terrorism across the world. “This is a war that has on both sides, what MP Paul Flynn has described as ‘evil fanatics’. He has warned that this civil war, with large economic powers at loggerheads supporting different outcomes, could very quickly escalate into a regional war and, dreadful to think, a world war. The use of chemical weapons, and the TV images of this dreadful incident, is abhorrent. But this act of mass murder should not be used as a reason for military intervention that will only make living in that region much more dangerous. “Military intervention will only displace millions more people and lead to many more people losing their lives. “The interventions in the Middle East, and especially in strategic and resource rich countries, is reminiscent of the build up to the situations that led to the two world wars in the early twentieth century. “After both world wars, the middle-east was carved up in the interests of the imperial powers – not of the people in the region. “What happens in Syria in the coming weeks will have huge implications in countries, including ours, across the world as the world powers line up to carve out what the unrest in the Middle East allows them to. “Western intervention never works, is always self-serving and always increases human suffering. This should be the lesson of history you take with you to the chamber. “Please act with the evidence of history and please act with principle. We should not be backing war in this region.”Coal, like railroads, steel and other engines of the nation’s industrial expansion in the 19th and early 20th centuries, helped drive Wall Street’s profits for generations. More than a century later, the coal industry is in a free fall and the banks are pulling away. “Given the state of the coal industry today, I think Mr. Morgan himself might make the same decision,” said Jean Strouse, a biographer of the banker. Some banks say they are trying to do their part to curtail climate change by moving away from coal projects and financing ventures that produce less carbon. But bankers also say there is a more basic reason for the shift: Lending to coal companies is too risky and could ultimately prove unprofitable. Coal companies are being squeezed by competition from less expensive energy sources like natural gas and by stiffer regulations — pressures that show no signs of letting up. As a result, even the most secure loans — like those made to companies emerging from bankruptcy, known as debtor-in-possession loans — are increasingly off limits for many banks, according to bankers and industry lawyers. And it is not just big banks. Even many more daring investors like hedge funds and private equity firms, which are usually eager to pounce on industries in distress, are shying away from coal because of deep uncertainty about its future. It is a starkly different scene in the oil industry, where investors are raising hundreds of millions of dollars to snap up the debt and equity of troubled companies that are struggling with an oversupply of oil. Despite the immediate stress, many investors expect the oil glut will burn off by next year and prices will rebound.× Teen: Masked man shot me. Other teens: Gunshot was accidental. BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — Police are getting conflicting reports about what led up to a shooting that sent one teenager to the hospital. The shooting happened on Battle Creek Avenue on Wednesday. When officers arrived, they found a 16-year-old victim who had been shot in the abdomen. The home was occupied by numerous teenagers who told police that the gunshot wound accidental and self-inflicted. However, the victim said an unknown man wearing a mask entered the house and shot him. The conflicting reports didn’t end there. Initially, the none of the teenagers would point police to the location of the gun. However, the firearm was located in a field across from the house. The serial numbers were missing. Ultimately, one of the occupants admitted to getting rid of the gun after the victim had accidentally been shot. Police are still investigating on whether the victim shot himself by accident or if another person at the home was the one who accidentally pulled the trigger. The victim was last listed in stable condition and required surgery as a result of the gunshot wound.We had a great time last year documenting how the business of professional sports often operates at a cost to taxpayers, fans, gamblers and even the players themselves. This year already looks as if it’s going to make last year look like a beginner’s course. We don’t consider ourselves to be great prognosticators or soothsayers by any stretch, but we can already see where at least a few of this year’s sports business storylines are headed just based on the calendar. Some of the rest were the topic of heavy chatter in 2015 that have limped their way into the new year. There are a few more that we could get into, but here are just five you’ll want to keep an eye on as 2016 gains momentum. 1. The Al Jazeera sports doping investigation The network ran its documentary on the use and procurement of performance-enhancing drugs in December and — with the exception of lawsuits from Philadelphia Phillies slugger Ryan Howard and Washington Nationals power hitter Ryan Zimmerman — the reaction has been muted. That fact wasn’t lost on the folks at the Boston Globe and Boston’s WEEI sports radio station, who noted that Al Jazeera’s claim that Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning used human growth hormone to recover from a neck injury are receiving far less attention than New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady’s alleged role in deflating footballs in last year’s playoffs. The Manning-Brady rivalry aside, there are a whole lot of dollars attached to the silence surrounding Manning. For one, he’s quite friendly with NFL commentator Jim Nantz, who’s called the allegations against Manning “a non-story.” Not only does Nantz share an agent with Manning, but Nantz’s employers at CBS are paying the NFL roughly $1 billion a year through 2022 for the right to broadcast weekend NFL games, playoff games and the occasional Super Bowl. (Nantz will be calling Super Bowl 50 on CBS in February.) Oh, and Nantz and Manning are also pitchmen for the NFL’s official pizza sponsor, Papa John’s International Inc. PZZA, -0.19% That’s the other dilemma: Manning is leading the top team in the AFC through the playoffs this year while official league sponsors including Papa John’s and Nationwide Insurance run ads featuring him front-and-center. The NFL has had no shortage of hits to its reputation in recent years, but linking Manning to HGH at playoff time could prove costly to its bottom line if the story gets too big. Even if the NFL, Manning and their allies manage to keep a lid on things until after the Super Bowl, there are far broader implications to the Al Jazeera report for sports in general. A New York Times follow-up to the report tied retired New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter’s trainer to a supply of performance-enhancing drugs. Jeter is a potential first-ballot Hall of Fame inductee when he becomes eligible in 2019. A stain on the reputation of a player considered “clean” — especially in comparison to Jeter’s former teammate Alex Rodriguez, who was suspended for the entire 2014 season for his role in a performance-enhancing drug scandal — could have huge consequences for a sport with ever-diminishing popularity. 2. The NFL’s return to Los Angeles The Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Rams all filed applications earlier this month to move to Los Angeles. The Chargers and Raiders have devised a plan to split a $2 billion stadium in Carson, Calif., but that would require one of them to switch conferences. The Rams, meanwhile, got an offer of nearly $400 million for a new stadium from St. Louis, but Rams management last week not only deemed that offer unacceptable, but salted the earth that stadium would be built on by telling the NFL that the city flat out can’t support a franchise. Rams owner Stan Kroenke has begun building his own $2 billion stadium in Inglewood, Calif., without NFL approval and has fueled speculation that he might invite the Chargers in as a second tenant, leaving the Raiders the odd man out. Keep in mind, a 17-team finance committee still needs to weigh in on the feasibility of any plan, and 24 teams need to vote for relocation before any team can make the jump. In the eyes of the three franchises mentioned, playing football in Los Angeles in 2016 is not only possible, but essential to their survival. An NFL meeting in a couple of weeks should clarify who gets to move and when, but it’s almost a lock that some existing NFL market is going to lose a team this year. 3. The 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil This is already having enormous implications for Brazil, and Olympic athletes are roughly eight months away from setting foot there. The Summer Games in August will come just after a dam breach sent toxic mud streaming into the Atlantic, political upheaval slashed the nation’s gross domestic product and its debt was reduced to junk status. Think the protests and plunder of the 2014 World Cup were something to witness? Imagine the reaction to profligate Olympic spending, forced evictions and a corruption scandal featuring dozens of congressmen, an effort to impeach President Dilma Rousseff for allegedly manipulating budget figures for the better and a push to remove the speaker of the lower house of Congress for alleged corruption. The sports themselves are just kind of ancillary to this year’s Summer Games. At best, the Rio Olympics will serve as yet another referendum on the merits of the games’ exorbitant cost and the price nations pay to host them. 4. The NBA collective-bargaining agreement Wait, isn’t that in place until the end of June 2021? Kind of. Either the players or management can opt out on June 30, 2017. However, to do so, they have to announce their intentions by Dec. 15 of this year. That means we’ll know if the NBA’s agreement is toast by the end of this year, and it’s already looking grim for Commissioner Adam Silver and the players. The current CBA went into place in 2011 and knocked 16 games off the schedule that year as players and teams hammered out details. Still, that was before the NBA somehow managed to get Disney’s ABC and ESPN and Time Warner’s Turner Sports (and its TNT network, specifically) to agree to a nine-year deal that pays the league $24 billion. That triples what the companies were paying for NBA rights, from $930 million each year to roughly $2.7 billion. Oh, and that new deal takes effect for the 2016-17 season. This creates a bit of a problem. Currently, the league salary cap sits at $67.1 million for the current season. It will grow to $89 million in 2016-17 and to $108 million in 2017-18. However, that’s based on the old $930 million television-revenue number. The players know that networks are paying three times that much now, and LeBron James (among others) is looking to maintain his percentage of the take. With NBA Finals broadcasts outdrawing the World Series and the $875 million in ad revenue generated by the 2014 NBA playoffs trailing only that year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament ($1.13 billion) and Super Bowl ($1.23 billion), both players and owners know how much is at stake. Now let’s see if they can divvy it up evenly without costing the fans any games. 5. Daily fantasy sports The issue of whether daily fantasy sports is gambling remains up for legal debate. Despite the misdeeds of their employees, the loss of operations in Nevada, continued setbacks in New York and the outside chance that they might have to return all their profits in the latter state, daily fantasy sports sites including DraftKings and FanDuel trudge on. It seems like a lifetime ago that the annoying, bro-laden ads for daily fantasy sports were inundating NFL viewers and just about anyone reading a sports site. At the end of the NFL season, daily fantasy prize money was well off its midseason highs and still clearly reeling from setbacks in various states. Daily fantasy’s story for the rest of 2016 is going to hinge largely on the outcome of its legal battle in New York, but also on the reaction of other states to that decision. As Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada and Washington have made clear, the federal loophole for daily fantasy has little bearing on whether it lives and dies on a state-to-state basis. Instead of one big fight with the feds, it looks as if daily fantasy is going to take a beating in dozens of local battles. Jason Notte is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Esquire. Notte received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1998. Follow him on Twitter @Notteham.Audible Audience Reaction To Inception's Ending: This Is The Sound Of Awesome By Josh Tyler Random Article Blend Critics and bloggers and pundits around the world have spent the last week doing two things, consistently: First they’ve been busy praising Inception, and boy did it deserve it. Second, they’ve been trashing moviegoers… and deserve it they don’t. We’ve only done the first of those two things here on Cinema Blend this week because much like Inception director Christopher Nolan, we believe in all of you. While the world has been quick to declare audiences too dumb to embrace this new masterpiece, Nolan’s movie has burst into theaters determined to assume that you’ll be smart enough to follow along with it. And you know what? He was right. You are, you did, and here’s the evidence. SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t seen Inception, go no further. Turn back now! Huge spoilers follow. Seriously, big spoilers which will ruin the entire movie for you are coming. Get out. Everyone who hasn’t seen it gone? Great. Let’s keep going. Inception’s ending is a risky proposition. For an audience that isn’t smart enough to get the movie, it’ll be frustrating, maddening, and disappointing. Yet I’ve seen the movie twice now, and the reaction to what happens at the end has been the same both times… and audible. Friends I've talked to who have attended other screenings have reported the same. It’s a sound being heard all around the country right now, an audience reaction quite unlike any other you’ve probably heard after any other film. It’s the sound of people, who are in on what’s going on, and happy to walk out the door without getting all the answers spoonfed to them. It’s the sound of smart moviegoers laughing and groaning all at once, the sound of frustration and delight colliding together in one cacophony, and here it is, thanks to someone foolhardy enough to sneak in a recording device just to capture this singular audience moment which happens in every showing right as the Inception end credits roll: Final Warning: This video shows the end of the movie. Don’t click play if you haven’t seen it! Go easy on the guy who recorded this Warner Bros. Technically it’s piracy but of the harmless variety. More importantly, this is the sound of
e There are about 5000 different kinds of Dragonflies. And what I think is the best fact: dragonflies eat mosquitos, ants, termites, and gnats. They can eat their own weight in pesky insects in about 30 minutes. (kinda makes you wish those 2.5 foot ones were still around) Here are some more pictures of this cool insect: Image credit for the Meganeura photo, Wikipedia.Please enable Javascript to watch this video A Downey police officer who was fatally shot while sitting in his personal vehicle near the police station was the victim of a botched robbery, and three young men who fled the shooting were arrested and were being held on suspicion of murder Thursday in his death. Officer Ricardo Galvez was parked in an unmarked vehicle in a public parking lot next to the Downey Police Department, located at 10911 Brookshire Ave., when two people ran up and at least one opened fire around 11 p.m. Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Three people believed to be responsible for the shooting, were in custody, sheriff's homicide Lt. John Corina said during a news conference. "It looks like these guys were out looking for somebody to rob,” Corina said. “They saw Officer Galvez sitting in his car — it was his personal car — and they thought, 'Well, we’re going to go up and rob this individual.' When they approached the car, that’s when they shot him.” Galvez, 29, was in plainclothes and was returning from an off-site training shift when the shooting occurred, Corina said. The trio did not realize Galvez was a police officer or that they were near the police station, the lieutenant said. Investigators initially thought Galvez may have been targeted. “There was nothing indicating he was a police officer when he was shot," Corina said. A fellow Downey officer who was beginning his patrol shift heard the gunfire and pursued the suspects, Downey police Lt. Mark McDaniel said. The pursuit ended near Washington Boulevard and Carob Way in Montebello, where multiple people, both men and women, were detained. The car's driver was taken into custody immediately, and two others were arrested after a search of a home at the location, Corina said. A handgun that was believed to have been used in the shooting was recovered. All three suspects were set to be charged with murder, Corina said. The driver was described as a 21-year-old Hispanic man, who had tried to flee through residential backyards, the Sheriff's Department said in a news release Thursday evening. The other two, 16- and 18-year-old Hispanic males, fled into a home where they were eventually taken into custody. The suspects' names were not being released, and they were being held without bail, the release stated. After news of the officer's death spread, local officials offered condolences. "Every day, the brave men and women of our Downey Police Department put themselves at personal risk to keep us all safe," Mayor Luis Marquez said. "We are incredibly sorrowed at the loss of Officer Galvez and our thoughts and prayers are with all who knew and loved him.” Galvez was a "tremendous young man" who loved serving the residents of Downey, police Chief Carl Charles said. "His smile was infectious and his professionalism was always on display,” Charles said. A five-year veteran of the Police Department and a U.S. Marine, Galvez was survived by his mother, a brother and sisters. "If you can mold a police officer, you would mold that police officer after Ricky Galvez. He loved serving his city and he loved serving his country," McDaniel said. The Sheriff's Department initially described the location where Galvez was shot as a Police Department parking lot, but McDaniel said it was a public lot that offers easy access to the station, and where police and city vehicles often park. The department also has two secure lots, McDaniel said. Investigators thought the fatal shooting may be related to a car-to-car shooting about 2 miles from the station, but later said the incidents were not related. Please enable Javascript to watch this video Please enable Javascript to watch this videoA top advisor to President Trump on Syria was removed from the National Security Council on Thursday amid speculation that the White House staff could soon see significant changes. Derek Harvey, a former military intelligence officer and top Middle East advisor, will likely be reassigned to another position within the Trump administration, NSC spokesman Michael Anton told the Washington Examiner. "General [H.R.] McMaster greatly appreciates Derek Harvey's service to his country as a career Army officer, where he served his country bravely in the field and played a crucial role in the successful surge in Iraq, and also for his service on Capitol Hill and in the Trump administration," Anton said in a statement. "The administration is working with Colonel Harvey to identify positions in which his background and expertise can be best utilized." Harvey is not the first NSC official to be transferred off the president's national security team. K.T. McFarland left her position on the NSC this year and accepted a nomination to become ambassador to Singapore. And Gen. Mike Flynn, the president's first national security adviser, resigned under pressure in February after the media reported that he had misled the vice president on his pre-inauguration contacts with Russians. McMaster, Trump's current national security adviser, was said to want his own team on the NSC when he took over the council earlier this year.A captive cheetah runs in an enclosure at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, on Feb. 18. (Gianluigi Guercia/AFP via Getty Images) More than 100,000 cheetahs prowled Africa's arid grasslands little more than a century ago. But the powerful predators now number just 7,100, and their populations are plummeting toward extinction, according to a new report. In a study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers called for cheetahs' conservation status to be raised to “endangered,” to reflect their low numbers and stave off further declines. “Given the secretive nature of this elusive cat, it has been difficult to gather hard information on the species, leading to its plight being overlooked,’ lead author Sarah Durant, a researcher at the Zoological Society of London and the Wildlife Conservation Society, said in a statement. “Our findings show that the large space requirements for the cheetah, coupled with the complex range of threats faced by the species in the wild, mean that it is likely to be much more vulnerable to extinction than was previously thought.” [A lion shot by Teddy Roosevelt 107 years ago still carries a message about conservation today] Cheetahs, the fastest animals on land, require home ranges that can span thousands of miles. Their habitat once extended across Africa all the way to southwestern Asia. But it has been fragmented by humans, and the population is divided as a result. This splintered existence makes survival even more difficult for animals; without genetic diversity from breeding with unrelated animals, each fragile group becomes even more vulnerable to disease, food shortages and environmental change. Of the 7,100 cheetahs estimated by the study, there is one relatively healthy group of about 4,000 living across six countries in southern Africa. Then there are about 1,000 in the Serengeti, plus clusters as big as 200 and as small as 10 scattered across a few dozen pockets of protected habitat. The species has been all but wiped out in Asia — just 50 still live in Iran. A cheetah in Kenya's Maasai Mara national reserve. (Dai Kurokawa/EPA) More than 75 percent of the cheetah's range is not part of a protected area, and that makes it difficult to ensure their safety — or even figure out how many of the creatures are still alive. Though governments are required to keep track of cheetahs within national parks, there is little data on the number of animals outside them. But the animals' extensive ranges mean they're constantly roving past the reach of protections afforded them on public lands. Beyond these borders, cheetahs risk run-ins with humans: They may be slain to protect livestock, struck by cars, or hunted for sale on the black market, where a cub might fetch as much as $10,000, according to the BBC. The study authors say it's time for a “paradigm shift” in thinking about cheetah conservation. National parks can provide only so much protection — and try explaining the concept of borders to a cat. Instead of focusing on protected areas, “we must think bigger, conserving across the mosaic of protected and unprotected landscapes that these far-ranging cats inhabit,” said Kim Young-Overton, director of the cheetah program at the conservation group Panthera. ['Silent extinction’: Giraffes listed as a vulnerable species after 30-year population plunge] The effort to count the population in Zimbabwe, which consists of no more than 170 animals, offers an example of this kind of “big thinking.” A group called Conservation Project Zimbabwe sought cheetah photographs and reports of sightings from tourists and safari guides and interviewed thousands of village leaders and ranchers to arrive at that number — which represents a decline of almost 90 percent since the start of the millennium. Working across this “mosaic” landscape will enable researchers to get a firmer idea of where cheetah populations really stand. A model developed by Durant and her colleagues to simulate the effects of the current rate of decline — about 10 percent per year in unprotected populations — suggested that the world could lose half of its remaining cheetahs in 15 years. And that's a conservative estimate; it doesn't take into account the effects of habitat fragmentation. “It’s a timely paper,” Yeneneh Teka, who used to work at the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority and is now at the U.S. State Department, told the Atlantic. “It should help to alert policymakers that the cheetah population is declining and measures have to be in place to save those outside protected areas.” Read more: How Vera Rubin changed science Dear Science: Could my body include an atom from Shakespeare? In breakthrough experiment, scientists shine a light on antimatter Drone video captures killer whales eating a shark aliveThis Wednesday at Playland, here in Vancouver, The great Orbax and Sweet Pepper Klopek plan to create & break another stupid record. These guys really really like our city, I mean that in an unhealthy, teenage angst sort of way. Every time they visit Vancouver (specifically for Fright Nights) they injure themselves in the name of ‘edu-tainment’ (except for the chainsaw accident, that was just was in the name of stupidity) to bring you some of the craziest stunts and world records that the world has ever seen. In 2010, Sweet Pepper set a world record for the most amount if mousetraps set off on a tongue in less than 1 minute. 40 if you’d like to know. video In 2011, The Great Orbax broke the Guiness World Record for the longest, heaviest vehicle pull from 2 shark hooks in his back. That’s 9000 pounds over a distance of 111 meters. video This Wednesday at high noon, The Great Orbax is going to tattoo Sweet Pepper while riding this wooden roller coaster. See their test run here. I had the chance to bring out a class of photography students for a little lesson in location lighting, while shooting a bit of promotional material for this upcoming stunt. For the final image above, 3 separate images were used and a little bit of light from a small grided softbox. Loren was actually in the frame holding the flash while I took the shot. He moved his position from frame to frame not only to give me the lighting where I needed it, but also so that I had all of the information in the scene to edit him out. The camera was on a tripod which helps out matching up the images during editing. Sweet Peppers face actually came from another frame as well. It’s hard to keep the attention of these guys, so luckily I had other frames to choose a face from. Pepper’s long hair made the edit a lot easier than if he didn’t. Here are the original frames used to create the image. Here are a few more samples from the group. photo by Loren Beyerstein photo by Carman Kwan If you’d like to see us all working our asses off, this is a time lapse of the shooting session. We were having a great time on the coaster however we were all a bit cold so we headed to the main haunted house to see if we could set up a shot in a more sheltered area. First off, do you guys realize how freaky it is to be in an amusement during the day? They keep the houses running even when the park is empty. Full on voices, fake gun shots, screams and even all the animatronics around the park. So before we decided which room inside the haunted house to photograph, we took a little private tour. Other than getting the shit scared out of us we concluded that there wasn’t a lot of room to shoot, and it was best to set up in the first room. This set up in this room was a full TTL. running 4 speedlights in 3 groups. I had a little trouble getting the flash behind them to communicate properly, but when it did work, it rocked!! The trick was to turn my camera to vertical so that the signal travelled over the right shoulder of the ‘model’. Check out the official press release for tomorrow’s stunt here: https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-monsters-of-schlock/the-monsters-of-schlock-get-tattooed-on-a-running-roller-coaster/10151270529778923 Also, hit their official website here: www.MonstersofSchlock.com Follow them on Twitter: www.twitter.com/OrbaxandPepper Also, their Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pages/The-Monsters-of-Schlock/9231078316 Thank for taking the time to read my blog. If you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends. Like this: Like Loading...Print Article COEUR dALENE Coeur dAlene Police exhausted all leads in the fatal shooting of Richard Baumgartner and have closed the case, saying the shooting was most likely accidental and self-inflicted. Coeur dAlene Police Chief Lee White said the investigation has been shelved unless another eyewitness comes forward with new information in the case. White and Coeur dAlene Police spokesman Jared Reneau met with The Press on Thursday to discuss the investigation and how police arrived at their conclusion. Reneau gave The Press an overview of the events as they unfolded the night of Dec. 13. He said a patrol officer was in the downtown area looking for a stolen vehicle when he passed a Blazer with its door wide open sitting in a parking lot near the Rocker Room bar on Coeur dAlene Avenue. Reneau said the vehicle looked suspicious so the patrol officer stopped to check it out. The officer found Baumgartner, 22, of Coeur dAlene inside the cab of the Blazer and he was obviously hurt. Mr. Baumgartner was still alive. He was showing signs of life at that point, Reneau said, adding the officer obviously knew it was something serious and initially thought Baumgartner may have been the victim of a bar fight. He didnt know the extent of his injuries until medical arrived. As medics began life saving efforts, Reneau said the driver of the Blazer, Nikolaus Berger, 23, returned to the vehicle saying I am the driver and this is my friend. Berger reportedly told police Baumgartner accidentally shot himself while showing off a new pistol he had purchased days earlier. Police took Berger back to the police station and interviewed him, but police say he did not give them all of the facts at that point. He omitted some information and wasnt entirely truthful with us, Reneau said. He basically didnt mention that there was a third person in the Blazer. Reneau said police already believed there was a third person in the Blazer because of the way Baumgartner was found sitting in the cab. Baumgartner was found sitting on the center console of the blazer because the back of it was full of stuff, which indicated someone was sitting on either side of him in the cab. Berger did tell police Baumgartner was kind of waving the gun around inside the cab, and the gun accidentally went off and a bullet struck him on the right side of his head above the ear. I spoke with him for 45 minutes to an hour and the facts I had at the time were consistent with his story, he said. Initially we didnt have enough (to hold him); it was an accidental shooting at that point, so as the rest of the investigation was continuing, Mr. Berger left and went home. Reneau said they went to the hospital to get more information on the case, and the third person, Brenen Best, 22 of Coeur dAlene, showed up to tell police he was in the car when the gun went off accidentally. Reneau said Best gave police almost the same story Berger gave them. At that point both of them were telling us it was an accident, White said. Not a suicide, not a murder an accident. White said police had also learned Baumgartner had, in fact, purchased the gun two days earlier, so their stories seemed to match the evidence police were uncovering. Police then brought both Berger and Best to the police station for more questioning. Reneau said Berger was upset but his emotions appeared to be consistent with someone who just witnessed an accidental shooting. Police quickly learned Best was a felon on parole at the time of the shooting, and that is why they tried to conceal the fact that he was at the scene. Best was not allowed to consume alcohol or handle a firearm because he was on parole, Reneau explained. White said even though the men's stories appeared to be consistent with the evidence police had gathered, we didnt necessarily believe what we were being told. White said the police decided to do some lab tests to confirm the men's stories. Police conducted a gunshot residue test on both Best and Berger, which came back inconclusive. Both had some residue on them, but nowhere near what police would have found if one of them had actually fired the weapon. In fact, White said the amount of residue they did find was consistent with where the two were sitting in the cab of the Blazer when the gun went off. Police also tested their clothing for blood spatter evidence and found none. Berger had washed his clothes before turning them over to police, but Bests clothes were the same clothes he was wearing at the scene. That revealed no evidence at all, White said. Both Berger and Best also agreed to polygraph tests, which Berger passed and Best failed. However, White said Best was under a lot of stress because he was serving time for violating the terms of his parole, and he is also facing felony possession of a firearm charges. He had been handling quite a bit at the time he took his polygraph, White said, adding that could have caused him to fail the test. Police also confiscated the Blazer to do a blood splatter test to confirm the way Baumgartner was shot, and determined it was consistent with the narrative of the accidental shooting. In fact, White said, Berger gave police a detailed description of how Baumgartner was holding the handgun when it discharged. The testing confirmed the trajectory of the bullet and position of the muzzle of the gun when it was fired and that matched Bergers description of the accidental shooting. At that point we had to say it appears this was a tragic accident, he said. There is still a small chance that someone else shot Baumgartner, but I cannot prove it either way. White said if new evidence comes to light or another eyewitness steps forward with new information, he would certainly be willing to reopen the case, but for now police have done all they can do. Reneau said Berger has been cleared, but Best is still facing prosecution for felon in possession of a firearm charges.by Jessica Bisesto Senior Editor Traveling can take a toll on your wallet, but we've found some fantastic and affordable destinations that will offer you the best bang for your buck in 2017. We've taken into consideration the cost of flights from major cities in the U.S., as well as the average price of accommodations, food and attractions for these countries. Read on to learn more about the ten most affordable destinations for budget travelers. 1. Greece One of our pirates just returned from this wonderful country and has convinced us that Greece should be at the top of any budget traveler's bucket list in 2017. Athens is more affordable than the islands, but Santorini is not to be missed. Luckily, there are beautiful accommodations for any budget throughout this country. With four-star hotels in most of Greece starting at just $40 per night, and fantastic food around every corner (think $2 delicious gyros), Greece is the perfect combination of classy and affordable. When in Athens, keep your eye out for a little cafe called Lithos for a fantastic traditional meal. If you're able to plan your Greek vacation around early November, the weather will still be warm, and the crowds will have gone home making it a great time of the year to request complimentary hotel upgrades. 2. Portugal Portugal, the sometimes-forgotten neighbor of Spain, offers a carefree Mediterranean vibe, with lots of beautiful architecture and culture. Fantastic fresh seafood, delicious and cheap wine, and comfortable hotels starting at about $45 per night. The historic city of Porto is a must-see, and if you've got some wiggle room in your budget, head over to the Azores. Try to plan your vacation between March and May, or September and October when prices are lowest. 3. Costa Rica If you're looking for a warm, friendly country that's filled with beaches, rainforests, and volcanoes — this is it. Costa Rica has a reputation for being affordable and easy to travel. Food is inexpensive and public transportation is efficient and plentiful. There's a great range of accommodations from five-star hotels to active coffee farms and luxurious tree houses available from fantastic prices. Depending on your style of travel, $40 a day can get you a mid-range hotel, three meals and round-trip bus rides to a nearby town. March and April offer beautiful weather in Costa Rica, but if you're looking to save a bit of money and skip the crowds, visit during the "green season." There might be a little rain daily, but as with any tropical location, it never lasts long. 4. Vietnam We all know that Thailand is considered to be quite affordable, but if you're looking to get more bang for your buck, head to Vietnam. This wonderful country offers some of the most fantastic food in the world, lots of trains and buses (if you choose to use public transportation instead of renting a motorbike and venturing out on your own). Bahn mi sandwiches will cost you less than $2, delicious Vietnamese coffees will run about $1 per cup and four-star hotels start at about $25 per night. If you're in the Hoi An area, one of our pirates recommends the (not-so-secret-anymore) Bale Well for a cheap, delicious and menu-free meal. The best prices in Vietnam can be found during August and October when crowds are minimal. 5. Nicaragua This beautiful (and quieter) Central American country offers something for everyone. The capital city, Managua, offers great public transportation to get you to other parts of the country. For those on a tight budget looking for an interesting experience, look out for the loud, colorful Chicken busses — your seat mate might actually be a chicken! It is possible to eat for less than $2 a day if you take advantage of the fantastic food stalls, but restaurants aren't much pricier. Comfortable hotels will run about $20 per night and there are a great variety of accommodations to choose from in this country. Prices are affordable year round in Nicaragua, but for the best value we recommend visiting between the summer months. 6. Malaysia This country is not only stunning, but offers the perfect combination of culture and metropolitan settings. Fly into Kuala Lumpur and snag whatever you've forgotten for your trip at one of the night markets before heading to your $30 per night, four-star hotel. Fill up on the delicious and world-renowned street food before checking out the Cameron Highlands, Penang, or the beautiful beach-filled island of Langkawi. Transportation costs approximately $1 an hour, and with the clean and comfortable trains running through the country, there's really no excuse to stay in one place for too long! January and February offer the best prices in Malaysia, just be sure to plan for very warm and dry weather. 7. Bolivia Once the visa cost (approximately $100) is paid, everything else in this fantastic country is very affordable. Bolivia is lesser-traveled than its other South American neighbors and offers rich culture, gorgeous scenery and one of the highest capital cities in the world — La Paz. The Salar de Uyuni and Lake Titicaca are must-sees, but if salt landscapes and lakes don't do it for you, there are plenty of other mountains and monuments to explore. You can get you a comfortable hotel room, three meals and entrance to a museum for just $30 per day. Fun fact: Bolivia is one of two landlocked countries in South America, making it geographically advantageous if you're looking to visit neighboring Peru, Brazil or Chile. As seasons are reversed below the equator, prices in Bolivia are highest between May and October. If you're not afraid of a few chilly nights, plan your Bolivian vacation between November and March for the best prices and least amount of tourists. 8. Cambodia Angkor Wat is at the top of many traveler's bucket lists and with Cambodia's consistently-inexpensive prices, it's understandable. Do not let the country's recent dark history affect your desire to experience the beautiful cultural melting pot that is Cambodia. Khmer cuisine is delicious and inexpensive, dishes average between 50¢ and $3, and a three-day temple pass costs about $40. Tuk-tuks are a very common form of travel and most prices are negotiable. Medium-range hotels start at $10 per night in either Siem Reap or Phnom Penh. The 'hot season,' between March and May, is the cheapest time of the year to see this wonderful Southeast Asian gem. 9. Morocco This country tops a few of our pirate's bucket list countries and luckily it's also a very affordable destination. On a shoe-string budget, a traveler can get by on less than $20 per day. For those on a slightly larger budget, $40 per day will suffice for a mid-range hotel or riad, three meals and a few items from one of the nearby spice markets. We encourage travelers to bring a little extra money and spend a night or two camping in the Sahara Desert — it's truly a once-in-a -lifetime experience. Spring is the most beautiful time of the year to visit Morocco, but also the most expensive. We encourage budget travelers to explore this destination between October and December for the best prices. 10. Hungary Although most of Europe is quite expensive, Hungary provides European elegance and affordability. A mid-range hotel will cost about $30 per night and most meals will set you back a mere $3 to $6. There are plenty of things to do in the capital city of Budapest that don't require much money, such as museums, transportation around town, or a boat cruise down the Danube River. We recommend exploring Hungary between March and May for the best prices and less crowds.Vancouver’s detached home prices will fall 20 per cent over the next year as the number of homes changing hands in the city continues to plunge, National Bank Financial said in a report on Friday. “In the case of Vancouver, we think a price correction will begin soon,” National Bank economist Marc Pinsonneault said in the report. While a correction of that magnitude sounds dramatic, the bank characterizes it as “moderate” given how high prices have climbed in the city. In his report, Pinsonneault said Ottawa’s new mortgage rules will have a cooling effect, but the impact “should not be over-estimated.” Indeed, the Vancouver market was already coming off its torrid pace of home sales before the new measures, and even the 15-per-cent tax on foreign buyers kicked in. Pinsonneault cites a number of other catalysts for Vancouver’s slide, including prices soaring out of reach for the some buyers, new minimum down payment rules for homes over $500,000, and B.C.’s introduction of a three-per-cent tax on the value of homes sold for more than $2 million. “And finally, China’s anti-corruption campaign is suspected of crimping the flow of capital from that country,” the report said. Across all property types, National Bank forecasts a 10 per cent price correction for Vancouver, with attached homes falling nine per cent and condos pulling back five per cent in the next 12 months. The Toronto market, the report notes, is now “red hot.” While Pinsonneault predicts home sales are about to slow in Toronto, the tight supply will limit the slide in prices to just three per cent next year. Among the catalysts for a Toronto sales slowdown: high prices pushing first-time homebuyers out of the market and rising mortgage rates as a consequence of new regulations from Ottawa, he said.From social media to the streets, President Duterte’s first month in office has been bloody Published 2:15 PM, July 25, 2016 “I told you to avoid me,” reluctant presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte warned the nation last year. “It’s going to be bloody.” From the beginning of his candidacy until his first weeks in office as President of the Republic, Mr Duterte has been consistent in using tough language in his war against crime and drugs. True enough, it has been bloody. Less than a month into his presidency, over 300 drug-related killings have been recorded. Most have been shot during police operations. Others were killed by unidentified gunmen and vigilantes. The profile of the victims varies. Some are known drug pushers – those who have been on the city’s drug watch list and ruined the lives of many poor families. There are possible instances of mistaken identity, like the young scholar sleeping over a friend’s place killed in a drug bust operation. Many are nameless victims, the “unidentified suspects” whose cadavers remain unclaimed in funeral parlors. The story we tell Whether we like it or not, killings have now become integral to the narrative of the Philippines’ war against drugs. Our President’s remarks have a lot to do with building this narrative, but it is unfair to lay blame squarely on the President for promoting this kind of discourse. This narrative is much bigger than Mr Duterte. Underpinning the President’s tough talk on drugs is a deeply worrying public sentiment that affirms, legitimizes and even celebrates the spike on drug-related killings. Carlos Bodoni calls this the Titanic Syndrome: A contagious euphoria while country is sinking. A cursory observation of comments in online forums and everyday talk is revealing of the kind of society in which we now live. First, it tells a story of a society that has cast doubt on what were once considered inalienable principles of human rights. It turns out that this discussion is far from settled, that there are vocal segments of society who continue to think that some are less human than others, that human rights are particular, not universal and that suspicion is enough to shoot someone dead. Today, what we see is a renegotiation of these universal principles. We hear citizens unapologetically arguing that there are lives worth protecting and lives worth sacrificing for the sake of a political project. Some, if not many, have given up on the ideal of building a nation based on principles of social justice and compassion. We are living in times of crisis, where rights and liberties are suspended to save the nation from itself. Penal populism Second, it seems like the discussion of crime and punishment today is overwhelmingly driven by emotions than evidence. Even though there is no compelling scientific evidence that death penalty is a deterrent to crime and no “war against drugs” has ever succeeded, none of these facts matter to an anxious public bent on punishing people they perceive to be scum of society. Penal populism is the term sociologists use to describe this phenomenon. It is driven by feelings of anger and disillusionment with the slow procedures of the criminal justice system. Toughness and immediate gratification are prioritised while the long-term and tedious strategy of reforming the criminal justice system is viewed as a policy supported by politicians with no balls and citizens who are biased and out of touch. The killings have driven a wedge into our society. Instead of cultivating a sense that we are responsible for each other, it has only served to make others feel better about themselves. It perpetuates an individualistic thinking that we do not end up as cadavers wrapped in a garbage bag and packing tape because we are much better people than those degenerates who do not deserve a fair trial. What we conveniently forget is how easy it is to fall into the cracks. Alice Goffman’s book On the Run brilliantly documents this in the case of Philadelphia although the insights put forward applies to the Philippines. Communities with limited life choices can easily be enveloped in the web of criminality, as in the case of too familiar stories of desperate youths ending up as drug mules and children running away from an abusive home only to land in the hands of drug syndicates. Anyone can end up as a drug pusher, young sociologistAdrienne Onday has rightfully pointed out. And often, misfortune, rather than deliberate life choices, creates the conditions that makes one vulnerable to summary executions. Changing the narrative So what is it that you want, I am often asked. I think there are two ways to move forward. First is to hold our officials accountable. Philippine National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa provides hope for his clear commitment to the rule of law and rejection of summary killings. It is good news that our police force has gained morale in performing their duties, as they are now emboldened to go after drug syndicates who used to be untouchable because they are protected by narco-politicians. I want our law enforcers to succeed. I want them to succeed in arresting, filing cases, trying and convicting guilty drug offenders. It would be tragic if what we consider as virtuous cops today evolve to be the butchers of the future. The best assurance that our law enforcement agencies do not spiral into the use of excessive force is to secure the integrity of our checks and balances even if this means subjecting themselves to the investigation of the administration’s political opponents. “There is nothing to fear if you did nothing wrong,” the police officers often tell us. This must also apply to them when there are calls for congressional inquiries, probes and investigations. Second, we need to hold ourselves, as citizens, accountable. I, personally, have been thoroughly impressed with what the Duterte administration has achieved in the past few weeks. These achievements, however, can easily be overshadowed by failing to bring in the voices of the victims of extra-judicial killings in our nation’s quest for change. There is blood in our hands if we fail to speak up and condone the troubling spike of summary killings. It is not unsupportive of this government to say we can do better than this. Citizens can still change the narrative of the Duterte administration. It can still be an administration that is competent, efficient and trustworthy while shifting its gears to a firm yet humane and creative but evidence-based approach to crime. My ideal society is one where citizens look after each other, one where we turn others’ misfortune, and even bad decisions, into redemption. From social media to the streets, the first month of President Duterte has been bloody. But the next six years do not have to end this way. – Rappler.com Nicole Curato is a sociologist. She is a research fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. Follow her on Twitter @NicoleCuratoStar Trek V: The Final Frontier has always got a bad rep from most fans and critics alike. It's usually voted the least liked, original crew feature film and current holds a not very hot, 21% score on Rotten Tomatoes. But I think that is unfair. I believe the film has a lot more going for it than people give it credit. Once you look past the special effects and strange plot, there is probably the closest feature film that resembles the Original Series. Also, it's a film that deserves a decent Directors Cut. Let me explain why... Star Trek V: The Final Frontier followed on from a trilogy of Star Trek movies that were a hit with fans and a commercial success for Paramount while claiming critical acclaim. They also had a story arc that concluded with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which was the biggest grossing Star Trek Movie at the time. On the back of that success, a new Star Trek series was launched. Star Trek The Next Generation started on shaky ground but by the end of the second season, it had found its feet and was being accepted by fans. So with a hit TV show and a separate, successful movie series, Star Trek was on an all time high. It was now 1988 and it had been two years since the last Star Trek movie, it was time for another. Star Trek III: The Search For Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home were both directed by Leonard Nimoy. During the original series, Nimoy and Shatner had a favored nations clause in their contract, which basically meant that what one actor received i.e. a pay, rise or contract renegotiation, the other would get it too. That carried over into the movies and therefore because Nimoy directed the previous Star Trek features, it was now Shatner's turn. In-fact, one of the reasons Shatner agreed to do the fourth film was because he was promised he could direct the next film. The studio also thought it would make a great marketing ploy having Captain Kirk in the directors chair. The story for the fifth film was based on Shatners experience of watching late night TV evangelists. He was fascinated with how they managed to convince people to hand over money by claiming God is speaking through them. This became the basis for the Sybok character who was initially going to be called Zar. His original idea had the whole crew including Spock and McCoy turn against him as they are brainwashed by Zar/Sybok. They eventually meet God who turns out to be Satan and Kirk saves the day and
.3 billion cubic feet each year, the consumption of 18,000 American homes. It will also cut carbon emissions by 2.75 million tons over 30 years, the equivalent of taking 19,000 cars off the road. The solar panels concentrate the sun’s rays into a vacuum-sealed tube that contains a synthetic oil, which heats up to 748 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil is then used to produce steam that is fed into an existing turbine to produce electricity. Using small sensors, the mirrors will be able to rotate during the day to track the sun’s movement. In case of a hurricane, they will flip upside down for protection.Only half of meteorologists think human emissions are major cause of climate change In 2016 67% of meteorologists said that humans have caused most or all climate change and The Guardian headlined that there was a Growing Consensus among Meteorologists. In 2017 that fell to only 49%. The Guardian said nothing. In 2016 29% of meteorologists thought climate change was largely or entirely man-made, but that fell to only 15% this year. Figure how this result fits with the idea of the overwhelming evidence and 97% consensus. Which group on the planet after climate scientists should be the second profession to “get it” — how about meteorologists? So either: 1. meteorologists are really stupid, or 2. meteorologists know how hard it is to predict the climate. From the survey results Nearly half of weathercasters (49%) are convinced that the climate change over the past 50 years has been mostly or entirely due to human activity, and an additional two in ten (21%) think it is more or less equally caused by human activity and natural events. About two in ten (21%) think the change has been primarily or entirely due to natural events. Weathercasters have diverse views on the extent to which additional climate change can be averted over the next 50 years if mitigation measures are taken worldwide: only 17% think a large amount or all additional climate change can be averted; many more think a moderate (38%) or a small (31%) amount of additional climate change can be averted; and 13% think almost no additional climate change can be averted. Only 1% believe there will be no additional climate change over the next 50 years. Nearly all weathercasters (95%) think climate change—as defined by the American Meteorological Society—is happening; relatively few think it isn’t happening (2%) or don’t know (3%). When asked if they had witnessed any positive outcomes in their communities as a result of climate change mitigation or adaptation activities, about a third (31%) of weathercasters reported that they had witnessed such outcomes. Anthony Watts pointed out in 2016 that there were biases that would underestimate the skeptic vote: Given that the operator of the survey, George Mason University is a hotbed of calls for prosecution and jailing of “deniers”, and that Edward Maibach is one of the people who signed the letter to the Whitehouse and who operated this particular AMS survey, I can’t say that I blame them. I wouldn’t have sent it in either when the man asking the questions might flag you for criminal prosecution for having an opinion he doesn’t like. George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication Weathercaster Survey Report PDF VN:F [1.9.22_1171] please wait... Rating: 8.7/10 (86 votes cast)When Owl City hit No. 1 with the massive song Fireflies, Adam Young, the track's DIY creator, was immediately tagged as an all-too-close (OK, some called him a rip-off) sound-alike of The Postal Service (Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard's electronica side project). But Young isn't letting the slags ruin what he describes as "an incredible, totally surreal experience." After all, it wasn't long ago that the 23-year-old was working menial jobs and living in his parents' basement in Owatonna, Minnesota, where he recorded music on his own and put it on MySpace - like so many other hopefuls. Young's first Owl City recordings, the 2007 EP June and 2008's full-length Maybe I'm Dreaming, received a fair amount of viral buzz, but last year he released the album Ocean Eyes, and from the minute people heard the oceanic, bubbling intro to Fireflies (face it: it's infectious, whether you think it sounds like The Postal Service or not), Young's success was made manifest: he signed a deal with Universal Republic, and Fireflies became iTunes' most-downloaded song ever. While still defending himself against rip-off comparisons - Young admits to being a Death Cab fan and says he only got into The Postal Service once the fuss started - the Minnesotan is taking Owl City on the road with a full band and living out his basement fantasies before packed houses. MusicRadar caught up with Young on tour recently, where we asked him how it feels to go from total obscurity to worldwide acclaim in the span of mere months. We also talked gear and, yes, asked him about those pesky comparisons. The Owl City man is a funny bird to pin down: one second he's open and honest, the next he's cagey and snarky. But he's certainly an original...even if people think he sounds like, well, you know. You recorded your first albums in the basement of your parents' house. Was that as lonely and depressing as it sounds, or did you have an upbeat feeling that you could'make it'? "It was almost more fun than I could handle. I was writing music for no one's ears but my own. I was my own worst critic and never was the process lonely or depressing. It was really entirely the opposite. I feel like I have a lot more purpose behind writing songs these days, but being an independent artist was really a wonderful thing." What did your parents think of your direction in life at the time? You were living at home and working at a Coca-Cola bottling plant and then at UPS. Did they push you to do something else and give up this'silly music thing'? "They were very supportive, although I think they secretly thought I was a bit of a mad scientist at the time. They are incredibly excited for me." Did growing up in Minnesota shape your view on life in a way that you see it influencing your music? "Yes and no. There was never much of a cultured music scene where I grew up, so I sort of had to invent it for my own. I imagined music being this or that without having any idea that it did, in fact, exist somewhere out there - and in a lot of places, ironically." Now that you've had a No. 1 single, what's been your parents' reaction? "They make me sandwiches." What kind of music did you grow up on, and how has it informed the style of music you're making now? "I listened to a lot of experimental music, quite a bit of ambient wordless material. I am very fond of film scores and music written for movies that stands up on its own. I write and record a lot of instrumental abstract music and that's really where my heart lies." Did you join bands as a teenager, or were you pretty much on your own, doing the'singer-songwriter' thing? "I was in a couple different bands as a drummer and never struck out to do the singer-songwriter thing, other than finding the idea of doing everything myself - via writing and recording - very intriguing." "I discovered the endless capabilities of samples and sequencing and knew I needed to get myself a DAW." How did you study up on gear and figure out what kinds of equipment to buy to build your basement studio? "All of it is done in the box, so to speak. I discovered the endless capabilities of samples and sequencing and knew I needed to get myself a DAW." How long does it take you to come up with an intro and the layering of instrumentation? Does it take you a while to find the right musical bed? "Some songs are different than others. They say a good song is never written, but 'caught' like a fish." Does writing come easily to you, or is it a difficult and painful process? "Some songs basically write themselves and it's like I'm the only one around to claim and record them. That's how a lot of my albums are written." You seem to favor soft, bubbling intros. Any ideas for changing that up in the future? Can you see yourself starting out with a crashing chorus, say? "Yes!" The songs Hot Air Balloon and The Saltwater Room features some nice acoustic guitar sounds. What kind of acoustic do you use? How would you rate yourself as a guitarist? "I used my uncle's old '69 Alvarez. I am by no means a very good guitarist but I have a lot of fun layering things together." For a guy who describes himself as "shy" and "a loner," you seem very comfortable on stage. Are you? "I always imagined what it would be like to perform on stage in front of a lot of people, and as a result, usually became nervous at the idea as well. Performing becomes easier as you do it. I still get butterflies." Does the sound of a live band - with live drums especially - excite you as much as creating at home? "There are a lot of things to appreciate about both. I think I favor the studio a bit more." (So what do you think? Does this...) How does your live setup differ from what you use at home? "I play a lot of hardware live, a Nord Wave and a Moog Voyageur. At home I sequence everything in Pro Tools." Like so many people, you started putting your music on MySpace. But yet, you hit a nerve and people reacted big-time. Why do you think you struck gold - well, platinum, really? "Ask me that in 20 years. I honestly have no idea. It's incredible. Totally surreal." What about pitch correction on your vocals What do you use? "I use Auto-Tune." OK, Fireflies....No. 1 smash. How does it feel - like you've cracked open the door for more, or do you worry about it becoming a one-hit wonder? "That song is funny. It kind of wrote itself. I'm honored that so many people seem to connect with it." What was the inspiration for Fireflies? It doesn't sound like something that a guy in Minnesota would come up with. "This one time I went to Taco Bell and got a grilled stuffed burrito and some cheesy fiesta potatoes. It was awesome. Then I went home and wrote Fireflies." (...sound like this?) What's a bigger thrill - having Fireflies go to No. 1, or having it featured on Kidz Bop 17? "One time I heard my song in a toolbox factory in Iowa on a really crappy boombox with a screwdriver stabbed into one of the speakers." I have to ask about the early slamming you got from some critics, especially Pitchfork, comparing you to The Postal Service. Unfair? Do you hear why they might lump you together? Are you totally sick of the comparisons and wish people could just move on? "My dad totally used to be a mail carrier and he got to drive around one of those sweet trucks with the steering wheel on the wrong side."RYANAIR WILL LINK up with rival airlines to offer ‘feeder flights’ onto long-haul routes, with the first of the deals to start by the end of the year. The low-cost carrier also plans to offer punters the ability to book connecting flights on its own routes by the end of this month, with the airline handling baggage transfers for transfer passengers. “This will be a big deal for us,” Ryanair chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said, adding that the changes would allow passengers to ‘self-connect’ between destinations with bookings made via the airline. “I think this is going to be a big advantage for Ryanair, given our network, it will be a big advantage for Ryanair getting more of the business travel market in Europe,” he said. The airline will first trial interconnecting routes for its own flights through Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, with other bases to follow. Connecting flights with “one to two partner airlines” are due to begin between September and the end of the year, Jacobs said. Aer Lingus and Norwegian Air – which recently launched low-cost transatlantic routes from several Irish bases – where the first two airlines the carrier was expecting to use for both long-haul and short-haul flights. Ryanair has long been reported to be courting deals with the two airlines, though its finance chief, Neil Sorahan, recently said the setup was “not hugely high” on his to-do list. Norwegian deal The significant shift in Ryanair’s strategy comes as part of its bid to become the ‘Amazon of air travel’ – handling everything from package holidays to flight bookings on rival airlines through its website and app. The feeder-flight move would allow passengers to book their whole trip with the short-haul specialist and have their luggage automatically moved between planes. In turn, it would open up Norwegian and Aer Lingus’s US routes to more airports across Europe at little extra cost, and help guarantee higher-priced seats to Ryanair. In February, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary told airline industry business publication Air Transport World that Ryanair and Norwegian were close to reaching an agreement. Michael O'Leary Source: DPA/PA Images “We are ready to co-operate with Norwegian right now,” he said. “We are finalizing technical implementation as Ryanair and Norwegian operate on two different reservation systems,” he said, adding, “It is better to work with them instead of compete with them (Norwegian).” Competition Jacobs today said he expected that Ryanair would end up working with “a raft of legacy carriers in the coming years”. “They get to focus on what they make more money on, which is flying long-haul, and they get to fill their long-haul flights at a cheap rate of customer acquisition.” Low-cost operators like Ryanair have been trying to discourage the major carriers from competing with them on short-haul routes and instead focus on their intercontinental services. However some larger airlines, such as Aer Lingus stablemate British Airways, have fought back against Ryanair by offering no-frills fares and charging for meals. Written by Paul O’Donoghue and posted on Fora.ieHello from Deutschland!!! We’re currently in Frankfurt, Germany visiting Stephan’s family. The temperatures have been up in the high 90’s for weeks in South Florida, so this is perfect timing to leave for a few weeks! I haven’t been cooking since I got here as my mother in law is a fantastic cook, but this is a little something I made before I left for vacation. We’ll be off to Prague, Vienna and Munich next week and I plan on blogging the good eats we find along the way! So… on to the tasty treat. Although this looks like a sweet treat, it is not. This cookie has one of my favorite savory ingredients… caramelized onion. There’s something magical that happens when you cook boring old onions in a little bit of butter. It turns into a sweet and caramel colored delicacy. You do have to be patient… very patient when caramelizing onion, though. Expect to spend the better part of an hour if you want perfectly caramelized onions. If you try to rush it, you’ll end up with a bitter tasting end result. Believe me… been there, done that!Windows Library for JavaScript (WinJS) Status Right now, Microsoft plans to maintain WinJS's existing features--this means responding to Issues and Pull Requests on a regular basis. We're committed to making sure that WinJS continues to run well. At this time, we don't have plans to invest in new features or feature requests; this also means that we're not planning a new feature release. Intro WinJS is a set of JavaScript toolkits that allow developers to build applications using HTML/JS/CSS technology forged with the following principles in mind: Provide developers with a distinctive set of UI controls with high polish and performance with fundamental support for touch, mouse, keyboard and accessibility Provide developers with a cohesive set of components and utilities to build the scaffolding and infrastructure of their applications This is a first step for the WinJS project and there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. Feel free to participate by contributing along the way. Contribute There are many ways to contribute to the project. You can contribute by reviewing and sending feedback on code checkins, suggesting and trying out new features as they are implemented, submitting bugs and helping us verify fixes as they are checked in, as well as submitting code fixes or code contributions of your own. Note that all code submissions will be rigorously reviewed and tested by the team, and only those that meet an extremely high bar for both quality and design appropriateness will be merged into the source. Build WinJS In order to build WinJS, ensure that you have git and Node.js installed. Clone a copy of the master WinJS git repo: git clone https://github.com/winjs/winjs.git Change to the winjs directory: cd winjs Install the grunt command-line interface globally: npm install -g grunt-cli Grunt dependencies are installed separately in each cloned git repo. Install the dependencies with: npm install Run the following and the WinJS JavaScript and CSS files will be put in the bin directory: grunt Note: You may need to use sudo (for OSX, *nix, BSD etc) or run your command shell as Administrator (for Windows) to install Grunt globally. Tests status Refer to http://winjs.azurewebsites.net/#status for the current status of the unit tests and the list of known issues. Try WinJS Check out our online playground at http://winjs.azurewebsites.net/ Follow Us Twitter https://twitter.com/BuildWinJS Facebook https://www.facebook.com/buildwinjsAn MMO based on Sony Pictures' forthcoming remake of 1990 sci-fi classic Total Recall is on its way to browsers. Currently in the works at Chinese studio ZQGame with SEE Games on publisher duties, it'll be a free-to-play title boasting a hybrid of features from traditional MMOs and social games, such as PVP and PVE play and a collaborative "memory quest" system. It's being built on a specially designed engine that's apparently capable of managing a large scale 3D MMO within a browser platform. "Total Recall is an international phenomenon; we know this well-known property will make a great 3D browser based game," commented Sony Pictures exec Mark Caplan. "With SEE Games and ZQGame's expertise, Total Recall will offer fans of the franchise and gamers alike an engaging and authentic experience - one that will deliver everything that the fans expect and will dovetail perfectly with the upcoming film." No release date has been announced but the movie, directed by Live Free or Die Hard shot-caller Len Wiseman and starring Colin Farrell in Arnie's lead role, is due in cinemas in August 2012.Some of the BBC’s most prominent female journalists and TV presenters are banding together to demand that the broadcaster fix its wide gender pay gap immediately rather than in several years as management has proposed. TV personalities including Clare Balding, Victoria Derbyshire and others wrote an open letter Sunday to the BBC’s top manager saying that plans to resolve the company’s gender pay gap by 2020 must be accelerated. They pointed out that the Equal Pay Act became the law in 1970. BBC responded in a statement that it has made “significant changes” in recent years but needs to do more to close the pay gap. Documents made public last week showed that male BBC TV and radio personalities make substantially more than their female counterparts. The salary disparity came to light after the publicly funded BBC was forced to publish the salary ranges of its best-paid actors and presenters. The list showed that two-thirds of the highest earners were men, with the highest-paid woman earning less than a quarter of the highest-earning male star. Many BBC men were also found to be receiving far higher salaries than women in comparable jobs. Balding, one of BBC’s most accomplished TV journalists, said in a pointed tweet that a 2020 target for equal pay isn’t good enough, since the Equal Pay Act was enacted in 1970 and the Equality Act was passed in 2010. “We’re standing together to politely suggest they can do better,” she said. Last Update: Sunday, 23 July 2017 KSA 20:29 - GMT 17:29For a band that has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, whose streak of consecutive gold and platinum records is topped only by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, trying to nail down the exact reason why Canadian trio Rush is so adored by so many is never easy. Reviled by critics — or worse, completely ignored — for a good portion of their career, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart have defied odds time and again, the music showing a remarkable amorphous quality, changing with the times yet never pandering, retaining an astounding level of popularity to this day. Although the band’s groundbreaking combination of heavy metal and progressive rock was what made it famous in the first place, appealing greatly to the teenaged hesher crowd in the ’70s while the critical elite scoffed, to call Rush a “progressive power trio” today is like calling Bob Dylan a protest singer. There’s so much more to the band than that — more musical and thematic variety than many are willing to acknowledge. Rush has dabbled in new wave, electronic music, pop, reggae, and world music, the wide array of instruments all three employ redefining what a rock trio could accomplish onstage. The technical skill of the three musicians is staggering: Lifeson’s expressive, versatile guitar playing, Lee’s impressive dexterity on bass and keyboards — often at the same time — and not the least of which, the inimitable Mr. Peart, the only rock drummer alive for whom everyone remains in their seat when it’s time for his drum solo. Despite the musical chops on display, though, songcraft always comes first. Unlike so many progressive metal bands today, Rush has always known that even prog rock is pointless if it doesn’t have a hook. Not many bands can write an instrumental that compels a crowd of 40,000 people to sing along to it, but Rush have written several. Additionally, Rush have always been incredibly grounded. Self-indulgent but always self-aware, a sense of levity has always served as a welcome undercurrent in the band’s work, whether making fun of their friends in KISS in a song in 1975, subtitling an instrumental “an exercise in self-indulgence,” the visual puns of the Moving Pictures cover art, or the band’s increasingly absurd and hilarious short films that precede each concert. The music can seem arch at times, but Rush always remember to laugh a little. It’s serious, but more importantly, it’s fun. It’s supposed to be. Before Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Slayer attracted global popularity with little to no help from radio or mainstream music press, Rush set the standard. Not once did the band rely on music tastemakers to spread the word. Although the band received a couple mildly positive reviews from Rolling Stone, they were never given a proper feature in the 1970s or ’80s. Spin was always too hip for Rush. Goodness knows they never landed on the Village Voice’s annual Pazz & Jop critics’ poll. Rush might be what Lee whimsically describes as “the world’s biggest cult band,” but never has Rush ever been cool. It’s unapologetically nerdy music, but it’s also welcoming. Cool people need not apply, and there’s something immensely appealing about that. It’s for everyone. If you go to a Rush concert today, you’ll see one of the more convivial environments you’ll ever witness at a rock show. Everyone’s on the same level, three, maybe even four generations represented. A lot more women than you’d expect, shattering the myth that Rush is a boys’ club. During Peart’s solos you’ll see fathers hoist their awestruck children onto their shoulders to witness the mastery at hand. And when “Tom Sawyer” climaxes, people, no matter how hip they are, no matter what age, will be compelled to air-drum along to Peart’s legendary fills. Whether your favorite album is 2112, Hemispheres, Moving Pictures, Grace Under Pressure, or, heaven help you, Roll The Bones, the unifying factor with all of those records is that Rush have always been uncompromising. When their third album flopped, Rush had a choice in 1976: to acquiesce to the demands of the record label, or to defiantly do their own thing. They chose the latter, achieved worldwide fame soon after, and were never again told what to do. Rush is the living embodiment of integrity in rock music, and it’s for that simple reason that we celebrate the Canadian legends’ vast, rich discography. As a Rush fan since 1984, I have my own personal favorites — your favorite Rush album is often your first Rush album, so for me it’s Grace Under Pressure — but I took it upon myself to dispose of any trace of fandom and examine all 19 albums (and one mini-album) with as objective a critical ear as possible. Some rankings might be cause for debate, but that’s why I’ve written this piece: for folks to discuss, debate, and above all, celebrate this band’s wonderful, enthralling, and perpetually endearing body of work. This July marks the 40th year that Dirk, Lerxst, and the Professor have been together. Boys, we wish you well, and thank you for the music. (Also, feel free to follow me on Twitter at @basementgalaxy, where the Rush talk never ceases.) Start the Countdown here. Coda: Rush enthusiasts are nothing if not a little bit obsessive, yours truly included, and no discussion of the band’s discography would be complete without the inevitable comment, “But what about the live albums?” So just to be thorough, here’s a quick ranking of Rush’s live albums, from best to, erm, least worst. 01. All The World’s A Stage (1976) 02. Rush In Rio (2003) 03. Snakes & Arrows Live (2008) 04. A Show Of Hands (1989) 05. Exit…Stage Left (1981) 06. Clockwork Angels Tour (2013) 07. Grace Under Pressure Tour (2005) 08. Different Stages (1998) 09. R30: 30th Anniversary World Tour (2005) 10. Time Machine 2011: Live In Cleveland (2011)When Dak Prescott was arrested on a DUI charge last weekend, many teams may have dropped him further down their list of draft candidates. Media analysts have weighed in on the subject and seem to be a bit unsure what this all means as Lance Zierlein told NFL.com: "If there is nothing else (negative in his background), I think every team is going to go off their own personal interviews with him and what their scouts have gathered on his character," Zierlein said. "That should reign supreme over one incident. But it certainly doesn't help." "For a team that was on the fence about him, this would be an easy way for an owner to knock him off the board. If he's a guy who was just barely alive (as a prospect for a team) and half the building was for him and half was not for taking him, this might be enough to get him scratched," Zierlein said. "That's how he could potentially get hurt. If you like Dak Prescott already, and there's nothing else in his background that's a red flag as it pertains to alcohol, I don't think this is going to hurt him badly. It was very important for him to come out and take responsibility right away." Well, don't count the Dallas Cowboys as one of those teams with doubt, in fact, they plan to work out the Mississippi State signal caller this coming Monday. Dak Prescott was one of the quarterbacks at the Senior Bowl way back when and actually won the contest's MVP award? Also, of note, Dak met with Scott Linehan pretty extensively in Mobile and was rumored to be a guy they really liked. Doing a little homework on him myself, here's what you can expect from a prospect like Prescott. Originally, I had Prescott pegged for that pick at 102, but he could likely be taken in the third round if he checks all the proverbial boxes. I'll take you back to a little write-up I had on him a little while back: Dak is an impressive type of player fitting that true dual-threat quarterback mold. He's everything that Tim Tebow wanted to be with better mobility, anticipation, and accuracy. Prescott owns 38 school records, is a two-time All-American, two-time First-Team All-SEC and was the MVP of the Liberty Bowl and Senior Bowl. He's got a feel for the game and has really shown a lot of development between the ears. Some scouts have likened him to having the upside of Russell Wilson. He'll need to learn to not predetermine his throws at the next level and still has some development needed in footwork. However, Prescott has shown that he has all the right traits to become a quarterback in the NFL, but it will take some patience to develop him. It's always going to raise an eyebrow or two when the Tebow card gets played, but again, he's a more polished passer than Tebow was. It's his leadership that gets him those comparisons. Moving on, Prescott also got a second meeting with the Cowboys at the Combine. Wade Wilson sat down with him this time and had some interesting things to say to Prescott: "Coach Wilson just [talked] about what they expect me to do if I come in there, if it's to be in the backup role behind Tony Romo, how do I plan on approaching it and then just talking ball," Prescott said at the combine about the meeting. "They've been productive meetings. He told me their picks and told me that they're thinking about getting a quarterback with one of those picks. He was saying that if I work hard, things maybe could work out." Nothing too telling in there, but it's no surprise that the Cowboys are in the market for a quarterback. They currently have just two on the roster and one on the practice squad. However, if they want a decent shot at someone developing, they know they'll have to spend some capital on the position. Taking into consideration the quotes we've seen and heard from all the Cowboys' brass, Tony Romo is the quarterback for the foreseeable future and they intend on contending for a championship while that remains the truth. This will be the third time in three months Wade Wilson has had face-to-face time with QB Dak Prescott in three different states. — Brandon George (@DMN_George) March 20, 2016 Prescott is a clear-cut candidate as a mid-round prospect with all the traits you look for in development. It's not a forgone conclusion that he's their man, but they certainly have taken every opportunity to look at him and get all their opinions gathered. Of course, you just know that this latest incident will certainly be on the menu of discussion, but Dak hasn't taken shelter to hide since. He was pretty open and quick with a response, after the unfortunate lapse in judgment: "I take complete responsibility for my actions," Prescott said this week in a statement. "I'm very remorseful for my misjudgment. I want to apologize to my true supporters, my family, Mississippi State, the NFL, and the kids who look up to me. I won't ask for forgiveness; however, I'll show the true man I am and exhibit my character through my actions and behavior moving forward." If Prescott has truly learned from this untimely mistake, his draft stock shouldn't take too much of a hit. He's certainly got all the intangibles and showed improvement with each coming year for the Bulldogs. Though he doesn't have the name recognition of the Jared Goff's, Carson Wentz's, and Paxton Lynch's of the world, he was very impressive in the Senior Bowl and has looked the part ever since. He also had a nice showing at the Combine too, now he'll have to prove once again, that he belongs. It certainly seems like the Cowboys intend on seeing much more of him and he can do a lot for himself with an impressive showing on Monday. Just a little foreshadowing, Cowboys fans. Don't forget this young man's name as he makes his third visit with these coaches. Could Dak Prescott possibly be the heir apparent to Tony Romo? Stay tuned.SAN DIEGO, CA – According to sources aboard Los Angeles-class submarine USS Asheville, the screaming in crew berthing moments ago was only Electronics Technician Second Class Brian Freeman having another bad dream he was in the Army. “It was horrible… awful,” Freeman said, forehead still damp with night sweat. “There was eye protection everywhere. I… I had just received orders to Fort Hood, and we hadn’t beaten Navy at football in decades!” “There, there,” said one of Freeman’s shipmates. “You’re here now, safe and sound on a tiny tin can where we’ve all got staph infections and haven’t seen the light of day in months.” “Thank GOD,” said Freeman, who truly couldn’t have it worse unless he was in the Army. The 26-year-old from Nebraska, who every day lives amidst ugly gray paint, tight passageways, and impossibly steep ladders; who smells of grease, is hideously pale, and has no privacy to speak of whatsoever began having nightmares he was in the Army after he met a couple of mournfully dull, irreversibly brainwashed soldiers just days prior to deploying with the Asheville. “I knew they were soldiers the moment I saw them,” Freeman said. “Nothing says Army Strong like terrible polos tucked into jeans with no belts at the bar.” “The one with the miserable flattop tried to engage me in conversation, and it was like staring into the void of death itself. Certainly makes a guy appreciate what he has, even if it’s just this low-oxygen, highly-irradiated metal tube.” Indeed, despite sharing a paper-thin mattress with three other guys, having once slept in the company of rickety torpedoes, and every second being literally one crewmember’s mistake away from certain death in the cold, black water surrounding his boat, Freeman says he simply can’t imagine anything more humiliating than being in a service that thinks so little of him he would be forced to wear a reflective belt on the walk from his car to the chow hall. At press time, sources confirmed the soulless soldier Freeman had met in the bar – who actually is stationed at Fort Hood – was frantically relieved to wake from a dream he was in the Air Force. “Jesus,” the painfully uninteresting man gasped. “I just don’t know what I’d do if I were a pussy.”Guest commentary from Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Rein Haarsma, KNMI Sometimes it helps to take a step back from the everyday pressures of research (falling ill helps). It was in this way we stumbled across Hansen et al (1981) (pdf). In 1981 the first author of this post was in his first year at university and the other just entered the KNMI after finishing his masters. Global warming was not yet an issue at the KNMI where the focus was much more on climate variability, which explains why the article of Hansen et al. was unnoticed at that time by the second author. It turns out to be a very interesting read. They got 10 pages in Science, which is a lot, but in it they cover radiation balance, 1D and 3D modelling, climate sensitivity, the main feedbacks (water vapour, lapse rate, clouds, ice- and vegetation albedo); solar and volcanic forcing; the uncertainties of aerosol forcings; and ocean heat uptake. Obviously climate science was a mature field even then: the concepts and conclusions have not changed all that much. Hansen et al clearly indicate what was well known (all of which still stands today) and what was uncertain. Next they attribute global mean temperature trend 1880-1980 to CO 2, volcanic and solar forcing. Most interestingly, Fig.6 (below) gives a projection for the global mean temperature up to 2100. At a time when the northern hemisphere was cooling and the global mean temperature still below the values of the early 1940s, they confidently predicted a rise in temperature due to increasing CO 2 emissions. They assume that no action will be taken before the global warming signal will be significant in the late 1990s, so the different energy-use scenarios only start diverging after that. The first 31 years of this projection are thus relatively well-defined and can now be compared to the observations. We used the GISS Land-Ocean Index that uses SST over the oceans (the original one interpolated from island stations) and overlaid the graph from the KNMI Climate Explorer on the lower left-hand corner of their Fig.6. Given the many uncertainties at the time, notably the role of aerosols, the agreement is very good indeed. They only underestimated the observed trend by about 30%, similar or better in magnitude than the CMIP5 models over the same period (although these tend to overestimate the trend, still mainly due to problems related to aerosols). To conclude, a projection from 1981 for rising temperatures in a major science journal, at a time that the temperature rise was not yet obvious in the observations, has been found to agree well with the observations since then, underestimating the observed trend by about 30%, and easily beating naive predictions of no-change or a linear continuation of trends. It is also a nice example of a statement based on theory that could be falsified and up to now has withstood the test. The “global warming hypothesis” has been developed according to the principles of sound science. ReferencesAppChat Week 1: Freak Outs, Flaming Servers and 6 Releases Matt Hall Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 8, 2015 Well that was a crazy week. Two weeks ago we had an idea for an app that adds a chat room to every app you have installed on your phone. We called it AppChat and it sounded like a fun experiment, and a nice little break from our long term launcher project Flow Home. We managed to get a rough version finished in under a week, then last Thursday posted it to the XDA app forum. We called it an “alpha” and meant it. There was tons of stuff missing and plenty of bugs, but it worked! And then… not much happened. We got a comment or two, probably 2 whole downloads, and it quickly slipped off the front page of posts. Maybe the whole thing was just a
world, we also had to leave behind friends, family, pets, jobs and our life as we knew it in order to start a new one as a “professional gamer.” The biggest lessons I think we learnt were about time management. We previously all worked full-time jobs, so all of a sudden we were faced with just nothing to do but play Counter-Strike, and that’s exactly what we did. We felt pressure to always be doing something Counter-Strike related, we stayed in Las Vegas for about 6 months on-and-off and only went out once or twice in that entire time. We practiced extremely hard, long hours, but it was mainly just scrims against other teams. We didn’t really review much footage, talk about tactics or just talk about how we want to play the game and fix our mistakes. We tried to adapt to a European style and we lost our identity because of it. We had ups and downs like any team. A small one that not many people talk about was the RGN event that took place as the afterthought to the iBP Cup. The event was plagued with delays and issues and we started the bracket play at 9 a.m. and finished at something absurd like 3 a.m. the next day. We managed to 2-0 Liquid and Luminosity and lost the final to Cloud9. I think a lot of people have erased that event from their memory, but everyone was under the same conditions and for us it was a good win. In that period the biggest downs would of been not qualifying for any of the Majors and missing out on the ESL Pro League finals because of lapse in concentration and some forfeits between other teams that hurt our chances. RELATED: Renegades to miss ESL Pro League finals due to conflict with Asia Minor This lineup looks like one of the strongest iterations of Renegades, but you guys unfortunately did not qualify for the ELEAGUE Major 2017. What do you believe is holding the team back? What needs to be changed in order to improve? The ELEAGUE Major qualifier was a tough time for us. We went into the event the most prepared and practiced we have ever been to any event. We had a bootcamp in Poland for two weeks before the event and we were playing very well. We had perfect flights with no delays and the ELEAGUE Hotel and accommodations are the best going around, so for us to fail this event left us asking lots of questions. We returned to Australia and took some time off and we each evaluated the performance and we unanimously agreed something had to change, but nobody could really pinpoint exactly what they wanted the change to be. In the end we all thought each of the players are capable of playing at the top level and have all showed signs of it throughout 2016. So by adding a new coach we thought it could harness the skill and improve consistency, to get better results and play the way we know we can play. You guys have changed your coach Nicholas "peekay" Wise for former mousesports coach Aleksandar "kassad" Trifunović. Why was this change made? What are your first impressions working with kassad? The change was made because we wanted to try something different. We didn’t feel like peekay was underperforming, we just wanted a different aspect on how to play Counter-Strike. We really didn’t know kassad at all before getting him on board and we think that’s a good thing. With peekay we were all friends and most of us grew up with him playing Counter-Strike 1.6. kassad is quite strict and stamps out bad plays by us as soon as we make them. So I guess the level of discipline is what has changed. Time to learn some Serbian. @kassadCSGO @OnFireYNk 👍💪. I believe Kassad will do great things for the guys. We are lucky to have him. https://t.co/uKAjdsmhcQ — James O'Connor (@jamesoconnor) January 5, 2017 One of Renegades’ co-owners, James "GBJame^s" O' Connor, was the former coach for Team Liquid when Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev was still part of that roster. Has he ever defaulted into coaching mode? How hands-on is he with the team? Yes, James is a coach by nature. He’s always watching Counter-Strike and coming up with ideas. Usually he keeps his thoughts to himself or shares them with the coach to keep the players focused and not have differing opinions on things. James lives in a different state so he isn’t really hands-on but we know he is only a phone call away if we ever need him for things. You’ve also notably been part of the Renegades as it changed hands, now owned by Boston Celtics forward Jonas Jerebko. How has your situation, or the team’s situation, changed in those transition periods? It’s a completely different environment. In the LA Renegades it felt like we were more about exposure than being a legit top team. We had temporary accommodations, the bare minimum in uniforms and support staff. We were also very isolated, it was just us six in Las Vegas with the owners, staff and other teams living in LA. The owners in LA Renegades did a lot for us and we are forever thankful that they took a chance on six guys from Australia, but being so isolated was the downfall and ultimately the reason we moved on. With the Detroit Renegades it really is more like a team environment. We have a fully furnished six-bedroom, five-bathroom house. An eight-seater truck, access to Jonas’ gym and the owners and other teams all live in the same neighborhood and we regularly do activities and fun stuff with them. I think this is the reason our results have started to improve recently and will continue to do so throughout 2017. You guys have kicked off 2017 on a high note by qualifying for DreamHack Masters Las Vegas. What are the main obstacles going into that event? Any plans to do anything fun in Vegas? To be honest we haven’t really looked too much into the event yet as we haven’t seen the groups or format. Once that information is known we can prepare for our opponents. Having spent most of 2016 in Las Vegas I think we have a few ideas of things we can do, but it really will depend on how deep into the tournament we can progress. It’s all business until you are eliminated. As far as Jonas goes, I think it’s All-Star weekend so he may have some commitments but it would be cool to have him at any event regardless of location. He’s a super cool guy and is a magnet for good times and positive attitude. DHM Vegas will be the first event to use the latest map pool, so Infer-new instead of Dust II. What are your thoughts on this? It’s good that maps are constantly changing to keep the game fresh, but unfortunately for us Dust II was one of our stronger maps so we will need to put in lots of work to get our Inferno really good as well. In saying that, I wish the communication was better and we had more warning when maps will change. Pro League Week 2 and Dreamhack Las Vegas are both coming up very fast and time spent recently on perfecting our Dust II is a set back.In a statement, BP described the outing as "a rare moment of private time" and said that "no matter where he is, he is always in touch with what is happening within BP" and can direct recovery operations if required. But Mr Hayward, who has come under fire for verbal gaffes that some said suggested he was tone-deaf to the mood in America, was immediately criticised in the US. Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to President Barack Obama, said it was another “gaffe” by the BP chief executive. “Well, to quote Tony Hayward, he’s got his life back, as he would say,” he told ABC television. “And I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting. This has just been part of a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes.” He added: “There’s really a substance here that matters. That’s clearly a PR mistake, but he’s made a number of those mistakes. What’s important is: are we capping the well? Are we capturing the oil? Are we containing the cleanup? Are we filing the claims? Are we also cleaning up the mess? That’s what’s important.” Richard Shelby, Republican senator for the Gulf state of Alabama, said during a tour of areas affected by the spill: "People here are not on their yachts today. "I believe it's the height of arrogance. He is the chief executive of BP, he was testifying in Washington and now he's going out on his yacht in England. That yacht should be here, skimming and cleaning up the oil." A ban on fishing in much of the Gulf of Mexico and sharp fall in tourism means that many fishing vessels and pleasure boats have been forced to remain at dock because of spill caused by an the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig. Mr Hayward watched his boat Bob take part in the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race. BP would not say whether or not he had joined his crew was on board, or was spectating from afar. A BP spokeswoman refused to comment beyond saying that the embattled chief executive was at the race with his son. Peta Stuart-Hunt, a press officer for the event, said Mr Hayward "wasn't listed on any of the crew list. If he is on the boat, he's in contravention of the rules." The annual event is one of the largest in yachting, attracting hundreds of boats and thousands of sailors. While Mr Hayward attended the race, a gathering of global oil industry leaders met on in St Petersburg, Russia, where his company's woes were a constant topic of discussion. The BP chief also faced predictable criticism from environmental groups. Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace said Hayward was "rubbing salt into the wounds" of Gulf residents whose livelihoods have been wrecked by the disaster.An ancient saying he learned from his subjects, the Lamalerans, showed the journalist Doug Bock Clark how to tell the story of a tribe with no recorded history. Doug McLean The Joyce Carol Oates Story That Shares DNA With 'Cat Person’ What the debut writer Kristen Roupenian learned from a masterful tale that dramatizes the horrors of being a young woman Doug McLean The Closest of All Possible Encounters John Wray describes how a wilderness survival guide taught him to face his fears while completing his most challenging book yet. Doug McLean E. B. White’s Lesson for Debut Writers: It’s Okay to Start Small Nicole Chung explains how an essay about sailing taught her to embrace her fears as she worked up to writing her memoir, All You Can Ever Know. Doug McLean The Chekhov Sentence That Contains Almost All of Life Gary Shteyngart dissects one of the “most unexpected” lines in fiction and shares how it influenced his latest novel, Lake Success. Doug McLean The Powerful Practice of Writing by Hand The author Laura van den Berg on what inspired her newest novel, The Third Hotel, and how she accesses the part of the mind that fiction comes from Doug McLean A Writer’s Fixation on Sound The author R. O. Kwon reflects on the relationship of rhythm to writing and how she stopped obsessing over the first 20 pages of her new novel, The Incendiaries. Doug McLean What J.D. Salinger Understood About Chance Encounters A.M. Homes on the short-story writer’s “For Esmé—With Love and Squalor,” and the lifelong effects of fleeting interactions Doug McLean What Richard Pryor’s Stand-Up Can Teach Writers The nonfiction author Cutter Wood on how the comedian’s work helped him imbue minor characters with emotional life Doug McLean How Gabriel García Márquez Created a World in a Sentence The novelist Mary Morris explains how the opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude shaped her path as a writer. Doug McLean Writing a Feminist Novel With a Man's Point of View The author Tayari Jones explains what Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon taught her about the centrality of male protagonists in stories that explore female suffering. Doug McLean The Necessity of 'Willful Blindness' in Writing The memoirist Terese Marie Mailhot on how Maggie Nelson’s Bluets taught her to explode the parameters of what a book is supposed to be Doug McLean The Technological Shift Behind the World's First Novel The author Martin Puchner on the way advances in paper production helped pave the way for The Tale of Genji Doug McLean What Writers Can Take Away From the Bible The National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee on how the story of Joseph, and the idea that goodness can come from suffering, influences her work Doug McLean Cujo's Unexpected Lesson About Parenting and Art The comedian and writer John Hodgman explains what Stephen King’s 1981 horror novel taught him about risking mistakes in storytelling—and fatherhood. Doug McLean How Surrealism Enriches Storytelling About Women The author Carmen Maria Machado, a finalist for this year’s National Book Award in Fiction, discusses the brilliance of an eerie passage from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Doug McLean What Writers Can Learn From Goodnight Moon The Little Fires Everywhere novelist Celeste Ng explains how the surprising structure of the classic children’s book informs her work. Doug McLean Jenny Zhang: 'Tiny Stories' Are Vital to Literature The Sour Heart author discusses Roberto Bolaño’s “Dance Card,” humanizing minor characters through irreverence, and homing in on history’s footnotes. Doug McLean How Rudyard Kipling Turned His Guilt Into Fiction The novelist Scott Spencer on the English author’s short story “The Gardener” and what it reveals about transforming shame into art Doug McLean Finding the Emotional Truth in Horror Writing The novelist Victor LaValle on how dark material hits hardest when it’s balanced out with wonderThe 50 Cent Party, or 50 Cent Army (Chinese: 五毛党), is the colloquial term for Internet commentators (Chinese: 网络评论员), hired by Chinese authorities in an attempt to manipulate public opinion to the benefit of the Chinese Communist Party.[1][2] It was created during the early phases of Internet's rollout to the wider public in China. The name derives from the allegation that commentators were said to be paid fifty cents (in Renminbi) for every post,[3][4][5] though some speculate that they are probably not paid anything for the posts, instead being required to do so as a part of their official Party duties.[6] They created favourable comments or articles on popular Chinese social media networks, intended to derail discussions that are unhelpful to the Communist Party and promoted narratives that served the government's interests, together with disparaging comments and misinformation about political opponents and critics of the Chinese government, both domestic and abroad.[7][8][9] It is also used as a derogatory term against people with perceived pro-CPC or Chinese nationalist views.[10] A 2016 Harvard University paper found that in contrast to common assumptions, the 50 Cent Army consists mostly of paid bureaucrats who respond to government directives in times of crisis and flood Chinese social media with pro-government comments. They also rarely engage in direct arguments, and around 80% of the analysed posts involve pro-China cheerleading with inspirational slogans, and 13% involve general praise and suggestions on governmental policies.[10][11] Research indicated a "massive secretive operation" to fill China's Internet with propaganda has resulted in some 488 million posts carried out by fake social media accounts, representing about 0.6% of the 80 billion posts generated on Chinese social media. To maximize their influence, such pro-government comments are made largely during times of intense online debate, and when online protests have a possibility of transforming into real life actions.[10] History [ edit ] In October 2004, the Publicity Department of Changsha started hiring Internet commentators, in one of the earliest known uses of professional Internet commentators.[13] In March 2005, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China enacted a systematic censorship of Chinese college bulletin board systems. The popular "Little Lily" BBS, run by Nanjing University, was forced to close. As a new system was prepared to be launched, school officials hired students as part-time web commentators, paid from the university's work-study funds, to search the forum for undesirable information and actively counter it with Party-friendly viewpoints. In the following months, party leaders from Jiangsu began hiring their own teams.[14] By mid-2007, web commentator teams recruited by schools, and party organizations were common across China. Shanghai Normal University employed undergraduates to monitor for signs of dissent and post on university forums.[15] These commentators not only operate within political discussions, but also in general discussions.[14][15] Afterwards, some schools and local governments also started to build similar teams.[16][17][18] On 23 January 2007, Chinese leader Hu Jintao demanded a "reinforcement of ideological and public opinion front construction and positive publicity" at the 38th collective learning of Politburo.[19] Large Chinese websites and local governments have been requested to publish the sayings of Hu, and select "comrades with good political quality" to form "teams of Internet commentators" by the CPC Central Committee (中共中央办公厅) and General Office of the State Council (国务院办公厅).[14][20] Negative reporting of local authorities has increased on the Internet since then.[21] In one instance described on the China Digital Times, the Jiaozuo (Henan) City Public Security Bureau established a mechanism to analyse public opinion after criticism of the police handling of a traffic incident appeared on the Internet. The Bureau responded with 120 staff calling for the truth to be revealed in line with the public opinion, which gradually shifted and eventually supported the police position, denouncing the original poster.[21][22] In the aftermath of the 2008 Guizhou riot, Internet forums were filled with posts critical of the local authorities; the China News Weekly later reported that "the major task of the propaganda group was to organize commentators to past [sic] posts on websites to guide online public opinions."[22] In 2010, the Shanghai Communist Youth League's official website published a summary, saying that there were more than 200 topics by Shanghai Municipal Authorities' Internet commentators posted at People's Daily site, Xinhua site, Eastday (东方网), Sina and Tianya after many incidents in 2009, including the Lotus Riverside incident, the forced installation of Green Dam Youth Escort software, the Putuo Urban Administrative incident, the control of H1N1, the Shanghai entrapment incident (钓鱼执法), the self-immolation of Pan Rong (潘蓉), etc. It was praised by the Shanghai Internet Publicity Office.[23] In December 2014, a Chinese blogger hacked into and published email archives for the Internet Propaganda Department of Zhanggong District in Ganzhou, including over 2,700 emails of 50 Cent Party Internet commentators.[24][25] For instance, on 16 January 2014, Shi Wenqing, secretary of the Ganzhou branch of the CCP, held a televised "internet exchange" in which he answered questions from a local news website forum; 50 Cent Party commentators were instructed to post seven discussion points, such as (translated) "I really admire Party Secretary Shi, what a capable and effective Party Secretary! I hope he can be the father of Ganzhou for years to come."[26] Range of operation [ edit ] The Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China now holds regular training sessions, where participants are required to pass an exam after which they are issued a job certification.[14] As of 2008, the total number of 50-cent operatives was estimated to be in the tens of thousands,[1] and possibly as high as 280,000–300,000.[14][27] Every large Chinese website is instructed by the Information Office to create a trained team of Internet commentators.[14] According to the Chinese Communists' opinions of the recruitment of university Work Committee (tentative), the university Internet commentators are mainly selected from cadres or student cadres at Communist Party Publicity Department of universities, Youth League, Office of Academic Affairs, Network Center, Admissions Employment Department, Political Theory Department, Teaching Department and other units.[28] The court of Qinghe District, Huai'an organized a team of 12 commentators.[29] Gansu Province hired 650 commentators, sorted by their writing abilities.[30] Suqian Municipal Publicity Department's first 26 commentators' team were reported by Yangtse Evening Post in April 2005.[31] According to high-profile independent Chinese blogger Li Ming, the pro-Chinese government web commentators must number "at least in the tens of thousands".[32] Wen Yunchao (温云超), a former Internet commentator said that there were about 20 full-time commentators for the local news websites in Guangdong. A county-level discipline inspection commission's Internet commentator estimated more than 100 spare-time Internet commentators in his county, whose population was about 1 million. Hu Yong, an Internet expert from Peking University, said that "the public opinion molders have already penetrated different layers of Chinese society", he found public opinion watchmen that deal with negative information on the forums in tourist city's airport and county-level middle school. A 2016 Harvard study estimated that the group posts about 488 million social media comments per year.[33] According to an article published by Xiao Qiang on her website China Digital Times, a leaked propaganda directive, sent to 50 Cent Party Internet commentators, stated their objective was the following:[34][35] In order to circumscribe the influence of Taiwanese democracy, in order to progress further in the work of guiding public opinion, and in accordance with the requirements established by higher authorities to "be strategic, be skilled," we hope that internet commentators conscientiously study the mindset of netizens, grasp international developments, and better perform the work of being an internet commentator. For this purpose, this notice is promulgated as set forth below: (1) To the extent possible make America the target of criticism. Play down the existence of Taiwan. (2) Do not directly confront [the idea of] democracy; rather, frame the argument in terms of "what kind of system can truly implement democracy.” (3) To the extent possible, choose various examples in Western countries of violence and unreasonable circumstances to explain how democracy is not well-suited to capitalism. (4) Use America's and other countries' interference in international affairs to explain how Western democracy is actually an invasion of other countries and [how the West] is forcibly pushing [on other countries] Western values. (5) Use the bloody and tear-stained history of a [once] weak people [i.e., China] to stir up pro-Party and patriotic emotions. (6) Increase the exposure that positive developments inside China receive; further accommodate the work of maintaining [social] stability.[34][35] Salary [ edit ] The English version of China-based Global Times reported that Changsha Publicity Department's Internet commentators were paid 0.5 yuan per post, which is considered as the origin of the term "50 Cent Party". However, according to the local party-building website, the basic salary of such commentators was 600 yuan in 2006.[13] In 2010, the Internet commentators from Hengyang Municipal Committee Party School were paid 0.1 yuan per post and less than 100 yuan monthly bonus.[36][37] A county-level discipline inspection commission's Internet commentator from Hunan Province told Global Times that a 500-word article is worth 40 yuan on local websites and 200 yuan on national sites. Those who made excellent incitement are honored as excellent critics from the government.[38] Terms [ edit ] There is an alternate official term for the Internet Commentator, as well as several unofficial terms coined by netizens for them: Chinese (Simp/Trad) Pinyin Literally in English Commonly in English Note Official name (Primary) 网络评论员/網絡評論員 wǎngluò pínglùn yuán Internet commentator Internet commentator Abbreviation in Chinese: 网评员/網評員 (wǎng píng yuán) Official name (Secondary) 网络阅评员/網絡閱評員 wǎngluò yuè píng yuán Internet examiner and commentator Internet examiner and commentator Unofficial term 五毛党/五毛黨 or simply 五毛 wǔmáo dǎng or wǔmáo Five-Dime Party, or simply Five Dimes 50 Cent Party The most common name, pejorative. Other English translation: 50 Cent Army Unofficial term 网评猿/網評猿 wǎng píng yuán Ape that comments on the Internet N/A Pronounced identically with the above Chinese wǎng píng yuán 网评员 abbreviation, punning yuán (猿 "ape; monkey") for yuán (员 "personnel, staff member"), pejorative Other English terms 红马甲/紅馬甲, 红卫兵/紅衛兵 hóng mǎjiǎ, hóng wèibīng Red vest; Red guard Red vest, Red vanguard[22][39] The Chinese translation for these English terms are rarely used Among those names, "50 Cent Party" (五毛党) was the most common and pejorative unofficial term.[40] It was created by Chinese netizens as a satire. Many trace the origin of the "50-cent" name to the salaries at the Publicity Department of Changsha, which according to the English version of Global Times, supplemented Internet Commentators' basic income with 50-cent ("5 mao")[Note 1] per post since October 2004. The term is derogatorily applied by cynical Chinese netizens to any person who blatantly expresses pro-Communist Party thoughts online.[4] However, there's another word "5 US cent (五美分)" used by some netizens to denigrate anti-party comments, with the implication that those commentators are hired by the governments of the United States, Taiwan or other western countries. Zhang Shengjun, a professor of international politics at Beijing Normal University published an article Who would be afraid of the cap of "50 Cent Party"? on the Chinese version of Global Times, saying that the term is spread by western media outfits, "it has become a baton waved towards all Chinese patriots" to make the Chinese government a constant target of criticism.[41] The Chinese cyberspace is also noted for its ideological contests between "rightists" - reformists who advocate Western style democratic reforms, versus "leftists" - conservatives and neo-Confucianists who advocates Chinese nationalism and restructured socialism. In this backdrop, rightists sometimes refer to leftists derogatorily as "50 Centers", regardless of their actual employment background.[10] The Hong Kong-based Apple Daily reported that although a search for "五毛党" ("50 Cent Party" in Chinese) on a search engine produces results, most were inaccessible and had been deleted. Effects and opinions [ edit ] The Internet commentator/50 Cent Party's activities were described by CPC general secretary, Chinese President Hu Jintao as "a new pattern of public-opinion guidance";[43][44] "they represent a shift from simply erasing dissenting opinions to guiding dialogue. In 2010, a contributor to The Huffington Post stated that some comments she received on one of her posts were from the 50 Cent Party;[45] she also stated that the 50 Cent Party monitors popular US websites, news sites and blogs and posts comments that advance Chinese governmental interests.[45] David Wertime of Foreign Policy argued that the narrative where a large army of paid Internet commentators are behind China's poor public dialogue with its critics is "Orwellian, yet strangely comforting". Rather, many of the Chinese netizens spreading nationalist sentiment online are not paid, but often mean what they say.[10] In Australia, the term has been used pejoratively in the ongoing debate over Chinese influence in the country.[46] See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] ^ "毛" (máo), formally known as " jiao ", is a colloquial unit of current Chinese currency Renminbi which equals to 0.1 basic unit yuan.The Shuttleworth Collection’s fourth Sunday airshow of 2017 was branded the Edwardian Pageant, albeit wind conditions on the day were out of limits for the original and reproduction aeroplanes of that era. The net was cast far wider than the Edwardian period, however. On the ground, an impressive collection of classic automobiles mustered on the hangar base (including a delightful horse-drawn fire appliance) ahead of a pre-show vehicle parade along the flight line. The flying programme, meanwhile, consisted of a mix of historic types (with a focus on Great War aviation – more on which later) interspersed with visiting vintage aeroplanes and civilian aerobatic acts. Capping it all off and giving Shuttleworth a true crowd-pleasing headline act, a return by the RAF Red Arrows. It’s hard to say exactly how the “Edwardian Pageant” translated into a theme in the event, but the more generalist approach to the flying programme gave it the feel of a midsummer family flying day – something a little more akin to the broader strokes dealt by the RAFA Shoreham airshows, for example. A marginally different approach for Old Warden, then, but that’s no bad thing given the breadth and depth of participation. The dozen-strong First World War contingent was split down the middle by weather and serviceability, with half of the scheduled aircraft getting airborne. It is fair to say, however, that the loss of the Avro 504K, Bristol M.1c, the second B.E.2e and Sopwiths Pup, Triplane and Camel (the latter was listed on the event’s webpage but was not ready to make its long-awaited airshow début) due to wind and serviceability didn’t take the shine off one of the finest gatherings of Great War aeroplanes seen in the UK in recent years. Earliest of the First World War designs to get airborne was the reproduction Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2e (a 1912 design later modified in 1916) operated by the WWI Aviation Heritage Trust at Stow Maries and displayed with grace by Jean-Michel Munn. Shuttleworth fielded its Bristol F2b and SE5a for a late-war pairing, while David Bremner flew a spirited display in the wonderful Bristol Scout reproduction. Concluding the Great War line-up was the Sopwith Snipe, operated by the WWI Aviation Heritage Trust and flown with tremendous verve by Jean-Michel Munn in what is likely the aeroplane’s strongest outing to date. The three-ship passes with the F2b and SE5a were a tremendous sight. Interesting comparisons in performance and handling could be drawn between the B.E.2e and the Snipe, the latter representing the pinnacle of rotary development with its 230hp Bentley B.R.2 engine. Pleasing it was too to see the Old Warden resident 1920 Sopwith Dove displayed by Stewart Luck, this being only its second airshow appearance (after a fleeting display at 2016’s October Race Day) since its return to flight in recent years. The Dove is a replica manufactured by Skysport Engineering in 1990, and was based at Old Warden in the 1990s before it suffered a landing accident at Andrewsfield in summer 2000. The aircraft is soon up for auction and has left Old Warden by road – one hopes that isn’t the end of its flying life in the UK. Of the visiting acts, the combination of de Havillands Dragonfly, Rapide and Comet provided a personal highlight, particularly during the first loose formation pass. The exquisite DH.90 Dragonfly is one of those quintessential 1930s gentleman’s air carriages, looking every inch the luxury touring biplane in its vivid scarlet and silver paint scheme. Visiting from the Biggin Hill-based Shipping and Airlines Collection for the afternoon, its display in the hands of Henry Labouchere was a real delight. For the second time this year Mark Miller visited in his beautifully maintained DH.89 Dragon Rapide, putting on a dynamic solo. Mark also displayed his immaculately turned out Auster J1 alongside BAe Systems’ resident Blackburn B2, while Kevin Hale put his Auster AOP6 through its paces in another engaging routine. A third Duxford visitor was Anna Walker in her Bücker Jungmann – a regular performer at that venue’s air displays, but not a machine I recall seeing “out and about” too often in recent years – and the smoke-enhanced aerobatic interlude went down a treat. The Tiger Nine team of de Havilland Tiger Moths also put on a commendable display in blustery conditions. Contrasting with the Great War focus were a smattering of more ‘family friendly’ acts, headed by the Red Arrows (making their second appearance at the venue in two years). The RAF aerobatic team closed the flying programme a little after 6pm, meaning that families drawn to Old Warden by the Reds’ broad appeal had enjoyed four hours of classic Shuttleworth air displays by the time the marquee act took the stage. Even a handful of conversions from first-time to return or regular visitors would bode well for Shuttleworth and make the Reds’ annual appearance worthwhile. Elsewhere in the flying programme, the Breitling Wingwalkers’ Boeing Stearman duo left a lasting impression (their act is genuinely excellent at smaller venues), whilst the ‘Little and Large’ Extra duo proved popular with the large crowd. Likewise the Calidus Autogyro, the Edwardian Pageant’s opening act, offered a unique deviation from the usual Shuttleworth fare. Though Old Warden will always cater for vintage enthusiasts, there’s a place for these general crowd-pleasing acts and the appeal they hold for those with a broader interest in aviation cannot be underestimated. Featuring them more prominently at one of the six big Sunday airshows is certainly no bad thing. The DH.88 Comet made two appearances during the afternoon, the first in the hands of Paul Stone as part of the aforementioned de Havilland sequence and latterly in chief pilot Dodge Bailey’s hands as a replacement for the four Edwardian aeroplanes grounded by the wind. The latter slot saw the Comet flown alongside the Collection’s Percival Mew Gull as a prelude to the Red Arrows. Notable too was the perfect Comet landing executed by Paul Stone – no mean feat given the considerable challenge the aeroplane offers its pilots during the landing roll! A number of Shuttleworth regulars also took to the skies, amongst them the Westland Lysander and Polikarpov Po-2 with a rematch of the mock dogfight flown at previous airshows. One more elusive type to take flight early in the programme was the de Havilland DH.51 (piloted by Peter Kosogorin), a lovely aeroplane seen all too rarely at Old Warden. It’s often difficult to draw any critical conclusions from Old Warden airshows – a standard has been set and maintained over the last few years, and an excellent afternoon’s flying is all but guaranteed. Each event delivers something a little different, be it in the air or on the ground, and there is always something worth going out of your way to seek out. The quality of flying has long been Old Warden’s selling point but, as all four big Sunday shows have demonstrated this year, there is so much more to enjoy under the confident management of the current regime.An explosive possessed by Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock may have been used in an NYC bombing. In this Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016 file photo, members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) carry on investigations at the scene of an explosion on West 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File) An explosive compound like the one found in Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock’s car and home is believed to have been used last year in an alleged terrorist bombing in New York City. Authorities say they recovered an undisclosed amount of the compound known as Tannerite from Paddock’s home in Mesquite and 50 pounds from his car parked at Mandalay Bay, where he used firearms to mow down concertgoers at the adjacent Route 91 Harvest festival on Sunday. Police have not said why the 64-year-old Paddock possessed Tannerite, which is unregulated and legally used by marksmen to create targets that emit a small cloud of smoke when they are struck. Authorities also found ammonium nitrate, another ingredient that can be used to build bombs, in his vehicle at the site of the shooting. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives notes that products like Tannerite are binary, meaning they consist of two separate components that are inert when separated. “But when mixed, they are high explosives and should be treated with caution and in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions,” the agency noted in a 2015 safety advisory. Tannerite apparently was used in a September 2016 bombing in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 31 people. Various news accounts at the time quoted unidentified federal officials as saying that residue of the product was found at the scene. Authorities later arrested Ahmed Rahami, an Afghan immigrant, and charged him with federal terrorism and weapons offenses in connection with that bombing and two others in New Jersey. According to prosecutors, Rahami had posted videos praising a former leader of the al-Qaida terrorist group and decrying U.S. military actions in countries like Afghanistan and Syria on social media prior to his arrest. Contact Mike Brunker at mbrunker@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4656. Follow @mike_brunker on Twitter.When Texas Gov. Rick Perry was indicted last month on two felony charges stemming from how he dealt with a misbehaving Democratic state official, the image of the stuttering 2012 Republican primary challenger was replaced with that of a hero-cowboy in the eyes of many conservatives. Perry was under attack from the left wing, and his response was not to apologize but to walk through a hail of blue-hued bullets and emerge laughing, without a mark on him. But some conservative true believers have begun to notice something rather suspicious: The company Perry keeps seems more suited to a mainstream Republican—or a right-of-center Democrat—than to their hero-cowboy. Perry is associated with three operatives who have concerned some members of the die-hard right wing: lobbyist Henry Barbour, former Bill Clinton aide Mark Fabiani, and McCain-Palin campaign chief and MSNBC pund
Hutchison, you use that alienation with the new world you find yourself in to write an album. Painting of a Panic Attack is Frightened Rabbit’s fifth album and, with the help of The National’s Aaron Dessner, might just be their most emotionally mature and rich. It’s been almost ten years since the first release of their debut, Sing The Greys, and in that time it’s clear that Hutchison has been through the ringer a fair few times. From realising drunken one night stands aren’t the way forwards on Midnight Organ Fight’s “Keep Yourself Warm” to the life-affirming experience of love on The Winter of Mixed Drinks’ “Living In Colour”, Frightened Rabbit have somewhat cornered the market on goose-bump inducing stories. Luckily, Hutchison’s lyrics still have the ability to send shivers of recognition down anyone’s spine here as they did ten years ago. Much of Painting of a Panic Attack is inspired by Hutchison’s recent move from Scotland to LA, a real shift in scenery if ever there was one. It deals with the anxiety of leaving friends (and fellow band members) back home to explore a new place he discovered he wasn’t particularly fond of. That detachment is ever present throughout the album and brought to life with Hutchison’s particular lyrical mastery. Take, for instance, album opener “Death Dream”. Hutchison has a way of making lyrics filled with a somber directness still feel like they’re shrouded in a fog of uncertainty, as though he can see the outline of shapes but is just unable to make it a whole. As he sings of the “tinnitus of silence”, it sets the tone perfectly for Hutchison’s state of mind for this album: confused and lost yet hopeful that an exit might be nearby and ready to keep searching for the light. He paints a picture of a seedy, noirish LA on “Lump Street”, contemplates getting older on "I Wish I Was Sober" and, once again, mines the idea of being your own worst enemy on "Break". Each track is filled with Frightened Rabbit’s usual poetically blunt explorations of the darker side of life. As much as they often retrace their thematic steps, they still find new, beguiling ways to do so. Though Hutchison’s talent for crafting beautifully dark stories hasn’t changed much, Frightened Rabbit’s sound most definitely has, thanks in part to Dessner behind the mixing desk. The usual aching melancholy that has the capability to flip to captivating exuberance at a moment’s notice is ever present but Dessner’s experience with The National gives a whole new, often gloomy, depth to their sound. His fingerprints are visible, as with the ominous buzzing like flickering street lamps on "Lump Street" and the explosive shoegaze guitars that signal that fantastic chorus of "Get Out" that bring to mind some of the best moments from Trouble WIll Find Me. And yet he still gives enough room to allow Frightened Rabbit’s unique sound breathe. Dessner is simply there to give their sound a leg up and it works wonderfully. This does come at a cost, however, bringing the pace we’ve come to expect from the likes of “Nothing Like You” or “The Woodpile” down a few notches to create an album that’s altogether a lot more of a slow burn than normal. Having said that, though, Painting of a Panic Attack is still an album to be cherished. A combination of new life experiences, that allow Hutchison to weave more vivid tales of mourning, nostalgia and, ultimately, triumph, and the shot in the arm that is Aaron Dessner giving the band that little bit more has helped to create an album that could rival Midnight Organ Fight. Just as Frightened Rabbit felt like they were starting to fall into a bit of a rut, Painting of a Panic Attack arrives to remind why they are such a special band. They’re not giving in just yet and thank goodness for that.Two Arkansas death row inmates, Marcel Williams and Stacey Eugene Johnson, have asked a federal judge to halt their executions because they say they are too obese for the drugs to effectively work on them. (KATV) Update: Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker dismissed Johnson’s claim that Arkansas’s lethal injection protocol violates his Eighth Amendment rights. Baker also dismissed Williams claim, but ordered Williams and Johnson to submit the evidence they would have brought before the court so they can have a record of appeal. Johnson and Williams have filed an appeal with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. Original Story: Two Arkansas death row inmates, Marcel Williams and Stacey Eugene Johnson, have asked a federal judge to halt their executions because they say they are too obese for the drugs to effectively work on them. Williams' lawyer writes in a brief that Williams gained 200 pounds while in prison and that when he went to prison he weighed 195 pounds. Williams has stayed in a 90-square-foot cell, which is half the size of a standard parking space, and gets one hour of recreational time a day. "Williams has been housed in extreme solitary confinement, he has gained 200 pounds and developed high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol. The prison has recorded Mr. Williams' body mass index at 48.74," his lawyer writes in a brief. Johnson's lawyer wrote in a court document that he weighs about 350 pounds and suffers from hypertension and sleep apnea. Dr. Joel Zivot, an associate professor of anesthesiology and surgery at the Emory University School of Medicine, found that Johnson's large size could botch the execution and "makes it more likely that the execution will fail and Mr. Johnson will be left alive, but disabled from the attempt." They also argue the executioners will not be able to find a vein. "Dr. Zivot concluded that if the Arkansas lethal-injection protocol is carried out as written, Mr. Johnson, in particular, will suffer respiratory distress and hypoxia, and he is at serious risk for irreversible organ damage or for a suffocating, painful death," the lawyer writes in the brief.The Bundespatentgericht (Federal Patent Court of Germany) has ruled that that Microsoft's European Union (EU) patent EP0618540 for its File Allocation Table (FAT) or "common name space for long and short filenames" is entirely invalid. While Microsoft is expected to appeal this decision, it will be months before it appears in front of the next court. In the meantime, one of Microsoft main Android patent weapons has been rendered harmless for now in the EU. This may sound like a minor patent. It's not. Microsoft has been using this patent since 2003 to pressure Linux and Android companies that use the popular FAT file system for compatibility with other operating systems. Just how important is it? In July 2012, Microsoft got a German court to give them the right to ban all Motorola Android device sales in Germany because of it. Microsoft has also used this, and other FAT patents, to get numerous Android vendors to sign patent-licensing agreements. These patent agreements, in turn, have made Android, not Windows RT, not Windows Phone 8, its most profitable mobile operating system. It's been estimated that Microsoft makes as much as $8 for every Android device sold. This would add up to Microsoft making as much as $3.4 billion in 2013 from Android sales. That's important. Don't count Microsoft's FAT patent out yet. This patent has been attacked numerous times before. It has also been rejected and then reinstated at least once before. Still, this latest result, combined with the recent judgment that the US version of this patent, "Common name space for long and short filenames," Patent No. 5,758,352 "invalid for obviousness," may finally blunt this patent's usefulness for Microsoft. Related Stories:The 19th annual Fantasia International Film Festival announced on Wednesday that it will host the North American premieres of Miss Hokusai and Fatal Frame, and the international premiere of the live-action Assassination Classroom film. Miss Hokusai, a film by Keiichi Hara (Summer Days with Coo, Colorful), adapts Hinako Sugiura's acclaimed historical manga Sarusuberi. Anne Watanabe will star in the role of O-Ei, daughter of acclaimed ukiyo-e painter Hokusai. The film is set to open on May 9 in Japan. Production I.G is handling worldwide distribution and sales. Anime Limited will release the film in U.K. cinemas in October-November before releasing it on Blu-ray Disc and DVD. Production I.G describes the story: The time: 1814. The place: Edo, now known as Tokyo. One of the highest populated cities in the world, teeming with peasants, samurai, townsmen, merchants, nobles, artists, courtesans, and perhaps even supernatural things. A much accomplished artist and now in his mid-fifties, Tetsuzo can boast clients from all over Japan, and tirelessly works in the garbage-loaded chaos of his house-atelier. He spends his days creating astounding pieces of art, from a giant-size Dharma portrayed on a 180 square meter-wide sheet of paper, to a pair of sparrows painted on a tiny rice grain. Short-tempered, utterly sarcastic, fond of sweets but with no passion for sake or money, he would charge a fortune for any job he is not willing to undertake. Third of Tetsuzo's four daughters, outspoken 23-year-old O-Ei has inherited her father's talent and stubbornness, and very often she would paint instead of him, though uncredited. “We're father and daughter; with two brushes and four chopsticks, we'll get by anywhere.” Decades later, Europe was going to discover Tetsuzo's immense talent. He was to become best known by one of his many names: Katsushika Hokusai. He would mesmerize Degas and Monet, Debussy and Baudelaire. However, very few today are even aware of the woman who assisted him all her life, and greatly contributed to his art while remaining uncredited. This is the untold story of O-Ei, Master Hokusai's daughter: a lively portrayal of a free-spirited and outspoken woman overshadowed by her larger-than-life father, unfolding through the changing seasons. The film will also screen at the 39th Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France this June. The live-action film adaptation of Yusei Matsui's Assassination Classroom manga opened in Japan on March 21. Eiichirō Hasumi ( Umizaru films, Wild 7 ) directed the film, and Tatsuya Kanazawa ( Saru Lock The Movie, Lucky Seven ) wrote the script. Arashi band member Kazunari Ninomiya voiced Koro-sensei. Viz Media is publishing the manga in North America, and it describes the story: A humorous and action-packed story about a class of misfits who are trying t o kill their new teacher – an alien octopus with bizarre powers and super strength! The teacher has just destroyed the moon and is threatening t o destroy the earth – unless his students can destroy him first. What makes things more complicated is that he's the best teacher they've ever had! A sequel live-action film is slated to open in 2016. The Fatal Frame live-action film adapts MPD-Psycho creator Eiji Ohtsuka's novelization of Tecmo's Fatal Frame ( Zero or Project Zero ) horror game franchise. Mari Asato (Bilocation) directed the film, which opened in Japan on September 26. Ayami Nakajō and Aoi Morikawa, two popular models in the Japanese magazine Seventeen, starred in the film. The story's setting has been moved from a Japanese house to an old school dormitory. In the story, Aya Tsukimori (Nakajō) becomes part of an ancient "cursed incantation" at a girls' high school dormitory. Michi Kazato (Morikawa) is a classmate who is pursuing the mysterious disappearances at the dormitory. The Fantasia International Film Festival will announce its second set of titles in June and the full line-up on July 7. The event will take place from July 14-August 4 in Montreal. Thanks to Daniel Zelter for the news tip. [Via The Hollywood Reporter]Michele Bachmann said she would not support increasing the debt ceiling if it didn't include major reductions in government spending. "I've already voted no on raising the debt ceiling in the past. And unless there are serious cuts, I can't," she said at debate June 13, 2011, in New Hampshire. Bachmann is seeking the 2012 Republican nomination for president. "But I want to speak to someone that's far more eloquent than I," she continued. "Someone who said just dealing with the issue of raising the debt ceiling is a failure of leadership. That person was then Senator Barack Obama. He refused to raise the debt ceiling because he said President Bush had failed in leadership." We decided to fact-check Bachmann's to see if she was right. We should point out that a vote to increase the debt limit doesn't increase spending directly. The spending was already authorized by other legislation, and now the U.S. Treasury Department needs a formal signoff to keep issuing debt. Some analysts have compared it to writing the check to cover a credit card bill for things you already charged. The limit now stands at a mind-boggling $14.3 trillion, but said it needs to be raised by August for the government to keep up with its obligations. Experts have warned that failure to raise the limit could ultimately lead to chaos in the financial markets, but Republicans have vowed to oppose the increase unless it's accompanied by spending cuts. Closed-door negotiations, led by Vice President Joe Biden, have been ongoing. The votes to raise the debt ceiling -- there have been 10 since 2001 -- are famous for political posturing. Our research showed that President Obama is no exception. Back in 2006, he joined with other Senate Democrats to vote against raising the debt limit, a measure supported by President George W. Bush. "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills," Obama said. "Instead of reducing the deficit, as some people claimed, the fiscal policies of this administration and its allies in Congress will add more than $600 million in debt for each of the next five years," he said, adding,"Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better." The Senate narrowly approved raising the limit along partisan lines, 52-48, with all Democrats opposed. Typically, the party that controls the White House has had to take the difficult vote to raise the limit, while the other party was free to criticize. An analysis of the past 10 years of votes on the debt limit from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center shows the vote usually splits along partisan lines, with the president's party voting in support. We asked the Obama re-election campaign for comment on this but we didn't hear back. Obama was asked directly about his vote on April 15, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News. Here's their exchange: "You've got to extend the debt limit," Stephanopolous said. "And your job is a lot tougher because of your vote in the Senate against extending the debt limit. When did you realize that vote was a mistake?" "I think that it's important to understand the vantage point of a senator versus the vantage point of a president," Obama replied. "When you're a senator, traditionally what's happened is, this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit for the United States by a trillion dollars. As president, you start realizing, you know what, we can't play around with this stuff. This is the full faith and credit of the United States. And so that was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I'm the first one to acknowledge it." Bachmann said Obama refused to approve an increase in the debt limit when he was a senator, and that he blamed President Bush for failed leadership, as well as Bush's supporters in Congress. She's right on both counts, and we rate her statement True.Developer Two Tribes says that there is no delay to gameplay when Toki Tori 2 is running on the Wii U GamePad’s screen. Collin Van Ginkel, the co-founder of Two Tribes, claims that during the developer’s test setups, the Wii U GamePad’s screen updated even quicker than their LCD TVs. Van Ginkel speculates, however, that the Wii U GamePad’s signal breaks down when players move far away from the Wii U console. Two Tribes has said there’s no slowdown when playing the game on Wii U’s GamePad instead of television. What are some things that can cause slowdown for any game running on the controller? “It’s even the opposite. In our test setups we see the GamePad screen updating quicker than our LCD TV’s if we send the exact same image to both. My guess, but this is pure speculation, is that the only time you may have missing visuals, and thus a delayed update, is when the signal breaks down when you move too far away from the console.”Online feminism needs to be more inclusive, but who do online feminists think are being excluded? Only people who already agree with their narrow view of what women need. One organization, known as DebateOut, claims to be an unbiased debate platform, but only it posts articles offering one view. In a post titled “Online feminism: Who are we excluding?”, the organization tried to point to a few groups who are apparently excluded in the feminist movement. They fretted that LGBT advocates and women of color are being excuded, quoting a “queer activist,” another queer activist, a woman of color (who didn’t really talk about being excluded) and a “transsexual media advocate.” Nothing these women said was necessarily unhelpful or wrong, but it's pretty hard to argue that these groups are being excluded from feminism. People identifying in these groups may not all jump into feminism, but they’re not excluded. Who is actually excluded from feminism? Women who have differing opinions about what women actually need, or who don’t think a lack of abortion access or free birth control are the worst things in the world women face. Pro-life women, for example, are routinely marginalized by feminists who equate "pro-woman" with "pro-abortion." And not just pro-abortion in instances of rape, incest or life of the mother — we’re talking about casting off any woman who talks about a second- or third-trimester abortion ban even though the vast majority of Americans agree with such a ban. If the feminist movement wants to be more inclusive, maybe it could start by listening to and accepting disagreements among other women who also strive for the equality and the success of women — even those voices who believe legal abortion isn't the key to women's success or that women can be successful without government help.A key figure in both Arland Bruce III's concussion lawsuit against the CFL in B.C. and the class-action suit against the league in Ontario (which now includes seven publicly-identified plaintiffs) is lawyer Robyn Wishart, who represents both Bruce and the class-action plaintiffs. Mike Beamish of The Vancouver Sun has an interesting profile on Wishart, including information on her background as a CFL fan growing up in Winnipeg, how she's doing this as "pro bono work" and working on a contingency-fee basis rather than seeking payment up front, and how she's doing this herself and is "not constrained by a law firm seeking bottom-line profitability." What really stands out is a number included in Beamish's article, though, which illustrates just how massive the scope of this concussion crisis is: With the Bruce case as a lightning rod, more former CFL players are coming forward in a separate class-action lawsuit Wishart is spearheading in Ontario. “Right now that’s being held up by what’s happening in B.C.,” she says. The roster of “historical players” with long-term cognitive deficiencies is more than 200 and growing. Some are ex-players who can’t publicly come forward for fear of job loss. All are players who gave up their bodies and brains to football, not knowing the risks to their emotional, physical and mental well-being. That information isn't a direct quote from Wishart, but this appears to be the first mention of over 200 players with long-term cognitive difficulties. That would put this on par with the numbers involved in the NHL concussion lawsuit. Of course, this doesn't mean all of those players will sue or win money even in the effect of a victory, but it is a big number. It shouldn't really be all that surprising that the numbers are that high, though, given how many people have played in the CFL over the years and how many former football players (in both the NFL and the CFL) have come forward with evidence of their major cognitive struggles. The actual numbers might be even larger; the roster of "more than 200" appears to be what Wishart has found so far. This is more proof that this case isn't just contained to the few people who have been publicly-named so far, though. It's also worth noting that Wishart told Beamish she intends to stick with this fight for the long haul: Now, Wishart and Bruce await a judgment from the B.C. Court of Appeal, which is combing through the legal aspects of Hinkson’s ruling. Even if that decision goes against the plaintiff a second time, Wishart says she’s prepared to take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada. An Ottawa lawyer has volunteered to take the ball if it comes to that. “We’re going all the way with this,” she says. ...The distinct subculture of men she watched as a girl in Winnipeg she now represents as a lawyer, “heroes” no longer able to watch a game on which they built their lives and identities while suffering from some of its long-term effects. “These players played for the love of the game,” Wishart says. “That’s why I loved the CFL. I just see things a bit differently now. My goal is to get them treatment. My goal is to get them a place to go. I don’t need to win this lawsuit to do that. But I need this lawsuit to get people talking about it.” Story continues She certainly has people talking about it, as they should be. Concussions, the CFL's handling of them, and its responsibility (if any; the courts will determine that) to players whose lives have deteriorated as a result of concussions are arguably the biggest issues facing this league. The revelation that there are over 200 ex-CFL players who have come forward so far with long-term cognitive difficulties illustrates just how massive of an issue this is for the league's future.In June, President Obama tapped lawyer Kenneth R. Feinberg, 64, to oversee the $20 billion account funded by BP to compensate victims of the Gulf Coast oil spill, making him the nation's most famous mediator. Every week, Feinberg leaves his Pennsylvania Avenue office, where the walls are adorned with dozens of pictures and news articles chronicling his work, to spend time with fishermen and others who make their living off the coastal waters. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, the Brockton, Mass., native, who also oversaw the government's Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund, talked about the task ahead as he wraps up emergency claim payments and moves on to making final payments to victims. Excerpts follow: Have you met one-on-one with people who were affected by the spill? I've sat down personally with hundreds of people. I've had town hall meetings throughout the gulf with thousands of people. You can't do this from Washington. You have to go down there, and that's what I've been doing. Why have the claims skyrocketed in the past two weeks? People are getting paid. The payments are generous. People are saying, "Let's file a claim; we might get paid too." We don't know yet how many of them are legitimate. What problems are you experiencing with processing emergency claims? There are 25,000 claims with absolutely no documentation. Thousands of them say things like, "My neighbor got paid; pay me too." Or they say, "I fish off the gulf to eat. Send me grocery money." There are 50,000 of them with woefully inadequate documentation. What was wrong with the BP claim centers? Why did they need to be replaced by your operation? The BP claim centers served their purpose. It was an emergency bandage approach. Sometimes it went to the right people; sometime it went to the wrong people. I know of situations where they paid people who were in desperate straits. I've seen in many cases BP paid claimants and the payments appear to be fraudulent. When it comes to final payments, you are counseling people to take the money. Some are suspicious of whether you are looking out for their best interests, since BP is paying your firm [Feinberg Rozen LLP] $850,000 a month to run the program. What do you say?GPD Pocket Windows OS firmware and drivers The GPD Pocket is a small handheld device from the GPD company out of HK. Here is their web site: http://www.gpd.hk Indiegogo page: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gpd-pocket-7-0-umpc-laptop-ubuntu-or-win-10-os-laptop–2#/ Official forum of the GPD: http://forum.gpd.hk/f7-gpd-pocket Official GPD firmware download page: http://www.gpd.hk/news.asp?id=1519&selectclassid=002002 Reddit page: https://www.reddit.com/r/GPDPocket/ Windows Downloads: Click here to download the Windows 10 OS firmware (You can click on “Valider et télécharger le fichier” to start the download) Click here to download the Windows 10 drivers Linux Downloads: Official Linux Ubuntu 16.04.1 from 2017-08-09: Click here to download Unofficial Linux GPD try out, follow this link: https://www.reddit.com/r/GPDPocket/comments/6idnia/linux_on_gpd_pocket Linux / Windows Download: Official BIOS (works with both Ubuntu and Windows, cuts the fan off when charging, full featured BIOS settings access): Click here to download the BIOSA letter about the Tiananmen Square massacre signed by 11 Chinese students in the United States and other countries is gaining traction after a state-run Chinese newspaper wrote that the students had been "brainwashed" while studying overseas. Yi Gu, a graduate student from China who is studying chemistry at the University of Georgia, published the letter online detailing the violence that took place in Beijing nearly 26 years ago. His letter, presented as discoveries Mr. Gu has made since coming to the United States three years ago, addresses a subject that is rarely discussed publicly in China and is widely censored by Chinese authorities. As such, it marks an unusual move for a Chinese student. "This part of history has since been so carefully edited and shielded away that many of us today know very little about it," the English translation of the letter reads. "The more we know, the more we feel we have a grave responsibility on our shoulders." Mr. Gu said he’d learned little about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989 before coming to the United States, but he was able to conduct his own research online and in the library when he arrived at the University of Georgia. He said he even spoke with survivors of the massacre who gathered in Washington, D.C., last year to mark the 25th anniversary of the incident. "I believed it was the moral responsibility to reveal the truth and show students in China how the truth has been hidden," he said in an interview on Wednesday with The Chronicle. With the 26th anniversary coming up, on June 4, he said it seemed like an appropriate time to share his findings, which he has posted online to be read back home even though the Chinese government censors Internet sites there. Mr. Gu’s letter was signed by students at the University at Albany, the University of Missouri, and Columbia and Missouri State Universities, as well as at universities in Europe and Australia, before publication. It has since gathered about 100 signatures more. He said he hoped to inform peers in China about the killings, since they are given few details about the massacre in Chinese schools. It’s unclear how widely the letter has been read in China. But it has attracted attention from the Chinese newspaper, Global Times, which posted an editorial denouncing the letter and arguing that the student signers had been influenced by "some overseas hostile forces." The vocal response has helped increase the number of signatures on the letter, he said. Fear of Returning Mr. Gu said he had received a few threatening messages, written in Chinese, since the letter has drawn notice. Advertisement But he said he’d also received more uplifting responses. "We have been living in this constant fear for several decades, and if we continue to keep silent, and no one rises up, we and our friends will continue to live in this fear," he said. "What we are doing is trying to stand up and fight for our future where everyone can live free without fear." Still, Mr. Gu said he wonders when he might be able to return to China now that he has spoken out about Tiananmen Square. "I miss my parents, and I want to be with my family, but it seems almost impossible for me to go back right now," he said. "But I hope that one day I will be able to go back to China." Perry Link, a well-known China scholar at the University of California at Riverside who has been barred from China for nearly two decades, said that Chinese students in America will typically seek out such information on their own but avoid talking about it even among themselves. In class discussions about their home country, the students typically avoid politics altogether, he added, although they will sometimes speak privately with a professor. "Even for Chinese students outside China, they feel watched, and indeed they sometimes are watched," he said. Mr. Link noted that American universities seeking partnerships with Chinese institutions know that self-censorship and limits on academic freedom come with the territory. "When an issue like this letter comes up," he said, "it just raises the stakes for U.S. college administrators on the academic-freedom side."Overview We are seeking your views on proposed changes to the junction of Borough High Street with Union Street and Newcomen Street. The proposals are part of the Central London Cycling Grid - a network of cycle routes in Zone 1. This junction forms part of the Blackfriars to Tower Bridge Road route. The London Borough of Southwark consulted on other parts of this route in October 2015 – further details can be found here: What are we proposing? Our proposals aim to improve safety for cyclists and accommodate the predicted increase in cyclists along this route. The design would provide a more direct route for eastbound cyclists by removing a long detour and allowing them to proceed along Newcomen Street. By altering the signal phasing of the junction, we would also enable cyclists on Borough High Street to turn onto the new route. Why are we proposing this? The Blackfriars to Tower Bridge Road Route will provide a safer and more pleasant journey through a section of the city that is already popular among commuters as well as recreational cyclists. Transport for London and Southwark Council have identified certain junctions and sections of the proposed route that could be modified to improve cycle accessibility as well as safety for all users of the road, including pedestrians. By closing a short section of Newcomen Street to motor vehicles and creating two-way access to the junction, we will remove a long detour from the cycle route. Changes to signal phasing at the junction, and modifications to existing street furniture, will create safer routes for cyclists without affecting pedestrian accessibility. Please click here for a larger version of the above map (PDF) The numbered descriptions below correspond with the numbered labels on the drawing above. At construction stage the junction would also be resurfaced. Proposals for this junction are: Union Street Existing contra-flow cycle lane retained for cyclists travelling westbound on Union Street. This would connect to Southwark Council’s proposals for Union Street. Existing advanced stop line extended to 5m with a cycle feeder lane. These extended facilities would provide cyclists with a larger waiting area in front of motor traffic, improving their visibility, and allowing them to safely move away at the traffic lights. Borough High Street Dedicated low-level cycle signals to inform cyclists of when to safely proceed across Borough High Street from Union Street and Newcomen Street. Pedestrian islands widened to improve pedestrian accessibility across Borough High Street. Cyclists permitted to turn left onto Union Street and Newcomen Street. This movement is currently banned and would remain banned for other vehicles. This allows cyclists on Borough High Street to join the route. The signal phasing would be altered to permit this movement. NOTE: All vehicles (including cyclists) would continue to be banned from turning right into Union Street or Newcomen Street. All-round pedestrian signal phase retained so that pedestrians can safely make all movements across the junction at the same time. Newcomen Street Section of Newcomen Street closed to motorised traffic. Bollards would be installed approximately 30m west of the junction to enforce road closure to motorised traffic except for emergency access. NOTE: Newcomen Street is a borough-owned road and this aspect of the scheme would be progressed by the London Borough of Southwark. Two-way cycling permitted on Newcomen Street allowing cyclists travelling eastbound to proceed directly from Union Street, and turn left from Borough High Street. Existing footways widened to improve pedestrian accessibility. We have carried out traffic modelling for this proposal. The results indicate that the proposed changes can be accommodated without undue delay to any road user.According to a tipster (and a report over at DroidLife), Google is testing a new feature for Google+ that could be big news for the platform. For now, it's called "Collections," and it's being tested for an unspecified release target. The basic idea behind Collections is curated content sets - like Pinterest boards or Dribbble buckets, users could curate pieces of content into their collection, with others viewing, sharing, and following those collections as they please. Here's a look at a collection (note that Derek Ross is not our source - the tipster simply sent a screenshot of a collection including posts by Ross.) We also got a look at what posts from a collection look like on mobile - they're designated with a subheader containing the name of the collection. According to our tipster the feature has actually been in testing for a few months already, and there are signs that it might launch relatively soon. Of course as with any new feature it's impossible to be certain exactly when or if it will come to the public until official word arrives from Google. If the feature does make it to release, it would obviously mark a pretty big addition to how content is shared and viewed on Google+. Here's hoping we hear something official soon."A sincere search for areas of common ground.” That’s what Al Gore called his surprise meeting this week with President-elect Donald Trump. Gore, of course, is one of the leading voices for aggressive action to fight the climate crisis, while Trump has famously called climate change "a hoax." Their meeting in Trump Tower in New York on Monday briefly gave a sliver of hope to people who want Trump to pivot to a position more in line with the global scientific consensus on climate change — that it's real, that it’s already having a serious impact, and that humans are largely responsible. But that hope may well have been dashed with Wednesday’s news that Trump has picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the agency chiefly responsible for implementing US climate policy, the EPA. Pruitt is a close ally of the fossil fuel industry and a fierce opponent of President Barack Obama’s signature plan to cut greenhouse emissions from power plants. The move is the clearest sign yet that Trump plans to stick to his promise to reverse the US’ course on climate policy. But the reversal may not be limited to policy. It may also extend to climate science itself. That at least was the indication of a Trump advisor, who said recently that the new administration wants to dial back or even eliminate one of the main sources of data on our changing climate — NASA’s Earth science program. NASA, of course, is most widely known for its moon landings, Mars rovers, planetary flybys and telescopes aimed at distant stars, but a big piece of its mission has always been focused on our own planet. Among other things, the agency has a suite of Earth-orbiting satellites that track everything from vegetation to volcanic activity to melting ice and other impacts of increasing concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. But the future of those Earth-oriented satellites could be in jeopardy. In a recent report in The Guardian, a senior Trump advisor said the new administration wants to steer NASA away from Earth science and focus almost exclusively on space exploration. That would be a big change with big consequences. “Earth has always been part of the NASA portfolio,” says Waleed Abdalati, former chief scientist at NASA. Abdalati notes that the first line of the NASA charter defines its purpose as “the expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.” “In the list of things that NASA should be doing, that appears as number one,” Abdalati says. He says the view of the whole Earth that NASA has from space is critical to national security and smart policy-making. He cites monitoring of melting polar ice caps as just one example. “There are things that could happen in west Antarctica that will make the difference between two feet of sea-level rise this century and 20 feet of sea-level rise this century,” Abdalati says. “And if we don’t pay attention to that, watch the story unfold, improve our models to get our arms around that, we’re at great risk. It’s in our interest to know this.” “In the list of things that NASA should be doing, (the study of earth) appears as number one,” says former chief NASA scientist Waleed Abdalati, who now teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Abdalati says turning NASA away from monitoring such things as the effects of climate change, as has been proposed by advisors to President-elect Trump, could put us "at great risk.” Credit: Nick Mott But for many critics in the Trump camp, NASA’s focus on tracking things like melting ice and other indicators of climate change follows more of a political agenda than a scientific one. Robert Walker, the Trump advisor and former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania
iators sought additional security assurances from Qatar this spring and got them, and that President Obama personally shook hands on the terms with the Qatari emir. U.S. officials and others who provided details of the negotiations spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the arrangement, much of which remains classified. The men are not under lockdown in Qatar, and their relative freedom of movement after more than a decade under complete U.S. control has angered administration critics. 1 of 33 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Taliban-held U.S. soldier released in exchange for Afghan detainees View Photos Bowe Bergdahl, the only U.S. service member known to be held hostage in Afghanistan, was handed over on May 31 by members of the Taliban in exchange for five Afghan detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Caption U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was handed over May 31 by members of the Taliban. U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is seen in this undated photo. Courtesy of Kim Harrison Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. “It’s possible someone will see them on the streets of Qatar,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said. “But those types of activities don’t threaten our national security interests, and that’s the standard here about substantially mitigating the threat that they will pose.” But based partly on Qatar’s past record with transferred Guantanamo detainees, critics fear that the five will be not be subject to the kind of strict monitoring that can prevent them from having a role in the Taliban insurgency. “There is no dispute in the intelligence community about how dangerous these Taliban detainees are,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). “It is highly likely that they will return to the fight against our country after their year in Qatar, which is why I share concerns expressed by many members of both parties about the administration’s decision.” The five, all once part of the Taliban government that rose to power in Afghanistan and sheltered al-Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, were traded for Sgt. Bergdahl, who was held by the Haqqani network, a branch of the Taliban, for nearly five years. He was the only American prisoner of war from the Afghan conflict, and the subject of years of fitful negotiations. A backlash to the prisoner swap has mounted, with criticism of the administration’s willingness to negotiate with a terrorist group and questions about whether Bergdahl had deserted his post before his capture. The independent Military Times newspaper reported Tuesday that Bergdahl may have walked off his patrol base in Afghanistan at least once before the night he was captured. As the circumstances of the prisoner exchange become an increasingly partisan political issue, the Obama administration is struggling to explain its reasoning in agreeing to the release of men once deemed among the most significant prisoners at Guantanamo and potentially among the most dangerous. Administration officials stressed that Bergdahl’s health was declining and time was of the essence to make a deal, if one was possible. Officials also stressed that once negotiations began they had to move quickly, for fear that a lag or a leak about the arrangements could put Bergdahl’s life in jeopardy. The Taliban did not issue any explicit warning that Bergdahl would be killed if the deal fell through or leaked, one person familiar with the discussions said. But U.S. officials said concern for Bergdahl’s life was a main reason that Congress was not given advance 30-day notice of the transfer from Guantanamo Bay, as required by law. Waiting the 30 days would have left Bergdahl unacceptably vulnerable, U.S. officials said. On Capitol Hill, senators disputed whether administration officials had told them during a classified briefing Wednesday night that the Taliban had threatened to kill Bergdahl if word of the impending exchange leaked beforehand. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said that administration officials who briefed senators said that “if word of the discussions had leaked out there was a danger that Sergeant Bergdahl would have been killed.” But other senators, including Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), told reporters that they couldn’t recall officials sharing that information during the briefing presented by officials from the White House, Pentagon, State Department and CIA. Kirk said the Taliban-made “proof of life” video shown by the administration depicted Bergdahl’s frail health after years in captivity. “It felt like they had not treated him well for him to have a poor and halting voice,” he added. “I would say that the video had an emotional impact and that’s probably why the Taliban released it — to have an emotional impact on the president so they could have the Fab Five released.” The Obama administration, however, says that it had demanded the video before moving forward with negotiations. The video surfaced in January, weeks after U.S. negotiators had told the Qatari intermediaries that after a long lapse in talks, the U.S. side needed to know that Bergdahl was still alive. People familiar with the negotiation said the five had become less worrisome as the years wore on, and were now considered “graybeards,” or elders unlikely to assume top battlefield roles. That said, U.S. officials acknowledged that some of the five could take on other leadership roles within the Taliban. The strict travel ban will keep them from returning to any active role fighting U.S. forces for at least a year, U.S. officials said. By that time, all U.S. combat forces will be gone from Afghanistan. A small force devoted to training and counterterrorism will remain. U.S. officials stressed that the swap does not set a precedent either for flouting the 30-day notice requirement to Congress or for future releases of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. “Bergdahl is an exceptional case,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the longer-range process of closing the military prison. The release of the five Taliban commanders ran counter to administration policy because the detainees had not been approved for transfer through a national-security vetting process, a category that now includes 71 of the 149 detainees that remain in Guantanamo. Many of those who remain have been there for a dozen years. There are 12 Afghan detainees remaining in Guantanamo, eight of whom have not been cleared for release either to their home nation or a third country. “There are a significant number of transfers in the pipeline, and I think you are going to see progress this year,” the official said. Asked if the tension that Bergdahl’s release has caused between the White House and Congress would complicate future transfers, the official said, “The facts and the merits very much support the conclusion that Guantanamo should be closed. The fundamentals of that picture are clear now, just as clear as they were a couple weeks ago.” Scott Wilson and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.The meme of the lack of women in tech (or software, or entrepreneurship) appeared in several places today. Regular readers of this blog know that I’ve been the chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology for a number of years and deeply involved in this issue. It’s very satisfying for me to see a meme like this pick up speed and appear in a bunch of thoughtful articles and discussions. If you are interested in this issue, I have three articles from the last 24 hours that I encourage you to read. Let’s start with a high level discussion in the San Jose Mercury News article titled “Startup boot camp illustrates dearth of women in tech.” The article does a nice job of framing the issue and the last few paragraphs bring up the idea that the “paucity of female tech entrepreneurs has something to do with what has been called the soft bigotry of low expectations.” A similar concept is that parents of young girls (junior high / high school) discourage (or “don’t encourage”) their daughters from exploring computer science. Next is a chewy blog post by Eric Ries titled “Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business).” Eric tackles a bunch of concepts around diversity with a focus on gender diversity (although a lot of the constructs are applicable to ethnic and racial diversity.) The comments to this post contain some good additional refinements to the discussion. In reading through the comments, I find it interesting to see how loaded the word “diversity” is as some of the commenters seem to confuse “diversity” with “equal numbers of all types” or some kind of specious politically correct construct. Eric also includes a tremendous short presentation by Terri Oda about how biology (doesn’t) explain the low number of women in computer science. Finally, Fred Wilson’s excellent post titled “Some Thoughts On The Seed Fund Phenomenon” has a comment thread started by Tereza that talks about an idea she calls XX-Combinator (a seed accelerator for women). For those that question the lack of data surrounding this area that is driving some of the current thinking, the amount of actual research that NCWIT has either sponsored, co-sponsored, or done over the past five years is substantial. As with much social science research, there’s a big gap between the core research, the conclusions, and long term behavioral change, but as Lucy Sanders (the CEO of NCWIT) is fond of saying, we are five years into a 20 year shift. Reprinted from Feld ThoughtsLGD Gaming punished for fixing ranked game Those who have been following China's Overwatch Premier Series should be familiar with the two teams fighting for the right to be called the best team in China: LGD Gaming and Miraculous Youngster. One of those teams, LGD, will be beginning the playoffs under the cloud of disciplinary action officially announced on Weibo. LGD was playing in ranked in a three-stack and four-stack when they queued into each other on King's Row. The two opposing stacks threw to get a draw so that neither stack would end up with a loss on the game. Someone in the game posted a video of their POV and Chinese Overwatch players took exception with the incident, often stating that as members of Team China, which four of the team's players are, throwing for a draw sets a bad example for their countrymen. As a result of the incident, LGD was fined ¥2,000 CNY (~$300 USD) as a team, the players' accounts were banned for 30 days. Furthermore, the team will lose two map picks in the OWPS playoffs. On top of the issues of the players attempting to manipulate match results, another issue has been raised by the Chinese Overwatch community as a result of this. Suggestions that LGD, as well as MY, are paying their players based on their ladder ranks have sprung up in the community, leading some to direct their anger at the teams rather than the players. Despite their punishments, viewers will get to see the players of LGD in playoff action this Friday as they play against Lucky Future in the first round.The NGT order came after a man living near the Delhi airport said human waste keeps falling on his home. Human excreta being splattered on houses from aeroplanes while landing today led the National Green Tribunal to slap a fine of Rs 50,000 on the airline whose aircraft empties its waste tanks midair. The NGT directed aviation regulator DGCA to issue a circular to all airlines asking them to pay Rs 50,000 as environmental compensation if their aircraft violated its direction.A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Swatanter Kumar passed a slew of directions while disposing of a plea of a retired army officer alleging dumping of human excreta by aircraft over residential areas near the IGI Airport in New Delhi.Normally, the waste in the aircraft tank is disposed by ground personnel once the plane lands. However, there are cases where lavatory leaks occur in the air.The tribunal asked the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to issue circular to all ground handling services and airlines to ensure that they do not release waste from human waste tanks while landing or anywhere near the terminals of the IGI Airport."DGCA shall also issue directions that aircraft on landing shall be subjected to surprise inspection to see that human waste tanks are not empty. If any aircraft is found to be violating such circular or (their) tanks are found empty on landing, they shall be subjected to environment compensation of Rs 50,000 per default," the bench said.The direction came on the plea of Lt Gen (Retd) Satwant Singh Dahiya who has sought action against the airlines and levy of hefty fines on them for endangering the health of residents, terming the act as a violation of the 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan'.While issuing directions, the green panel also said it was "surprised" to note the stand taken by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) that on analysing the samples taken from the petitioner's house, it could be ascertained that it was excreta but its source could not known."We are surprised to note the stand of CPCB to the extent of coliform and the kind of splashes created on the houses of the petitioner as well as others clearly demonstrate that it was human excreta," the bench said.It added that the amount collected shall be deposited with CPCB for using it for environment protection and a quarterly report shall also be submitted by DGCA before it.DGCA was also asked by the tribunal to set up a helpline so that similar complaints can be addressed and this number and email address be made public.During the hearing, DGCA told the bench it has issued a circular to constitute a committee to investigate the matter.The NGT had earlier slapped a cost of Rs 5,000 on the Environment Ministry and the Ministry of Civil Aviation for their failure to file inspection report on the plea.It had also directed CPCB to depute a senior environmental engineer to inspect the petitioner's house and check the existence of human excreta on its walls and if excreta was found, samples should be collected for analysis and the report placed before the tribunal.In his petition, Vasant Enclave resident Dahiya had sought creation of a 24-hour helpline for immediate reporting of such incidents and a monitoring mechanism to check that no aircraft drops "human soil or excreta" while landing. The ministry had opposed the argument and said plane toilets stored the waste in special tanks that are normally disposed by ground crew once the plane lands. However, aviation officials acknowledge that lavatory leaks can occur in the air at times.TAMPA -- Cleaning out the notebook from joint practices between the Patriots and Buccaneers: 1. Wednesday was the largest media turnout for the Buccaneers since training camp began, with about 50 credentialed members of the media. That's about double the normal crowd. Nationally, ESPN had live TV reports throughout the day with Bob Holtzman and Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports was another national presence. 2. Offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia doesn't talk to the press often, but he made himself available Wednesday with the rest of the team's offensive coaches. Listening to Scarnecchia is always a pleasure. He shoots it straight. Asked in a lighthearted manner what made Wednesday different in terms of speaking with the media, Scarnecchia said, "I don't know, but this is it." And with a smile, and several handshakes, he was on his way. 3. Defensive coaches are scheduled to be available for interviews after Thursday's joint practice. 4. Heard on local television that the Patriots-Buccaneers preseason game Friday is blacked out here in Tampa. Longtime Patriots fans remember what that was like. Amazing to think a game hasn't been blacked out in New England since 1993. Those in Tampa hoping to watch can do so on tape delay in the 11 o'clock hour. 5. Leftover soundbite from running back Jeff Demps on the uniqueness of linebacker Brandon Spikes: "I’ve been with Spikes before at Florida. He’s crazy.” 6. Maybe a hint that Brian Waters isn't coming back? When asked about the return of left guard Logan Mankins and right tackle Sebastian Vollmer from the physically unable to perform list, Scarnecchia said: "As much as we can, we're able to get bodies working side by side that hopefully will be working side by side when it's for real in September. We tried to keep Logan with Nate [Solder] and tried to keep Sebastian over there with [Dan] Connolly, and just give them some reps together. I think that's always a good thing. I think the most important thing for their own self-comfort, I guess, is to be able to get out, test themselves and see how everything is working and the mending process is going. It's only a good thing." 7. Running backs coach Ivan Fears might be part of the "all-name" team for assistant NFL coaches, but it turns out players call him something altogether different. In a lighthearted moment, Fears was asked if he has the best name among coaches. He laughed. "The guys call me 'Coach If.' What does that mean?" Fears cracked. 8. Tight end coach George Godsey on the return of Daniel Fells from the physically unable to perform list: "He's getting a little bit better so as much as we can work him in, we'll take it from there. He's taken all the mental quizzes and tests the other guys have. He's a veteran, [so] he knows what it means to be a professional. He's put his time in there mentally."Today, December 12, 2016, roughly 500 pages of previously classified US Government documents concerning Argentina were released to the public on orders of the Obama administration. They make for interesting reading, especially for anyone who remembers the 1970s and 1980s and the extreme state of tension in the Southern Cone of South America in that period. For me, however, it was a little more personal. You know of my trip to Chile and to Colonia Dignidad in June of 1979. (You’re probably tired of hearing about it!) However, these recently declassified documents shed even more light on the circumstances I faced at the time as the Argentina documents often include information on Chile (and Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil) as well. One such document contains information that, while corroborating what I wrote in Unholy Alliance and in The Hitler Legacy (as well as in numerous radio and podcast interviews) also provides additional details that confirm what I have been insisting for more than 35 years since that fateful trip: the Colony was a Nazi refuge, it was the center of the assassination and terror network known as Operation Condor, and that the Chilean secret police – at the time known as DINA although it had other acronyms as well – had a torture and interrogation center on-site and in other sites “nearby.” Here is the relevant section, verbatim, from a document entitled “A Staff Report concerning Activities of Certain Foreign Intelligence Agencies in the United States submitted to The Subcommittee on International Operations, Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate” and dated January 18, 1979 (and thus six months prior to my trip to Colonia Dignidad): QUOTE (1) Chile. Although no intelligence officer of the Government of Chile apparently is currently stationed in the United States, such officers have visited the United States using false identification, and their activities were not known. The Chilean intelligence service is a member of a consortium of South American intelligence services, “Operation Condor,” which has, in the past, plotted assassinations in foreign countries and maintained files on anti-regime activists. This service maintains close liaison with the German Nazi colony of La Dignidad in Southern Chile, which makes its substantial resources available to it. UNQUOTE (this is from page 7 of the report; italics in the original) Thus, we have several points worth mentioning. In the first place, our government found it could not keep tabs on Chilean intelligence officers entering the country since the officers used false identification. Secondly, Operation Condor is identified and Chile recognized as being part of the “consortium.” Most importantly, however, is the acknowledgement that Colonia Dignidad was a German Nazi colony, and that it maintained a close working relationship with the Chilean secret police. This was known six months before my visit. When I returned from Chile with my own, very personal, report, I was told I had to be mistaken. There was nothing to the rumors, etc. etc. Further along, on (often heavily redacted) pages 13-15 of the report, we read: QUOTE Another element with an uncertain relationship to DINA is the “Colony.” Located in Parral, Linarest (sic) Province, “La Dignidad” was established by former Nazi Luftwaffe officers at the close of World War Two. The Colony is registered as a “farm property” (3 lines redacted) known in the Colony as “The Commander.” (several more lines redacted) residents must leave Chile through Argentina. The Colony’s leadership maintains good relations with Chilean military officials, particularly officers of the Chilean Air Force, who have close ties to the Colony’s former Luftwaffe pilots. The Colony maintains complete autonomy over its territory. Investigations into its activities have always come to an abrupt halt. The Colony’s primary source of livelihood is a large dairy farm, although it also produces other agricultural products and engages in some mining. It maintains good relations with the local peasant population, in part because an excellent medical facility maintained by the Colony is open once a week for free medical treatment and medicine to farm families in the area. (line redacted) DINA has maintained a detention center inside the Colony and there are allegations that torture has taken place there. Allegations also have been made that German personnel, who are described as ex-Gestapo or ex-SS officers, have given instruction in torture techniques and have actually taken part in the application of those techniques. (3-4 lines redacted) The Colony has received large amounts of money over the years, probably from German Nazis. DINA, which maintains two facilities nearby, makes use of the Colony’s national and international contacts. Knowledgeable State Department officials believe that they “might very well indeed be part of the so-called network of German exiles in Latin America.” Precisely what actions have been carried out by DINA and Operation Condor, and what role the “Colony” has played, are unclear. “Our knowledge of DINA operations is almost nil,” the CIA stated. What is clear is that DINA and Condor possess both the motive and capability to harm United States residents. The former director of DINA, Manuel Contreras, has said (redacted) DINA has representatives in all Chilean embassies abroad except behind the Iron Curtain. These agents, he said, served under civilian cover, and their mission included “hit” Chilean enemies in those countries. “We will go to Australia if necessary to get our enemies,” he said. UNQUOTE There is a great deal to unpack here, but a few points come immediately to mind. The phrase “residents must leave Chile through Argentina” is revealing. It is, of course, exactly what happened when Chilean security forces raided the Colony to arrest its “Commander”, Paul Schaefer. Schaefer fled across the border into Argentina and was finally located there and extradited back to Chile where he stood trial for child abuse charges, among others. The details about the medical facility are quite true, as I saw myself and as I learned from local police officials in Parral. The information that former Gestapo and SS officers operated at the Colony was only demonstrated much later, after my visit, but corroborated in details from Luftwaffe pilot Hans Ulrich Rudel’s address book (as published in its entirety in The Hitler Legacy) among other places, including interviews with prisoners who had been held at the Colony. That the Colony received large amounts of cash from abroad was verified during my own visit when I was told precisely that by the local carabineros the morning before my visit there. What was a little more terrifying, however, was the information that DINA maintained two facilities nearby the Colony. In other words, they were torturing prisoners at the Colony but had two more sites in the region as well. I had managed to walk into the dragon’s lair without knowing about it at the time. Further, the report acknowledges that the Colony was not only part of Operation Condor (as we would discover later, a major node in the Operation) but was also “part of the so-called network of German exiles in Latin America”: a rather sanitized way of saying ODESSA. Finally, we learn that DINA and Condor “possess both the motive and capability to harm United States residents.” We know that they did so with the assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffitt in Washington, D.C. in 1976. I believe at this point that there was no need to get all Michael Vernon Townley on me at the time because my reporting on this subject was being rejected everywhere, including by the Simon Wiesenthal people. I was essentially neutralized. I had no journalistic credentials, didn’t work at any newspaper or other media outlet, and had only my experiences and my research to back up my story. That was in June-July, 1979. As mentioned, six months after this report was sent to Congress. My government knew all about this place and its relationship to DINA, to torture of political prisoners, to assassinations and terror attacks in Chile and abroad. I had heard about it from reading Ladislas Farago’s Aftermath, and later from rumors heard among Latin exiles in Jackson Heights, Queens. I had decided to go there, at my own expense, taking a two-week vacation from my job as an export administrator for the Bendix Corporation in New York City. Finally, fifteen years later, an editor in New York decided to take a chance on me and my story, and Unholy Alliance was published in 1994. There is much else in these documents, containing as they do presidential briefings, memoranda and other evidence showing what we knew about the human rights abuses in South America at the time. The Soviet Union was a major threat, and it colored our foreign policy decisions in Latin America. Further, Argentina was developing its own nuclear power program at the time which was a grave cause for concern among Washington policy makers. And for anyone who believes that only Communist regimes and Middle Eastern terrorists are capable of extreme and hideous forms of torture, one merely has to read the sickening account of one Alfredo Bravo who was kidnapped from a classroom in Buenos Aires where he was a teacher, taken to a remote location, and tortured and interrogated for days on end in ways too graphic to detail here. All because he was suspected of being in league with a union and with a human rights organization. In one scene, he is being threatened by a colonel who has on his desk a small Nazi flag. And so it goes. This is the link to the documents in question: https://icontherecord.tumblr.com/Hold your real assets outside of this system in a private non-government controlled facility --> http://www.321gold.com/info/053015_sprott.html (Click For Original) In the past, readers have been alerted to numerous “impossible” trends in our markets and economies, all manufactured by the Western banking crime syndicate. Here are just a few of those highlights (low-lights?) a) It’s impossible for Western bond prices to be at all-time highs. Western nations have never been less-solvent (i.e. obviously bankrupt). The less-solvent the debtor, the higher the rate of interest the debtor is (supposed to be) forced to pay, and bond prices and interest rates are precisely inverse to each other. Interest rates should be at all-time highs, bond prices should be at all-time lows. Obvious fraud. b) It’s impossible for our markets to move like one, gigantic, synchronized yo-yo, every minute of every hour of every day. Markets diverge, it’s what they do. When we see prices move together in near-perfect clockwork, we know we no longer have “markets”. Obvious fraud. c) It’s impossible for precious metals prices to fall below the cost of production – and stay there – with large supply-deficits in both the gold and silver market. There is literally only one, possible “cure” for a supply-deficit: higher prices. These markets are being (permanently) prevented from doing what theymust do. Obvious fraud. Note also that all of these “impossible” trends are separate from the multi-billion and multi-trillion dollar mega-crimes which these same financial criminals are caught perpetrating, on a near-daily basis (and are allowed to continue to perpetrate): 1) They were caught conspiring to serially rig the $500 trillion LIBOR debt market. 2) They were caught conspiring to serially rig the $5 trillion/day global currency market. 3) They were caught conspiring to serially rig the “gold fix”. 4) They were caught conspiring to serially rig the “silver fix”. 5) They were caught conspiring to serially rig base metals markets. 6) They were caught conspiring to serially launder $TRILLIONS for the drug cartels and “terrorist” organizations. Isn’t there supposed to be a “War on Drugs”? Isn’t there supposed to be a “War on Terror”? Why do these criminals get a free pass? [Meanwhile, the Lemmings continue to scoff at “conspiracy theories”.] But all of these “impossible” (i.e. fraudulent) developments in our economies, and all these mega-crimes that are swept under the carpet by our puppet governments pale in significance next to the greatest impossibility/insanity of all: the co-bubbles in Western stocks and bonds, and more specifically the incredibly gigantic (simultaneous) stock- bubble and bond-bubble in the U.S. Stock prices and bond prices can never rise together, in any legitimate marketplace. Period. U.S. stock prices are at all-time highs. U.S. bond prices are at all-time highs. This is market fraud to (literally) the ultimate extreme. Why can stock prices and bond prices never rise together? The bankers have been explaining this to us, for decades. Stocks are the “speculative investment”. It’s where investor dollars flow and concentrate when investors are feeling confident and “bullish” about the marketplace. Bonds are the “conservative investment”. It’s where investor dollars flow and concentrate when investors are feeling pessimistic and “bearish” about markets. That’s the real world. Then we have our ultra-corrupt, fantasy-world, where (impossibly) the U.S. has both a gigantic 6 ½ year-old stock bubble, and a more-gigantic, bond bubble in its Treasuries market which is arguably much, much older. Absolutely impossible. Ultimate fraud. What do the criminals (i.e. bankers) tell us today, with markets which totally violate everything they had been previously telling us, going back at least a quarter-century? The criminals tell us that investors are “bullish” and “bearish” right now, at the same time. To frame it differently, the market is (supposedly) “hot” and “cold” at the same time. Absurd. Impossible. We have a word for when you mix “hot” and “cold” together: lukewarm. Here’s the point. If the criminals were actually telling the truth (for the first time, ever) and investors really were “bullish” and bearish” at the same time, we wouldn’t see U.S. stock markets and the U.S. bond market simultaneously at all-time, bubble highs. We would see lukewarm markets, with average, stock and bond prices – reflecting what the bankers are telling us: that investors (supposedly) can’t make up their minds as to whether they are bullish or bearish. The infantile “explanation” by the criminals on the co-bubbles in U.S. stocks and U.S. bonds is just as impossible (and nonsensical) as the bubble-prices themselves. The criminals have no explanation for these “impossible” markets. This begs an obvious question, in terms of simple mechanics. How did the criminals create two, gigantic, simultaneous fraud-bubbles in U.S. markets, when these two bubbles (according to everything we know about markets) could never occur together – by any means? Regular readers should be able to answer this question: Unlike what we hear from the criminals, and their servants (our governments and regulators), this chart explains the “impossible” co-bubbles in U.S. stocks and bonds in simple and rational terms. There are five times as many “investor dollars” in U.S. markets today as there were only five years earlier. As readers know, money-printing on such an extreme, exponential level is obviously hyperinflationary – but that is aseparate subject which has been previously discussed on many occasions. Suddenly, what appeared “impossible” is no longer impossible at all, merely completely fraudulent. What we see here is nothing more complex than the concept of a “rising tide”. Pour five times as much water into our oceans, and we wouldn’t simply have “high tides” all over the world, simultaneously. We would have a global tidal wave. Now we can view the U.S.’s “bubble” markets in their correct context. Thanks to the fraud of “fractional-reserve banking”, and our even more-fraudulent, near-zero interest rates, the criminals receive, for free,every year, somewhere in excess of $100 TRILLION in Western funny-money, most of it denominated in USD’s. With Western markets literally flooded with this debauched, worthless, funny-money, what appeared to be the highest-of-high-tides is actually something much different. We do have lukewarm markets – in proportion to the mountains of funny-money which the criminals are hoarding. Put another way, the criminals could have pushed these U.S. bubbles up much, much higher than their present, insane levels. They have only deployed the tiniest portion of all their (illegal) funny-money. Most of it is hoarded in the banksters’ $1.5 QUADRILLION rigged-casino which they call “the derivatives market”. For the mathematically challenged, that is a $1,500 TRILLION hoard of illegal capital – twenty times larger than the entire, global economy. Suddenly, we’re looking at a much different question. Instead of asking how the criminals could have pumped-up these U.S. bubbles to such incredible highs, we ask ourselves something entirely different: why haven’t the criminals pumped-up their fraud bubbles even higher – much, much higher? There are two answers to that question, both based in practical terms. To start with, small numbers of the brainwashed Lemmings in our societies are already questioning these “impossible” fraud markets. What would they say if the Dow was up at 50,000, and the “interest paid” on U.S. Treasuries was negative 10%? What if you took markets which were already ridiculously impossible, and made prices five times, or ten times as extreme? The “jig” would be up. But there is a second, even more-important reason why the criminals have no desire to pump-up their fraud bubbles to even more-insane levels: there is no profit in doing so. Pump-up the price of a particular stock 10,000% higher, or even an entire stock index, and it does you no good unless you can find some Chump who is willing to buy your stock at such wildly fraudulent prices. The criminals need to ensure that the fraud-prices in their markets remain at some quasi-plausible level, or there will be no more Chumps for them to fleece. They would simply be playing with (exclusively) their own money in these fraud markets – and you can’t steal from anyone by doing that. For most of us who still retain the capacity for rational thought, we look at the U.S.’s crime-ridden, bubble markets, and we shake our heads. We wonder how these prices could ever go so high, simultaneously, as we see with the U.S. stock-bubble and the U.S. bond-bubble. Meanwhile, as the criminals dine on their filet mignon, and gaze out over the economic carnage they have wrought in our societies, their conversation is entirely different. They don’t “gaze in wonder” at these sky-high prices. Rather, they lament that there is no way for them to “make” (i.e. steal) even more money – by pushing their fraud markets much, much higher. Please email with any questions about this article or precious metals HERE Hold your real assets outside of this system in a private non-government controlled facility --> http://www.321gold.com/info/053015_sprott.htmlIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told French Jews Saturday, after 17 people were killed there during three days of Islamist attacks, that Israel is their home. “To all the Jews of France, all the Jews of Europe, I would like to say that Israel is not just the place in whose direction you pray, the state of Israel is your home,” he said in a televised statement, referring to the Jewish practice of facing Jerusalem during prayer. “Unless the world comes to its senses, terror will continue to strike in other places,” he added in remarks on his official Twitter account. Four of the fatalities occurred during an attack on a Jewish supermarket. Media said he had ordered a ministerial committee to convene next week to discuss ways to encourage immigration of French and other European Jews to Israel. They said Netanyahu had considered attending Sunday’s mass rally in Paris but was obliged to drop the idea due to security concerns. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will represent Israel instead. Lieberman met Saturday evening with Israeli ministry and security officials to discuss repercussions of the attacks. “The meeting discussed strengthening ties with the heads of the Jewish community in France and the security of the various institutions of the Jewish community there,” ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement. Last Update: Saturday, 10 January 2015 KSA 22:13 - GMT 19:13The longer I live and the more I read and the deeper I fall in love and the less I give a fuck and the more patience I lose and the more perspective I gain, the more certain I become that the people who most aggressively try to define love for others have never actually experienced it themselves. I don't mean that in some woo-woo cornball way, I mean it in a WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT way. My vagina is livestock? My boyfriend is a customer? I should charge men for my milk? Um, okay, Casanova. Clearly you're highly qualified to be making declarations in this field of study, as you've definitely "laid lots of times" with girls you met in Niagara Falls whose boobs felt like bags of sand. Got it. Naomi Schaefer Riley, writing in the New York Post yesterday, penned a glowing paean to the latest incarnation of the old why-buy-the-cow metaphor: The Economics of Sex, a fun, kicky YouTube animation (for the youths!) about how women
.1 out of 10, as the world’s most corrupt nation, closely followed by Afghanistan and Myanmar with scores of 1.4, and Iraq on 1.5. The least corrupt were New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark, on 9.3 (See table attached). “Unstable governments with a history of conflict dominate the bottom rungs of the list,” said Huguette Labelle, Chair of Transparency International. Dr Jon Moran, a reader in security in Leicester University’s Department of Politics and International Relations, said we should not be surprised that war-torn states dominate the list. The recent histories of both Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate the link between war and corruption. “In Iraq, sanctions after the first Gulf War, combined with the existing corruption of Saddam Hussein’s regime created a siege economy in which corruption became endemic,” Moran said. “Smuggling and black markets became important for everyone from the ordinary citizen to the elites. This is a legacy that is still evident today in the way the Iraqi Government is run.” The corrupt Government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is prepared to use violence in defence of its interests. One story is enough to illustrate this fact: Iraq judge Radhi al-Radhi, who was investigating corruption as head of the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, was forced to flee to the US in 2007 after 31 of his investigators were assassinated by al-Maliki’s men. The assassins also tortured 12 members of the investigators’ families by drilling holes into their bodies, before killing them, too. In becoming more corrupt from top to bottom, Iraq has followed a familiar historical pattern. “There is plenty of evidence to show how war-torn or blockaded states often see increases in corruption as smuggling networks, black markets and extortion become a way of gaining and distributing resources. It was evident in Yugoslavia in the 1990s,” Moran said. The Second Gulf War, and subsequent occupation of Iraq, made an already bad situation even worse. “To the existing corruption was added the effects of the chaotic and politicized US occupation,” Moran said. “Although US society has a highly developed system of legal and agency regulation of political and economic corruption - stronger than the UK, for example - in the highly charged ideological occupation of Iraq, this was ignored. “A number of the basic rules of good governance, which the West often urges developing countries to adopt, such as controls on the disbursement of funds and strong auditing regimes, were missing. The journalist Patrick Cockburn has argued Iraq is the site of some of history’s biggest frauds.” A third reason for corruption in Iraq is the poor security situation, said Moran. “The lack of basic security after 2003 fuelled violent crime. Basic services disappeared and everyone was forced to use contacts, and black markets and other desperate measures to simply get by.” The origins of corruption in Afghanistan, Moran said, also have their antecedents in former war and occupation. “Afghanistan already had a serious problem with corruption under the Soviet-backed governments of the 1970s and then after the Soviet invasion in the 1980s the country became a site of opium, arms smuggling and black markets,” he said. The Taliban eradicated opium crops in 2000-2001, but their attitude to drugs has been inconsistent. “They were also not averse to trading it themselves and now they are using it to fund their insurgency,” said Moran. “Afghanistan has always been a major supplier of opium, but the war has created a surge in opium growth. Lack of security, corrupt local security, and the encouragement by the Taliban of opium-growing have all contributed.” Ned Conway, a researcher at the Institute for Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies (MECACS) at the University of St Andrews, said the Taliban made money from opium by offering protection to narcotics networks. “The Taliban does not produce opium, but it collects taxes from everyone involved, including farmers, processors, all the way up to the drug barons and kingpins in Pakistan,” he said. The Anglo-American security forces are too overloaded to fight corruption and prevent opium production. “The ISAF are relatively thin on the ground and they are expected to do everything from fighting the Taliban, to promoting democracy, to training the police and army and providing local services and eradicating opium,” Moran said. In his analysis of the corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ned Conway, at the University of St Andrews, focuses on the direct role of Anglo-American money. “There are two reasons why pouring billions of dollars into Iraq and Afghanistan has made them more corrupt,” he said. “Firstly, if the host government doesn’t have the institutions to make sure the money is accounted for, then people take advantage of the situation. We have members of government who receive bribes in return for contracts and contracting companies which never follow through on projects they were paid to complete. “The second reason is these countries are incredibly dangerous. If inspectors do not have freedom of movement, so that they aren’t able to check up on a project’s progress in a high conflict area, implementing appropriate anti-corruption safeguards is very difficult.” It has become impossible to police the situation so that corruption has become a way of life. “The problem is mainly with the sub-contracting or sub-sub-contracting,” said Conway. “You may think you’re giving your money to company X to complete a project, but often there is a chain of sub-contracts before a shovel hits the earth, and all along the way, each sub-contractor takes a cut.” Conway, however, has some sympathy with the innocent people caught up in the culture of corruption. “In Iraq and Afghanistan, it is to some degree expected. Take the Afghan Border Police officer who makes $130 a month. That is not enough to live on, so the individual is forced to find more ‘creative’ ways to support his family. Is it wrong? If you asked him, he would probably say that President Hamid Karzai is taking a much bigger piece of the pie, so why can’t he? On top of that, he probably won’t be caught. In fact, his boss might even encourage the behaviour.” Conway believes the Anglo-American occupation will leave different legacies in Iraq to Afghanistan. “Iraq is in a much better situation than Afghanistan. Large groups of people have a voice now that was stunted under Saddam Hussein, and that voice for the most part manifests itself in the political arena, not in armed conflict. Iraq has its share of problems, and could fall back into true chaos, but more or less the country is much better off,” he said. “Afghanistan is more difficult. Its system of governance is doomed to fail. There is too much power in central government, not enough power in the provinces. There are also no industries that might ‘save’ the country, whereas in Iraq oil will guarantee money coming into the budget. Afghanistan wants to be a transit state for pipelines and for trade, but that is impossible as long as there is violence.” THE MOST CORRUPT NATIONS: 1. Somalia – 1.1 2. Myanmar – 1.4 3. Afghanistan - 1.4 4. Iraq - 1.5 5. Uzbekistan – 1.6 6. Turkmenistan -- 1.6 7. Sudan – 1.6 8. Chad – 1.7 9. Burundi - 1.8 10. Equatorial Guinea - 1.9 11. Angola --1.9 12. Venezuela -- 2.0 13. Kyrgystan -- 2.0 14. Guinea -- 2.0 15. Democratic Republic of Congo -- 2.0 Jan Toporowski, chair of the department of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, analysed some common characteristics of corrupt countries; Weak banking systems: “It is difficult to generalise as the countries have different patterns of corruption. But countries at the bottom tend to have weak banking systems involving a lot of informal payments. A combination of weak laws, suspect payments and weak asset markets makes it difficult to do business. In countries like Uzbekistan, and many African countries, the rich elites want to increase their wealth, but the traditional sources of wealth – such as land – are not appreciating much. So these elites - in these resource-rich lands - turn to ‘informal’ ways of holding onto wealth,” he said. Traditional societies: “Iraq and Afghanistan may be democracies, but democracy is not the only factor. To avoid corruption, it’s important to have a modern ‘impersonal attitude’ to finance. This is what characterises modernity in terms of finance. It means people don’t get too attached to share certificates, or land. They sell on for a better price, or buy and sell against their assets. In the traditional societies of the Middle East, many people still store their wealth in gold and not many people borrow against their wife’s jewels.” Developing countries: “Most developed countries have been through a period of high corruption, before legal frameworks of accountability are put in place. Developing countries have huge inequalities of income, which leads to more corruption because people are envious of other people’s money. With more equal distribution of income, the incentive to make that extra bit of money through corruption is not there.” Professor Toporowski says the long-term solution is modernisation of financial sectors. The emergence of a commercial middle-class, which uses modern bank accounts and modern systems of payment, would stop ‘informal’ approaches to business. “Education changes attitudes. They become educated by studying abroad to the US, or Britain, and taking back ideas which help their countries to modernize. We call them ‘modernising elites’. The education systems in the developing nations are important, too, in bringing about change. In this respect, Somalia is at a disadvantage as literacy is a recent thing there, whereas Myanmar is a relatively urbanised and relatively educated society, so we might expect change to occur more quickly there.” Want more world corruption index figures and data? Check out our new Corruption Perception Index database.UK troops numbers in Iraq will be cut to 2,500 by next spring The city is dominated by militias and the police contains "murderous" and "corrupt" elements, the report added. The whole purpose of the UK forces' presence may be in question due to cuts, the Defence Committee suggested. Defence secretary Des Browne said security forces in Basra had grown in ability during the past year. Numbers at the Basra Air Station base are to be halved to 2,500. The local security forces in Basra have grown in confidence and ability throughout the year. Des Browne, Defence Secretary The report said: "The initial goal of UK forces in south eastern Iraq was to establish the security necessary for the development of representative political institutions and for economic reconstruction. "Although progress has been made, this goal remains unfulfilled." It also suggested that the relative security of Basra did not mean that the root causes of violence had been tackled. The report added: "There remain murderous, corrupt and militia-infiltrated elements within the police which must be rooted out as a matter of priority." It went on to speculate on the future role of UK forces in Iraq. The report said: "If there is still a role for UK forces in Iraq, those forces must be capable of doing more than just protecting themselves at Basra Air Station. Attacks continue "If the reduction in numbers means they cannot do more than this, the entire UK presence in south eastern Iraq will be open to question." The report said the Iraqi Army had made significant progress but still required logistical support from the British. MPs welcomed the reduction of attacks on UK forces since they pulled out of their last base in the city but pointed out that there had been no corresponding reduction in the number of attacks against civilians. The report explained: "The relative security of Basra is said to owe more to the dominance of militias and criminal gangs, who are said to have achieved a fragile balance in the city, than to the success of the multinational and Iraqi security forces in tackling the root causes of the violence." It also warned that it was important not to overstate the success of the US troop surge in and around Baghdad, adding that it was still unclear whether recent improvements in the security situation would remain for the long term. Overstretch Furthermore, the committee expressed concerns over whether the Ministry of Defence budget would be able to complete the necessary amount of refurbishment work required to be carried out on British Army equipment. The committee also said there was a discrepancy between the number of troops the Minister for Armed Forces said was needed to perform the 'overwatch role' and the numbers given by the prime minister. Bob Ainsworth said in July 2007 anything below 5,000 would be "difficult to sustain". But the prime minister announced in October 2007 that forces would be reduced to 2,500 from spring 2008. Mr Browne added that he was satisfied that on the basis of the evidence he had received the prime minister's "figure of troops to tasks is the right figure." BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt said the committee had been reassured the withdrawal was not due to overstretch and the need for more troops in Afghanistan. General Peter Wall, at the MoD, had told the committee that "were more forces needed at this stage of the campaign, the army could provide additional forces". Defence Secretary Des Browne said: "We have always said that our obligations to the Iraqi nation will not end when all four provinces within our area of operations have been transferred to Iraqi control. "The local security forces in Basra have grown in confidence and ability throughout the year." 'Bodes well' He added: "Under the leadership of Generals Mohan and Jalil, they have proved able to handle the occasional security incidents swiftly and effectively. "These are positive indications which bode well for the prospect of transferring Basra province to Iraqi control by the end of the year - an ambition which is shared by our Coalition allies and by the Iraqi government." Mr Browne accepted that the Iraqi forces were "not the finished article". But he added: "Our commitment in this role is undiminished. We will continue until the Iraqis themselves are confident they no longer need our assistance." The chairman of the committee, Conservative MP James Arbuthnot, said the handover should go ahead despite the violence. "Development of the Iraqi army is going much better than the development of the Iraqi police and the army in Iraq is able I think, in the south eastern part anyway, to take over control from British forces," he said. "The trouble is the experience in every-day life terms of the Iraqi population in that area is largely experience of the police and we say they remain murderous, corrupt and infiltrated by militias and that's a real worry."Werewolf films are something Hollywood rarely gets right. What took off as a fantastic genre in the 30’s and 40’s was mostly pushed aside in the 1950’s as sci-fi took dominance – and almost forgotten in the 60’s and 70’s when it was reduced to mostly unwatchable trash. Then something happened: the 1980s came at us like a vengeance and the lycanthrope was reborn from the cold dark depths from which it was discarded. The 1980’s in general was really a rebirth of the horror genre. The majority of horror villains cherished today came out of those 10 years. Horror fans should cherish this decade as it may be awhile before we see another one like it. The chart of The Best Werewolf Films of the 1980s will bring you 23 titles, and there are a lot of really good flicks on this list such as Silver Bullet (Gary Busey, get that werewolf), Teen Wolf (which taught us the disco inferno, lady stealing power of the wolf) and The Company of Wolves (a reinvention of the Little Red Riding Hood story) – however, let’s focus on the top 3. Let’s begin with the undisputed masterpiece of werewolf films….. David and Jack (Americans of course, it’s not just a clever name) are on a walking tour of Great Britain when they are attacked by a werewolf, Jack is killed and David is sent to the hospital. David begins to have nightmares and is then visited by his very deceased and slowly decaying friend Jack who tells David that he is now a werewolf and must kill himself to release the curse. Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors…..David believes he is going crazy, that is until the full moon arrives. This had been director John Landis’s project for over a decade, he wrote the first draft of the script in 1969 and it was put aside. It took the success of 2 little films he made called Animal House and The Blues Brothers to finally get this green-lit. What set it apart from earlier films at the time was its extremely successful mixture of comedy and horror, the story flows seamlessly between a witty comedy and gore filled nightmare. The howl of the werewolf as David and Jack wander the moors lost has haunted me since I was a kid while at the same I find myself laughing at the rotting corpses sitting in a porno theater enjoying “See You Next Wednesday”. One of my favorite things about American Werewolf is the seemingly out-of-place upbeat soundtrack featuring multiple versions of “Blue Moon” and CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising” however the real star of this movie is the groundbreaking special effects from Rick Baker. The makeup won the first ever Academy Award for this category, and it still holds up to this day. Nothing is off-camera or hidden away in the dark – it’s all right there in your face. Most remembered is the transformation scene which was achieved using a mixture of makeup and animatronics – something that had not been done before. Baker’s talents also shine through on the victims – most notably on Jack who, with each visit to David, we get to see a new level of decomposition. CGI can never match what is done here with good old-fashioned makeup and hard work, I’m pretty sure Hollywood has people locked in a basement trying to make a computer program that can do effects like this. This is a must watch, and even if you have seen it – watch it again. Then find someone who hasn’t seen it, and make them watch it. #98 on my Flickchart / #300 All Time Wolfman’s got nards….. While some may debate that it’s not 100% a werewolf movie, this 1987 classic fits great on this list. The Monster Squad, a group of movie monster loving kids, become the only hope for their town when Dracula and his team of monsters – The Mummy, Gill-Man, The Wolf Man, and Frankenstein arrive with plans for world domination. Directed by Fred Dekker (who also directed another cult classic – 1986’s Night of the Creeps. Watch it.) and penned by both Dekker and Shane Black, this movie is still as enjoyable now as it was when I was a kid – though when released it did not get the recognition it deserved. Originally met with mixed reviews and a low box office take, it gained its cult following from video releases. I think one of the things working against it at that time of release was it had been around 20 years or so since the Universal Monsters storylines had been explored – aside from Hammer Horror. Most people at that time were confused on what a Universal Monster should be, and were quick to dismiss this. One of the challenges faced by Dekker during production was that all the monsters were copywritten by Universal Studios – meaning they could not be directly copied to screen. The solution to this was getting Stan Winston involved; his team created updated versions of each character while staying as close to their original look as possible, which resulted in a fantastic, fresh approach. Look out for the human form of The Wolfman in this played by Jon Gries (aka Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite). This is a wonderful movie to watch again, or introduce your kids to, as the gore is minimal and the scares are tolerable. #278 on my Flickchart / #957 All Time Humans are our cattle… LA TV Reporter Karen White (played by the amazing genre queen Dee Wallace) suffers amnesia after an encounter with a serial killer stalker, and is sent along with her husband Bill to “The Colony” for treatment. The Colony ends up being full of interesting characters, and after Bill is attacked by a wolf-like creature, he and Karen start to undergo “transformations”. Directed by Joe Dante (Who also brought us Piranha, Gremlins, and The ‘Burbs), this was the first movie to be released in the 1980s’s rebirth of the werewolf. The Howling is based on a novel of the same name by Gary Brandner; the screenplay however took a less direct approach then the more serious and straightforward novel. The movie is filled with inside jokes, (the majority of main characters are named after directors of old werewolf movies) and cameos from people such as Roger Corman and Forest J. Ackerman. There’s always a debate on which movie has the best transformation scene, American Werewolf or The Howling, but both movies were essentially done by the same people using the same special effects techniques. Rick Baker originally had left American Werewolf in London due to delayed production and was actually working on The Howling. After he went back, his assistant Rob Bottin took over. I prefer American Werewolf’s more in your face approach, where The Howling hides everything behind low light – but it is still pretty amazing. Take note to keep an ear on Pino Donaggio’s score: it’s a lighthearted horror blend that is perfectly balanced and really makes this movie. Please avoid the sequels at all cost. #524 on my Flickchart / #1266 All Time What’s your favorite werewolf film – of the 80s, or of all-time? List your favorites in the comments!WASHINGTON — If one believes James B. Comey’s account of his encounters with President Trump, it could present a prosecutable case of obstruction of justice, several former prosecutors said Thursday. But they also cautioned that little is normal about this situation. The Justice Department has long argued that the Constitution does not permit prosecuting a sitting president. And even if Mr. Trump left office first — through impeachment, or simply by losing re-election in 2020 — there is no guiding precedent in which any former president has been indicted on a charge of ordering a criminal investigation closed for improper reasons. “Usually as a lawyer you look at the precedent and it makes it easy, but it hasn’t come up before,” said Samuel W. Buell, a former federal prosecutor who led the Enron task force and now teaches white-collar criminal law at Duke University. “We are way outside the realm of normal executive branch behavior.” Federal law criminalizes actions that impede official investigations and can include actions that would otherwise be lawful if prosecutors can prove the defendant had corrupt intentions. Mr. Trump’s critics have been raising the specter of obstruction of justice since he fired the F.B.I. director, Mr. Comey, last month, then admitted on television that when he made that decision, he had been thinking about the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination by Trump campaign associates.Sunday July 23 by Nick Knox Now I know what you're thinking. But I don't care! It was a well-spent 6 hours! On a quest to deepen the fissure between me and my friends, I judged a USB flash drive that instantly plays an insulting video at max volume when booted from to be the best, most tact birthday present possible. I have about 6 hours until his party, so we gotta move fast, kids. With our goal of creating a flash drive that can be booted on as many different platforms as possible, there exists no greater weapon then the Linux sledgehammer of hardware support. Specifically, I've decided to use Arch Linux due to its potentially small initial resource footprint, expansive documentation, and relatively speedy installation in its distro-category (I'm scowling at you, Gentoo). Using Arch Linux also allows us to install only the bare minimum packages we need to accomplish the righteous duty we are vested with, and the distro has been proven to be very simple to install on removable media in the past. Furthermore, on the subject of compatibility, we'll be using the x32 bit version of Arch for both a smaller package footprint (no multilib) and slightly better platform support. To install the previously mentioned Arch Linux onto the flash drive, I ran into a slight speedbump: I only have one computer. Rather than have to turn off of my computer and (god forbid) stop playing the trash soundcloud rap I was listening to, I found that in an activated version of VMware Workstation 12 Pro, you can forward a physical disk into a virtual machine and give VMware exclusive access to it, allowing us to perform the installation virtually. My music is saved. Once we were booted into our installation media, partitioning the disk was very simple. Only I'm lying, and it wasn't simple at all, because I ended up doing a Hybrid UEFI GPT + BIOS GPT/MBR bootable partition scheme, for marginally better platform support. Notice that I made my data partition a mere 2GB, despite having 8GB to work with. This is so I can easily create a disk image with DD later, and only have to image the first 2GB. On the topic of file systems, despite the advice of the Arch Linux Wiki, I decided to use ext4 with journaling enabled, as I was not too concerned about lowering the life span of the flash storage, and was more worried about likely frequent, ungraceful dismounts of the drive corrupting the image. The next natural step was simply to pacstrap the system. In addition to the mandatory base packages, the only other packages I deemed necessary to install were mpv (for playing the video), xorg-server (as my robust display server), and xorg-xinit (to initialize xorg on boot). I also installed grub as my bootloader, and efibootmgr as well so as to support UEFI booting. Next, I set the root password and configured getty to automatically login upon boot. I also configured Grub to boot instantly rather than timeout after 5 seconds. The less prompts or interactions the better. None, in fact, is the very achievable goal. As a more significant note, I also configured mkinitcpio to load the block module directly after udev, so it would be able to access the flash drive media early enough to continue booting. And with that, I had enough pieces in place to at least reboot to make sure everything so far looked good. After rebooting without forgetting to configure Grub (totally didn't happen), the only thing left to do was add a command to our.bash_profile that will cause our video to instantly play full screen. It just so happens, given the packages I've already installed, such a command looks like this: Well isn't that easy! We just tell xinit that mpv is our initial desktop environment, and the fool believes us. Notice this command will automatically play video.mp4 from your home directory. How you choose to get your video payload of choice onto your system is up to you. (My method involved curling from Youtube, decidedly not recommended) After testing this command actually worked, I also noticed it would be a good idea to crank up the audio before finishing up. Arch Linux uses ALSA, which is muted by default. But one last alsamixer configuration later, and we're completely done! Tada! ...that was worth all 6 hours, right??? I'll post a download to the disk image when I find a place to put it. Worst comes to worst, I won't post it, and it won't matter, because making this was a piece of cake. As always, hit me up if you wanna talk about it.That’s the title of this article by Amy Davidson of the New Yorker. It would be difficult to deny that such an effort is underway, as Davidson shows. The effort makes great sense. From all that appears, Ivanka Trump has influence with her father. Along with her husband, who apparently has become very influential, she is viewed as a force for moderation in the White House. Naturally, then, international elites want to flatter her. They hope she will try to remain on their good side. The strategy is far shrewder than the approach of American leftists. They seek to demonize Ms. Trump and make her life miserable — whether it’s a loser shouting at her on an airplane (as she sits with her young children) or jerks trying to injure her business. Here, though, is a question for Amy Davidson and the New Yorker: Have they written about, or even noted, the effort to exalt Chelsea Clinton — as, for example, through an “achievement” award from Variety and Lifetime? Kevin Williamson has. So has Michelle Malkin. Williamson writes: Chelsea Clinton, most recently lionized on the cover of Variety, is a 37-year-old multi-millionaire... Judging from the evidence of her public statements, she has never had an original thought — it isn’t clear that she has had a thought at all. In tribute to her parents, she was given a series of lucrative sinecures, producing a smattering of sophomoric videos for NBC at a salary of $600,000 a year. She later went more formally into the family business, leaving her fake job at NBC for a fake job in her parents’ fake charity. She gave interviews about how she just couldn’t get interested in money and bought a $10 million Manhattan apartment that stretches for the better part of a city block. And, since her mother’s most recent foray into ignominious defeat, she has been inescapable: magazine covers, fawning interviews, talk of running her in New York’s 17th congressional district. The Democrats are doing their best to make Chelsea happen. As Williamson says, the effort here isn’t to influence presidential policy; it is to inflict Chelsea on American public life. With Ivanka, the flattery is defensive — to limit the “damage” President Trump will do to left-liberalism. With Chelsea, the media is on offense. It’s not trying to butter her up (she’s already buttered). Rather, it wants to produce a new champion of left-liberalism. I think the media is barking up the wrong tree. JOHN adds: All true! But a few liberals are horrified at the prospect of another generation of Clintons being inflicted on us. Like the author of this piece in Vanity Fair: “Please, God, Stop Chelsea Clinton From Whatever She Is Doing.”In one photo, a family of four smiles toward the camera on Easter morning, while just off to the side grandpa is seen chugging a can of beer. In another shot, a young boy happily blows out candles on his birthday cake as dad hoovers nearby wielding a hammer. Ah yes, family photographs. Not the glossy portraits of bliss proudly displayed in homes everywhere. But photographs that reveal a deeper truth about family, that perhaps it’s really, well, a little awkward. Mike Bender saw one of his own awkward family photographs five years ago when he returned home for his dad’s birthday. It was a shot from a skiing trip to Aspen and his family was posed on top of a mountain, their legs lifted in the air, Rockettes-style. He cringed, but then he and his writing partner, Doug Chernack, got the idea to launch a blog that would feature some of their awkward family photos, and those of their friends. They also invited visitors to send in their own examples. Next Sponsor “I was shocked that anyone was actually visiting the website in the beginning,” Bender recalled this week. “I don’t think we had much of a plan of where it would go.” Where it went was viral, as in a million hits by the end of the first week. Now Awkward Family Photos is a web sensation with a Facebook page that has close to two million likes. It’s also a marketable brand that produces books, calendars and a board game. Bender and Chernack have also teamed up with the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica for the first prominent exhibit of Awkward Family Photos. The exhibit features 200 of the most popular photographs from the Awkward collection, which are displayed in an upstairs gallery space. The photographs are divided into ten family themes such as Siblings, Family Portraits, Birthdays and Family Vacations. Even the frames for the exhibited works are awkward, intentionally so. Made of metal and wood, they are overly ornamental and add to the general sense that something is wrong with these pictures. The brightly-lit gallery space also forces viewer to stare at every inch of awkwardness contained in the works. The exhibit may be a bit of a stretch for the museum, which has as its mission to promote the history and culture of California. But who care? The exhibit is a hoot. It’s all here. Bad haircuts. Hideous matching outfits. Siblings choking siblings. Wailing babies. Scowling toddlers. And plenty of poor photo choices, such as the parents who decided to pose their toddler boy next to a Hoover vacuum his own height, his arm around the machine as if it’s some kind of human companion. “If a photo gives you any sense of discomfort, then generally it’s awkward,” Bender said. “There is some crack or chink in the family armor that we are seeing that gives us that discomfort.” Bender said that he and Chernack were clear from the beginning that the intent of their work was not to demean people. “It’s always been a celebration of awkwardness and family,” he says. All the photos on their site are from people who willingly submit them. “We want the families to be in on the joke. It’s a cathartic experience for them,” Bender says. The photos date from the 1950s to the present. The inelegance of some of the photos stems from the passage of time and changing fashion. Wild hair and outrageous clothing styles from the 1970’s and 1980’s are a popular theme. Some of the photos include brief stories explaining the circumstances behind how they were taken. Bender also writes titles and captions for the photos, and it’s clear that the aspiring screenwriter relishes the opportunity to utilize his writing skills. For example, in one hilariously stunning but ill-conceived montage, a mom and two kids are posed portrait-style, while dad’s giant head is superimposed over them, as if they are somehow housed in his cranium. It’s titled “Head of the Family.” Bender said that a small Wisconsin museum exhibited some of the photos two years ago, but this is the first large-scale project. He said they worked with Angie Behm, who is on the museum’s board, to make it happen. Bender said he liked the idea of the California Heritage Museum because it’s a house, and the photos are all family-themed. And he believes that the photos deserve to be in a museum. “From our perspective, some of these photographs felt like art to us,” he said.One of the seven victims wounded in a shooting at a Calgary New Year's Eve party has died, making this the city's first homicide of 2015, Calgary police confirmed Thursday night. The six remaining victims are in stable condition, with injuries ranging from minor to serious. Det. Steve Adair said city police received multiple 911 calls from the 1900 block of 36th Street S.W. at about 5:05 a.m. MT Thursday. Responding officers located five people in and around the house with possible gunshot wounds and Adair said two other people later showed up at local hospitals for treatment. Those injured in the shootings are both male and female, ranging in age from early 20s to early 30s. First homicide of 2015 CBC has confirmed the victim was 27-year-old Abdullahi Ahmed. Calgary Imam Abdi Hersy spoke to Ahmed's family, who was with him at the Foothills Medical Centre when he died. “They were there until the last moment and when he was pronounced dead and life support was taken off, that is when they left the hospital,” Hersy said. According to Hersy, Ahmed was originally from Toronto and had been in Calgary for six years. His mother was on her way from Toronto to Calgary on Thursday night. Hersy urges anyone in the Somali community with information to come forward and speak to police. “If we remain silent, then nothing will be done," he said. "Everybody has to be working side-by-side, hand-in-hand together with the authority, with the police and everybody to bring the criminals to pay their criminal act and to face justice.” Search for suspects Adair says police don't yet have a description or know the number of assailants. About 50 people were at or near the residence, and as many as 15 witnesses were taken to headquarters in a city transit bus to be interviewed. Police say witnesses have identified themselves and others at the party as members of African communities. Adair said police "are not getting a great deal of co-operation" from witnesses. At least two blocks were cordoned off, with numerous police cruisers in the area. Killarney is a quiet community just off 17th Avenue, which is a major Calgary thoroughfare. Duty Insp. Quinn Jacques says police have more questions than answers at the moment. Calgary police believe many more witnesses have yet to come forward and are asking members of the communities with information to contact police at 403-428-8161 or Crime Stoppers.After surging more than 75% so far this year, bitcoin prices could finish 2016 even higher, according to a panel of experts polled by CoinDesk. These market observers pointed to a range of factors when explaining their forecasts, including macroeconomic uncertainty, market dynamics and a currency war ignited by nations attempting to fix their exchange rates. Strong year for bitcoin Starting 2016 at roughly $430, the world’s largest and most well-known digital currency has had a great year so far, breaking through $500 in May and then surpassing both $600 and $700 in June, according to the CoinDesk USD Bitcoin Price Index (BPI). On 18th June, bitcoin prices reached $781.31, their highest price thus far in 2016, before falling back from this peak, additional BPI figures reveal. By the end of November, the digital currency was trading slightly north of $740, which represented a 72.5% year-to-date return for the first 11 months. Bitcoin prices pushed higher during the first few weeks of December, reaching an annual high of $788.49 on the 13th of that month. The digital currency’s price has fluctuated between $700 and $800 since roughly mid-November, and it will likely finish the year in the upper half of this range, according to most analysts reached by CoinDesk. Bullish market bets Petar Zivkovski, director of operations for leveraged bitcoin trading platform Whaleclub, emphasized bullish market dynamics when explaining his forecast that bitcoin prices would be
track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate.” Nice, a falsification dodge that won’t be falsifiable until we build a more extensive ocean monitoring system, but four years later what little evidence there is about the deep oceans is pointing in the other direction: they are cooling, not warming.. However that turns out, if the viability of the CO2-dominant theory hinges on a highly uncertain new speculation then the theory itself cannot be more certain than that new speculation. There have been a host of such rescue attempts: that Chinese coal burning is causing the pause, that the Montreal Protocol caused the pause, that volcanic aerosols caused the pause, that a slow down in Pacific trade winds caused the pause, and on and on. All are highly speculative, thus none can confer any significant level of certainty on the otherwise now highly uncertain IPCC attribution claim. Von Storch again: So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We’re facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years. That hasn’t happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) — a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year. But they didn’t confront it. They ignored this “serious scientific problem” and pretended that their human-warming theory had been strengthened, not weakened, by developments since AR4. This fixed determination to ignore the available reason and evidence is the opposite of science. The unscientific and anti-scientific nature of the IPCC’s attribution claims is unambiguous. They are asserting extreme and increasing certainty as the foundations of their CO2-dominant theory are on or past the verge of falsification. The only degree of certainty they can legitimately assess is very low. It is certainly not extremely high, and if Keating has any integrity he will admit it. Advertisements Share this: Print Email Twitter Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn RedditCLEVELAND, Ohio -- Johnny Manziel's association with LeBron James and Maverick Carter has already begun to pay off. Before leaving town for his summer break, Manziel spent Sunday afternoon filming his first commercial as a pro at Collinwood High School in Cleveland. The day-long shoot involved Manziel completing a pass to his go-to guy, a silver Nissan Altima. The endorsement for Collection Auto Group was arranged by Carter, James' childhood friend and partner in LRMR, the marketing firm that James and Manziel. "The connection actually started with Lebron and Maverick Carter,'' Bernie Moreno, owner of Collection Auto Group told cleveland.com. "They've been phenomenal clients of ours for the last nine years, even after he moved to Miami -- not only LeBron but his friends and associates. He's been a super-loyal client and it was a natural for when they got Johnny to really present it to us and give us that opportunity.'' So, will Manziel and Moreno conspire to bring James back to Cleveland? "If we only had that much power,'' Moreno said with a laugh. "I think it would be fantastic (to have both in town). I think there would be nothing better than that.'' Carter spent the day at Collinwood with Manziel during the shoot, sometimes tossing the football around with him on the football field and beating the heat on a 90-degree day. Neither was available for interviews, but Moreno couldn't have been happier with how the day went. "We're really excited,'' he said. "To have Johnny be able to do his first commercial in Cleveland with us, with our company, he's a really, really nice guy and he's doing a great job. He really cares about doing things well, and I think that if that translates it into his other job. I think he brings a credibility. We couldn't ask for a bigger endorser than that. "He's raising our entire community's level of expectations. I moved here nine years ago, and what I found is that Cleveland's esteem maybe needed to be raised and the reality is that Cleveland is a great city, a great place to live. What Johnny's doing is getting us all to realize, this isn't a second-rate city. It's really a great place to live.'' After spending the afternoon with Manziel, Moreno was struck by what a regular guy he was. "He has a lot of charisma,'' said Moreno. "He's a naturally nice guy. He cares deeply. Despite some of the fringy things you see out there, I think in his heart he's a really good person, the kind of person that just wants to win and bring a championship to Cleveland, there's no question in my mind about that.'' Manziel will do a few other marketing deals for Carter during his six weeks off and also spend time back home in Texas before returning to Cleveland for the start of training camp July 26.It started with a mother’s serious claim on Facebook and a call to police. The Santa Claus at College Mall in Bloomington, Ind., “spanked” her 5-year-old son, who has autism, the mom said in a Facebook post. It ended in uproar in the community – and Santa is threatening a lawsuit. Mother Jessica Chandler called police on Monday alleging that the Santa had assaulted her son, according to the Bloomington Herald-Times. She followed it up with a post on the mall’s Facebook page. “The Santa at the College Mall in Bloomington took it upon himself to spank [my son] because he wasn’t following directions,” she alleged in a now-deleted post. Screenshots of the post were saved online. Jeremy Schnepper, an attorney hired by the Santa, told TIME that his client, a longtime fixture at the mall, began getting threats after the allegations surfaced, forcing him to leave his job for the rest of the season. “I really don’t think Ms. Chandler understands what she’s done,” Schnepper said. “He’s absolutely devastated.” Schnepper said that his client, whose name was not released by police, did not spank the child. He added that his client is a real-bearded Santa and could have his career destroyed by the allegations. Chandler, who declined to comment to TIME, apparently walked backed the allegations against the Santa not long after she made them, the Herald-Times reported. On Tuesday, she told police that she “may have overreacted,” according to the newspaper. She also did not personally witness the incident, Schnepper said, and made her initial call after speaking with the boy’s caretaker. The caretaker told police that when the child laid down and decided he didn’t want to sit on Santa’s lap, the Santa playfully patted the boy on the bottom, the Herald-Times reported. Many in the Bloomington community have rallied around the Santa, who has played his role for years, and some have even attacked Chandler’s character. A number of onlookers have posted on social media denying any improper conduct, and Schnepper says crew members at the scene also denied the initial account. “I will stand by this Santa because he has been there for my students year after year and has been the good in their lives when they feel like the world around them is crumbling,” one user, a special education teacher, wrote on Facebook. Schnepper said he is planning to file a suit for defamation of character seeking monetary damages. However, “More than anything,” the lawyer said, “he’d appreciate an apology from Ms. Chandler.” Schnepper said that the company that runs the program will allow Santa to return to College Mall next year. Write to Jamie Ducharme at jamie.ducharme@time.com.We love podcasts here at PolicyGenius, and we wanted to make sure that everybody who has read our suggestions knows how to listen to them. If you already know how to listen to podcasts, head over to our lists to get some awesome new shows streaming into your ear: What the heck is a podcast? Podcasts are a lot like radio shows, except, like everything since the invention of the internet, way more convenient. (There are video podcasts, too, but they aren’t as popular as audio podcasts.) In fact, the majority of popular podcasts are either recorded versions of radio shows or created by radio veterans. NPR, WNYC, and KCRW are three radio companies that have produced hundreds of episodes of podcasts. Why is everyone talking about podcasts? Blogs and internet news sources have had a bit of a field day with podcasts recently, mostly because of the huge success of Serial, a spin-off podcast from the long-running This American Life radio show. While most have claimed that podcasting is going through a renaissance or has come back from the dead, neither is true. Podcasting has slowly been gaining popularity since Apple gave podcasts a section in iTunes in 2005. There was never a dip in listeners, only a dip in media interest. The fact that podcast listening is now at its highest levels is due to a number of factors, with perhaps the most important being smartphones. Before smartphones, downloading and listening to podcasts was a pain. You had to download them on your computer, connect your iPod or other MP3 player, and load them up. Now, you can get new episodes automatically downloaded to your iPhone or Android device. It’s never been easier to listen to podcasts, so a lot more people are listening to them. If it’s so easy, how come I don’t know how to listen to podcasts? For a long time, podcasts were really nerdy things. If you wanted to listen to them in anything other than iTunes, it was a pain. With smartphone apps, however, it’s a lot easier to get started. iPhone The most popular podcast app (and the easiest way to get started) is appropriately named "Podcasts." It’s built by Apple and is now automatically installed on iPhones and iPads with iOS 8. If you’re looking for a low-friction way to get started with podcasts, it’s hard to beat an app that’s free and pre-installed. However, it’s not nearly the best podcast app - reviews state that it constantly crashes, freezes, fails to download new episodes, and randomly stops playing in the middle of episodes. Our favorite alternative to Podcasts is Overcast. Overcast is free with a one-time in-app purchase of $4.99 for premium features. Why is it our favorite? It’s simple and clean enough for people who just want to listen to their podcasts, but has enough nerdy, under-the-hood features for people who want to dig deeper and customize their listening experience. Marco Arment, the developer of Overcast, made the app free so that every iPhone user had a stable alternative to Apple’s Podcasts, and we appreciate that logic. Other awesome podcast apps include Downcast ($2.99), Pocket Casts ($4.99, also available for Android), Instacast (free with multiple in-app purchases to unlock features), and Castro ($3.99). All of them have their own unique features. If you find you really enjoy podcasts but don’t like the app you’re using, we suggest trying out new apps to find the one that’s best for you. Android Pocket Casts ($3.99) is cross platform with both Android and iPhone apps. It’s one of the only podcast apps that sync across both platforms, so if you happen to have an iPhone and an Android device (a tablet, perhaps), Pocket Casts is the clear choice. BeyondPod ($6.99) is another popular podcast app. It has a seven day full-featured free trial. Another popular choice is Stitcher (free), which also lets you listen to live radio stations. At your computer: While most people listen to podcasts on the go, sometimes you want to listen to a show at your computer. For most people, iTunes is still the desktop audio player of choice (and if you have ever had an iPod or if you own a Mac, it’s probably already installed on your computer). Some smartphone apps have desktop counterparts, like Downcast, or web interfaces, like Overcast. Most podcasts also have their episodes available to stream online, either on their own websites or on Soundcloud. Ok, I have this app… now what? Add podcasts! Most podcast apps have a built-in directory, so all have you to do is search for the name of the show you’re looking for and hit "subscribe" (or "add" or "download" or whatever language your chosen app uses). Some apps even have recommendation engines that will suggest new shows to you based on what you already listen to. You should also check out our blog posts 21 podcasts to make you smarter, 9 podcasts to make you healthier, and 9 best podcasts about money and find podcasts from those lists to listen to. Photo: zoomarSony's PlayStation 3 has received approval from Chinese regulators on safety standards, leading to suggestions China may soon lift a ban on home gaming consoles. According to Reuters, the China Quality Certification Center gave two models of the PlayStation 3 approval this July, with all electronic devices needing to pass the body's safety standards before they can be launched on the Chinese market. The safety approval doesn't mean the console is coming to the country any time soon, however. "This does not mean that we have officially decided to enter Chinese market," a Sony spokesperson told Reuters. "We recognize that China is a promising market so we will continuously study the possibility." China's Ministry of Culture has banned gaming consoles in the country since 2000, saying they harm the well-being of young people, but Sony's latest console certification may signal a relaxation of the rules in the future. Nevertheless, gaming is still available in China: smartphone and tablet devices are increasingly being used by gamers, while online gaming remains popular in the region. Manufacturers are also able to launch gaming-style devices, as long as they're not branded as such. Lenovo, for instance, launched a motion-sensing device in China -- similar to that of Microsoft's Kinect -- marketing the product as an "exercise and entertainment machine," rather than a "games console". Launching the PlayStation in China would be a boon for Sony. The company has struggled over the past few years with falling sales that have hit its bottom line, and a range of job cuts and factory closures. However, the Tokyo-based electronics giant has seen its fiscal year picture brighten somewhat recently, thanks partly to its Sony Mobile division releasing a number of new smartphones.Republicans expressed more dismay Sunday about a recent clash outside a Turkish embassy between non-violent protestors and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's security team but disagreed about what the next step should be. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told “Fox News Sunday” that the incident Tuesday outside the Turkish ambassador's residence in Washington was “outrageous” and that the Trump administration has expressed “dismay” and summoned the Turkish ambassador to State Department headquarters. However, Tillerson said the administration will wait for the outcome of a department investigation, which will likely focus on cellphone videos of the bloody clash, before taking further action. “You don't need any further information, just look at the clip,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said later on the Fox show. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, McCain said the U.S. should “throw their ambassador the hell out” of the country. “Those were his people and Erdogan's people who were sent out there” to confront the protestors, McCain said Sunday. “That's not America.” Protestors said they suffered concussions and lost teeth in the melee, which occurred just hours after Erdogan visited President Trump at the White House. Turkey says the clash was the fault of demonstrators who aggressively provoked Turkish-Americans who had gathered to see Erdogan. The demonstrators said they were attacked by security forces as they peacefully protested. A video shared on social media Thursday showed Erdogan watching the melee. The State Department prior to Sunday called the clash "deeply disturbing" and insisted there would be a "thorough investigation" to hold those responsible accountable. Tom Shannon, the acting deputy secretary of State, met Wednesday with the Turkish ambassador, Serdar Kilic, to discuss the altercation. Turkey's U.S. embassy alleged the demonstrators were associated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade-long insurgency against Turkey and is considered a terrorist group by the United States. But Mehmet Yuksel, who arrived immediately after the incident and knows almost all of the little over a dozen demonstrators, said they weren't connected with that group. The victims included Americans, he said, and there was no justification for the attack. Yuksel said one demonstrator seen in video of the attack carrying a bullhorn and being repeatedly kicked is in his 60s. The man suffered loose and broken teeth and had to return Friday to a hospital, he said. Ceren Borazan, seen on video in a headlock, said in a Facebook post that the attack "popped a blood vessel in my eye." Among those charged in the incident are Jalal Kheirabadi, 42, of Fairfax, Va., He is charged with assaulting a police officer. Kheirabadi says he was a victim, not an aggressor. Tuesday's incident isn't the first time violence accompanied a visit by a Turkish leader to the U.S. Last year, violence erupted outside Erdogan's appearance at a nuclear security summit in Washington, and there have been scuffles at the United Nations. The Trump administration has acknowledged briefly holding two members of Erdogan's detail. A U.S. official who wasn't authorized to comment publicly on the matter and requested anonymity said the guards were released under a globally recognized custom under which nations don't arrest or detain visiting heads of state and members of their delegations. The guards are back in Turkey with Erdogan, an authoritarian leader who survived a 2016 coup attempt and on Sunday was reelected as the leader of Turkey's ruling party. The Associated Press contributed to this report.The plot of Zach Braff's new movie, Wish I Was Here, is indebted to the structure of the 1927 talkie sensation The Jazz Singer, which told the story of an entertainer (Al Jolson) choosing between the religious way of his father or secular life. The script also refers to an idea that dates back to the silent-movie era: the alleged Jewish control of Hollywood. At one point in Wish I Was Here, the main character's adolescent daughter Gracie is asked by a gentile neighbour why she had to drop out of private school, and she explains the family's straitened means. "But I thought the Jews ran Hollywood?" says the boy. "Me too," says Gracie mournfully. (The thought might have occurred to Braff, who is Jewish yet was compelled to finance his movie outside the studio system.) That old "Jews control Hollywood" saw just won't go away. It was a favourite theme of the ravingly anti-Semitic claims by the Henry Ford-owned Dearborn Independent back in the 1920s. Every few years, it pops up again. Just last month, English actor Gary Oldman was quoted in Playboy magazine saying that Mel Gibson was being punished "in a town that's run by Jews" for his infamous anti-Semitic comments in 2006. Oldman has since apologized. Story continues below advertisement And last year, the Academy Awards and host Seth MacFarlane were criticized by the Anti-Defamation League (a century-old organization that was created to refute these kinds of attacks) and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for the use of "Jews run Hollywood" jokes. Jokes about Jewish control and a "secret synagogue," they said, perpetuated a dangerous negative stereotype about Jews in Hollywood for a global audience. There was no Jewish media consensus on the risk of MacFarlane's jokes. The columnist in the right-of-centre Commentary magazine was more offended by the appearance of the U.S. First Lady, Michelle Obama, on the show. The Jewish Journal dismissed the condemnations as missing the satiric point. In Jewish Daily Forward, J.J. Goldberg (author of Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment) noted that with Jews occupying 84 per cent of the president and chairman jobs at the major studios, the controversy raised an interesting discussion. What is agreed is that Jewish people hold many important jobs in Hollywood. The Anti-Defamation League website quotes a 1995 article by Steven G. Kellman, a professor at the University of Texas in San Antonio, who at one point writes: "Boosters and anti-Semites agree: Jews have been prominent and predominant in all phases of the [motion picture] business: production, distribution and exhibition." Kellman's conclusion was that "though individual Jews control Hollywood, Jewishness does not." Historically, though, the studio owners' Jewishness did influence movie content, though hardly in a pro-Jewish way. The argument of Neal Gabler's 1988 book An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (later made into a Canadian-produced documentary called Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream) is that the uneducated Eastern European merchants who came to California in the late-1910s and '20s, and who established the major Hollywood studios, had an agenda. They wanted to excel in an unrestricted line of enterprise and keep the anti-Semites at bay. So they "created their own America," that was much more tolerant, integrated and idealistic than the social reality. As a compromise, they largely effaced representations of Jewish life in America. In the post-Second World War era, institutionalized anti-Semitism decreased and Jewish artists came out of hiding through the sixties and '70s. Jewish directors (Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg) and stars (Elliot Gould, Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman, George Segal) emerged into the spotlight, even as the movie business became departments of multinational conglomerates. And the "Jewish control of Hollywood" canard seemed to belong to the sort of conspiracy paranoia associated with people who wear tinfoil hats. And of course there was Marlon Brando. In a 1996 interview with Larry King, Brando, a long-time supporter of Jewish causes, complained about how the studios perpetrated negative stereotypes of some minorities, and asserted once again that "Hollywood is run by Jews." He then cried the next day when he apologized for his comment. To put the matter to rest, 60 Minutes even did an investigation on the subject of Jewish Hollywood stereotypes. Screenwriter-actor and conservative Ben Stein wrote for E! Online about how he had been asked by 60 Minutes to refute the charges. The editor said their research showed that "only" about 60 per cent of the top positions in Hollywood were occupied by Jews, but Stein said that that if Jews, who represent about 2.5 per cent of the U.S. population had 60 per cent of the top movie jobs, that was certainly prominent. His comment, he says, was not politically correct enough for the program. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement The more important question, Stein asked, was why does anyone care? "I marvel that when people criticize the auto industry for making trucks that catch fire when they are struck, and cars that turn over on a turn, no one ever says, 'The gentile auto industry.'" This point was made again, with more satirical bite, in 2008 by columnist Joel Stein (no relation), writing in the The Los Angeles Times (Who Runs Hollywood? C'Mon!). Stein begins by describing how upset he was by a poll that shows only 22 per cent of Americans now believe "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," down from a lofty 50 per cent in 1964. "As a proud Jew," complains Stein, "I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you'd be flipping between The 700 Club and Davey and Goliath on TV all day." After fencing with Anti-Defamation League head Abraham Foxman about why the phrase "Jews control Hollywood" is considered dangerous in a world where most Americans still view Hollywood "values" with deep suspicion, Stein ends his column with this mischievous flip of the bird. "But I don't care if Americans think we're running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them." Both Joel and Ben Stein's articles have been widely reprinted on the Internet. The bad news, however, is they've mostly been reprinted on anti-Semitic websites. So now we know who cares. And we also now know that neither candour nor satire can effectively deter hostile stupidity.Here are your Apple rumors and news items for Thursday: Canon Coupling: The two new high-definition cameras in the iPad 2 aren’t the only exciting photography-related features coming from Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). The website CanonRumors said Wednesday that it has received information that Apple and Canon (NYSE:CAJ) are working on a still-unspecified collaboration. The report speculates that the two companies will work on Apple’s Final Cut Pro 8 video-editing software. AppleInsider meanwhile speculates that the success of Apple’s Aperture app, an $80 photo-editing software suite that has been the Mac App Store’s No. 1 grossing product, would suggest that the two companies will promote both the app and Canon’s cameras. Where Pro Sports Happen: Apple released the 4.3 update for its iOS mobile operating system on Wednesday, two days earlier than expected. The update brings a number of new features for the iPod Touch, iPhone 4, original iPad, and Apple’s oft-overlooked set-top box, the Apple TV. The Apple TV, in particular, got a compelling selection of new features that could boost its marketability. Both the NBA and MLB are bringing live sporting events to Apple TV. The MLB.TV addition brings on-demand baseball games as well as access to stats, scores, and standings. The NBA will bring its League Pass Broadband subscription service to the device, allowing subscribers to watch live games through Apple TV. These are certainly appealing to a certain type of customer, but if Apple really wants to leverage professional sports as a selling point for the Apple TV, they’ll have to integrate fantasy league tools from Disney’s (NYSE:DIS) ESPN.com and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) Sports. SXSW’s Apple Store: If the massive variety of independent music, movies, art, and video games descending on Austin, Texas for the SXSW festival wasn’t enough to guarantee its cool factor, the temporary South by Southwest Apple Store opening on Friday should be the proverbial icing on the cake. After all, how can everyone at the conference be cool unless they’re all able to pick up an iPad 2 on the day it comes out? Apple has opened its temporary retail outlet in downtown Austin solely for SXSW. Apple already has two permanent retail stores in the city. As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.Twinkie Bundt Inspired by, but not the recipe from, Pure Vanilla Cake 1 cup (225 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 3/4 cups (350 grams) granulated sugar 2 large eggs 2 large yolks (save the 2 whites for filling, below) 1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon fine sea salt or table salt 2 1/2 cups (315 grams) all-purpose flour 1 cup (235 ml) buttermilk Filling * 2 large egg whites 2/3 cup (135 grams) granulated sugar 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar 1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract Heat your oven to 350°F. Generously grease a 10-cup Bundt pan, either with butter or a nonstick spray; I like to use a butter-flour spray and go over the pan twice. Bundts are sticky! Fortuntely, this cake is not. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, scraping down bowl between each, and then yolks. Add vanilla. Sprinkle batter with salt and baking powder and mix briefly to combine. Add about 1/3 of flour, mix to combine, then half of buttermilk, mixing again just to combine, repeating with next 1/3 of flour, remaining buttermilk then remaining flour. Dollop batter into prepared pan and spread so that the top is smooth. Bake in heated oven for 40 to 45 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into cake comes out batter-free. Let cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert onto rack and let cool absolutely completely. You can hasten this along in the fridge; it will take about 45 minutes. When cake is completely and totally cool, invert it again. If your cake had domed quite a bit in the oven, you can use a serrated knife to level it a little. Then, using a melon baller (my first choice), small spoon or paring knife, scoop out several mounds of cake through the underside, being sure not to cut through top or sides of cake. If using a traditional bundt shape (as I show), I used the larger bloops in the pattern (there are 8) for mine. What happens to the cake bellies you scoop out is between you and your gods. Combine egg whites, sugar and cream of tartar in a heatproof bowl and place this over a pot of gently simmering water. Whisk constantly until sugar dissolves and whites are lukewarm to touch, about 3 minutes. Remove bowl from simmering water and use an electric mixer to beat with a whisk attachment on low speed, gradually increasing to high, until stiff, glossy peaks form, about 4 to 7 minutes. Add vanilla and mix to combine. Scoop filling into a large piping bag fitted with a large, round tip or plastic bag with the corner cut off and fill the indentations of the cake. Center your cake platter over the cake and invert your filled cake back onto it. If desired, dust lightly with powdered sugar before serving. This cake keeps at room temperature for up to 3 days. I keep mine under a cake dome. * A few ways to approach the filling: Make the recipe as above. The filling will be a bit soft, but very marshmallow-like. Plus, I’ve engineered the cake to give you the spare egg whites you’ll need. Go in a different path. The next two things I’d have auditioned as fillings are Swiss Meringue Buttercream, which I know to be fairly stiff (I’d halve the 4 egg white-level frosting, and see if I could get away with just 8 tablespoons butter) or, as suggested by a clever commenter on Instagram, ABC Kitchen via Martha Stewart’s Marshmallow Frosting which is set with gelatin, which is, I think, exactly what this cake would need as you could keep the great marshmallow frosting flavor but not the softness. Get real and just buy a jar of marshmallow fluff. Seriously, Sever knew what she was talking about. In her recipe, you beat a 7.5-ounce jar with a 1/2 cup softened butter and 1 teaspoon vanilla and I believe many headaches can be avoided this way. Also: yum.ASUS ROG Summer runner ups ENCORE have now officially decided to stick together as a team and are looking for organizational support. Finland's previous long term top team ENCE disbanded, after nine months in the organization, at the end of June when Aleksi "allu" Jalli left the squad to team up with mousesports. Joona "natu" Leppänen quickly created ENCORE to attend ASUS ROG Summer in Helsinki and to take part in ESEA Main, but the team wasn't build as a long-term project at the time. KHRN from Curse.EU KHRN & natu are once again playing together in a team ENCORE finished second at ASUS ROG Summer after a semi-final win against Nostalgie, falling short against Danish myRevenge in the grand final to settle for $3,000 for prizes. The team's captain natu gave HLTV.org an official statement regarding their decision to give it a go as a team: "It's come time to confirm what people have probably figured by now - we've decided to stick together with the lineup that was initially built just to attend the ASUS RoG event few weeks back. We had a lot of fun playing together and things seemed to go into the right direction with very minimal preparation which initiated the idea of sticking to it and continue to compete on the international circuit," natu told HLTV.org. "We are currently looking into opportunites to represent an organisation but taking our time to figure out what the right fit for us would be. As everyone else, we'll be looking to compete in any online and lan tournaments the future brings us." ENCORE will therefore continue with the following roster: ENCORE are currently seeking organizational support while competing in ESEA Main, where they hold a 7-2 record. You can reach them via Leppänen's Facebook page.Remember Blur vs Oasis, the chart battle that celebrates its 20th anniversary this month? For those that answered “no”, here’s a primer: to massively hype two below-par singles, the bands’ respective labels decided to release both on the same day, pitting them against each other. For anyone under 30, it was mandatory to pick a side - conscientious objection was not an option. This indie version of a playground scrap caused a sensation, utterly captivating people. NME called it the “British Heavyweight Championship”, making it sound like Ali vs Frazier, rather than some Manc oiks saying nasty things about some Southern fops. It even made the main headline on the actual TV news, forcing seasoned pop-hater John Humphrys to pretend he cared about it. In my house, sides were taken and lines were drawn. My sister chose Blur and I, in the folly of youth, chose Oasis. So at around 6.55pm on Sunday 20th August 1995, as the Radio 1 chart show played Blur’s Country House as the nation’s number one, rather than Oasis’s Roll With It, I suddenly realised I was on the wrong side of history. Today, I feel like Donald Rumsfeld probably does when he sees that photo of him shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. Or how Noel Gallagher feels when he remembers he willingly attended Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia canapé and cronyism festival. Like them, I flirted with the devil and I’m truly ashamed, because 20 years on, Oasis are the worst thing that’s ever happened to Britain.Rio Grande: In High Demand Will Rogers once described the Rio Grande as “the only river I know of that is in need of irrigating,” a prescient observation considering how fragmented this fabled river has become. At nearly 1,900 miles, the Rio Grande is runner-up only to the combined Missouri-Mississippi system in length within the continental U.S. Or it would be, if it still flowed the length of its channel. From its headwaters in the San Juan Range of the Colorado Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico at Brownsville, Texas, the Rio Grande draws from 11 percent of the continental US, with much of that being drought-prone land. That vulnerability is compounded by scores of dams and irrigation diversions, which has left significant portions of the river dry in recent years. In 2001 the river failed to reach the Gulf of Mexico for the first time. In 2002, it happened again. Yet segments of the Rio Grande remain among the most spectacular in America, including two designated National Wild & Scenic River stretches, a pair of National Monuments, and a National Park. After wending its way through some of the top trout waters in southern Colorado, the Rio Grande tumbles into a cavity of sheer-walled canyons carved from the volcanic rock of New Mexico’s Taos Pueblo. The box canyons of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, dedicated in 2013, offer dramatic wilderness and important bird sanctuary surrounding some of the finest whitewater in the West for skilled paddlers, establishing an outdoor recreational mecca that extends downstream along 74 miles of Wild & Scenic river. It’s a solid 600 miles between rapids until the river reaches its lower Wild & Scenic designation surrounding Big Bend National Park along the Texas border with Mexico. Despite being redirected and sucked dry for hundreds of miles before reaching El Paso, the river gets replenished by Mexico’s Rio Conchos just upstream from Big Bend’s iconic eponymous S-curve enough to feed a 191-mile segment of Wild & Scenic river, established in 1978. Towering limestone walls stretching up to 1,500 feet in the park’s Santa Elena and Mariscal canyons provide much of the scenery amidst a remote, rugged wilderness that extends far beyond Big Bend’s 118-mile river boundary. The Backstory [clickToTweet tweet=”Rio Grande is a Southwestern treasure that could become a legend in its own time. #WeAreRivers” quote=”The Rio Grande is a Southwestern treasure that could become a legend in its own time. “] Water supply within the Rio Grande drainage is dwindling. The International Boundary and Water Commission was forced to lease irrigation water to grow cottonwood trees for habitat restoration along the riverbank below Elephant Butte Dam in central New Mexico. Diversions for municipal and agricultural use already claim some 95 percent of the Rio Grande’s average annual flow, and Elephant Butte’s gates now only open during a short irrigation season. Increasingly frequent droughts in the face of climate change and growing populations around Albuquerque and El Paso could exacerbate the problem. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation estimates the upper Rio Grande watershed will collect 30 percent less water by the end of the century, as annual snowpacks shrink and evaporation rates increase. The river’s tragic story is perhaps best told from the perspective of the endangered Rio Grande silvery minnow in New Mexico, the final survivor of a suite of small native minnow species once found throughout the river. Reduced to just 5 percent of its former range by dams and diversions, it survives only in the middle section of the river, near Albuquerque. The last minnow may soon be driven from the river by the growing demand for water in the face of drought. The Future Because of its listing under the Endangered Species Act, the Silvery Minnow has long been a source of conflict, including litigation. But it does manage to buy some time by keeping water in the basin that otherwise wouldn’t likely be there. Albuquerque has begun to realize the benefits of a healthy Rio Grande for drinking water, recreation, and the community at large, and is taking proactive steps to conserve its water
9eb9738 100644 +--- a/src/rsn_supp/tdls.c ++++ b/src/rsn_supp/tdls.c +@@ -112,6 +112,7 @@ struct wpa_tdls_peer { + u8 tk[16]; /* TPK-TK; assuming only CCMP will be used / + } tpk; + int tpk_set; ++ int tk_set; / TPK-TK configured to the driver / + int tpk_success; + int tpk_in_progress; + +@@ -192,6 +193,20 @@ static int wpa_tdls_set_key(struct wpa_sm sm, struct wpa_tdls_peer peer) + u8 rsc[6]; + enum wpa_alg alg; + ++ if (peer->tk_set) { ++ / ++ * This same TPK-TK has already been configured to the driver ++ * and this new configuration attempt (likely due to an ++ * unexpected retransmitted frame) would result in clearing ++ * the TX/RX sequence number which can break security, so must ++ * not allow that to happen. ++ / ++ wpa_printf(MSG_INFO, "TDLS: TPK-TK for the peer " MACSTR ++ " has already been configured to the driver - do not reconfigure", ++ MAC2STR(peer->addr)); ++ return -1; ++ } ++ + os_memset(rsc, 0, 6); + + switch (peer->cipher) { +@@ -209,12 +224,15 @@ static int wpa_tdls_set_key(struct wpa_sm sm, struct wpa_tdls_peer peer) + return -1; + } + ++ wpa_printf(MSG_DEBUG, "TDLS: Configure pairwise key for peer " MACSTR, ++ MAC2STR(peer->addr)); + if (wpa_sm_set_key(sm, alg, peer->addr, -1, 1, + rsc, sizeof(rsc), peer->tpk.tk, key_len) < 0) { + wpa_printf(MSG_WARNING, "TDLS: Failed to set TPK to the " + "driver"); + return -1; + } ++ peer->tk_set = 1; + return 0; + } + +@@ -696,7 +714,7 @@ static void wpa_tdls_peer_clear(struct wpa_sm sm, struct wpa_tdls_peer peer) + peer->cipher = 0; + peer->qos_info = 0; + peer->wmm_capable = 0; +- peer->tpk_set = peer->tpk_success = 0; ++ peer->tk_set = peer->tpk_set = peer->tpk_success = 0; + peer->chan_switch_enabled = 0; + os_memset(&peer->tpk, 0, sizeof(peer->tpk)); + os_memset(peer->inonce, 0, WPA_NONCE_LEN); +@@ -1159,6 +1177,7 @@ skip_rsnie: + wpa_tdls_peer_free(sm, peer); + return -1; + } ++ peer->tk_set = 0; / A new nonce results in a new TK / + wpa_hexdump(MSG_DEBUG, "TDLS: Initiator Nonce for TPK handshake", + peer->inonce, WPA_NONCE_LEN); + os_memcpy(ftie->Snonce, peer->inonce, WPA_NONCE_LEN); +@@ -1751,6 +1770,19 @@ static int wpa_tdls_addset_peer(struct wpa_sm sm, struct wpa_tdls_peer peer, + } + + ++static int tdls_nonce_set(const u8 nonce) ++{ ++ int i; ++ ++ for (i = 0; i < WPA_NONCE_LEN; i++) { ++ if (nonce[i]) ++ return 1; ++ } ++ ++ return 0; ++} ++ ++ + static int wpa_tdls_process_tpk_m1(struct wpa_sm sm, const u8 src_addr, + const u8 buf, size_t len) + { +@@ -2004,7 +2036,8 @@ skip_rsn: + peer->rsnie_i_len = kde.rsn_ie_len; + peer->cipher = cipher; + +- if (os_memcmp(peer->inonce, ftie->Snonce, WPA_NONCE_LEN)!= 0) { ++ if (os_memcmp(peer->inonce, ftie->Snonce, WPA_NONCE_LEN)!= 0 \|\| ++!tdls_nonce_set(peer->inonce)) { + / + * There is no point in updating the RNonce for every obtained + * TPK M1 frame (e.g., retransmission due to timeout) with the +@@ -2020,6 +2053,7 @@ skip_rsn: + "TDLS: Failed to get random data for responder nonce"); + goto error; + } ++ peer->tk_set = 0; /* A new nonce results in a new TK / + } + + #if 0 +-- +2.7.4 + new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..85ea1d62bcf --- /dev/null +++ b/ diff --git a/net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/files/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0007-WNM-Ignore-WNM-Sleep-Mode-Response-without-pending-r.patch b/net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/files/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0007-WNM-Ignore-WNM-Sleep-Mode-Response-without-pending-r.patchnew file mode 100644index 00000000000..85ea1d62bcf--- /dev/null+++ b/ net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/files/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0007-WNM-Ignore-WNM-Sleep-Mode-Response-without-pending-r.patch @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +From 53c5eb58e95004f86e65ee9fbfccbc291b139057 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 +From: Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi> +Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2017 11:25:02 +0300 +Subject: [PATCH 7/8] WNM: Ignore WNM-Sleep Mode Response without pending + request + +Commit 03ed0a52393710be6bdae657d1b36efa146520e5 ('WNM: Ignore WNM-Sleep +Mode Response if WNM-Sleep Mode has not been used') started ignoring the +response when no WNM-Sleep Mode Request had been used during the +association. This can be made tighter by clearing the used flag when +successfully processing a response. This adds an additional layer of +protection against unexpected retransmissions of the response frame. + +Signed-off-by: Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi> +--- + wpa_supplicant/wnm_sta.c \| 4 +++- + 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) + +diff --git a/wpa_supplicant/wnm_sta.c b/wpa_supplicant/wnm_sta.c +index 1b3409c..67a07ff 100644 +--- a/wpa_supplicant/wnm_sta.c ++++ b/wpa_supplicant/wnm_sta.c +@@ -260,7 +260,7 @@ static void ieee802_11_rx_wnmsleep_resp(struct wpa_supplicant wpa_s, + + if (!wpa_s->wnmsleep_used) { + wpa_printf(MSG_DEBUG, +- "WNM: Ignore WNM-Sleep Mode Response frame since WNM-Sleep Mode has not been used in this association"); ++ "WNM: Ignore WNM-Sleep Mode Response frame since WNM-Sleep Mode operation has not been requested"); + return; + } + +@@ -299,6 +299,8 @@ static void ieee802_11_rx_wnmsleep_resp(struct wpa_supplicant wpa_s, + return; + } + ++ wpa_s->wnmsleep_used = 0; ++ + if (wnmsleep_ie->status == WNM_STATUS_SLEEP_ACCEPT \|\| + wnmsleep_ie->status == WNM_STATUS_SLEEP_EXIT_ACCEPT_GTK_UPDATE) { + wpa_printf(MSG_DEBUG, "Successfully recv WNM-Sleep Response " +-- +2.7.4 + new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..b9678f6815a --- /dev/null +++ b/ diff --git a/net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/files/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0008-FT-Do-not-allow-multiple-Reassociation-Response-fram.patch b/net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/files/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0008-FT-Do-not-allow-multiple-Reassociation-Response-fram.patchnew file mode 100644index 00000000000..b9678f6815a--- /dev/null+++ b/ net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/files/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0008-FT-Do-not-allow-multiple-Reassociation-Response-fram.patch @@ -0,0 +1,82 @@ +From b372ab0b7daea719749194dc554b26e6367603f2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 +From: Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi> +Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2017 12:06:37 +0300 +Subject: [PATCH 8/8] FT: Do not allow multiple Reassociation Response frames + +The driver is expected to not report a second association event without +the station having explicitly request a new association. As such, this +case should not be reachable. However, since reconfiguring the same +pairwise or group keys to the driver could result in nonce reuse issues, +be extra careful here and do an additional state check to avoid this +even if the local driver ends up somehow accepting an unexpected +Reassociation Response frame. + +Signed-off-by: Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi> +--- + src/rsn_supp/wpa.c \| 3 +++ + src/rsn_supp/wpa_ft.c \| 8 ++++++++ + src/rsn_supp/wpa_i.h \| 1 + + 3 files changed, 12 insertions(+) + +diff --git a/src/rsn_supp/wpa.c b/src/rsn_supp/wpa.c +index 0550a41..2a53c6f 100644 +--- a/src/rsn_supp/wpa.c ++++ b/src/rsn_supp/wpa.c +@@ -2440,6 +2440,9 @@ void wpa_sm_notify_disassoc(struct wpa_sm sm) + #ifdef CONFIG_TDLS + wpa_tdls_disassoc(sm); + #endif /* CONFIG_TDLS / ++#ifdef CONFIG_IEEE80211R ++ sm->ft_reassoc_completed = 0; ++#endif / CONFIG_IEEE80211R / + + / Keys are not needed in the WPA state machine anymore / + wpa_sm_drop_sa(sm); +diff --git a/src/rsn_supp/wpa_ft.c b/src/rsn_supp/wpa_ft.c +index 205793e..d45bb45 100644 +--- a/src/rsn_supp/wpa_ft.c ++++ b/src/rsn_supp/wpa_ft.c +@@ -153,6 +153,7 @@ static u8 wpa_ft_gen_req_ies(struct wpa_sm sm, size_t len, + u16 capab; + + sm->ft_completed = 0; ++ sm->ft_reassoc_completed = 0; + + buf_len = 2 + sizeof(struct rsn_mdie) + 2 + sizeof(struct rsn_ftie) + + 2 + sm->r0kh_id_len + ric_ies_len + 100; +@@ -681,6 +682,11 @@ int wpa_ft_validate_reassoc_resp(struct wpa_sm sm, const u8 ies, + return -1; + } + ++ if (sm->ft_reassoc_completed) { ++ wpa_printf(MSG_DEBUG, "FT: Reassociation has already been completed for this FT protocol instance - ignore unexpected retransmission"); ++ return 0; ++ } ++ + if (wpa_ft_parse_ies(ies, ies_len, &parse) < 0) { + wpa_printf(MSG_DEBUG, "FT: Failed to parse IEs"); + return -1; +@@ -781,6 +787,8 @@ int wpa_ft_validate_reassoc_resp(struct wpa_sm sm, const u8 ies, + return -1; + } + ++ sm->ft_reassoc_completed = 1; ++ + if (wpa_ft_process_gtk_subelem(sm, parse.gtk, parse.gtk_len) < 0) + return -1; + +diff --git a/src/rsn_supp/wpa_i.h b/src/rsn_supp/wpa_i.h +index 41f371f..56f88dc 100644 +--- a/src/rsn_supp/wpa_i.h ++++ b/src/rsn_supp/wpa_i.h +@@ -128,6 +128,7 @@ struct wpa_sm { + size_t r0kh_id_len; + u8 r1kh_id[FT_R1KH_ID_LEN]; + int ft_completed; ++ int ft_reassoc_completed; + int over_the_ds_in_progress; + u8 target_ap[ETH_ALEN]; /* over-the-DS target AP / + int set_ptk_after_assoc; +-- +2.7.4 + new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..51b710f07c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/ diff --git a/net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-2.6-r3.ebuild b/net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-2.6-r3.ebuildnew file mode 100644index 00000000000..51b710f07c6--- /dev/null+++ b/ net-wireless/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-2.6-r3.ebuild @@ -0,0 +1,397 @@ +# Copyright 1999-2017 Gentoo Foundation +# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 + +EAPI=6 + +inherit eutils qmake-utils systemd toolchain-funcs + +DESCRIPTION="IEEE 802.1X/WPA supplicant for secure wireless transfers" +HOMEPAGE="http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/" +SRC_URI="http://hostap.epitest.fi/releases/${P}.tar.gz" +LICENSE="\|\| ( GPL-2 BSD )" + +SLOT="0" +KEYWORDS="~alpha ~amd64 ~arm ~arm64 ~ia64 ~mips ~ppc ~ppc64 ~sparc ~x86 ~x86-fbsd" +IUSE="ap dbus gnutls eap-sim fasteap +hs2-0 libressl p2p ps3 qt5 readline selinux smartcard ssl tdls uncommon-eap-types wimax wps kernel_linux kernel_FreeBSD" +REQUIRED_USE="fasteap? (!ssl ) smartcard? ( ssl )" + +CDEPEND="dbus? ( sys-apps/dbus ) + kernel_linux? ( + dev-libs/libnl:3 + net-wireless/crda + eap-sim? ( sys-apps/pcsc-lite ) + ) +!kernel_linux? ( net-libs/libpcap ) + qt5? ( + dev-qt/qtcore:5 + dev-qt/qtgui:5 + dev-qt/qtsvg:5 + dev-qt/qtwidgets:5 + ) + readline? ( + sys-libs/ncurses:0= + sys-libs/readline:0= + ) + ssl? ( + gnutls? ( + dev-libs/libgcrypt:0= + net-libs/gnutls:= + ) +!gnutls? ( +!libressl? ( dev-libs/openssl:0= ) + libressl? ( dev-libs/libressl:0= ) + ) + ) +!ssl? ( dev-libs/libtommath ) +" +DEPEND="${CDEPEND} + virtual/pkgconfig +" +RDEPEND="${CDEPEND} + selinux? ( sec-policy/selinux-networkmanager ) +" + +S="${WORKDIR}/${P}/${PN}" + +Kconfig_style_config() { + #param 1 is CONFIG_ item + #param 2 is what to set it = to, defaulting in y + CONFIG_PARAM="${CONFIG_HEADER:-CONFIG_}$1" + setting="${2:-y}" + + if [! $setting = n ]; then + #first remove any leading "# " if $2 is not n + sed -i "/^# $CONFIG_PARAM=/s/^# //".config \|\| echo "Kconfig_style_config error uncommenting $CONFIG_PARAM" + #set item = $setting (defaulting to y) + sed -i "/^$CONFIG_PARAM/s/=./=$setting/".config \|\| echo "Kconfig_style_config error setting $CONFIG_PARAM=$setting" + else + #ensure item commented out + sed -i "/^$CONFIG_PARAM/s/$CONFIG_PARAM/# $CONFIG_PARAM/".config \|\| echo "Kconfig_style_config error commenting $CONFIG_PARAM" + fi +} + +pkg_setup() { + if use ssl ; then + if use gnutls && use libressl ; then + elog "You have both 'gnutls' and 'libressl' USE flags enabled: defaulting to USE=\"gnutls\"" + fi + else + elog "You have'ssl' USE flag disabled: defaulting to internal TLS implementation" + fi +} + +src_prepare() { + default + + # net/bpf.h needed for net-libs/libpcap on Gentoo/FreeBSD + sed -i \ + -e "s:$#include <pcap\.h>$:#include <net/bpf.h> \1:" \ +../src/l2_packet/l2_packet_freebsd.c \|\| die + + # People seem to take the example configuration file too literally (bug #102361) + sed -i \ + -e "s:^$opensc_engine_path$:#\1:" \ + -e "s:^$pkcs11_engine_path$:#\1:" \ + -e "s:^$pkcs11_module_path$:#\1:" \ + wpa_supplicant.conf \|\| die + + # Change configuration to match Gentoo locations (bug #143750) + sed -i \ + -e "s:/usr/lib/opensc:/usr/$(get_libdir):" \ + -e "s:/usr/lib/pkcs11:/usr/$(get_libdir):" \ + wpa_supplicant.conf \|\| die + + # systemd entries to D-Bus service files (bug #372877) + echo 'SystemdService=wpa_supplicant.service' \ + \| tee -a dbus/.service >/dev/null \|\| die + + cd "${WORKDIR}/${P}" \|\| die + + if use wimax; then + # generate-libeap-peer.patch comes before + # fix-undefined-reference-to-random_get_bytes.patch + eapply "${FILESDIR}/${P}-generate-libeap-peer.patch" + + # multilib-strict fix (bug #373685) + sed -e "s/\/usr\/lib/\/usr\/$(get_libdir)/" -i src/eap_peer/Makefile \|\| die + fi + + # bug (320097) + eapply "${FILESDIR}/${P}-do-not-call-dbus-functions-with-NULL-path.patch" + + # bug (596332) + eapply "${FILESDIR}/${P}-libressl.patch" + + # https://w1.fi/security/2017-1/wpa-packet-number-reuse-with-replayed-messages.txt + eapply "${FILESDIR}/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0001-hostapd-Avoid-key-reinstallation-in-FT-handshake.patch" + eapply "${FILESDIR}/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0002-Prevent-reinstallation-of-an-already-in-use-group-ke.patch" + eapply "${FILESDIR}/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0003-Extend-protection-of-GTK-IGTK-reinstallation-of-WNM-.patch" + eapply "${FILESDIR}/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0004-Prevent-installation-of-an-all-zero-TK.patch" + eapply "${FILESDIR}/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0005-Fix-PTK-rekeying-to-generate-a-new-ANonce.patch" + eapply "${FILESDIR}/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0006-TDLS-Reject-TPK-TK-reconfiguration.patch" + eapply "${FILESDIR}/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0007-WNM-Ignore-WNM-Sleep-Mode-Response-without-pending-r.patch" + eapply "${FILESDIR}/2017-1/rebased-v2.6-0008-FT-Do-not-allow-multiple-Reassociation-Response-fram.patch" +} + +src_configure() { + # Toolchain setup + tc-export CC + + cp defconfig.config \|\| die + + # Basic setup + Kconfig_style_config CTRL_IFACE + Kconfig_style_config MATCH_IFACE + Kconfig_style_config BACKEND file + Kconfig_style_config IBSS_RSN + Kconfig_style_config IEEE80211W + Kconfig_style_config IEEE80211R + + # Basic authentication methods + # NOTE: we don't set GPSK or SAKE as they conflict + # with the below options + Kconfig_style_config EAP_GTC + Kconfig_style_config EAP_MD5 + Kconfig_style_config EAP_OTP + Kconfig_style_config EAP_PAX + Kconfig_style_config EAP_PSK + Kconfig_style_config EAP_TLV + Kconfig_style_config EAP_EXE + Kconfig_style_config IEEE8021X_EAPOL + Kconfig_style_config PKCS12 + Kconfig_style_config PEERKEY + Kconfig_style_config EAP_LEAP + Kconfig_style_config EAP_MSCHAPV2 + Kconfig_style_config EAP_PEAP + Kconfig_style_config EAP_TLS + Kconfig_style_config EAP_TTLS + + # Enabling background scanning. + Kconfig_style_config BGSCAN_SIMPLE + Kconfig_style_config BGSCAN_LEARN + + # Enabling mesh networks. + Kconfig_style_config MESH + + if use dbus ; then + Kconfig_style_config CTRL_IFACE_DBUS + Kconfig_style_config CTRL_IFACE_DBUS_NEW + Kconfig_style_config CTRL_IFACE_DBUS_INTRO + fi + + # Enable support for writing debug info to a log file and syslog. + Kconfig_style_config DEBUG_FILE + Kconfig_style_config DEBUG_SYSLOG + + if use hs2-0 ; then + Kconfig_style_config INTERWORKING + Kconfig_style_config HS20 + fi + + if use uncommon-eap-types; then + Kconfig_style_config EAP_GPSK + Kconfig_style_config EAP_SAKE + Kconfig_style_config EAP_GPSK_SHA256 + Kconfig_style_config EAP_IKEV2 + Kconfig_style_config EAP_EKE + fi + + if use eap-sim ; then + # Smart card authentication + Kconfig_style_config EAP_SIM + Kconfig_style_config EAP_AKA + Kconfig_style_config EAP_AKA_PRIME + Kconfig_style_config PCSC + fi + + if use fasteap ; then + Kconfig_style_config EAP_FAST + fi + + if use readline ; then + # readline/history support for wpa_cli + Kconfig_style_config READLINE + else + #internal line edit mode for wpa_cli + Kconfig_style_config WPA_CLI_EDIT + fi + + # SSL authentication methods + if use ssl ; then + if use gnutls ; then + Kconfig_style_config TLS gnutls + Kconfig_style_config GNUTLS_EXTRA + else + Kconfig_style_config TLS openssl + fi + else + Kconfig_style_config TLS internal + fi + + if use smartcard ; then + Kconfig_style_config SMARTCARD + fi + + if use tdls ; then + Kconfig_style_config TDLS + fi + + if use kernel_linux ; then + # Linux specific drivers + Kconfig_style_config DRIVER_ATMEL + Kconfig_style_config DRIVER_HOSTAP + Kconfig_style_config DRIVER_IPW + Kconfig_style_config DRIVER_NL80211 + Kconfig_style_config DRIVER_RALINK + Kconfig_style_config DRIVER_WEXT + Kconfig_style_config DRIVER_WIRED + + if use ps3 ; then + Kconfig_style_config DRIVER_PS3 + fi + + elif use kernel_FreeBSD ; then + # FreeBSD specific driver + Kconfig_style_config DRIVER_BSD + fi + + # Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) + if use wps ; then + Kconfig_style_config WPS + Kconfig_style_config WPS2 + # USB Flash Drive + Kconfig_style_config WPS_UFD + # External Registrar + Kconfig_style_config WPS_ER + # Universal Plug'n'Play + Kconfig_style_config WPS_UPNP + # Near Field Communication + Kconfig_style_config WPS_NFC + fi + + # Wi-Fi Direct (WiDi) + if use p2p ; then + Kconfig_style_config P2P + Kconfig_style_config WIFI_DISPLAY + fi + + # Access Point Mode + if use ap ; then + Kconfig_style_config AP + fi + + # Enable mitigation against certain attacks against TKIP + Kconfig_style_config DELAYED_MIC_ERROR_REPORT + + # If we are using libnl 2.0 and above, enable support for it + # Bug 382159 + # Removed for now, since the 3.2 version is broken, and we don't + # support it. + if has_version ">=dev-libs/libnl-3.2"; then + Kconfig_style_config LIBNL32 + fi + + if use qt5 ; then + pushd "${S}"/wpa_gui-qt4 > /dev/null \|\| die + eqmake5 wpa_gui.pro + popd > /dev/null \|\| die + fi +} + +src_compile() { + einfo "Building wpa_supplicant" + emake V=1 BINDIR=/usr/sbin + + if use wimax; then + emake -C../src/eap_peer clean + emake -C../src/eap_peer + fi + + if use qt5; then + einfo "Building wpa_gui" + emake -C "${S}"/wpa_gui-qt4 + fi +} + +src_install() { + dosbin wpa_supplicant + dobin wpa_cli wpa_passphrase + + # baselayout-1 compat + if has_version "<sys-apps/baselayout-2.0.0"; then + dodir /sbin + dosym../usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant /sbin/wpa_supplicant + dodir /bin + dosym../usr/bin/wpa_cli /bin/wpa_cli + fi + + if has_version ">=sys-apps/openrc-0.5.0"; then + newinitd "${FILESDIR}/${PN}-init.d" wpa_supplicant + newconfd "${FILESDIR}/${PN}-conf.d" wpa_supplicant + fi + + exeinto /etc/wpa_supplicant/ + newexe "${FILESDIR}/wpa_cli.sh" wpa_cli.sh + + dodoc ChangeLog {eap_testing,todo}.txt README{,-WPS} \ + wpa_supplicant.conf + + newdoc.config build-config + + doman doc/docbook/*.{5,8} + + if use qt5 ; then + into /usr + dobin wpa_gui-qt4/wpa_gui + doicon wpa_gui-qt4/icons/wpa_gui.svg + make_desktop_entry wpa_gui "WPA Supplicant Administration GUI" "wpa_gui" "Qt;Network;" + fi + + use wimax && emake DESTDIR="${D}" -C../src/eap_peer install + + if use dbus ; then + pushd "${S}"/dbus > /dev/null \|\| die + insinto /etc/dbus-1/system.d + newins dbus-wpa_supplicant.conf wpa_supplicant.conf + insinto /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services + doins fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant.service fi.w1.wpa_supplicant1.service + popd > /dev/null \|\| die + + # This unit relies on dbus support, bug 538600. + systemd_dounit systemd/wpa_supplicant.service + fi + + systemd_dounit "systemd/wpa_supplicant@.service" + systemd_dounit "systemd/wpa_supplicant-nl80211@.service" + systemd_dounit "systemd/wpa_supplicant-wired@.service" +} + +pkg_postinst() { + elog "If this is a clean installation of wpa_supplicant, you" + elog "have to create a configuration file named" + elog "${EROOT%/}/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf" + elog + elog "An example configuration file is available for reference in" + elog "${EROOT%/}/usr/share/doc/${PF}/" + + if [[ -e "${EROOT%/}"/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf ]] ; then + echo + ewarn "WARNING: your old configuration file ${EROOT%/}/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf" + ewarn "needs to be moved to ${EROOT%/}/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf" + fi + + # Mea culpa, feel free to remove that after some time --mgorny. + local fn + for fn in wpa_supplicant{,@wlan0}.service; do + if [[ -e "${EROOT%/}"/etc/systemd/system/network.target.wants/${fn} ]] + then + ebegin "Moving ${fn} to multi-user.target" + mv "${EROOT%/}"/etc/systemd/system/network.target.wants/${fn} \ + "${EROOT%/}"/etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/ \|\| die + eend ${?} \ + "Please try to re-enable ${fn}" + fi + done + + systemd_reenable wpa_supplicant.service +}The Raptors may not be a whole lot better now that president Bryan Colangelo is about finished filling out his roster. But they most certainly are older. Veteran guard Anthony Carter played for the New York Knicks last season. ( GETTY IMAGES ) Aside from 32-year-old swingman Rasual Butler, who signed with the team Saturday, the Raptors are poised to add 36-year-old point guard Anthony Carter as early as Sunday, putting some age at the end of the team’s bench. In another day of whirlwind activity trying to get bodies in that may be serviceable this year and not cause any disruption to the financial plan for the future. While they lost a chance to acquire Mickael Pietrus, who has returned to Phoenix to continue rehabilitation from off-season knee surgery, the Raptors have picked up some much needed experience in Butler, who is going into his 10th season, and Carter, who is entering his 13th. Article Continued Below “That’s one of the main reasons whoever else we bring in is going to have some experience,” coach Dwane Casey said after watching Butler go through his first workout and anticipating Carter’s arrival on Sunday. “What we want to do is put veteran players, veteran leadership around Andrea and DeMar and James and our young guys.” The Raptors also have plans to add a couple of relative kids to a roster that should be complete early next week. They have extended an offer sheet to second-year swingman Gary Forbes and the Denver Nuggets are not expected to match it, paving the way for Forbes to join Toronto on Tuesday. And the Raptors are also going to sign 7-foot centre Aaron Gray to a one-year deal on Sunday. Butler, who has played for five teams over the course of his career, figures he cannot only provide some leadership to a young team but some much needed shooting depth. A career 36 per cent shooter from three-point range, he’s already one of the most prolific outside shooters on the Raptors roster. “I was really impressed with him today,” Casey said of the 6-7 swingman Butler. “He’s a three-point shooter, he’s an experienced player in this league. He had every excuse to come in today and not really give it to us, he flew in from L.A. on an all-night flight but I was really impressed with his play. He knows how to play and he adds that veteran feel to our group. “Defensively, I was just as impressed. He knew where to be, knew how to rotate, so we were impressed with him from that standpoint.” Article Continued Below Butler’s one-year deal won’t have any impact on Colangelo’s future plans and he could work himself into a longer deal if he lives up to his billing. The fact the Raptors were aggressive in pursuing him to fill glaring holes made Toronto a logical next step. “You pretty much just have to be vocal on the basketball floor, talking and communicating on the defensive end,” he said. “If you see guys not doing something right, trying to correct them and also being able to take criticism when you make a mistake. “They wanted me. It’s always good to be wanted. They weren’t asking me to wait to make another move or see what happens, they wanted me to come right away.”On his way to the White House, Barack Obama promised to free untried people from prisons like Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp, or GTMO. His failure to do so is an ongoing political controversy. But in Canada, we heard nothing during the recent federal election about our own crisis of innocent prisoners. That ought to be a scandal in itself. After all, we’ve got GTMO justice operating right here. If I told you that most people in jail are innocent, you might roll your eyes at presumed lefty claptrap. But this is a fact, not a conspiracy theory. Stats Canada: “On any given day in Canada, there are more adults in custody awaiting trial or sentencing in provincial/territorial facilities than there are adults serving a sentence.” According to StatsCan, "On any given day in Canada, there are more adults in custody awaiting trial or sentencing in provincial/territorial facilities than there are adults serving a sentence." ( JOEL SAGET / AFP/GETTY IMAGES ) People who have not been convicted of an offence, including those charged but still awaiting a trial, are innocent until proven guilty. Most people in jail today are awaiting trial. Therefore, most people in jail today are innocent; only a minority of prisoners have actually been convicted. This is in Canada, not GTMO. Canada. This situation is the reverse of how it all worked for most of our history. What happened? In a word, fear. Today, unfounded but real societal fears trump the constitutional presumption of innocence when it comes to what we do with people charged with crimes. Article Continued Below When I was first appointed Ontario Attorney General in 2003, I pressed the deputy attorney general on this global phenomenon, wherein supposedly enlightened democracies with constitutional rules of due process had prisons filled with more untried innocent people than the convicted. His raised eyebrows conveyed the obvious: you’re the attorney general. You can try to change this, you know. I didn’t. And it’s only gotten worse. Back then, I suffered the malady of ignorance. I would have said that I was more concerned about public safety. Little did I know that many victims of crime in Canada are exactly the kind of person who ends up in jail. The homeless, addicted and mentally ill (who are often all three) are more likely to end up in jail, innocent or not, and more likely to be a victim of a crime, than the rest of us. However, when the rest of us eyeball a grubby kid in bail court, we might bristle at the thought: risky thug. This is the heart of our collective (and my past personal) ignorance. That grubby kid is not well. He should be in Sick Kids Hospital. That grubby homeless guy should be in a hospital too. Both end up not with health care, but handcuffs. Because they’re scary looking. This is the crux of the problem with our bail system today: it is driven primarily by fear, rather than reasoned principles of a civil society. If the latter grounded our bail system, then the presumption of innocence would triumph. Instead, the bail system is all about public fears, and, I hate to say it, self-preservation by the decision-makers. Just think about it. Why would police or prosecutors or a judge not release someone who has been charged but not tried? Because they’re afraid that the person will do something bad pretrial, and that will make the police or prosecutor or judge look bad. Even if the latter decision makers are fearless, they are bound by foreboding rules, riven with fear. Article Continued Below This isn’t conjecture on my part. According to the John Howard Society, it is well established by social science research that “decisions made at various stages of the criminal justice system are increasingly influenced by organizational risk aversion” — a fancy term for fear. The legal test for bail in Canada is similarly organized around risk aversion: risk of flight, risk of harm and then more risk analysis. Protecting the public from risk is a mug’s game that’s ended up jailing a lot of innocent people. Who cares? Believe me, you would care if you were the one charged, faced with the prospect of awaiting trial in jail. Or if you cared about how we treat Canadians living in fear — that is, not guided by empathy or reason, but by our own fears. You’ve got to start with your own fear, in my experience, before you can expect the rest of society to change for the better. Michael Bryant, Ontario Attorney General from 2003-07
Palestinians, who launched relatively primitive rockets from inside Gaza. As Obama told reporters, "There's no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders. We are fully supportive of Israel's right to defend itself." As Elizabeth Murray, a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, pointed out in response to a similarly worded statement from the State Department: [W]hile the State Department urged both sides to avoid civilian casualties, nowhere was there mention of the Palestinians' right to defend themselves from various attacks by Israel. Apparently only one side is granted that privilege, according to the U.S. statement. Writing in the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald noted the role that the U.S. has played in allowing Israel to once again attack Gazans with impunity: Obama continues to defend Israel's free hand in Gaza, causing commentators like Jeffrey Goldberg to gloat, not inaccurately: "Barack Obama hasn't turned against Israel. This is a big surprise to everyone who has not paid attention for the last four years" (indeed, there are few more compelling signs of how dumb and misleading U.S. elections are than the fact that the only criticism of Obama on Israel heard over the last year in the two-party debate was the grievance that Obama evinces insufficient fealty--rather than excessive fealty--to the Israeli government). That the Netanyahu government knows any attempt to condemn Israel at the UN would be instantly blocked by the U.S. is a major factor enabling them to continue however they wish. And, of course, the bombs, planes and tanks they are using are subsidized, in substantial part, by the U.S. taxpayer. The U.S. media generally are parroting the Israeli government claim that the current conflict was sparked by Hamas' breaking of a cease-fire. This is not only an outright lie, but it is designed to paint Israel--with its vastly superior weaponry and army--as a victim of the conflict. The facts are that as early as November 8, several Israeli soldiers invaded Gaza--exchanging gunfire with Palestinian fighters and killing a 12-year-old boy who was playing soccer at the time. After several skirmishes over the following days, Palestinian factions agreed to a truce on November 12 if Israel ended its attacks. In the Israeli daily Haaretz, journalist Nir Rosen pointed out that, just prior to his assassination on November 14, Hamas' Ahmed al-Jabari had: received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the cease-fire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the factions in the Gaza Strip. This [is] according to Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin, who helped mediate between Israel and Hamas in the deal to release Gilad Shalit and has since then maintained a relationship with Hamas leaders. Baskin told Haaretz on Thursday that senior officials in Israel knew about his contacts with Hamas and Egyptian intelligence aimed at formulating the permanent truce, but nevertheless approved the assassination. Such attacks are not the actions of a nation "seeking peace" with Palestinians, as Israel repeatedly claims. They are designed to provoke a Palestinian response, which is then used to unleash an overwhelmingly brutal assault under the pretext of "fighting terrorism." The Israeli state has been targeting Gazans ever since they dared to democratically elect Hamas in Palestinian Legislative Council elections in 2006. For the act of daring to stand up to continuous, repeated brutality, all Gazans are now paying a heavy collective price. As Electronic Intifada's Rami Almeghari wrote, when asked by her 13-year-old son what Israel wants from Gazans: "'What do they want?' I exclaimed to Munir. 'What they want is obviously to deprive us of our humanity, taking away our dream to live normal lives like other nations, and to throw us into the ocean.'" It will take a mass outcry--here in the U.S. and around the globe--to stop Israel's latest assault on Gaza.Story highlights Tim Berners-Lee wrote the original proposal for the World Wide Web in March 1989 He is a champion of Web rights and warns of the threat from surveillance and censorship At 25 the Web is like a "young adult," he says. "It needs its independence" Today is a landmark anniversary for Tim Berners-Lee. In March 1989 he wrote a proposal to his employers at CERN for a somewhat abstract "global hypertext" system he called Mesh. A year later he re-named that system the World Wide Web. It caught on. A quarter of a century later, Berners-Lee is like a proud father, seeing his baby all grown up and making its way in the world without him. "I feel a certain amount of inventor's pride," he tells CNN. "My greatest pride has been the spirit of collaboration we've had for the last 25 years." He's watched the Web grow through a carefree childhood and turbulent adolescence, reaching the kind of age when things suddenly get more serious, and it's time to make some important decisions about the future. "At 25 it's more like a young adult," he explains. "Suddenly it needs its independence; young adults are at the stage when they're looking for freedom, and in terms of what they do they're asserting their rights. "Now, 25 years on, Web users are realizing they need human rights on the Web... We need independence of the Web for democracy, we need independence of the Web to be able to support the press, we need independence of the Web in general. It's becoming very important to sort out all that." Recent years have been marked by growing pains. Revelations of mass surveillance by the NSA and other agencies have caused international outrage. Arguments over net neutrality persist and copyright wars pitching open-net activists against mainstream creative industries have grown bitter, with Berners-Lee himself criticized at times. The stock and use of illicit material has grown with the dark net. Berners-Lee is clear that our ability to speak and associate freely is under threat. The widespread data gathering of the NSA revealed a "broken" system, he believes, and he praises whistle blowers like Edward Snowden whose leaks expose the excesses. "When (systems) break the whistle blower is the person who saves society by pointing out something that nobody else will, because it's illegal," he says. "One thing I'd like to see built in the future is an international convention and international respect for whistle blowers." JUST WATCHED Web inventor: U.S. abused internet Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Web inventor: U.S. abused internet 04:45 JUST WATCHED Internet creator wants 'web for all' Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Internet creator wants 'web for all' 04:20 JUST WATCHED Web inventor's opening ceremony role Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Web inventor's opening ceremony role 05:34 If spying is one threat, Berners Lee believes censorship is another. He recalls the situation in Egypt, where the Internet was cut off at the height of anti-government protests in January 2011. "For a lot of people that was the first time they realized you could turn it off, and they asked themselves, who could turn it off for me?" he says, adding that "turning off the Internet is more or less a signal that the regime does not trust its citizens and that the regime is on the way out." At 58, Berners-Lee is not taking a back seat. Having invented the Web once, he hopes to re-invent it through the " Web We Want " initiative, aiming to create a universal "Internet Users Bill of Rights." Key targets of the manifesto include spreading net access to the nearly two thirds of the world that still doesn't have it. Establishing clear regulations is also a priority, as is the protection of personal user information. Berners-Lee still enjoys enough power over his creation to make big changes realistic, through two authorities he founded and continues to lead. The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) determines standards for all Web infrastructure, backed by the world's leading academic institutions and software developers. The Web Foundation manages the spread and ethical application of the Web, bringing pressure to bear on governments through initiatives such as The Web Index, which ranks nations by Internet access standards. The Web We Want campaign will rely on mass mobilization across industries, nations and activist bodies to succeed, but Berners-Lee is confident of fostering a spirit of cooperation. He has seen it before and considers it the Web's greatest accomplishment. "It's really a story of collaboration, people working painstakingly on getting protocols right... There's an international spirit that ignores boundaries," he says. As for what the Web will look like over the next 25 years, as it enters its middle age, Berners Lee sees a smarter Web emerging, with users empowered by the huge amounts of personal information collected as part of the "Web of data" -- information that could help personalize our Web experience. "People are worrying about what other people are doing with their data," he says, "but they haven't realized what they can do with their own data." As we grow more connected to, and reliant on, the Web, so the potential for abuse increases. How we use such a powerful tool amounts to a test of our species, says Berners-Lee, but it's one he is confident we can pass together. "In general the Web enables humanity to be more powerful and that power can be used for good things and to do horrible things -- but on balance when it comes to humanity I'm a tremendous optimist."It has been hard to ignore the mixing of sports and politics recently, as President Donald Trump -- both on the stump and on Twitter -- repeatedly expressed his disgust with athletes who take a knee during the pre-game rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Most NFL players, and some coaches and owners, reacted against Trump’s words by linking arms as the national anthem was played before games on Sept. 24 and 25, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, Seattle Seahawks and Tennessee Titans remained largely off-field for the anthem. The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem. NFL must respect this! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2017 The recent controversy over the national anthem began in 2016, when then-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick initially sat, and later switched to taking a knee, during the pre-game anthem to protest racial discrimination, especially at the hands of police. With increased interest in the national anthem and its role at sporting events, we decided to take a closer look at some of its history. How long has the Star-Spangled Banner been played at sporting events? While the Star-Spangled Banner only became the nation’s official anthem in 1931, the lyrics date back to 1814, the anthem was played sporadically in the 1800s, several experts said. The earliest rendition came at the opening of Union Grounds park in Brooklyn on May 15, 1862, which was during the Civil War, said John Thorn, the historian for Major League Baseball. The first documented example from opening day occurred in Philadelphia on April 22, 1897. Union Grounds, Brooklyn, 1865 A key turning point came during the 1918 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox. That year’s World Series was held during World War I, and "the public mood was sullen and anxious," Luke Cyphers and Ethan Trex wrote in ESPN The Magazine in 2011. "The war strained the economy and the workforce, including baseball's. The government began drafting major leaguers for military service that summer and ordered baseball to end the regular season by Labor Day." The mood, however, perked up considerably when a brass band began playing the Star-Spangled Banner during the seventh-inning stretch of one game. "The crowd, already standing, showed its first real signs of life all day, joining in a spontaneous sing-along, haltingly at first, then finishing with flair," Cyphers and Trex wrote. "The scene made such an impression that the New York Times opened its recap of the game not with a description of the action on the field but with an account of the impromptu singing." The scene also made an impression on the two teams’ front offices. The Cubs’ management made sure the band played the anthem during the next two games as well, and attendance, which had been in a rut, increased. When the series moved to Boston’s Fenway Park, officials moved the playing of the anthem to the pregame festivities, coupled with the introduction of wounded soldiers who had received free tickets," the authors wrote. The anthem was played periodically in baseball after that, but it took until another war -- World War II -- before it was played before essentially every game. Playing the national anthem before regular season games "was not universal in baseball until 1942 and the start of World War II, though some clubs started the practice in 1941," said Michael Teevan, a spokesman for Major League Baseball. Since then, "the national anthem has been played before virtually every professional — and many collegiate and high school — baseball, football, basketball, hockey and soccer contests in this country," said Marc Leepson, author of Flag: An American Biography and What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life. In the period after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the anthem took on special meaning at sporting events, and some teams arranged pregame events with survivors and first responders. In some cases, a rendition of America the Beautiful was added, said Elliott J. Gorn, a Loyola University of Chicago historian and co-author of A Brief History of American Sports. How about football? Singing the national anthem before National Football League games has been ongoing for "decades," said NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy. One aspect of this history that has spawned some confusion in recent days concerns a change made in 2009. Until that year, players in primetime games would remain inside their locker rooms while the anthem was sung, due to timing concerns for the television networks. After 2009, the players in primetime games have been on the field during the anthem, McCarthy said. But this change only affected primetime games. For all other games -- typically held at 1 p.m. or 4 p.m. Eastern -- players had already been stationed on the field for the national anthem. So the 2009 change simply applied to primetime games the rules that had already been in place for daytime games. Part of the confusion, McCarthy said, may be that television networks often haven’t shown the national anthem being played. How common have anthem-related protests been? In 1968, U.S. Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave a raised-fist "black power" salute on the medal stand as the Star-Spangled Banner was being played. They were thrown out of the Olympics. Four years later, U.S. Olympians Vince Matthews and Wayne Collett, who were also African-American, were barred from further competition when they were considered to have shown insufficient respect from the medal stand. Some fans also found room to express their views during the anthem. "During the Vietnam era, it was not uncommon for fans -- not enormous numbers, but some -- to remain seated during the anthem," Gorn said. In March 1996, the National Basketball Association suspended the Denver Nuggets’ Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. A convert to Islam, Abdul-Rauf said he did not believe in standing for any nationalistic ideology, according to the New York Times. As for baseball, Cassidy Lent, a reference librarian at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., said she was not aware of any protests beyond the one by Bruce Maxwell of the Oakland A's in the wake of Trump’s comments. A footnote: In his 1972 autobiography, I Never Had It Made, Jackie Robinson -- who broke baseball’s color line in 1947 -- wrote, "As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world." Is there an NFL rule against kneeling during the anthem? This notion gained attention on social media in the wake of Trump’s comments and the NFL’s reaction. One version we came across said the anthem "must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem," standing, facing the flag, helmets in left hands. This language does not appear in the NFL Rule Book, as the post indicates. However, it is apparently included in a separate document called the "game operations manual." This document is not online, so we can’t review it first-hand, but McCarthy, the NFL spokesman, said it is distributed by the league to all of its member teams. While text circulating on social media would seem to suggest there will be consequences for protesting during the anthem, there is discretion involved -- and the NFL has repeatedly stated that it will not punish players for taking a knee during the anthem. McCarthy told PolitiFact that "players are strongly encouraged, but not required, to stand during the national anthem." He has used essentially the same language in previous statements going back to 2016. Another NFL spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said during a conference call with reporters on Sept. 25 that "there will be no discipline handed down this week." He added, "We also believe our players have a right to express themselves." Share the Facts 2017-09-25 21:35:46 UTC PolitiFact -1 -1 -1 PolitiFact Rating: Rule not being enforced PolitiFact Rating: Social media The national anthem "must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem," standing, facing the flag, helmets in left hands. Bloggers on the Internet on the Internet Monday, September 25, 2017 2017-09-25 Read More info CLARIFICATION, Sept. 27, 2017: This article has been updated to provide more specificity in describing the origin of Kaepernick’s protest. For three games beginning on Aug. 14, Kaepernick sat during the anthem. Then, after consulting former Green Beret and former NFL player Nate Boyer about the best way to make his point without disrespecting the military, Kaepernick began taking a knee in games beginning on Sept. 1.A lot of nonsense has been written about the role of Putin’s Russia in subverting “our democracy.” As though our democracy had been functioning perfectly (even reasonably) well, until these shadowy Russian forces purchased a few Facebook ads that sent us all into the streets. It’s a laughable concept. I’m sorry, did Putin acquit George Zimmerman or Jason Stockley? Did Putin shoot 12-year-old Tamir Rice? Russia did not carry out the drug war against African Americans or implement policies of mass incarceration, or pass voter ID laws in the U.S. – all of which have contributed to disenfranchising millions of African Americans over the years. The U.S. has a lot to answer for with regard to systematically denying the democratic rights of African Americans and this is not the first time they’ve tried to deflect criticism for that by blaming Russia. As a student of history I’ve mostly just rolled my eyes this time around while the Democrats attempt to make red-scare tactics that are very old, new again. But a recent entry in this canon of “Black activists are pawns of Moscow” writing is so insulting and patently false, that, as we approach the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, it seems very important to reply. Last week an author named Terrell Jermaine Starr wrote a piece for The Root entitled, “Russia’s Recent Facebook Ads Prove the Kremlin Never Loved Black People.” I’ve enjoyed entries from The Root before, particularly in chronicling racist attacks against African Americans that are underreported in the mainstream media. But their willingness to toe the Democratic Party line, uncritically in most circumstances, has been noted. Starr’s piece is supposedly historical in scope but is premised upon a huge, glaring, historical fallacy: that of conflating the Russian Federation with the Soviet Union. In one sentence, Starr describes the two as essentially the same (showing you the level of material historical analysis he’s interested in engaging in) and then for the rest of the article proceeds to whitewash the history of Black communism, using the favorite arguments deployed by racists – that Blacks who supported socialism did so because they were duped, and that the Soviet Union was only interested in Black liberation insofar as it meant spiting their enemies in the White House. These assertions deny the agency of African Americans, many of whom were amongst the most prominent Black intellectuals of their time, who looked to the Soviet system as an alternative to American racism and exploitation. This interpretation also denies the real solidarity and support that the Soviet Union expressed in their assistance to liberation movements of many Black, brown and oppressed people all over the world. Since anti-communist propaganda is easily promulgated without evidence in this country, allow me to present some of the evidence that exposes these racist lies for what they are. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was birthed via a revolution in 1917 and overthrown via counter-revolution in 1991. While Russians were in the majority of the population, the USSR itself was actually an extremely diverse and vibrant society for all of its existence. The Soviet Union spanned 14 time zones and comprised many independent nationalities and ethnic groups, such as Tajiks, Kazakhs, Lithuanians, Tartars – all of whom spoke different languages, practiced different religions – and suffered terrible racist oppression under the Tsar. The triumph of the socialist revolution and the very existence of this unique political formation was the result of a revolution carried out by united oppressed peoples, who rose up as one and took control of society away from their Tsarist and capitalist exploiters. The Bolsheviks always took the task of uniting oppressed people and elevating their struggle very seriously. This was a key to their success and a guiding principle in their work. It was Lenin who pioneered communist opposition to imperialism and he who changed the Marxist formulation, “Workers of the World Unite” to “Workers and oppressed people of the world unite” as an expression of the priority they placed on the struggle of colonized people against imperialism. Around the world, the 1919 triumph of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was greeted by the imperialists with great dismay and by oppressed/colonized peoples with great enthusiasm, inspiration and hope. In America, 1919 was an infamous year, known for its “Red Summer” of intense lynchings, race riots and gruesome violence against African Americans at the hands of white mobs. The Black American political movement had entered a new era of militancy, as veterans returning from WWI were less inclined to submit to Jim Crow and more inclined to fight for their dignity, wages and rights. A new wave of radical Black intellectuals all but took over the Black political scene, many from the Caribbean and mostly based in Harlem in the 1920s and 30s. These men and women were considered some of the premier thinkers and writers of their time and of the majority of these radical African American leaders–regardless of political orientation– held the Russian Revolution in very high esteem. According to historian Winston James, in his work Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia, the appeal of the Russian Revolution to Black people in America at the time lay not in their having been “recruited” by Russia as the Root article asserts, but in their own independent evaluation of the Bolshevik government and where it stood with regard to equality for oppressed and colonized people. James wrote about three major factors that attracted Black people to Bolshevism in the 1920s and 1930s. The first was the domestic policies promoting national minorities and oppressed groups that were put in place almost immediately after the triumph of the revolution. After the revolution the Bolshevik government undertook what can be described as the most far reaching and thorough affirmative action plan that any government has ever attempted, dedicating much in the way of their limited resources towards raising the standard of living for groups who had been historically oppressed and creating conditions that could facilitate greater equality for those groups. To Black Americans, the most convincing example was the swiftness and seriousness with which the Soviets began redressing historical inequality suffered by the Jews, including immediately outlawing discrimination against them and putting an end to the violent pogroms that had plagued them under the Tsar. In 1923 Claude McKay, the young Black intellectual, writer and poet wrote: “For American Negroes the indisputable and outstanding fact of the Russian Revolution is that a mere handful of Jews, much less in ratio to the number of Negroes in the American population, have attained, through the Revolution, all the political and social rights that were denied to them under the regime of the Czar (166).” The other two factors explored by James were the “uncompromising rhetoric of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and the right of self-determination for oppressed nations (165)” espoused by the Bolshevik government and the creation of the Third Communist International, an international body that openly encouraged colonized (often Black or Brown) people to rise up against their (mostly European) exploiters all over the world. At a point when the U.S. government had systematically ignored the pleas of Black people to pass even one federal law against lynching, when city and state governments all over the country were colluding in lynchings, race riots and allowing whites who attacked Blacks to go free, or even reap rewards – it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why many Black thinkers were genuinely excited that such a different kind of government, one that spoke to them and had taken action to support and defend its own national minorities, had come into the world. Black and white (film) Langston Hughes was a Black intellectual of this generation, this being the same generation that we associate with the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro. Of all the insults buried in that heinous Root article, the disrespect to Langston Hughes, inarguably one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century, is one of the most difficult to endure. Starr paints Hughes as a dupe, someone “recruited” to champion the Soviet Union, as if the man had not traveled all over the world, studied and written extensively and was not capable of genuinely supporting a government that he believed to be on the right track. We revere Hughes’ poetry that celebrates Black beauty, he is the jazz poet laureate of Black America and we love to recite his words that affirm our deep history and continued struggle in the face of white American racism. But what about his poetry celebrating the Soviet Union? Here’s a link to a poem that he wrote praising Lenin. Did they break that one out at your school’s Black history month event? Probably not. But that doesn’t change the fact that Langston Hughes was extremely sympathetic to the Soviet Union, as is abundantly evident in his autobiographical writing, including in the chapter of I Wonder As I Wander, “Moscow Movie.” The Root provides perhaps the most cynical and shallow reading of this chapter possible, though I hesitate to affirm that that author of that piece has even actually read it. “Moscow Movie” tells an important story about a time in 1932 when Langston Hughes was invited to the Soviet Union by the government, to work on a major film production. This film was called “Black and White” and it was supposed to highlight the struggle of Black workers in the South and give an international showcase to the racism and oppression experienced by Black people in America. According to Langston Hughes, it was “intended to be the first great Negro-white film ever made in the world (80),” though unfortunately it did not come to fruition. Hughes accompanied a delegation of 22 young African Americans who were supposed to star in the film, though it was odd that most in that group were not actors or performers by trade. Starr erroneously attributes this casting to racism, saying that Hughes determined that the Soviets were so racist that they assumed that all Black people could sing and dance (and play sports?) and so didn’t bother to check the backgrounds of the people they hired for the film. In fact, Hughes said nothing of the sort. He addressed the peculiar composition of the delegation early in the chapter, stating, “That most of our group were not actors seems to have been due to the fact that very few professional theater people were willing to pay their own fares to travel all the way to Russia to sign contracts they had never seen. Only a band of eager, adventurous young students, teachers, writers and would-be-actors were willing to do that, looking forward to the fun and wonder of a foreign land as much as to film-making. There were a few among them who wanted to get away from American race prejudice forever, being filled up with Jim Crow (70).” It’s important that Hughes highlighted their motives as traveling to seek a reprieve from American racism. So high was the esteem for the Soviet Union in the group, that “When the train stopped beneath this banner for passports to be checked, a few of the young black men and women left the train to touch their hands to Soviet soil, lift the new earth in their palms, and kiss it (73),” according to Hughes. In his accusations of racism what Starr may be referring to is where Hughes says at one point, “Europeans as well as Americans, seem to be victims of that old cliche that Negroes just naturally sing (80).” That is hardly an indictment of any particularly Russian racism and more of a complaint on how African Americans are represented on the world stage. Lack of specific cultural knowledge about African Americans was a problem throughout the film’s production and that is what Hughes believes ultimately damned the film. Hughes was given an early copy of the script and let them know that he did not think it was usable because there were so many errors with regard to what racism and working class struggle actually looked like in the American South. Hughes said that the author of the script was well intentioned but had never been to America. He also said that information from or by Black Americans was rarely translated into Russian in those days. Even with these critiques, it’s nearly impossible to interpret Hughes as being at all bitter or resentful at the Soviets for their attempt at making this film. On the contrary, Hughes wrote with unmistakable good humour throughout the chapter and also repeatedly mentioned that they were all paid in full and well taken care of, even when it became clear the film wouldn’t be made. The reception that the students received in Moscow is really remarkable, especially considering the historical context – none of which The Root brings up, of course. The students were “wined and dined” in Hughes’ own words, they were put up in the most lavish hotels and treated to free tickets to the theater, the opera, the ballet and dinners and parties with dignitaries and important people, almost every night. They were official guests of the state and treated with the highest honors. No Black delegation has ever been received in America with such grace. Hughes says that they were always introduced as “representatives of the great Negro people (82)” and after describing the incredible amenities at one of the elaborate resorts they were housed in, he adds “I had never stayed in such a hotel in my own country, since, as a rule, Negroes were not then permitted to do so (93).” On their reception by ordinary Soviet citizens, Hughes writes: “Of all the big cities in the world where I’ve been, the Muscovites seemed to me to be the politest of peoples to strangers. But perhaps that was because we were Negroes and, at that time, with the Scottsboro Case on world-wide trial in the papers everywhere, and especially in Russia, folks went out of their way there to show us courtesy. On a crowded bus, nine times out of ten, some Russian would say, “Negrochanski tovarish – Negro comrade – take my seat!’ On the streets queueing up for newspapers or cigarettes, or soft drinks, often folks in line would say, “Let the Negro comrade go forward.” (74) This is in 1932! Nowhere in America were Black people treated like this in 1932. Hell, many of us could not get that treatment today, if our lives depended on it (and they sometimes do). This account echoes many others by African Americans who visited or moved to the Soviet Union. In William Mandel’s Soviet but Not Russian, Muhammad Ali is quoted as saying of his 1978 visit to the Soviet Union: “I saw a hundred nationalities. No such thing as a Black man, or a white man, or ‘you nigger,’ or get back. People say, ‘Oh well, they just showed you the best.’ You mean all of those white folks rehearsed, said: ‘Muhammad Ali’s coming!’.. ‘All hundred nationalities, pretend you get along. Muhammad Ali’s coming!’…’They just took you where they wanted to go.’ I know that’s a lie. I got in my car and told my driver where to go. Lying about the Russians.. I jogged in the mornings in strange places where they hardly ever saw a Black man. I ran past two little white Russian ladies who were walking to work. They didn’t look around and ask what I was doing. I can’t go jogging in some streets in America in the morning in a white neighborhood.” (85) The Root tries to paint a picture of a USSR where the same racism that existed in Jim Crow America infected everyone there, but there simply is not enough evidence to say that was the case. They cite the experiences of one Black American man (Robert Robinson), thoroughly. But what about the experiences of the estimated 400,000 African students who were educated for free in the Soviet Union between 1950-1990? These Black youth attended technical schools, Lumumba University and the special Lenin school for leadership, they lived and traveled all over the Soviet Union and upon graduation, they would return to their homelands with skills necessary to aid in the new independence governments. Mandel interviewed quite a few Black Soviets for his book, including other African Americans who moved to the Soviet Union- and the picture they paint is very different from the one in Robinson’s account. Providing no evidence, Starr also asserts that interracial relationships would naturally be a problem in the Soviet Union, saying “both Russian and white American men weren’t cool with their women messing with black men.” Since he introduced the term “bullshit” just before that line, I’m going to call bullshit on that. Langston Hughes’ account features many stories of the men in his group dating Soviet women and not a word about anyone batting an eye at such pairings – which in 1932, would have gotten someone lynched in the United States. Please stop projecting American racism onto the Soviet Union, when you just don’t have the evidence to back that up. As W.E.B. Dubois wrote on his third visit to the USSR in 1949, “of all countries, Russia alone has made race prejudice a crime; of all great imperialisms, Russia alone owns no colonies of dark serfs or white and what is more important has no investments in colonies and is lifting no blood-soaked profits from cheap labor in Asia and Africa.” The material basis for widespread Jim Crow style racism just wasn’t there. Hughes was aware that the western press celebrated the failure of the movie and spread many rumours that they knew to be false concerning the Soviet government maneuvering against the Black students. He writes that Western journalists, who saw them spending money and carousing in Moscow nightclubs, filed stories in the U.S. about how they were going unpaid and neglected. Hughes wrote that some in his group suspected that the movie was scrapped because the Soviets were sacrificing the Black struggle to appease the American government – but Hughes himself did not believe that. He was one of the only members of the group who saw the script and he was unequivocal in stating that more than anything else, it was the script that caused the project’s failure. Hughes also repeatedly mentioned the context of the international campaign in defense of the Scottsboro Boys, a Black struggle that was most certainly not being dropped by the Soviets, as all this was going on. The Root miscasts this excerpt from the life of Langston Hughes to support their conclusion that “the Soviets’ attempts to curry favor with the black struggle” was “insincere and downright fraudulent.” I would counter that this anti-communist propaganda is actually “insincere and downright fraudulent” but allow me to present further evidence on the genuine solidarity expressed by the Soviet Union. Sticking with the theme, let’s keep talking about film. Focus on Africa in film In the book Focus on African Film, noted film scholar Josephine Woll describes “The Russian Connection” between the Soviet Union and African film, an invaluable alliance in making postcolonial African cinema a reality. As alluded to in the previous section, the Soviet Union expended a lot of resources on aid and development for African nations, who were in the process of throwing off their own colonial oppressors and beginning their independence after World War II. These countries were severely underdeveloped, as chronicled by Walter Rodney and the Soviet Union was a key ally in providing material support, education and technology to allow these countries to thrive without being beholden to their former colonial masters. It’s worth noting that the greatest victory for Black liberation to occur in my lifetime, the fall of apartheid in South Africa, involved a great deal of material and political support from the Soviet Union, which was integral to the success of that movement. Film was another area in which the Soviet Union provided Africans with crucial foundational support. Ousmane Sembene of Senegal, widely considered the “father of African film” was educated in the Soviet Union. This was also the case for other pioneering African filmmakers, like Souleymane Cissé of Mali and Abderrahmne Sissako of Mauritania/Mali and Sarah Maldoror, the French daughter of immigrants from Guadeloupe who made many films about African liberation. In addition to technical know-how, the Soviet Union also provided the essential film and production equipment, distribution and promotion, to bring African cinema onto the world stage. Dr. Woll seems to believe that the motives of the Soviets were clearly political, but also genuine. Woll wrote: “The Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath, radically altered how, why, and for whom films were made. Financial profit still mattered but it competed with other goals: educational, political, promotional. The new regime in post-tsarist Russia, like the new leaders of post-colonial African nations, willingly allocated part of its budget to subsidizing cinema because it recognized how effective the medium could be as an instrument of propaganda; and most Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s, though they had individual and often compelling aesthetic agendas, readily supported the politics of revolution (225).” In the U.S. we tend to be very cynical of the word “propaganda” but in revolutionary times, propaganda is necessary and the Africans needed aid in producing theirs. Ousmane Sembene clearly agreed; he was adamant about telling compelling political stories through his films and he fully recognized the potential for his films to “help decolonize Africa (225).” The Soviet Union trained and equipped these African directors, so that they could bring the
any public place or on any public street." The law was aimed at stopping the Black Panthers, but affected all gun owners. Twenty-four years later, Reagan was still pushing gun control. "I support the Brady Bill," he said in a March 28, 1991 speech, "and I urge the Congress to enact it without further delay." One of the most aggressive gun control advocates today is Republican mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City, whose administration sued 26 gun manufacturers in June 2000, and whose police commissioner, Howard Safir, proposed a nationwide plan for gun licensing, complete with yearly "safety" inspections. Another Republican, New York State Governor George Pataki, on August 10, 2000, signed into law what The New York Times called "the nation's strictest gun controls," a radical program mandating trigger locks, background checks at gun shows and "ballistic fingerprinting" of guns sold in the state. It also raised the legal age to buy a handgun to 21 and banned "assault weapons," the sale or possession of which would now be punishable by seven years in prison. Gun control crusaders argue that the Republicans are simply yielding to grassroots pressure, to gain political advantage. But polls show little evidence of such pressure A Gallup/CNN/USA Today survey taken in June 1999 - only two months after the Littleton massacre - showed that the number of Americans who favored stricter gun laws had declined by 20 percent since 1990.“We choose not to go to the moon. We choose not to go to the moon in the foreseeable future and not to do the other things, not because they are hard, but because they are expensive, because that goal will serve only to waste our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are unwilling to pay for, one we are unwilling to continue, and one which we intend to abandon…” Of course, I’m paraphrasing the speech that, nearly 50 years ago, set the lunar dream in motion. With mere words, John F. Kennedy placed his nation on a path that would lead it to accomplish the greatest feat in human history. As a direct result of JFK’s inspiration, the United States has landed on the moon seven times. Brave men with manly names like Buzz, Conrad, Shepard, Harrison and Armstrong took flight aboard craft like Eagle, Intrepid, Antares and Challenger. Each time, the world watched, dreamed, and cheered. In the years since the Apollo program ended, the missions have taken on nearly legendary status, leading the disillusioned to the idiotic notion that such an undertaking was simply too massive to have been real. It wasn’t. It just took one man with vision, a person who actually believed that America could achieve the impossible, to articulate a dream. Shortly before George W. Bush left office, he created the Constellation program and we began the adventure again. We were to reach the Moon’s surface by 2020. Unfortunately, with the stroke of the budgetary pen, President Barack Obama has gutted NASA’s budget, ending the nascent moon mission and pounding a major nail into the coffin of U.S.-manned space exploration. The space shuttle program has only five more missions before its retirement. After that, Americans will reach the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz capsules until 2020. Beyond that, there are no plans for Americans to return to space. Don’t worry, though, Obama assures us that NASA will have enough cash to keep doing research into the bogus science of man-made global warming. As the president said during a speech last week, there will still be funding for what he termed “programs I care about.” Since the moon shot is obviously not something that captures the current presidential imagination, it’s gone—sacrificed to the laughable notion of fiscal responsibility within the largest, most bloated, irresponsible budget in history. Instead, Obama has taken $6 billion from NASA, one-third of its 2009 budget, and offered it to private companies to encourage their space initiatives. Rather than do something that inspires pride in their country’s ambition, Americans will be able to watch as corporations line up to kiss the federal ring, grab some tax dollars, and spend it on low-end rockets that will push the wealthy into orbit for a few seconds at a time. Here’s hoping they’ve unionized, helped get the president elected, or promised some sort of future campaign donation kickback, because, as we’ve seen with the government auto takeover, Obama doesn’t embrace the private sector unless it benefits Democrats directly. Americans will also be able to enjoy the view as China pursues its own lunar dreams, since the Chinese National Space Agency has managed to find the enthusiasm Obama lacks. If things continue as it appears they will, the next two decades will see the CNSA emerge as the global leader in manned spaceflight, likely achieving their goal of reaching the moon sometime between 2020 and 2025. In the end, the most disturbing thing about the president’s decision to eviscerate NASA is that it accomplishes absolutely nothing. If it somehow fixed his massive budgetary problems, there might be a justification. Sadly, it doesn’t. His budget still creates a trillion dollars of new debt, per year, for the next 10 years. The money he’s taken from the space program does nothing to stem the tide of red ink, will serve to increase unemployment, and fails, in every way, to advance the American cause. So why are we choosing this course? Imagine how different the world would be if JFK had gone to Rice Stadium in 1962, stood before that crowd, and opted to squash the concept of American exceptionalism in favor of a negligible, short-term, financial gain. Obama has done just that, embracing instead the failed ideology of Walter Mondale, who once said NASA was “a waste of money that would be better spent on welfare.” If Democrats were smart, they’d ignore Mondale in favor of their flawed forebear, Lyndon Johnson, who said “I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a communist moon.” It was true then, and it still rings true today. Perhaps there’s still some hope. Maybe Congress will do the right thing and reject this nonsense. If not, President Obama’s most prominent legacy may be the Democrat PR disaster of a Chinese flag planted at Tranquility Base—a nightmare scenario, at least to those of us who still believe in the inherent greatness of this nation. Robert Laurie writes a daily political commentary blog, The Robalution. Robert holds a degree in English from Wayne State University, and has worked in advertising as a graphic designer and copy writer.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Sir Michael Wilshaw says creating an educated workforce in the north will feed into the wider economy The failure to improve schools in some parts of England has contributed to the feeling of being ignored revealed in the Brexit vote, the chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw has said. The Ofsted boss said while standards were rising overall, the number of poorly performing schools in the north and the East Midlands would continue to fuel the sense of a divided nation. He said the situation was very serious. The government said 89% of schools were good or outstanding. In an interview with the BBC in Manchester, Sir Michael said the economic future of the north of England relied on addressing the poor performance of some schools. He said the European Union referendum result had revealed a wider malaise, with communities feeling their needs were being ignored. Although some northern city centre areas voted strongly to stay in the EU, large parts of Greater Manchester and some Merseyside towns voted in great numbers to leave. Image caption Sir Michael says schools in northern cities such as Manchester need to improve "The situation is very, very serious. If you look at Manchester, the city we're in, nearly one in three schools [is] not good. In Liverpool, half are good. If you look at satellite towns, things are worse. "It's feeding into a sense that the people of Liverpool, Manchester and the North are not being treated fairly - that their children have less of a chance of educational success than people south of the Wash. "And that's feeding into a wider malaise that I sense with the Brexit vote, that actually this wasn't just about leaving Europe, it's about 'our needs being neglected, our children are not getting as good a deal as elsewhere'. "Parents want to see their children doing well; they want to see them going off to university; they want to see them getting a good job. "Well, they have less of a chance of that in this city, in Liverpool and elsewhere and that feeds into this sense of discontent in the North and in the Midlands." Join the conversation - find us on Facebook His report said there was considerable evidence that schools in isolated and deprived areas where educational standards are low are losing out in the recruitment stakes. It added that heads in north-west England are reporting an "auction" for teachers - particularly in Greater Manchester for hard to recruit subjects. But there are also shortfalls in secondary subjects in south-east England. Sir Michael said addressing education must be a government priority. 'More teachers' The Ofsted annual report, published on Thursday morning, highlights that overall standards are rising, with 1.8m more pupils in good or outstanding maintained schools in 2016 than in 2010. During this period, the curriculum and assessment regime had become more rigorous and children from poor backgrounds were gaining ground on their peers in national primary tests. But the report also said to become truly world class, England needed to have: High standards in education in every part the country More teachers and leaders in in the right areas Technical education that is on a par with academic education It also highlighted the poor quality of education in the more geographically and economically isolated parts of the country, including coastal areas. School Standards Minister Nick Gibb said good and outstanding schools now made up 89% of all schools inspected in England but acknowledged there was more to do. "That's precisely why we have set out plans to make more good school places available, to more parents, in more parts of the country - including scrapping the ban on new grammar school places, and harnessing the resources and expertise of universities, independent and faith schools," he added. Malcolm Trobe, interim general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the reasons for educational underperformance in some areas were complex. He said: "Industrial decline, generational unemployment and high levels of deprivation have had a devastating impact on many parts of the country, creating extremely challenging social conditions. "Schools in these areas often find it difficult to recruit staff and are hit particularly badly by the on-going nationwide teacher recruitment crisis." Sir Michael retires as head of Ofsted at the end of the year. He will be succeeded by Amanda Spielman, who currently chairs exams regulator Ofqual. Pisa tests: UK lags behind in global school rankingsIf elected president, Hillary Clinton could permanently resettle close to one million Muslim migrants during the first term of her presidency alone, according to the latest available data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Between 2001 and 2013, the U.S. permanently resettled 1.5 million Muslim migrants on green cards. However, under Hillary Clinton’s stated proposals, Muslim immigration would grow substantially faster, adding nearly one million Muslim migrants to the U.S. during her first term alone. Based on the most recent available DHS data, the U.S. permanently resettled roughly 149,000 migrants from predominantly Muslim countries on green cards in 2014. Yet Clinton has said that, as President, she would expand Muslim migration by importing an additional 65,000 Syrian refugees into the United States during the course of a single fiscal year. Clinton has made no indication that she would limit her proposed Syrian refugee program to one year. Clinton’s Syrian refugees would come on top of the tens of thousands of refugees the U.S. already admits from Muslim countries. Adding Clinton’s 65,000 Syrian refugees to the approximately 149,000 Muslim migrants the U.S. resettled on green cards in the course of one year, means that Clinton could permanently resettle roughly 214,000 Muslim migrants in her first year as President. If Clinton were to continue her Syrian refugee program throughout her Presidency, she could potentially resettle as many as 856,000 during her first term alone. Analysis from the Senate Immigration Subcommittee found that Clinton’s plan to expand refugee resettlement could cost U.S. taxpayers over $400 billion. Additionally, once Clinton’s Syrian refugees are in the U.S. as green card holders, they will have the ability to bring over their family members through chain migration. With regards to Middle Eastern migration, Clinton’s 65,000 Syrian refugees would be added on top of the roughly 96,000 Middle Eastern migrants the U.S. resettled on green cards in a single year. Based on the minimum numbers Clinton has put forth thus far, as President, she could potentially resettle approximately 644,000 Middle Eastern migrants during her first term alone. According to a September 2015 Rasmussen survey, women voters oppose Clinton’s Middle Eastern refugee plan by a remarkable 21-to-1 margin. Democrat voters oppose Clinton’s refugee plan by a 17-to-1 margin. Most remarkably, 85 percent of black voters oppose Clinton’s refugee agenda– with less than one percent of black voters supporting her plan. Yet Clinton’s expansion to Muslim migration would be in addition to her expansion for immigration overall. U.S. Census data shows that if a President Hillary Clinton were successful in passing a Gang of Eight-style immigration expansion bill, the U.S. could permanently resettle roughly 9.4 million migrants throughout the nation during her first term alone. This figure does not include the additional 11 million illegal immigrants already here to whom Clinton has promised amnesty and U.S. citizenship. Clinton’s desire to expand immigration is shared by GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan, who leads the pro-Islamic migration wing of the Republican Party. Ryan has championed policies to expand Muslim migration into the United States. Ryan has repeatedly ruled out the possibility of curbing Muslim migration and has frequently chastised his party’s presumptive nominee for advocating policies to reduce immigration. At times, Ryan has even echoed Clinton’s rhetoric in his efforts to denounce Trump and Trump’s proposals. In recent weeks, Ryan has come under fire in his own Wisconsin district for continuing to support Islamic migration, and voting to expand Islamic migration, despite the fact that seven out of ten Wisconsin GOP voters would like a Muslim migration pause. Paul Ryan has a two-decade long history of supporting open borders immigration policies, even though, according to Pew polling data, 92% of GOP voters and 83% of American voters overall want to see immigration levels frozen or reduced. In stark contrast to Paul Ryan and Hillary Clinton’s support for open borders, Donald Trump has called for a common sense “mainstream immigration policy that promotes American values.” “That is the choice I put before the American people: a mainstream immigration policy designed to benefit America, or Hillary Clinton’s radical immigration policy designed to benefit politically-correct special interests,” Trump said following the Orlando terrorist attack, carried out by the child of Afghan migrants. Trump continued:'The final page in their story': World War Two Lancaster bomber and its crewmen's remains discovered in German field 69 years after it crashed A RollsRoyce engine and landing gear was found followed by 'hundreds' of fragments of human bones in what would have been the cockpit The seven strong crew died in April 1943 after coming under fire from German anti-aircraft flak British Air Ministry tried to find the final resting place of the crew but with no success so assumed aircraft had crashed in the sea Sixty-nine years after their burning plane plunged to the ground after being shot down by the Germans, the remains of seven Lancaster Bomber crewmen have been recovered. They were discovered by a tea m of German historians who spent hours digging a muddy field near Frankfurt looking for the RAF crew after an eyewitness who saw the plane crash guided them to the site. Lancaster ED427 was one of 327 bombers that took part in a raid on the Skoda armaments works at Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. On their return to their base at RAF Fiskerton, Lincs, they came under fire from German anti-aircraft flak. Pieces of history: Sixty-nine years after their burning plane plunged to the ground after being shot by German anti-aircraft fire the remains of most of the Lancaster bomber crewmen have been recovered.The team sorted the fragments they found into boxes at the site Burnt out: The remains of a scorched parachute. The site was discovered by a British military historian and a team of German archaeologists who spent hours digging a muddy field looking for the RAF crew after an eye-witness who saw the plane crash guided them to the precise spot. Damage: The crater made by the impact of the engine. A Rolls Royce engine and landing gear of the World War Two aircraft was found followed by 'hundreds' of fragments of human bones in what would have been the cockpit 'TOO LITTLE TIME, TOO MUCH DAMAGE:' WHY DID THE CREW NOT MAKE IT OUT ALIVE? Christian Pratt, IWM Duxford: There are a number of possible reasons why none of the aircrew were able to save themselves by parachuting from the aircraft. With eyewitnesses reporting the aircraft to be on fire, it seems likely that one or more anti-aircraft shells would have hit the airframe. The explosions from these hits, and resulting shrapnel, could well have killed or mortally wounded, or disabled crew members directly. The resulting fire and smoke may have also disabled crew members or, possibly, overwhelmed or suffocated them. Egress from the Lancaster was difficult at the best of times (there is a large, central wing spar to climb over, and it is generally cramped inside the aircraft despite its apparent size). In the dark, and with the aircraft damaged and on fire, it may also have been simply too difficult – too little time, or too much damage to hatches – to escape. Ejector seats require the occupant to be conscious and capable of pulling the handle (there are some exceptions, but this is the general principle). If the crew were indeed severely injured or unconscious, they would not have been able to operate the seat, even had they the facility available to them. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like on board during the attack, though we can reasonably assume that the crew would have made every possible effort to save themselves – and so that the circumstances preventing them from doing so were insurmountable, however highly motivated they were. Peter Elliott, Royal Air Force Museum: The crew were not all in 'the cockpit' although five of the seven (pilot, flight engineer, navigator, wireless operator and bomb aimer) would have been in the front part of the aircraft – the two gunners were in their turrets further back and at the tail. If the aircraft was hit in or near the cockpit the pilot could have been killed or injured (as might other members of the crew) and he would have lost control. Others might have tried to fly the aircraft, and thereby left it too late to bail out. Although the crew wore their parachute harnesses all the time, they would have had to find their parachute packs and clip them on to the harness, and it would have been very difficult to get to an emergency exit in the dark while the aircraft was perhaps spinning out of control – they wouldn’t have much time before the aircraft crashed. Would ejector seats have helped? Not necessarily – some of the crew had to move around the aircraft to do their work and so may not have been in their seats when it was hit; some of them may have been killed when it was hit, and even modern ejector seats have their limits. Eyewitness Peter Menges saw the plane on fire before it crashed into a field outside the village of Laumersheim, near Frankfurt, and exploded into a fireball. It is not unknown why the men did not manage to parachute from the plane. Reasons could include Peter Elliott from Royal Air Force Museum said it may have been a case of' too little time, or too much damage.' 'With eyewitnesses reporting the aircraft to be on fire, it seems likely that one or more anti-aircraft shells would have hit the airframe. 'The explosions from these hits, and resulting shrapnel, could well have killed or mortally wounded, or disabled crew members directly. 'The resulting fire and smoke may have also disabled crew members or, possibly, overwhelmed or suffocated them.' A Rolls-Royce engine and landing gear of the World War Two aircraft was found followed by 'hundreds' of fragments of human bones in what would have been the cockpit. The archaeological dig in Germany was questioned by some locals who couldn't understand why the team were searching for British airmen who bombed their cities. Uwe Benkel, who led the search, said they felt obliged to find the missing men and bring comfort to their families who knew nothing of how or where they died. Some of the relatives have now expressed their gratitude to the amateur historians and are hoping to finally bury their loved ones seven decades after their deaths. Mr Benkel, 51, said: 'A lot of people couldn't understand what we were doing and said things like why were we digging up British airmen who bombed our cities and killed our people? 'Our view is that this is past and history, it was 70 years ago. We are another generation. 'We do research on missing men who are still in the ground. 'It doesn't make a difference if they are German or British; they were young men who fought and died for their country for which they deserve a proper burial in a cemetery. 'We do it for the families. For them, it is a bit like reading a book with the last page missing. When we find the bodies, we are writing the final page for them.' The seven strong crew - pilot Alex Bone, flight engineer Norman Foster, navigator Cyril Yelland, wireless operator Raymond White, bomb aimer Raymond Rooney, air gunner Ronald Cope and air gunner Bruce Watt - died in April 1943. Lancaster ED427 one of 36 bombers which failed to make it back to Britain that night. The impact of the crash created a large crater in the ground. The German military recovered two of the bodies from the wreckage - thought to have been Sgt Cope and Canadian Pilot Officer Watt - and buried them. Perished: Flight engineer Sgt Norman Foster, left, crew member of the doomed Lancaster and wireless operator Sgt Raymond White, right. It is thought the remains of the men will be buried in the same coffin in a single grave at a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Germany Found: Sgt Ronald Cope, left, an air gunner and pilot FO Alex Bone, right. The seven strong crew died in April 1943 Air gunner Bruce Watt, left, and Sgt Cyril Yelland, a navigator, right. On their return to their base at RAF Fiskerton, Lincs, they came under fire from German anti-aircraft flak 'THE BOMBERS ALONE PROVIDE THE MEANS OF VICTORY' RAF Bomber Command's role during World War Two was to bomb the enemy's airbases, shipping, troops, communications and other industries connected to the German war effort. Britain had to use long-range bombing after Dunkirk in 1940 until D-day in 1944 as it had no other way of attacking the Germans. The job fell to RAF air crews - some of who were just 18 - who flew increasingly heavier types of long-range bombers. It was so successful that Hitler was forced to divert nearly a million men, 55,000 artillery guns and a large part of the German air force on to defending the nation instead of fighting offensively. Bomber Command flew almost every day and mostly at night during the war to avoid being shot down - but this meant it was difficult to locate small targets. In 1941 it was decided whole industrial cities should be priority targets. Larger four-engine bombers and improved navigation equipment then followed to create a formidable fighting force. The repeated and persistent attacks on German cities which followed became a critical factor in the liberation of Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. After the war, the British Air Ministry tried to find the final resting place of the crew but with no success. It was assumed their aircraft had crashed in the sea and their names were added to the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey dedicated to 20,000 servicemen with no known grave. Mr Benkel, a health insurance clerk by day, began researching military plane crashes 25 years ago and now leads a voluntary recovery group that has examined 400 crashes and recovered the bodies of 38 airmen. He recently began looking into ED427 and found Mr Menges, 83, culminating in the dig that took place last Saturday. Mr Benkel said: 'Peter lived in the next village. He saw the plane coming down on fire and saw the explosion. His parents didn't allow him to go and see the plane that night. 'He went the next morning and the German military were there. From what he saw the majority of the parts were on the surface and taken away. 'There was a big crater in the ground, within a couple of days it was filled in with rocks and dirt and was covered up for the next 69 years. 'Peter showed me the site and we used metal detectors and radar photos to examine it.' The team dug five metres deep in a 100 square metre area and found sections of the fuselage, cockpit, landing gear, a tyre, a burnt parachute, tools and ammunition. Mr Benkel believes the remains they found are those of F/O Bone, Sgt Foster, Sgt Yelland, Sgt Rooney and Sgt White as these men would have been in the cockpit at the time. Sgt Foster's daughter Hazel Snedker was three-years-old when her father was killed aged 22. Excavation: Volunteers dig within the crater, exhuming the fateful planes remains. The team dug five metres deep in a 100 square metre area and found sections of the fuselage, cockpit, landing gear, a tyre, a burnt parachute, tools and ammunition Discovery: The remains of a Merlin engine were also unearthed by the team Storage: Ammunition collected from the crash site. It was assumed the aircraft had crashed in the sea and their names were added to the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey dedicated to 20,000 servicemen with no known grave Fatal flight: A graphic of the site in Laumersheim, Germany, where the Lancaster crashed 69 years ago LANCASTER BOMBERS BY NUMBERS 19 Victoria Crosses won by men of Bomber Command, including Guy Gibson, who led the Dam Busters raid 125,000 Bomber Command air crew serving during WWII 55,573 died in action, a death rate of 44 per cent 4% average chance of being shot down per mission – but crews had to complete at least 30. Chances of surviving war lower than infantry officer in First World War trenches 9,838 bomber crew became prisoners of war 1.3m tons of bombs dropped by the Allies on Germany 635,000 is the estimate of German civilians killed 72% of Bomber Command dead were British. The rest were from Canada, Australia and New Zealand Mrs Snedker, now aged 72 and from Leamington Spa, Warks, said: 'I have no memory of my father whatsoever. 'The only memory I have is of my mother fainting when she received the telegram saying he was missing. 'My mother died from tuberculosis when I was six-years-old and I was bought up by my paternal grandparents. 'Iknow that they quietly hoped that there would be some news of their son. 'But in those days very little was spoken about it and you just carried on. 'When something like that happens you either get bitter and twisted about it or you just get on with it. 'And now, after all these years, it has all come to light. 'It is a great relief to know what did happen to him and where he is. At least he will now have a grave with a headstone. 'My father had two sisters who are still alive. I know my auntie Joan is very pleased. She wanted to know what happened to her brother.' Labour: Volunteers dig within the crater to exhume any remains. After the war, the British Air Ministry tried to find the final resting place of the crew but with no success Tireless: Uwe Benkel, the volunteers' team leader and Volunteer Christian Schwein with fragments of tyre found at the crash site. Mr Benkel said: 'I think it is right they share the same grave. These men flew together and died together. They should now rest together Birds eye view: An aerial Luftwaffe picture showing the crash site at Laumersheim, Germany Commemoration: A minutes silence was held in respect by the volunteers. Members of the Bundeswehr reserve, part of the German army, are in uniform Respect: A poppy memorial was erected as a mark of remembrance. It is thought the remains of the men will be buried in the same coffin in a single grave at a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Germany The British Embassy in Berlin has been made aware of the discovery. It is thought the remains of the men will be buried in the same coffin in a single grave at a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Germany. Mr Benkel said: 'I think it is right they share the same grave. These men flew together and died together. They should now rest together.'FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- Gary Andersen's dog died late last spring. Her name was "Aggie," acquired by the family during his Utah State coaching days. Late on a sad Thursday night in May, the Oregon State football coach laid her to sleep. I only know because we were supposed to talk that day for a column I was working on. Andersen asked if I wouldn't mind connecting with him the following day. "She's my baby," he told me then. A month before that, in April, Andersen attended the wedding of his oldest twin son. The father of the groom wore a tuxedo with a blue vest beneath it. He posed for photographs, made a toast, and to friends, he smiled and lifted the pant leg of his slacks to reveal that the coach was wearing a pair of Nike "Swoosh" socks instead of dress socks beneath the cuff. "I have good boys," he told me then. What I'm saying is that since Andersen last coached a football game, he's lost and gained and lived, mourned and laughed. He's inherited a prized transfer running back (Thomas Tyner), named a starting quarterback (Jake Luton), and this week when I asked the Beavers' coach how he was feeling about the season opener - unknowns swirling all around him -- Andersen replied with words we all might have seen coming. "It's a tough man's game," he said, "you gotta dig in and dig deeper." Count me among those interested in seeing the latest installment of the sociological experiment being conducted by Andersen. Since his arrival in Corvallis I've talked with Andersen 1-on-1 on a dozen or more occasions, and the common theme of the majority of those conversations relates around the fact that he is trying to turn a battleship in the narrowest of canals. He wants Oregon State to stop thinking, talking, and acting like "little old Oregon State." He wants the Beavers to stop feeling sorry for themselves. He wants his team's identity to be forged from sweat equity, bound by strength and glued together with toughness. "It's a wall I work to beat down every day," he told me in the summer. "Got to keep grinding and take care of the things that matter." Saturday's game at Colorado State is an important pivot point for Andersen's program. It's a "put up or shut up" game for his players. Road game at Colorado State? In a new stadium opening? An underdog playing at 5,000-feet of altitude? "Little old Oregon State" would lose that game. It would wilt. It would wobble. It would get its teeth kicked in. But if Andersen really has changed the identity of his program, and if he's going to take OSU to a bowl game, it's exactly the kind of game the Beavers should win. It's the kind of game where the Beavers do the kicking. It's not a must-win. It's just the first big revealing moment in what promises to be a season filled with big moments. Has Andersen killed Oregon State's loser mentality? The non-conference football season is filled with questions. But that's the biggest question that will be answered on Saturday by Oregon State. Is it still "little old Oregon State"? Or nah? I asked Beavers broadcaster Mike Parker about the differences he's seen in watching OSU coaches such as Dennis Erickson, Mike Riley and Andersen cycle through the same job over the years. Parker pointed out that players, even ones recruited by Riley, said of Andersen this season, "Everything he tells us comes true." He's brutally honest in his evaluation of talent, it's true. He's real with his players. I've seen Andersen walk past them and shout constructive criticism at them. And I've heard him tell an assistant of a couple of his players who weren't getting the offseason work done in the weight room, "We can't be with them on game day. They have to do it. Handling their business now matters on Saturdays." No sugar coating. No lowering of standards. No excuses. Get busy being part of the solution, or get out of the way. But will all that messaging and posturing manifest itself in victories in this season? Will he really take the Beavers to a bowl game? Andersen has to be a nervous wreck. Maybe the most nervous coach in America right now, or at least the most nervous among the 10 head coaches who open this season this weekend. I can imagine he's going to spend Friday night and Saturday early morning, reassuring himself that he's put in the work, and as he told that assistant, it's up to the players now. He can't know - FOR SURE - how his team will handle the environment in Fort Collins, Colo. He can't know if Luton is truly ready to win a big game at quarterback. He can't know, without doubt, whether his defense will make enough plays or his running backs will run wild. Has Andersen really turned the USS Beavers battleship? Or is he sitting perpendicular in the channel with an oncoming rig approaching? Wide open water? Or wide-open hull? That's what we find out on Saturday. I'm sure when Oregon State scheduled this game it didn't expect to find Colorado State looking formidable on both sides of the ball, and opening a new stadium in front of a sellout crowd. When it moved the contest to "Week Zero" to create two bye weeks in the season, there was obvious advantage to the conference schedule. Also, it made Oregon State one of the featured games nationally. But the biggest opportunity for the rest of us is that we're not going to have to wait through a tune-up game against Portland State to figure out if Oregon State is back. It's not like the Beavers entire season is on the line against CSU. But if they're going to be bowl eligible this season, the Beavers are going to have to win some road games (at Colorado State, at Cal, at Arizona, for example). Andersen has never won a road game as the Beavers coach. To be bowl eligible, it's not lost that he'll have to win as many games (six) this season as he's won in his first 24 attempts (6-18) as the head coach in Corvallis. The end-of-season victories in 2016 over Arizona and Oregon, two programs that were struggling to finish, were promising. They were proof of life. They were especially interesting because they indicated that OSU had an identity. The Civil War, in particular, ended with the skies opening as Ryan Nall sliced up the Ducks porous defense. It was momentum, but did it say more about OSU or its dead-in-the-water opposition? We can't know for sure until we see a larger sample size. When Riley ditched Oregon State for Nebraska, he was making a statement. No doubt, Riley felt unappreciated and decided to throw in the keys. He'd raised the profile of the university, but felt stalled. The Beavers didn't interview a pool of candidates. They never hired a search firm. They just looked up and Andersen fell from the clouds, landing smack into their laps. It felt like a steal. Assist to Barry Alvarez at Wisconsin. But from the moment Andersen showed up it's been, "We need to be tougher... stronger... better... and we need to stop making excuses and feeling sorry for ourselves and fight." Also, he's talked about OSU being his forever job. It's all lined up that way for Andersen, isn't it? He bought his forever house. He got a new dog (a boxer) this summer. His former athletic director at Utah State (Scott Barnes) was hired in December. We get a peek into forever on Saturday. --- @JohnCanzanoBFTThe sound of battle has long gone. But the ghosts remain in Ukraine's Independence Square, where more than two years ago police and protesters clashed for weeks amid acrid black fumes billowing from burning tires. In Ukraine's Maidan where sniper rounds once cracked, there are now foreign tourists. Where 53 people were slain either with clean shots by expert marksmen or gunned down at closer range by less skillful assassins, there are now snaking lines of school kids visiting from other Ukrainian cities. The kids listen in various states of indifference or interest to the guides explaining the events that led to the ouster of President Vladimir Putin's satrap Viktor Yanukovych. That ouster triggered the Russian land-grab of Crimea and what Ukrainian and Western officials say is Moscow-fomented separatism in the country's mainly Russian-speaking eastern region of Donbas. For all of the calm now in Maidan, Ukrainian officials fear the Kremlin is limbering up for another destabilizing offensive in the east. They say it is part of Moscow's hybrid war involving dirty tricks and misinformation to snap Ukraine back into the Russian orbit and prolong a state of uncertainty to hinder the government in Kyiv from accomplishing the political reforms Maidan protesters demanded. Mounting tensions And tensions are increasing, not only in the Donbas but on the Ukraine-Crimea frontier following the off-and-on closure over the weekend of all three border crossings by Russia. Kyiv accused Moscow on Tuesday of stepping up military activity on the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014 within weeks of Yanukovych's fall. More helicopter gunship sorties reportedly are being flown along the border, as well as surveillance drone flights. Ukraine's general staff is reinforcing units in Kherson, the Ukrainian region bordering Crimea, and residents say they have spotted anti-tank rocket launchers being transported by Ukrainian forces. The Russians also are building up in Crimea. The deputy chairman of the outlawed Crimean Tatars' Mejlis, or council, Nariman D
of AT&T and Verizon's plan to hang up on unwanted DSL customers they refuse to upgrade. That doesn't somehow mean the broadband that's "100% available" to you is going to actually beor, since that would involve the government acknowledging that lack of competition means Americans pay more for broadband than most developed nations. Fixing this will take significantly more than empty promises, and for Clinton, it will certainly involve pissing off new allies like Jim Cicconi.The lion's share of Clinton's tech agenda consists of ambiguous promises that, as with all campaign promises, may or may not have any actual basis in fact.Clinton's plan calls for improving government adoption of technology and efficiency, improving our patent system (which the Clinton camp declares "has been an envy of the world"), and other feel good efforts such as "facilitating citizen engagement in government innovation" and using technology to "improve outcomes and drive government accountability" (doesn't that sound?). But Clinton also makes it clear she intends to continue waging war on encryption -- her plan for a " Manhattan Project " to "solve" (read: weaken) encryption still very much on the table:Yes, it's abundantly clear that Clinton and friends continue to struggle with the idea that encryption is simply a tool, and like any tool it can be used for a myriad of purposes. That doesn't mean you unilaterally declare war on said tool -- or work tirelessly toor more dangerous via backdoors -- a conversation we'll apparently be having over and over and over again should Clinton's presidency ascend beyond the rhetorical, larval stage. Filed Under: broadband, encryption, hillary clinton, net neutrality, platformFooch's update: Brown realized how his comments sound, switches gears to throw Kap's agents under the bus Clarifying: #Browns said they were called about interest in Colin Kaepernick. Source says it was player's agent, not 49ers. — Tony Grossi (@TonyGrossi) March 21, 2016 The Colin Kaepernick saga has taken another turn as we move toward April 1, and whatever lies beyond that. The Cleveland Browns are now claiming their interest in the San Francisco 49ers quarterback was "over-reported", and that it was the 49ers who reached out to them about trying to do a deal. Executive Vice President Sashi Brown is at the NFL owners' meetings, and he met with Browns meeting to discuss the state of the team's quarterback position. Brown said the Browns are not actively engaged in trade talks with the 49ers for Colin Kaepernick, "and at this point we don't anticipate being engaged with San Francisco." He said the Browns were called to see if they were interested, and engaged in some preliminary talks. He said the Browns' interest was "over-reported," and that they never negotiated a draft pick or a new contract for Kaepernick. We can't really believe anything anybody in the NFL says when it comes to trade talks. As always there are usually shades of grey in anything we hear. In this case, one extreme is that Sashi Brown is completely full of crap. The other extreme is that the 49ers are desperate and have effectively gone door-to-door trying to sell their used Kap. I think that Sashi Brown is probably lying to some extent, and I also think the 49ers are probably going door-to-door to sell their used Kap. The 49ers have tried to made it clear through leaks and some direct comments that they are comfortable keeping Kap if a deal does not get done. It's possible they are in fact comfortable trying to re-build the relationship. It's also possible they are bluffing and hoping to convince the Broncos to get a deal done. As always, there is a little bit of everything involved. I suspect at some point this week, we'll hear some national media reinforcing the notion that the 49ers are prepared to retain Kap. Ian Rapoport, Adam Schefter, and Jason Cole are the three most likely candidates to provide the latest such bit of rumor. If I were to give them odds, I'd say Cole is the favorite, Schefter is second, Rapoport is third.Fake information trails and burner phones. If you’re wondering how journalists who cover sensitive federal government issues have adapted to the discovery that there’s even more snooping going on than all but the most paranoid of them thought, it’s a complicated mess. Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union interviewed nearly four dozen journalists about how their jobs have changed in the wake of both Edward Snowden’s leaks and the propensity for President Barack Obama’s administration to prosecute leakers (or those who leak things the government doesn’t want leaked, anyway). It’s probably not news to anybody at this point that journalists have seen a chilling effect from their sources as a result of the government’s behavior. But it is interesting to note how far it has gone for them: While sources’ employers sometimes have legitimate reasons for discouraging conversations about certain matters with the press, the stakes and the consequences have increased substantially in recent years, making conversations about declassified or innocuous subjects not worth the risk. One journalist described a source who was eventually fired when his or her employer found signs of the source’s initial contact with journalists a year earlier, even though the source had not leaked classified information. At the same time, the fact that senior government officials themselves routinely appear to authorize “leaks” of classified information has bred cynicism about the government’s claims that these prosecutions are merely about enforcing the law. “Of course, leaks that help the government are sanctioned,” observed Brian Ross, chief investigative correspondent for ABC News. Bart Gellman, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, and the winner of multiple Pulitzer Prizes, argued that official, sanctioned leaks reveal much more classified information than unofficial ones. Yet, beyond the leak investigations and administrative efforts to prevent leaks, many journalists said that the government’s increased capacity to engage in surveillance—and the knowledge that it is doing so on an unprecedented scale—has made their concerns about how to protect sources much more acute and real. In fact, some believed that surveillance may be a direct cause of the spike in leak investigations. “It used to be that leak investigations didn’t get far because it was too hard to uncover the source, but with digital tools it's just much easier, and sources know that.” observed Bart Gellman. Peter Maass, a senior writer at The Intercept, concurred: “Leak investigations are a lot easier because you leave a data trail calling, swiping in and out of buildings, [and] walking down a street with cameras. It’s a lot easier for people to know where you’re going and how long you’re there.” Charlie Savage raised a similar point: “[E]lectronic trails mak[e] it easier to figure out who’s talking to reporters. That has made it realistic [to investigate leaks] in a way that it wasn’t before.” Peter Finn, the National Security Editor at the Washington Post, expressed concern that “the government’s ability to find the source will only get better.” So journalists have to resort to all sorts of tricks and countermeasures to try to make sure their sources are protected, which may sound like some sexy All the Presidents’ Men stuff, but in actuality is probably very burdensome to the task of actually getting information: In addition to seeking security in a combination of more and less advanced technology, a number of journalists have adapted their use of conventional tools to make it more difficult to track down their sources through surveillance. One approach involves deliberately creating a misleading electronic trail. For example, one journalist described a colleague who calls a large number of possible sources before a story comes out in order to obscure the identities of those who actually provided information. Another reported booking “fake” travel plans for places he never intended to visit. Journalists and sources have also made creative use of common technologies to hide their interactions. The most common such approach is to use “burner” phones—cell phones with limited identifiable links to the owner, and which one disposes of after a matter of days or weeks. A significant number of journalists described elaborate processes by which they managed to obtain such phones, limit their traceability, and make them operable for a short period. Others described a variety of similar techniques for sharing information with sources electronically while minimizing the trace left behind. Some detailed the inventive use of email accounts or phones, as well as tricks for hiding purchase records related to reporting activity. Journalists also have made efforts to better protect their information. Due to the traceability of GPS information from cell phones, and the possibility of turning cell phones into listening devices (even if they are off), several journalists reported turning off cell phones or taking out their phone batteries before speaking with people in person, or even leaving phones behind altogether when visiting sources. One journalist reported keeping his files “on a flash drive in [his] pocket all the time,” and taking additional precautions with his notes—such as writing them by hand and encoding them. A couple of others have employed codes for discussing stories or sources, whether within an office or otherwise. While the part of the report that discusses the chilling behavior of surveillance on the work of journalists is getting most of the attention, the report also discusses the potential impact of government snooping on lawyers, too, as ample evidence shows the feds have been gaining access to privileged communication between lawyers and clients. When Glenn Greenwald finally revealed some names of actual individuals targeted for surveillance by the government—though they were not suspected of any crimes themselves—two were representing foreign government or organizations that were suspected of terrorist ties. Lawyers are left not knowing how safe it is to speaking openly with their clients: As a result of recent surveillance revelations, a couple of attorneys reported feeling duty-bound to warn their clients that information related to their case may not remain private. Linda Moreno noted, “Given the now publicly admitted revelations that there is no privacy in communications, including those between attorneys and their clients, I feel ethically obligated to tell all clients that I can’t guarantee anything [they] say is privileged … or will remain confidential.” Similarly, Nancy Hollander, who focuses on criminal defense including in national security contexts, has begun including a bolded auto-signature in her work-related emails with the same effect: “Warning: Based on recent news reports, it is possible that the NSA is monitoring this communication.” Overall, however, without a clear sense of the boundaries of US government surveillance, and the effectiveness of various countermeasures, it is difficult to discern what steps lawyers might be obliged to take to protect their information. Gillers cautioned lawyers about the use of phone, email, and text communications, noting that when it comes to electronic data, “it doesn’t matter what the vehicle is.” An experienced criminal defense attorney observed similarly that, based on what we knew about US government surveillance programs before the Snowden leaks, overseas travel (instead of international electronic communication) was likely ethically required for attorneys handling certain types of cases. Now, he argued, “Lawyers have to assume any electronic communication they have is going to be intercepted.” Although the risk that poses will vary with the nature of the communications, and might be mitigated in some instances by security measures, lawyers need to treat the likely collection of electronic communications as a “fact of life.” In its conclusion, the report calls for reforms, such as an end to the overclassification of government documents, additional disclosure about the nature of the surveillance programs, and enhanced protections for whistleblowers. Read the entire report here.NEWARK, N.J. -- New Jersey Devils right wing Jaromir Jagr continues to be defiant against Father Time, so it shouldn't be a surprise that the now 43-year-old could be one of the most influential players to change teams prior to the 2015 NHL Trade Deadline on March 2 at 3 p.m. ET. Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello hasn't said he is going to trade Jagr, nor has Jagr made public any request to be traded, but New Jersey's position in the standings (seventh in the Metropolitan Division) and Jagr's position as a player on a one-year contract who can still score makes him a valuable commodity as the deadline nears. "He's got it, he's still got it," Devils forward Dainius Zubrus said. "He's still doing it." Jagr leads the Devils with 29 points in 52 games heading into their game Tuesday against the Buffalo Sabres at Prudential Center (7:30 p.m. ET, NBCSN). He's averaging 17:59 of ice time per game, but lately his minutes have gone down as his role has shrunk since the Devils made their coaching change on Dec. 26. Maybe it's because of his diminished role that Jagr made it a point to say the following, which can be seen as sending a message to teams that might be interested in acquiring him for the stretch run: "I think some teams worry about when I go there I want to be on the first power play, I want to be on the first line; it's not true," Jagr said. "I'm here on the third line, and I play 15 minutes, sometimes I don't get on the power play, and I'm happy. Not happy, but I do my job. I try to do it the best. I think sometimes the teams or the coaches, they think, he always plays on the outside. I know where's my strength. I like to play offensive zone on the boards. I still feel like I'm strong enough to beat anybody, at least hold that puck. If it's true or not, I still believe in it. Maybe I'm not going to beat that guy one-on-one like I used to, but I can still make a play from that corner from the cycle. That's my strength. And in the playoffs that's the way you play. I don't have to play 40 minutes." Jagr added he feels he can play on any line for any team. "Unless you're [Sidney] Crosby or [Evgeni] Malkin who play a little more, or [Patrick] Kane and those guys, most of the time when you look at playoffs guys are playing from 18 to 15 [minutes], everybody, it doesn't matter if you're a first line or not," Jagr said. "It has changed a lot in that way. I think it helps me to realize it. Of course I want to play 20 minutes, but I find out it doesn't matter who I play with, I'm happy if I play my role, the cycle game and play on the boards." Lamoriello, who has never been one to disclose his plans, at least indicated he thinks Jagr still has a lot to offer in the NHL. "What we're saying about, and I agree, is that he's in phenomenal shape, is still contributing, and could be an asset to anybody depending on what they needed, if that were the case," Lamoriello said. Jagr's current teammates can attest to that too. Zubrus said he thinks Jagr generates offensive zone time for the Devils because of how strong he is on the puck in the corners. "He's as strong of a guy that we have on the puck, down low and cycling," Zubrus said. "Even on the forecheck he's hungry." Devils defenseman Andy Greene compared Jagr to a center in the NBA. "He turns his back into guys, backs them up, and wants to wear them down," Greene said. "He's still a big guy, a strong guy, and he has the chance to wear guys out throughout a game. Especially in a playoff series, you get him in there and he can wear teams down for sure." That people are still talking this way about Jagr makes it easy to wonder if we'll ever see another player like him at this age; a 43-year-old player with a combination of skill and power that is still coveted by contending teams because they might not think they can find it anywhere else. "It's rare," Zubrus said. "Yes, it's very rare." The last players to play in the NHL, and have an impact, at 43 were Teemu Selanne and Mark Recchi, but their games weren't built on being powerful along the walls the way Jagr has had to live for his entire career. "He's one of those generational players," Greene said, "but he's been through a couple generations, a couple different eras now." But Jagr hasn't won the Stanley Cup since 1992, when he played for the Pittsburgh Penguins. A trade before March 2 might give him the chance to do it again. Even if it happens, Jagr isn't going to walk into the sunset the way Recchi did after winning the Cup with the Boston Bruins in 2011. He plans on playing next season, and likely beyond. "If I have to go to tryout I go to tryout. I just love the NHL, so it doesn't matter," Jagr said. "I'll go try out. If I have to go I'll go, and I'll be ready. Trust me, I'm going to make that team. "Where else can you go into an arena and have 20,000 people watching you and you make something great and they clap their hands, or they're booing you? Where else are you going to do that? It's a show. You're not going to find that excitement anywhere else. I'm going to sit at home and what, watch TV and say I wish I was there?'" Jagr will risk doing that if the Devils hold onto him beyond the trade deadline. There should be enough teams calling on him that it shouldn't be a problem. Follow Dan Rosen on Twitter at: @drosennhlInternet-connected televisions, social media, and the power of simplicity were all cited as launch pads for future innovation in technology, according to a panel of experts that convened at Harvard Business School as part of the HBS Centennial Business Summit in October. And though advertisers love the Internet, to what extent they can capitalize on these transformations remains an open question. HBS professor David Yoffie moderated the session on "The Technology Revolution and its Implications for the Future," with panelists James Breyer (HBS MBA '87), partner of the venture capital firm Accel Partners; Susan L. Decker (HBS MBA '86), president of Yahoo! Inc.; and Eric Kim (HBS MBA '81), senior vice president and general manager of Intel Corporation's Digital Home Group. The first computer, the ENIAC, cleared the path for future innovation in the late 1940s, said Yoffie, who set the context for the ensuing discussion. Today, millions of Web users generate free content, and we are witnessing an "explosion" in video and cell phone use, he continued, with more than 100 million smartphones already in use. In addition, there is the phenomenon of virtual worlds, where approximately 217 million online players interact. This is an evolving landscape, with much growth remaining, Yoffie said. Of 6.5 billion people in the world, about 1.5 billion have Internet access, more than 300 million have broadband access to the home, and 3 billion have cell phones, a growing number of which offer Internet access. What these statistics suggest is that "the most precious currency today is information," said panelist Jim Breyer, an early investor in Facebook and a director of Wal-Mart Stores. "Each year there is more information created on the Web than in all the previous years combined. Investment initiatives are around participating in the information flow. We [at Accel] are interested in companies that help us understand how to structure information, communicate, categorize some of that self-generated information, and then act on it." A sticking point currently for businesses is spanning the gap between the physical and the digital world, he continued. "Right now there are significant problems understanding how to take what we are getting at point of sale in the physical world environment—very valuable info on customers—and how to integrate it with all the information that is being generated on the Web. To date, there is no company that allows one to take quickly all this information 'in the cloud' and integrate it with the vast arrays of information in the physical world." Difficulties aside, Breyer said the promise of technology meant that innovation to solve a problem could arrive from any quarter: prominent companies, nonprofit enterprises, "two students in a dorm room, or mothers or fathers after they have done their school pickups." He continues to be impressed by businesses that start with little capital—anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000—yet get to scale quickly and build new applications on the Web. Sleeping By The Cell Phone Just as technology is influencing society, society is increasingly making demands on technology, said Sue Decker of Yahoo! "The way we live, love, communicate, and work will influence technology, and the greater population will be exercising an increasing amount of control," she said. Decker cited statistics suggesting that in 2007, 12 percent of newlyweds met online. In addition, of the users in the United States, half sleep with a cell phone or other electronic device nearby, and married couples usually do not share cell phones. Innovation will serve people who want simplicity of technology usage. As the network gets larger it becomes less relevant to individuals, she said, so people want to organize their experience according to their own interests. "Companies that will do pretty well will create a dashboard of simplicity that is very open to the whole Internet, not just to the company it may be associated with, and will elevate social connections in a way that drives dollars." How exactly social connections will drive dollars remains to be seen, she added. Although some sites such as Yahoo! include premium services that require fees or subscriptions, the largest business model by far is advertising: a $45 billion industry globally that has been growing about 20 percent per year, said Decker. Advertising on the Web is very effective in the sense that advertisers can reach great scale and do precision targeting. The challenge is to discern consumers' intent. "Search is unbelievably efficient because you look at a little query box. You can tell exactly what people care about, and you can serve an ad that is relevant at scale. In social media, that is very difficult to do. It's very hard to know what people care about with respect to buying things, because you are inferring intent, you're not taking intent directly from the consumer," said Decker. "Advertisers really want to be there: They love the demographics, they are increasingly comfortable with some of the brand risks of what that might mean. But Internet advertising still doesn't perform very well, and that's a challenge. How do you serve the right ads to the right user and understand what it is that that individual would be interested in buying?" Tv And The Internet Pressure has been building for a merging of television and the Internet, said Intel's Eric Kim. Consumers now expect Internet service everywhere, with implications for entertainment and advertising. For almost 90 years, the television has been a one-way device, and it should be a two-way device. "This is not a new idea," Kim clarified. "Many attempts have failed. It primes us for success." Prices of televisions are going down, and the industry as a whole is mature, leaving an opportunity for the Internet to disrupt both the value chain and the content industry. Advertisers, for their part, continue to feel comfortable placing ads on TV, gauging that their dollars will not be wasted. Emerging markets further propel the growth potential for innovations combining the Internet and television, which is a natural, low-cost, and ubiquitous way for people in emerging markets to engage with the Internet, he said. "We think there's a lot of room for innovation here and a lot of room for richness and choices," Kim concluded. "There is no silver bullet in a lot of these economic models," added Breyer. "It's almost always the case that the business models shift in every successful company. I think it's our job as board members, CEOs, and investors to find breathtakingly brilliant entrepreneurs who then try to find breathtakingly brilliant operating executives who also understand the products, and try to spend a great deal of time finding pockets of monetization. There will be a great deal of experimentation. Some of it will work and a lot won't. Five years from now, many of them will have found highly successful business models," but it is tricky at the beginning of a new venture to predict what those models might be. A dashboard concept is very important as the key to innovation, said Decker. "Increasingly, companies will find ways to leverage whatever social networks you're in, find ways to service those in ways easy for you to access, and try to go for more simplicity," she said. "Simplicity is the single thing people really want. It's going to get faster in terms of technology. There's going to be more opportunities and interconnections. "But fundamentally, removing the complexity and adding simplicity so you can easily access in an open way everything you want, and leverage a lot of social connections rather than going to multiple ones, is how the user experience will evolve.""Miscavige got out a tire jack and... smashed the pay phone so it wouldn't work. Needless to say this scared the crap out of Gale. Then he grabbed Gale and forced her into the van." David Miscavige (known within the Church of Scientology as “DM”) had been at St. Hill, England where he was training to be a Class IV auditor. In 1976, at the age of 16, he joined the Sea Org at the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida, and went directly into the Commodore Messengers Org or “CMO.” LRH had already left Clearwater for Washington, DC, at that time, so DM did not get to meet him then. DM did the introductory training for the CMO, which is called the Estates Project Force or “EPF.” Like any normal CMO recruit he moved up the ranks to running programs around the Flag Land Base. He did his first mission at the Flag Land Base with Art Webb. But staff did not like how he treated them. Miscavige was determined to follow his Mission Orders to the letter and gave no consideration to the people he had to deal with or what the real situation was. He ended up with a failed mission. In early 1977, Dave was sent "over the rainbow" to work with LRH in La Quinta, California, also known as WHQ ( Winter Headquarters). Since there was no LRH Personal Communicator located with LRH in La Quinta, the messengers filtered all traffic to LRH. Dave, shortly after arrival was assigned to be the "Traffic Messenger" with all written traffic to LRH being filtered by him to remove or kick out any irrelevant particles or incomplete proposals. Though Dave's office was located two offices down from LRH's, he was not a main messenger and rarely did he stand watches directly with LRH. As far as standing watches and working with LRH as a messenger, Dave's status was Messenger I/T (in training) and later he became a Junior Messenger. Dave never stood enough watches and did not work with LRH enough to become a Senior Watch Messenger. "Olives" building at "WHQ" (Winter Headquarters) in La Quinta, California where Miscavige shared a room with Pat Broeker in the CMO men's dorm During this period, Dave lived in the CMO men’s dorm with Pat Broeker, where they became very good friends. When Dave got in trouble and busted for a car accident and assigned to work on the grounds, it was at the same time Pat happened to have been busted, so the two of them were picking tomatoes together while going through correction programs. Life at WHQ was pretty laid back in the beginning but as LRH got more involved in projects, the schedule started to get tighter with less free time and more production demands. Civilian clothes were worn, we had lighter work schedules and regular liberty. The idea was not to attract attention; we needed to blend in and act like normal people. There was always concern of someone trying to serve LRH with a law suit, so we drilled on how to deal with such. The men let their hair grow and wore jeans most of the time to fit in. It was a small group, in the summer most of us swam and just hung out at the pool during meal times or played ping pong. Evenings we would crowd into the small crew lounge and watch "Soap." Our purpose was to make a safe place for LRH to live - we were not involved in management, and though every now and then LRH would check on what was happening with the FSO and Flag Bureaux (FB), most of his attention and traffic was concerning the WHQ base and editing his tapes and doing voice overs. Once things got settled at WHQ, LRH had a recruitment mission fired to get trained auditors from the field to join the SO and come train directly under him. LRH started working with these auditors until the FBI raid in LA, around mid '77, when LRH left with Pat, Claire and Dede for Reno and stayed there until it was "safe" for him to return. At WHQ, LRH and Mary Sue's home was called "Rifle." The Red door on the far left is the entrance used by messengers and LRH to enter an open courtyard. Inside this door, to the right (where the blue window is) was LRH's office. The open doorway in the photo was usually kept locked and opened to an inner courtyard surrounded by doorways to all the rooms. The interior of the house was square with an inside open courtyard. You had to go outside to get from most of the rooms to the next. Mary Sue Hubbard stayed at WHQ and took over running the base. As had been her habit each time she took command, she lightened schedules and would force people to go take their liberties. She was very good about staff morale and many times over the years would try and get LRH to lighten schedules. Late '77, Mary Sue was sent to live in LA so LRH could feel safe returning to WHQ and not have to worry about any raids of the base because of Mary Sue being there. "Palms" building at WHQ containing kitchen, dining, course room and rooms for married staff members which doubled as auditing rooms. In January '78, LRH returned to La Quinta and got into shooting training films for Scn. While LRH was gone, the messengers were training on various fields of Cine. Dave ended up Deputy/Camera Man and later became Camera Man. While doing this, he was also the Action Chief and would run missions when not shooting films (an evaluation done in the late ‘80s found that though DM bragged about having run a successful Action Bureaux, the eval found that the Action Bureaux in the late ‘80s had a better success rate than Dave did; this eval never got approved as it would have made Dave look bad). He was a decent Mission Ops and there were many missionaries that liked working for him as he seemed to duplicate what his Missionaries were reporting or when they had trouble but he was always very determined to get things done on a "now" type basis. Mary Sue was always a calming influence on LRH and when she was around him, he was not as moody. However, with her gone to LA, he had major mood swings. Those that had not worked with him for long had a hard time confronting these outbursts. It was during these rough days, though, that Dave Miscavige was around LRH - so he never really experienced what LRH was like when he was not stressed out about his wife and others being tried and jailed. During the year of '78, many people including some Messengers were being assigned to the RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force) as “List One R/Sers” meaning there was supposedly evidence that they harbored an evil purpose toward Scientology. Later the adjudicating criteria turned out to be false. "The Stables" at WHQ sat closer to the road and shielded the house from prying eyes. The stables were used to store LRH's personal belongings. Anyway, during the shortage of messengers Dave stood a few watches with LRH but the majority of his time was spent behind the camera. He never had the status of being a Senior Messenger of the Watch and in fact did not spend very much time around LRH in his day to day work. Early ‘77 to mid ‘77 as Traffic Messenger, and then Jan ‘78 to end of ‘78, he was mostly on the camera and not doing much in the way of watches with LRH. In '79 Dave spent little time with LRH as he was "too busy" handling management traffic. So in all honestly, Miscavige did not have much history of seeing how LRH dealt with orgs and missions on a long term. The time Dave did spend with LRH was one of the most tumultuous and upsetting periods of LRH's life. In late ‘78, while making training films, we were out on location using a golf course for one of the films. This was at Gilman Hot Springs. It was found that the place was up for sale, so LRH had it purchased with the intention of using it for summer headquarters and using LaQuinta properties for winter headquarters -- they were only about 90 minutes away from each other. Gilman Hot Springs became the Int/Gold Base outside of Hemet. Two views of the patio at the Olives It was during this time we had a breach of security with some staff going to the press about the location of LRH, which made LRH very concerned about being served with legal papers. In 1979, we moved from WHQ (La Quinta) to Summer Headquarters (now the Int/Gold Base). LRH was living in Hemet at an apartment complex called “X,” so instead of messengers standing 6-hour watches and creating lots of vehicle traffic to the complex, the messengers would stay at the apartments for a week and would replace each other every week. Dave and a few other messengers worked it out that the management traffic required too much of their time and they could not be gone for a week, so the rotation was shared between messengers like Claire, Janis, DR, Clarisse, Marc and Shelly. Also, not many messengers enjoyed going to X because LRH was in a very bad mood a lot of the time. Pat and Annie were living permanently at the apartment complex along with Kima and Michael and a few other staff like Lola and Bert, David Mayo, etc. The handling of LRH's management traffic for him was the start of the Watch Dog Committee or “WDC.” About '79, while Miscavige was Action Chief, he coined the phrase "severe reality adjustment" also known as "SRA", which was in store for anyone who raised a question, was hesitant to comply or who just plain disagreed. LRH would drive to the base, almost daily to shoot the training films, he also on occasion would meet Mary Sue there - the last time he saw her was at Bonnie View (LRH’s house at the base) where he took photos of her to document how she looked before going to prison and to say goodbye. Whenever they were apart, during the time periods I was with LRH, LRH and Mary Sue made it a point to write each other daily -- after he left in Jan 80, I don't know how often he wrote her. These letters were usually dictated to a messenger at a typewriter. During the '79 time period, LRH also spent a lot of time in his audio recording studio set up at the apartments and worked on remixing his lectures and editing them. We would also sometimes go for drives where he would take photos of the scenery or go for walks in strip malls/supermarkets just to get out of the apartment. In Jan ‘80, LRH left again. It had already been worked out between the messengers that if LRH had to go, Pat and Annie would automatically go since they were the only messengers that were a couple, the rest were either married to staff at the base or single and did not wish to disappear for an unknown amount of time. CMO moved to LA in Jan ‘80 to run international management. During this time Dave was Action Chief and also WDC Sea Org and started getting more cocky when dealing with other messengers. We returned to the base at the end of summer. It was late 1980 when Dave had a major asthma attack. He was barely able to breath so Paul Grady took him to the hospital emergency room. Dave survived and when he came back he told Gale and Paul that he had a huge realization when he was in the hospital. He said, "Power is assumed." Gale and Paul thought nothing of this. Dede Voegeding, was CO CMO at the time. Gale was D/CO CMO Internal. Anyway, he proceeded with his post as Action Chief. He also would usually drive Dede and Gale or just Dede to meet with Pat Broeker at a secret location away from Gilman Hot Springs on the way to LA. Since most of these meetings were at night, it was thought it would be safer to have a male with them, so Dave or Marc Yager would go. The meeting place was usually near the airport but sometimes in Riverside area. Dave and Pat were very chummy on at these meetings and behind Dede's back, DM managed to get Pat's support in having LRH remove Dede from CO CMO Int and to replace her with Gale and post him as Special Ops directly under LRH/Pat and outside of CMO command. Dede was removed for several things which were all based off reports from DM to Pat Broeker and relayed to LRH. Omar Garrison came out to Gilman (completely sanctioned) to interview a number of people for the LRH biography he was hired to write. Omar interviewed Dede for a number of hours where she gave a fairly detailed LRH history from 1971 forward. She was a little too specific as to how LRH had taken off at different periods; going to different locations with a few messengers (or others, Jim Din and Paul Preston to NY with him in 1972/73), etc. It was reported that Dede had told Omar where Hubbard was…but since she didn't have a clue where that was, that was certainly incorrect. The other reasons for Dede's bust were: 1) her attitude toward MSH; “too weak.” When LRH ordered Mary Sue removed as she needed to concentrate on her own legal defense, Dede wanted to remove her from post in such a way so Mary Sue could save face. Dede argued with DM and Pat about their wanting to make an example of her and destroy her publicly. Dede disagreed – she was still Hubbard’s wife and she had also done time for following his orders. 2) the lowering of the prices based on a WDC eval. WDC did the eval that showed we were pricing ourselves into oblivion. Dave hated the fact that Dede didn’t want to cream Mary Sue. He was disgusting in his constant descriptions of what he wanted to do to her. With the removal of Dede, DM started reporting
defense (343.4 yards per game). Under Levine's direction, both as head coach and an assistant, his special teams units blocked 20 kicks, returned nine kickoffs for touchdowns, including a NCAA-record-tying five in 2009, and forced seven turnovers. Led by AAC co-Special Teams Player of the Year and first team All-AAC selection Demarcus Ayers, the Cougars finished fifth nationally in kick return average (25.3) in 2013. Individually, Ayers was 12th nationally and the AAC leader with a 27.6-yard average. His 1,021 return yards set a Houston freshman record and were second on the school season list. Punter Richie Leone was a first team All-Conference USA selection in 2012, a second team FWAA All-American in 2013 and a three-time semifinalist for the Ray Guy Award. Leone set the Houston career record with 54 punts of more than 50 yards and is the only punter in school history to earn All-America honors. In 2011, Houston returned three kickoffs for touchdowns, including Tyron Carrier's seventh career return for a score (tying an NCAA record), and two punt return scores. Houston's receivers and tight ends also flourished under Levine. In 2008, tight end Mark Hafner earned second team All-Conference USA honors with 86 receptions for 907 yards and 11 touchdowns. The following season, inside receiver James Cleveland finished with 104 receptions for 1,214 yards, while Tyron Carrier hauled in 91 receptions for 1,029 yards. Carrier finished his career as Conference USA's career leader in both receptions (320) and receiving yards (3,493). Other standouts included Justin Johnson's 87-reception, 1,229-yard season in 2011 and Fendi Onobun, a basketball transfer from Arizona who had never played football, being selected by the St. Louis Rams in the sixth round of the 2010 National Football League Draft. Onobun tied the NCAA record with two blocked PATs against Southern Miss in 2010. Prior to Houston, Levine spent two seasons with the Carolina Panthers (2006-07) in the NFL as an assistant specials teams and strength and conditioning coach. The Panthers led the NFC in net punting in 2006 (38.8), with punter John Baker's net average of 39.0 establishing a franchise record. Baker placed 31 of his punts inside the opponent's 20-yard line, best in the NFC, while his 45.7 yard gross average was second. Kicker John Kasay finished the 2006 season 24 of 27 on field goal attempts, including a perfect 20 for 20 on kicks up to 49 yards long. Kasay was 24 of 28 on field goals in 2007, including a 54-yard make that tied for the third-longest of his career. Levine also has spent time as a receivers and tight ends coach at Texas State (1997-99), offensive graduate assistant at Auburn (2000-01), special teams coordinator and tight ends coach at Louisiana Tech (2002) and director of football operations (2003) and special teams coordinator and outside linebackers coach at Louisville (2004-05). Highlights from his time as a coach at Louisville include a 20-4 overall record, an 11-3 conference record, back-to-back top 20 national rankings (No. 6 in 2004 and No. 19 in 2005) and the 2004 Conference USA championship. His special teams units blocked seven kicks, returned three punts for touchdowns and kicker Art Carmody made an NCAA-record 77 consecutive extra points in 2004. Carmody would go on to win the 2006 Lou Groza Award, the year after Levine departed for the Panthers. At Louisiana Tech, kicker Josh Scobee earned second team All-Western Athletic Conference honors under Levine's direction. The Bulldogs averaged 417.9 yards of total offense, 19th in the country, and 302.8 passing yards, 10th nationally. A walkon wide receiver at Minnesota, Levine earned three letters for the Golden Gophers and was a two-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree. He got his start in coaching at Highland Park Senior High School, his alma mater, in 1996. Levine earned a bachelor's degree in kinesiology with an emphasis on sports management from Minnesota in 1996, a master's degree in physical education from Texas State in 1999 and an educational specialist degree in adult education from Auburn in 2003. A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Levine (born Oct. 28, 1972) and his wife, Erin, have three sons - Ben, Asher and Eli - and a daughter, Willa. Holt rejoins Jeff Brohm's staff in West Lafayette after coaching Western Kentucky to a 51-31 victory over Memphis as interim head coach. Prior to being elevated to the interim role, Holt served as the Hilltoppers' associate head coach, defensive coordinator and linebackers coach from 2013 to 2016. A veteran of 31 years of coaching experience, including two as a head coach and 16 as a defensive coordinator, Holt has coached in 15 bowl games, including seven BCS bowls, was on the USC coaching staff that won the 2003 national championship and five Trojan Pacific-10 title staffs. Under Holt's guidance, the Hilltoppers improved their scoring defense from 121st nationally in 2014 (39.9) to 41st in 2016 (24.6), their total defense from 120th (509.9) to 41st (376.6) and their rushing defense from 111th (220.8) to third (97.2) among FBS schools. In his first season at WKU, the Hilltoppers ranked 15th nationally in total defense (339.2) and 10th in passing defense (177.9). In his position group at Western Kentucky, senior linebacker Keith Brown was named first team All-Conference USA in 2016 after racking up 131 tackles, including 60 solo, 13 for loss and six sacks, with nine pass breakups, two interceptions and a fumble recovered. Sophomore Joel Iyiegbuniwe and junior T.J. McCollum were named honorable mention All-C-USA in 2016, with Iyiegbuniwe tallying 64 tackles, including 10 for loss and 3.5 sacks, and McCollum finishing third on the team with 85 stops, including four for loss. Senior Nick Holt was named first team All-C-USA in 2015 after recording 90 tackles, including 7.5 for loss and four sacks. In 2013, Xavius Boyd had a career season and was named the Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year, giving WKU the award in consecutive seasons (also Quanterus Smith in 2012). The 2013 Hilltoppers also had a conference-best four players named first team All-SBC: Bar'ee Boyd, Xavius Boyd, Jonathan Dowling and Cam Thomas. Prior to joining WKU, Holt spent three seasons (2009-11) at Washington as assistant head coach, defensive coordinator and defensive line coach. The Huskies played in the 2011 Alamo Bowl and the 2010 Holiday Bowl, defeating heavily favored Big 12 North champions Nebraska 19-7 in the Holiday. In his first season, Washington cut its scoring defense by nearly 12 points per game (from 38.6 in 2008 to 26.7 in 2009) and its total defense from 451.8 yards per game in 2008 to 389.5 in 2009. The Huskies finished second in the Pac-10 in passing defense in 2010, allowing 194.4 yards per game. Holt has had two stints at USC, serving three seasons as the defensive coordinator and line coach (2006-08) and three seasons as linebackers coach (2001-03). During his six combined seasons with the Trojans, USC posted an overall record of 63-14, a Pac-10 record of 41-10, won the 2003 BCS national championship, four Rose Bowls (2003, 2006, 2007 and 2008) and one Orange Bowl (2002). With Holt as the coordinator, the 2006 Trojans finished the season ranked 20th in total defense (295.8), 11th in scoring defense (15.2) and tied for ninth in rushing defense (91.1). In 2008, USC led the nation in scoring defense, allowing a paltry 9.0 points per game while holding eight opponents to seven points or less with three shutouts. The 2008 Trojans paced the NCAA in passing defense (134.3) total defense (221.8) and in passing efficiency defense (85.75) while ranking second by allowing 221.8 yards of total offense per game, the lowest total by a Pac-10 school since 1971. In between stints at USC, Holt was the head coach at Idaho during the 2004 and 2005 seasons, posting a 5-18 record. He previously had served as the Vandals' defensive coordinator and linebackers coach (1994-97) and defensive line and recruiting coordinator (1990-93). The Vandals made five appearances in the Division I-AA playoffs and had the No. 1-ranked rushing defense in 1994. Holt also has served as the defensive line coach at Louisville (1998-2000) and as the inside linebackers coach (1988-89) and as a graduate assistant (1986-87) at UNLV. With the Cardinals, Holt developed a defensive line that finished second in the nation and broke the school record with 50 sacks. The 2000 team finished second nationally in rushing defense (79.9), went 9-3, won the Conference USA title with a 6-1 record and played in the Liberty Bowl. Louisville also played in the 1998 Motor City Bowl and 1999 Humanitarian Bowl. Holt has coached/recruited five conference defensive players of the year: Jeff Robinson (1992 Idaho, Big Sky), Ryan Phillips (1995 Idaho, Big Sky), Dwayne White (2001 Louisville, Conference USA), Sedrick Ellis (2006 USC, Pacific-10) and Xavius Boyd (2013 Western Kentucky, Sun Belt). A native of San Jose, California, Holt was a four-year letterwinner and two-time team captain and Most Valuable Player as a linebacker at the University of Pacific. He was named to the Associated Press All-West Coast team in 1984 and 1985 and an honorable mention All-American in 1985. He graduated in 1986 with a bachelor's degree in political economics. Holt (born Oct. 15, 1962) and his wife, Julie, have two sons, Nick and Ben. Johnson joins the Boilermakers after spending the 2016 season at Western Kentucky, where he coached the defensive ends. The Hilltoppers' four primary defensive ends racked up 98 tackles, including 22 for loss and 11 sacks, with six pass breakups, two fumbles recovered and an interception. Senior Nick Dawson-Brents led the way with 37 tackles, while topping the team with seven sacks and ranking third on the team with 11 tackles for loss. Before his lone season at WKU, Johnson spent two seasons as the defensive coordinator, linebackers and defensive line coach at Alabama A&M (2014-15), two seasons as the defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Alabama-Birmingham (2012-13) and four seasons as the linebackers coach at Arkansas (2008-11). Previously, he served four seasons as the linebackers coach (2004-07), one season as the defensive line coach (2003) and two years as a graduate assistant (1997-98) at Louisville, his alma mater. He had a three-year stint at Alabama A&M, where he served as special teams coordinator and defensive coach (1998-99) and inside linebackers coach (2000) and also spent two seasons at UTEP as defensive ends (2001) and linebackers (2002) coach. Johnson has coached in eight bowl games, including the 2005 Gator Bowl, 2006 Orange Bowl, 2010 Sugar Bowl and 2011 Cotton Bowl. In 2012 at UAB, Johnson saw senior linebacker Marvin Burdette set school game, season and career records for tackles with 24, 157 and 406, respectively. Burdette was named All-Conference USA. During his four seasons at Arkansas, linebacker Jerry Franklin became the first Razorback to lead the team in tackles four straight seasons since 1957 to 1960. Franklin was a Freshman All-American and named to the SEC All-Freshman Team in 2008, and ranked sixth in the SEC with a career-high 101 tackles as a senior. In 2003 at Louisville, Johnson helped mentor future All-American, Nagurski and Hendricks Award winner Elvis Dumerville, as well as freshman and future first-round selection Amobi Okoye. Dummerville has gone on to a pro football career that has seen him selected to the Pro Bowl five times and set the Baltimore Ravens' franchise record for sacks in a season with 17. Okoye, who was the youngest player ever drafted at the age of 19, played six seasons in the National Football League with the Houston Texans and Chicago Bears and now is a member of the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Canadian Football League. Okoye was selected by the Texans with the 10th overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft. Johnson was a four-year letterwinner as a linebacker at Louisville from 1987 to 1990. As a senior, he played on a team that went 10-1-1, including a 34-7 victory over Alabama in the 1991 Fiesta Bowl. He finished his career with 252 tackles. Johnson graduated from Louisville in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in political science and earned a master's degree in education from Louisville in 1998. Johnson (born April 14, 1969) and his wife, Eulice, have two children, Sydney and Jordan. Poindexter comes to Purdue after three seasons (2014-16) as the defensive coordinator and safeties coach at Connecticut. Previous to his stay at UConn, he spent 12 seasons at Virginia, his alma mater, in a variety of roles. He has coached in six bowl games, including the 2007 Gator Bowl and the 2011 Chick-Fil-A Bowl. In 2016, Poindexter coached Senior Bowl-bound safety Obi Melifonwu to All-American Athletic Conference honors. Melifonwu finished the season with a team-high 118 tackles, including 73 solo, while also leading the Huskies with four interceptions. UConn finished the season ranked seventh in the nation in red zone defense (73 percent). During the 2015 season, Poindexter directed a unit that finished the season ranked seventh in the nation in red zone defense (73 percent), 15th in scoring defense (19.5), 20th in passing defense (189.3) and 33rd in total defense (355.1). Senior safety Andrew Adams was named second team All-AAC after leading the Huskies with 103 tackles, including 3.5 for loss, and three interceptions. Poindexter got his start in collegiate coaching as a graduate assistant at Virginia in 2003 before being elevated to running backs coach in 2004. He served as Cavaliers' running backs/assistant special teams coach from 2006 to 2008, defensive backs/assistant special teams coach in 2009, safeties and special teams coordinator from 2010 to 2012 and safeties coach in 2013. In 2013, Poindexter coached Sports Illustrated All-American safety Anthony Harris to first-team All-ACC honors after leading the nation with eight interceptions. Harris amassed 80 tackles, including 42 solo, 3.5 for loss and one sack, with six pass breakups and one forced fumble. Poindexter's defensive backs limited the opposition to merely a 53.7 passing completion rate in 2011, ranked 21st in the nation in passing defense in 2009 (184.6 yards per game) and saw second team All-ACC safety Ras-I Dowling and cornerback Chris Cook selected in the second round of the National Football League Draft by the New England Patriots and Minnesota Vikings, respectively. As running backs coach at Virginia, Poindexter coached Cedric Peerman, a seven-year NFL veteran, to 1,749 career rushing yards and 15 touchdowns. Peerman was an honorable mention All-ACC selection in 2008 and played in the 2009 Senior Bowl. An outstanding player in his own right, Poindexter was a two-time consensus All-American (1997 and 1998) and the 1998 ACC Defensive Player of the year as a safety for the Cavaliers. He is one of only three players in ACC history to be named all-conference three times. He was named the 1998 Brian Piccolo Award winner, presented to the ACC's most courageous football player. A hard-hitter compared with Ronnie Lott, Poindexter finished his collegiate career with 342 tackles, ninth in school history. His No. 3 jersey was retired by Virginia in 2009. Despite tearing his ACL during his senior season, Poindexter was selected by the Baltimore Ravens in the seventh round of the 1999 NFL Draft and was a member of the Ravens' Super Bowl XXXV championship team. Poindexter graduated from Virginia in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in anthropology. Poindexter (born July 28, 1976) and his wife, Kimberly, have three children: Morocca, Anthony Jr. and Chloe. Williams comes to Purdue after spending the 2016 season as the offensive line coach at Western Kentucky. He has previous coaching experience at Florida Atlantic, Findlay, Gardner-Webb, North Greenville College and West Virginia. At WKU in 2016, Williams' line helped protect a proficient Hilltopper offense that averaged 45.5 points, 336.8 passing yards and 523.1 total yards per game. WKU's line allowed merely 22 sacks on 471 passing attempts (one every 21.4 attempts). Senior left tackle Forrest Lamp, a two-time first team All-Conference USA selection, was named a third team All-American by the Associated Press. Classmate Max Halpin joined Lamp with first team all-conference honors, while fellow senior Darrell Williams earned second team recognition. At FAU, the Owls won the 2007 Sun Belt championship, 2007 New Orleans Bowl (the school's first-ever bowl appearance) and 2008 Motor City Bowl. FAU ranked 15th in the nation in total offense in 2009, averaging 432.1 yards per game. Williams' line protected 2007 Sun Belt Player of the Year Rusty Smith and paved the way for a pair of 1,000-yard rushing seasons by Charles Pierre (1,009 in 2008) and Alfred Morris (1,392 in 2009). FAU finished 13th in the nation in fewest sacks allowed in 2007 and 17th in 2008. Three of Williams' offensive linemen - John Rizzo, Jarrid Smith and David Matlock - went on to earn All-Sun Belt accolades. At Findlay, where he was the offensive coordinator and line coach from 2002 to 2004 and recruiting coordinator from 2000 to 2004, Williams directed an offense that finished 11th in the nation among Division II schools in rushing in 2004 (246 yards per game) and 18th in rushing (219) and 29th in total offense (405) in 2002. The 2002 team went 9-2, was ranked No. 25 in the country and allowed merely 15 sacks. Williams' line blocked for running back Robert Campbell, who rushed for 1,564 yards. Brad Dunlap earned first team All-Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference honors in 2002. Three of Williams' players earned second team All-GLIAC recognition: Ken Meibers in 2001, Phil Gunder in 2003 and Mike Patrick in 2004. A three-year letterwinner and a member of West Virginia's 1994 Sugar Bowl team, Williams was a two-year starter on the offensive line for the Mountaineers. He went on to get his start in collegiate coaching as a graduate assistant at West Virginia. Williams graduated from West Virginia with a bachelor's degree in liberal arts in 1994 and earned a master's degree in athletic coaching from West Virginia in 1996. A native of Cleveland, Williams (born Dec. 4, 1970) and his wife, Wendi, have two children, Nicole and Dominick. Greg Brohm comes to Purdue after spending the 2014 to 2016 seasons as the director of football operations at Western Kentucky. He was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the program. During his three years with the Hilltoppers, they compiled a 30-10 record. Prior to WKU, Brohm was a teacher and head football coach at Thomas Nelson High School in Bardstown, Kentucky, from 2012 to 2014. He started the football program at the newly opened school. Brohm served as the director of football operations at Louisville from 2004 to 2008. In that capacity, he was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the program while assisting in developing academic procedures and coordinating all player development. He organized travel, camps and coordinated bowl preparations for the 2004 Liberty Bowl, 2005 Gator Bowl and 2007 Orange Bowl. In addition, Brohm maintained all NCAA documentation for the program. In three seasons under head coach Bobby Petrino, the Cardinals won a Conference USA and Big East championship and twice finished in the Associated Press top 10. Prior to Louisville, Brohm served as the president and offensive coordinator for the Louisville Fire of the Arena2 Football League. As president, he was responsible for all football operations, corporate sales and marketing, as well as hiring and supervising the coaching staff. He took the lead in recruiting players and executing player contracts, while also coordinating the team's practice schedule and travel plans. Brohm was an account manager for WHAS radio and Clear Channel Communications in Louisville for nine years prior to joining the Fire. As account manager, he conducted advertising sales in the greater Louisville market, managed event and sports marketing activities, and created a strategic plan to grow budgets and projections. While at WHAS, Brohm also served as an analyst for the Louisville Cardinals' radio broadcasts. Brohm was a four-year letterwinner and a three-year starter at Louisville from 1988 to 1992. He was the starting wide receiver during the Cardinals' 1991 appearance in the Fiesta Bowl, catching passes from his brother, Jeff. A member of the Dean's List, Brohm graduated from Louisville in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in business administrating and accounting. He earned a master's degree in teaching from Louisville in 2014. A three-sport athlete (football, basketball and baseball) at Louisville Trinity High School, Brohm earned first team all-state honors as a wide receiver in 1987. He was inducted into the Trinity High School Hall of Fame in 2006 and served on the board of directors for the Trinity alumni board from 2000 to 2003. Sampson spent the 2016 season working as assistant director of football operations at Western Kentucky. He assisted in the daily management of the program, including work with team travel, team meals, schedules, recruiting travel expenses and the coordination of head coach Jeff Brohm's schedule. Sampson also assisted with the management of WKU football camps. The Hilltoppers won the 2016 Conference USA Championship and 2016 Boca Raton Bowl, finishing the season 11-3. A native of Lexington, Kentucky, Sampson spent the 2015-16 school year at TCU, working in the media relations office with the women's basketball and football programs. During a three-year stint in WKU's media relations office, Sampson helped re-energize the image of the women's basketball program, promoting four All-American selections and seven conference player or coach of the year honorees. The Lady Toppers won two conference tournament championships, made two NCAA Tournament appearances and earned the program's first Associated Press ranking since the 1997-98 season. Sampson also worked closely with the football program under the direction of head coaches Bobby Petrino and Brohm. Sampson earned a bachelor's degree in integrated strategic communications with a minor in communications from Kentucky in 2009. While at Kentucky, he worked with the media relations office, as a manager for the women's basketball team in 2006-07 and as a staff assistant for the men's basketball team in 2007-08 and 2008-09. Sampson earned a master's degree in sports administration from Eastern Kentucky in 2011 and worked for the Kentucky High School Athletic Association and the Louisville Sports Commission's Paul Hornung Award. Sampson also spent time growing the brand of athletics at Louisville's Trinity High School on a national level. Under the guidance of head coach Mike Szabo, Sampson played a key role in establishing the Trinity boys' basketball program as a state power, national name and eventually helping the school claim the 2012 KHSAA Sweet 16 for the first time in program history. His work with the school's football program resulted in Sports Illustrated, Scout.com and Rivals naming the team national champions in 2011. The eight new additions join Shephard, who was hired as an assistant coach Dec. 8, 2016, and Lovett, who was hired as the director of strength and conditioning Dec. 21, 2016. Shephard came to the Boilermakers after spending the 2016 season at Washington State following the previous five years at Western Kentucky. In his lone season at Washington State, where Shephard served as the inside receivers coach, he had senior slot receiver River Cracraft en route to a career year before a torn ACL ended his campaign. Cracraft finished his final collegiate season with 53 receptions for 701 yards (13.2 average) and five touchdowns in 10 games. Washington State averaged 370.8 yards passing per game during the regular season. Shephard joined the Western Kentucky staff in 2011 as a defensive analyst and volunteer assistant, a position he held for two seasons. He was moved to offensive analyst by then-head coach Bobby Petrino in 2013 before being hired full time as the Hilltoppers' receivers coach by Brohm in 2014. In the two seasons under Shephard's guide, Hilltopper receivers amassed 553 receptions and 86 touchdowns. The offense averaged 374.3 yards through the air in 2014 and 372.2 yards in 2015. Individual standouts under Shephard at WKU included Taywan Taylor, who finished the 2015 season ranked 10th nationally with 104.8 receiving yards per game. Taylor's 17 touchdowns were second among FBS players, while his 1,467 yards receiving ranked third and his 86 receptions 20th. All three marks are school records. Jared Dangerfield, who broke the previous school record for receptions with 69 in 2014, and Taylor were All-Conference USA selections. Shephard got his start in football coaching in the Indiana high school ranks, serving as an assistant at his alma mater, Fort Wayne Northrop, in 2005 before moving to Broad Ripple in Indianapolis in 2006. He served as a volunteer assistant with the DePauw track & field program in 2007, working with the long jumpers and sprinters. A native of Fort Wayne, Indiana, Shephard was a four-year football letterwinner at DePauw from 2001 to 2004. He was a two-time All-American and still holds the school record for career kickoff return yards (1,430), while ranking fifth in receptions (168), sixth in receiving yards (2,382) and tied for 18th in scoring (122). As a senior, Shephard caught 47 balls for 815 yards (17.3 average) and seven touchdowns. He played in the 2005 Hula Bowl (one of just two NCAA Division III participants) and the 2004 Aztec Bowl. Shephard served as captain for both the football and track & field teams his senior year. Shephard served as an intern with the Philadelphia Eagles during his senior year at DePauw. He worked in the NCAA Education Services Division in 2006 and 2007 and with the National Center for Drug-Free Sport in Kansas City, Missouri, from 2007 to 2011. Shephard (born May 30, 1983) earned his bachelor's degree in sports medicine from DePauw in 2005 and his master's degree in recreation and sport administration from Western Kentucky in 2013. He and his wife, Hallie, have a son, Jaylan, and a daughter, Alana. Lovett joined the Boilermakers after three seasons in a similar capacity at Western Kentucky. During his time with Hilltoppers, Lovett helped build WKU to back-to-back Conference USA championships (2015 and 2016) and two straight bowl victories (2014 Popeyes Bahamas Bowl and 2015 Miami Beach Bowl). Five players were selected by National Football League teams during his time in Bowling Green, including a school-record-tying three in the 2016 draft. Western Kentucky went 30-10 overall during Lovett's time, including a 19-5 mark in CUSA play. Prior to WKU, Lovett spent two seasons with the strength and conditioning staff at Georgia. The Bulldogs posted a 20-7 overall record, played in the 2012 SEC championship game and in two January bowl games (2013 Capital One Bowl and 2014 Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl) during his time in Athens. Including first-rounders Todd Gurley, Jarvis Jones and Alec Ogletree, a total of 15 players were selected by NFL teams in his two seasons at Georgia. Lovett worked with the Denver Broncos from 2009 to 2011, starting as an intern before moving to assistant strength and conditioning coach the final two years. While with the Broncos, the team won the 2011 AFC West and was among the top five teams in the NFL in terms of having the lowest amount of practices and games missed by starters in 2009 and 2011. Denver had eight players voted to the Pro Bowl during Lovett's time there. Lovett got his start among the collegiate ranks at UTEP from 2008 to 2009. He served as the strength and conditioning coach for Miners' soccer and track & field teams, and assisted with football and softball. Lovett served as the head strength and conditioning coach at Grandview High School in Aurora, Colorado, from 2004 to 2008 and as the director of sports performance at Miramont Sports Center in Fort Collins, Colorado, from 2003 to 2004. A two-sport athlete in football and baseball at the University of Findlay, Lovett earned a bachelor's degree in exercise and sports science from Colorado State in 2003 and a master's degree in exercise science from California University of Pennsylvania in 2012. He played semi-professional football in the Colorado Football Conference from 2000 to 2003 and was a Colorado Golden Gloves amateur boxer in 2002. Lovett holds certifications from the Collegiate Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association (Strength & Conditioning Coach Certified), National Strength and Conditioning Association (Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist), National Academy of Sports Medicine (Performance Enhancement Specialist & Corrective Exercise Specialist) and the National Association of Speed and Explosion (Specialist in Speed and Explosion). A native of Beavercreek, Ohio, Lovett (born Jan. 8, 1977) and his wife, Amy, have two sons, Tillman and Lyndon.Google In a classic pairing of IT and renewable energy, an IBM supercomputer will optimize placement of wind turbines to improve performance. IBM and Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas yesterday announced that the Firestorm supercomputer will analyze petabytes of data to maximize energy output of Vestas turbines. The supercomputer crunches through weather reports, moon and tidal phase, sensor data, satellite images, and deforestation maps to generate the best placement of turbines, IBM said. Once installed, Vestas engineers will use the software to predict future performance and figure out the best time to do maintenance. Predicting energy output of turbines is vitally important to project developers who put up money for wind farms with an expectation of selling a certain amount of energy to the grid. Although wind power is growing in many places around the world, project developers are seeking better methods, including better wind speed measurement, to better match expected and actual performance. The turbines themselves are high-tech devices, equipped with processors to track wind direction and control the pitch of the blade. IBM said the software took four years to develop and will run on the Apache Hadoop software for parallel processing of very large data sets. This sort of analysis used to take weeks, but can be done in under an hour, IBM said.The shortage of foreign language skills in the UK is now a permanent preoccupation, with some sources placing the estimated cost of the deficit as high as £48 billion a year. Britons are now seen as a “nation of monoglots” and ridiculed when attempting to communicate in international contexts. But part of the problem is that although teenagers recognise the need to learn languages, few are doing so – and even fewer are studying non-traditional languages such as Mandarin, Arabic, Russian and Turkish, which are only available in a handful of schools. Bad reputation The UK’s poor reputation for languages is not surprising. A 2012 European survey found that only 39% of UK respondents felt able to hold a basic conversation in a language other than English. For those who could, this was most likely to be French (19%) or German (6%). In England, less than half of 16-year-olds now take a language at GCSE and only 8% continue to A Level. University entries for languages continue to drop, as does the number of university language courses on offer. Promising policies This may in time be tempered by the move to make languages compulsory for seven to 11-year-olds at Key Stage 2 from this September, plus £1.8m of funding offered by the government for school-centred training and support. The introduction of the English Baccalaureate – a league table measure in which schools are rewarded for pupils who get a C grade or above in five key subjects, including a language – appears to have boosted language take-up at GCSE. Beyond that, there are early signs that the “Ebacc effect” has begun to increased the numbers studying French, Spanish and German at AS Level. Proposed A Level reforms also promise to reinvigorate students’ passion for languages – particularly for French, German and Spanish – by promoting a higher level of intellectual challenge and cultural understanding. Beyond the big three It is encouraging to see the recognition of a need for foreign language skills moving beyond media rhetoric towards actual policy changes. But while the nation is trapped in a “vicious cycle of monolingualism”, language education itself appears unable to move beyond the three modern foreign languages mainly taught in British schools and universities. Of the ten languages listed as “most important for the UK’s future” according to a 2013 British Council report, French, German and Spanish represent 92% of languages GCSE entries, the other seven accounting for only 6%. So how do schools decide what languages to offer? Our preliminary research points mainly towards tradition. French, for instance, appears to be the dominant language taught because it has always been so – for historical, economic or geographical reasons. Similar reasons explain the relative prevalence of German and, more recently, Spanish. The decision to start providing a new foreign language is, of course, extremely difficult for a school that has gathered significant teaching resources for one of the “traditional” languages over the years. This difficulty is compounded by the limited number of graduates with skills in less common languages and the language teacher supply shortage. So it is understandable that many schools have been reluctant to make changes. Employers report that they cannot find the necessary linguistic abilities among UK school leavers. The most critical shortage is recorded in languages of the fastest-growing markets: Russian and Mandarin. This is thought to be one of the reasons why many UK employers recruit non-UK graduates. What attracts children to languages? Yet at the age when most students decide whether or not to study a language, employment prospects may not feel particularly relevant. Research shows that 14-year-olds in English schools can be very aware of the importance of languages in society and still decide not to study them. The 600 pupils who took part in our recent study mentioned more than 20 languages they would have liked to study, had they had the opportunity. They also showed a remarkable level of insight regarding the usefulness and personal satisfaction of knowing a foreign language. In the schools we worked with, which offered French, German or Spanish, half the pupils chose to study a language the following year based on their perceptions of previous lessons and whether they considered languages to be important in their own lives. For example, they were interested in multilingual social media, online gaming, and understanding the culture of children from other countries. Many also mentioned travelling abroad as another reason influencing their decision, which echoes the stereotypical perception that language skills are mostly needed for business and travel. Languages at our fingertips But we do not need to travel far to be able to learn a language. Smartphone apps, for example, have opened up a range of new possibilities for language learning. While in Britain the focus is still very much on the “traditional” foreign languages, modern technology is attracting a new demographic to what was traditionally considered an elite skill. An invaluable, though often overlooked, resource that many British schools have are bilingual children themselves, or students with English as an additional language. Without valuing and nurturing the multilingual skills that these young people bring into our classrooms and society, we will struggle to convert our language advocacy into meaningful change. It is also difficult to succeed without real support for the most accessible role models our children have: language teachers. Schools with a multilingual ethos, which keep alive the passion that brought linguists into the classroom, are schools that buck the downward language trend. With adequate support and encouragement
Flynn and Commander Phelps that is handling this training for their officers. I am looking forward in working and sharing the ideas that you may have and that you can work with the concerns of our supporters. Our group is already acknowledge by the District Attorney's Office, our professional supporters are Vets., former police officers and canine trainer, therapists, dog trainers, Internet News Editors that are there to put out the news and progress of our group and work with the Monroe County Sheriff's. I was never promised anything when we began talks about the officer training Sheriff O'Flynn just got the job done with Commander Phelps coordinating the efforts which he now has command of the training center. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Sincerely, Eddie Cintron Founder K9 Partners Of Monroe CountyI followed my instincts and arrived at a slightly different model to solve the problem at hand: Each particle can perform the following moves: l- left, r-right, u-up, d-down, s-stay. Each particle will have n chromosomes. A chromosome contains the sequence of moves that the particle will go through. If the chromosome is [‘r’, ‘d’, ‘d’, ‘s’, ‘l’] the particle will move right, go down twice, stay in the same square and go left. Each generation will have a 100 particles. Chromosomes of the first generation particles are generated randomly. A maze is a 2D array. All four walls of the maze are marked ‘b’. If a particle tries to move into a wall its fitness is reduced by 1 point. Each square in the maze has a reward that is handed out when the particle visits that position. The reward is halved each time a square is reached. This discourages the particles from staying in the same region for a long time and encourages discovery of other regions with higher rewards. Each time a trial is performed, all the particles of the generation move through the board based on their chromosomes and collect rewards. At the end of all the trials the particles are sorted by their fitness (total rewards collected) and we have to determine which particles survive to reach the next generation and which don’t. There are a number of solutions that can be found online to make this selection. I took the easy way out and did the following: The top 5 particles from the current generation are selected for sure. 10 particles are selected from the particles ranked between 5 and 30. 35 particles are selected from the remaining ones. Psst…these values were chosen arbitrarily. While the top performers are an obvious choice to be selected to the next generation it is important to give a chance even to those particles that haven’t done so well for themselves as they may have some interesting properties that could give rise to great kids! These particles that have survived a generation now act as parents and are paired up randomly to give rise to 50 children. Each child gets its chromosomes from its parents randomly. As a result, the child’s fitness may or may not be better than its parent’s fitness. I found that it was important to perform random mutations of chromosomes before conducting the next round of trials. By not performing any mutations the top fitness plateaued at around 50 generations and a lot iterations were needed before we could get good results. However a high rate of mutations resulted in low fitness since the chromosomes were as good as ones that were generated randomly i.e. the “goodness” from the previous generation was getting lost by making too many mutations. I found that a mutation probability of 0.007 yielded the best results. With these rules in place I started simulating the movement of a particle across a maze with no walls. The top-left corner of the maze had the least rewards and the bottom-right corner had the highest rewards. [['b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b'], ['b', 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 'b'], ['b', 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 'b'], ['b', 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 'b'], ['b', 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 'b'], ['b', 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 'b'], ['b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b']] The fittest particle after a 100 generations had a fitness of 70 and it had taken the following path: ['d', 'r', 'd', 'r', 'd', 'r', 'r', 'd', 'l', 'l'] And the maze, after handing out rewards, looked like this: [['b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b'], ['b', 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 'b'], ['b', 0, 0.5, 2, 3, 4, 'b'], ['b', 0, 1, 2, 6, 8, 'b'], ['b', 0, 3, 3, 4.5, 6, 'b'], ['b', 0, 4, 4, 6, 8, 'b'], ['b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b', 'b']] The path that has been selected in this case is one of the best possible one (for a chromosome of length 10). However, we do not get such perfect solutions when we are working with larger mazes. It was possible to change the objective of the particle by making small changes. I’ve discussed some of them below. To set an endpoint: have a terminating square hand out a sizable reward and terminate execution so that particles reaching this square are more likely to be selected for the next generation. To solve a maze: Add walls inside the array. To simulate pacman: Set the chromosome length to be very high, have each square in the maze hand out just one reward and give bonuses at the end to particles that have visited the highest number of squares. The approaches that I’ve chosen to select survivors from each generation, generate offspring, perform mutations etc. are pretty simple and there are a lot of white papers describing other methods to ensure that we don’t stagnate or end up with all particles that are genetically similar to the fittest one (which is a problem with my method). You can find the source code on Github. Feel free to fork it and try out better algorithms! It’s time for me to figure out how to simulate a race car on a track. Any suggestions?He admitted trying to kill a female student after ‘listening to the Koran’, but he’s not responsible. Source: UBC student found not criminally responsible \| Vancouver 24 hrs A former University of B.C. student who violently attacked another student in her university dorm has been found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder. At trial, Thamer Almestadi, 19, pleaded not guilty to the October 2016 attempted murder of Mary Hare in the victim’s room at the Salish House student residence. He also pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault and assault causing bodily harm. The accused, an international student from Saudi Arabia, admitted in his testimony that Hare’s description of the attack was accurate and that he had committed the assault, but argued that at the time of the assault he was suffering from a mental disorder. In a ruling released Thursday, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Margot Fleming said that there was no question that Almestadi had suffered a brief psychotic episode at the time of the incident and that the episode amounted to a mental disorder under the law. “It’s also clear to me that Mr. Almestadi’s brief psychotic disorder rendered him incapable of knowing his attempt to kill Ms. Hare was morally wrong.” Almestadi, wearing a grey suit and shirt and sitting in the prisoner’s dock, said: “Thank you, your honour.” Court heard that in the weeks before the assault, Almestadi was growing increasingly distressed about his inability to study and keep up with his course work. He began sleeping odd hours and skipping classes. He spoke to his family, who found him depressed and homesick, and urged him to speak to someone at the university. Almestadi, who prior to his attendance at UBC had not suffered any mental disorders and had no record of violence, talked to other students, telling them he was falling behind and thought he might need to see a counsellor. In an attempt to calm himself, Almestadi, who is Muslim, listened to an audio-recording of a passage of the Qur’an and came to believe that God Allah was sending him a message to kill Hare, who he had only met once before briefly outside the student residence and otherwise felt no animosity toward her. Almestadi picked up a steak knife he had in his room and went outside to look for Hare. When he couldn’t find her, he eventually returned to the student residence, where they both lived and found Hare’s room, which had her name on the door. After Almestadi knocked on the door, Hare opened the door, only to have the accused lunge at her with a knife. Almestadi slashed her throat with the knife, inflicting three wounds, one of them 12.5-centimetres long. Hare, who was terrified and screaming, fought back and grabbed at the knife, breaking the knife and holding the blade in her hand. Almestadi then began choking her and she began to lose consciousness during the struggle. Several other students rushed to help her and eventually she managed to extricate herself from him and flee. She was later treated in hospital. Outside court, Crown counsel Daniel Porte noted that the judgment of not-criminal responsibility was supported by both the Crown and defence. He said Almestadi will now be remanded to a psychiatric hospital and be subject to the B.C. Review Board, which conducts periodic reviews of such cases. Asked about Almestadi’s immigration status, he said it would be up to the Canada Border Service Agency to take whatever steps they deem appropriate. “Often times if a person doesn’t have status in Canada, they will be ultimately removed from Canada and returned to whichever their home country is.” This is a no-brainer…but then again, there don’t appear to be any brains left in the Canadian political class.While I don’t do it every day, I love themed nail art! What better way to kick off Shark Week than by getting all gussied up for the occasion? Cass from A Dingo Ate My Nail Blog gives a great step-by-step tutorial for how to get great whites of your very own. [how to paint shark nails] MY LATEST VIDEOS OUR LATEST VIDEOS OUR LATEST VIDEOS Project estimate Blue sparkly nail polish, on hand or $1 and up Grey nail polish, on hand or $1 and up Silver nail polish, on hand or $1 and up White nail polish, on hand or $1 and up Black nail polish, on hand or $1 and up Top coat, on hand or $1 and up Toothpicks, on hand Total: Free and up! More shark crafts: Follow Mrs. Greene’s board Shark Week! on Pinterest.Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, shown here during a recent signing ceremony, is defending his order restoring voting rights to more than 206,000 felons. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post) One of the best-known anecdotes from Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s colorful memoir has him wrestling an eight-foot-long alligator — intended to show that he never backs away from a fight. That never-give-up, don’t-look-back approach has been on display in recent weeks as he tries to bat away opposition by Republicans — and some Democratic — to a signature achievement of his term: restoring voting rights to more than 200,000 felons. Using polling data, heartwarming stories, fiery speeches and town halls, McAuliffe has launched a robust public relations campaign to answer critics who say the flawed implementation of his clemency order outweighs his good intentions. In the latest offensive, McAuliffe criticized 43 commonwealth’s attorneys who signed a brief supporting a GOP lawsuit seeking to reverse his order. The elected prosecutors — among them five Democrats, three of whom are from Fairfax, Arlington and Prince William counties — worry that once felons’ civil rights are restored, they could serve on juries and more easily win back their gun rights. The state’s attorneys would have to intervene to prevent those things from happening. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe made a decision to allow convicted felons to vote ahead of elections in November. Here’s how the executive order works and why it has lead to a legal fight. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post) “This is where some of the commonwealth’s attorneys say, ‘Oh, I have more work to do now,’ ” McAuliffe said in a mocking tone Wednesday during an appearance on WRVA, a Richmond radio station. “It’s not our responsibility,” he said. “It is the sole responsibility of the judicial system whether to return someone’s gun rights. It’s their job. I tell them, ‘Do your job.’ ” Radio host Jimmy Barrett interjected, “They are government workers — I mean, come on.” McAuliffe replied: “Well, I’m sorry. Work a little harder.” The situation puts Democratic prosecutors, including Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney Theo Stamos in the awkward position of supporting McAuliffe, the de facto head of the state party but opposing his major policy initiative. Stamos said that she applauds the intent of the clemency order but that there have been too many administrative hiccups. She was referring to errors in data the administration is using to restore the rights of more than 200,000 felons who are no longer in prison or under supervised release. “It’s not political,” she said in a phone interview. “It’s a practical and legal concern.... I respect the governor, and I respect what he was trying to do. I just wish perhaps there could have been a little more consultation with us down here in the mud to see if we could have avoided some of these pitfalls.” On April 22, when McAuliffe announced the order from the south portico of the Capitol, he encouraged felons to check their restoration status using a website maintained by the secretary of the commonwealth. If their rights were restored, they were immediately directed to a link to register to vote. But some individuals whose rights McAuliffe did not intend to restore were mistakenly included in the database. That included criminals in prison and on supervised probation in other states and others under federal supervision. Then Terry J. Royall, the commonwealth’s attorney in Nottoway County, noted that 132 sex offenders under involuntary supervision were among those whose rights were restored. A McAuliffe spokeswoman accused Royall, an independent, of joining a Republican effort to “demagogue this issue.” “This is yet another partisan attempt to spread misinformation and hysteria,” spokeswoman Christina Nuckols said. Royall fired back in a news release, saying her “integrity and competence” should not have been questioned for simply exposing problems with the governor’s order. Roanoke Commonwealth’s Attorney Don Caldwell, a Democrat who signed the brief, said the incident shows that McAuliffe’s staff did not properly research the clemency order. “When you have some embarrassment associated with something that you’ve done, one of the easiest ways to take attention off yourself is to attack someone else,” he said. McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy said there are no plans to revise or replace the April 22 clemency order, which was written by the governor’s counsel. The problem is with how the order is being carried out, he said. The administration is responsible for implementing the order. [Democrats pan Trump at state party convention] State officials say the public supports McAuliffe’s action. A Roanoke College poll from May, before most of the loopholes were reported, found that 61 percent of likely voters agreed with the clemency order. In an automated survey asking a different question, the Democratic Public Policy Polling group found more than 6 in 10 support the policy even after revelations about some imprisoned felons getting their rights reinstated. One of McAuliffe’s closest allies, Levar Stoney, defended the order last weekend at the state party convention. Stoney helped develop the policy as secretary of the commonwealth but resigned shortly before it was announced to run for Richmond mayor. “Even though there are people who have done their time and served their sentences, there are some people who would rather keep them in the shadows,” he told 1,400 party loyalists. “What is wrong is wrong, and Governor McAuliffe did the right thing.” The state Supreme Court will hear the Republican challenge to McAuliffe’s order on July 19. Scott Clement contributed to this report.This article is over 4 years old 18-year-old man to appear before magistrates in London, while second arrested student is on bail pending further inquiries An 18-year-old man who was arrested after an incident that prompted two evacuations and a controlled explosion at a university has been charged with manufacturing an explosive substance. The teenager was one of two Russian students from Newcastle University who were arrested after "suspicious material" was found last week. The north-east counter-terrorism unit confirmed on Monday night he had been charged with the manufacture of an explosive substance, contrary to section 4 (1) of the Explosive Substances Act 1883, and possession of a bladed article in a public place. He has been remanded in custody and will appear before magistrates in London on Tuesday. The venue for the hearing has yet to be confirmed. The other student arrested last week, also an 18-year-old man, remains on police bail pending further inquiries. Police asked students to leave their accommodation on Tuesday last week and carried out a controlled explosion. Roads surrounding the INTO accommodation building were closed off as specialist bomb disposal experts were called in. A specialist robot was seen entering the building and, eventually, a controlled explosion was carried out on Newcastle Town Moor. A second temporary evacuation was ordered on Thursday but students were allowed to return after searches concluded.This article is about the album by Rush. For the novel by Cassandra Clare, see Clockwork Angel 2012 studio album by Rush Clockwork Angels is the nineteenth and final studio album by Canadian rock band Rush, released on 8 June 2012 on Anthem Records. During their year-and-a-half break following their Snakes & Arrows Tour, the group decided to write a new studio album. The album was recorded in April 2010 at Blackbird Studio in Nashville, Tennessee and from October to December 2011 at Revolution Recording in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[2] Two songs that would eventually appear on the album, "Caravan" and "BU2B", were released to radio stations and made available as a digital download on 1 June 2010.[3] Following the release of these two songs, the band embarked on the Time Machine Tour, with "Caravan" and "BU2B" included in the set list. Clockwork Angels was completed following this tour. The album's second single, titled "Headlong Flight", was released on 19 April 2012. The album's third single, "The Wreckers", was released on 25 July 2012. On 20 February 2013, "The Anarchist" was released as the fourth and final single. A 10" picture disc version of the song "The Garden" was released as part of the 2013 Record Store Day Black Friday sale, limited to 3,000 copies. The album debuted at No. 1 in Canada and at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart.[4][5] The album won the award for Rock Album of the Year at the 2013 Juno Awards.[6] Background and writing [ edit ] At the end of their Snakes & Arrows Tour in July 2008 the group took a year-and-a-half long break, during which they released the live albums Snakes & Arrows Live (2008) and the compilation Working Men (2009). The band reconvened in Los Angeles in December 2009 to discuss what projects they wanted to undertake in the coming year. Among their options were to start a new studio album and to undergo a major tour; as Peart later wrote: "Fools that we are, we ended up doing both."[7] The idea of an album with a back story as opposed to a collection of different songs became an attractive one to the group, for which Peart detailed one set in a fictional world with a suite of songs telling a story.[7] Rush had worked on new material as early as February 2009, but Lifeson denied a speculation that they were set to make a concept album at that time.[8] Rush adopted their usual songwriting methods which involved Lee and Lifeson working on the music at their home studios in Toronto while Peart worked alone from his California home on the lyrics. The group had encouraged one another to become more spontaneous with their solos in live performance which became a primary element while writing new music for Clockwork Angels.[7] Lifeson had to consciously hold himself back from layering guitar tracks as he wanted to emphasise the "basic rockiness of the songs" and resorted to greater use of double tracking.[9] The sessions were productive; in March 2010, Lee said: "Just about a month and a half ago we had no songs. And now we've been writing and now we've got about six songs that we just love" and Lifeson predicted a spring 2011 release.[10][11][12] After some weeks into the writing Peart had developed his story further, leading to the band's agreement to adapt it into concept album while having each track make its own statement. Rush had previously recorded conceptual songs throughout the career, but had yet to commit to a full album concept. Lee was apprehensive towards the idea at first as he wanted the group to move forward in direction and not adopt something typical of fellow progressive rock bands of the 1970s.[13] Music Radar wrote that despite the story-based theme, the album fails to get weighed down by the plot.[9] In a change of pace, Peart wrote the lyrics to Clockwork Angels on a blank canvas without using any preconceived ideas that he had written down.[7] Early in January 2010, Peart had written some ideas and sent them to Lee and Lifeson, who then paired the words to the pieces of music that they had come up with.[7] Peart was influenced to devise a story and lyrics set it in a dystopian steampunk-inspired world "lit only by fire", named after the same-titled book on the history of the Middle Ages by William Manchester and "driven by steam, intricate clockworks, and alchemy".[7][9] He had incorporated elements of ancient tradition with Tarot cards on Vapor Trails (2002) and the ancient Hindi game Leela on Snakes & Arrows and wanted to bring in alchemy for Clockwork Angels.[7] Peart wrote a lyrical "chapter" for each of the album's twelve tracks, representing the mood or atmosphere of each track with its own symbol as depicted in the artwork.[7] The plot is based on various sources such as Candide by Voltaire "with nods to" the novel The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) by John Barth and writers Michael Ondaatje, Joseph Conrad, Robertson Davies, Herbert Gold, Daphne du Maurier, and Cormac McCarthy, and early Spanish explorers in the American Southwest for the Seven Cities of Gold myth.[7] Development paused in April 2010 when Rush announced their Time Machine Tour which was initially set to run from June to October of that year. The tour saw Rush perform two new songs that they had written for Clockwork Angels entitled "Caravan" and "BU2B".[14] They had also written "The Garden" and "The Anarchist" at that point.[13] With the first half of the Time Machine Tour finished, Lee and Lifeson resumed to write the rest of the album in early 2011, but the sessions had not produced strong enough results barring from some "furious jams" that became the basis of "Carnies" and "Headlong Flight".[7] There was also difficulty in matching Peart's lyrics to the new music which resulted in many rewrites, some on the day of recording via e-mail. Lifeson later complimented Peart: "Neil came through – he never complained".[9] In August 2010, Lifeson had remarked at the time that the album was turning out to be very musically diverse. In particular, Lifeson referred to the nearly finished title track "Clockwork Angels" as an "epic song" and a "multi-parted piece". He described it as "very dynamic".[15] Peart said of the still in-work album in May 2011, "I intend it to be my highest achievement lyrically and drumming wise."[16] When the final writing sessions began in late 2011, Lee and Lifeson decided to swap instruments at one particular meeting. The result was what became "The Wreckers".[7] Clockwork Angels contains string arrangements composed of six violins and two cellos. Brad Madix stated when working the strings in the album: "I'd worked with strings in the past, but it was always either in a very quiet setting with minimal sound reinforcement or the violins were strictly electric. On Rush's Clockwork Angels Tour, the band definitely meant for the strings to be featured and acoustic."[17] Production [ edit ] Recording [ edit ] Rush recorded Clockwork Angels in two phases. The first took place in April 2010 at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, Tennessee with Nick Raskulinecz returning as co-producer following his work on Snakes & Arrows (2007). The tracks "Caravan" and "BU2B" were recorded during this time and mixing was completed by Richard Chycki at the Sound Kitchen in Franklin, Tennessee.[3][7] The band's initial plan was to return to the studio at the conclusion of the Time Machine Tour in October 2010 and have the album finished for a 2011 release.[18] However, they decided to extend the tour with dates from March to July 2011, thus pushing back the release of Clockwork Angels.[19] That August, the band announced their deal with Roadrunner Records in partnership with their domestic label Anthem Records to handle their international distribution, marking the end of their time with Atlantic Records which began with Presto (1989).[20] The second phase of recording took place at Revolution Recording in Toronto between October and December 2011.[21][7] The strings were recorded at Ocean Way Recording in Los Angeles in January 2012.[7] On his personal website, Peart revealed that he took a new approach in writing and recording his drum tracks for the album: "I played through each song just a few times on my own, checking out patterns and fills that might work, then called in Booujzhe. He stood in the room with me, facing my drums, with a music stand and a single drumstick—he was my conductor, and I was his orchestra... I would attack the drums, responding to his enthusiasm, and his suggestions between takes, and together we would hammer out the basic architecture of the part. His baton would conduct me into choruses, half-time bridges, and double-time outros and so on—so I didn't have to worry about their durations. No counting, and no endless repetition."[22] Novel [ edit ] On 9 February 2012, science fiction novelist Kevin J. Anderson, a long time friend of Neil Peart, announced that he would be writing a novelization of Clockwork Angels. He also revealed information about the album's concept:[23] In a young man's quest to follow his dreams, he is caught between the grandiose forces of order and chaos. He travels across a lavish and colorful world of steampunk and alchemy, with lost cities, pirates, anarchists, exotic carnivals, and a rigid Watchmaker who imposes precision on every aspect of daily life. Released on 4 September 2012, the novel was followed by a loose sequel titled Clockwork Lives, which was published on 15 September 2015. Artwork [ edit ] The album's front cover, designed by Rush's longtime collaborator Hugh Syme, depicts a clock marked with alchemical symbols instead of numbers. It displays the time as 9:12, which in 24-hour time is 21:12, a reference to the band's fourth studio album, 2112 (1976).[24][25] Release and reception [ edit ] Clockwork Angels was released on 8 June 2012 in Australia,[1] followed by the United States and Canada on 12 June and in Europe on 13 June. British magazine Classic Rock released a limited edition fan pack containing the album and 132-page magazine on 11 June.[37] The single "Caravan" was released 1 June 2010 to radio stations and made available for digital download at this time along with "BU2B".[3] The second single, "Headlong Flight", was released to radio stations and for online streaming on 19 April 2012. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with sales of 103,000 units the first week.[38][39] In Canada, the album debuted at No. 1 with sales of 20,000 units.[40] By 20 June, over 40,000 copies of the Classic Rock fan pack had been sold. Had the release been eligible for the UK Albums Chart, the album would have debuted at No. 1.[41] As more people bought the fan pack than the album alone, the latter debuted at No. 76 in the UK before it reached its peak at No. 21.[42] Clockwork Angels holds a score of 74 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 14 reviews, which indicates "generally favourable reviews".[26] Classic Rock scored the album a 9/10 and called it Rush's best release in 30 years.[43] Jamie Thompson of The Guardian wrote in his review that "those who worship at the temple of Rush will be in raptures; for those who remain agnostic, there may well be enough here to justify a leap of faith."[36] Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles editor-in-chief Martin Popoff gave the album a perfect 10/10 and said of it, "one can't deny that there's more purpose and focus here than on any Rush album ever".[44] Track listing [ edit ] All lyrics written by Neil Peart[45]; all music composed by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson. No. Title Length 1. "Caravan" 5:39 2. "BU2B" 5:10 3. "Clockwork Angels" 7:31 4. "The Anarchist" 6:52 5. "Carnies" 4:53 6. "Halo Effect" 3:14 7. "Seven Cities of Gold" 6:32 8. "The Wreckers" 5:01 9. "Headlong Flight" 7:19 10. "BU2B2" 1:28 11. "Wish Them Well" 5:25 12. "The Garden" 6:59 Total length: 1:06:03 Personnel [ edit ] Credits adapted from the album's liner notes. Rush Additional musicians Production Arranged & produced by Rush & Nick Raskulinecz Recording engineers: Richard Chycki, Martin Cooke, Jason DuFour, Paul Fig & Stephen Koszler Mixed by Nick Raskulinecz Mastered by Brian Gardner Singles [ edit ] "Caravan/BU2B" 5:40/4:21 Released: 1 June 2010 Written by: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson & Neil Peart Produced by: Rush & Nick Raskulinecz Chart positions: #2 Bubbling Under Hot 100; #38 US Mainstream Rock/#19 US Bubbling Under Hot 100 "Headlong Flight" 7:20 (5:08 (Radio edit)) Released: 19 April 2012 Written by: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson & Neil Peart Produced by: Rush & Nick Raskulinecz Chart positions: #5 US Mainstream Rock "The Wreckers" 5:01 Released: 25 July 2012 Written by: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson & Neil Peart Produced by: Rush & Nick Raskulinecz Chart positions: #38 US Mainstream Rock "The Anarchist" Released: 20 February 2013 Written by: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson & Neil Peart Produced by: Rush & Nick Raskulinecz Chart Positions: Charts [ edit ]In what looks like the love child of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist, Studio Ghibli have produced their first feature since 2014’s When Marnie Was There and it seems to be making quite the impression. The Red Turtle won the Special Jury Prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where it was promptly snapped up for US distribution by Sony Classics in May. Ghibli films generally tend to reach for wider appeal than your average animated feature, but the absence of dialogue makes this an interesting outlier in the studio’s canon. Most notably, this is Studio Ghibli’s first film by a non-Japanese director. Helmed by Dutch filmmaker Michael Dudok de Wit, is this perhaps a sign that the feted animation house is already embracing the winds of change following the retirement of Hayao Miyazaki? The Red Turtle is released in the US 23 September. Published 22 Sep 2016 Share thisUpdate: NIS America just sent out an official announcement regarding the game’s delay. It’s coming on November 10 in North America and November 13 in Europe. In the announcement, NIS America cited “ongoing technical difficulties”, and with the extra time, they hope to “give players the best experience possible”. NIS America has confirmed Rodea: The Sky Soldier’s second western delay – at least in Europe. It’s now slated for release sometime during the first two weeks of November. We don’t have the official word on this yet, but it’s likely that the delay pertains to North America as well given recent retailer listings. Footage from Rodea: The Sky Soldier’s English build is posted below. The video is based on the Wii U version of the game. Share this: Twitter Facebook Reddit Tumblr Google More Email Print LinkedIn Pinterest PocketIf you got a drone over the holidays — or bought one for a child — there’s more involved with this present then opening the box and going flying. As of Dec. 21, the Federal Aviation Administration has required owners of small unmanned aircraft systems to register before their first flight. Failure to register an aircraft may result in regulatory and criminal sanctions. The FAA may assess civil penalties up to $27,500. Criminal penalties include fines of up to $250,000 or imprisonment for up to three years, says the agency’s website. The FAA has estimated that more than one million drones were sold this holiday season. The new federal law comes in the wake of a series of incidents in the San Bernardino National Forest and elsewhere this year. One of the most widely publicized was July 17, on Interstate 15 in the Cajon Pass. That’s when civilian drones flying near firefighting aircraft forced them to leave the area as flames swept across the freeway and ignited 20 vehicles. Separately, at the Lake and Mill2 fires — also in San Bernardino County this summer — firefighting aircraft were temporarily grounded because drones flew above the fires, presenting a hazard to pilots, U.S. Forest Service officials have said. Meanwhile, the California Department of Insurance has issued caution to check on your policies before flying. “Every drone pilot should check with their insurance agent before they lift off,” Dave Jones, insurance commissioner, said in a statement. “Drone hobbyists share the same level of responsibility as manned aircraft pilots to fly safely and make sure they’re covered if their drone causes property damage or bodily injury.” A number of high-profile drone crashes and near misses illustrate the danger, including a drone crash that just missed a skier when it crashed during the recent world cup in Italy. In September, debris from a drone crash hit an 11-month-old girl in a stroller in Pasadena. The little girl received a quarter-inch cut on her head and a bump on the forehead, police said. She was treated at Pasadena hospital and released. Using a private drone as a hobby is likely covered by homeowner or renter insurance, but the state agency recommends drone owners confirm their coverage before flying. What do consumers think about the new regulations? “When we tell them about the rules, some of them look funny. But they say okay,” said Dave Anders, who sells radio-controlled aircraft at Pegasus Hobbies in Montclair. The new registration isn’t repelling buyers, he said. Owners must register small unmanned aircraft systems weighing anywhere from about nine ounces (0.55 pounds) to 55 pounds. The FAA registration costs $5, but the $5 fee will be refunded for payments made until Jan 20. The law requires current drone owners prior to Dec. 21 to register their no later than Feb. 19. After completing the registration, owners will receive a personal registration number. For those owning more than one drone, each one must be marked with that number. Any method may be used to mark the unmanned aircraft system as long as the number is legible, FAA regulations say. Registrants may put the number in the battery compartment if it is easily accessible. “The registration system continues to operate smoothly and we are seeing steady activity on the part of aircraft owners, said Alison Duquette, an FAA spokeswoman. Numbers are expected to be released in early January, she said. Where to register your drone Register your drone at the following Website: www.faa.gov/uas/registration/ Registration is $5 but will be refunded if completed before Feb. 19.– It was your first time working with character designer Masayoshi Tanaka wasn’t it? Yes. J.C. Staff were able to assemble some excellent staff, and so this was the first time I met Tanaka-san. I was very grateful. – The designs are very faithful to the original work, aren
the price of Bitcoin to rise so I can buy a new Lamborghini, "I cant wait for the price of Bitcoin to rise so I canand buy a new Lamborghini." ning_chang Offline Activity: 210 Merit: 100 Full MemberActivity: 210Merit: 100 Re: Two types of Bitcoiners, Which are you? June 18, 2016, 03:28:39 PM #2 Quote from: MbitSport on June 18, 2016, 03:18:54 PM Type 1, "I cant wait for the price of Bitcoin to rise so I can buy a new Lamborghini with my Bitcoin." Type 2, "I cant wait for the price of Bitcoin to rise so I can sell my bitcoin and buy a new Lamborghini." , "I cant wait for the price of Bitcoin to rise so I can buy a new Lamborghini, "I cant wait for the price of Bitcoin to rise so I canand buy a new Lamborghini." because that's what I want. to decrease the price of BTC. I buy a lot for the rise in the prices to sell BTC will I return to the capital is more than I have, 1, "I cant wait for the price of Bitcoin to rise so I can buy a new Lamborghini with my Bitcoin."because that's what I want. to decrease the price of BTC. I buy a lot for the rise in the prices to sell BTC will I return to the capital is more than I have, a7mos Offline Activity: 574 Merit: 500 Hero MemberActivity: 574Merit: 500 Re: Two types of Bitcoiners, Which are you? June 18, 2016, 03:50:21 PM #11 as long as bitcoin is a limited currency that few people around the world only know it and use it, one will have to sell his btc to buy anything. bitcoin is always valued by its worth in exchages BillyBobZorton Offline Activity: 1204 Merit: 1019 LegendaryActivity: 1204Merit: 1019 Re: Two types of Bitcoiners, Which are you? June 18, 2016, 03:51:40 PM #12 You can only be type 1, unless you have already millions in BTC. Why? because if you have a decent amount (like 10 to 20) but not enough to be rich already, if you become rich in the future, it will mean that BTC is so high per coin that is a success and you can buy anything with it, so no need to sell it for dollars first. MbitSport Offline Activity: 78 Merit: 10 MemberActivity: 78Merit: 10 Re: Two types of Bitcoiners, Which are you? June 18, 2016, 03:52:16 PM #13 Quote from: bitpop on June 18, 2016, 03:30:53 PM YOU HODL PERMANENTLY LOL, i found this funny, i had a convo with someone not too long ago about holding, if the price were to reach 100k tomorrow or even 1 mill, there will still be loyal Hodlers. Quote from: etparle on June 18, 2016, 03:41:57 PM in honesty i dont think bitcoin will ever replace fiat the two will always exist side by side, its the gateways that bridge the two that will need to change i also believe Fiat isn't going anywhere anytime soon, at least not in our lifetime, i do believe however we will live to see both operating side by side, and at this point, i do believe there will be people that choose to use bitcoin exclusively LOL, i found this funny, i had a convo with someone not too long ago about holding, if the price were to reach 100k tomorrow or even 1 mill, there will still be loyal Hodlers.i also believe Fiat isn't going anywhere anytime soon, at least not in our lifetime, i do believe however we will live to see both operating side by side, and at this point, i do believe there will be people that choose to use bitcoin exclusively hasiramasenju Offline Activity: 980 Merit: 1000 LegendaryActivity: 980Merit: 1000 Re: Two types of Bitcoiners, Which are you? June 18, 2016, 03:58:57 PM #14 i think i'm Type 2, "I cant wait for the price of Bitcoin to rise so I can sell my bitcoin and buy a new Lamborghini." but i could not buying Lamborghini with my bitcoin because i only have small amount of bitcoin Hugroll Offline Activity: 756 Merit: 500 Hero MemberActivity: 756Merit: 500 Re: Two types of Bitcoiners, Which are you? June 18, 2016, 04:02:46 PM #15 I dont necessarily spend my btc that often, i only keep around 10% of my btc for spending use. Im the type of guy that says " i cant wait for bitcoin to be worth millions so ill be a millionaire in bitcoin".I dont necessarily spend my btc that often, i only keep around 10% of my btc for spending use. BTCLovingDude Offline Activity: 1120 Merit: 1010 BTC to the moon is inevitable... LegendaryActivity: 1120Merit: 1010BTC to the moon is inevitable... Re: Two types of Bitcoiners, Which are you? June 18, 2016, 04:48:55 PM #19 i am mostly trying to be the first type and hold bitcoin to be able to use it in the future when the price is higher and it is accepted everywhere. but until then i will sell some also to make some money. --looking for signature--Vikings defensive end Everson Griffen, who is one game shy of the team record for consecutive games with a sack, did not practice Wednesday because of a foot injury. At the end of Minnesota’s 33-16 win Oct. 29 over Cleveland, Griffen sat on the ground and took off a shoe and sock. When asked about it after the game, he shrugged and said, “Everything’s good.” The Vikings return from their bye week to play Sunday at Washington. Related Articles Charley Walters: Twins’ latest signing shows they’re serious about winning AL Central Vikings awarded three compensatory picks in 2019 NFL Draft Vikings’ kicking woes are a top priority for new special-teams coordinator Football lifer Gary Kubiak thrilled to be ‘back in the foxhole’ with Vikings Vikings add two coaches to staff, promote another Also not practicing were tackle Mike Remmers, who suffered a concussion on the first series against the Browns, offensive lineman Jeremiah Sirles and defensive end Stephen Weatherly. Sirles and Weatherly both sat out against Cleveland because of knee injuries. Listed as limited in the workout were safety Anthony Harris (hamstring) and guard Danny Isidora (ankle). Griffen has 10 sacks this season and at least one in each of Minnesota’s eight games. That ties him for the team record shared by Jim Marshall and Jared Allen. Griffen stretched with the team at the start of practice Wednesday, wearing a stocking cap rather than a helmet, and left the field. He was unavailable afterward for comment. SLOTER FINE WITH ROLE Rookie Kyle Sloter has gone from being the Vikings’ No. 2 quarterback to the No. 3 guy who likely will be inactive Sunday. But that’s fine with him. Case Keenum will start against Washington with Teddy Bridgewater as the backup. Bridgewater was activated off the physically unable to perform list Wednesday, and quarterback Sam Bradford was placed on injured reserve to make room on the roster. With Bradford missing six of the past seven games with a knee injury, Keenum replaced him as the starter and Sloter was his backup each time although he didn’t get into a game. Vikings coach Mike Zimmer doesn’t anticipate Sloter will dress out at Washington. “It’s cool with me,” Sloter said. “That’s what they ask me to do, so I’m going to do it to the best of my ability.’’ With the roster spot needed for Bridgewater, the Vikings did not want to risk waiving Sloter to get him on the practice squad for fear another team would claim him. Sloter is glad to stick around. “It feels good,” he said. “This is where I want to be, so I’m looking forward to being able to help in any way I can.” A FAMILIAR FOE The Vikings (6-2) will play Washington (4-4) for the seventh time in eight years. The only season the teams haven’t met this decade was in 2015. “It seems like we play them every year,” said tight end Kyle Rudolph. “Coach Zim mentioned it earlier, we kind of treat it like a division game. We’re very familiar with one another.” The Vikings have won four of the six games played this decade, but Washington won 26-20 at FedEx Field last season. “We always have our work cut out when we play them, especially at their place,” said wide receiver Adam Thielen. “It’s a big game for us.”Former President Bill Clinton greeted people inside the Newton Free Library, a polling place, during Tuesday’s primary election. Bill Clinton’s presence inside a polling location in Boston on Super Tuesday raised concerns about whether the former president violated state rules on election campaigning. While stumping for his wife, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton entered a polling station at the Holy Name Parish School’s gymnasium in West Roxbury early Tuesday. It was there that he spoke with workers, bought a cup of coffee, and apparently took a photo with one woman, according to press pool reports. Advertisement A video clip showing Bill Clinton shaking hands with election clerks at Holy Name, alongside Mayor Martin J. Walsh, had some people on Twitter questioning the former president’s appearance indoors. Get Metro Headlines in your inbox: The 10 top local news stories from metro Boston and around New England delivered daily. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here “Aren’t there rules about electioneering at the polling location?” one person wrote on Twitter, after seeing the video. “How is this legal?” a second person asked on social media. Secretary of State William F. Galvin told the New York Times that he had to remind election workers that “even a president can’t go inside and work a polling place.” “He can go in, but he can’t approach voters,” Galvin said. “We just took the extra precaution of telling them because this is not a usual occurrence. You don’t usually get a president doing this.” Advertisement According to the Election Day Legal Summary on Galvin’s website, certain activities on Election Day are prohibited within polling locations and within 150 feet of polling places, including the “solicitation of votes for or against, or any other form of promotion or opposition of, any person or political party.” Bill Clinton had also been inside the Newton Free Library, a polling station in Newton, on Tuesday, after greeting supporters outside. A spokesman from Galvin’s office said Hillary Clinton’s campaign had been “notified” of the state rules. “We have heard about it, and the clerks have been instructed and the campaign has been instructed that 150 feet is the rule,” said Brian McNiff, a spokesman for Galvin’s office. Bill Clinton seemed determined during his stop in Boston to stay in line. Advertisement When one woman asked for a photo with him in West Roxbury, he replied, “As long as we’re not violating any election laws,” according to a pool report. An official from Walsh’s office said the duo was not campaigning inside of the polling location, however. “President Clinton joined Mayor Walsh to thank poll workers in West Roxbury this morning,” said spokeswoman Bonnie McGilpin. Walsh has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Bill Clinton also made a stop in New Bedford to greet a large crowd of voters Tuesday. Steve Annear can be reached at steve.annear@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @steveannearFoursquare Adds Inline Photos Feature to Enhance Visual Experience of Their iPhone App Foursquare has introduced photos inline feature with check-ins in a latest update to its iPhone application. The new version will add color to the action stream and rejuvenates the look and feel of the application. With this update, Foursquare for iPhone customers will now perceive friend’ s images and check-ins united together in the activity stream just as they would on Foursquare.com. Most remarkably, you will see that images are now exhibited inline when you are viewing your check-in activity stream. This is equivalent to the functionality that was freshly included to the Foursquare.com. It not only enhances the visual appearance, also it makes the service experience more lively and private. This innovative addition of inline photos saturates the more visual experience of the complete application. If you visit a venue page and then click all the way through to perceive who is there, if any of your friends are there, you will observe their images and screams from that position inline as well. One feature which has not been included in this update is Lists. This new feature that Foursquare launched to their site, they are still a working at the mobile end. But it will be introduced in the next updated version soon, Foursquare promised. Also, all of these fresh features will be introduced in the BlackBerry and Android mobile apps soon.Are you a mom who needs to pump and uses an electric pump? Consider getting a car adapter and/or a battery pack for your electric pump. Some electric pumps can also be converted to manual use – learn how to do this ahead of time. Consider getting a hand pump to use as your back-up pump. Learn how to hand express your milk. Preventing your expressed milk from thawing The first order of business is to try and prevent the milk from completely thawing. If there are still ice crystals in the milk, then it is still considered frozen– it is safe to either use the milk or return it to a working freezer. Some ways to keep your milk frozen: If you have access to a generator, use it to operate your freezer during a power outage. If a neighbor or a nearby store has power, ask if you can store your milk in their freezer until power is restored. Make sure your milk has contact information on it! In your freezer (with no power): Open the freezer as little as possible. Food will stay frozen longer if the freezer is full: if you know ahead of time that you may lose power, fill empty spaces in your freezer with containers of water so that there is extra ice instead of empty space. Keep your expressed milk in the middle of the freezer, away from freezer walls. According to the USDA, “a full freezer will hold the temperature for approximately 48 hours (24 hours if it is half full) if the door remains closed.” In a cooler: Pack the cooler as full as possible, to slow thawing. Crumpled newspaper is a good insulator if there is extra air space in the cooler. Covering the cooler with blankets will also help to keep it cold. Extra air space in your freezer or cooler can be filled with dry ice, Techni Ice, “blue ice,” containers of water or ice, or snow. Are you in an area with snow on the ground? You may be able to store your milk in a snow bank, out of the sun, or use snow/ice to keep your milk cool in your freezer or cooler. What if the milk has completely thawed? Current guidelines recommend that this milk be used within 24-48 hours (24 hours if baby is a preemie or has immune issues that require stricter precautions) and not refrozen. According to the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine’s 2010 “Clinical Protocol #8: Human Milk Storage Information for Home Use for Full-Term Infants:” There is little information on refreezing of thawed human milk. Bacterial growth and loss of antibacterial activity in thawed milk will vary depending on the technique of milk thawing, duration of the thaw, and the amount of bacteria in the milk at the time of expression. At this time no recommendations can be made on the refreezing of thawed human milk. However, there is some information on refreezing human milk. A 2006 study looked at the effects of refreezing previously frozen milk (Rechtman, Lee, & Berg, 2006). The researchers used donor milk that had been expressed by mothers without following any special sanitary guidelines. The frozen milk was thawed overnight at refrigerator temperature, separated into batches, then refrozen in separate batches and thawed for a second time to room temperature. At this point, different batches were (1) kept at 46°F/8°C for 8 or 24 hours; (2) kept at 73°F/23°C for 4 or 8 hours; (3) exposed to multiple freeze-thaw cycles of various lengths; and (control) kept at -4°F/-20°C. Vitamin content was adequate for all the refrozen samples, and none of the sample batches that had been refrozen had unsafe levels of bacteria. From the conclusion to this study: The data generated by the authors support the contention that milk is relatively robust. Milk that has been left unrefrigerated for less than 8 hours, or placed in the refrigerator for a day, is safe to use and retains a good portion of its nutritional value. Moreover, it appears that unpasteurized milk that has been accidentally thawed remains safe to use provided it has not been left too long in an unthawed condition. Based on these data, it appears that unpasteurized milk that has thawed in the refrigerator for up to 8 hours may be safely refrozen. Moreover, this data would seem to support the use of frozen milk to which fresh milk has been added and then refrozen. This should allow for more convenient storage and for the salvage of milk that mothers might otherwise have been told to discard. Rechtman DJ, Lee ML, Berg H. Effect of environmental conditions on unpasteurized donor human milk. Breastfeed Med. 2006 Spring;1(1):24-6. Also available here. Commentary here: Study results about frozen breastmilk. Also discussed in Breastfeeding Answers Made Simple (Mohrbacher, 2010, p. 461-2). Additional resources: More:Last week the Indianapolis Colts officially signed 18 undrafted free agents, who will participate in their rookie mini-camp this upcoming weekend. Let’s take a look at each of the players the Colts signed and what their chances are for making the 53-man roster. Deyshawn Bond, G, Cincinnati A 6-1, 302 pound lineman who is from Indianapolis and played at Warren Central High School, Bond was a four-year starter along the offensive line for Cincinnati. He wound up playing in 48 career games and starting 47 of them, and though he spent a lot of time at center the Colts list him as a guard. The Colts will always be looking for offensive line competition and Chris Ballard will continue to prioritize the trenches, so it’s not a surprise to see the Colts sign a few UDFAs up front. Bond is an interesting player who could be poised to compete for a spot on the 53-man roster, though there are only so many spots for linemen. Anthony Castonzo, Jack Mewhort, Ryan Kelly, Joe Haeg, Le’Raven Clark, Brian Schwenke, and Zach Banner will likely all make the roster, and Denzelle Good and Austin Blythe are others who may have an edge. So Bond will face some competition in trying to win a spot, but he should at least have a chance to compete. Dalton Crossan, RB, New Hampshire A 5-11, 202 pound back, Dalton Crossan had an impressive collegiate career in which he played in 44 games and rushed for 2,617 yards and 27 touchdowns while averaging 5.8 yards per carry. He also caught 105 passes for 779 yards and eight scores. He totaled 1,226 total yards and 16 total touchdowns in 2015 and then recorded 1,547 total yards and 14 total touchdowns in 2016. A former lacrosse player, Crossan choose football in college and impressed as a rusher, receiver, and kick returner. Crossan was one of the players that Chris Ballard mentioned recently as an UDFA to keep an eye on, so he might have a decent shot at making the roster. The Colts have Frank Gore, Robert Turbin, and Marlon Mack at running back, but if they do keep four backs then the fourth spot seems wide open right now. They have a couple of young backs who will be competing this offseason, but Crossan could be right there in the middle of that competition. Darrell Daniels, TE, Washington In 49 games at Washington, the 6-3, 247 pound Darrell Daniels started 18 of them and caught 47 passes for 728 yards and five touchdowns, averaging 15.5 yards per catch. He moved from wide receiver to tight end in 2013 and is much more of a receiving tight end in that regard, and in 2016 he caught 17 passes for 307 yards and three scores, averaging 18.1 yards per catch. Another one of the players that Ballard recently mentioned to keep an eye on, Daniels comes into a tight end room with the Colts that is looking for a number three behind Jack Doyle and Erik Swoope. Brandon Williams was signed in free agency and then Mo Alie-Cox was signed as a project player, but that number three tight end spot seems pretty open. So Daniels could stand a decent shot at the position, competing with Williams, Alie-Cox, and fellow UDFA Colin Jeter. Trey Griffey, WR, Arizona You may recognize the name “Griffey,” as Trey is the son of baseball Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. (who ranks sixth all-time with 630 career home runs and who was a 13-time all-star and 10-time Gold Glove winner) and the grandson of Ken Griffey (who was a key piece to the Big Red Machine in the 1970s and was a three-time all-star). Trey was actually drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the 24th round of the 2016 draft, but that was as a tribute to his father (who wore number 24 with the Mariners), since Trey hasn’t played baseball since before high school. He’s focused on football, and in44 games at Arizona the 6-2, 209 pound receiver caught 79 passes for 1,241 yards and six touchdowns, averaging 15.7 yards per catch. In 2016, he caught 23 passes for 382 yards and two scores. The Colts didn’t draft any receivers this year but did sign a few as undrafted free agents, though unlike some other positions there doesn’t seem to be as much room for competition at wideout. T.Y. Hilton, Donte Moncrief, Kamar Aiken, and Phillip Dorsett will probably all make the roster, and I think Chester Rogers probably will have a pretty good shot too. So that’s already five receivers, and we haven’t even mentioned Quan Bray (who would only make it if the Colts decide he’s their return man). There’s not a lot of open roster spots at this position, then, but the Colts could be looking for guys who stick out to keep working with them on the practice squad. Thomas Hennessy, LS, Duke Thomas Hennessy (6-2, 246 pounds) was Duke’s long snapper for the past four seasons, playing in 52 games and seeing action on 545 snaps. He helped Duke’s special teams unit convert 61-of-80 field goal attempts (76.3%) and 187-of-188 PAT attempts (99.5%) during his career as the long snapper, and he also helped Duke lead the ACC with the fewest punt return yards allowed in both 2014 and 2015. In addition, Hennessy helped the cause by recording four tackles. It’s rare to find an undrafted free agent that seems to be almost guaranteed a roster spot when it’s just May, but Thomas Hennessy might come close. The Colts cut Matt Overton last week and will need to replace him, and currently Hennessy is the only long snapper on the roster. So he’s not yet guaranteed the spot, but he seems to be the clear frontrunner to be the Colts’ long snapper in 2017. Bug Howard, WR, North Carolina The 6-4, 221 pound Howard played in 53 games during his time at North Carolina, catching 146 passes for 2,048 yards and 18 touchdowns (averaging 14 yards per catch). His 18 touchdown receptions rank as the sixth-most in school history. In 2016, he caught 53 passes for 827 yards and eight scores, averaging 15.6 yards per catch. As mentioned earlier when discussing Trey Griffey, there’s not a ton of roster spots that will likely be open for the Colts at the wide receiver position. So Howard faces an uphill battle in that regard, but teams are always looking for young receivers to keep working with - so, if Howard impresses, the Colts will likely notice. Colin Jeter, TE, LSU Colin Jeter (6-6, 251 pounds) originally began his collegiate career at Kilgore College (Texas) before transferring to LSU in 2014. During his three seasons at LSU, he played in 35 games and started 17 of them, catching 23 passes for 289 yards and two touchdowns. He was a three-time SEC Academic Honor Roll selection. Unlike Darrell Daniels, Colin Jeter is more of a blocking tight end. That could be intriguing for the Colts, who have an all-around tight end in Jack Doyle and a receiving tight end in Erik Swoope. They could opt to go with a blocking tight end as the number three guy to balance that out, but they’ll mainly be looking for players who produce. Either way, the number three tight end spot does seem to be open for Jeter to compete. Jerome Lane, WR, Akron One of two Akron wide receivers signed by the Colts as undrafted free agents this offseason, Lane (6-3, 226 pounds) played in 37 games during his collegiate career, catching 101 passes for 1,800 yards and 14 touchdowns (averaging 17.8 yards per catch). He had a very good 2016 season in which he caught 62 passes for 1,018 yards and six scores. He began his time at Akron as a linebacker and played defense in 2014, recording 14 tackles, five sacks, and five tackles for loss. Once again, it might be hard for these undrafted free agent receivers to make the roster initially because of the other guys ahead of them on the depth chart with the Colts. But, with that said, I think Lane could have an especially intriguing case if he impresses as a receiver in camp, because of his defensive background. That could be valuable and could help him contribute on special teams, which could give him an early advantage over some of the other UDFA wideouts. Chris Lyles, CB, Mississippi College Lyles began his collegiate career at Hinds Community College (Mississippi) before transferring to Mississippi College, where he played in 17 games and recorded 25 tackles, 0.5 tackles for loss, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery, an interception, and two passes defensed. In 2016, he produced the bulk of that as he recorded 25 tackles, 0.5 tackles for loss, a forced fumble and fumble recovery, a pick, and two passes defensed. He also participated in track and field. It should be noted that Lyles is the only one of these undrafted free agents (officially announced as signings by the Colts last week) to not be on the Colts’ roster on their website. Most likely that’s just an error on the part of the website team, but it’s at least worth noting. The Colts will likely be looking for young corners to work with and help develop, and so Lyles should have the opportunity to show what he can do. He’ll be making the jump from a smaller school to the NFL level, though, which could be a significant adjustment. Christopher Muller, G, Rutgers Christopher Muller (6-6, 315 pounds) played in 50 games during his collegiate career at Rutgers, starting 49 of them. He made 48 of those 49 starts at right guard and never missed a game during his collegiate career, starting 49 games in a row to end his career. He was named a team captain in 2016. Like Deyshawn Bond, Muller will be competing for a backup spot at guard - and if there’s a spot to be competing for up front, it’s at right guard, which is where Muller played at Rutgers. It’s presumed that Joe Haeg and Brian Schwenke will be the main contenders there for that spot with Denzelle Good also perhaps a contender, and it’s likely that Bond and Muller will be competing for depth. The Colts will always be looking for offensive linemen, but Muller will really have to show that he’s worth continuing to work with in order for him to stick around. JoJo Natson, WR, Akron The Colts signed two receivers out of Akron, as JoJo Natson joins Jerome Lane. Natson (5-7, 159 pounds) is a small wideout who was dismissed from Utah State in 2015 for a violation of team rules, but upon transferring to Akron he had an impressive 2016 campaign, catching 59 passes for 837 yards and ten touchdowns (averaging 14.2 yards per catch). He produced during his collegiate career as a receiver, rusher, and punt returner, as he scored 27 total touchdowns (15 receiving, six rushing, and six returning). His versatility as a three-way threat as a receiver, runner, and returner could make him interesting to the Colts, but he’s a small receiver and so his size could be a question. And, like the other receivers we’ve looked at, Natson faces an uphill battle because of the players ahead of him. His capabilities as a return man could make him a bit more interesting, however, especially depending on what the Colts decide to do at that spot with Quan Bray. Reggie Porter, CB, Utah Porter (5-11, 185 pounds) played in 36 games at Utah and started 22 of them, recording 91 tackles, two tackles for loss, two interceptions, 18 passes defensed, and a fumble recovery. He had his best season in 2016 when he recorded 43 tackles, two tackles for loss, two picks, and six passes defensed. The third player that Chris Ballard recently mentioned to keep an eye on, Porter will be competing for a depth spot at cornerback. The Colts need young guys with talent to work with, and so there could be a spot or two for young guys who impress in training camp. If Porter can do that he might be able to make it as a depth corner, but he’ll have to really produce and show up in camp and preseason. Brandon Radcliff, RB, Louisville Radcliff (5-9, 206 pounds) rushed for 2,365 yards and 26 touchdowns during his career at Louisville, averaging 5.4 yards per carry. He also added 20 receptions for 196 yards and a touchdown. In 2016 he rushed for 903 yards and six touchdowns while averaging 6.5 yards per carry. Like Dalton Crossan, Radcliff could be very much in the competition for the fourth running back spot - if in fact the Colts decide to keep four backs. It seems like the top three on the depth chart are pretty much set, with Frank Gore, Robert Turbin, and Marlon Mack, but after that it seems to be open. So if Radcliff impresses there could be a roster spot for him, but he doesn’t even seem like the most likely undrafted rookie to make that spot (that would be Crossan). Rigoberto Sanchez, P, Hawaii Rigoberto Sanchez played in 26 games at Hawaii as both the punter and the kicker, making 21 of 24 field goal attempts (87.5%) and averaging 44.8 yards per punt. He punted 144 times and didn’t have one blocked, recorded 45 punts of 50+ yards, had 49 punts pinned inside the 20 yard line, and recorded six touchbacks. He also served as the kickoff specialist and recorded 39 touchbacks on 93 attempts (41.9%). Last year, he was perfect on field goals (13 of 13) and averaged 44.6 yards per punt. This is an interesting UDFA signing and one to perhaps keep an eye on. Sanchez is listed by the Colts as a punter, and that would mean that he’ll be competing with free agent addition Jeff Locke this offseason. Locke seems to be the favorite to win that spot, but I’m not sure it’s completely guaranteed. Most likely, Sanchez is simply the camp leg who will help relieve some of the workload for Adam Vinatieri and Jeff Locke. But with a change in punters this year, there is a chance for Sanchez to perhaps win the spot - but it would have to take a very impressive performance and proof that he can contribute at multiple spots, as the punter, kickoff specialist, and perhaps even the holder too. Garrett Sickels, OLB, Penn State Sickels (6-4, 261 pounds) left school early and it didn’t pay off, as he went undrafted. He played in 14 games last year at Penn State and started 12 of them, recording 47 tackles, 12.5 tackles for loss, and six sacks as he was named Penn State’s Most Valuable Defensive Player at their annual football banquet. During his three years at the school, he recorded 20.5 tackles for loss and eleven sacks in 39 games (24 starts). The Colts will be looking for any help they can get at outside linebacker, and interestingly Sickels was the only UDFA at the position that they signed. With how uncertain the linebacking corps are there should certainly be a spot for Sickels if he can show that he can produce or that he can get after the quarterback. Even if he can show some flashes of raw pass rush ability he could be a practice squad candidate. At this prime position and as the only UDFA signed at the spot, he’s a guy who could have a chance of sticking around as one of the 63 guys the Colts keep. There will be real competition, at the very least. Jhaustin Thomas, DE, Iowa State Thomas (6-5, 292 pounds) was a second-team All-Big 12 selection in 2016 as he recorded 23 tackles, 9.5 tackles for loss, three sacks, an interception, and a pass defensed. In his 20 games at Iowa State, he recorded 38 career tackles, 12 tackles for loss, four sacks, a pick, and a pass defensed. He originally started at Trinity Valley Community College (where he also played basketball) before transferring to Iowa State. The Colts have a crowded defensive line group that will be competing for spots, so Thomas faces a tall task in trying to make the roster. With Henry Anderson, Kendall Langford, Johnathan Hankins, Hassan Ridgeway, T.Y. McGill, Grover Stewart, Al Woods, David Parry, and Margus Hunt all also competing for playing time and spots, Thomas is a long shot. But if he can flash pass rush ability, he could be a guy that is worth keeping around on the practice squad. Jerry Ugokwe, OT, William & Mary Ugokwe is a big player, standing 6-7 and weighing 321 pounds, and he has a lot of experience. He started 42 games at William & Mary, making the first seven starts at left tackle and then closing his career with 35 straight starts at right tackle. A Nigerian native, he didn’t play football until he was a junior in high school and walked on at William & Mary, eventually finding himself as a four-year starter. This is a guy with some potential to keep growing, as he hasn’t been playing football that long but still has a lot of collegiate starting experience. The Colts don’t have as much depth at tackle as they do at guard either, and especially the right tackle position could use some more depth. Ugokwe is the only undrafted tackle that the Colts added, and while it will likely be Le’Raven Clark starting it’s possible that Ugokwe could push for either a spot on the 53-man roster or the practice squad so that the Colts could continue to work with him. Phillip Walker, QB, Temple Walker was a four-year starter at Temple, where he ranks as their career leader in attempts, completions, passing yards, passing touchdowns, and total offense, while he’s also the first Temple QB to ever lead the team to multiple bowl games. In his career he started 49 games and completed 55.8% of his passes for 10,668 yards (7.3 yards per attempt), 74 touchdowns, and 44 interceptions while also adding 763 yards and nine scores rushing (2.2 yards per carry). Chris Ballard said earlier this offseason that the Colts would add a fourth quarterback to take into training camp, and that guy is Phillip Walker. He joins a QB room that obviously has Andrew Luck, plus backups Scott Tolzien and Stephen Morris. The starting spot is of course out of the question, and even the backup spot seems most likely to go to either Tolzien or Morris. But the possibility of the Colts keeping three quarterbacks shouldn’t be ruled out, especially with Luck’s injury, while teams often keep a practice squad QB too. So Walker could have a shot to stick around in some role, but he’ll have to have a good camp and preseason if he hopes to do so.Infowars.com April 3, 2013 Following the criminal plot by the IMF, the EU and the European Central Bank to steal billions from depositors in Cyprus, the banksters have hatched a new plan to steal trillions, level the economic playing field and force millions into grinding poverty. In order to save the earth and pay for social programs supposedly designed to help the victims of our alleged carbon crimes, the IMF says we need to pay an extra $1.40 per gallon in taxes. “The time has come for subsidy reform
-right leaders in Europe, with French National Front president Marine Le Pen among the first to voice their congratulations. I think we must expect that American foreign policy will become less predictable for us and we must expect that the United States will be more inclined to make decisions on its own. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier She tweeted: 'Congratulations to the new President of the United States Donald Trump and the American people, free!' German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, described the result as a 'huge shock' and questioned whether it meant the end of 'Pax Americana', the state of relative peace overseen by Washington that has governed international relations since World War Two. The country's Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted: 'The world won't end, but things will get more crazy.' Chancellor Angela Merkel - denounced by Trump as 'insane' for allowing more than a million migrants into the country last year - hinted at unease when she congratulated the Republican on his election victory. Merkel said: 'Germany and America are bound together by values - democracy, freedom, respecting the rule of law, people's dignity regardless of their origin, the colour of their skin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views. 'On the basis of these values, I am offering to work closely with the future President of the United States Donald Trump.' During the presidential campaign, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier branded Trump a 'hate preacher'. He has warned that'many things will become more difficult' And Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned that a Trump administration would be more unpredictable, and'more difficult' to work with. He said: 'I think we must expect that American foreign policy will become less predictable for us and we must expect that the United States will be more inclined to make decisions on its own. 'In other words, and I will not dress it up, nothing will become easier, many things will become more difficult.' During the presidential campaign, he branded Trump a 'hate preacher'. 'Looks like this will be the year of the double disaster of the West,' former Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt said on Twitter, pointing to Britain's vote in June to leave the European Union. 'Fasten seat belts,' he said. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Mr Trump's personality 'raised questions', but vowed to work with the newly-elected US President Chinese President Xi Jinping said he looks forward to working with Trump in a 'constructive' way Chinese President Xi Jinping said he looks forward to working with Trump in a 'constructive' way. During his campaign, Trump accused China of illegally subsidising exports, manipulating its currency and stealing intellectual property. 'I highly value China-US relations and am looking forward to working with you to expand cooperation in all fields, including in bilateral, regional and global aspects. Xi Jinping Xi wrote to the President-elect: 'I highly value China-US relations and am looking forward to working with you to expand cooperation in all fields, including in bilateral, regional and global aspects.' He said he expects they would'manage differences in a constructive way, in the spirit of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect, cooperation and win-win'. State media outlets in China cast the US election as the embodiment of America's democracy in crisis, with the state-run Xinhua News Agency saying the campaign had highlighted that 'the majority of Americans are rebelling against the US's political class and financial elites'. Donald Trump's election as US President has been branded a 'huge shock' in Europe The result has sparked alarm among the USA's immediate neighbours, with the Cuban government announcing five days of nationwide military exercises to confront 'a range of actions by the enemy'. Although it did not explicitly link the announcement to Trump's victory, it was made at the same time as the result. Similar exercises have been carried out at times of high tension with the US. There has been a normalisation of relations under Barack Obama, but Trump has pledged to reverse this unless President Raul Castro agrees to more freedom on the island. It has led to fears that tourism, and the benefits it brings, will drop off. Taxi driver Oriel Iglesias Garcia told Associated Press: 'The little we've advanced, if he reverses it, it hurts us. Trump has pledged to reverse a normalisation of relations with Cuba unless President Raul Castro (pictured) agrees to more freedom on the island 'You know tourism will go down. If Donald Trump wins and turns everything back it's really bad for us.' The first Bastion Strategic Exercise was launched by the Cuban government in 1980 after the election of Ronald Reagan. The announcement by Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces in red ink across the top of the front page of the country's main newspaper said the army, Interior Ministry and other forces would be conducting maneuvers and different types of tactical exercises from November 16 to 20. It warned citizens that the exercises would include'movements of troops and war materiel, overflights and explosions in the cases where they're required'. Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders claimed the 'people are taking their country back', and added: 'So will we' Far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders welcomed Trump's election, claiming: 'The people are taking their country back' The result was welcomed by controversial far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who has previously hit out at what he describes as the Islamification of the Netherlands. After results came in for Florida and Utah, he wrote: 'The people are taking their country back. So will we.' Trump made statements that were at odds with how we like to see our society and world order. Bert Koenders The country's Foreign Minister, Bert Koenders said: 'We will judge him on his actions.' Koenders, of the center-left Labor Party, said: 'Trump made statements that were at odds with how we like to see our society and world order.' He cited examples including Trump's comments about US relationships with NATO, Russia and the European Union. But the Dutch minister says it is important for the Netherlands' close relationship with the United States to continue since 'we are facing global challenges such as climate change and the fight against terrorism'. Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin voiced hopes for more constructive US-Russian dialogue when the newly-elected president takes office Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon warned of a'real sense of anxiety' following Trump's election. Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Trump's victory has created a'real sense of anxiety' After congratulating the Republican candidate, Sturgeon said: 'It is normal in any election for those on the losing side to feel disappointment, but today, many in America and across the world, will also feel a real sense of anxiety.' Trump, whose mother was Scottish, owns two golf courses on the west and east coasts of Scotland. Sturgeon has long been vocal on her distaste for Trump, and endorsed his opponent Hillary Clinton as recently as Tuesday. 'While this is not the outcome I hoped for, it is the verdict of the American people and we must respect it. I congratulate president-elect Trump on winning the election,' she said. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the USA's 'unity in diversity' is one of its greatest strengths UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations will be counting on Trump's administration to meet global challenges - including climate change and human rights. Ban says after 'a hard-fought and often divisive campaign, it is worth recalling and reaffirming that the unity in diversity of the United States is one of the country's greatest strengths'. Ban also praised Hillary Clinton 'for a lifetime commitment to peace, the advancement of women and the well-being of children'. Extreme Australian right-wing Senator Pauline Hanson congratulated Trump on his presidency and thanked Americans ‘for getting it right Australia’s extreme right-wing Senator Pauline Hanson congratulated Trump on his presidency and thanked Americans ‘for getting it right'. Hanson co-opted Trump’s controversial statements and demanded that Australia ban all Muslim migration to Australia and once warned that the country was being ‘swamped by Asians’. We have no stronger relationship, whether it is on the battlefield or in commerce, than we have with the United States. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ‘I’m so excited that Donald Trump looks like he is over the line and I’m so happy about it because this is putting out a clear message to everyone around the world that people power is now happening,’ she said in an online video posted shortly before Trump’s victory was confirmed. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull congratulated Trump on his surprise win and promised the two countries would remain allies through any conflict. 'We have no stronger relationship, whether it is on the battlefield or in commerce, than we have with the United States. 'They are a great and powerful nation. They are a great and powerful friend,' Turnbull told a news conference. News of Trump's election has been greeted with shock in Italy, whose Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had supported Hillary Clinton Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who had openly supported Hillary Clinton, congratulated Donald Trump on his victory in the US presidential elections and said Italy's ties with the United States remained strong. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi was one of the few world leaders to endorse Clinton, but has today said the Italo-American friendship is'solid' 'I wish him well. The Italo-American friendship is solid,' Renzi said at the start of a speech in Rome. Renzi was one of the few world leaders to endorse Clinton and opposition politicians were swift to condemn him today, saying that by doing so, he had weakened Rome's international standing. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto congratulated the US on its election - but did not directly congratulate winner Donald Trump, who alarmed many by describing Mexican migrants as murderers and rapists. Pena Nieto sent a series of tweets repeating his readiness to work with Trump 'in favor of the bilateral relationship'. He said Mexico and the US 'are friends, partners and allies who should continue collaborating for the competitiveness and development of North America'. The value of Mexico's peso currency plunged sharply after the election of Trump, who has denounced the North American Free Trade Agreement. Trump meeting Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in August. Trump's comments about Mexico, and pledge to build a wall along the US border, have been among the most contentious moments in the race for the White House Analyst Alejandro Hope described Trump's election as 'probably something as close to a national emergency as Mexico has faced in many decades'. Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu said today that the country's government would not pay for Trump's proposed wall along the US border. Trump's threat that Mexico will pay for the wall had become a key feature of his speeches. Turkey's justice minister said he is cautiously optimistic of improved relations with the US. Bekiz Bozdag told the state-run Anadolu Agency: 'In essence our relations are relations between two states and we hope that under the new presidential term the Turkish-US relations will be much better. 'That is our expectation.' Bozdag noted that Trump's win came despite intense campaigning in favor of his rival Hillary Clinton. 'I saw an intense campaign for Hillary Clinton's victory. Artists, sportsmen, all personalities worked for Clinton's victory. But in elections, it is important to embrace the people,' Bozdag said. 'No one has won elections through newspaper headlines, opinion polls or television (campaigns).' Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban wrote on Facebook: 'What great news. Democracy is still alive' Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban congratulated Trump with the words: 'What great news. Democracy is still alive.' The comment was posted on his Facebook page. Orban said in July that Trump's plans on migration and foreign policy were 'vital' for Hungary, whereas those of rival Democrat Hillary Clinton were 'deadly'. Orban was then the first European head of state to express a clear preference for either of the two candidates. Poland's President Andrzej Duda reminded Trump of the'strategic partnership' between the two nations The President of Poland has reminded Trump of the'strategic partnership' between the nations, amid concerns that the region could be more vulnerable if the USA's NATO allies are not protected. Andrzej Duda wrote to Trump: 'Polish-American relations have become an important pillar of European and trans-Atlantic stability. 'We are particularly pleased that that during this year's NATO summit in Warsaw the United States decided to increase its military presence in Poland.' The result was also welcomed by controversial far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who has previously hit out at what he describes as the Islamification of the Netherlands Danish prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said in a written statement that the election had been 'exceptionally tough and confrontational'. He said: 'When the dust has settled, it is my hope that the next administration would continue the open and constructive cooperation that has characterized the United States for many years. 'Europe needs a strong United States, which is leading the free world and is based on democracy and dialogue.' TRUMP'S POPULISM CONQUERS THE WHITE HOUSE: EUROPE REACTS TO REPUBLICAN'S SURPRISE ELECTION By Gerard Couzens Catalan daily El Periodico posted a cover picture of Trump on its website above the words: 'God Bless America', claiming: 'The populism of the Republican candidate has imposed itself and provoked the defeat of Hillary Clinton.' Leading national El Mundo proclaimed: 'Hillary Clinton has failed with women and Hispanics.' The paper’s special envoy to New York Irene Velasco wrote: “Let’s say it loud and clear. 'Hillary Clinton is a woman who an important part of the United States don’t like. 'And it’s been like that for a while. They don’t like her arrogance, they don’t like the fact she’s been in politics all her life, they don’t like the fact she symbolises the Washington establishment.' Right-wing daily ABC said: 'Trump’s populism conquers the White House.' Its Washington correspondent Manuel Erice Oronoz posted an article titled: 'Trump, the triumph of the daring narcissist' which began: 'Meglomaniac, big child, egocentric, fraudster, charlatan, Hitler’s successor, last fascist, mentally ill…the list of definitions and descriptions Donald Trump has accumulated mark an era.' Raphael Minder, the New York Times correspondent in Spain, told a popular Spanish morning TV programme today: 'It’s an unexpected victory when you think that two years ago it didn’t even like look like Trump could win the Republican primaries and a week ago he was saying he wouldn’t accept his defeat.' Trump's victory has split experts across the world this morning, but Spain's Foreign Minister has cautiously welcomed the election result Pilar Garcia de la Granja, US Chief correspondent for leading Spanish TV channel Telecinco, told daily morning show ‘El Programa de Ana Rosa’: 'Millions of people in the States are fed up with being lied to. 'Millions of people do two or three jobs just to be able to reach the end of the month. 'There’s a heroin epidemic here among young people. Heroin cigarettes are cheaper in some states than a headache tablet.' But leading Spanish journalist Arcadi Espada said: “The largest producer of lies in the history of America politics is Trump. 'It’s the spreading of lies that has led this man to the presidency of the United States.' Alfonso Dastis, Spain’s newly-elected Foreign Minister, said: 'I think things will go well. We at least are going to work in that direction. We have worked hard over these years to consolidate our close relationship with the US.' Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has congratulated Trump on his win Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wrote in a statement that he 'congratulates the elected American president, Donald Trump, and hopes that peace will be achieved during his term'. An Abbas aide, Saeb Erekat, said Wednesday he doesn't expect US positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to change under Trump. Erekat said the Republican and Democratic parties are both committed to a two-state solution of the conflict and said: 'I think this will not change with the coming administration'. Trump has proposed moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, even though the US has not recognized Israel's annexation of parts of the city. The first Middle Eastern leader to offer congratulations to Trump on winning the presidency was reportedly the Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who telephoned a message of support to the new President. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Trump as a 'true friend of the State of Israel', and said he was confident that his country's relationship with the US would reach 'new heights' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he is confident that he and Trump can bring US-Israeli relations to 'new heights'. In a statement congratulating the Republican candidate, Netanyahu - who had a difficult relationship with President Barack Obama - said: 'President-elect Trump is a true friend of the State of Israel, and I look forward to working with him to advance security, stability and peace in our region. 'I am confident that President-elect Trump and I will continue to strengthen the unique alliance between our two countries and bring it to ever greater heights.' Saudi Arabia's King Salman wished Trump luck in his'mission to achieve security and stability in the Middle East and worldwide' Congratulating Trump on the win, Saudi Arabia's King Salman praised 'historic and tight' ties with the United States and wished him success 'in your mission to achieve security and stability in the Middle East and worldwide'. United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan also said his country was eager to strengthen "strategic relations" with Washington. Iran's President has warned Trump against ripping up last year's nuclear deal, made between his country and world powers - claiming the US no longer has the capacity to create 'Iranophobia'. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned Trump against trying to rip up last year's nuclear deal - saying the US no longer has the capacity to 'create Iranophobia' Hassan Rouhani said: 'The accord was not concluded with one country or government but was approved by a resolution of the UN Security Council and there is no possibility that it can be changed by a single government. 'The United States no longer has the capacity to create Iranophobia and to create a consensus against Iran.' Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Trump needed to 'understand the realities of today's world'. 'The most important thing is that the future US president stick to agreements, to engagements undertaken,' he said. A statement from the Taliban has demanded that Trump withdraws all US forces from Afghanistan when he takes office Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War. I hope Donald Trump will end all wars and become hero of peace in the world. Mohammad Omar Daudzai, Afghanistan's former Interior Minister Afghanistan’s former Interior Minister Mohammad Omar Daudzai said: 'Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War. 'I hope Donald Trump will end all wars and become hero of peace in the world. People of Afghanistan are tired of war. We want him to invest heavily in bringing peace to war torn Afghanistan and stabilize our region.' The country’s president Ashraf Ghani congratulated Trump on his astonishing victory. He stated that USA is a strategic partner of the Afghan government and people – in the fight against terrorism and development. In a statement issued by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid to Associated Press, the organisation called for Trump to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan when he takes office. Trump triumphs: The election result has been greeted with shock across Europe 'WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE FACING': GERMANY'S SHOCK AND UNCERTAINTY OVER SURPRISE VICTORY By Allan Hall in Berlin 'We are heavily shocked,' said Ursula von der Leyen, Germany's defence minister - four words which seemed to sum up the national mood on learning of the Trump White House victory. 'Of course, we Europeans know as NATO partners that Donald Trump will ask himself what we are contributing to the alliance,' the conservative member of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) told the public TV network ARD. 'But we will also be asking, what is your position on the alliance. Many questions are open. A responsible and open America is in our interests. Ursula von der Leyen, Germany's defence minister, said leaders were 'heavily shocked' at Trump's victory 'I also think that Donald Trump knows that this wasn't an election for him, but against Washington, against the establishment,' von der Leyen added. 'With Mr. Trump we really don't know what we're facing,' said centre left SPD foreign policy spokesman Niels Annen. Green party leader Cem Özdemir called the possibility of his presidency a 'break with the tradition that the West stands for liberal values,' and he warned that the United States could turn its back on the rest of the world. Left party chairman Bernd Riexinger said: 'He won't be able to offer anything at all to the people who he's promised all kinds of things.' The only German party to welcome Trump's victory outright was the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). Deputy party leader Beatrix von Storch was quick to draw parallels with the European political situation. "The victory of Donald Trump is a signal that the citizens of the Western world want a clear political change," she wrote on her Facebook page. Her party colleague Marcus Pretzell took to Twitter to ask for more "optimism" and less 'fearmongering' from the German media. In Berlin, the small group Republicans Overseas celebrated the win. 'A Trump victory just goes to show how much Americans hate being told what to do,' the Berlin branch wrote on Facebook. 'If he wins, it's laid directly at the feet of the media establishment, the sneering, snotty coastal elites, and all the social justice warriors whose bigotry against rural America caused small town USA to rise up and say ENOUGH!' Trump supporters celebrate The Donald's surprise election victory Northern Ireland's political leaders have congratulated Trump. First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness expressed hope the region's long-standing relationship with the US would be strengthened during Mr Trump's time at the White House. Northern Ireland's First Minister Arlene Foster said she looks forward to working with the Trump administration Mrs Foster said: 'We are a small region but we are fortunate to have strong historical, economic and political ties to the United States. 'Northern Ireland has developed a mutually beneficial relationship with the United States and I look forward to working with Donald Trump's administration to continue this. 'As our largest inward investor the United States plays a massive role in our economic progress.' Sinn Fein's Mr McGuinness said: 'Over many years successive US administrations have made a major contribution to both our peace process and economic development and I expect this to continue. 'I commiserate with Hillary Clinton who showed unwavering commitment to the north of Ireland as Secretary of State and First Lady.' During the presidential campaign, Irish Taoiseach branded comments by Trump 'racist and dangerous', but now said he is happy to work with the President-elect The Irish Taoiseach has softened his criticism of Trump following the presidential election result. Enda Kenny has said 'racist and dangerous' remarks made by Trump were made in the 'heat of battle'. He said today: 'I recall a comment made in the Dail (Irish parliament), when asked if I would agree that comments made in the heat of battle, in a primary election, by the president-elect, before he was nominated formally as a candidate, were racist and dangerous. 'And I said "yes", in respect of those comments. I listened very carefully to the president-elect this morning, and the first thing he said was, it was now time to heal wounds, to build partnerships, to work constructively with people of the US and every other country and people who want to work with him. 'I am very happy that the (Irish) government will work with the new administration when appointed by the president-elect.' Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he will work with Trump not just for Canadians and Americans 'but for the whole world' Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to work with Trump 'in a positive way'. Trudeau told students in Ottawa that he will work with Trump not just for Canadians and Americans 'but for the whole world'. The prospect of Americans moving to Canada after Trump's win drew so much online interest it temporarily knocked out Canada's immigration website. Internet searches for "move to Canada" spiked last night as election returns favored Trump. 'Canada' was a leading US trend on Twitter. The website for Citizenship and Immigration Canada went down due to a surge in traffic. Andree-Lyne Halle, a spokeswoman for Trudeau, said staff worked throughout the night to resolve the issue. A US flag is hoisted in the small town of Sevnica, Slovenia, the birthplace of Trump's wife Melania The president of Slovenia - the home country of future US First Lady Melania Trump - says he hopes relations with the US will further improve during Donald Trump's presidency. President Boris Pahor said: 'We are allied as part of NATO and I will strive for the friendship and the alliance to deepen further.' Melania Trump was born as Melanija Knavs in the industrial Slovenian town of Sevnica before working internationally as a model. Members of the 'Hindu Sena' group celebrate Trump's victory in New Delhi today Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Donald Trump, who had praised him during his presidential campaign Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has voiced optimism about Trump's election, tweeting that 'we appreciate the friendship you have articulated toward India during your campaign'. He added that 'we look forward to working with you closely to take India-US bilateral ties to a new height'. Trump had reached out to Indian-American voters at a rally in New Jersey in mid-October, praising Modi and vowing to defeat terrorism while acknowledging that India had suffered terror strikes, including the deadly 2008 attacks that killed 164 people. Activists from 'Hindu Sena', or Hindu Army, celebrate Trump's victory in New Delhi, India, this morning In the Indian capital today, a small group of men from the right-wing Hindu nationalist group Hindu Sena celebrated Trump's victory at a central protest ground, where they brandished posters and photos of the US president-elect while dancing and sharing sweets. The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, branded Trump's win 'historic', praising the Republican's commitment to free enterprise. He said Trump's election 'is indeed the triumph of the American people and their enduring faith in the ideals of democracy, freedom, human rights and free enterprise'. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed one of his top aides to visit Washington as early as next week Japan is set to send a top official to Washington to meet senior figures in the next White House administration. Katsuyuki Kawai, a political aide to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in charge of diplomacy, told reporters after meeting with Abe that he had been instructed to visit Washington as early as next week. Abe's instruction came when results showed Republican candidate Donald Trump with a clear lead. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said it was not because Japan was unprepared for Trump's win. He said: 'We have been preparing so that we can respond to any situation because our stance is that our alliance with the US remains to be the cornerstone of our diplomacy whoever becomes the next president.' Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has said Trump's victory shows politicians cannot take voters for granted The prime minister of Malaysia said Trump's victory is a sign that voters cannot be taken for granted by politicians. Supporter: Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen announced his support for Trump before the election Najib Razak - who is currently embroiled in a scandal over the alleged theft by his associates of several billion dollars from a state investment fund, which is being investigated by the US Justice Department - congratulated the Republican. He said Trump's 'appeal to Americans who have been left behind, those who want to see their government more focused on their interests and welfare, and less embroiled in foreign interventions that proved to be against US interests, have won Mr. Trump the White House'. Cambodia's long-serving authoritarian prime minister Hun Sen described Trump as 'your excellency', and pointed out that he had announced his support days earlier. On his official Facebook page, the prime minister said: 'American voters have shown their choice to elect your excellency... My support for your candidacy is not wrong either.' The leader of the world's most populous Muslim nation has vowed to work with Trump's administration - but experts say many in the country are shocked. South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said that he believed Donald Trump would maintain the current US policy of pressuring North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests. He said: 'Trump has indicated that the greatest problem facing the world is the nuclear threat and members of his national security team hold the position that favours applying strong pressure against the North.' He made the comments in a meeting with members of parliament scheduled to discuss the results of the U.S. presidential election. The North conducted its fourth and fifth nuclear tests in January and September, drawing widespread international condemnation. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte offered 'warm congratulations' to Trump and said he looks forward to working with the incoming administration Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte offered 'warm congratulations' to Trump and looks forward to working with him to enhance relations, a Philippine minister said on Wednesday. Duterte, who has expressed outrage almost daily with the Obama administration and threatened repeatedly to end one of Washington's most important Asian alliances, hailed the success of US democratic system and the American way of life, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said in a statement. Indonesian president Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo said 'good relations' would continue with the US Duterte 'looks forward to working with the incoming administration for enhanced Philippines-US relations anchored on mutual respect, mutual benefit and shared commitment to democratic ideals and the rule of law,' he said. Indonesian president Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo said: 'We will keep good relations, especially in trade and investment as we know the U.S. is one of Indonesia's major investors. I think there will be no change.' But noted Islamic scholar Komaruddin Hidayat said the outcome was'shocking' for many. Hidayat, who is also rector of Indonesia's state-run Islamic University, says Trump has signaled backing for ultra-nationalist, isolationist and protectionist policies which could be harmful. He said: 'Trump's isolationist policy will certainly harm Americans because in the era of globalization no country can live alone.' SOUTH AMERICA REACTS TO TRUMP VICTORY Argentina's Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra had previously said the country would feel'more comfortable' if Hillary Clinton won By Gerard Couzens Argentina's Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra, who said before the US elections that Argentina would feel ‘more comfortable’ with a Hillary Clinton win, congratulated Trump on his election victory, tweeting: 'Congratulations Donald Trump on being elected as the new president of the United States. 'The north American people have spoken at the polls. 'Congratulations to democracy and its institutions.' But she added in a second tweet: 'Congratulations to Hillary Clinton for her great campaign. 'A shame to see such a capable woman not being chosen to fulfill such an important responsibility.' There was no immediate word from Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. But Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, leader of left-wing political party MORENA, said he was not worried about Trump’s election win because Mexico was a 'free, independent and sovereign' country. Donald Trump was congratulated by Argentina's Foreign Minister after his victory in the race for the White House Addressing the nation in a video believed to have been filmed just before the election result was known, he said: 'I feel it’s important at this time to transmit this message to all Mexicans, to immigrant workers and their families as well as entrepreneurs and investors. 'There’s no need to worry with the result of the US election results. 'Don’t forget that Mexico, because of the effort and hard work of our founding fathers, is a free, independent and sovereign country. It’s not a colony or a protectorate and is not dependent on any foreign government. We need to be calm.' Colombian political analyst Vicente Torrijos told the country’s leading daily El Tiempo the States was heading down a risky path because Trump was an 'unpredictable person with “very individualistic and explosive tendencies'. Rival paper El Espectador, in a piece written by Juan Carlos Rincon Escalante, said: 'The US is a disaster but Trump knows how to fix it (at least he says he does). 'Multi-millionaire. Rude. Misogynist. Xenophobe. Racist. Liar. What’s his appeal?' EU Council President Donald Tusk (left) and his Commission counterpart Jean-Claude Juncker (right) have invited Trump to visit the European Union Trump has been invited to visit the European Union to assess trans-Atlantic ties. EU Council President Donald Tusk and his Commission counterpart Jean-Claude Juncker said that, despite Trump's campaign talk of protectionism and isolationism, both sides'should consolidate the bridges we have been building across the Atlantic'. I really doubt President Obama had any clear policy to South Sudan other than to destroy it. 'So we will definitely expect better relations with Trump Michael Makuei, Minister of Information in South Sudan After the shock election result, Tusk and Juncker said that 'it is more important than ever to strengthen trans-Atlantic relations'. Tusk told reporters in Brussels that 'while respecting the democratic choice of the American people, we are the same time aware of the new challenges that these results bring'. He spoke of a'moment of uncertainty over the future of our trans-Atlantic relations'. Optimism about Trump's forthcoming presidency has been voiced by the Minister of Information in South Sudan. Michael Makuei said he believed it would be 'better for all' when the new leader is in place, criticising Barack Obama. He said: 'I really doubt President Obama had any clear policy to South Sudan other than to destroy it. 'So we will definitely expect better relations with Trump... and the USA after the election.' Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said: 'The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly' Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has sent a message of congratulations to Trump, stating: 'The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly'. Kenyatta said 'the ties that bind Kenya and the United States of America are close and strong'. Trump was congratulated by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari - with experts believing the uncertainty caused by the Republican candidate's victory will benefit the country. Lagos-based SBM Intelligence risk analysts say the uncertainty generated by Trump's win should be good for Nigeria, the African oil giant, since it will weaken the US dollar. But not everyone in Nigeria embraced Trump. At an election watch party organized by the US Embassy in Lagos, Nigerian artist Nike Davies-Okundaye called Hillary Clinton'my hero'. Oby Ezekwesili, a founder of the Bring Back Our Girls movement for schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram, also praised Clinton and said 'I can't wait for my friend to be in the White House.'Pluto: Sputnik Planitia Gives Credence to Possible Ocean We’ve been looking at the idea of an ocean beneath Pluto’s icy surface for some time, including interesting work on the thermal evolution of the dwarf planet’s ice shell from Guillaume Robuchon and Francis Nimmo (University of California at Santa Cruz). Back in 2011, The Case for Pluto’s Ocean looked at their view that the stretching of Pluto’s surface would have clear implications for an ocean kept warm by radioactive decay in the interior. Now Nimmo is back with a post-New Horizons analysis that also points to an ocean. The key here is Sputnik Planitia, forming part of the heart-shaped feature that was so distinctive during the flyby — think of Sputnik Planitia as the heart’s ‘left ventricle.’ The impact basin here is aligned almost exactly opposite from Charon. We learn in Nimmo’s paper in Nature that there is only a 5 percent chance that the feature’s alignment with Pluto’s tidal axis is by coincidence. To Nimmo and colleagues, the alignment is a dead giveaway that extra mass in the location is indicated. This would cause tidal interactions between Pluto and Charon that oriented Sputnik Planitia opposite the Charon side. Image: In this image of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, different colors represent different compositions of surface ices, revealing a surprisingly active body. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute. Thus we’re looking at forces that led to a re-alignment of the two small worlds, and enough mass to make that kind of shift possible. A deep basin doesn’t provide the heft, but an ocean could explain the result. In this way of thinking, Sputnik Planitia is the result of a major impact, which would have been followed by an infusion of water pushing up from below. The ice shell at the top hardens, leaving a deep basin gradually filling with nitrogen ice. Both the nitrogen ice and the water from below are necessary to explain the mass needed. “It’s a big, elliptical hole in the ground,” says Nimmo, “so the extra weight must be hiding somewhere beneath the surface. And an ocean is a natural way to get that.” Image: These schematic diagrams show how the gravity anomaly at Sputnik Planitia is affected by an uplifted ocean and the thickness of the nitrogen layer. Either a nitrogen layer more than 40 km thick (panel b) or an uplifted ocean (panel c) could result in a present-day positive gravity anomaly at Sputnik Planitia; otherwise, the gravity anomaly will be strongly negative (panel a). Credit: Nimmo et al., Nature, 2016). Researchers also believe that the frozen nitrogen ice in the Sputnik Planitia basin may be convecting thanks to a weak spot at the bottom which would let heat rise from the interior. That would be an indication of a thin crust in this area, which would have allowed material from below to push upward to create, along with the nitrogen ice, the extra mass observed. “Pluto is small enough that it’s just about almost cooled off but still has a little heat, and it’s about 2 percent the heat budget of the Earth, in terms of how much energy is coming out,” says New Horizons co-investigator Richard Binzel (MIT), a co-author of the Nimmo paper. “So we calculated Pluto’s size with its interior heat flow, and found that underneath Sputnik Planitia, at those temperatures and pressures, you could have a zone of water-ice that could be at least viscous. It’s not a liquid, flowing ocean, but maybe slushy. And we found this explanation was the only way to put the puzzle together that seems to make any sense.” Nimmo believes the subsurface ocean is mostly water mixing with ammonia. This natural ‘anti-freeze’ slows the refreezing of the ocean, but
with the problem theoretically. As a sort of appendix, I’ve included critiques of four essays from the two sides of the debate, but first I will generalize what I see as the strengths and weaknesses of each. Insurrectionists make a number of vital contributions, perhaps the most important being that the time is now, that the distinction between building alternatives and attacking capitalism is a false one. The critique of leftist bureaucracy as a recuperating force, the state within the movement that constantly brings rebellion back into the fold and preserves capitalism, is also right-on, though often the word “organization” is used instead of bureaucracy, which can confuse things because to many people even an affinity group is also a type of organization. Or it can lead to a certain fundamentalism, as some people do intend to excommunicate all formal organizations, even if they are understood by the participants as a temporary tool and not a “one big union.” The insurrectionists also nurture a number of weaknesses. Their frequent criticisms of “activism” tend to be superficial and vague, reflecting more an inability to come to terms with their personal failures (or observed failures) in other modes of action, than any improved theoretical understanding, practically guaranteeing that the faults they encountered in activism will be replicated or simply inverted in whatever they end up doing as insurrectionists. (This point will be developed more in the appendix). There is also a certain lack of clarity in insurrectionist suggestions for action. Insurrectionists tend to do a good job in making a point of learning from people who are not anarchists, drawing on recent struggles in Mexico, Argentina, Algeria, and so on. However this also allows them to blur the difference between what is insurrectionary and what is insurrectionist. Much as most of them forswear ideology, by mining historical examples of insurrection to extract and distill a common theory and prescription for action, they earn that “ist” and distinguish what is insurrectionary from what is insurrectionist. They have perceptively grasped that what is insurrectionary in a social struggle is often the most effective, most honest, and most anarchist element of the struggle; but by seeing through an insurrectionist lens they discount or ignore all the other elements of the struggle to which the insurrectionary is tied, even, in many cases, on which it is based. In this instance the “ist” carries with it that monotheistic insistence that any elements reducible to another “ism” must be incorrect. So we are told to open our eyes when the people in Oaxaca burn buses and defend autonomous spaces, but close our eyes when the strikes carried out by the teachers’ union give birth in large part to the insurrection, when the rebels choose to organize themselves formally or above ground for a certain purpose. Insurrectionists call for action inside or outside social movements, which I agree with. People should fight for themselves, for their own reasons and own lives, even if they have to fight alone. This is, after all, how many social movements exist at the beginning, before they are recognized as social movements. To contradict a criticism I have seen from some more organizationally minded anarchists, it is not at all vanguardist to take action first or even attempt to escalate actions, because fighting for your own reasons or attempting to inspire other people to action by example is quite the opposite of vanguardism. In fact a common sign of a vanguardist is one who objects to other people running ahead of the flock (and consequently ahead of the flock’s vanguard). However this insurrectionist stance is sometimes accompanied by a disparaging view of social movements, as though any movement is inherently authoritarian, inherently bureaucratic, inherently recuperative (in Green Anarchy I even read one fairly silly call for “momentum” instead of movements, though if the author of this piece was doing anything besides redefining “movement” as “the bad sort of movement” and defining everything else as “momentum” it wasn’t very clear, because of that preference for words instead of meanings fashionable among many [anti]political writers). But we should not underestimate the importance of social movements. I recently had the opportunity to spend five months among anarchists in the former Soviet bloc, primarily in Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. Unanimously, the anarchists I met told me that the socialist dictatorships had destroyed and subsequently prevented any social movements, and left a legacy of people who hate and distrust the government (many of them are also dissatisfied with capitalism) but who also have no tradition or inclination to trust and participate in social movements, or even cooperate with their neighbors. The anarchist situation there is far bleaker than it is in the US: the anarchists are alone, isolated, without any clear starting point for action, much less insurrection. One Romanian anarchist said organizing in his home country was like going to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and trying to build anarchy. (In Poland and Czech [Republic], the anarchist movement is much stronger, and these are also the countries that developed dissident social movements in the ‘80s. Incidentally the dictatorship in Romania was toppled not by a movement but by an insurrection that was largely stage-managed — these too can be recuperated). In light of this, it seems a glaring absence that insurrectionists tend to avoid actions or analysis focused on building up social movement (if by movement we only mean a large informal network or population, that may include formal organizations, and that constitutes itself as a social force in response to perceived problems, initially acting outside the scope of previously routinized and institutionalized forms of social activity). Insurrectionist suggestions for action tend to revolve around creating autonomous spaces that support us, allow us to practice communal, anarchist living now, and serve as a base for waging war against the state. This is as good as any other singular anarchist strategy, in fact it’s a good deal better than a few, but also like the other strategies in circulation it has already been defeated by the state. Insurrectionists in the US don’t even need to use that typical American excuse of amnesia; in this case, isolationism is to blame. The largely anarchist squatters’ movement that thrived across Western Europe in the ‘70s and ‘80s (and shadows of which still survive), including the German Autonomen, already attempted — in a very serious way — the same strategy that US insurrectionists are now circulating without any differences serious enough to be considered a revision or lesson from past failures. And they are likely, if they ever get a half of the momentum the Europeans had, which under present circumstances is improbable, to end up exactly the same way: an isolated, drug-addicted wasteland of ghettoized subculture frozen in a self-parodying gesture of defiance (yes, this is a pessimistic view, and one that discounts the several wonderful squats and social centers that are still hanging on, but I think insurrectionists would agree there’s no point in looking for the bright side of a movement that has come to accommodate capitalism). It goes something like this: the state and the culture industry isolate them (operating almost like Daoist martial artists, pushing them in the direction they’re already going, only harder than they intended), by many accounts flood in addictive drugs, which come to fill a new need as the stress mounts from the prolonged state of siege brought about by frequent attacks from police; not everyone can live under those conditions, especially older folks and those with children [who] drop out or turn to more escapist, less combative forms. The militants stay within their circle of barricades for so long that in-crowd aesthetics and mentalities entrench, they are, after all, at war with the rest of the world by now. Eventually the rebels lose any real connections with the outside world, and any possibility to spread the struggle. Thus weakened and lacking external solidarity, half the squats are evicted, one by one, and the others become exhausted and give up the fight. Because of their proximity to that history, a particular group of French anarchists could not just ignore the weaknesses of the strategy. This group, the authors of Appel (Call), the most intelligent and insightful insurrectionist (if I can give it a label it has not claimed for itself) tract I have come across, hit the nail on the head when, advancing a more developed and lively form of this strategy, they pointed out that the squatters’ movement died because it stopped strategizing (and thus stopped growing and changing, stagnated). However, more than one nail is needed to hold the strategy together. Stagnation was the likely outcome of the squatters’ movement due to its very structure, and the consequent structure of state repression. The falling off of strategizing was a probable result of the strategy itself. And what about the organizationalists? First I should note that this is a rather amorphous group, and few people actually identify themselves as organizationalists. A good part of them are the old or classical anarchists — anarchist-communists whose strategy rests in part on creating a strong federation of anarchists, or syndicalists building anarchist labor unions, or otherwise working in the labor movement. Some in this camp are social anarchists who prefer an involvement in mainstream society to waging anything that resembles war (class or insurrectionary). More than a few are anarchist activists working above ground with some organization around a particular issue, perhaps without a clear long-term strategy, who have been swept in with the others by insurrectionist criticisms. I will focus on the classical anarchists, because they have more clearly articulated strategies (this is not at all to criticize the others, after all no strategy can be better than a simplistic, dogmatic one). Hopefully the criticisms I make there will be informative for all anarchists who consider the use of formal organizations. On the one hand, the emphasis of these anarchists on building social movements and being accessible to outsiders is well placed. Clearly a major problem of US anarchists is isolation, and organizing in above-ground groups around problems that are apparent to broader populations can help overcome this isolation. It is extremely helpful when there are types of anarchist action people can get involved in that are relatively easy, that don’t require a plunge straight from mainstream life into uncompromising war against the system (to go off on a tangent, insurrectionists often praise the replicability of certain actions, but I wonder how many started off as activism-oriented anarchists and how many were insurrectionists from the beginning. In other words, how replicable is insurrectionist anarchism for most people?) The communication and coordination that, say, a federation can provide can be helpful in certain instances. In Europe many of the prisoner support organizations that anarchists of all kinds rely on are organized as federations. Organizations can also build and escalate the struggle. For example, the actions of an anarchist labor union can make anarchism accessible to more people, by providing an immediately apprehendable way to get involved, a forum for spreading ideas, and a demonstration of the sincerity and practicality of anarchists winning improvements in the short-term. I would also wager that people who have gotten some practice in a union, and learned first-hand about strikes for example, are more likely to launch a wildcat strike than people who have never been part of a union. An approach that relies heavily on formal organizations also has a number of weaknesses. Since these weaknesses have appeared and reappeared in no uncertain terms for over a century, it’s a damn shame to have to repeat them, but unfortunately there seems to be the need. Democratic organizations with any form of representation can quickly become bureaucratic and authoritarian. Direct democratic organizations still run the risk of being dominated by political animals (as Bob Black pointed out in more detail in Anarchy After Leftism). And there is something problematic in the first instance [when] a society separates the economic from the political and creates a limited space for decision-making wherein decisions have more authority than those decisions and communications enacted elsewhere in social life. Organizations should be temporary, tied to the need they were formed to address, and they should be overlapping and pluralistic. Otherwise, they develop interests of their own survival and growth that can easily conflict with the needs of people. This organizational self-interest has been used time and time again to control and recuperate radical social movements. It should long ago have become obvious that using formal organizations is risky, something best done with caution. Yet some organizational anarchists even persist in believing that all anarchists should join a single organization. I have never seen an argument for how this could possibly be effective, and the question is irrelevant since it is neither possible nor would it be liberating. Voluntary association is a meaningless principle if you expect everyone to join a particular organization, even if it is perfect. But I’ve still heard a number of anarchist-communists use that obnoxious line, “they’re not real anarchists,” on the basis that these not-anarchists did not want to work with them. The interest of working together in an effective organization, especially if it is singular (as in, The Only Anarchist Group You’ll Ever Need to Join!), encourages conformity of ideas among members, which can cause them to waste a great deal of time coming up with the Correct Line and can make them a pain in the ass for other folks to work with. (The 1995 pamphlet “The Role of the Revolutionary Organization” by the Anarchist Communist Federation is very clear that they see theirs as only a single one of many organizations working in the movement, and they renounce the aim of any kind of organizational hegemony; perhaps the problem is the lack of a deep recognition that these many organizations may approach, relate to, or conceive of the movement in entirely different ways). Hopefully by now it is clear how these two tendencies can cooperate for greater effect. First of all, by abandoning that horrible pretension that just because the Other disagrees with our point of view, they have nothing valid to offer. It follows from this that we recognize different people will prefer to be active in different ways, and in fact different temperaments draw people towards different anarchist tendencies before theory ever comes into it. Some people will never want to go to your boring meetings or organize in their workplace (they won’t even want to have a workplace). Some people will never want to set foot in your nasty-assed squat or live in fear that the state will take away their kids because of the lifestyle of the parents (or they won’t even want to subject their kids to the stress of a life of constant warfare). And guess what? That’s fine and natural. If. If we can cover each other’s backs. Above ground organizers who build support for the insurrectionists, who stand by those masked terrorists instead of denouncing them, will create a stronger movement. Insurrectionists who carry out the waves of sabotage the organizers are too exposed to call for, who keep in touch with the outside world and also keep the organizers honest and aware of the broader picture, the horizon of possibility, will create a stronger movement. Organizationalists who exclude the insurrectionists help them isolate themselves. Insurrectionists who see the organizers as the enemy help them recuperate the struggle. These are self-fulfilling prophecies. Insurrectionists can be helped by the movement-building and social resources of the organizationalists, who in turn can be helped by the more radical perspective and sometimes stronger tactics, the dreams put into practice, of the insurrectionists. Because the US anarchist movement often looks to Greece for inspiration, especially the insurrectionists, I find it interesting that the Greek experience seems to show the two approaches to be complementary, even if the organizations involved are bitter enemies. In the [U.S.] we usually hear about the Greeks when they attack a police station or burn surveillance cameras; basically every week. But we do not hear about the foundation that makes this possible. For starters Greece enjoys a more anarchic culture. Family ties are stronger than state loyalties (Greek anarchists were shocked to learn that a number of prisoners in the US were turned in by relatives), there is widespread distrust of authority, and many people still remember the military dictatorship and understand the potential necessity of fighting with cops. US culture is not nearly so supportive of our efforts, so we need to figure out how to influence the broader culture so it will be more fertile for anarchy. The state has been doing the opposite for centuries. I couldn’t tell how much the anarchists in Greece influenced the surrounding culture and how much they just took advantage of it, but there were many clearly conscious attempts to influence the social situation. A great deal of activism goes into opposing the European Union immigration regime, working with and supporting immigrants, and the squatted social centers play a role in this. Such work also helps make the anarchist movement more diverse. Labor organizing plays a role in Greece, though I learned much less about this while I was there. In Athena the foundation that keeps much of the local anarchist movement alive and kicking is a neighbourhood — Exarchia. This entire quarter, located in the center of the capital, has the feel of a semi-autonomous zone. You can spraypaint on the walls in broad daylight with little risk (wheatpasting is even safer), you see more anarchist propaganda than commercial advertising, and you rarely encounter cops. In fact you’re likely to find nervous squads of riot police standing guard along the neighbourhood’s borders (nervous because it’s not uncommon for them to be attacked). The autonomous spaces, the destruction of surveillance cameras, the Molotov attacks on cops are all characteristic of the insurrectionary approach. But also important to the rebellious makeup of Exarchia are the language classes for immigrants organized by social centers, the friendly relationships with neighbors (something the Black Bloc types don’t always excel at cultivating) and even, curiously, some anarchist-owned businesses. In the US, the phrase “anarchist business” would be scoffed at contemptuously, though one would also avoid applying it to anarchist bookstores, which are recognized as legitimate. But in Exarchia (and this was also the case in Berlin and Hamburg) the anarchist movement was bolstered by a number of anarchist-owned establishments, particularly bars. I think the rationale is fairly solid. If some anarchists need to get jobs in the meantime, and this is certainly more the case in the US than in most of Europe, it can be better to own your own bar that you open as a resource to the movement than to work at a Starbucks. Likewise, if anarchists are going to gather at a bar every Friday night (and this could also apply to movie theaters and a number of other things), why not go to one that supports a friend, and supports the movement (as an event space and even a source of donations)? It can also provide experience building collectives, and edge out the local bourgeoisie who would otherwise be a reactionary force in a semi-autonomous neighbourhood. I sure as hell ain’t advocating “buying out the capitalists” as a revolutionary strategy, but in Exarchia and elsewhere anarchist businesses, in this strictly limited sense, have played a role in creating a stronger movement. Most important, if we want to consider the strength of Greek anarchists, has been the student movement. For a year, university students (along with professors and even many high school students) have been on strike, protesting a neoliberal education reform that would corporatize universities, privatize some of them, and end the official tradition of asylum that forbids police to set foot on Greek campuses. At the most superficial level, this student movement has allowed the anarchists many more opportunities to fight with the police. Getting a little deeper, it is perhaps the social conflict in Greece with the most potential to lead to an insurrectionary situation, similar in some regards to Paris in 1968. A strictly organizational strategy, whether of the typical syndicalist or anarchist-communist varieties, will be too weak, and too tame. Another organization will just be a competitor with the communist parties, and will have a conservative effect on the passions of the students, who show the tendency to blow up and act out quite ahead of the plans and predictions of the organizations, which are the ones getting the heat from the authorities. A strictly insurrectionary approach will isolate the anarchists from the student movement, who will increasingly view them as parasites who only come to fight with the cops. Without the involvement of an anarchist perspective, nothing will stop the political parties from controlling the movement. And anarchists are unlikely to gain much respect in the student movement if they disdain working for the short-term goal of defeating this education law. Putting aside the dogma about reformism, everyone should be able to see the tragic tactical loss anarchists would suffer if the universities had their asylum privilege revoked (right now, people can attack a group of cops and then run back into the university and be safe), and of course a fierce movement using direct action is much more likely to dissuade the government from putting this education reform into effect than a passive movement dominated by party politics. By fighting the police, taking over the streets, and squatting the universities, anarchists can inspire people, ignite passions, capture the national attention and raise the fear, which everyone immediately smells and is intoxicated by, that things can change. By spreading anarchist ideas, turning the universities into free schools, setting up occupation committees, organizing strikes, and preventing the domination of the student assemblies by the political parties, other anarchists can provide a bridge for more people to be involved, make overtures for solidarity to other sectors of society, and strengthen the movement that has provided a basis for the possibility of change. If these two types of anarchists work together, the insurrectionary ones are less likely to be disowned as outsiders and isolated, thrown to the police, because they have allies in the very middle of the movement. And when the state approaches the organized anarchists in the movement in an attempt to negotiate, they are less likely to give in because they have friends outside the organization holding them accountable and reminding them that power is in the streets. Similar lessons on the potential compatibility of these two approaches can be drawn from anarchist history in Spain of ’36 or France of ’68. Both of these episodes ultimately showed that insurrection is a higher form of struggle, that waiting for the right moment is reactionary, that bureaucratic organizations such as the CNT or the French students’ union end up collaborating with power and recuperating the movement. But what is easier to miss is that insurrectionary tactics were not the major force in creating the necessary foundation. The CNT and the French students’ union were both instrumental in building the revolution (the former by spreading anarchist ideas, launching strikes and insurrections, building connections of solidarity, preparing workers to take over the economy, and defeating the fascist coup in much of Spain; the latter by disseminating radical critiques [at least by certain branches], organizing the student strike and occupation, and organizing assemblies for collective decision making). The failing was when they did not recognize that their usefulness had passed, that as vital as they were those organizations were not the revolution. (This is not at all to say there should be a preparatory period, during which insurrectionary tactics are premature. Clandestine attacks at any stage can help build a fierce movement. Waiting to attack until the movement is large leaves you with a large, weak movement, with no experience in the tactics that will be necessary to grow or even survive the mounting repression. It might even leave you with a large, pacifist movement, which would just be awful.) Between living in a squat or living in an apartment and organizing a tenants’ association, there are inevitably going to be people who strongly prefer one or the other, whether or not we bring theory into the picture. This should be a good thing, because both of these actions can help bring about an anarchist world. When anarchists give up our narrow dogmatism and embrace the complexity that exists in any revolutionary process, we will [be] closer. Because I guess I’m not really happy with a happy ending, I’ll conclude by pointing out some problems that I think are common to both tendencies. I’ve already mentioned the monotheistic mentality that leads to schisms within the movement, but especially in the US this exists on a larger scale as an inability of most anarchists to work in a healthy way with those outside the movement. This has been a failure to figure out what makes other Americans tick, what they are passionate about, what sphere of their lives is illegal, under what circumstances they will rebel, and how to engage them on this. There is no simple answer, and the complex answers will differ between regions, communities, and individuals, but I think most anarchists of all stripes have stuck to self-referential and repetitive actions rather than plunging into this tedious work. Granted, people in the US aren’t the easiest population for anarchists to engage; our culture encourages conformity, isolation, and the Protestant work ethic more strongly than most others. But we should take this as a challenge and get on with it. The inability to work well with others is also the manifestation of another Western value that contradicts anarchism more blatantly than monotheism, and it is the Risk board mentality, that ingrained view of the world from above, with ourselves positioned as the architect or general. It is the understanding that you change society by forcing people to organize themselves in a certain way. The more classical anarchists put themselves at one extreme, thus occasioning many of the criticisms that they are authoritarian or Marxist, by pushing a program or insisting that revolution only occurs when people see the world through the narrow lens of class consciousness. The insurrectionists have caught a whiff of this and they go to the other extreme by forswearing activism and to a large extent avoiding contact with people who are much different from them. That way they don’t have to worry about forcing their views on anyone. It should be apparent that both of these approaches rest on the assumption that contact between people who are different must result in a missionary relationship, with one converting the other. The idea of mutual influence, of organizing as building relationships with people rather than organizing as recruiting people, is generally absent. In my view, the largest problem shared by both the insurrectionary and organizational camp, and most other anarchists, is whiteness: and even more than the failure of white anarchists to solve the mystifying problem of checking our white privilege, I mean intentionally preserving a movement narrative that tells the stories and contains the values of white people, and refusing to recognize the importance of white supremacy as a system of oppression every bit as important as the state, capitalism, or patriarchy. Different white anarchists find different ways of minimizing race, depending on their analysis. But a common thread seems to be that perennial colonial belief that for salvation — or hell, just for us to get along, the Other must become like me. On the one hand, this could be the insistence that white supremacy is nothing but a tool and invention of capitalism, perfectly explainable in economic terms, and that for people of color to liberate themselves, they must surrender whatever particular experience and history the world’s ever present reaction to their skin color may have given them, and identify primarily as workers, with nothing but fictive barriers standing between them and the white anarchists sitting in their union halls waiting for a little diversity to wander in. The minimization of race can also mask itself behind a misuse of the recognition that race is an invention without physiological justification. I’ve heard many anarchists take this further to say that race does not exist. I imagine this could come as a slap in the face to a great many of the world’s people, it certainly contradicts my own lived experiences, and it is also a supremely idiotic statement. By definition something that does not exist cannot cause results in the real world. I think most anarchists who make this statement would be horrified by someone who denied the existence of racism, but they must be using another kind of denial, that which accompanies abusive relations, to not see this is exactly what they have just done. (Other anarchists take a more dishonest but unassailable route by simple denouncing as “identity politics” any excessive preoccupation with race). Race is a harmful categorization that must be abolished, and like capitalism or the state it cannot be wished away or solved by exclusion from one’s analysis any more than AIDS or the scars of a beating can be wished away. The liberal “color blind” mentality to which so many anarchists adhere can only be a way of prolonging white supremacy. Until white anarchists of all stripes allow — no, encourage — anarchism to adapt to non-white stories, anarchism is likely to remain about as relevant to most people of color as voting is to immigrants. And as long as anarchists continue to view differences in the same way the state and civilization we oppose has taught us to, we will never encompass the breadth of perspective and participation we need to win. Comments on a couple articles from each side of the schism The two insurrectionist essays I’ll touch on are “Rogues Against the State” by crudo (anarchistnews.org) from Modesto Anarchist (California), and “Fire at Midnight, Destruction at Dawn: Sabotage and Social War” (www.geocities.com) from A Murder of Crows, out of Seattle. Both of these are well written, thoughtful pieces, and neither in itself is terribly sectarian. But they both contain weaknesses, and I think they both could have been more useful if they had not set themselves in opposition to another way of doing things. “Fire at Midnight” advocates sabotage carried out inside of or outside of social struggles, without spending much time criticizing other methods. However, the article makes it clear that “We must be willing to examine and scrutinize the methods and strategies of the past so that we do not follow in the footsteps of history’s failed attempts at revolution. To this end we will focus on a method that is as powerful as it is easy to put into practice: sabotage.” However, it does not really discuss how to build the social struggles they acknowledge are necessary for the total abolition of capitalism, and I think most readers would get the impression that sabotage itself is meant to build up such a struggle. Towards the end the article does criticize more organized forms of resistance, though it chooses its targets carefully, in a way that borders on setting up a strawman argument because the effect is that one must either be part of a vanguard party, an institutionalized group that always counsels waiting, or one must take part in autonomous and anonymous, insurrectionary tactics like sabotage. To the author, nothing in the middle is worth mentioning. The effectiveness of sabotage is exaggerated. In fact, in most of the examples mentioned in the article, the people using sabotage lose (though it almost seems they are celebrated for maintaining a sort of purity throughout the process). Let’s look at two of the cases where people won. One is the campaign against Shell Oil and its involvement with South African apartheid. The article points out that anonymous acts of sabotage throughout Europe and North America against Shell cost them much more money than the boycott did. This is an important fact that demonstrates the effectiveness of sabotage and the silliness of those people who still claim violence (property destruction) hurts the movement, but not when it is presented as a substitute for the boycott. Generally, I am averse to boycotts because they reinforce our role as consumers, but they go along well with education campaigns about, in this case, the need to oppose Shell Oil. They are easy for everyone to do, and harmless to the movement as long as pacifists don’t try to hold them up as an effective alternative to violence. This article certainly appreciates the easiness and replicability of tactics, when it comes to sabotage. The same should apply to the education/boycott campaign because in many ways this campaign provided a foundation for the wave of sabotage. Of course sabotage is more effective, but destroying Shell Oil’s infrastructure and kidnapping their executives would have been more effective still. That’s a moot point, because the movement wasn’t strong enough to do this. Its strength needed to be built up, just as it needed to be built up before a large wave of sabotage could occur. By disdaining this building process, insurrectionists would be destroying their own base. By embracing a building process, anarchists could influence the creation of an education campaign based not on values of liberal citizenship but on anticapitalist rage, surely a more supportive foundation for sabotage and other forceful tactics. The second example comes from the Mohawk (sic) who resisted Canadian government encroachments at Oka in 1990. Sabotage was a strong tactic in this struggle, but far more important was that resistance was carried out by a well organized group united by a common culture (and also willing and able to escalate well beyond sabotage), and many of the external, non-Mohawk groups giving solidarity were also formally organized. Additionally, in such circumstances, the anonymous and spontaneous form of organization favored by insurrectionists really disadvantages the type of communication and accountability that are needed for effective, responsible solidarity actions that don’t end up hurting the people you’re trying to help. Once again, an exclusively insurrectionary approach would have been less effective and probably self-isolating (especially given the inescapable reality that right now most insurrectionary anarchists — most anarchists — are white, so a strong, exclusively insurrectionist tendency at Oka would have come off as yet another example of white people exploiting the struggles of people of color). “Rogues Against the State” also comes close to building a strawman in its critique of activism. Again, it’s a bit vague as to who are the targets of the criticism, and in this haze a dichotomy is entrenched between insurrection, which is advocated as the path anarchists should take, and forms of activism that are inevitably reformist and based on getting people to join a specific organization. The essay contains a number of good points — about the problems with building “one monolithic anarchist organization,” that certain technologies such as cellphones and computers require the intensive exploitation of global sacrifice zones so anarchy cannot result from worker control of the present infrastructure — and the section on “Creating Autonomous Spaces” is especially valuable. But there are also serious flaws. As I pointed out earlier, this strategy does not address the fatal shortcomings that became apparent when it was put into practice in Western Europe. Point 9 contains the important point that anarchists can, do, and should learn from non-anarchist struggles, and that “the masses” do not need to be taught how to act. Yet a number of examples are misleading. In Oaxaca, much of the struggle grew from the strike of the teachers’ union, and was helped along by APPO, the popular assembly (much as this organization may later have had a pacifying effect, organizationalists take note). In the countryside, a large, organized anarchist influence was CIPO-RFM, the association of autonomous anarchist communities, with whom I understand NEFAC (the Northeastern Federation of Anarchist-Communists) works. And as for “rent-strikes,” another spontaneous occurrence praised in the article, is the author aware of how many of these come out of tenants groups, organized quite often by activists (inside or outside the buildings)? In other words, the inspiring examples of insurrection do not bear out the strategy of insurrectionism. But a great part of the essay is a criticism of activism, and here is one of the weakest parts. The author says much of her/his personal experience was with an activist group the principal activity of which was to dole out charity and try to get other people to join the group. Yeah, that sounds pretty shitty. The assumption that everyone engaged in activism, community organizing, whatever the hell you want to call it, is doing the same thing, is equally lacking in depth. Instead of taking their failures as a sign that they were doing a bad job in their chosen activities, ‘crudo’ instead jumps ship and denounces activism wholesale. “Activism” is never defined, and it’s too easy a term to use disparagingly — many articulate, not-so-active anarchists do. But the author gives the example of Copwatch and Food Not Bombs. I’ve seen examples of these groups that have been effective, examples that have been ineffective, some that have been charity and some that have been empowering. It depends a great deal, not surprisingly, in how you go about it, whether your goals, strategy, and tactics line up, or if you’re just mimicking something anarchists habitually do elsewhere. If it’s done well and in spite of its weaknesses, activism can teach us how to talk to mainstream people without hiding, or scaring them away with, our anarchist politics, it can help us learn how other people see common problems and thus how we can better communicate a radical critique of these problems, and sometimes even motivate people to get off the couch and respond to their problems with direct action. It can allow us to influence other people’s realities, when they see that there are anarchists out there, and therefore the possibility of anarchy, and that by working together and using direct action we can change the situations most people are used to only watching on television. It’s a fucking tedious process that rarely brings results quickly, and this has the advantage of teaching us that in the concrete details of people’s everyday lives revolution is neither quick nor easy, that simply overcoming this stifling alienation in a single neighbourhood could take years. The built-in disadvantages are that it’s too easy to burn out, lose hope, compromise your dreams, or fall into a holding pattern of habitual, uninspired actions to spare oneself the energy it takes to be constantly creative and effective, to keep attacking these walls of alienation by leaving one’s comfort zone and talking to strangers. ‘crudo’ seems to have an unrealistic view of this process, though since s/he mentions years of experience in an activist group, it may just be the failing of a mistakenly simplistic paragraph. But it’s amazing that in an otherwise intelligent article, the author would suggest wheatpasting flyers around town calling for a general strike as an alternative to talking with AFL-CIO leaders, as though these are the two logical options, as though either one of them could actually accomplish anything. If it’s unrealistic to say that a union will usher in the revolution, what is it to suggest that reading a flyer will get people to launch an insurrection? In both cases, a whole lot more creativity and patience are called for. Point number 8 also displays an unrealistic understanding of the insurrectionist strategy (along with the obnoxious suggestion, based on who knows what, that anarchists who are activists seek compromise with authority instead of complete social transformation). “To be against activism and for a complete social transformation means that we desire the destruction of hierarchal [sic] society and openly desire it’s [sic] abolition. We seek anti-politics, meaning the rejection of representative forms of struggle and a praxis of insurrectionary attack, or the use of actions which seek to destroy any existence of the state and capital and allows for the self-organization of revolt and life. This does not mean that people shouldn’t use activist approaches from time to time (for instance organizing events to fundraise for political prisoners). But in general we need to find a strategy that exists outside of going from protest to protest and from issue to issue. We are in the middle of a social war, not a disagreement between various sides that can reach a compromise.” Activism is a vague method, or a set of tactics, things like giving away free food or organizing a fundraiser for prisoners. How does this at all suggest activists must believe in compromise with the government? And how exactly does the author imagine setting up autonomous spaces or fighting the state, if activist approaches like fundraising for prisoners are only a part of the picture “from time to time” (has the author ever been to an autonomous space like those he advocates? In Greece and Spain for example, organizing informational events
’m doing for about 6 months now which is journaling my days at work. It started while chatting with my friend Flavien who was asking how he could have a TODO list with reccuring tasks. Half-jockingly I said use Github issues with a template. Thinking more about it I thought it could be a great idea and I should try this in practice. My daily routine Regarding my daily tasks, I’ve mostly been a low-tech person with pen and paper crossing out what I had done. But this process is quite inefficient regarding reccuring tasks. Also keeping up with what was left to do from the other days is not really optimal. Tried some TODO/GTD apps too but it didn’t catch. These days I try to keep a journal of what I do at work using Github issues. I chose Github since I use it everyday so I figured this would be a great place to store this “me vs. work” stuff. Every morning I open a new issue in a private repo with the date as the title. The repository is not public, perhaps one day it will. I’ve got mixed feelings with opening it, it’s my private life but journaling in the open could be an interesting experiment too. There is an ISSUE_TEMPLATE file in the repository. It contains my daily routine tasks and a placeholder for what I intend to do today and another one for tasks I did that were not planned. The template looks like this: Today here are the tasks I'd like to complete: - [ ] Check Slack for urgencies - [ ] Check X status - [ ] Check New Relic - [ ] Check Sentry - [ ] Check Y I also did: - [ ] So every morning with my coffee I make a quick standup with myself and it ends up with something like: Today here are the tasks I'd like to complete: - [ ] Check Slack for urgencies - [ ] Check X status - [ ] Check New Relic - [ ] Check Sentry - [ ] Check Y - [ ] Project 42 - [ ] a sub task - [ ] another subtask - [ ] and another subtask - [ ] Fix bug #66 I also did: - [ ] I then add a label with my current mood and if I’m working remotely or not. During the day I check every task I completed and eventually add un-planned tasks. At the end of the day I’m left with: Today here are the tasks I'd like to complete: - [x] Check Slack for urgencies - [x] Check X status - [x] Check New Relic - [x] Check Sentry - [x] Check Y - [ ] Project 42 - [x] a sub task - [x] another subtask - [ ] and another subtask - [x] Fix bug #66 I also did: - [x] Free-up space on Jenkins - [x] Some Open source stuff - [x] Fixed a bug for a customer When the day is over it’s time for a bit of reflection over it and I’ll tag the issue with some labels to rate it. So far I have 12 of them: The productivity labels are purely subjective, it’s just how I feel at the end of the day not how much I accomplished quantitatively. The mood I set in the morning can be adjusted if I feel like it was not the right one too. I usually close the issue but leave the tab open so that I can copy paste the unfinished tasks for the next issue. What’s next? The closed issues list is pretty nice with all the labels and the progress bar but I haven’t found a real use for them yet except a sense of completion (or not) at the end of the day. Since I have an API with pre-formatted data at hand using Github, I’m thinking about making a visualisation interface with some graphs and try to get some insights. It would be a nice side-project to play with some new front-end tools too (Purescript I’m looking at you). The idea would be not only to have a fancy TODO list but also to try to self-quantitize my life as a worker. Trying to extract tendencies from this data would be great. For example if it’s been 20 days I’ve been setting my Mood to Bad and my Productivity to Bad then perhaps it’s time for a deeper reflection and a big change, this kind of stuff. It could also help for the 1-to-1s with my manager perhaps. I also thought about some elisp or a script I could write to automate my process a bit but I’m not sure it would really add value. My issue routine is a moment of reflection, I’m not sure I want to speed it up right now. That’s it for my daily routine. If you have thoughts, comments or ideas of improvement don’t hesitate to open an issue here.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 Matty Willock has been promoted to the Manchester United first-team squad and could be on the bench against West Brom in the Premier League for the first time. The 20-year-old midfielder arrived with teammates at The Lowry Hotel on Friday evening where Juan Mata and Luke Shaw were not spotted by photographers. London-born Willock joined United from Reading in 2012 and his brothers, Chris and Joe, are still in The Gunners' academy. Willock has trained with the senior squad already this season and scored for the Reserves at the Etihad Stadium and Anfield. He played regularly in United's Under-21 title-winning side last season. Axel Tuanzebe could also make the 18 having travelled with the squad to Middlesbrough in March. Injuries to Phil Jones and Chris Smalling have kept the England Under-20 international involved with pre-match preparations. The Congo-born centre half made his United debut against Wigan in January and has spent the majority of the season training with the first-team squad. Captain Wayne Rooney arrived separately and so did Anthony Martial, Joel Pereira and Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who all live in the city centre. Daley Blind also resides nearby and could have rendezvoused with teammates. United are without a number of players through injury and suspension ahead of the first of nine April fixtures in the league and Europa League. "They are not important," Mourinho said of United's unavailable players. "The important ones are the ones who are ready to play, that's the way we have to think. "We cannot be here crying or speaking about the players who are not available to pay. You know that Zlatan and Ander Herrera are suspended, that Herrera is two matches ban for that episode against Chelsea. You know what happened in the English national team with Smalling and Jones, you know we have also Poga injured. "But I repeat they are not importat. The important players are the one who are ready to lay, the ones I trust and the ones who are going to give everything tomorrow to try and keep us in the fight for the top four." West Brom's visit marks United's first game without Bastian Schweinsteiger after he left to join the MLS team Chicago Fire. "He is in the category of players I feel sorry for something I did to him," Mourinho said. "I don't want to speak about him as a player, I don't want to speak about him as a payer I would or would not buy. I want to speak about him as a professional, as a human being. "It was the last thing I told him before he left, 'I was not right with you once. I have to be right to you now.' So when he was asking me to let him leave, I had to say yes, you can leave because I did it once, I cannot do it twice. "So I feel sorry for the first period with him, he knows that, I am happy that he knows, because I told him. I will miss a good guy, a good professional, a very good influence in training. So I could not stop him to go, even though I know we have so many matches and probably would need him for a few matches or a few periods. (Image: Eamonn and James Clarke) "But I had to let him go and now publicly wish him and his wife a very happy life in Chicago. When asked if he regretted Schweinsteiger's treatment, Mourinho replied: "I do, yeah. I would let him be in the squad. I knew in that moment we have too many players. "If you remember we had many players in this doubtful situation, we still had Schneiderlin, Depay, Andreas Pereira, Tyler Blackett and James Wilson, a huge squad in the beginning. "But after knowing him [Schweinsteiger] as a professional and as a person, the way he was behaving and the way he was respecting my decisions as a manager, yes I regret, and no problem for me admitting it and he knows that because I told him. Follow United vs West Brom here. Confirmed squad members David de Gea Sergio Romero Joel Pereira Antonio Valencia Timothy Fosu-Mensah Matteo Darmian Eric Bailly Axel Tuanzebe Marcos Rojo Michael Carrick Matty Willock Marouane Fellaini Jesse Lingard Ashley Young Henrikh Mkhitaryan Wayne Rooney Marcus Rashford Anthony Martial Get all the latest Manchester United news first with our new app. Download it here now.Guests: Nicolas Winding Refn Nicolas Winding Refn Nicolas Winding Refn is the Danish director of the new film Drive, starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. Refn had a very specific vision for the film, which included trance-like music and throwbacks to the aesthetics of films of his childhood. Drive is a moody thriller that combines elements of fairy tale, noir, 80s pop and 70s grit. The film won Refn the Best Director award at Cannes. Drive opens in theaters nationwide on September 16th. Click here for a full transcript of this interview. OR Stream or download this interview now. JESSE THORN: It's The Sound of Young America, I'm Jesse Thorn. My guest, Nicolas Winding Refn grew up in the world of cinema. His father, Anders, edited the Danish classics Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark for director Lars Von Trier, among dozens of other films. He grew up in Denmark, but spend his teenage years in New York City. He briefly attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before being expelled, allegedly for throwing a chair into a wall, and passed up one of six slots at a very prestigious Danish film institute when he had the opportunity to develop what had been his application short film into a feature. That movie, Pusher, went on to become a European cult crime classic. His new film is his first American production. It's called Drive. It won Refn the directing prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Its nearly silent protagonist played by Ryan Gosling is a professional stunt driver by day and a getaway driver by night. It's a movie that somehow both brutal and serene, and because the main character almost never talks, it's tough for us to encapsulate with a clip of dialogue. So instead, suffice it to say that on those evenings when he isn't committing a crime, the protagonist called the driver cruises the roads of Los Angeles listening to music like this. Nicolas, welcome to The Sound of Young America. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Thank you. JESSE THORN: It's really great to have you on the show. I want to ask you, having only seen one passing reference to you throwing a chair into a wall at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, I thought I would go to the horse's mouth and find out what got you booted. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: It was a table instead of a chair. It was great because I hated authority anyways, so it didn't turn out the way I thought it was going to be, but that was maybe good, because if it hadn't maybe I wouldn't be sitting here. So I was the happiest person smashing a table into the wall and being told that was unacceptable. JESSE THORN: I read somewhere that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the movie that made you want to make movies, which I thought was particularly interesting in light of the fact that your dad was an editor and director. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: I grew up in New York with my mother and my step-father who were photographers. Growing up in what you would call a Scandinavian socialistic household of upper class New York, anything that was actually American was considered Fascist and everything that was Europe was great, especially European cinema of the 60s, the French new wave and sorts. Growing up, if you couldn't rebel with your music -- because my mother had photographed Jimi Hendrix and so forth -- I turned to genre movies as my rebel without a cause, and that would surely get them pumped because they thought it was the vilest thing to see, and tracking down extreme cinema. But it wasn't really until I was 14 that I saw the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was a double feature in New York at Cinema Village that I realized to me film was an art-form. I've always been very fascinated by images, maybe that's because I'm dyslexic and I didn't learn how to read until I was 13, so images became very much my understanding of story telling. JESSE THORN: You're also colorblind, right? NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Yes, I'm colorblind, I can't see mid-colors. That's why all my films are very contrasted, if it were anything else I couldn't see it. JESSE THORN: This was a film that was originally brought to you by Ryan Gosling, who's the star of the movie. Did he tell you at the time why he wanted to meet with you? NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Yes, I recall but I was so stoned I couldn't remember what he explained to me. JESSE THORN: It seems like a bad idea to get stoned when you're about to meet with a huge movie star. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: It's a little more complex, because - - I had no aspirations of working in Hollywood. It was not something that I set out to do. It was perfectly content to stay in Europe and make the kind of films I make in that arena. I guess after Valhalla Rising I kind of felt, well, maybe I should try to do a movie in Los Angeles; maybe it wouldn't be that bad. It would also be an interesting obstacle to work within, because it would probably be in a much more controlled environment than I was used to. I was offered a script by Paul Schrader that Paul had written called The Dying of the Light, I actually got Harrison Ford to play the lead. I was really interested in doing a movie where I got to kill Harrison Ford. And then, as it always does in Hollywood, it began to unravel. What you thought was the head began to unravel. Suddenly Harrison didn't want to die, maybe, and blah blah blah, and I was like, oh dammit. I postponed my own film back in Europe and gone to Hollywood and, of course, ended up in development hell. While this was going on I would come to LA at four days a trip because I just got a new child, and I couldn't be away for a long time. One of the times that I came here at a critical point in the collapse of Dying of the Light, I'd gotten the flu coming in so I was pretty out of it. Harrison got me these anti-flu drugs. I don't do drugs anymore and I haven't done them for a long time, so it didn't take a whole lot of American anti-flu drug to make me as high as a kite. JESSE THORN: Just the idea of Harrison Ford getting you some special drugs that only Harrison Ford has access to, it's almost like getting amphetamines from Elvis. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: If you think about it it's like the perfect party. I was there, and everything was unraveling and I was so out of it it seemed surreal. Then I got a call asking if I would have time to have dinner with Ryan Gosling. I'd never met him, we'd never crossed paths. I was, yeah, sure, why not. That morning, they sent the script over called Drive that I read, but I couldn't remember it because I was so stoned when I read it. I got a taxi that came to the restaurant and Ryan was already there because I couldn't find the restaurant, I was quite delayed. Ryan was terrific, so courteous, respectful, nice, professional, and I was completely zoned out. It was basically impossible to have a conversation about anything besides music and films, a little bit about my films. After we were through with dinner I asked him to take me home, because I can't drive a car and I just needed a ride home, which of course was a strange thing to do because it was like a blind date that was about to go terribly wrong. He was like, yeah, absolutely, sure. It was all the way in Santa Monica that was quite a long trip. We got into his car and we were driving along the highway in just awkward silence. I liked him so much; even though I was out of it I knew that the man was very unique in his aura around him. So we're sitting there in silence and Ryan turns on the radio to break the silence, and REO Speedwagon's “I Can't Fight this Feeling Anymore” starts to play. I am very emotional because I'm both ill and high at the same time, flying as a kite. I actually started to sing the song, because I love REO Speedwagon, I love that song it reminds me of my youth. It almost brought me down memory lane of where I grew up, and it's a very much LA driving song. There I am, singing this song, and probably obnoxiously, and then I start to cry. I turned to Ryan, for the first time, and I looked at him in the car, and I just screamed in his face, “I know what Drive is. It's going to be about a man that drives around in a car at night and listens to pop music because that's his emotional release.” Ryan very quickly just caught up on that and just nodded and was like, got it. I'm in. And then we did it. JESSE THORN: I want to play a scene from the movie. This is one of the only scenes with enough Ryan Gosling dialogue for it to qualify for being played on the radio. In this scene Ryan Gosling is working at a garage that is owned by a character played by Bryan Cranston who folks might know from Breaking Bad. The character Irene, who becomes his love interest, has just met him but conveniently comes back in with a car problem. Ryan Gosling's character in the film is very very quiet. There are very few lines of dialogue for Ryan Gosling. Was that the case when you got the script that had been being developed as a more traditional action movie starring Hugh Jackman for a long time? NICOLAS WINDING REFN: It was a different kind of character at that point. When Ryan and I began to re-think it with Hoss [Hossein Amini], it was really about - - I had this idea that I wanted to do a fairytale in Los Angeles, in terms of building characters that were larger than life. The drive in my film becomes a larger than life aspect because his silence is what makes him an enigma. He is a man who has no past, and as Ryan said, he didn't see this guy as a man who did small talk. He didn't engage in conversation unless he was asked or needed something, because he's in a sense completely separated from the world. That also eliminated a lot of dialogue because then there was no point in a lot of conversations, which is good. Silence in a movie like this is sometimes so much more engaging, especially when you have action because action is all visuals and emotions. The idea that the drive was half man, half machine, meaning that by night he's somebody else and by day he's a human being, at night he's a hero. It's one of the songs in the film. The idea that through the movie he transforms himself into a hero. That kind of a character is very similar to the characters in my previous movies, so it's a kind of transformation theme that I've been subconsciously very obsessed with. JESSE THORN: Let's hear a little bit of the song that ends up being a kind of closing title theme for the film, it's called, “A Real Hero,” it's by College. JESSE THORN: You are originally from Copenhagen, you live in New York City, you don't have a driver's license. As a guy who grew up in urban San Francisco and moved to Los Angeles, I can only imagine what being tossed into the weird world of Los Angeles was like. There's a lot of hyper reality in LA and a lot of simulacra. It's just a weird place. It's so central in this movie. Was was it that made you want to take this fairytale idea and put it specifically in Los Angeles and not, say, out in the desert of Utah or Chicago or something like that? NICOLAS WINDING REFN: It was the sensibility that Los Angeles was almost like the back drop because it was this illusioned world that the Ryan Gosling character lives in. There was also a personal need to experience Hollywood in it's pure form as a European filmmaker. Coming to America, I felt I might as well go all the way, so I wanted a house in the hills with a swimming pool and an orange tree. JESSE THORN: At one point you had an editing suite at the house. Carey Mulligan was living at the house because she was in town and didn't have a house in LA, Ryan Gosling was sort of living in the house, and you were all just kind of getting up in the morning or - - I don't understand exactly the chronology, but in my mind Ryan Gosling was building the car that he drove, you were re-writing the script. It sounded insane to me. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Insane in a wonderful way because it was very collaborative in the sense that it was all about how we could entangle with each other. It was like pure 70s film-making, all we needed was a lot of cocaine and it would have been an all nighter. I think that, especially - - my parents came and stayed with us. Then it was really a full house. Three editors and my parents and my kids and my wife and friends and Carey and Ryan and everybody else was always open to come by. It created a little bubble for us. We had our little own world and Ryan Gosling and I would always go drive around at night, living the characters and kind of developing the film, eating at The 101 which was a famous diner that was near my house. The house was on Bronson Avenue, which was ironic because I made a film called Bronson. There were so many things that was like living the illusion of Hollywood, which very much transpired into the film. JESSE THORN: I find, as a city guy, that Los Angeles is an alienating place for me. I feel separated from everything. I wonder if you felt that way about Los Angeles when you moved here, if you felt that weird separation from the world around you. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Because LA is all about movement of cars or being in houses, it automatically separates you from each other. What's weird about LA, it's like, either you move or you sit still. Interaction with human beings is always an effort you have to drive to. It's not like New York or Paris and London or Chicago in so far as where you basically just walk out the door and you're surrounded by millions of people that automatically interact with you. That was what was so unique about Los Angeles and why I very much enjoyed my time there was that it was a bit like stranger in a strange land. It was like coming to a science fiction world where nothing really seemed real. Everything still looked like we were back in the 80s. It's very much a city that hasn't left the 80s. JESSE THORN: The film does have that 80s feeling, not just because of the music. It reminded me a lot of - - I'm not a great cinephile, but maybe Michael Mann's first movie Thief with James Caan. That quality that Mann does so well of quiet passage through the world. That idea of executing your job calmly, silently, and beautifully. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Once the fairytale nature was incorporated, it automatically set the film out of place and time. The characters themselves play archetypes, but because the city of LA still feels very much like an 80s arena, and combining that with a European electronic score that Cliff Martinez composed, which is very feminine and has a very much retro-sensibility to it transports you into a time where you can't really define it. Even though they have cell phones and text messages and e-mails, technology is not a big part of the film. Albert Brooks plays a movie producer who produced films in the 80s. Ron Perlman wears a track suit and runs a pizzeria in the valley. A lot of it was reminiscent of the past, but that's okay. That's what mythology is, it's about past in a sense. If you look at films of Melville or Sergio Leone or Sam Peckinpah or Michael Mann, a lot of it deals with heroes that have difficulties connecting to our world. Clearly Drive is within that category. JESSE THORN: In fact it seems like many of his deepest connections are to objects. Not just his car, but his gloves, his driving gloves, the satin baseball jacked that he wears. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: You can see that he's pure fetish. But then I'm a fetish filmmaker, so I can only shoot what I like to see. JESSE THORN: I want to ask you about Albert Brooks in this movie. He's essentially the primary villain in the film, and he is - - Albert Brooks is certainly a hero of mine and probably one of the ten or twenty greatest comic minds of the past 50 years. He is not someone who I think of as scary, but he's very scary in the film. I wonder how his name even came up for consideration when there are a thousand different scary guys in Hollywood whose primary characteristic is that they're scary and they look scary on screen and they sound scary when they talk, and you could have just picked one of those dudes. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Hollywood casting is a lot about lists. The financiers like to do lists of people that they would consider commercially in various set ups. There were a lot of great actors that were suggested to me that are very scary and had played a similar role and therefore knowingly could do it again. In theory, all that is perfect, and yet it is also wrong. One of the surprises - - I've always wanted Albert Brooks He was my first thought, and I'm not an expert on Albert Brooks I live in Copenhagen, I just remember him a little bit from the 80s in New York when I was a teenager. JESSE THORN: I love the idea that Albert Brooks was always your first choice. Ever since I saw The Scout I wanted to make a movie with Albert Brooks as the bad guy, or something like that. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: When I came up with his name in my head it was more like, that was somebody who could be fun to work with. Clearly he had the acting ability to do it, that was certainly not the issue, and he had the physique to be quite frightening in the sense that he's the kind of guy that would stab you in the back with a razor. What really cemented my belief in that it would work was that he was like a volcano of emotions. Albert, of course, had never played a bad guy or killed anybody in a movie, so that was also a fun way to surprise the audience, because they wouldn't predict how this was going to turn out. JESSE THORN: There's something you can see when you look into his eyes, especially in the film, but it's the combination of brilliant intelligence, you can just look at Albert Brooks' eyes and see that he's brilliant, and a ferociousness, that's funny, because it's the qualities of a movie producer, it is also the qualities of a murderous gangster. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: After I spent an hour with him in the morning having coffee I kind of felt that this guy was essentially going to kill somebody, so let's do it in a movie. And that's how I offered him the part. JESSE THORN: You have a lot of experience directing brutal violence, it's been an element of a lot of your films. Do you feel like you have a sense of what a certain kind or degree or length of violence will do to an audience or how it will affect an audience? I felt physically, frankly, affected by the violence in the film, and I felt that must be a choice. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: It's not like I plan or do a mathematical equation. I do believe that art is an act of violence. JESSE THORN: What do you mean by that? NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Art is meant to penetrate you. Violence doesn't have to be an act of physical violence, it can be emotional violence, and it doesn't have to be destructive, which can be a violent emotion, but not necessarily a bad one. The DNA of art and war is very similar. It's two very powerful forces in our world that takes up a lot of our time; but, where war destroys, art inspires. In my film I always approach violence like sex. It's all about the build up. The climax itself is a mechanical procedure that we as an audience know is not true, so my job is to make the build up so engaging so that whatever happens in front of us actually affects us, but it only affects us because we believe the emotion before it. The characters that I go through a lot in my movies, violence is part of their catharsis. They have to go through extreme pain and suffering in order to obtain what they're meant to be. JESSE THORN: Well Nicolas, I really appreciate you taking the time to be on The Sound of Young America. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Thank you very much for having me. JESSE THORN: Director Nicolas Winding Refn won the directing reward at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Drive, which will be released to American theaters September 16. It stars Ryan Gosling and a host of other brilliant folks, and it is by turns a beautiful and brutal and really remarkable film. Thanks again for coming on the show, Nicolas. NICOLAS WINDING REFN: Thank you. Our transcripts are provided by Sean Sampson. If you're interested in contacting him for transcription work, email him here.Judicial Watch reported Wednesday that police in a New Mexico border town arrested a woman they described as an “Islamic refugee” who was “in possession of the region’s gas pipeline plans.” This was, it said, the latest in “a number of stories in the last few years about Mexican drug traffickers smuggling Islamic terrorists into the United States through the porous southern border…. A few months ago Judicial Watch reported that members of a cell of Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future attacks with the help of Mexican drug traffickers.” But building a wall? That’s racist. It gets worse. Judicial Watch adds: Among the jihadists that travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso, Texas. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and has lived in Mexico for more than a year, according to Judicial Watch’s high-level Homeland Security sources. Now Khabir trains thousands of men—mostly Syrians and Yemenis—to fight in an ISIS base situated in the Mexico-U.S. border region near Ciudad Juárez. Khabir actually brags in a European newspaper article about how easy it is to stake out American targets because the border region is wide open. The Muslim woman who had the gas pipeline plans was a “refugee,” so she deserves humanitarian consideration, no? Just like the two Muslim refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky who were arrested in 2009 after authorities discovered their fingerprints on an IED in Iraq; both admitted to attacking U.S. troops in Iraq. And just like Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon jihad murderers, and the jihad plotters who were involved in the foiled plot against Fort Dix in New Jersey. San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik had passed five separate background checks from five separate US government agencies. Ahmad al-Mohammed and one other of the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015 had just entered Europe as refugees. In February 2015, the Islamic State boasted it would soon flood Europe with as many as 500,000 refugees. And the Lebanese Education Minister said in September 2015 that there were 20,000 jihadis among the refugees in camps in his country. Meanwhile, 80% of migrants who have come to Europe claiming to be fleeing the war in Syria aren’t really from Syria at all. So why are they claiming to be Syrian and streaming into Europe, and now the U.S. as well? An Islamic State operative gave the answer when he boasted in September 2015, shortly after the migrant influx began, that among the flood of refugees, 4,000 Islamic State jihadis had already entered Europe. He explained their purpose: “It’s our dream that there should be a caliphate not only in Syria but in all the world, and we will have it soon, inshallah.” These Muslims were going to Europe in the service of that caliphate: “They are going like refugees,” he said, but they were going with the plan of sowing blood and mayhem on European streets. As he told this to journalists, he smiled and said, “Just wait.” Many “refugees” have already passed the vaunted “vetting process” and then joined jihad plots to kill Americans. Liban Haji Mohamed, a Muslim “refugee” from Somalia, was granted Lawful Permanent Resident status and finally U.S. citizenship – and then went back to Somalia to join the jihad terror group al-Shabaab. Another Somali Muslim “refugee,” Abdinassir Mohamud Ibrahim, got Lawful Permanent Resident status, and was later found guilty of supporting al-Shabaab and lying in his request for refugee status, as well as on his application for citizenship. Then there’s the Bosnian “refugee” Abdullah Ramo Pazara, who became a U.S. citizen and then joined the Islamic State in Syria. And Ramiz Zijad Hodzic, another Bosnian “refugee,” who has been charged with conspiring to support terrorists. And Abdurahman Yasin Daud, a Kenyan “refugee” who entered the U.S. when he was a child – one of the children that Barack Obama has scolded us for not weeping over – and has now been charged with trying to aid the Islamic State. There are so very many others. And it’s nothing new – it has been going on for decades, as long as there have been formal immigration benefits. The Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, sought asylum in the U.S. back in the 1980s – and masterminded the 1993 jihad bombing of the World Trade Center. Mir Amal Kansi, a Pakistani Muslim asylum seeker, murdered two people outside CIA Headquarters in January 1993. Fawaz Damrah, another naturalized American citizen, was for a time a prominent “moderate” imam in the U.S., working out of the Islamic Center of Cleveland. How long must this continue to go on? How many Islamic jihadis must we admit into our country as “refugees” and “asylum seekers” before this severely dysfunctional system is repaired? How many Americans have to die at the hands of these “refugees” before the calls of an increasing number of Americans to stop this madness are heeded? The answer is that there is no number of jihadis will convince the political and media elites that we need to take steps to protect ourselves and seal our borders. That would be racist. They would rather see Americans die at the hands of Islamic jihadis than be politically incorrect.The Le Mans-based team currently races in GP2, GP3 and Formula E with Renault, and is putting together a plan to purchase new LMP2 cars for competition in 2018. “We are looking at it closely and we want to do it, but not for next season, for 2018,” Driot told Motorsport.com in Marrakesh this weekend. “I am close to what happens in LMP because I gave guys like [ACO and FIA technical managers] Vincent Beaumesnil and Thierry Bouvet a start in racing and I know them well. “We will make a decision after seeing what happens next season with the new LMP2 cars. We could go Dallara, we could go Ligier, we will see. "But we are based in Le Mans, we have done Le Mans and we like this type of racing. We have been too long away from endurance.” DAMS has experience in sportscar racing, having competed in GT and LMP categories since the mid-1990s. The team ran a Panoz in the late 1990s before racing with first a Lola B98/10 and then a Cadillac prototype from 1999 to 2002. The last time the team had a programme in endurance racing was with Nissan and Lamborghini GT projects in 2003 and 2004 respectively. “I need DAMS to carry on with its life,” stated Driot. “We have a plan and early next year we will start detailed talks with partners and drivers. "We looked at doing it for next year but time is too short now, we want to do it properly, we always go racing in the best possible way.”Chrystia Freeland is a Liberal member of the Canadian Parliament and author of "
annual meeting of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) and Infectious Disease Society of America in Washington, D.C., Arias shared the news that this clone has been recorded in multiple patients in Ecuador and Venezuela. Other research personnel at the UT Medical School included: Shahreen Chowdhury, Sreedhar R. Nallapareddy, Ph.D. and Barbara E. Murray, M.D. The research was funded in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.ChemtrailsAreDemonic.org › Occult Indoctrination of the World The protective blood of Jesus Christ covers this page, images and website and those who will view it, we bind up every demon who would try to transfer from these images in any way and command you to go wherever Jesus sends you. We bind every demon who would blind the reader's mind to the truth and from reading and comprehending this information in Jesus name, as well as any demon who would keep this information from being shared and distributed and from becoming common knowledge. The Occult Indoctrination of the World: Disney, Star Wars, X-Men, Harry Potter, and the Externalization of the Hierarchy (of Demons). There are no "good witches" and there is no "white magic," though Hollywood would try to convince us otherwise. What is at stake is your soul. All magic is executed by the same demonic powers, though they would be happy for you to think otherwise. All magic is from the demonic, satanic realm, it is the apple of the garden, when Satan tells us "we will not die, but be like gods." Little g gods, or demons. The spiritual power that the demons offer is real, but it exists only for the hurt, manipulation and control of others. The following article assumes several basic truths.- There is only one God, the Father, and Jesus Christ his Son, who died on the cross so that our sins may be paid for, and so that we may have everlasting life with him upon our death, and God the Holy Spirit who indwells believers.- Satan and demons are very real, and there are many people on earth that have sold their souls for money, power, and fame, who are possessed by them.- All other religions, while part of culture and history, are in fact the doctrines of demons or man, and created to distract from the only truth and capture the souls of men.- The Bible is the inspired word of God and infallible, absolute truth, Old and New Testament.The last 100 years have seen a dramatic change in the values of the world, spearheaded by the culture creation of the United States and specifically Hollywood. Hollywood, or holly wood, is a reference to the wood a magician uses for their wand. Satan has moved in through a total onslaught in all realms of life knowing that his time is short, attacking through our senses, through music, movies, television, popular culture, internet and technology and all sorts of new ideas (or doctrines of demons) in psychology and new age religion. The 80's song "We built this city on Rock and Roll" could not be closer to the truth, the demons have built Mystery Babylon on Rock and Roll and all that it ushered in. [1] The United States has gone from a nation that once included God, the Bible, and prayer in schools, to replacing those things with Harry Potter, a witchcraft manual, as required reading.In 2016, the Star Wars movie released that year became the fastest movie to cross the one billion dollar mark. If we look back to the original release of Star Wars, we can see where things started to go astray. Before we open our minds to a new film, music, or any kind of media, we must be cautious. What is the source? Is there an agenda? What concepts are they trying to get across? There is only one absolute truth in this world, and that is the Bible and God's word, which says that we are not to set any evil thing before our eyes.Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey, two highly influential occultists of the early 1900's, talked about the externalization of the hierarchy. We are witnessing that happening now. The hierarchy of spirits, or demonic spirits, is being revealed through popular culture and people of all ages are being pulled in and indoctrinated without even realizing it. Satan and his demons have time on their side in comparison to the relatively short life of us here on earth. They have made a strategy, and that strategy is to create a vacuum, where Christianity is first compromised, then they can fill the vacuum with their occult (demonic) doctrines, and in turn capture as many souls as possible. This is where we find ourselves in human history, where the concepts and ideas of the demons fill our popular entertainment, music, and media, and few even realize that they have been covertly, quietly, indoctrinated into the occult without even knowing it.Christianity has be beaten down through the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, the watering down of conservative Christianity with the pollution of things like CCM, Contemporary Christian Music, prosperity doctrines, and all sorts of compromises that pastors are willing to make to fill the seats of their mega congregations. Through cross pollination of eastern ideas, Christian Yoga, new age ideas, and the idea that all religions are inspired from God. Evolution and modern psychology have done much to undermine children's belief in God at an early age. We are taught that everything came from nothing, and we are nothing more than animals on our way to evolving into higher beings, and to question it is madness.God tells us that we are not to suffer a witch to live. God hates witchcraft and he does not want his people taking part in it. This is not because he wants to be mean, it is because he knows of the damage that they can do to his people. There is no white, or good magic, though many are deceived into thinking that there is such a thing. Those who dabble in wicca, or good magic are ignorant of the fact that the source of their power is actually Satan and his demons. If they pursue it long enough, they eventually figure out that truth. Movies like Star Wars and Harry Potter exploit our ignorance of the occult world. They paint a picture that in every evil person there is a little good, and in every good person there is a little evil. This is a lie. God tells us that in him there is no shadow of turning, he is only good, and he would have us be like Him. Just like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, man continues to chose evil and rebellion over obedience to God on a daily basis. This is why we need a Savior. We do not realize just how poor, miserable, wretched and naked we truly are. It is important to look upon the movies and ideas of today with spiritual discernment. The magic of Harry Potter has replaced the Bible. Children grow up with witches and wizards as their heroes, which have replaced the Biblical heroes in God's word. Children are deprived of the Bible, which is the only way to a good life here on earth and an everlasting life upon death. Unsuspecting parents have no idea that this Satanic world really does exist, and is just waiting for their children to invite them into their lives. Star Wars is futuristic witchcraft. "The Force" is a term witches used long ago. "May the force be with you" is not an original idea. The source of power for the Jedi's in Star Wars is demonic, but they will not come out and call them that. In one of the recent movies, they measure the level of a Jedi's power by the number of "Midi-chlorians" in his bloodstream. This is again tipping us off to the truth. The more demons a Jedi has, the more powerful they are. This is no different than those who practice in the occult or satanism. The more demons and the more powerful the demons, the higher a person ranks in the occult realm, until they are challenged and defeated by someone with stronger demons. Satan is a master at advertising and branding. He re-brands his ideas once we catch on to them so that a new generation can be deceived. He uses the same old bait in a shiny new package. The question is, will we catch on to his tricks? Witchcraft Star Wars May the force be with you. May the force be with you. Power comes from Satan. Powers come from the Force. The more demons a witch has, the more powerful they are. The more "midichlorians" in the bloodstream of a Jedi, the more powerful they are. Mind control. Jedi Mind Trick. Levitation. Levitation. Supernatural abilities from the demons. Supernatural abilities from the force. The X is Satan's mark. So X-men are actually Satan's men, or men wielding demonic powers. Satan offers those who choose him spiritual powers, but they only exist to further his plans to kill, steal and destroy. Satan lies and promises his followers that they will rule and reign with him after he has defeated God. This is a big joke, but the joke is on those who believe his lie. Disney is possibly the biggest offender in leading people away from God at a young age. Disney offers a kind of "occult lite" initiation for children. Satan often wraps his hooks in pretty packages, and Disney's magic is no different. In cute Disney movies, God is nowhere to be found, but magic is promoted as the solution to many problems. Children are indoctrinated at a young age to believe in magic and luck more than God and his word, which are entirely absent from the picture. These movies serve Satan's purposes of distracting us from the only thing in life that can truly bring us peace, joy, satisfaction, and eternal life. Satan is distracting people away from Jesus Christ. Jesus is the true hero of the ages, throughout all eternity, and these movies and mythologies only serve to confuse, distract, and mislead young minds and adults alike from worshiping the true King. Satan desires worship, and through the creation of a multitude of distractions, through movies, games, music, and entertainment that glorifies his values, we bestow our worship to him. The sad reality of the world today is that many people may choose hell over relinquishing some of these things they grew up with and hold so dear. But God says, what fellowship has light with darkness (2 Corinthians 6:14)? Come out of her my people and be ye separate (2 Corinthians 6:17). The consequence of spending our time, money, and energy on these distractions is that we loose the peace that only the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, can provide. Satanic entertainment blurs and confuses our values, and as we get farther from the truth, demonic spirits of blindness, doubt, unbelief and Antichrist move in. It becomes harder and harder to see the real truth as we wade through the lies. We end up paying dearly for our entertainment, but many times we do not even make the connection that it is the true source of our problems. Now is the time to turn back to God and remove the things from our lives that do not glorify Him. Restoration, healing, and deliverance will come when we repent, turn from evil, and love and serve the Lord with all of our hearts. [1] They Sold Their Souls for Rock n Roll - Good Fight Ministries 10 hr video.I firmly believe that many political problems are born of the average Americans inability — and unwillingness — to try to think and understand the world around them rather than accept conventional wisdom. This is clearly evident in peoples’ lack of understanding of pricing; it is disturbingly evident in the political policies they seek as a result of this lack. It’s clear enough when you hear about “price gouging”, and every economic argument that prices must rise to avoid shortages falls on deaf ears. But it’s the same principle when folks rail in favor of “windfall profits taxes”, as if businesses have the power to just arbitrarily select the level of profits they’ll earn. Someone should really tell Ford, GM, and Chrysler, because they seem to be having some trouble with this concept! Given that this is such an important concept, and given that it’s really quite simple, it’s surprising that the simple rules of pricing aren’t more apparent. But it’s not something that most people regularly have to think about. And sadly, because it’s so simple, it is not often explained — which I’d like to change. The misconception of pricing is obvious. Most people think that prices are determined by a simple formula: Price = Cost of materials + Cost of labor + Overhead + reasonable profit It sounds so axiomatic that it is taken at face value. It’s so often true (but for a different reason) that it seems correct. But it’s not that clear. Pricing is actually determined by the following equation, with a second equation added for clarity: Price = whatever the market will bear Profit (or loss) = Price – Cost of inputs – Cost of labor – Overhead Note the difference between the two. Price is not a PRODUCT of the equation of material/labor/overhead/profit. Price is determined through a wholly different process, and profit or loss is the product of the pricing equation. Allow me to use an anecdote to explain. As I pointed out a while ago, my wife and her sister recently opened a business making gourmet rice krispy treats. They intuitively understood the reality of pricing, but their logical thought process was all on the wrong model. They initially thought about how much their gifts should cost. Then, as certain costs started piling up, they had that internal desire to raise prices to compensate. But in fact, they started to understand that their initial pricing goals were actually too high, not too low. They realized that the market will only price gourmet gifts around a certain level, and they must adjust their costs to suit. They’ve ended up making some sacrifices that they didn’t want to make in the early term, and will have to defray some business decisions they’d wanted to make until orders become larger and economies of scale develop. The simple fact is that in the gourmet gift market, the type of people who are buying gifts and the type of occasions they buy them for (birthday, Valentine’s Day, Secretary Appreciation Day, etc) have certain price tags already in mind. They will not buy a gift beyond that level. Conversely, a gift priced too low will not be purchased for it will seem “cheap” to the recipient. It’s a fairly narrow band for this type of product. It doesn’t matter that their product (rice crispy treats) is a new entrant to the gourmet gift market. Their pricing structure has to compete with the existing players. Of course, they can go against the market pricing. If they price their product too low, they may move more units but will end up working extremely hard for a very slim profit margin. If they price their product too high, they won’t sell very many units but each unit will carry a lot more profit. It’s the difference between Outback Steakhouse, a fine establishment that I might enjoy on a business trip or a random Tuesday, and my personal favorite steakhouse, Ruth’s Chris, where I might eat once or twice a year. It’s the difference between Honda and Ferrari. You see a lot of Honda’s on the road, but you notice a Ferrari. Premium products can command a premium price, but fewer people are willing and able to afford them on a regular basis. Thus, you see a lot more “regular” products than premium products. The situation becomes even worse when you start talking about commodity products. The gas you buy at Arco isn’t noticeably different from that you buy at Shell, which is pretty much the same as that you buy at Chevron. Thus, pricing is almost identical across the board. Different stores may have different business models, of course. Many stations will price their gas lower if they have much more full-service convenience store attached, as the profit margins on the convenience store items help to keep them afloat, and the low gas prices entice you to pull into the station (and hopefully, for the station, you’ll walk in and buy a Coke and some Pringles, probably tripling or more the profit they made on your gas). Or, they’ll price gas lower in cash than using a credit card, partially because they must pay a transaction fee on the card, but also partly because you need to walk inside to pay cash (and again, may buy a higher-margin item while inside). Thus, the pricing equation looks simple and correct, but if you’ve ever had to actually select a price to sell a good, you know that it is one of the most complex parts of business that anyone will encounter. It’s especially difficult in areas where pricing is a lot more opaque. When you own a gas station, you know how much all your competitors in town are pricing their product. When you’re pricing an industrial product that is an input to other production, you typically don’t know what your competitors are charging. Pricing often becomes an educated guess, and there can be thousands or millions of dollars difference over large quantities between how much the customer is willing to pay and how much you attempt to charge. In my business, some deals may be so tight that $1 move up in price can pay multiple employees’ salaries for a year out of the increased profit, but that $1 move up in price loses the deal to the competition. Like anything else, though, as a producer you’re trying to charge the customer as much as you think they’re willing to pay, but still low enough to win the business. Thus, a business cannot simply set a price based on the profit they’d like to make. Instead, business run an analysis of profit/loss based on what they expect is the price they can charge, and the costs they must incur to produce. If the expected price is too low to make enough of a profit, they don’t engage in the business venture. If the profit is high, they rush into business as quickly as possible. Profits thus also tend towards the “reasonable” over time, because large profits attract new entrants to the market (driving down price), and small profits (or losses) cull participants from the market (allowing price to rise). This again is why the pricing equation appears to be correct, because in an equilibrium point of price stability, the market tends to only allow the “right” number of producers to exist. This is why GM, Ford, and Chrysler have such trouble. The price for their automobiles is set by the market. They cannot raise their prices beyond this level or they won’t sell enough cars to stay afloat. They can’t lower their prices to move more units because they’re already at a cost structure that is too high for their prices. For them to continue compete, they need to cut costs. And they don’t have a corporate DNA that makes it easy for them to alter their cost structure. Especially not when they can simply go to Congress for regulation to punish their competitors, or as we see this week, a big fat bailout. This is also why we’ve seen such problems in the airline industry. Airlines were created in the days when travel was a luxury, the only way to schedule a flight was to call multiple airlines on the phone or use a travel agent, and they could differentiate their product on a service model rather than a cost model. The market has changed, and air travel has now become a commodity. With transparent pricing easily comparable on the internet, casual travelers* almost never choose their airline based on a service model. If they save $2 to fly low-cost airlines instead of a “name”, they’ll do so. This is why you see airlines adding things like baggage fees, because they know that they need to increase revenue per passenger, but they cannot increase the fare that shows up on an online search. Many are slowly adopting the Southwest Airlines approach, which is the “sit down and shut up because we’re about to take off” model, delivered with a smile! This has been a very long explanation for what is a very simple concept. But it all comes down to a single point: Prices are a signal that tell producers what goods and how much of those goods to produce. This doesn’t mean that the prices are always responded to in exact terms, many industries go through feast/famine cycles as inventories wax and wane, particularly when the lag time between deciding to produce a good and it actually reaching the market is long (i.e. semiconductor products, oil, etc). But the political message is clear. Anything that politicians do to artificially modify the price signals in the market will have consequences to production of goods. Price-gouging laws are a good example. In the wake of a major hurricane, bottled water and portable electric generators tend to see huge spikes in demand. Due to this, the price tends to go up quite a bit. In some ways this signal is taken by consumers as a sign that they should ration their purchases (which helps more consumers get some of a good, rather than few consumers getting all of a good). High prices also offer an incentive to suppliers to deliver more of a good into the affected area, though, which helps to alleviate some of the price pressure while allowing more consumers to get more of the needed goods. If you disrupt the price signal, through a price-gouging law, you tend to see hoarding of goods by those quick enough to get them at low prices, and you see a sustained supply crunch of those goods. Windfall profit taxes work the same way. When prices of a commodity increase sharply, it creates a signal to producers that they need to work especially hard to produce more of that commodity. Oil companies spend more money on exploration, they are willing to produce oil in wells where the marginal cost of production is far higher than the “easy” wells, and they do everything in their power to increase supply, because they want to take part in those profits. If you institute a large tax on those profits, though, they will refrain from the exploration and production of the higher marginal cost projects. The supply will remain below its potential, and the situation the politicians are trying to achieve — lower commodity costs — will actually end up in the exact opposite. So if price-gouging laws and windfall profit taxes are such bad economics, why are they so popular? It’s because peoples’ understanding of what drives prices is completely backwards. If I believe that prices are set by “costs + a reasonable profit”, I would naturally feel that an external situation which creates much larger profits without an increase in costs is “unfair”. I would feel that way because my understanding of prices assume that the price of a good is tied to its production cost, and thus to increase prices without a change in those costs is “gouging” your customers. If it assumed, on the other hand, that prices are a function of the market and they are merely a signal to producers to change their behavior, we should be able to understand that short-term increases in prices will result in long-term increases in supply, and that in the long run the equilibrium of all of these goods and services reaches the “right” level. Pricing seems like an easy and a trivial task. As we’ve seen, though, it’s not easy, and when the politicians get involved, it’s not trivial. For our entire economy to work, pricing has to be allowed to naturally emerge from the market. Any deviation from this natural occurrence results in unintended consequences and reduces the efficiency of the market. It should be noted that many of the areas where government is most actively regulating prices (such as the medical industry) is where we see the market behaving contrary to the wealth-producing tendency it has in all other markets. Pricing is not difficult in concept, but a lack of understanding about its nature can grind our whole system to a halt. * I personally am in the technical end of the business, not the sales/pricing end. While I understand the impact if a dollar swing either way, I just don’t have the heart to argue with a customer over a dollar — even if that dollar is multiplied a few hundred thousand times. It’s not my personality. Note also that one aspect of air travel that is not being cut is frequent-flyer programs. Business travelers are far more capable of loyalty to a specific airline, and the airlines know that they’re willing to pay a bit more for the perks of “elite” status. Business travelers are the remaining cash cow of their industry, and they’re doing what they can to protect that status.I've put together this status report to keep you in the loop of what's going on. These our our current top priorities, things that we are working hard on to finish in the next day or two. ( except the website, that might take a tad longer, since it's being coded from the ground up )Note that while Hiro is finishing his work on a new wallet feature, I'm not comfortable with revealing what it is yet. When it's certain we will be able to launch it soon, expect a video to explain exactly what it is!Finalize new website MihailFinish Alpha version of a new wallet feature HiroWrite merge mining proposal XanderIncorporate new branding material into Hiropool OmarWork with Altcoin Agent to finish the Hiropool promo video JoeriKeep the community updated on current objectives JoeriCreate FAQ JoeriWrite Hironews issue # 4 JoeriGather collaborators for the current ideas in thinktank JoeriRedo the opening post in our BTCtalk ANN JoeriHave a flowchart made for objectives, goals, etc JoeriRecruit a social media manager Joeri I've put together this status report to keep you in the loop of what's going on. These our our current top priorities, things that we are working hard on to finish in the next day or two. ( except the website, that might take a tad longer, since it's being coded from the ground up )Note that while Hiro is finishing his work on a new wallet feature, I'm not comfortable with revealing what it is yet. When it's certain we will be able to launch it soon, expect a video to explain exactly what it is!Finalize new website MihailFinish Alpha version of a new wallet feature HiroWrite merge mining proposal XanderIncorporate new branding material into Hiropool OmarWork with Altcoin Agent to finish the Hiropool promo video JoeriKeep the community updated on current objectives JoeriCreate FAQ JoeriWrite Hironews issue # 4 JoeriGather collaborators for the current ideas in thinktank JoeriRedo the opening post in our BTCtalk ANN JoeriHave a flowchart made for objectives, goals, etc JoeriRecruit a social media manager JoeriKendall Jenner did her best to hide from the controversy surrounding her Pepsi commercial on Wednesday when she landed in Paris. Jenner, who starred in an advertisement for the soda giant that was blasted as 'tone deaf', shielded her face as she was hurried through the terminal in France. As she left the airport, the reality television star pulled her jacket up over her face and a security guard held out his hands in an attempt to block her from sight. Jenner has also claimed she had no involvement in the creative process behind the commercial, according to TMZ. Her airport appearance came shortly after Pepsi said it was canning the commercial in a statement released on Wednesday. Scroll down for video Kendall Jenner did her best to hide from the controversy surrounding her Pepsi commercial on Wednesday when she landed in Paris; As she left the airport, she pulled her jacket up over her face and a security guard held out his hands in an attempt to block her from sight 'Pepsi was trying to project a global a message of unity, peace and understanding,' the statement read. 'Clearly, we missed the mark, and we apologize. 'We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are pulling the content and halting any further rollout. 'We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position.' Interestingly, the apology appears to have had the opposite effect that Pepsi intended - at least financially. Stocks in Pepsi rose today after a small dip until 1.20pm when they ad was pulled. From then the stocks tumbled, closing the day at.12 per cent down. One small piece of good news for the brand may be that their rivals didn't escape the backlash despite having nothing to do with the ill advised ad. Coke's stock closed out the day at.26 per cent. Pepsi has canceled its controversial new advertisement starring Kendall Jenner, after it was mocked by Bernice King - MLK's daughter Bernice King attacked the Pepsi commercial on social media on Wednesday - just before the drink company announced it was canceling the advertisement Stocks in Pepsi rose today after a small dip until 1.20pm when they ad was pulled, and they plummeted, closing at.12 per cent down, while Coke also suffered on Wall Street The statement was released shortly after Bernice King - the daughter of MLK - mocked it on social media. PEPSI'S STATEMENT CANCELING THE AD Pepsi was trying to project a global a message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly, we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are pulling the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologize for putting Kendall Jenner in this position. 'If only daddy knew about the power of Pepsi,' she tweeted, while sharing a photograph of her iconic father clashing with police on the front-line of a protest. The two-and-a-half-minute commercial features Kendall stepping out of a crowd of multi racial protesters to end a stand-off with police officer by handing him a can of Pepsi. It was also slammed by other stars and celebrities on social media, including: Lena Dunham, Questlove, Judd Apatow, and Patton Oswalt. 'J. Edgar Hoover takes aim from the grassy knoll. The motorcade approaches. He fires. JFK raises a Pepsi to his lips, blocks the bullet,' Oswalt tweeted. 'Assuming everything that can be said about faux-test Pepsi ad has been said so I'm just gonna go with this: it didn't make me want Pepsi,' Dunham wrote. Kendall Jenner, 21, is at the center of backlash for a Pepsi commercial she starred in that has been accused of 'appropriating the resistance' Celebrities including Lena Dunham were quick to slam the star's tone-deaf Pepsi commercial Judd Apatow also had his say on the bizarre advert - saying he could never'make something as funny' Patton Oswalt joked that Pepsi could have stopped a faux plot that involved J.Edgar Hoover killing JFK Questlove ripped into Pepsi for putting an April Fools commercial out four days late 'That Pepsi commercial was genius troll move of the year, 4 days from April Fools? we talkin/meming bout em too?' Questlove said, before adding: 'Dear corporations let this be a lesson. you run the risk of getting DRAGGED if your boardroom shows NO diversity.---there is NO excuse. For not ONE PERSON to smack some sense in y'all. i mean I'm laughing. cause.0000003 per cent of me hopes this was some 'lets troll em!' move.' And the mocking didn't stop after the ad was canceled, with social media continuing to bubble over with jokes and complaints. 'O'Reilly Factor down to one advertisement for tonight: Kendall's Pepsi commercial,' Josh Brown wrote, in a reference to the current controversy surrounding Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. 'I think it's time to open my 'Ask A Black person' consulting firm,' comedian Travon Free tweeted. Other people continued to mock the commercial on Wednesday even after Pepsi announced it was being canceled 'Pepsi pulling ad + also apologizes to Kendall Jenner - I was under the impression that she's a grown a woman who was present for filming,' another said. 'Steve Bannon could probably use a @pepsi right about now,' model Ines Helene joked. Pepsi previously defended the commercial in a statement, saying it was: 'a global ad that reflects people from different walks of life coming together in a spirit of harmony, and we think that's an important message to convey.' Kendall herself previously told Women's Wear Daily: 'I had never been to Bangkok before [where it was filmed], so it was interesting to be in that city. There were a lot of really cool people on set that I got to meet. It was fun, it was entertaining. The whole concept is really something that I'm about, so it was just fun to be a part of. 'I think a lot of people are caught up in whatever's happening in someone else's life and they're not really paying attention to what's happening right in front of them most of the time. 'It's not hard to put your phone down and consciously try and get yourself to live in the moment. That's what I try and do.' The imagery - whether intentional or not - evokes the real-life moment protester Ieshia Evans faced down lines of heavily armed police wearing riot gear during a Black Lives Matter demonstration over the fatal shooting of a black man by police. Evans was arrested moments later, unlike Kendall whose actions win her knowing smile from the Pepsi ad's handsome, enlightened cop. The ad has sparked outrage online from hundreds accusing Pepsi of trying to cash in on the Black Lives Matter protests. Twitter was flooded with deeply sarcastic posts mocking the 'tone deaf' ad. Many compared Kendall's action to that of protester Ieshia Evans (pictured) last year in Indiana during the Black Lives Matter protests across the country Kendall joins the crowd of young protesters with a Pepsi in hand in the now-canned commercial Not everyone was upset with the controversial commercial, as Kris Jenner tweeted out how proud she was of her daughter for being 'the face of (Pepsi's) campaign' 'How nice of Kendall Jenner to stop in the middle of her photo shoot to end social injustices by giving that cop a Pepsi,' one Twitter user wrote. 'MLK who? Rosa who?' User @lgbtgreene added: 'I can't believe Kendall Jenner ended police brutality and white supremacy with a can of Pepsi not bad for a girl with no talent.' Others complained that it was a transparent attempt by Pepsi to try and tap into whatever the 'youth (are) into these days.' Of course, it is not the first time a soda giant has been accused of crass commercialism. Evans was arrested moments later, unlike Kendall whose actions win her knowing smile from the Pepsi ad's cop Social media bubbled over with criticism from people who thought the commercial was making light of a serious issue Coca Cola faced fierce backlash for their Super Bowl ad, which was actually a re-run, this year which features people of all different ethnicities singing America the Beautiful in multiple languages. People accused the brand of trying to ride the wave of pro-immigrant and unity sentiment shortly after Donald Trump announced his Muslim ban. In another unfortunate creative choice, Coke was forced to pull an online advert in 2015 which appeared to show Caucasian people turning up at an indigenous town in Mexico bearing gifts of soda cans and a Christmas tree for locals. Coke received so many complaints that the ad reinforced stereotypes of whites teaching 'culturally and racially subordinate' indigenous people, that they even issued a rare apology. Another user was so shocked, they assumed it was an ad for the competition The ad starts out with a glamorous Kendall in a blonde wig, doing a photo shoot in front of a large window But Pepsi appears to have outdone their rival with an advert which many complains'mocks' the Black Lives Movement - which began over the deaths of so many young black men at the hands of police and has gone on to spark national and international protests. Violence between police and protesters have been reported at numerous such demonstrations which have even resulted in fatal shootings in some cases. Not then, the most obvious setting in which to set an ad to sell sugary, fizzy drinks. The commercial, filmed in Bangkok for the brand's new Live For Now moments campaign, begins with a protest of young, attractive demonstrators holding aloft bland signs which proclaim statements such as 'Love' and 'Be part of the conversation.' Jenner sees the protesters walking by and wants to join in on the movement instead of finishing up her photo shoot The model pulls off her wig and walks away from her photo shoot towards the protest in the now-canned commercial In the commercial, Jenner smears off her lipstick in a symbol of her change of political ambition The march continues past a photoshoot where who else but Kendall Jenner is posing, in a short silver dress with platinum blonde hair, in front of the camera until her attention is drawn to a cute protester who gestures for her to join the movement. Suddenly awakened to the cause, and perhaps the frivolity of a life of fame and photoshoots, the 21-year-old rips off her blonde wig, wipes off her makeup and joins the crowd. She is now 'one of them'. When the crowd come up against a line of attractive cops, Kendall has the solution; Pepsi. She hands over a can to the most handsome officer and the crowd erupts in cheers as he takes a sip. Kendall pumps her fist in the air while the cop, seemingly won over by the gesture, shares a look with his colleague to say, 'well, they can't be that bad.' Jenner 'bravely' steps out of the crowd and hands the officer who is blocking the protest a can of Pepsi All is well: He drinks the Pepsi, all problems go away and everyone is happy again Kendall has not yet responded to the criticism of the ad, set to the sound of Lion, a new track by Bob Marley's grandson Skip. But before it was released Kendall had said: 'I am thrilled to join the legendary roster of icons who have represented their generations and worked with Pepsi.' She added: 'The spirit of Pepsi - living in the 'now' moment- is one that I believe in. I make a conscious effort in my everyday life and travels to enjoy every experience of today.' But her fans are less than pleased and have taken to social media to call out her and Pepsi. One user pointed out the comparison between the ad and the picture of Evans, saying: 'I'm gonna end this thread with this picture. The picture of that you mocked in this advertisement.' 'So according to @KendallJenner and @pepsi the racial tension problem is just a matter of thirsty cops,' another user lamented. Community organizer Deray Mckesson added: 'If I had carried Pepsi I guess I never would've gotten arrested. Who knew?' Comedian Margaret Cho wrote: 'If this #Pepsi ad is the choice of a new generation, Im gonna need that generation to turn in its badge.' Fellow comic and actor Jim Gaffigan added: 'But you said you wanted social media to talk about Pepsi.' - Advertising guy to Pepsi executive before agency is fired.' Meanwhile members of an Austin Black Lives Matter group were outraged by the ad. Jane Dunnington wrote on their group's page: 'What BS-- the pretty white chick gives the cop a Pepsi and it's all good; everyone cheers?! Yeah, that fixed institutional racism.' 'Wow that is offensive on so many
ileaks hadn't immediately rejected it—would be about as effective at removing these secrets from the Internet as suing college students was in removing illegal music from the Internet. And the Pentagon banned military personnel from accessing the info obtained by Wikileaks because "doing so would introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks," even though any schmuck in a Cleveland internet cafe can look it up. (So far, the Pentagon hasn't taken any real steps against Wikileaks. Probably a good idea given that the just posted a massive encrypted file called "insurance" on their site.) We even learned today that a server provided by an ISP linked to notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay helps host Wikileaks. It's only a matter of time before Apple starts selling top-secret incident reports for 99 cents a piece on iTunes. [Photo of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange by Getty Images]First the basic, "big three": Anti-virus programs scan for viruses and related malware by examining the files on your system for patterns of data that have been identified as being viruses. On some regular basis the database of patterns the programs use is updated to contain the latest information on known viruses. "In short, you should have one each of all three." Anti-spyware programs monitor your system as you use it for behaviours that are known to be spyware-related. For example, an anti-spyware program might trap attempts to change your browser home page, or attempts to install software that starts automatically. Firewalls prevent malware from reaching your machine through your network. They don't prevent things you control, like downloads or email, but rather stop attempts to connect to or infiltrate your machine without your knowledge or participation. In short, you should have one each of all three. It's seems simple, but sadly it's not. "Internet security suites" are, in essence, bundles of two or more of the basics above, and typically also include additional security software or shortcuts as well. For example, one extremely popular internet security suite contains all three: anti-virus, anti-spyware and a firewall, as well as calling out "phishing" protection, keylogger protection, website reputation information, email and download monitoring, spam filtering, parental controls and even throws in some PC performance tools to boot. Everything but the kitchen sink, it seems. Once again, on the surface it seems like a good idea. Who wouldn't want all that? Based on my experience here at Ask Leo! I've become fairly biased against internet security suites or bundles. I see several problems: I get more problem reports about security suites than I do with the individual programs that they replace. From what I can tell, most suites are based on one very good program - say an anti-virus tool - and then add additional tools and features, typically of lower quality, simply so that they can claim a longer checkbox list of features. Much of what these suites call out as separate features are, in fact, fundamental to one of the big three tools anyway. Saying you have "keylogger" protection and spyware protection, for example, is redundant. Much of what these suites include is also unnecessary, or not something I'd go to them for. I wouldn't use my internet security suite to try and tune up my PC, for example. But, that's what internet security suites are: they give you a lot of stuff in a single package; some of it good, some of it not so good, some of it, in my opinion, completely unnecessary. And with so much stuff being added to your system, it's not at all uncommon for the suites to in fact cause both functional problems and system performance issues. Now, there's one other point of confusion that's worth addressing: the growing convergence of spyware and viruses and the technologies that scan for them. You've probably seen an increase in the use of the term "malware". That's a generic term meaning "bad" "software", and is used to encompass viruses, spyware and in fact anything else that might come along. The problem is that the line between viruses and spyware isn't nearly as clear as I've painted above. And as a result, the scanning and prevention technologies are also overlapping more and more. In fact, some tools are now starting to label themselves as simply anti-malware, since their approach and their coverage seems to straddle the definition. Unfortunately, it leaves us in an interesting position: if you know you need both anti-virus and anti-spyware tools, is a single anti-malware tool sufficient? Maybe. It all depends on the specific tools involved. My recommendation for determining which tools are right for you, and which might be better than others, is simply to do some research on the internet. I'm a huge believer in reputation as a guideline. While no tool has a perfect reputation, you'll often see both good and bad information that will allow you to compare relative merits. But, ultimately... well, I told you it was a confusing mess.BEIJING: Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's visit to China in 1988 was an "ice breaking" trip and played a very important role in resuming and developing friendship between the two countries, a former Chinese diplomat has said. Zeng Xyyong, who worked as a councillor at the Chinese Embassy in Delhi, wrote in an article that Gandhi's meeting with Li Lianqing, China's Ambassador to India in 1987, broke the ice in bilateral ties leading to his visit to Beijing, the first by an Indian Prime Minister in 34 years. As a "new generational leader" Gandhi aspired to promote the rise of India by carrying out economic reforms but found that the environment hindered his objective, Zeng wrote in an article, providing a rare insight into Chinese assessment of what led Gandhi to visit China and his close door meetings with the top Chinese leaders, including Deng Xiaoping. The article, part of a book titled'stories of China and India', was circulated to the media ahead of the Congress of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) to be held here on October 18 in which Chinese President Xi Jinping was expected to get a second five-year term. "Over all, Rajiv Gandhi visit to China was an ice breaking trip, very important in resuming and developing friendship between China and India," he wrote in the article. The book is a compilation of nostalgic accounts of former Chinese diplomats who served in India. Besides India, only two other books, one on Pakistan and the other on Nepal containing write-ups by Chinese diplomats, were displayed at the CPC media centre. "India had a tense relationship with Pakistan for many years, it got involved in civil war in Sri Lanka in 1987. No substantial results had occurred in border negotiations with China," Zeng said outlining his assessment of Gandhi's decision to restore ties with China. Zeng alleges that the longest standoff between the Indian and Chinese armies at Sumdorongchu in 1986 when the troops had an eyeball to eyeball stalemate, similar to one at to the recent Dokalam, was "orchestrated" by India to "intensify military confrontation while setting up a border state of Arunachal Pradesh". "Tensions thus escalated further souring bilateral ties", he said. "This made Rajiv Gandhi feel uneasy. He was worried that if things continued like that, the opposition party would use against him in the next general election, threatening his continuation in office," he said. "Therefore, he began to consider adjusting his China policy" and sought a "private appointment" with the then Chinese Ambassador in Delhi Li Lianqing, Zeng said. His observation about Sumdorongchu valley, which is located east of tri-junction with Bhutan and not far from Dokalam, were interesting as for the official accounts of India it was sparked off by Chinese troops occupying an Indian patrol point, vacated during winter. Indian army in a daring counter move placed the troops in dominating heights and set up posts closer to the Chinese positions. China launched a media blitzkrieg similar to the one during Dokalam where Indian troops intervened to stop Chinese from building a strategic road in area claimed by Bhutan, close to India's Chicken Neck corridor connecting North East. Status quo was restored in Sumdorongchu after about seven years of negotiations to stabilise the situation. The Dokalam standoff lasted 73 days. The Indian counter move at Sumdorongchu was widely regarded as strengthening New Delhi's stature ahead of Rajiv Gandhi's visit to Beijing in December 1988 during which both the sides agreed to negotiate a boundary settlement and would maintain peace and tranquillity at the boundary. In his article, Zeng also provided details of Gandhi's talks with the then Chinese Premier Li Peng and top leader Deng Xiaoping who succeeded Mao Zedong. Li told Gandhi that the border issue could be resolved with "mutual understanding and mutual accommodation". He also said that China had taken note of the position by the successive Indian governments that "Tibet is part of China: India doesn't interfere in China's domestic affairs. "Tibetan separatists were not allowed to conduct anti- China activities in India. China highly appreciate India's principled stand," he said. In his meeting with Gandhi, Deng said relationship between India and China had been "very good in the 1950s but turned sour for a long period after that". In an apparent reference to the 1962 war, Deng told Gandhi that "now was moment to forget those unpleasant things and look to the future". "Rajiv Gandhi agreed saying he hoped bilateral relations would be fully restored," Zeng said. Though Gandhi lost elections subsequently, successive Indian governments took more positive approach to improve ties with China, he said. "The situation in the Sino-Indian border region was less tense. Sino-Indian relations were back on track", he said. Li who made a reciprocal trip to New Delhi in 1991 clarified during his talks with the then Indian Prime Minister, P V Narasimha Rao that "China would not get involved in any dispute between India and Pakistan hoping that the issues could be resolved in a reasonable manner through peaceful consultation", Zeng wrote.We get tips. Lots of them. Sometimes Gawker features editor Tom Scocca responds to them. These conversations are memorialized here in an occasional feature we call Tom Tips Back. In a special treat, today's correspondence was initiated by Tom himself, in a Tip directed at Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank. Last week, after the vindication of Gawker's initial reporting on the existence of a video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine, Cruickshank wrote that the revelation was the result of "work of a scale and seriousness that can only be undertaken successfully by what is now called 'the mainstream media,'" and that unnamed "others lack the resources, the experience and the credibility to call a senior official to account." From: Scocca, Tom Date: Fri, Nov 1 2013 at 11:03 AM Subject: journalistic standards To: John Cruickshank <xxx@thestar.ca> Dear Mr. Cruickshank, You know one reason why the Ford people were able to keep calling the Star's coverage a pack of lies for so long? Because from day one, your paper selfishly, gutlessly, and above all stupidly tried to cover up the fact that Gawker had already reported the existence of the video. You had independent corroboration, and you were too small-minded and churlish to accept it. It was more important for the Star to trumpet a fake exclusive than to make the case against a corrupt mayor. And now you praise your paper's solitary, courageous truth-telling. You are a sanctimonious fraud. Sincerely, Tom Scocca features editor Gawker From: Cruickshank, John <xxx@thestar.ca> Date: Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 11:21 AM Subject: Re: journalistic standards To: Tom Scocca <scocca@gawker.com> Tom, I’ve passed your note on to the editor in chief. I thought your story was terrific. But you operate in a very different legal environment than we. You had very little at stake in publishing your story. Our assets sit in Toronto, Canada. Our legal jurisdiction doesn’t recognize any distinction between reporting on public figures and regular folks. None of your protections. We had real skin the game as well as a large number of feet on the street. You broke a great story from a foreign country for which you bore almost no potential accountability should it have proven to be untrue. Nice to be you in such circumstances. Cheers, John From: Scocca, Tom Date: Fri, Nov 1 2013 at 11:57 AM Subject: journalistic standards To: John Cruickshank <xxx@thestar.ca> I'm not sure your risk-benefit calculations are exactly right. If we enjoyed fewer legal protections, we also had considerably less to gain than a Canadian publication by doing the story. Nor am I sure that the fact that our one reporter beat your "large number of feet" really redounds to the Star's credit. At any rate, if you did think Gawker's work in breaking the story was terrific, it might have behooved you to have said so in your summing up. That was your byline, not the editor in chief's. From: Cruickshank, John <xxx@thestar.ca> Date: Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 2:30 PM Subject: Re: journalistic standards To: Tom Scocca <scocca@gawker.com> Tom, I think it's easy to misunderstand what you refer to as a risk-benefit calculation when you have no risk — only benefit. We had already written about the mayor's public intoxication and the unsavoury nature of his playmates before we, and later you, learned of the existence of the video. We were also, already defending a law suit launched by the mayor. So, weren't fumbling with our abacuses trying to compute whether we should publish the video story. We were just continuing with our reporting so that we could get it to the public in the strongest version possible. From: Scocca, Tom Date: Fri, Nov 1 2013 at 10:05 PM Subject: journalistic standards To: John Cruickshank <xxx@thestar.ca> You didn't decide to publish the story of the video because you'd cautiously and thoughtfully worked it into the strongest version you could come up with. You published the story when you did because John Cook had beaten you to it—and, while beating you, he supplied a template, which the Star hastily copied, for how to a story could be written without possession of the video. It appears to make you feel better to emphasize that your reporters had seen the video before John had. I don't know why. Your job is to inform the public, not to sit around impotently wondering how to eventually go about informing the public. And nothing in these notes comes close to explaining or justifying your decision to try to leave John and Gawker out of your history of the Rob Ford video scandal. It wasn't just rude and petty of you—it was also, as John has pointed out on Twitter, factually inaccurate. You claimed that the Toronto police said that the Star's coverage had precipitated the investigation. The Toronto police did not say that. They did, however, specifically credit Gawker in the first sentence of their account of the investigation. You obviously lack the courage or integrity to give Gawker the credit you owe us. But do you have the honesty to at least give the Star's readers a correction of your error? From: Cruickshank, John <xxx@thestar.ca> Date: Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 8:35 AM Subject: Re: journalistic standards To: Tom Scocca <scocca@gawker.com> Tom, I mistakenly sent you a shard of an email yesterday without any background on why the tape went on the market etc. You are certainly right that we couldn't have published the story John Cook did, when he did. And we were able to go ahead with our piece on the crack tape when we did because Gawker's piece published in a foreign country became available here in ours. I love all the stuff about "beat you" etc. It has such a virile ring of 1980s news papering. I'll address all of this in a column next week. My son in Chicago tells me your Mr. Cook's latest investigative piece was 10 Reasons I'm a prick. Interesting choice of disparagement. More manly journalism, I expect. I'll send you the column when I'm done. John Sent from my iPad From: Scocca, Tom Date: Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 9:56 AM Subject: journalistic standards To: John Cruickshank <xxx@thestar.ca> If you find the attitudes of competitive journalism so barbaric and quaint, you should probably have a word with your editor in chief about the use of "Star Exclusive." I wouldn't bother reading too much into a rather mild Old English vulgarity. We are a plainspoken people down here. It's not that the Canadian mode is unintelligible to us—if anything, you seem less able to parse your own pieties than we are—but it's a headache to hold that pose. Sometimes the most useful response to a high-toned and long-winded insult is a crude and concise one. At any rate, when we get past our concerns about whose style is more offensive to whom, you are saying that the Star had to report on the Ford video more slowly than Gawker did because your paper was hampered by concerns about negotiating local laws and protecting its assets. This is a rather different line of argument than your public one about the strength and power of a traditional newspaper. And of course your claim about the Star's singular indispensability to the case remains untrue, as a matter of basic fact, and particularly when you attribute it to the Toronto police. Please do send along a copy of your column and any factual correction you may decide to make. I'd read it online, but I'm afraid I'm near the limit of the Star's paywall this month. From: Cruickshank, John <xxx@thestar.ca> Date: Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 11:00 AM Subject: Re: journalistic standards To: Tom Scocca <scocca@gawker.com> Tom, I'll get at my version of the issues and my apology for failing to acknowledge Gawker's important role in prompting the timing of the Canadian reporting in my column. We have a grasp of Old English here too. You've read the reporting about our Mayor so you should know. But we encourage our children to leave it behind in the playground. Some never do. John From: Scocca, Tom Date: Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 12:16 PM Subject: journalistic standards To: John Cruickshank <xxx@thestar.ca> Yeah, down here we teach our kids not to grab stuff that isn't theirs. From: Cruickshank, John <xxx@thestar.ca> Date: Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 12:43 PM Subject: Re: journalistic standards To: Tom Scocca <scocca@gawker.com> Don't think we quite did that. The tape came on the market as a result of our Ford at Garrison Ball piece that long predated your brief appearance on the scene. And Siad came to us because Ford was already suing us for an investigative story from two years before. So he knew we were interested. [Ed note: If Mohamed Siad, the alleged crack dealer who had possession of the video, which he showed to Cook and to two Toronto Star reporters, ever directly "came to" the Star, that's a previously unreported development. The Star has thus far only reported that an unnamed "broker" approached the paper.] So I'm sorry you're feelings are hurt and all but you weren't here for the start, you're not here now and you won't be here when we finally have a new mayor in our City Hall. You desperately insist that you get credit for Toronto journalism but you haven't been involved with any of the heavy lifting. The truth came out this week because of the months we've spent in court and the pressure we've put on the police chief. If you really want to help we can work together and try to get the crooks out of office. Otherwise, I'll write my piece, apologize for forgetting about your brief excursion to this country, and get back to work. John From: Scocca, Tom Date: Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 7:53 AM Subject: journalistic standards To: John Cruickshank <xxx@thestar.ca> Yes, you've already emphasized all the hard work and heavy labor and invaluable Toronto-journalism expertise you put into not publishing the story. As my daddy used to say, "If the dog hadn't stopped to take a shit, he woulda caught the rabbit." Good luck with your column. From: Cruickshank, John <xxx@thestar.ca> Date: Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 9:02 AM Subject: Re: journalistic standards To: Tom Scocca <scocca@gawker.com> We got the rabbit this week. This has been Tom Tips Back.Rupert Murdoch, probably the most powerful media mogul in history, submitted to an interview with Sky News Australia's David Speers last week that was incredibly revealing. (We'll have a follow-up post to some of the other things he said. The full interview is here.) And probably the most revealing was his full-throated defense of Fox News and its War on Obama -- and particularly Glenn Beck for calling President Obama a racist. When Murdoch poo-poohed the notion that Fox's news coverage was slanted, while its opinion shows like Beck's were supposed to be opinionated, Speers pointed out that the problem was how far Beck was going: Speers: Glenn Beck who you mentioned has called Barack Obama a racist, and he helped organize a protest against him and others on Fox have likened him (Obama) to Stalin is that defensible? Murdoch: No, no, no, not Stalin, I don't think, ah, not one of our people. On the racist thing, that caused a (unintelligible). But he (Obama) did make a very racist comment. Ahhh -- about, you know, blacks and whites and so on, and which he said in his campaign he would be completely above. And um, that was something which perhaps shouldn't have been said about the President, but if you actually assess what he was talking about, he was right. Well, just for anyone interested, we've provided both in the video above and in transcript below exactly what everybody said. First, here's what Beck actually said that Murdoch thinks was "right": Beck: This president has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture, I don't know what it is. But you can’t sit in a pew with Jeremiah Wright for twenty years and not hear some of that stuff and not have it wash over you.... This guy has a social justice – he is going to set all the wrongs of the past right.... I’m not saying that he doesn’t like white people. I’m saying he has a problem – he has a – this guy is, I believe, a racist. Look at the things that he has been surrounded by. Let’s look at his new green-jobs czar. Now, what exactly was it that Obama said that brought Beck to this conclusion -- and which Murdoch claims was a "racist" thing for him to say? Well, he was talking about the Henry Louis Gates arrest: Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts what role race played in that, but I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that's just a fact. As you know, Lynn, when I was in the state legislature in Illinois we worked on a racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and hispanics were being stopped disproportionately. And that is a sign, an example of how, you know, race remains a factor in this society. That doesn't lessen the incredible progress that has been made. I am standing here as testimony to the progress that's been made. And yet, the fact of the matter is that, you know, this still haunts us. And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and hispanics are picked up more frequently and often time for no cause cast suspicion even when there is good cause, and that's why I think the more that we're working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we're eliminating potential bias, the safer everybody's going to be. And this was racist exactly how? I suppose if you redefined "racism" to include "bringing up historically and factually accurate information about racist behavior of white people", then I suppose you could say that. I don't think we're there yet, but Rupert Murdoch is obviously working on it. Murdoch, you'll note, was either intentionally or intentionally was chock full o' s--t misinformation. After Speers quoted the "White House Communications Director" -- namely, Anita Dunn -- for her remarks describing Fox as "the communications arm of the Republican Party", Murdoch sneeringly dismissed press secretary Robert Gibbs as "a very young, inexperienced guy" -- even though he hadn't made those remarks. He also claimed that Fox would always make a correction when it got its facts wrong. Well, we're still waiting for multiple corrections from Glenn Beck -- and that's just for starters. Fox almost never corrects its misinformation -- just ask Media Matters. He tried to cast Fox's news shows outside of its "opinion shows" as being accurate -- even though Fox's daytime "news" programming is every bit as slanted as its opinion shows -- they just lack the intense levels of open advocacy. Though when it came to the tea parties, there was hardly any distinction worth making. He claimed "the other networks" only have on Democrats, while his network shows both Republicans and Dems. But the reality, of course, is that the guests are heavily weighted in favor of Republicans, and its "Democrats" are fine examples of "liberalism" like Lanny Davis and Joe Lieberman. And his claim that no one on Fox had likened Obama to Stalin? Well, here's Judge Andrew Napolitano declaring that Obama was "Stalin without the bloodshed." Oh, and here's a screen grab from a Fox News website front: Because, of course, Fox's news operations are always "fair and balanced," right, mate? Wink wink, nudge nudge. All in all, you have to wonder how someone can run one of the world's most powerful corporations effectively and have a head so full of bald misinformation. But then, maybe that's why Fox deals in so much misinformation and disinformation and outright Newspeak: It needs to manufacture nonsense in huge amounts just to create its own little bubble planet to which its corporate masters can retreat when evil liberal Democrats intrude upon their profit-making schemes. Money talks, reality walks.OAKLAND — Festus Ezeli is unlikely to play in the Warriors’ first three preseason games next week. Shaun Livingston is doubtful to see any preseason action at all. Two of the Warriors expected to give the bench a boost this season are out of action indefinitely, as Ezeli isn’t scheduled to have his shin reevaluated until next week and Livingston continues to recover from toe surgery. That means opportunities to play for those looking for minutes at point guard and center at a time when coach Steve Kerr has yet to define roles. Kerr said Saturday, with Livingston out, veteran Leandro Barbosa can play point guard and share responsibilities with Andre Iguodala. The coach has imagined sets with them on the floor together, as he considers Iguodala a point-forward who last season spent time bringing the ball up the court. Point guard Nemanja Nedovic, the Warriors’ 2013 first-round draft pick who had an injury-plagued rookie season, has been one player Kerr has gone out of his way to praise. “Honestly, I can’t wait for Shaun to get back because good competition at the point guard spot makes me work harder and makes me want to earn my minutes more,” Nedovic said. “Going against Steph (Curry) every day is really big for me, so I’m taking full advantage of it.” The Warriors expect Ezeli to return to action this season, but while he’s out, Kerr said he is satisfied with Marreese Speights and Ognjen Kuzmic as the other centers on the roster. “Speights looks good,” Kerr said. “I wasn’t here last year, but everybody says he was really heavy and not ready. He was in the Bay early this year and put in some work, and he’s had a good first few days of practice.” The bench is expected to be deeper than it was last season when four Warriors starters averaged more than 30 minutes per game. “I think it’s going to be vastly improved,” forward Draymond Green said. “We added some pieces. Guys have gotten better. So I think that’s going to be key. Especially getting Shaun healthy will be big. Getting Festus healthy is going to be big.” The Warriors signed free-agent guard/forward Jason Kapono to a training camp deal. Kapono, 33, has played for six teams in nine seasons, but he hasn’t played in the NBA since 2011-2012, with the Los Angeles Lakers. He ranks fifth on the league’s all-time 3-point percentage list at 43.4 percent, averaging 6.7 points per game in his career. Kapono, whose signing had been delayed as he waited to receive his FIBA clearance, last played professionally in Greece in 2013.Vinales secured Suzuki's first race win since 2007 earlier this year at Silverstone, but by this stage the Spanish rider had already long since decided to take up an offer from Yamaha to replace the departing Jorge Lorenzo. Instead, Suzuki will field an all-new line-up of Ducati refugee Andrea Iannone and Moto2 graduate Rins, who finished third in this year's standings behind Johann Zarco and Thomas Luthi. Speaking during a media event in Madrid, Rins said he is aware that the expectation on him will be to get similar results to what Vinales managed during his two-year Suzuki stint. "I'm replacing him at Suzuki, and this, whether you like it or not, means that I have to try to get better results [than him], which have not been bad at all," said Rins of Vinales. "The pressure is on before starting, but I hope to be there. It will be hard because there are more electronics and a lot more things to keep in mind compared to Moto2. "But in the end, every time I was on track with him we have been fighting. "I'm not saying that I will be doing it in the first two races, but after moving to Yamaha he has adapted very quickly and has been very fast in Valencia and Malaysia, so I hope to get up to speed quickly." Tough Moto2 transition Rins injured himself in a crash during the second day of post-season Valencia testing, and was therefore forced to sit out the subsequent private test at Jerez - although he has now recovered and has recommenced training. Up until the accident, the 21-year-old noted how much more physical the MotoGP bike was compared to what he has been used to for the last two seasons in Moto2. "I spent a month resting at home [after the crash] and I feel a lot better, I can have a normal life," said Rins. "Last Thursday I was on the bike to train, to see how my back was doing, and I felt great. The bike felt incredible, but it's true that it requires a lot more physical preparation than I was used to. The first day [of testing] before lunch I was exhausted. The change was very hard. "When I rode it for the first time in Valencia on the first day it was just to see how everything worked. "I went out without much electronics and I noticed a big change compared to Moto2." Additional reporting by Sergio LilloI still remember, of course, how I heard about David Kelly’s death. It started with an early-morning phone call from my friend Mick Smith, then defence correspondent of The Daily Telegraph. Dr Kelly had gone missing, and the police were looking for a body. Even then, I couldn’t really believe that he had died. Surely it was some sort of misunderstanding? Perhaps he’d just decided to go off for a few days and would turn up in some hotel, à la Stephen Fry? As soon as I got to the BBC, the director of news, Richard Sambrook, called me to his office. While I had been on the way in, he said, not sounding like he believed it himself, Dr Kelly’s body had been found, and it looked like suicide. He’d taken painkilling tablets and slashed one of his wrists. If Sambrook sounded shaken, it was nothing to how I sounded. He had to get me a glass of water to calm me down. But as well as being upset, I was very, very surprised. I hadn’t known David all that well, but he didn’t strike me as the suicidal type, if there is such a thing. He was quite used to confrontation and pressure: he’d been a weapons inspector in Iraq, for goodness’ sake. I thought his famous grilling by the Foreign Affairs Committee had been distasteful, and symptomatic of the committee’s stupidity, but it hadn’t been that bad. And the affair was tailing off. Politics was breaking for the summer, both the BBC and I had refused to confirm or deny whether David was my source, and the battle between us and Downing Street had essentially reached stalemate. What a lot I didn’t know. Even now, almost precisely 10 years since David Kelly’s last journey, we are still learning just how extraordinary and inexcusable the behaviour of our rulers was – both towards him, and in the wider cause, defending the Iraq war, for which he was outed and died. On July 18 2003, I did not consider myself a shockable person; I was an experienced, sceptical journalist with, I thought, a realistic idea of how politicians, intelligence officers and civil servants behaved. But over the months and years that followed, my views, and those of most of the country, changed. To borrow the famous words of David Astor over Suez, we had not realised that our government was capable of such folly and such crookedness. You probably remember Dr Kelly’s main contention, which became the centrepiece of my BBC story – that a government dossier making the case against Iraq had been “transformed” at the behest of Downing Street and Alastair Campbell “to make it sexier”, with the “classic example” being the insertion in the final week of a claim, based on a single source, that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction could be deployed within 45 minutes. The intelligence services were unhappy about the 45-minute claim, David said. They believed it was unreliable. In the first of my 18 broadcasts on the story, I added a claim, mistakenly attributing it to David, that the Government probably knew the 45-minute claim was wrong. What we now know is that at precisely the same moment as the Government was launching hysterical attacks on the BBC and on me for reporting this, Whitehall had quietly conceded that it was true. In July 2003, literally as David Kelly was outed, MI6 secretly withdrew the 45-minute intelligence as unreliable and badly-sourced. What we now know is that according to Major General Michael Laurie, the head of the Defence Intelligence Staff at the time of the dossier, “we could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It was clear to me that pressure was being applied to the Joint Intelligence Committee and its drafters. Every fact was managed to make the dossier as strong as possible. The final statements in the dossier reached beyond the conclusions intelligence assessments would normally draw from such facts.” What we now know is that, according to an MI6 officer working on the dossier, the 45-minute claim was “based in part on wishful thinking” and was not “fully validated”. Another MI6 officer said that “there were from the outset concerns” in the intelligence services about “the extent to which the intelligence could support some of the judgments that were being made”. What we now know is that on September 17 and 18 2002, a week before the dossier was published, Alastair Campbell sent memos to its author, Sir John Scarlett, saying that he and Tony Blair were “worried” that on Saddam’s nuclear capability the dossier gave the (accurate) impression that “there’s nothing much to worry about”. On September 19, Campbell emailed Scarlett again, suggesting the insertion of a totally false claim that, in certain circumstances, Saddam could produce nuclear weapons in as little as a year. This fabrication duly appeared in the dossier. What we now know is that in his September 17 memo, Campbell suggested 15 other changes to the text of the dossier. Most were accepted; their effect was to harden the document’s language from possibility to probability, or probability to certainty. Campbell lied to Parliament about the content of this memo, giving the Foreign Affairs Committee an altered copy which omitted his comments on the 45-minute claim and played down his interventions on most of the other issues. And what we now know is that, contrary to his campaigning certainty at the time, Blair admits in his memoirs that he privately saw the case for war against Iraq as “finely balanced”. No wonder a little tipping of the scales was needed – or, as Blair also put it in his book, “politicians are obliged from time to time to conceal the full truth, to bend it and even distort it, where the interests of the bigger strategic goal demand that it be done”. We knew nothing of this then. Indeed, in his evidence to the Hutton inquiry, Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, described the 45-minute claim, straight-faced, as “a piece of well-sourced intelligence”, two months after his own service had discredited it. Despite his key role as Dearlove’s military counterpart, General Laurie was never called to Hutton
electrified now, try it." Asami said pointing at the blade. "You have got to be kidding me." The blade sprung out, and Korra watched as electric charges danced on it. "Wow, thanks Asami. But what are you going to do while we're fighting?" "I think I will have to get out, Terran Arms has a secret research facility, I will be transferred there." Korra couldn't just leave her defenseless. She walked over to her bag, and looked through it until she found what she needed. "Catch!" Korra said as she threw the TRAC 1 rifle to Asami. "How do you have this?" Asami asked as she catched the rifle with both her arms, and bent a little under it's weight. "I sneaked it home when we switched to the TRAC 2. I couldn't just let the gun I had cared so much about for years sit and gather dust in some arsenal. Or worse yet be sold at an auction to the highest bidder." "But that's Il-..." Asami stopped mid sentence, she couldn't really condemn anyone for breaking the law anymore. "There's 5 magazines in the bag, and a box with 100 rounds, use them wisely. Also there should be every attachment in the bag, but I don't have any grenades, and take my Omni tool you could need it. If not for defense then to call for help." Korra's Omni tools blinked red, the new as well as the old one. "That's the signal, I guess this is goodbye for now. If I don't return then... Then keep fighting, you have to for humanity, so many nations have given up but we won't. Not until it's over for good." Korra looked away from Asami to hide a tear, and started walking towards the door, TRAC 2 in hand, TX-1 Repeater by her side and head sunk into her chest. "Korra wait, there's something I want to say." Asami said grabbing her hand. Korra wiped away the tear. "What is it?" She said trying to keep her voice from breaking. "It's just that, that this time with you, even though we have been waiting for the end of the world, has also been one of the best times of my life. When I'm with you I feel free, you bring joy and happiness to everything, and you have given me hope. I think what I'm trying to say is that, Korra I love you." Korra felt a jolt going through her with those words. Her head shot back up, and she knew what to do. She turned around on a dime in a millisecond, it might even have been one due to the nano suit she was wearing, and took Asami's face with her hands, and pulled her in for a kiss. Asami was at first surprised, but she quickly accepted the kiss, and they stood like that for what seemed to be an eternity. Eventually Korra let go, and looked into Asami's eyes. "Asami, I love you too." She said, she wanted to stay like this forever but knew she couldn't, so she let go. "I promise I won't let them take our city!" She declared, she felt invincible. "Just be safe, please." Asami said concerned. "I will." Korra said as her Omni tool blinked again. "I really have to go now. See ya when it's over." Korra said as she jogged out the door, and leaped over the railing. Falling all 5 stories before landing with a thunder, and cracking the floor. She knew this would be a good day."I think it's selling itself," President Trump said Friday, with customary bravado, as he signed into law the $1.5 trillion, Republican-passed tax cut. Every Republican running in a competitive race in 2018 is hoping he's correct, but they face an uphill climb to turn the president's words into reality. There is a sizable disconnect in public opinion shaping the political environment. Economic and consumer confidence are strong, but that has yet to give lift to the president or the GOP. Trump's approval ratings hover at or just below 40 percent at a time of low unemployment, a booming stock market and steady economic growth. When such a pattern of low presidential approval at a time of low unemployment has appeared in the past half-century, the party in power suffered major setbacks in the midterm elections. Republicans hope the tax measure provides the elixir to produce a change in fortune, but there are several reasons to be skeptical. The first is the degree to which Republicans failed to sell the tax bill to the public before they pushed it through the House and Senate with record speed. To the extent that the measure is selling itself, as the president said, it is through the response of a number of corporations who have announced hikes in the minimum wage, bonuses for their workers or new investments. If these examples are a leading indicator, then Trump could be proven correct in claiming that the tax bill will trigger the kind of widespread response by the business community that ultimately will produce enough investment to create jobs in big numbers and, more importantly, increases in wages for working Americans after a lengthy period of wage stagflation. But is corporate leaders' enthusiasm about the measure surprising? It cuts the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and provides other tax breaks designed to spur activity; those cuts are the heart of the measure. But the overall response from the business community and the ultimate impact on the economy remain in question. The economic forecasts are more modest than the president's rhetoric. President Trump speaks about the passage of the tax bill Wednesday on the South Lawn at the White House7. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) That's not the only reason Republicans should be cautious. Because the benefits are heavily weighted toward corporations and the wealthiest Americans, the public has already made a judgment: They feel left behind in comparison. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, released as the bill was nearing final passage, found that 63 percent of the public said the bill favors the rich and corporations. Only 7 percent said the measure was designed to mostly help the middle class. Republicans say the middle-class cuts are more substantial than many Americans know and that taxpayers will begin to change their assessment early next year, when they see more dollars in their paychecks due to the near-doubling of the standard deduction and an increase in the child tax credit. Still, it could take until tax filing in April 2019, well after the midterm elections, before people can fully measure the impact of those changes, along with the effects of the reductions in the deductibility of state and local taxes and for some the lower cap on mortgage interest deductions. Democrats, with the Affordable Care Act, found how difficult it can be to change initial impressions of a big policy change enacted along partisan lines. (And that measure was judged more favorably from the start than the Republican tax bill.) The ACA proved an anchor around the necks of Democrats in the 2010 election, which ended up as one of worst drubbings for a party in power in generations. "That's a good demonstration that it's difficult to take a bill that's underwater and change public perceptions," said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster and part of the bipartisan duo that conducts the NBC-Wall Street Journal surveys. "We have to acknowledge that." But McInturff said the tax measure could be a chip on the table for Republicans in the midterm sweepstakes. If 2018 is an even stronger year economically, he said, there is an opportunity for Republicans to connect that performance to the tax bill and claim credit. McInturff said his hope is that corporations will step forward in the coming months with many more examples of how they are taking advantage of the bill's provisions to expand and benefit their workers — and that the president uses those examples to campaign vigorously around the country highlighting them. But individual examples don't paint the whole picture, nor are they always what they seem at the time they are announced. The proof ultimately will be in the overall performance of the economy. The other and likelier bigger problem for Republicans, however, is the disconnect between perceptions of the economy and the president's personal ratings — and the degree to which the midterm elections turn on Americans' attitudes about Trump rather than personal finances and the state of the economy. That same NBC-Wall Street Journal poll found that by a margin of 40 to 21 percent, Americans say Trump has helped to make the economy better rather than worse. Yet that has done nothing so far for the Republican Party. The party's image is poor and somewhat worse than the Democrats and, as the survey also showed, the GOP is surrendering its advantage on the economy and taxes. This is perhaps related to initial evaluations of the tax bill and to the fact that on three other measures — America's standing in the world and two dealing with partisan divisions in the country — majorities say the president has made things worse, not better. In other words, judgments about Trump's performance and personality remain demonstrably negative, and those attitudes could overshadow the importance of the economy as voters make choices next year. That's the conundrum for Republicans as they look to next year. Passage of the tax bill is the achievement they needed to construct a case to take to the voters, in hopes that they can turn around negative impressions of the product. But midterm elections usually don't turn on positive messaging; instead, the most motivated voters in midterm elections tend to be those with grievances. And every current measure, from the results of the off-year elections to gauges of political energy, shows there are many Democrats with grievances toward the president and they want to register those feelings at the ballot box.There's three things pretty much everyone's sure of. One, there's a General Election coming up. Two, it's going to come down to two people. Three, those two people-David Cameron and Ed Miliband- will never, ever, stop arguing. Ever. It's impossible. And it's certainly impossible that the two of them could ever, possibly, willingly spend time together. It's impossible that you could start to enjoy spending time with the one person who disagrees with you on everything. It's impossible that you could find yourself confiding in your political rival. It's absolutely, completely, unutterably impossible that you could find yourselves maybe, possibly, navigating something together that might be more than just friendship. Impossible. Of course. Then again, impossibility isn't what it used to be. Epic Camerband fic, set from autumn 2014 onwards to some point in the near future. Overlaps with General Election and real-life events. A story of politics, awkward friendship, something more than awkward friendship and too much arguing. (No, really. Too much arguing.) (Check Author's Notes inside for reasons for absurd word-count, etc.:))YouTube TV launched only four months ago, and it's rapidly expanding beyond its initial five markets. Today, the company announced that the service will be available in 14 new US markets, which means 50 percent of US households have access. It plans to expand to 17 more markets in the "coming weeks." Here's the complete list of where YouTube TV is expanding now and where it'll be expanding later: Launching now: Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Columbus, Jacksonville-Brunswick, Las Vegas, Louisville, Memphis, Nashville, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Seattle-Tacoma, Tampa-St. Petersburg-Sarasota, and West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce Launching later: Austin, Birmingham, Cleveland-Akron, Denver, Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek, Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem, Harrisburg-Lancaster-Lebanon-York, Hartford-New Haven, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Norfolk-Portsmouth-Newport News, Oklahoma City, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City, San Diego, and St. Louis YouTube TV initially rolled out in five massive markets — New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, and Philadelphia — and later came to 10 other places. Basically, YouTube TV is trying to expand to anywhere that has an internet connection, and it's trying to make its service more worthwhile than conventional cable providers. It offers nearly 50 networks, including ESPN and AMC, and costs $35 a month.Boxing’s “greatest of all time” is being remembered by celebrity fans and friends. He was 74. The three-time heavyweight champion died at the Phoenix-area hospital he had spent the past few days being treated for respiratory complications. Hollywood A-listers and sports stars expressed their condolences on social media with many of them posting well-known photos of the sports hero. “RIP @muhammadali, a legend who transcended sport and was a true champion for all. #thegreatest #MuhammadAli,” tweeted retired boxer Oscar De La Hoya. The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now “God came for his champion. So long great one. @MuhammadAli #TheGreatest #RIP,” said Mike Tyson. “Goodbye champ. Fly like a butterfly….” Josh Gad wrote on Instagram. “Muhammad Ali is dead at 74! A truly great champion and a wonderful guy. He will be missed by all!” Donald Trump tweeted. “Yes you did Mr Ali. You shook up the world Sending love and light to the family #RIP,” Kate Hudson captioned a video of some highlights from Ali’s career. One day before Ali’s death, boxer Manny Pacquiao tweeted: “Please keep @MuhammadAli in your thoughts and prayers. With God, all things are possible.” This article originally appeared on People.com For much more on Muhammad Ali, see TIME’s ALI: The Greatest, a 112-page, fully illustrated commemorative edition. Available at retailers and at AMAZON.COM Contact us at editors@time.com.American exports to India support more than 260,000 jobs directly and indirectly in the US and the cumulative investment from the country into India reached $28.3 billion in 2015, a new report said on Monday.India's foreign direct investment (FDI) in the US totalled $9.2 billion as of 2015, up more than 500 per cent since 2006, said the report 'India Matters for America/America Matters for India', which was released by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and East-West Centre at an event on the sidelines of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit here."Every US state exports to India, these exports support more than 260,000 jobs directly and indirectly," the report said.Thirty-one states have more than 1,000 jobs dependent on exports to India, while an additional six states have 10,000 jobs or more," said the report, adding that the cumulative investment from the US into India reached $28.3 billion in 2015.Noting that the US is one of the largest sources of investment into India, the report said since 2000, the US invested over $20 billion in India, more than six per cent of India's total inflow of investment.According to the US Trade Representative, India's direct investment in the US is led by professional, scientific, and technical services; depository institutions and manufacturing.Among the Asia Pacific countries, India is the 7th largest investor in the US, it said."The study clearly brings out the multi-faceted relationship between India and the US and which has only been strengthening with time. Be it trade, investments, tourism, student exchanges or engagement in strategic sectors like defence, India and the US have continued to contribute a lot to each other's economy," said Pankaj Patel, FICCI president.Stating that the defence trade between the US and India increased from $1 billion to over $15 billion, it notes that India was named a 'Major Defence Partner' of the United States in 2016, a status which was created to facilitate technology sharing with India to a level at par with that of the United States' closest allies and partners.The signing of defence agreements such as the Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) and the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) furthered cooperation.India conducts more bilateral exercises and personnel exchanges with the US than with any other country, 50 formal events annually, it said.According to the report, the two-way trade between the US and India increased nearly 200 per cent since 2005, with total value from $37 billion in 2005 to $109 billion in 2015.US exports amounted to $21.5 billion in goods and $18.1 billion in services to India in 2015.The US is the top destination for Indian goods, 14 per cent of India's export.Also the US is India's 2nd largest trading partner while India is the 9th largest goods trading partner of the US.Further US goods imports from India increased from $1 billion in 2000 to almost $45 billion in 2015, a fourfold increase, it said.Nearly 2,000 American multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate in India, more than from any other foreign country, and employ over a million people, according to US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates, it said adding that sales by these companies amounted to $76.7 billion in 2014.There are also over 200 Indian companies in the United States. These companies have invested over $15.6 billion across 37 states and employ over 100,000 people. Sales by Indian MNEs totalled $25 billion in 2014, the report said.More than 1.2 million US tourists visited India in 2015, accounting for over 15 per cent of all international visitors, and contributing over $3 billion to the Indian economy, it said.In the same year, over 1 million Indians traveled to the United States.As the 7th largest source of visitor spending in the United States, Indian tourists contributed $11.4 billion to the US economy.Thirty-one US states saw an economic impact of $100 million or greater from spending by Indian visitors, the report noted.The United States is also the top destination for Indian students studying abroad, with US schools hosting half of all Indian international students.Almost 166,000 Indian students studied in the United States during the 2015/16 academic year, a 25 per cent increase over the previous year, and contributed over $5 billion to the economy.Indian students make up 16 per cent of all international students in the US.A majority of Indian students study at the graduate level, and 35 per cent study in a math or computer science field.American students in India numbered over 4,000 during the 2014/15 academic year.India is the 4th most popular destination for US students studying abroad in the Asia Pacific, it said.Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? The American New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt’s first two terms combined the goals of financial stabilization, reconstruction, conservation, and employment—jobs for the jobless; public works; power systems and new industries, especially in the South; soil conservation and reforestation to battle the Dust Bowl; and a potent mix of regulations and insurance to assert public power over high finance.1 Ad Policy Europe today needs all of these. Its overgrown banks, haunted by the specter of insolvency, are pushing households into foreclosures and evictions across the continent, and at an accelerating scale in the most depressed countries. States are bankrupt and will only become more so as the European Central Bank begins to tighten under pressure from German savers crushed by negative interest rates. Like America 80 years ago, Europe has a vast periphery. In its South, there is a semi-permanent Great Depression, whereas in the East there is great need for new and renewed industries, transport networks, housing, and social investments. Above all, Europeans need jobs.2 Unlike the United States in the 1930s, Europe is also facing the menace of disintegration, as the absence of a democratic federal system has spawned a crisis of legitimacy. Paralysis in the face of deindustrialization and chronic unemployment is breeding a toxic politics throughout Europe, with a postmodern form of fascism threatening some countries and a sense of hopelessness elsewhere. Europe has not yet suffered ecological calamities comparable to those in the past few weeks in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico; but they are coming, in the form of droughts, rising sea levels, and (most immediately) unstoppable waves of refugees from conflict and climate change in the Middle East and Africa.3 The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) has therefore proposed a European New Deal (END), inspired by FDR but designed for European conditions. Chief among these is the sad fact that the European Union is a weak and limited thing—a confederacy, more or less. The crisis has made it virtually impossible even to discuss the creation of a US-style federation in Europe, with full powers to budget and mobilize for the emergencies at hand. European polities are so alienated by the authoritarian incompetence of the current leadership—exemplified by the crushing of the Greek government in 2015 and the heavy-handed approach of the European Commission to Brexit—that an increase in central powers (“more Europe,” as they say) would almost certainly meet heavy resistance. So it is necessary to work within existing charters and treaties to bring about stabilization by means of a European New Deal before hope is restored and the creation of new, democratic, federal, pan-European institutions—even a proper European Constitution—can be discussed sensibly and with cool heads.4 To this END, we have proposed the following programs for all European countries, independent of whether they are in the European Union or the eurozone:5 • A green transition, led by a new agency whose aim is to provide a continent-wide infrastructure focusing on the green Energy Union and the technological sovereignty that Europe desperately needs.6 • Economic and social stabilization, principally through a jobs-guarantee program to offer employment to all Europeans seeking work in their home countries. The jobs should pay a decent moderate wage keyed to national conditions, ending the involuntary migration flows within Europe that have been the cause of much discontent, and tied to a food-and-energy-stamps program and to social housing.7 Current Issue View our current issue • A universal dividend that would allow European citizens to share in the returns of capital and automation, democratizing the economic sphere and preventing the next crisis of low aggregate demand due to the worker- displacement effect of artificial intelligence.8 Specifically for the eurozone, we propose a series of therapeutic policy interventions whose great advantage is that they need no European Union treaty changes, but can be implemented under a broad interpretation of existing rules:9 • A step-by-step banking union that (a) emulates the creation, by the Roosevelt administration, of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; and (b) restructures all of Europe’s problem banks, placing them under effective social control.10 • A program by which the European Central Bank mediates between states and money markets to reduce their total debt burden, but without money-printing or making Germany pay for, or guarantee, the public debt of deficit countries.11 • A Chapter 11–like public-debt restructuring facility for unpayable legacy debts (e.g., Greece’s).12 How are these programs to be funded in the absence of a federal treasury or a central bank with a suitable remit?13 The Green Transition Works Authority will be funded by a combination of (a) the European Investment Bank, which has the capacity to issue the necessary bonds, while the European Central Bank can stand by in the secondary markets ready to purchase the EIB’s bonds, bolster their value, and reduce the interest payments; and (b) a continent-wide carbon tax.14 Any retreat to the nation-state will only benefit the xenophobic forces of the ugly right. For economic and social stabilization, we propose the creation of a European Equity Depository, into which the following income streams will flow: profits from the financial assets purchased by Europe’s central banks (in the context of their monetary operations); other central-bank profits; and a pan-European inheritance tax.15 Finally, a percentage of shares from every corporate initial public offering and capital increase should be socialized and transferred to the European Equity Depository. The accumulating dividends, plus levies on the derived distribution of intellectual-property rights and on common-knowledge monopolies, will then fund a universal basic dividend.16 Then there is the euro. The currency shared by 19 of the EU’s member states cannot be preserved in its current form, resembling as it does the gold-exchange standard, whose 1929 collapse led to the Great Depression. The euro has political and symbolic importance, both for its champions and its foes, but monetary systems are tools, not ends in themselves. So the euro must either adapt or cease to exist.17 The reality is that Europe created a common currency with an inflexible central bank and no federal state; that arrangement has ended in a predictable debt deflation. As a result, already the European monetary system is falling apart. There are countries (Denmark and Britain) that will never join the euro. There are others (Sweden, Poland, and Hungary among them) that are supposed to join in the future but apparently have no intention of doing so. And then there are Cyprus and Greece, which under capital controls have a de facto dual—currency system, since a euro in a Cypriot or Greek bank cannot be exchanged freely for a euro in paper or in another country’s banks. Lastly, some countries in the eurozone would be better off outside, including rich countries like Finland.18 Given these realities, the vision of a comprehensive continental currency is not going to be realized. The European establishment must accept that false hope is bad strategy. Work should begin now on a new round of monetary reforms for Europe, giving the indebted countries of the region degrees of freedom without which the grapes of wrath will continue to “grow heavy for the vintage.”19 To this effect, DiEM25’s European New Deal is proposing a moderate, technically simple reform: the creation of a public digital-payments platform in every eurozone country. Using the existing digital platform of their nation’s tax office, taxpayers would be given the opportunity to purchase digital tax credits, which they could use to pay one another or to extinguish future taxes at a substantial discount. These credits would be denominated in euros but transferable only between taxpayers of a single country, and would thus be impervious to sharp capital flight. Meanwhile, governments would be able to create a limited number of these “fiscal euros,” to be given to citizens in need or for the funding of public projects.20 Fiscal euros would allow stressed governments to stimulate demand, lessen the tax burden, and, ultimately, reduce the crushing power of the European Central Bank. In the long term, these public digital-payment platforms can form a managed system of country-specific euros that work like an International Clearing Union, a modernized version of John Maynard Keynes’s 1944 vision of what the Bretton Woods system should have been like—but, tragically, was not.21 DIEM25’s European New Deal provides, we believe, the best chance for holding the European Union together. But should it be held together? Many progressive voices in Europe (and beyond) have been calling for the disbandment of the EU, due to its irredeemably neoliberal architecture, and a return to the nation-state as the realm in which democratic politics can be rebuilt before a new internationalism can spring up again, this time on solid foundations. They point, in much the same way as Burkean Brexiteers did, to the absence of a European demos on which a pan-European democracy can rely.22 DiEM25 begs to differ. Societies in Europe are facing four major socioeconomic challenges with the hallmarks of climate change. Just as global warming can never be addressed at the national level, even though local and national action is imperative, the same applies to the crises of (a) public debt, (b) banking, (c) exceptionally low investment (relative to savings), and (d) rising poverty. These will either be dealt with effectively at a European level or not at all, thus ensuring that any retreat to the nation-state will only benefit the xenophobic, militantly parochial forces of the ugly right.23 Beyond the practical need for a pan-European approach, DiEM25 embarks from something the left used to understand well: When Marx and Engels adopted their slogan “proletarians of the world unite,” they were not rejecting the importance of national culture or of the nation-state. Instead, they were rejecting the idea of a “national interest” and the view that struggles must prioritize the realm of the nation-state. The notion that we must return to a one-nation/one-parliament/one-demos frame of mind would puzzle the left’s 19th-century pioneers, as it would puzzle progressives of the early and mid-20th century, who dreamed of, and struggled for, a transnational republic from the Atlantic to as far east as possible.24 We need a pan-European network of rebel cities, rebel prefectures, and rebel governments. The left, lest we forget, traditionally opposed the bourgeois belief in a one-to-one relationship between a nation and a sovereign parliament. We counterargued that identity is something we create through political struggle: class struggle, the struggle against patriarchy, the struggle to smash gender and sexual stereotypes, and emancipation from empire, racism, xenophobia, and the practices of mass surveillance.25 In today’s Europe, this spirit is not well served by calling for the split of the EU into neatly delineated national realms. DiEM25’s alternative approach is to issue a call to arms to all Europeans to join in what we term “constructive disobedience.” First, we offer a well-thought-out policy agenda for every nook and cranny of Europe, to be implemented at a pan-European level; then, when the establishment predictably turns it down, we embark on massive disobedience, including governmental disobedience (which is what one of us practiced when representing Greece in the Eurogroup in 2015).26 In this sense, DiEM25’s European New Deal is the constructive part, which should inspire Europeans regarding what can draw us together into a single, transnational progressive agenda, so that we can organize the disobedience necessary at the local, national, and pan-European level. This is the way forward for progressives seeking practical solutions to problems that wreck the lives of the many across our continent.27 Related Article Should We Stay or Should We Go? A Debate Over Brexit Helen Lewis, Jon Cruddas, Harris Beider and Tariq Ali DiEM25, therefore, by calling for a pan-European campaign of disobedience with the transnational elites in order to create the European demos that will bring about Europe’s democracy, is in tune with the left’s traditional approach. In this Gramscian spirit, DiEM25 insists that our European rebellion should happen everywhere, in towns, regions, nation-state capitals, and in Brussels, without prioritizing any level over any other. The European New Deal, therefore, is a practical policy agenda for bringing together a pan-European network of rebel cities, rebel prefectures, and rebel governments into a progressive movement that becomes hegemonic in Italy, in Greece, in England—indeed, anywhere in Europe.28 Of course, one may cheekily ask: “Why stop at the European level? As internationalists, why don’t you campaign for worldwide democracy—for an International New Deal?” Our answer is that we are doing precisely that (see the July 6 New York Times op-ed by Yanis Varoufakis, “A New Deal for the 21st Century”). Ideally, DiEM25 should link up with a Democracy in the Americas movement, which Bernie Sanders’s “political revolution” could spark, as long as it extends beyond the US-Mexican border to include Latin America. And then onward to the Democracy in the Middle East, Democracy in Asia, and Democracy in Africa movements. But given that history has, for better or worse, delivered an internally borderless European Union, with common policies on the environment and a variety of other realms, progressives must defend our really existing absence of borders, the existing EU commons of climate-change policy, even the Erasmus exchange program that gives young Europeans the opportunity to mingle in a borderless educational system. Turning against these splendid artifacts of an otherwise regressive EU is not consistent with what the left ought to be about.29 So, yes, the European Union should and must be saved, and here are just a few of the reasons why:30 • Europe has political and social standards for democracy and human rights, as well as for health and safety and the environment, that will not be respected if the continent splits back into national fiefs. In this respect, the cases of Poland and Hungary are already disturbing enough.31 • Integrated production networks are efficient, and part of the warp and woof of modern economic life. Disrupting them is extremely costly, as the experiences of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia showed.32 • After a breakup, the smaller countries of Europe will be just as vulnerable to speculative movements of their currencies, the caprices of international investors, and the vagaries of their local oligarchies as they were before the European project got under way.33 • Population movements cannot be stopped, and they would become even more toxic politically if new barriers and electrified fences were built. The evidence for this is clear in Britain in the wake of the Brexit vote, and in Austria, Hungary, and elsewhere.34 In the long run, Europe needs a democratic governing structure, a proper budget, and the consolidation of many functions now maintained at the national level, with savings in some areas (the military), more uniform and effective protection of the weaker European citizens, greater effective sovereignty at the state and municipal level, and—last but not least—a common approach to the postcapitalist forms of production and distribution made inescapable by new technologies and the energy and environmental crisis.35 But this will be possible only after European peoples come to appreciate the continent as a constructive force in their lives—as a visible, palpable, useful presence. And that cannot happen until the structure and ideologies of European economic management have been changed, until there is a full escape from the dysfunctional molds in which those ideas were initially framed.36 Is this politically difficult? You bet! But Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have shown that clear, sensible ideas—brave enough to challenge the entire existing system, but not unprecedented or utopian—can persuade large numbers of people. Europeans are ready for this. They know that Europe is in danger because it is undemocratic and, consequently, misanthropic when faced with crisis.37 Europe now needs an antidote to Euro-TINA: the toxic doctrine that “there is no alternative” within the European Union—except, perhaps, disintegration. That is what the Democracy in Europe Movement, DiEM25, and its European New Deal are about. And this is why we are determined to take our agenda to ballot boxes all over Europe by 2019.38Expedition 48/49 crew ready for journey to International Space Station Juan Diego Delagarza JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, Texas — Three members of the Expedition 48/49 crew detailed their upcoming flight to the International Space Station on the Soyuz MS-01 spacecraft. That mission is currently scheduled to get underway on June 21 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The trio briefed reporters on Wednesday, March 9. The crew for this mission includes rookie NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, who will serve as Flight Engineer during her time on orbit. “There’s a lot of experiments that I’m very excited about, there’s going to be some DNA sequencing experiments, a lot of experiments to look at the behavior of cells in space as well as bone loss and muscle loss that we can correlate with some diseases on Earth. So, I’m looking forward to a pretty hefty research component on 48/49,” Rubins said. Taking point on Expedition 49, and serving as a flight engineer on Expedition 48, will be Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin. Ivanishin was asked to give his crewmates some advice on what to do during their first time at the orbiting lab. The space flight veteran’s words were profound. “The best advice that I can give to them is to keep their eyes open, have fun and enjoy the time you experience, because the time is going to pass by very fast,” Ivanishin said. The final member of the Expedition 48/49 crew is Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi who will also serve as a flight engineer on the ISS. “I’ve spent almost half of my time in Russia and the other half here in Houston. I’ve been very busy for these two-and-a-half years, since my assignment. The training for [the] Soyuz vehicle was quite tough, because I had to study like a college student, I stayed up late, almost every day, staying up until 2 a.m. studying Soyuz systems and going to classes… so it was very challenging for me,” Onishi said. The briefing was held at JSC’s Building 2 at 1 p.m. CST and detailed how these new station crew members will be conducting about 250 experiments not possible on Earth. As she noted, during her time at the space station, Rubins will be performing the first genetic sequencing in space as an example of the hundreds of experiments in which she plans to participate. Rubins noted that both in preparations and execution, efforts to conduct these experiments are firmly rooted on the ground. “So, we get some training on the ground, generic ‘set of skills’ training so that we can function as laboratory workers essentially on board the International Space Station and then each contributing agency gets time and resources and
high school in Auburn Hills this morning. 7 Action News received a ton of calls from students and parents about the situation at Avondale High School. A student sent us a picture showing dozens of kids sitting down in the hallways. The students say this all stems from recent issues with the administration. "We sit in silence to show how we've felt all year. Silenced. Claims have been said that we have a voice, but in reality our voice is never heard. So today. We're done talking. The once happy, welcoming culture of this school has diminished, and today we are doing exactly what they really want us to do. Be silent," read a letter submitted to the administration from the students. Here's the full letter: We were also sent a Snapchat photo that showed students in the hallway with the caption "we will be heard." The administration tells 7 Action News that "the students expressed their thoughts about programming and building operations. The discussion lasted until about 10:20 and then the students resumed their school schedule."GlamTech Magnetic Makeup Palettes Early this year I discovered GlamTech Magnetic Makeup Palettes. I fell in love with how the palettes are made from high-quality components. And of course, I love the fully customizable nature of them too. GlamTech Magnetic Makeup Palettes are a great, high quality alternative to z-palettes. Where to Buy Etsy My GlamTech Magnetic Makeup Palettes My Phaedra 35 pan palette. It’s got a mix of Makeup Geek, Sugarpill, Colour Pop, and Lunatick Cosmetic Labs. My SeaHorse 35 pan palette. It’s filled with Anastasia Beverly Hills eyeshadow singles that I need to swatch. My Star 35 pan palette. It’s almost empty with NARS and Makeup Geek in it. My Bats 12 pan palette. I have Saucebox Mermaid Life eyeshadows in it. They’re huge (Sugarpill size pans). GlamTech Magnetic Makeup Palettes Review Each GlamTech Magnetic Makeup Palette is made using a strong PVC plastic base. The sturdy lid is thick acrylic that won’t easily crack or break. The magnet inside the palette is an industrial strength sheet magnet. All of this combined gives you a very durable, easy to clean, great for travel, palette design. They’re much stronger than a z-palette. 12 pan palettes are $12. For my Bat palette I added a base color upgrade of purple for $2. 35 pan palettes are $24. For my Seahorse I added a $3 lid upgrade. Shipping for these two palettes was $8.02 total ($4.01 each). My Phaedra 35 pan palette has a purple glitter and white outline design. It was $37 plus $5.24 shipping. My Star 35 pan palette was $24 base with a $3 upgrade for the orange pink purple color design. Shipping was $5.24 With one of my palettes, the Seahorse palette, I was unhappy with how the color turned out and I let GlamTech know. They were kind enough to fix the color issue and send a replacement lid. With my Phaedra palette, they didn’t like how the first lid turned out so they recreated it and then sent the second lid. I never saw what the first lid looked like. They let me know that happened and that it would add more time on to the creation process. About My Palettes Phaedra Palette (35 pan) – $42.24 (Ordered Jun 13, Arrived Jul 1) Bat Palette (12 pan) – $18.01 (Ordered Mar 13, Arrived Mar 30) Seahorse Palette (35 pan) – $31.01 (Ordered Mar 13, Arrived Mar 30 and Apr 15) Star Palette (35 pan) – $32.24 (Ordered Feb 19, arrived Mar 13) One of the cool things about GlamTech is that they’re a local indie business. They’re located in Orlando, Florida. I like being able to support a local company. I’ve traveled with my GlamTech palettes and had no issues with them at all. I love that they’re easy to fit into my zuca bag. You can put Makeup Geek or any other sort of magnetic pan into them without any issue. People in the PhyrraNyx Facebook Group have created gorgeous palettes. Some are Harry Potter themed, some are super gothic, some are Star Wars themed. The possibilities are endless! You might also enjoy best gothic clothing brands on etsy. What do you think of GlamTech Magnetic Makeup Palettes?Media enquiries: T: 020 3166 6166 E: press@hrp.org.uk Historic Royal Palaces cares for the public side of Kensington Palace. For media enquiries concerning The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, please contact the Royal Communications Press Office at Kensington Palace. Filming enquiries: Binita Dave, Filming Officer E: Binita.dave@hrp.org.uk T: 020 3166 6309 For enquiries about the Tower of London, Banqueting House and Hillsborough Castle: Cat Steventon, Media and PR Manager E: catherine.steventon@hrp.org.uk T: 020 3166 6302 For enquiries about Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace, and Kew Palace: Adam Budhram, Media and PR Manager E: adam.budhram@hrp.org.uk T: 020 3166 6307 For enquiries about Historic Royal Palaces: Laura Hutchinson, Head of Media and PR E: laura.hutchinson@hrp.org.uk T: 020 3166 6338 For all enquiries about social media and digital content: Claire Lampon, Digital Media Manager E: claire.lampon@hrp.org.uk T: 020 3166 6347(U//FOUO) This document provides detailed instructions for the implementation and installation of premise wire infrastructure in support of unclassified and classified networks within NSAW, Build-out Facilities, domestic facilities where NSA controls the plenum, domestic facilities where NSA does not control the plenum and all OCONUS field sites. This document provides instructions for implementations and installations of premise wiring in communications facilities, office spaces and machine rooms by ITD Internal Service Providers (ISP), External Service providers (ESP), field personnel stationed at the respective facilities or authorized NSA agents. (U//FOUO) This document applies to all new voice, video, and data cabling including TS/SCI, Secret and Unclassified networks for all NSA facilities identified in the previous paragraph. This includes any construction, restoration, and modernization projects. This document is not intended to justify wholesale replacement and upgrade of existing premise wiring or cable infrastructure unless security violations are found. (U//FOUO) It is presumed that any facility in which these instructions pertain is protected by approved means of anti-terrorist force protection (ATFP), owned or leased by the NSA/CSS and perimeters monitored by security cameras, intrusion alarms or other means approved and implemented by the Office of Physical Security, Countermeasures/Headquarters Security and Program Protection or Field Security. Where these do not apply, additional Security and TEMPEST counter measures are required. Details are provided in the respective sections of this document. (U//FOUO) Prior to the installation of any Red communications or network infrastructure, all facilities will have Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) accreditation in accordance with NSA/CSS Manual 130-1, Annex P and NSA/CSS Policy 6-3, Operational Information Systems Security Policy. All installation personnel must be legal U.S. citizens in accordance with NSA/CSS Policy 5-23, Physical Security Requirements for Controlled Areas. (U//FOUO) Failure to adhere to the Standards outlined in this document will result in delays in activation and possibly denial of services until the facility is certified to be in compliance. Additional site surveys will be conducted by the Office of Technical Security Countermeasures as part of the automated Annex P process detailing appropriate Countermeasures for the respective facility. …At twenty, Nika Maples learned that when hope was all she had, she claimed it boldly while defying all odds to recover from a devastating stroke. The lessons from that struggle are powerful and universal, and she shares those lessons in her new book,Â Hunting Hope. Doctors warned that she had as little as 48 hours to live, andâ€”if she lived at allâ€”she would never walk or talk again. There was no hope on the horizon. So Nika started to hunt for it. Today, she not only walks, but she speaks to audiences everywhere about the power of hunting hope when a situation appears hopeless. She says hope remains camouflaged in the daily mundane. If we are not looking for it, we will miss it, though it is right before our eyes. CelebrateÂ the release ofÂ Hunting HopeÂ with a $200 Getaway Giveaway (details below) and aÂ live webcast with Nika on May 26! â€”One copy ofÂ Hunting Hopeâ€”A $200 Hilton gift card to give a hope hunter the chance to restÂ The winner will be announced at theÂ Hunting Hope live author webcast on 5/26. RSVP for a chance to connect with NikaÂ and other hope hunters, as well as for aÂ chance to win otherÂ prizes!Find out what readers are saying about the book HEREWikiLeaks is pointing the finger at Guardian journalist David Leigh for leaking the password to its unredacted cables, allowing the names of informants to be exposed. The whistle-blowing site insisted earlier this week that it’s “totally false” that sources of the leaked U.S. embassay cables had been exposed or will be in exposed in the future, but WikiLeaks is now backpedaling, accusing the Guardian of “gross negligence or malice” by publishing this password in a book. “A Guardian journalist has negligently disclosed top secret WikiLeaks’ decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished U.S. diplomatic cables,” WikiLeaks wrote in a statement. “Knowledge of the Guardian disclosure has spread privately over several months but reached critical mass last week. The unpublished WikiLeaks’ material includes over 100,000 classified unredacted cables that were being analyzed, in parts, by over 50 media and human rights organizations from around the world.” WikiLeaks explained that it has known that the password had been leaked for quite a while, but is only speaking out now because the public got wind of the breach. It’s a curious accusation, too, considering until December, the Guardian was one of WikiLeaks main publishing partners. In short, WikiLeaks is confirming what has already been assumed true by the media: the identities of sources and informants have been exposed, and it could put the lives of these individuals in danger. “More #Assange rubbish/lies? #Guardian has nothing to do with #WikiLeaks lack of security,” Leigh tweeted. What WikiLeaks has failed to mention is that its own minions are culpable, too. WikiLeaks supporters uploaded the full catalog of U.S. cables online in a BitTorrent file at the beginning of the year as a “public archive of the documents that WikiLeaks had previously published,” the New York Times said this week. Is WikiLeaks just trying to deflect blame from itself? And this password has been exposed for so long, why is WikiLeaks just now addressing the situation? Or is the site looking for a way to make itself relevant again after several months out of the spotlight? Leigh alleged from his Twitter feed that WikiLeaks is trying to drag the Guardian into the fight between Assange and former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domschiet-Berg, who broke off from WikiLeaks last fall to start rival site OpenLeaks. The Guardian has denied culpability in leaking the password. “It’s nonsense to suggest the Guardian’s WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way,” the paper said in a statement. “Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the datatbase. No concerns were expressed with the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn’t do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian’s book.” There’s a lot of finger-pointing going, accompanied by a number of accusatory, paranoid posts on WikiLeaks Twitter feed. Aside from the glaring irony that WikiLeaks itself has suffered a leak and regardless of the blame game going on, it’s likely that a number of slip-ups led to this point. For more from Leslie, follow her on Twitter @LesHorn. For the top stories in tech, follow us on Twitter at @PCMag.In his book Concepts in Film Theory, the renowned film critic Dudley Andrew proposed three models that, in total, describe the ways in which a screenplay can draw from its source. When a film borrows from another text, the source doesn’t necessarily share a storyline with the resulting work — it merely serves to inform the film’s subtext and essential emotion. In Abbas Kiarostami’s film Shirin (2008), for example, an audience — composed almost entirely of women — sits watching a film based on the tragic Persian romance “Khosrow and Shirin.” We only ever see the women’s faces and never the film they’re watching, which exists solely for us as an aural presence: an amalgam of dialogue, song, and dramatic sound effects. (Incidentally, these were added in editing; Kiarostami filmed each of his actors individually in his living room, a blinking light falling on their faces to simulate the effect of being in a movie theater). But the knowledge that the film these women are watching is a classic romantic tragedy inevitably informs the way we read their expressions. The second of Andrew’s adaptation models describes films that intersect with their source text, in which a text is preserved wholesale when rendered into cinematic form. In Ritwik Ghatak’s 1961 film about the aftermath of the Indian partition, Komal Gandhar (“A Soft Note on a Sharp Scale”), a group of East Bengal migrant artists find themselves stuck on the wrong side of the border. On the one hand we see the characters preparing to stage a classic Bengali play, and on the other we get to see the play itself as it’s performed. The abrupt shift between these two registers proves to be a clever formal device, recreating the displacement being experienced by the characters themselves. ‘Komal Gandhar’ (Ritwik Ghatak, 1961) The most common form of adaptation Andrew calls transportation, in which the cinematic version retains the essence of its source text. Among many contemporary examples is the 2015 film Brooklyn (John Crowley). Based on the book by Colm Tóibín, and adapted by the novelist Nick Hornsby, Brooklyn the film makes significant departures from its novelistic source. The first third of the book, approaching sixty pages, shows the central character, Eilis Lacey, at home in Enniscorthy, Ireland. She lands a job at the town’s provisions store, run by Miss “Nettles” Kelly, then moves into the room of one of her brothers. In the film, Eilis (played by Saoirse Ronan) boards the New York-bound ship about ten minutes in, her time in Ireland occupying less than one-tenth of the movie’s total running time. Among other things, the book intends to critique the Ireland of that time period (the 1950s), which had little to offer the young, compelling them to make Westbound oceanic journeys in search of better prospects. The film’s predominant concern is to focus on Eilis’s more positive experience after moving to the New World. Her less than ideal Irish work life is captured in a three-minute long scene, her personal life — she has no one to date! — reduced to and represented by a single dance room scene, which lasts only two minutes. Both of these scenes serve a metonymic function, allowing the audience to infer an accumulation of other moments similar to these that have led Eilis to make the decision to leave. Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn-bound, in ‘Brooklyn’ (2015) While Eilis in the book is possessed of three brothers and a sister, in the film these characters are collapsed into a single sister, Rose (Fiona Glascott), after whose death Eilis comes back to Ireland. In both texts the factor keeping Eilis from returning to Brooklyn — the fact that her mother will now be alone — gives rise to a central question: should Eilis choose her homeland, or the new home she’s made for herself in Brooklyn? Hornby’s thoughtful choice increases the stakes of the narrative in the film, less giving way to more. Most notably, however, it is a vital scene towards the end of the film that proves to be a significant departure from Tóibín’s novel. Unexpectedly making roots in Ireland after her return — this time she has a reputable job, and a love interest, Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson) fixing to marry her — Eilis’s former employer Miss Kelly (Bríd Brennan) confronts her with the procured knowledge that Eilis is already secretly married to someone in America, a man named Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen). In the book Eilis responds to this indictment with fear, and decides once again to leave Ireland. The film gives Eilis more agency in her decision to leave: she stands up to Miss Kelly, critical of her small-minded nature — and, by extension, that of others in the town, where everyone appears overly concerned with everyone else’s business. Here is the scene as it appears in Tóibín’s novel: In her tone, Eilis tried to equal Miss Kelly’s air of disdain. “Oh, don’t try and fool me!” Miss Kelly said. “You can fool most people, but you can’t fool me.” “I am sure I would not like to fool anyone,” Eilis said. “Is that right, Miss Lacey? If that’s what your name is now.” “What do you mean?” “She told me the whole thing. The world, as the man says, is a very small place.” Eilis knew from the gloating expression on Miss Kelly’s face that she herself had not been able to disguise her alarm. A shiver went through her … She stood up. “Is that all you have to say, Miss Kelly?” “It is, but I’ll be phoning Madge again and I’ll tell her I met you. How is your mother?” “She’s very well, Miss Kelly.” Eilis was shaking. “I saw you after that Byrne one’s wedding getting into the car with Jim Farrell. Your mother looked well …” “She’ll be glad to hear that,” Eilis said. “Oh, now, I’m sure,” Miss Kelly replied. “So is that all, Miss Kelly?” “It is,” Miss Kelly said and smiled grimly at her as she stood up. “Except don’t forget your umbrella.” And the same scene in Hornby’s adapted screenplay: The intention of both the book and film is to show Eilis’s character arc. But in the film Eilis’s response to Miss Kelly is a consequence of her change, while in the book the scene triggers a change in her.“Muslims love to take advantage of” free speech, Danish-Palestinian poet Yahya Hassan says, “and as soon as there is someone else saying something critical against them, they want to restrict it.” In an action previously indicated by this writer, Hassan is now personally facing this double standard in Danish “hate speech” charges for his anti-Islam comments. Following Danish-Iranian artist Firoozeh Bazrafkan’s conviction under Danish Penal Code Section 266b (in Danish here) for condemning Islam as misogynist, a local Muslim Aarhus politician demanded a similar prosecution of Hassan. His poetry “says that everybody in the ghettos like Vollsmose and Gellerup steal, don't pay taxes and cheat themselves to pensions,” the Somali-Dane Mohamed Suleban stated after reporting Hassan to the police on November 27. “Those are highly generalizing statements and they offend me and many other people.” Authorities are currently considering Section 266b charges for, according to one English translation, any public “communication by which a group of persons are threatened, insulted or denigrated due to their race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation.” The 18-year-old Hassan’s eponymous debut book contains about 150 poems, “many of which are severely critical of the religious environment he grew up in” according to Wall Street Journal reporters Clemens Bomsdorf and Ellen Emmerentze Jervell. Written in all capital letters, Hassan’s poems treat “issues like the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, child abuse, and the interplay between violence and religion” with “[p]rofanity and vivid analogies.” Yahya Hassan has sold 80,000 copies following an October 17 release in the comparatively small Danish market and is expected to exceed 100,000 copies by Christmas. Hassan’s publisher Gyldendal reports that Danish poetry books are fortunate to sell 500 copies. A recent book forum honored Hassan as the debut author of the year and an English translation of his poetry is underway. Hassan first became prominent with an October 5 Danish newspaper interview entitled “I Fking Hate My Parents’ Generation.” In it he blamed poor Muslim parenting for the juvenile delinquency and social maladjustment experienced by many Danish Muslim youth such as Hassan himself. With more than 85,000 social media shares, the interview became the most shared Politiken article of the year. Days thereafter Hassan recited from his “LANGDIGT” or “LONG POEM” before his book’s release on the Danish news program Deadline. Extract: “between the Friday prayers and the Ramadans/you want to carry a knife in your pocket/you want to go and ask people if they have a problem/although the only problem is you.” Such verses brought Hassan more death threats than any other previous Deadline guest. Hassan has subsequently reported 27 Facebook threats against him, of which the police investigated six as serious and pressed charges in one case of a 15-year old boy. A subsequent assault against Hassan occurred on November 18 in Copenhagen Central Station by a 24-year old Palestinian-Danish Muslim who had previously received a seven-year terrorism sentence. Hassan now wears a bulletproof vest and receives protection from Denmark’s domestic intelligence agency PET at speaking engagements. A November 26 reading by Hassan from his book in a school in the Danish town of Odense, moreover, required an estimated one million kroner in security costs, more than the amount spent on a high-risk soccer game. Several hundred policemen had observed the school for two days before the event occurred with road checkpoints, a bomb sweep, and a five kilometer no-fly zone around the school. Police safety concerns had forced the cancellation of an earlier, sold-out reading at a public library in Odense’s troubled district of Vollsmose. Along with Hassan, Culture Minister Marianne Jelved and several other Danish politicians criticized the Vollmose cancellation as “completely unacceptable.” Jelved demanded that police in Vollmose “make the necessary precautions” in order “to hold on to what democracy is, or otherwise we reduce it day by day.” Yet Suleban’s charges might succeed in silencing Hassan where violence has failed. Jacob Mchangama, legal affairs director at Denmark’s liberal think-tank Cepos, sees a “strong case” against Hassan, particularly given a “range of similar preceding cases” like Bazrafkan’s. Hassan’s media attention and public popularity, though, might make conviction difficult, as “his poems are important social commentary.” Hassan’s acquittal “for making statements similar to what other people have been convicted for,” Mchangama nonetheless observed, “will expose a random legislation where no-one can be sure of what is legal to say.” Calling for Section 266b’s abolition, Mchangama further questions the law’s “arbitrary limits.” What “is sufficiently degrading” and why should, for example, homosexuals receive protection, but not disabled people. Mchangama also sees no “good science” correlating speech laws with “less hate crimes.” Other commentators, moreover, have argued that speech trials simply bring more attention to the offending statements. Hassan’s case presents speech codes functioning not just as a de facto blasphemy, but also as a de facto apostasy law protecting Islam. How, after all, can an atheist like Hassan, who says that there is “something wrong with Islam,” decide upon his religious views without rigorous testing of all faiths? For that matter, how could anyone answer Hassan’s call for a “reformation” in an Islam that “refuses to renew itself” without similar scrutiny? Such questions aside, Hassan remains committed to his criticisms, stating that he does not “care about getting convicted of racism.” Muslims threatening violence can likewise “all come and get me if they want. I don’t give a st about these morons.” “I know these people,” Hassan adds, “They can’t handle criticism…they’re not interested in dialogue.” This article was commissioned by The Legal Project, an activity of the Middle East Forum. Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.The Cult of the Toxic Hero In the book The Phoenix Project, unplanned work is described as "anti-work". If not addressed, it's the antimatter to the matter of what you want to actually get done. “Like matter and antimatter, in the presence of unplanned work, all planned work ignites with incandescent fury, incinerating everything around it.” Company culture has its own antimatter. It may not always... Read More Like My Grandpa, With a Big Lawn I've learned some amazing things from code-related blog post titles lately. Apparently React is terrible, because Ember leads to blindness and Angular causes cancer. Backbone is washed out and in rehab, while Knockout is still unconscious. Link bait, after link bait, after bombastic ignorant link bait. Seriously - what planet do we live on? In my lifetime the number of... Read More Know When to Walk Away You've got to know when to hold 'em Know when to fold 'em Know when to walk away Know when to run... -- "The Gambler", Kenny Rogers Aside from the fact that Kenny Rogers got me into a lot fights as a kid (due to a different song that I absolutely loathe), the key takeaway from the burden of unfortunately... Read More machina v0.3.8 Released I just pushed the latest version of machina.js (v0.3.8). I've been working to eliminate some edge case bugs with extended machina.Fsm constructors and it appears we may have squashed the last bug there (until the next one, of course). This is the perfect segue to mention a feature that not many are aware of. When you... Read More UMD For Everyone I never thought I'd be one to write a response blog post. Sigh, now I'm that guy. However, I had an interesting conversation on twitter today with Ryan Florence after he said this: I wish everybody would quit screwing around with modules and just use CJS, it is the biggest pain as a library author to deal with this.&mdash... Read More Using ReactJS and KendoUI Together ReactJS has fundamentally challenged & changed the way I view web UI. The brief time that I've been working with it has been full of "aha!" moments that have rekindled excitement for the web in a way that I haven't felt in years. Much of that excitement is due to the fact that React views the UI differently that what we're... Read MoreSara Steffens, 37, is standing her ground. Once, she was a top reporter covering poverty and social services for the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, California. Today, Steffens labors as a union organizer. But a lasting lesson about unions came as a journalist organizing her co-workers with the Bay Area News Group, a holding of MediaNews Group, Inc. The experience transformed Steffens, also a mother of two daughters, June, five months, and Rosie, three and a half years. "I was so surprised at what an organizing campaign actually looked like and how it worked," she said. "I hadn’t come from a labor background. In my head it was going to be an intellectual debate between management and workers. I had this idea about what the best arguments would be for and against unions." In the months to come, her viewpoint would change along with her working conditions. Company Resistance to the Union During the Guild’s drive, MediaNews hired Cruz and Associates, Inc., based in Southern California, Steffens said. The firm’s Web site touts its skill in "union avoidance [and] counter union communications strategy"; adding: "For the majority of our clients, the single largest operating expense is labor costs." Cruz and Associates declined to comment as to the scope of its work for MediaNews, whose general counsel is Marshall Anstandig. Asked what Cruz and Associates did during the union drive, Anstandig said that was "confidential." SPONSORED Less confidential is what happens when workers organize, and why employers resist the efforts with such zeal. Workers can bargain collectively with employers to improve pay, benefits and conditions. "Economic data have long demonstrated a substantial wage premium for unionized workers—on the order of 10 to 20 percent—relative to non-union workers with similar characteristics," according to John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. As a journalist, Steffens organized with the California Media Workers Guild, Local 39521, The Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC unit. Her version of that experience is noteworthy. "It’s so difficult and scary to stand up in your workplace to choose a union when employers have constant access to you and control your livelihood," she said. A union has no such access to or control of employees at work. That power rests with employers. According to Steffens, "What the company actually did was to try and scare people in mandatory one-on-one meetings with their direct supervisors and management from voting for the union. Their message was that a pro-union vote might lead to layoffs and be a bad career move. "It’s not really an open debate between the union and management. The way that our labor law system is set up now almost demands that management respond like that to organizing." A Necessity to Organize According to Steffens, necessity drove her and her co-workers to launch the organizing campaign. "The company merged a bunch of newsrooms and quit recognizing an existing union," she said. "There was a group of us who saw organizing a new union as a way to keep alive the quality of our papers by exercising the strength of numbers." Do the math. The number of journalists in the combined newsrooms fell from 300 to 200 during the union drive. This trend reflects the industry’s economic instability. It has dual causes. One is a sharp loss of ad revenue to the Internet. That shrinking revenue funds newspapers’ operating expenses. The other is a brutal recession. Eight million jobs have been lost, doubling the ranks of the unemployed nationwide since Dec. 2007. These trends are shaking the foundations of mainstream print journalism and journalists. Steffens was an organizing co-chair with fellow reporters Karl Fischer, Carl Hall and Michael Manekin during a 6-month campaign leading up to a union vote. This is what workers must do to comply with the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. It calls for a secret-election ballot to (not) join a union. As the ballot date grew closer for Steffens and her workmates, they and management tracked the votes closely. Tensions rose. Livelihoods were at-risk. She and her co-workers won the National Labor Relations Board election of June 13, 2008 by a narrow margin. The bloom was quickly off that rose, though. A month after winning the vote to unionize, management dropped a figurative bomb in the form of layoffs for Steffens and 28 of her co-workers. "About two-thirds of those laid-off were union supporters," she said. "Conversely, none of the leaders of the in-house anti-union group were laid off." Anstandig, who also teaches labor law at Santa Clara University, said there was no "animus to the layoff decision" for Steffens and her co-workers. Rather, the company cutbacks were due to declines in revenue, circulation and "needing to make efforts to cut back on costs," he said. Freedom to Choose According to Steffens, the post-ballot layoff was retaliation for her and co-workers’ efforts in the union drive. A remedy exists, she said: passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. The EFCA, which amends the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), requires the necessary votes to pass the Senate and House before President Barack Obama signs it into law (which he promised to do while running for that office with major labor union help). If this comes to pass, workers could have an easier time of joining and remaining in unions. The EFCA would level the playing field between management and workers in three ways: It gives employees a choice between a secret ballot and checking a union card, imposes stiff fines for employers who violate employees’ right to organize and creates a binding, 120-day timeline for negotiating a crucial first-year contract. For one leading scholar, though, the EFCA is no magic wand. Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner is director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Her 2009 report, "No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing," shows that the MediaNews campaign that Steffens and her co-workers experienced matches broader trends in the U.S. workplace. American employers more than doubled their use of anti-union tactics against employees attempting to form unions between 1999 and 2003. Want proof? Bronfenbrenner analyzed a random sample of 1,004 NLRB union election campaigns and did in-depth surveys with head union organizers (like Steffens) in 562 of the campaigns (PDF). Sixty-three percent of employers use mandatory one-on-one, anti-union meetings with employees. Further, 57 percent of employers threatened to close the workplace, while 47 percent of employers issued threats to slash benefits and wages, while 34 percent of employers fired workers during union organizing drives. For Bronfenbrenner, Steffens’ employment experience "shows both the best of EFCA and its limitations." Take the card check option. It offers employees the option to check a card to show their support to unionize versus the NLRB secret-ballot election process. If a majority elects to sign cards, talks between the union and the company begin. That change to card check would help workers by "allowing the union to avoid the worst of the employer opposition," said Bronfenbrenner. Further, "the stiffer penalties for all employer violations could have a restraining effect on the opposition" to unionizing. However, big companies such as MediaNews, which owns daily papers, radio and TV stations across America, have deep pockets. Thus, "the EFCA penalties probably are not large enough to be any disincentive at all and they (companies) may play hard ball through the entire election and first contract campaign taking every penalty they get, still doing the lay off, and forcing an imposed first contract," according to Bronfenbrenner. Against this backdrop, Steffens and her fellow laid off journalists have had another reality check. Consider this. Their Guild filed three NLRB unfair labor practice charges at the regional and national levels against MediaNews for the post-election layoffs of July 2008. The Guild lost each time and lost a request for reconsideration, Steffens said. According to her, the NLRB rulings show that, short of written evidence from MediaNews of her and co-workers’ layoffs being due to union activity, the Guild has no case. The Guild and Labor Law Three months after her 2008 layoff, Steffens landed a full-time job as an organizer with the Guild. Now she works to improve the bargaining power of print journalists employed by MediaNews in Northern California. About a year after employees voted for a union, they ratified their first Guild contract. "I’m so proud of everybody that’s part of that bargaining unit, which covers over a dozen papers in the East Bay Area," Steffens said. The contract established a minimum rate of pay of $39,000 per year for journalists. "That means raises for a number of reporters," she said, adding this is not "a huge salary" for area residents. David Bonior is the chairman of American Rights at Work and a former House Democratic Whip. According to him, Steffens is a poster person for Congress passing the EFCA. Since her layoff, she has spoken out publicly for it to become the law. Here’s why. "When I started losing the NLRB cases, I realized that the system of labor law is broken," Steffens said. "It doesn’t work. The law says that you have the right to organize a union and can’t be fired for it. The law prohibits employers from threatening or intimidating employees during an organizing campaign. But all of those things are routine. The recourse you have through the NLRB isn’t very efficient and it doesn’t really work for most people."Connecting Intercom and Slack with a Serverless Webhook In this post I am going to show you how you can connect Intercom via Webhooks to dynamically route messages to Slack by standing up a Serverless Webhook endpoint. One tool I work with a lot in my day job is Intercom. It is a great product which we use to send Welcome Auto messages to customers when they sign up for our product. What's realy nice about Intercom as opposed to just email, is we can respond right from the Intercom UI where the whole thread is visible to the team. That's why when we decided to launch a second product it was a no brainer for us to use it again. Challenges integrating Intercom with Slack As an organization we live in Slack and as such, we integrate whatever we can to make our lives easier. Fortunately, Intercom has an integration with Slack, which we already use. That integration sends all notifications from Intercom to a single Slack channel. For our Extend product, I wanted the Intercom notifications to go to a different channel in order to allow us to have better visibility and management across the products. It became clear the existing Slack integration wouldn't suit my needs. Webhooks, local tools, and standing up servers Fortunately, I found Intercom supports Webhooks. Using the Create webhook feature you can create a subscription which will send notifications to an endpoint
able to relax a little. Everyone messes up. As long as you get your message across somehow you’ll be just fine. Don’t get hung up on being perfect: Your instructor will likely tell you to remember certain things, like the "Three W’s" when you’re reporting your position in the pattern. In this case, you’re supposed to say who you are, where you are, and what you’re doing, which sounds easy until you’re multi-tasking while turning from base to final in the pattern. Remember that it doesn’t really matter if you forget one portion of the required radio call- you can always call again. Or, if you're in a towered environment, ATC will ask you for any missing information they might need and everyone will move one. Don’t worry about embarrassment: ATC deals with new and unfamiliar pilots a lot, and they’ll understand. As far as other pilots, they’re all too busy worried about what they’re going to say to even notice a bad radio call. Early on in your training, your instructor might suggest that you avoid ultra-busy airports until you’ve mastered the radios. Practice on the ground: Practicing your tower communications on the ground will do wonders for your flight. Grab a buddy and have him or her pretend to be ATC while you "fly" the pattern on the ground. Listen: Listening from the ground at or near the airport is the best way to learn ATC lingo, phrasing and terminology, including operations specific to your area or airport. Just grab a transceiver (your instructor or FBO might have one you can borrow) and head down to the airport. Sit at the FBO or on the ramp, grab a bite to eat and listen to the radio. You’ll hear a few things from the ground that will help with your own radio communications. First, you’ll get a good idea of local procedures and what goes on in general at the airport. Second, you’ll get an idea of the timing of radio calls, which is also important. Specifically, you’ll learn when air traffic controllers do hand-offs, when to contact them when you’re inbound to the airport and what to say upon departure. Finally, you’ll hear other pilots mess up radio calls, which will make you feel better about your own mistakes. In the end, the best way to learn is by experience. You have to get your feet wet at some point, so don't be afraid to just jump in and do it. Your first few radio calls will probably be a bit rough, but it only takes a few flights to get the hang of it!Image copyright gsmudger A police force in a rural part of England is struggling to find a suitable chief constable, despite casting the net as wide as the US, Canada and Australia. Here are six things for potential police chiefs in Lincolnshire to consider when throwing their hat in the ring. The salary Image copyright Lincolnshire Police Image caption Chief Constable Neil Rhodes (centre) is retiring in February According to the force's annual accounts, current Lincolnshire Police chief Neil Rhodes received £146,986 in salary, fees and allowances in 2015-16. This is £3,524 a year more than the prime minister. And it is also more than the many top police officers would earn in the US. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the top 10% of high ranking officers earn on average $131,570 or £107,492. Could this tempt some to move across the Atlantic? Inspector Jon Hassall, chairman of the Lincolnshire Police Federation, said: "It may seem an attractive salary although it's actually quite low for a chief constable, as it's based on the population size of the area. "For someone coming from the US, it might be a good wage but the cost of housing and other living costs here are more expensive too. "I would find it inconceivable that someone could be put in charge of a British police force without experience of British policing." For more stories from the BBC England data unit follow our Pinterest board Career prospects Image copyright CaronB Is Lincolnshire a place for a chief constable to make their name? The answer, according to Mr Hassall, is probably not. "It's a fantastic place to live, with great schools, but it's more somewhere to come at the end of your career," he said. "It's an absolute privilege to serve here, but it's not somewhere you'd go from to run one of the big metropolitan forces." He said it was more likely that ambitious officers with a long time left in their career would go for a role as an assistant or deputy chief constable in a larger force. At West Midlands Police, England's second largest force, the current deputy chief constable is paid £147,500 a year - slightly more than Mr Rhodes was paid as Lincolnshire's chief constable. Cheaper than average housing Lincolnshire housing market £229,821 Average paid for detached home in Lincoln in the past 12 months £365,969 UK average £242,405 Average asking price for a detached house in Lincoln £420,766 Current UK average asking price for a detached house Thinkstock As long as the new recruit has a deposit of at least 5%, he or she could afford to pay about £2,576 a month on a mortgage in Lincolnshire. And that would be plenty to buy a £550,000 home, such as a six-bed detached house currently on the market in North Hykeham or a four-bedroom home in the village of Canwick, both within a half hour drive of police headquarters. Below average crime Whoever takes on the job will inherit one of the lowest crime rates in England. Crime in Lincolnshire 48.8 crimes per 1,000 people 2015-16 18.5 lower than the England average 36,008 recorded crimes 2015-16 7,080 violent crimes Thinkstock Challenging times Money-wise, Lincolnshire's police budget is stretched. According to a statement on the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary website: "Lincolnshire receives the lowest central funding per head of population of any police force, some £34 less per person than the national average." And it faces a looming challenge to keep its books balanced and have enough officers on the streets. "Medium term financial projections indicate that the force will be challenged to sustain an adequate number of police officers to ensure public safety and a viable force beyond 2016/17 if police finance continues to be allocated on the current basis", the force says. High rate of complaints Official figures showed Lincolnshire Police had the highest rate of allegations per 1,000 employees made to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. In 2014-15, there were 478 allegations recorded per 1,000 employees in categories such as neglect or failure in duty, incivility, impoliteness and intolerance, lack of fairness and impartiality or oppressive conduct or harassment. The total number of complaints had also risen 46%. The figures for 2015-16 will be published in November. And if they have not come down, tackling them may fall to the new chief constable.Police are appealing for information after a sexual assault in West Didsbury. At around 12.45am on Friday 22 September 2017, police were called to reports of a sexual assault on Hague Road. A 30-year-old woman had left a bus on Central Road and turned right onto Hague Road, when she was approached by a man from behind. This man pushed her into a hedge and as the victim attempted to free herself, he grabbed her around the neck and shouted abuse. She then fell to the floor and the offender continued to assault her, until the victim managed to break free and call police. The man is described as olive skinned, in his mid-20s, 6ft tall, of a medium build with a long black beard and short black hair with tattoos on his right forearm. He was wearing a black tracksuit top, with matching black trousers and bright yellow trainers. Detective Constable Martyn Gibson of GMP’s City of Manchester Team, said: “This woman was left bruised and shaken after what must have been a traumatic encounter. “In her commitment to escape from this man, I’m sure that people in nearby homes, or people moving around the area at this time, will have heard something. “Please help us to find this man by getting in touch if you saw anything that could help with our investigation, or recognise the description of the man.” Anyone with information is asked to contact police on 0161 856 6198 or 101, quoting incident number 98 of 22/09/17. All reports can also be made anonymously through the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.AURORA \| The Aurora Cultural Arts District is on its way to becoming brighter this summer as the city begins the first phase of an expansive lighting project along, and branching off of, East Colfax Avenue. Early next month city workers are expected to begin the process of adding eight street lights, 27 pedestrian lights and about 2,500 feet of conduit to East Colfax sidewalks and their peripheries, according to city documents. The project began with a feasibility study conducted in late 2014 and early 2015 that determined where the district needed additional lighting. The study found that the areas most in need of lighting were the blocks of Dayton Street and Dallas Street that run just south of Colfax. Two small parcels near the Aurora Fox Arts Center were also deemed a high priority. Those areas will be where the bulk of the new lamps will be located, according to Julie Patterson, spokeswoman for the city. In total, the new lights, conduit and energy meters will cost $865,100 over the course of two phases of construction. The project has been entirely funded by Community Development Block Grants, according to Cindy Colip, the city’s transportation project delivery manager. Lighting in the ACAD has been a lingering issue for local creatives and city officials alike in recent years as they have battled longstanding, negative perceptions of the area. Tracy Weil, managing director of the ACAD, said that the additional illumination could be a boon for keeping patrons in the area for longer stints of time, particularly after theater performances let out around 10 p.m. “I think (the lights) can really help attract more people, especially at night,” he said. “We have a lot of theater performances and if it’s a bright, cheery environment it will attract more people to come out, stay out, and have a good time.” A separate effort to help illuminate the ACAD came in 2012, when local artist Susan Cooper installed a public art piece called “Spotlight Aurora,” which included several LED lights fixed on the facades of multiple buildings in the area. However, the impact of the installation was short lived as the piece was damaged in a hail storm in June 2015. The city’s Art in Public Places Program is working with Cooper on restoring the installation to its original state, according to Roberta Bloom, public art coordinator for the city. The first phase of the lighting project is expected to be complete in about four months and eat up about $615,000 of the overall budget, according to planning documents. The second phase will account for the remaining $250,100 and could be completed by early 2017, though an official timeline has not yet been determined, according to Colip and city documents. “As the Colfax Arts District develops into a vibrant working arts district, with venues hosting activities and shows throughout the evening, the additional lighting will enhance the pedestrian experience, help to create a people-friendly environment and promote walkable routes within the Colfax Arts District,” Colip wrote in an email. The pedestrian lights will be mounted on 12-foot poles, while the traffic lamps will sit on poles that are 30-feet tall, according to planning documents. Annual energy and maintenance costs of the lights added in the first phase of construction will total roughly $1,500, according to the feasibility study. The second phase of the project could result in more lights along Colfax sidewalks and plazas between Florence and Dallas Streets, as well as along the northern blocks of Dayton and Elmira Streets and Del Mar Parkway to the south. Satya Wimbish, vice president of the ACAD board of directors and owner of The Collection gallery on East Colfax, said that the extra lights may help pedestrians feel safer when walking to or from their cars. “I know when I travel through, if I’m on foot, it’s always nice if there’s some type of lighting around,” she said.Please enable Javascript to watch this video CHICAGO - Her accomplishment last year in Canada is something which caught the attention of the entire world. As a member of the US Women's National Team, Christen Press helped the squad win the Women's World Cup for the first since since 2003. Over the course of a month the names of the players became familiar to women's soccer supporters along with sports fans all across the country. That includes here in Chicago where Press helped the Chicago Red Stars to an appearance in the National Women's Soccer League playoffs last fall. In 2016 she's back with the team again as the go for a championship in a new home. For this season the Red Stars have moved into Toyota Park in Bridgeview for their home campaign and open up this Saturday against the Western New York Flash at 6 PM. To get fans ready for the opener, Press joined Jarrett Payton and Josh Frydman on Sports Feed to discuss the team and her own career. To watch the segment, click on the video above.Bernie has overplayed his hand. It’s a classic mistake in politics and in life. And when you overplay your hand, you lose your power and leverage. Hillary is clinching the nomination with a majority of votes, a majority of pledged delegates and a majority of superdelegates. It is history in the making. What is the worst thing Bernie can do to her at this point? Keep attacking her character? He’s done that for months and she’s still winning. Turn the media against her? They’ve already hit her harder than any candidate — according to two independent studies — and she’s still winning. Impugn the Clinton Foundation, mention her emails, call her a war hawk, suggest she’s corrupt? He’s done all that (and did it again today) and she’s still winning. Spend the next seven weeks until the convention struggling for air time, seeking attention by doing things like siding with Donald when Hillary questions his qualifications? He’s done that and she’s still winning. Pretend that the nomination was stolen from him, that the process was rigged? He tried that and eventually came around to admitting it wasn’t true. Pressure superdelegates to overturn the will of the people? He’s done that and not one has switched to him. Try to create procedural hurdles at the convention? Hillary will still be the nominee and once the convention is in the rear view mirror, she’ll still be positioned to defeat Donald. Create an environment where his supporters disrupt the convention? She’ll still be the nominee and once the convention is in the rear view mirror, she’ll still be positioned to defeat Donald. As I’ve argued repeatedly, Hillary plays the long game — she knows that news cycles are ephemeral. What seems earth-shattering today is a hazy memory tomorrow. She’s weathered so many storms, withstood so many assaults that she is unfazed by temporary distractions. Bernie can keep trying to slow her down, but she will prevail. Because that’s what Hillary does. Her focus is on Election Day and on the unshakable bond with her supporters. They will turn out for her no matter what Bernie does. The Democratic Party may give him some nominal concessions, but the fact is this: Bernie is way overestimating his political leverage. His only path back to power is to join Hillary’s cause and help her defeat Donald. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)By Jennifer Walden Quentin Tarantino’s go-to supervising sound editor Wylie Stateman, of Twenty Four Seven Sound, reveals the secret sauce of the director’s cinematic style: “He is truly an aural enthusiast and very much a sculptor of his cinema through the use of sound and music.” That applies to dialogue as well, as Tarantino likes to cast actors with interesting voices. “Sound is a major contributor to Quentin’s films and often the secret sauce that makes the meal just gel and come together as a coherent recognizable work,” says the veteran audio pro, who has seven Oscar noms under his belt, including two for Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012) and Inglourious Basterds (2008). Stateman, who’s been working with Tarantino since Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003), feels it’s been a privilege having the opportunity to explore his vision as a filmmaker since his love for sound and music is such an integral part of his process. “Audio is very different from the other filmmaking aspects,” he explains. “You design a costume and you can hold it up, feel the material and see how it reacts to light. It’s real. Audio is very mysterious — a force that is just truly present in the moment. It’s just a vibration in the room. It’s something that the audience experiences but can’t see and can’t touch. It’s a different kind of art form, and as an audio artist I love working for Quentin because he is so particular and he values the contribution that sound makes to the experience of watching his film.” In Tarantino’s latest film, The Hateful Eight, distributed by The Weinstein Company, eight ruthless killers become holed up in Minnie’s Haberdashery one fateful Wyoming winter’s day. Bounty hunter John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth (Kurt Russel) arrives there with his captured outlaw Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and two other travelers — union soldier turned bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and the supposedly new sheriff of Red Rock Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who are trying to escape the encroaching blizzard. Instead of Minnie, they find in the Haberdashery a much shadier cast of characters. As the storm rages outside, the situation inside becomes equally intense. The seeds for Tarantino’s western were sown during the final phase of post on Django Unchained. After the initial leaked script fiasco, a new shooting script for The Hateful Eight came together the summer of 2014, and around Christmas time that year Tarantino rounded up his troop of main department heads — costume, production design, photography and sound — and headed to Telluride, Colorado, to get geared up for the production process. “I was there for Christmas and New Year’s, mainly to participate in the celebration that Quentin creates around the production side of the process. He celebrates the tools, the process and the people,” Stateman says. Minnie’s Haberdashery was being built in the mountains above Telluride, and the finishing touches were being added to the sets. “It’s an important part of his filming process. Lots of creative decisions are taking shape during those final weeks of pre-production,” says Stateman, who likens the process to the construction of the Rose Bowl parade floats. “People show up the month before the parade to participate in building the floats, and then there are the people who come out on New Year’s Day to watch. I enjoy the float building process.” Challenges of Location Sound In addition to shooting in Colorado where weather was often a challenge, Tarantino filmed interior shots at Red Studios in California, in a giant freezer to mimic the cold conditions. That environment added compressor hum to the production track. Also, considering the characters were wearing heavy clothing that obstructed the lav mics, Stateman says they did a substantial amount of work to make the dialogue tracks sound consistent. “Quentin likes the performances that he works to acquire during production and he wants to use those in the final mix. He doesn’t like to replace the dialogue and so despite all the challenges that the production sound team faces, the post sound team has a mission and a mandate to basically work with and around any of the production issues.” Foley All that dialogue cleaning and EQing didn’t just smooth things out. It resulted in pulling the life out of the track as well. Stateman used Foley to add it back in, spending roughly 200 hours recording Foley at Sony Studios with Foley artist Gary Hecker and his Foley mixer Nerses Gezalyan. “We want to really emphasize the micro details that Quentin goes after with his film editing style and his photography style,” explains Stateman. “In a Quentin Tarantino movie, when somebody flexes a muscle or puts a hand on a weapon, there’s a hyper-reality to the sound and that is acquired by having a really beautifully performed and recorded Foley track.” From the characters’ unique clothing and boots to their hats, holsters and guns, everything was represented in Foley. Stateman and his team acquired Foley props from far and wide, like hand-forged bits of old metal, old creaky wood, and cast iron pots and metal for the stove. “I’m a very committed Foley enthusiast. I really like to spend time and effort to produce sounds that blend entirely into the film. When Foley is done well, it’s invisible. It just adds this third dimension to the dialogue track. It adds depth and texture. We really beat up the dialogue track to get rid of all the noise and make each line match the line before and after. The Foley brought that three-dimensional feel back to the production dialogue.” Pristine Foley allowed Stateman to go hyper-real with the soundtrack at any time without bringing in unwanted noise. He could add fine detail, like a sound to highlight an eye blink, without obstructing the dialogue. “And Quentin’s films really benefit from having the ability to just go hyper-real.” The Blizzard Seeing as how Tarantino likes to cast characters with interesting voices it’s only fitting that the ninth adversary in the film, the blizzard, should have an interesting voice too. Stateman and co-supervising sound editor Harry Cohen called on sound designer Sylvain Lasseur to help craft the storm sounds. “The wind and weather are a very important part of the background texture of the film. Weather plays a very important role, but it’s not always a role that you want to call attention to. It has a progression and it puts pressure on the actors because they can’t leave the Haberdashery,” explains Stateman. Lasseur brought along his Kyma by Symbolic Sound, an independent sound design workstation that uses its own dedicated processor called a Pacarana. Using a continuum fingerboard to control the Kyma, Lasseur was able to manipulate and morph layers of wind sounds. “We created the weather literally one wind gust, wind whistle and wind wisp at a time. We built the wind to flatter the dialogue and the film edit in a very unique way with the Kyma sampler,” explains Stateman, who explains that the beauty of the Kyma is that it creates interesting instruments out of sound samples. First they created a guide track around the dialogue, using the pitch and velocity features in Kyma. Then they could model other sounds in and around the guide track. “So let’s say we have a base sound of a blizzard, we could then, very selectively, model wind wisps or rumbles or anything else against it. The Kyma would shape the other samples in time relative to the control track. Once we have them all modeled against each other we can start to pull them apart a little bit so that each element can have its own dynamic moment. It becomes more like a parade and you hear the low, the mid and the high — not on top of each other but offset from each other. The artistry comes in turning samples into instruments.” Lasseur spent four months creating wind instruments in Kyma and another four months hand shaping the wind around the dialogue and visual action. “We pushed really hard to crack this one particular problem of wind for the film.” Stateman and his team worked out of the Twenty Four Seven Sound studio located in Topanga Canyon, California, which features a full Dolby Atmos design studio. The Hateful Eight’s 70mm version, known as “the roadshow version” was their primary focus, as that is how Tarantino intended audiences to experience the film. “The multiplex version is a somewhat downscaled version of the film,” explains Stateman. The final 5.1 mix was handled at Sony Pictures Post in Culver City by re-recording mixers Mike Minkler and Christian Minkler in the Cary Grant Theater. Jennifer Walden is a New Jersey-based writer and audio engineer.Meanwhile, once hallowed verities fell by the wayside. U.S. officials stopped promising that Saddam’s downfall would trigger a wave of liberalizing reforms throughout the Islamic world. Op-eds testifying to America’s enduring commitment to the rights of Iraqi women ceased to appear in the nation’s leading newspapers. Respected American generals—by 2007, about the only figures retaining a shred of credibility on Iraq—disavowed the very possibility of victory. In military circles, to declare that “there is no military solution” became the very height of fashion. By the time Barack Obama had ascended to the presidency, this second phase of the Iraq war—its purpose now inverted from occupation to extrication—was already well-advanced. Since taking office, Obama has kept faith with the process that his predecessor set in motion, building upon President Bush’s success. (When applied to Iraq, “success” has become a notably elastic term, easily accommodating bombs that detonate in Iraqi cities and insurgent assaults directed at Iraqi forces and government installations.) Which brings us to the present. After seven-plus years, Operation Iraqi Freedom has concluded. Operation New Dawn, its name suggesting a skin cream or dishwashing liquid, now begins. (What ever happened to the practice of using terms like Torch or Overlord or Dragoon to describe military campaigns?) Although something like 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, their mission is not to fight, but simply to advise and assist their Iraqi counterparts. In another year, if all goes well, even this last remnant of an American military presence will disappear. So the Americans are bowing out, having achieved few of the ambitious goals articulated in the heady aftermath of Baghdad’s fall. The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation, and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget. Back in Iraq, meanwhile, nothing has been resolved and nothing settled. Round one of the Iraq war produced a great upheaval that round two served only to exacerbate. As the convoys of U.S. armored vehicles trundle south toward Kuwait and then home, they leave the stage set for round three. Call this the War of Iraqi Self-Determination (2010–?). As the United States removes itself from the scene, Iraqis will avail themselves of the opportunity to decide their own fate, a process almost certain to be rife with ethnic, sectarian, and tribal bloodletting. What the outcome will be, no one can say with certainty, but it won’t be pretty. One thing alone we can say with assurance:As far as Americans are concerned, Iraqis now own their war. “Like any sovereign, independent nation,” President Obama recently remarked, “Iraq is free to chart its own course.” The place may be a mess, but it’s their mess not ours. In this sense alone is the Iraq war “over.” As U.S. forces have withdrawn, they have done so in an orderly fashion. In their own eyes, they remain unbeaten and unbeatable. As the troops pull out, the American people are already moving on: Even now, Afghans have displaced Iraqis as the beneficiaries of Washington’s care and ministrations. Oddly, even disturbingly, most of us—our memories short, our innocence intact—seem content with the outcome. The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing. Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His new book is Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.PROVO — In an industrial warehouse in Provo, a man and a half-elf try to wrestle a magic hammer away from a god. It's just another day on the set of Mythica, a five-movie fantasy series being produced by Jason Faller and Kynan Griffin of the locally based Arrowstorm Entertainment. Faller and Griffin have devoted the past three years to the project. They shot the first three movies at the same time over a six-month period. "Because the size and scope of making five movies all tied together is difficult to do on any budget, and on our budget some people would say impossible," Faller says. "Some people say it's like shooting a couple hundred weddings day after day after day." With titles like "Orc Wars,""Shadow Cabal" and "Osombie" — Osama bin Laden's rebirth as a zombie — Arrowstorm has made a name for itself with lower-budget genre pictures. "We always talked about doing fantasy films, also talked about the impossibility of it," Faller says. "As computer imagery and graphics grew and changed and made a lot more things possible than were before, we finally felt that we were ready to try this out." This day on the set there's an imposing figure familiar to many fantasy fans. Kristian Nairn, who portrays Hodor on the immensely popular "Game of Thrones," is Mythica's Tek, god of the forge. "Who doesn't want to play a god?" Nairn says. "Look at all those armor and weapons. I'm a huge sci-fi fantasy geek. … It's a geek's dream come true." One more battle scene, and filming of the last Mythica movie will be complete. "A lot of melancholy feelings around the project right now," Faller says. "Mythica," the first DVD, is now on shelves at Wal-Mart. The second movie will be released Feb. 9. The third and subsequent installments will be at Redbox. Faller and Griffin say the fantasies won't end. They're now planning a TV series. "We've become a little bit addicted to this long form of storytelling," Faller says. "We can take that and create another world, another set of characters who I think people would really love," Griffin says. (Photo: Courtesy Arrowstorm Entertainment) × PhotosBy Tauqeer Jalal In June 26, 2014 On Freebies, Inspiration 11429 Views 90 Flares 90 Flares × In this post we have gathered 100 Plus Free High Resolution Textures and Backgrounds for your inspiration these textures and backgrounds are free to download and easy to use some textures and backgrounds in this article are iOS7 style you can download Free PSD files and use them in your projects. Hope these will help you in your project let us know about this texture post by comments, Enjoy! 10 Free High Resolution Blurred Backgrounds Download 9 Free Blurred Backgrounds Download 5 Spring Bokeh Backgrounds Download Carbon Fiber Pattern Background(PSD) Download 5 Polygon Backgrounds Download 5 Free iPhone Backgrounds(PSD) Download 58 Free Blurred HD BG Download Blurred Backgrounds Download Free Polygon Backgrounds Download 5 HD Free Bokeh Backgrounds Download 20 Free Blurred Backgrounds Download 20 Blurred Images(PSD) Download 20 Large Blurred Backgrounds Download 15 Free Blurred Backgrounds Download Geometric Backgrounds Download 16 Blurred Backgrounds Download 20 Blurred Backgrounds Pack(PSD) Download 5 Premium Free Polygon Backgrounds Download 4 Free Sphere Backgrounds Download Free Bokeh Backgrounds Download 23 Free Blurred Backgrounds Download Colorful Grunge Textures Download Light Textures Pack Download Thriller Dramatic Background Textures Download Dusty Particle 4K Textures Download Light Grunge Textures DownloadAlchemy Symbols and Signs from Spiritual Symbols Book What is Alchemy? A book Excerpt Secret Art of the Land of Khem 'Khem is an ancient name for the land of Egypt, and alchemy is one of the two oldest sciences known to the world. The other one is Astrology.' Manly P. Hall about Alchemy According to an old Rabbi legend, an angel gave Adam the mysteries and secrets of Kabbalah and of Alchemy, promising that when the human race understand these inspired arts, the curse of the forbidden fruit would be removed and man will again enter into the Garden of Eden. Alchemy Symbols, Alchemy Signs The earthly body of alchemy symbols is chemistry. The Phoenicians, and Babylonians were familiar with alchemy. It was the most prized of the secrets of the Atlantean priest-craft, it was practiced in China, Greece and Rome; and it was the master science of the Egypt. The most powerful of the alchemical organizations were the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, and certain Arabian and Syrian sects. What is Alchemy and Nature Alchemy is based upon the natural phenomenon of growth. According to Alchemists through the self development the consciousness of man can be transformed from base animal desires (represented by the metals) into a pure, golden, and enlightened consciousness; ignorance can, through proper endeavor and training, be transmuted into wisdom; metals can be transformed into gold. Alchemy Symbols and Kabbalistic Tarot painted by Oswald Wirth: The stages through which matter passes in its journey towards perfection can be divided into twenty-two parts, the twenty-two major cards of Tarot Symbolism of Numbers, twenty-two paths of Kabbalah, and the Twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Read More within Symbolism of Numbers The Tarot cards are an Alchemical Formula of manifestation. What is Alchemy Q&A So what is Life according to the Alchemy? What is intelligence? What is the essence? What is Nature of elements? Nature manifests through growth, it is an urge from within outward, a force that drives expression and manifestation. It is invisible, it is life found in bodies, animated by the divine breath. How does the Nature manifest? Nature manifests as male and female, as Yin and Yang, as Left and Right Sephirot within the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life. An alchemist must first know the Nature An alchemyst knows that all substances grow from seeds, and that these seeds are already in the body of the substance. Nature transforms the black carbon into diamonds, through millions of years of natural hardening. Alchemy is the Art of increasing and bringing an element into perfection with the greatest possible speed. The Alchemist must be able to discriminate between the male and female qualities and manifestations. The matter must be separated from its impurities. Alchemy Symbol, Can we give Nature a chemical symbol, a sign, an element? Nature can be compared to Mercury. Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver. It is highly toxic. Mercury is dual - fixed and volatile, it ascents and descents. Ascending, it seeks to purify. Alchemy - transforming Metals into Gold, Soul into Spirit Alchemy preserves the triple key to the gates of eternal life. It is a mystery of manifestation in three worlds: the divine, the human, and the elemental. Alchemical Symbols: The Triple Key in Four Worlds a table showing the analogies of the three principles in the four worlds across different cultures. These are alchemical symbols manifesting across different religions all around the world. Timeless & Eternal Dynamic & Expanding Multiplying & Dying; contracting Father Kether Brahma (Creator) Son Chokmah (Wisdom) Vishnu (Preserver) Yang Mother / Holy Ghost Binah (Understanding) Siva (Destroyer) Yin Spirit Soul Body Not an element: Life Force, Kundalini, Tao Fire and Air Water and Earth Philosopher’s Mercury Sulphur Mercury or Salt The Alchemist starts with a good seed, puts it to its proper earth, and when the seed is ready s/he rarefies it so that its virtue is increased and indefinitely multiplied. According to Alchemy the Nature should be assisted, so the Alchemist works according to the laws of Nature, recognizing that the Art is merely a method that copies Nature. Within the process of purification the Nature ends… Alchemy Symbol of Gold An Alchemist would tell you that all the beings contain in their inmost centre a precious grain of the elementary gold. The nature of man reflects the entire universe in miniature. According to Alchemy, One is developed into Two, and the two are merged into one. Elementarily and symbolically Sulphur is the living male, and Mercury is the living female. Female and male must be joined together, so that they form a germ. The Alchemist should separate the light from the darkness. Both must be purified and putrefied and joined a-new together. Their merge results in an Egg (Philosopher’s Stone) with the four elements joined together. The shell is Earth, the white is Water, the skin between the shell and the white is Air, and the yolk is Fire. In the middle of the yolk there is the 5th element that is the Life Force. VITRIOL = Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultul Lapidem After the purification, a perfect equilibrium of the four elements enters into the Lapis creating the Philosopher's Stone, the Mercury of the Philosophers, or the Philosopher's Medicine that gives health and cures diseases, perfects metals changing them into Gold. Long life, health, and happiness are all within the promise of this true AURUM, the most powerful and most precious Gold. Could it be that the Land of Punt was Ancient Malta? Eti Queen & Ancient Egypt Earliest ever Recorded Sea Voyage to the Sacred Land of Punt Many have tried to find Lapis, the Philosophers Stone, this sacred substance, searching amongst stones, liquids, air, or deep within their soul. The stone that turns metals into gold, the energy that transforms any fire into ‘living fire’, any flow into ‘Divine flow’. Do Read Ama Alchemy of Love Spiritual Fiction our Historical Novel that explores Alchemy The Secret of the Golden Flower and Chinese Alchemy It is the merge of male and female that fascinates us so much, it is the White Queen and the Black King that unite to give a birth to a child that is perfect and immortal. It is Taoist Yin and Yang that when circling in perfect harmony create balance and harmony within a Human Being, on Earth and in the Universe. Wisdom and Secrets of an Ancient Chinese Alchemy Text: The Secrets of the Golden Flower. This is an Excerpt from Spiritual Symbols with Their Meanings Book (Alchemy of Love Mindflness Training Book #8) by N

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